"Paine, I can’t help you," Yuna complained.

"DR. Paine," she said, opening the door to her office and not bothering to show Yuna in.

"I have a job to do. I have some jobless twit trying to get custody of five kids when only three of them are hers and meanwhile the husband took off with all of them. Jumped state!"

"And I have some nun who’s setting fires every chance she gets," Dr Paine retorted, angrily dumping herself down in her chair. "You want my job?"

"That’s just it. I can’t do your job. All I got from him is that he killed someone named Kinoc."

"Of course he did!" Dr. Paine said, sitting up and smacking her hand on the papers on the desk. "Frankly, I would have lashed out at that brainless misogynistic twit myself if I had a chance."

"Wait…" Yuna said. "This isn’t about Kinoc?"

"No, it’s not Yuna," Dr. Paine said, and sighed, collecting herself. "I was hoping to keep that out of this case, but Auron had to not only get arrested, but also get involved in this whole mess. God, it’s like this whole city’s inbred at the top."

"What are you talking about?"

"Seymour’s in trouble for killing his father, Jyscal. Kinoc used to be the State Attorney; kept Jyscal where he was and kept the fuss down as part of the job in exchange for a few perks."

"Perks?" Yuna asked.

"Jailbait and hookers, if he could find anyone sober willing to do it with him. After he retired, Shelinda, another of Jyscal’s friends took over. She’s the one who pushed for a trial without an assessment. A year ago Kinoc went absolutely batty and started shooting at people from his house, claiming they were after his cat. I think he said Jyscal was killed by aliens. Then one of Kinoc’s friends gets himself chucked in here with severe anger issues." There was only a hint of emotion to what Dr. Paine said and it wasn’t caring about Jyscal or Kinoc in the slightest. She was pissed Seymour had to go to court.

"What do you want me to do?" Yuna asked, still clueless.

"Get him to say something. Get him to say anything. Have him talk about the murders. Have him talk about… get anything out of him, please."

"Why?" Yuna asked. "Why can’t you do it?"

"Because he won’t talk to me anymore."

"Well I can’t do shit unless I have any clue what the hell’s going on. You never told me he killed his father!"

"I thought you’d refuse if I told you. He refuses to plead inanity or not guilty, and you were the only person I could get any evidence to the contrary from him."

"I can’t just poke around in the dark. I need to know the details."

"You want details, so do I," Dr. Paine said. "There are no records of him, no school, nothing but a birth record from out of state. His grandmother on his mother’s side says there was a custody battle, but she’s a basketcase with seven cats and thinks it 1987. That’s all we have before the murder. None of the cops are talking about any sort of custody battle and all we have is that you and I think he’s innocent and thinking doesn’t cut it in court."

"So what?" Yuna protested. "So why do you care? I’m sorry, but I have so many other kids that need me and my cousin’s worried sick her husband won’t get out and frankly he seems to be the most sane of everyone I know, and that includes you."

"I’m sorry I care about my patients," Dr. Paine said, ironically the most stoic Yuna had ever seen her. "I’m sorry I trust in a boy that came here after he had to be wrestled off the prison bars while he was crying."

"But why?" Yuna asked. "Why him? What makes him so special?"

"Because this doesn’t happen when your father’s the chief of police, damnit!" Dr. Paine yelled. "You don’t have a child that never went to high school! You don’t have a custody battle no one knows about."

"So what, you want to be his mother?" Yuna asked, crossing her arms.

Dr. Paine stood up from her desk. Yuna’s comment had been some sort of slap in the face when she hadn’t meant it to be. The doctor walked around her desk and sat down on it. "I could have been, but it wouldn’t have done any good." She started peeling off one of her black gloves, which was hidden under the sleeves of her white jacket. Yuna had always thought they were just there to keep her from looking like a ghost with her pale skin and hair and clothes. She pulled her sleeve back, revealing a scar on her arm. From the looks of it, it had been made by someone’s teeth.

Yuna said nothing. She knew who had made that scar. What she wanted to know was why and how things were the better for it.

"He was obviously disturbed by something the first time I looked at him. I marked him down as mentally unfit to go to court and they threw him in here. It took him a year to get well enough for anyone to consider another assessment."

"He bit you?"

"He bit me," Dr. Paine said, nodding. "He didn’t say anything, he just shot for my arm and bit me and refused to let go."

"What did you do?"

"I let him. I told him I wasn’t there to punish him. I told him he wasn’t going to court; he wasn’t ready," she said, then covered up her arm with her sleeve. "He did nothing for about a minute, but then he let go. And he talked to me. He said he missed his mother, and that he was very, very scared. Then I told him I understood. I told him I’d help him. Then I made a mistake. I told him I knew his dad. He clammed up after that and never said another word to me. Ever."

"You knew his dad?"

"I used to be a cop. His father would constantly hit on me. Three times I reported it as sexual harassment. I quit after the third time. There’s no record of anything I ever filed."

"You sure he was too nuts to go to court for a full year?"

"Did you get a good look at his face?"

"No, why?" Yuna asked. How much more to Seymour was there that was being kept from her? What the hell had Dr. Paine tried to get her into?

"On his left is what he got after Auron attacked him with the chair. On his right… We put him in ISO first thing, considering the circumstances. He kept attacking the guards. He was screaming and crying when he did it, but it always took four of them to hold him down if anyone ever opened his cell. It was only a few days until he began attacking himself as well. He bit himself, chewed on himself, scratched himself, and cut and stabbed himself with anything he could get his hands on. We had to put him in a straightjacket. It didn’t really help. He’d wait until everyone left and the lights were out. He’d bang his head on the glass, repeatedly. He knocked himself out twice doing it and he got more violent. He bashed his skin open on his forehead. We had to put him in a padded room until he stopped."

"Maybe he’s just—"

"He’s not. Schizos take time to become multiple murderers. He’d have hurt small animals and I’ve only known about three dog-nappings since I was on the force. Jyscal may have kept people from talking, but he couldn’t keep people from listening. I was a cop when he was a kid, everyone’s pets were fine. Besides, they hardly ever go after relatives."

"But—"

"Yuna. Screw me. Okay? He called the police on himself and when they got there, he was puking all over the phone. He never even managed to hang it up. He didn’t stop crying until he was given drugs to calm him down. He was so scared he didn’t sleep for two days. He was a mess and he’s still a mess. But something made him a mess, and if you don’t want to help me clean it up, you don’t have to. It’s easier to just have him killed and throw the mess away anyway. God knows there’s enough kleptos and pyros in here no one’s really going to miss him. Especially with Auron hanging around here. Hell, he’ll probably just start over where Seymour left off."

"What if I’m right?" Yuna asked. "What if he is just a crackpot? I know he’s scared. I know he’s not going to hurt me. I know he can be nice, but that doesn’t erase the fact that he killed two people."

"No. No, you’re right. It doesn’t. But we don’t know."

"What if I am right?"

"Then he’ll pay for it. But we won’t know without your help. You can quit, or you can stay and I’m not going to hold your decision against you. But if you don’t, we’ll never know. He’ll take the secret to his grave. If you don’t do this out of compassion, there’s only one chance to do it out of curiosity."

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