Revelations of a bartender

Dr. Charlotte Whittier had been a therapist for years.

Her practice was small but well known for being the best in the district, having helped hundreds of people work through their problems, often ranging from stress and anxiety to coming out to their parents after years of suppressing themselves. She had heard thousands of stories and dozens of experiences and couldn’t think of a single thing that could surprise her.

Until an inmate in the Clark County Jail requested to speak with her personally.

This wasn’t a first. In fact, she was the go-to mental health specialist for the jail and nearby prison. She even had her own office in the two locations.

However, this inmate was different. This inmate was one that was currently on trial for a series of murders, numbering fifty-eight in all. He had been tight-lipped with every professional therapist and doctor that they sent him to, and the trial itself was going poorly.

But Charlotte Whittier wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, and it spoke well that the man had requested her himself; maybe she could find out his motive and convince him that coming clean was for the best?

They met for their first - and last - session on a Friday. The weather was gloomy, with chances of rain stretching through the weekend.

She had made sure her office was clean and already had a pencil and legal pad ready when the Correctional Officer knocked on the door.

“Ma’am, are you ready for him?” the overweight officer asked as he opened the door.

“Yes.”

The door opened and a man in an orange jumpsuit walked in, hands and feet clasped in chains. His dark hair was a bit long, lightly brushing his neck as he walked in, and he had no defining features like other inmates did. No visible tattoos or scars that suggested a person prone to violence; nose, lips, and ears were free from piercings and looked as close to the word ‘plain’ as Charlotte had ever seen.

This was Keith Jones, a possible serial killer.

“Doc,” he greeted, voice flat as he looked around the office.

“Good evening,” she greeted, before looking at the officer, “That will be all, officers,” Charlotte said, giving the man a polite smile as he stepped out and closed the door; more than likely settled against the wall in case the inmate became violent.

“As you most likely know, my name is Dr. Charlotte Whittier,” she began as she uncapped her pen.

“Yeah,” he chuckled, “My buddy Rizzo said you helped him when he was dealing with suicidal thoughts.”

She smiled slightly. “Yes, I remember that nickname. So, he’s the one who suggested you talk with me?”

“He said it couldn’t hurt,” he shrugged, “and all honesty, I’m tired of not telling anyone what I know.”

“What do you know?” she asked in interest.

He shrugged again. “I know a lot of stuff, the school system isn’t that shitty…” he looked around, his brown eyes completely disinterested in everything around him. “You, uh...got any cigarettes? Haven't had one in months…”

“I do not smoke, and this facility is smoke-free,” she said pointedly before opening her drawer and pulling out a pack of cigarettes and sliding them across the table.

He grinned. “You’re not too bad, Doc,” he said, pulling one out and placing it between his lips, lighting it with a proffered lighter. “Thanks…” he sighed as he breathed out the first inhale.

“Of course, situations like yours can be stressful, and while I don’t condone it, sometimes a crutch like cigarettes can be helpful,” She leaned forward, “Do you feel stressed in the situation that you’re in?”

He shook his head. “Not really, figured it would happen eventually you know? I’m mostly feeling...disappointed.”

“Can you elaborate on that?” she asked as she began writing.

“Maybe...I like your hair, is it natural?” he asked, leaning back in his chair, eyes staring at her with the same disinterest he had shown her office.

“My hair is natural, yes,” she said, refraining from reaching up to touch her auburn hair, still tied back in a tight bun, “but we’re not here to talk about me-”

“-yeah I know...but I couldn’t help but ask; this day in age, it’s hard to tell the fakes from the real ones,” he sighed, “and I was a fake most of my life.’

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, pushing her glasses up.

“I just walked through life,” he explained, “my grades weren’t great, weren’t bad, I never stood out in sports; I applied to college despite not wanting to go, and I worked three jobs to be able to afford an apartment and my tuition.” He looked out the window. “It’s not what I wanted to do, but if I had done what I wanted to do, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here.’

“What did you want to do?”

Keith smiled, his first display of true emotion since the session had begun barely five minutes ago. “I always wanted to travel cross country. No home, no family, just me and what I could carry on my back; not belonging anywhere and able to go everywhere...it always made me feel...peaceful, thinking about that.” His smile disappeared. “But life doesn’t want you to have what you want. They want you to fit in, and will do what they can to squash you into that mold.” he looked back to her. “I never liked sports. In fact, I hated them; I wanted to be in the choir, but my father was the kind to force me and my siblings to fit what he thought we should do.”

“Fathers like that can be very demanding, and oftentimes distant; even when they’re coming from a good place.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed, taking another drag of his cigarette, “I never said I blamed the guy, I just wish he would’ve let us make our own choices...he used to get angry anytime I tried bringing up joining the choir, said it was for ‘sissies’ and girls. After a while, I stopped trying to convince him to let me join and just shoved that dream away...I did that a lot, come to think of it…”

“Care to elaborate?” she asked.

“I...it's hard to explain...you know how sometimes, you try to say something to someone, and they keep talking over you? You try and you try, and they just keep interrupting and disrupting your thought process and words, until you finally just stop talking and nod along? That’s how my life felt. I tried saying I wanted to join Choir and I got shouted down until I nodded along; when I told my teachers that I wasn’t going to go to college, they talked over me until I finally just conceded. Think I might be in love with my girlfriend and I want to propose? My friends would jeer and joke until I was too uncomfortable to even hold her hand…”

“-you were a pushover?” Charlotte tried to clarify.

“I’d have called it being a little bitch, but let's go with that,” he drawled, “doing what everyone told me to do landed me in three dead-end jobs, the beginnings of a degree I didn’t want, and an apartment that was too expensive for me to have after my girlfriend left me for not being emotionally available.”

“Is that when you decided to start killing?”

“Heh, no, that’s when I started drinking.” he laughed.

“What made you start killing?” she asked.

Keith stared at her for a while, a spark of interest lighting in his otherwise dead eyes, “Have you ever worked as a bartender, Dr. Whittier?”

“I can’t say I’ve had that pleasure,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Hmm. It’s a good enough job. Learn how to mix drinks well, you get fairly good tips, and you’re an interesting subject to the drunk girls sitting at the bar...but there’s another part of the job that no one tells you about.” He put the cigarette out in the ashtray and pulled another one from the pack. “Everyone tells you about their problems. It’s like I’m an unofficial therapist to these drunks who want to tell me their whole life story.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Some of their stories were sad: Dad beating him and mom and drinking is the reason this guy couldn’t look at his boyfriend after they flinched away from him during an argument; Mommy was an addict so I developed a cocaine addiction. Stuff like that I understood and would give them advice to try and help them get out of that situation...but others…”

Charlotte raised an eyebrow as anger flickered across the man’s face. It was gone in an instant; almost too fast to have seen.

But Charlotte had seen it.

“The first jackass I threw out of the bar was this sleazy middle-aged guy.” he began, lip curling in disgust, “bald, overweight, greasy from who knows what. He showed up drunk off his ass to begin with, met up with a friend who had been there a bit. They began talking, inconsequential things at first. Then Sleazy started talking about the family get together he had just left. About his little six-year-old niece, ‘so innocent and cute’,“ Keith sneered. “His buddy clocked him once good, and I threw him out; we called the cops and there was an investigation...but nothing came of it. The little girl was too scared, parents didn’t want to put a relative in jail. So they buried it, refused to press charges and the piece of shit was back on the streets.”

“That must have been hard…” Charlotte said softly.

“It was...that’s when I realized that this world was flawed; these bottom feeders of society who can do shit like this and get away with it will openly brag or talk about it like it’s nothing. And the prosecutors and judges in charge of putting them away can’t because the children are too afraid, and the parents are so caught up in ‘family comes first’ that they refuse to even try and help their kids.”

He leaned forward. “That was the night I realized the system was flawed, but there’s a difference between a realization and a revelation.”

“What’s the difference?” she asked, not even writing notes down as he took another drag.

“A realization is knowing the system is flawed and there’s nothing anyone can do about it,” he said, “but a revelation is knowing that even with this flawed system, justice can still be served.” he smiled again, this one distinctively darker as he seemed to reminisce about the events he was about to reveal.

“I didn’t have a real plan,” he said, “and I didn’t even know I was going to do it until he walked back into the bar. Bragging about the big court case he had just walked away from; he was very careful this time around about not saying what it was he was on trial for, but he must have been stupid because he was talking with me, the guy who called the cops on him.” He looked down at his hands. “Last call came and I locked up and jumped into my car. I followed him back to his house, on some shitty looking farm that was probably a meth lab. I waited until the last light went out, then I went in. Again, I didn’t have a plan, no weapon, no easy way in, I didn’t even know the fucker’s name...but I knew I had to do something. I grabbed a hammer that was in the kitchen, and I went upstairs and bashed the fucker’s head in.”

Charlotte dropped her pen, mouth slightly parted in shock; she’d had her fair share of confessions in her office, and had seen the different reactions to confessing, from sobbing and crying to taking sadistic glee in doing it.

But the man in front of her didn’t cry. He didn’t beg for forgiveness. He didn’t even take a perverse joy from talking about it.

He simply sat there, his eyes on his cigarette, a small smile of grim satisfaction upon his visage, like a coal miner who had met his quota, or a construction worker who finally finished the current project.

“You...see this as a job?” she whispered quietly.

“No one else will do it,” he said matter of factly, “so yeah, I do...and with how much time I spend online, I was able to erase my ever being there. Hammer was burned with the bedding and mattress, and the body went into the harvester. The clothes I wore were cleaned thoroughly. I had thought they’d be out looking for this shit-heel in force within a few weeks.” He scoffed. “Family didn’t report him missing until three months later. By that time, I’d killed eight more of them.”’

“Do...you feel any remorse?” she asked hesitantly.

“Remorse?” he asked in confusion.

“Yes...for the people you killed?”

He gave a quiet laugh. “Oh, Dr. Whittier...do you feel remorse when you kill a cockroach? Or find a mouse killed in a trap? Why would I feel remorse for these vermin of the human race? Rapists and abusers of all walks who rule through fear and survive in a loophole?” He scoffed again, “They should be happy I only killed them…” he leaned back. “No, I don’t give two shits about these shit-heels. In fact, I’d do it all again, no changes save maybe calling the cops on Sleazy; probably would’ve just killed him in the alleyway. Made it look like a mugging.”

Charlotte coughed, looking away from Keith and clearing her throat.

“You don’t approve, I’m guessing?” he asked, amusement evident in his voice.

“Motives aside, murder is wrong-” she began.

“So is raping six-year-old girls,” he said bluntly, “or beating your wife until she can’t walk on her own, or treating your son as a slave because you think he ruined your chance for a better life when you got pregnant in high school. All of these things are wrong, Doc, and that’s why I do what I do.”

“What about the people left behind? Their families and friends-"

“I’ve only met three shit stains whose families missed them,” he interrupted her, “One was a meth addict who had raped a teenager after getting him fucked up on the same shit he was on. His family blamed the meth and held a memorial for him, then life moved on. Another was the mother I was talking about, her boyfriend was distraught she was gone and took it out on the kid.” He crossed his arms. “I took care of him.’

“What about the boy?”

“Friend of mine looks after him. They’re a foster parent, and a decent one too,” he sighed, “you’re trying to rationalize two conflicting interests, Doc. You want to tell me I’m wrong because I murdered people, but at the same time, you want to feel that satisfaction of knowing justice was served and that they’re never going to hurt anyone again...you know what? Let’s run an experiment.”

“Experiment?”

“Yeah, tonight, probably around midnight, after the shift change, I’m going to kill my cellmate.”

Charlotte felt like someone had dumped cold water on her. “You...you’re going to…”

“Yep,” Keith said simply, “I know how to make it look like it was natural. Not the way I want to do it, but the only way I won’t get caught; it’s called air embolism, you inject 100 ml of air into the person's bloodstream-”

“-I know what air embolism is…” she said faintly.

Keith smiled grimly. “I knew you were a smart one. I’m going to do that to him tonight, fucker’s a pretty heavy sleeper so he won’t even wake up while I’m in the process.”

“But why? Why kill him? What has he done-”

“He’s molested dozens of children, and has been caught with child pornography on several occasions,” he said calmly, making her stop, “asshole brags about it all the time, about how he’s never gone to prison for it because of his meth addiction. He’s the prime example of a person who’s abusing the system. The court has already sentenced him to probation, as well as a six month mandatory rehabilitation...for the eighth time. He’ll go, complete two weeks, and then bail out of it. Of course, the county will issue a warrant and they’ll pick him up anywhere between six months to a year.” He leaned forward. “In those six months, what do you think he’ll be doing? Do you think he’ll be twiddling his thumbs in some safe house? Or do you think he’ll be preying on his next victim? Eagerly waiting to strike.”

“Why are you telling me this…” Charlotte whispered as a tear trailed down her cheek.

“Because you have the power to stop me,” he said with a smile, “I gave it all to you, my motive, my plan, all the way down to how I’ll do it; sure you got doctor-patient confidentiality, but if you think I’m a danger to myself and others - and it’s apparent I’m a danger to others - then you can release information to the police, or the guard standing just outside this room, and they’ll move me into a single cell and the incident will be sent off to the judge. It would then practically prove my guilt and I’d most likely be sentenced to the death penalty,” He slowly leaned back, “or you could keep it to yourself, not tell anyone of what I plan, and let me murder him. Another sick fuck will be off the street, and I get to sleep without hearing him talk about his ex-wife’s daughter in excruciating fucking detail.”

Keith put out his last cigarette as he stood up and moved towards the door. “It’s up to you, Doc. I won’t sway you one way or the other,” he said as he knocked on the door. “Thank you for this session...it helped.”

“O-of course,” she said, watching as the officer led him away, her mind a whirlwind of conflicting emotions and thoughts.

WVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVW

Charlotte sat in her living room, dressed in her pajamas as she sipped on her fourth glass of wine, staring at her phone on the table.

she thought idly as she began to pick up the flip phone,

She then put it back down on the table, standing up as she began to pace. “But the person he’s killing...he’s…” she shook her head, “No, no. It’s wrong to kill, no matter what.” She went for her phone again, then turned away from it, “but is it? I mean, he’s right. How many people have gotten away with those kinds of charges? How many victims suffered...how many have I spoken with…” she slowly sat back down, burying her face in her hands.

“What do I do...what do I do?” she mumbled, peaking out at her phone, letting out a startled shriek when the phone began to ring.

With shaky hands, Charlotte answered the phone, “Hello?”

“Good evening Dr. Whittier, this is Officer Brock at the Clark County Jail? I’m calling in regards to Inmate Jones, Keith.”

“Y-yes?”

“Was there any indication that Inmate Keith had been...planning something?”

Charlotte felt an icy coldness grip her heart as she slowly looked at the clock on her wall, slowly blinking 12:56.

He had already done it.

“Dr. Whittier, are you still there?”

Charlotte coughed, “Yes,” she said strongly, “I’m still here, and no, Mr. Jones gave no indication of planning something.”

“Hmm...well thank you for your time Doctor, sorry to call so late.’

“It’s fine. You have a good night,” she mumbled, hanging up her phone.

WVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVWVW

Knowing you could’ve saved a man from death is something one would think would drive a person crazy.

But Charlotte found that other than the initial shock and horror of not coming clean to the Officer, she had no feelings of guilt or remorse; in truth, she was almost relieved a man like that was now dead, no longer able to hurt those around him.

She followed the news on it for a time and was only marginally surprised that the man’s own family refused to claim his body, opting to let the county take care of it for a fee. The man, Travis Jackson, was buried on the edge of the cemetery, a cheap wooden cross the only indication that a body lay there six feet under.

She supposed she should feel bad that the man had no one to mourn him, and had said her own prayer for his probably-doomed soul, but couldn’t find any reason to care beyond that.

She kept a close eye on Jones’s court case, even sitting in the audience a few times as the attorneys and lawyers argued back and forth and family members were put on the witness stand; some of them cried and wept for their family members, swearing up and down that they had been good people, who didn’t deserve their fate; others attempted to give evidence of Keith’s guilt, claiming that he had been the last one to see their friends alive.

But no one could come up with evidence to place him at the scene of the crime. No fingerprints or DNA was recovered that belonged to him, murder weapons all absent; and any alibi that Keith had was hard to confirm since he spent most of his time working; no friends called up could say when the last time they had seen their friend. His family likewise could only recall spending a handful of days with their relative and never bothered to check in with him.

In the end, he was ruled Not Guilty and restitution would be paid for the time he was in jail and falsely accused.

Keith Jones walked out of Clark County Jail a free man, protected from any retaliation or further charges.

And yet, his eyes stayed vacant and dead until he saw Charlotte waiting in the parking lot, leaning against her car as she watched him.

He was no longer in a prison jumpsuit, and instead wore a plain white button-up shirt and black slacks, a pair of worn sneakers on his feet.

“Dr. Whittier,” Keith greeted, “Surprised to see you here so early.”

“I had an appointment,” she said simply.

“With who?” he questioned as she pulled her keys out and pressed the key fob, unlocking the doors on her car.

“You.”

Keith smiled. “Let's get started then.”

They drove away from the jail and cruised the streets of the city, neither talking as the sun began to set.

“What’s your plan now?” Charlotte asked as she came to a stop at a red light.

He shrugged, “Find a new job, maybe at a new bar, lay low for a bit until they stop looking at me...then start again.”

“Seems slow, just waiting to run into one of them,” Charlotte noted.

“Vermin like that are always around.” he muttered, “I’ll find them eventually.”

The therapist took a deep breath, gripping the steering wheel. “What if I could help you find them faster?”

Her question had caught him off guard, and Charlotte was pleased to see the look of shock on his face, looking away when it turned into a smirk, his eyes alight with newfound interest.

“I’m listening,” he said as the light turned green and Charlotte drove ahead, no hesitation left as she laid out her plan to the dead-eyed man.