“Mr. White,” I begin, and his good eye rolls in my direction, “thanks for meeting with us.” I introduce myself and Chase. He doesn’t respond, so I keep going. “You spoke with a man, Dr. Bradley, last week. Do you remember that?”

He snorts derisively. “Yeah. I’m not a retard.” Spittle clings in the corners of his cracked lips.

“Didn’t mean to imply anything,” I say. Chase clears his throat, automatically reaches in his pocket for his phone to take notes, but quickly realizes his phone was confiscated back at the intake desk.

“Why did you agree to see him?”

Tyler shifts in his chair, stretches his back, as though he’s just waking up. “He’s writing a book. He asked if he could interview me for it.”

“You agreed?”

“Obviously, since I talked to him.” He rubs his fingertips together. Then studies them as if he’d touched something interesting. “Nothing else to do in this place.”

“What did you talk about?”

Tyler takes a deep breath. “All the same stuff the other doctors want to know about. Did I decide to kill my mother because of my shitty childhood.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him the truth.” He stabs the table with his index finger. “I killed Louise in self-defense.”

“How’s that?”

“She beat the shit out of me my whole life. Every goddamn thing was my fault.” His eye meets mine. “She had some kinda powers too.”

“Powers?”

His head droops and his voice falters. “She knew things. Secret things. I can’t describe it.” Silence fills the room. The clock high on the wall ticks. Finally, Tyler sits up, glares at me and Chase, and whispers, “She was going to kill me. I heard her talking to someone. She was always talking to someone where I couldn’t see her.”

“Who was she talking to?”

His bottom lip trembles slightly. “How the hell should I know? I never saw him.” Tyler makes a strange, low sound in his throat before meeting my gaze. “So it was her or me.”

“So you had no choice?”

“No. I had no choice. No choice. That’s what I keep telling them.” He shakes his head like he’s trying to dislodge something stuck in his brain.

“Uh huh. What else did Dr. Bradley ask you about?”

“Let me think a minute.” He closes his eyes, and a slow smile spreads across his face. His good eye pops open and pins me in my seat. “He wanted to know when the switch flipped.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I went from being a regular guy to a killer. What changed?” He looks off at the wall, his eyes fixed and unblinking. “Like I knew. I didn’t change. I’ve always been the same person. I didn’t know what he was getting at, if you want to know the truth. Then he asked me if I fantasized about killing my mother before I did it.”

“Did you?”

He shrugs one thin shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about that. I told him that was private. A person’s fantasies should be private, don’t you think? What goes on in your head is nobody’s business.”