They don’t learn to handle stress, because they escape it. So they usually have pretty serious chronic psychiatric problems, like anxiety and depression. Every time there is a new stress, they are prone to crumble. Maybe even dissociate again.”
If — if — this theory were true, Green thought, the stress of a new job and a new family could have been the trigger, and the killing of Jackie Carmichael the unconscious acting out of his buried childhood rage. Farfetched, barely credible, but, as Sharon said, the human mind was an astonishing thing.
And now this loose cannon was on the loose again. Without treatment and facing perhaps the worst stresses of his life.
Chapter Six
Ignoring the laminated menu in front of him, Archie Goodfellow laced his fingers over his girth and smiled to catch the waitress’s eye. She grabbed a pot of coffee before hustling over. “Meatloaf and mashed, hon?”
He chuckled. It was the Tuesday lunch special at the diner, and in all the years he’d been coming here, he’d never missed that special. “You got it, Nancy. With extra gravy on the mashed.”
She laughed as she retrieved the menu. “No one joining you today?”
Archie did half his ministering over lunch at the diner, but today he pointed to his laptop. “Gotta catch up on my paperwork.”
Once she’d left, he moved aside his motorcycle helmet, set his laptop on the table and booted it up. It was true that there were fifty-two unopened emails in his inbox but he scrolled past all of them. Paperwork, even the electronic kind, was not his strong suit, and most people knew him well enough to send three or four reminders if they actually wanted a reply.
This time, however, he focused on a single email that had been sent to him only once. It was a forwarded message from Rosten’s new parole officer, accompanied by one sentence of explanation. Think you should handle this. She checks out. The parole officer knew him well enough to keep all correspondence brief.
Archie had already skimmed through the message earlier that morning, enough to know that it could not be handled with a quick, off-the-cuff reply. This would require some planning, some weighing of alternatives, even some soul-searching.
Dear Mr. Vogel,
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