Contemplating him, Dr. Warren Hunt leaned back in his sleek leather executive chair, the poster boy for patience and serenity, and nodded. “If you need to take care of business, there’s an adjoining office you’re free to use.”

Tomasetti looked down at the cell phone in his hand and tried not to think about Kate. Or the fact that instead of sitting in this office humiliating himself, he should be on his way to Painters Mill. “Let’s just . . . get this over with.”

The doctor smiled.

Tomasetti had never been a fan of doctors, but he hated shrinks with particular vehemence. He found all of their how-do-you-feel-about-that questions, their phony concern and not-so-covert glances at their watches obscenely disingenuous. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice but to tolerate Dr. Warren Hunt. The suits might call it progress, but John called it a crock of shit.

“Where were we?” the doctor asked.

Hunt was a nice enough guy. A little too preppy for someone his age; John guessed him to be in his mid-fifties. But he’d been through some tough times. He’d spent a year in Bosnia way back when. He’d been a cop in New Orleans during Katrina. But while those things held weight for Tomasetti, there was baggage, and then there was fucking baggage. He had the profound misfortune of possessing the latter.

“I think we were discussing my plethora of vices,” Tomasetti replied.

Hunt gave a small smile, then looked down at the file in front of him. Tomasetti knew it contained records—damning personal information from past doctors—another proviso he didn’t care for, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it. And so here he was.

“I see you’ve had some problems with alcohol,” Hunt said. “Are you still drinking?”

Tomasetti looked across the gleaming span of rosewood, wondering how much of this would get back to his superiors. “I’ve cut back. A lot.”

“You still running?”

“I’m up to a couple of miles.” He hadn’t run for a week, but then he didn’t feel the need to confess.

“What about sleep?” Hunt asked. “You sleeping at night?”

“Better.”

“Sleep disturbances? Nightmares?”

“Sometimes.” For the last two and a half years—since the murders of his wife and two little girls—Tomasetti had been plagued by nightmares. More than one shrink had called them a by-product of post-traumatic stress disorder. They’d prescribed everything from Valium to antidepressants to antianxiety drugs to sleeping pills. The antidepressants seemed to do more harm than good, so John had stopped taking them almost immediately. The rest, however, he’d sucked down with the self-destructive glee of an addict.