“PTSD is the very least of it,” said Rudy, his rich baritone voice filled with cracks. “Listen to me, Junie, you know that Joe is who he is because of trauma. The horrors inflicted on him and his girlfriend, Helen, when they were fourteen destroyed much of the person he’d been before that. You know that this trauma created fractures in his psyche that resulted in the emergences of a number of limited-dimension shadow personalities. Many of them at first, and since he and I began our therapy, that number was reduced to three.”

“Yes, the Modern Man, the Cop, and the Warrior.”

“Correct. The Modern Man is the closest to who Joe might have become had his life not been so profoundly overshadowed by what happened at age fourteen and then again later when he found Helen after her suicide.”

Junie nodded. She knew that the suicide had also done considerable damage to Rudy, because Helen was the first of his patients to take her own life.

“The Cop shadow self is the one that gives him the balance, the pragmatism that allows him to function in day-to-day life but that collects and refines his acquired skills in ways that made him an excellent police officer and later detective. He tries to be the Cop every minute of every day of his professional life. You’ve seen that aspect of him, but I suspect you are most in love with the affable, somewhat goofy Modern Man—that lover of rare steaks, craft beer, Hawaiian shirts, and baseball.”

Junie smiled despite the stress, and she nodded, then added, “But I love all of him.”

“Is that really true, though? You mentioned his third shadow self, the Killer, but you used the older nickname Joe had for that aspect when you called him the Warrior. In truth, I believe the Warrior part of him was really an extension of the Cop self, in the same way that a pragmatic policeman who tries to prevent or investigate crimes might be required to draw his weapon and even take a life. The Cop is the true Warrior—a person who studies the art and science of warfare and is sophisticated in his understanding of the often ugly things such a person is forced to do in defense of those incapable of their own protection. However, since joining the old Department of Military Sciences, his third shadow self has had cause to become far more aggressive than before. Less a warrior and more of a primal savage. Not mindless or heartless—rather the reverse; possessed of a deep and unshakable need to protect the weaker members of the tribe. In that defense, there is no limit to what the Killer would do. I have heard the slang that it is ‘going to war under a black flag.’”