Chapter 3: Skin Deep Interrogation
The serpent candle was now on her desk. Evelyn had taken it from the drawer that morning, placing it dead-center on the blotter. The wax was the color of dried blood, the serpent’s vacant eyes staring at the empty patient’s chair. A statement. A challenge. To whom, she wasn’t entirely sure.
She didn’t wear the white coat at all today.
The teal silk of the crop top was a deeper shade, the same color as yesterday’s but cut narrower, a band of fabric that clung to her ribs and ended a full two inches above the waistband of her skirt. The skirt itself was a minimalist creation in charcoal gray, a slash of fabric that hugged the curve of her hips and fell to the middle of her thighs. It was professional in its severity, yet brutally revealing in its brevity. She applied her lipstick slowly, blotting it perfectly, then clipped her hair back. The stethoscope felt too obvious today. She left it in her office.
The walk to the interrogation room was a silent procession. Orderlies didn’t just watch; they stopped, their mops and clipboards forgotten. A senior nurse, a woman with a face like a closed fist, shook her head once, a sharp, disapproving motion. Evelyn met her gaze, held it, and then looked through her. The click of her heels was the only sound she owned.
Inside, the room smelled of yesterday’s sweat and today’s industrial cleaner. Jerome was already chained, his posture more alert, his eyes already fixed on the door when she entered. She saw his pupils dilate, a physical reaction he couldn’t control. The door hissed shut behind her, sealing them in.
She didn’t speak. She walked to her chair, pulled it out, but didn’t sit. Instead, she turned her back to him, facing the one-way mirror she knew was observational glass, and shrugged out of the simple black blazer she’d worn over the top. She let it slide down her arms and draped it over the chair back. Then she turned around.
The fluorescent light gleamed on the exposed strip of her stomach, the delicate arch of her collarbones. She stood there, letting him look.
Jerome’s smile was a slow, creeping thing. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Getting smaller every time,” he said, his voice tighter than usual. “Tomorrow, you gonna just walk in with some paint and a dream?”
Evelyn took her seat, crossing her legs. The movement made the skirt ride higher. “I’m surprised,” she said, her tone cool, analytic. “A big man like you, scared of a woman’s body.”
He let out a sharp, brittle laugh. “Scared? Honey, I’m not scared. I’m just sad.” His eyes traced the line from her ankle to her knee. “Real sad I can’t taste it. Seems a waste, all that… presentation.”
“All information is useful,” she said, opening her notebook. “Even your frustration is data. Tell me about the first time you set something on fire.”
He leaned back, feigning relaxation, but the chains were taut. “Birthday cake. I was six. Wanted to see the pretty lights myself.” His gaze wandered over her shoulders. “You ever burn your hair with a curling iron, Doc? That smell.”
She ignored the question. “And the first living thing?”
“A cat.” He didn’t blink. “It was always hissing. Wanted to see if it would purr when it was warm.” His attention dropped to her mouth. “Your lipstick’s smudged. Left corner.”
It wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t. But the comment was a probe, an attempt to make her touch her face, to break her clinical pose. She didn’t flinch. “Why did you take the trophies from your victims? The… personal effects.”
“Souvenirs.” He shrugged, the metal rattling. “You keep that candle on your desk. Same thing. Reminds you of me.” He licked his lips. “Does it remind you of me, Doc? When you’re alone in your office?”
The banter was circular, a cage of his making. He was deflecting, dancing, commenting on the shape of her nails, the shadow at her throat, the way her breath hitched when she leaned forward. He gave her nothing of substance, only a running commentary on the vessel asking the questions.
Evelyn watched him for a long minute. She uncrossed her legs and slowly, deliberately, leaned down. Her fingers found the buckle of her left high heel. She undid it, slid the shoe off, and placed it silently on the floor. Then the right.
She stood up on bare feet. The vinyl was cold.
Without a word, she walked around the desk. She stopped beside his chair, just outside the radius of his chained hands. She could smell him now—unwashed skin, cheap soap, and something bitter, chemical.
“Your mother’s smile was a lie,” she stated, her voice soft, almost intimate. “You hate lies.”
“I do,” he breathed, his eyes locked on her bare legs.
“So tell me the truth.” She took a half-step closer. The side of her bare thigh brushed against the rough fabric of his prison-issue trousers, just above his knee. He jerked as if shocked. “Why the performances? The jokes? Why not just… kill quietly?”
He was staring at the point of contact, his breathing shallow. “Quiet is boring.”
“You’re boring me now.” She shifted her weight, letting her calf press a little more firmly against his leg. “All this chatter. No substance.”
His head snapped up, his eyes blazing. “You want substance?”
“I want the truth behind the smile. The reason before the rhyme.”
She saw the conflict in the tightening of his jaw, the war between his compulsive defiance and the visceral distraction of her proximity. She leaned in, closer, her lips near his ear. Her breath stirred the greasy strands of his hair. She didn’t kiss him, but the ghost of it was there, a promise in the air between her mouth and his skin. “Tell me,” she whispered.
A tremor ran through him. He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing.
Then she moved. It was a subtle, deliberate shift. She turned slightly, as if to adjust her stance, and the warm, bare skin of her inner thigh came to rest gently, fleetingly, against the confined bulge in his trousers.
Jerome gasped. It was a raw, undone sound. All the air left his lungs in a rush. His head fell back against the chair with a soft thud, his eyes squeezing shut. The chains jerked taut, his fists clenching white. For a long moment, he just trembled, wrestling with a wave of pure, undiluted sensation.
“The… the first time was my fault.” The words spilled out of him, cracked and hurried, as if pushed by the pressure building in his groin. “I broke a plate. She made me pick up the pieces. Cut my hands. She laughed.” He was talking to the ceiling, his throat exposed. “She said I was clumsy. A monster. I looked at my hands, bleeding, and I thought… she’s right.”
Evelyn didn’t move her leg. She was a statue, a conduit. “Go on.”
“The mirror… my reflection… it agreed with her. So I agreed with it.” His hips gave a small, involuntary jerk against her thigh. He cursed under his breath. “I gave it what it wanted. Started small. A neighbor’s dog. Then the neighbor. It was… it was making the outside match the inside. Scratching an itch so deep it was in my bones.”
The floodgates were open. He described the stench of his first arson, the crackle of the timbers, not with glee, but with a terrifying, flat precision. He recounted the look on a victim’s face not as fear, but as a “fascinating collapse of architecture.” He spoke of the trophies not as mementos, but as “corrections,” taking what was falsely happy and exposing the void beneath. All of it spilled out in a rushed, hushed torrent, punctuated by his ragged breaths and the soft, rustling friction of fabric against her skin.
Evelyn listened, her mind a cold, clear lake. She cataloged every word: fault, monster, itch, architecture, correction. She mapped the pathology onto her internal model of him. The narcissistic injury, the shattered ego, the externalization of self-loathing into grand, violent theater. It was all there, laid bare. The coherent diagnosis she had struggled to construct clicked into place, a perfect, horrifying puzzle.
He talked until he was hoarse, until the confession dwindled to a stop. His body went limp against the restraints, spent. The room was silent except for the hum of the lights and his quiet panting.
Slowly, deliberately, Evelyn withdrew her leg. She stepped back, the cold air of the room rushing into the space where their warmth had mingled. She walked barefoot to her chair, sat down, and picked up her pen. She began to write, her notations swift and clinical, filling the page.
Jerome watched her, his expression hollowed out, drained of all its performative rage. He looked young. He looked tired. “Happy now?” he muttered, his voice raw.
“It’s not about happiness,” she said, not looking up from her notes. “It’s about understanding.”
The intercom buzzed. Time was up.
The orderlies entered. They unlocked him, hauled him to his feet. He was pliant, unresisting. As they shuffled him toward the door, he turned his head, his eyes finding hers one last time. There was no smirk, no sly comment. Just a look of profound, exhausted recognition.
Then he was gone.
The silence in the room was absolute. Evelyn looked down at her notepad, filled with the stark, analytic truth of Jerome Valeska. In three sessions, she had achieved a psychological profile of unnerving depth, something teams of seasoned psychiatrists had failed to do in years. It was a monumental professional triumph.
She should have felt elation. A vindicating thrill.
She felt cold.
Her thigh, where it had pressed against him, felt branded. The clinical detachment she had worn like a shield was gone, evaporated in the heat of his confession. She had peeled him like a banana, just as she’d intended. But the fruit inside was not a simple, sterile specimen. It was complex, wounded, terrifyingly human.
A dull ache spread through her chest. She cared about the data. She cared about the breakthrough.
And, with a sinking, irreversible clarity, she realized she was starting to care about him.
Her eyes lifted from the notepad to the serpent candle on her desk. The flame she had been so determined to study had leapt from the wick and scorched her own hands.