Free Projection by Keith Ablow

— a very kind young man named Scott Trembley — who took a special interest in her from the word go.  I'm told hey still talk privately every day."
    "But this Trembley hasn't brought anything up."
    "Not to me."
    "You're not being very reassuring."
    "Sorry.  I didn't know it was my job to make you feel better."
    I glanced out the window, at nothing in particular.  "Have you been able to reach her?  Do you think she's making progress?"
    "Hard to say.  I've only had six months.  I don't have to tell you we're talking about pathology that could take many years to address."
    "So she's not any better."
    He shrugged.  "Baby steps, my boy.  She seems a little more willing to talk about her childhood, maybe a bit more open to the idea that her own early trauma might have fueled her rage as an adult.  I see her on the unit, though, not in the community.  She may still be taking the path of least resistance, telling me what she thinks I want to hear."
    "She has an extraordinary capacity to deceive."
    "Most serial killers do."
     
    *            *            *
     
    I followed Hollander's Suburban Silverado down Route 97 East to a simple wooden arrow nailed to a tree and painted with the letters AGC.  The road curved through miles of farmhouses and woods before ending at a set of stone pillars at the entrance to the Austin Grate Clinic.  We parked in the semicircular drive of Hollander's magnificent residence.
    Hollander was at my door before I was halfway out of the car.  I remembered his size had always seemed inversely proportional to his speed.  "I've called ahead to the chief of nursing, so everything will be set for the visit," he said.  "I told her you're a psychiatrist consulting on the case."
    We walked into the main building, built in 1809 as a prominent merchant's mansion, then converted to a school and a nursing home before being turned into a psychiatric hospital by the prior owner.  Hollander had stripped away layers of wall-to-wall carpet, linoleum and Formica and restored every inch of wide-pine flooring, wainscoting and chair rail.  Walking through the lobby and corridors gave no hint of the building's earlier — or current — uses.  It reminded me a little of the admissions offices of the half dozen Ivy League colleges that had rejected me, which might be one reason I had never taken up Hollander on his offers of a job at Austin Grate.  Elegance leaves me feeling unsettled, dangling too high above the uglier reality of things.  The doors and walls of the elevator we took were overlaid with raised mahogany panels.  The brass controls gleamed.  Graffiti would have reassured me, but there wasn't a single obscenity scrawled anywhere.  Hollander pressed the button for the fourth floor.  "We had to renovate the Secure Care Unit in compliance with more rigid state standards," he said.  "You won't miss the difference."
    As the doors glided open, the incandescent lighting of the elevator was flooded out by fluorescent ceiling fixtures.  The floors were covered with high-gloss green and black vinyl squares.  The walls were cinder block painted white.  Everything gleamed, but nothing caught the eye.  "Beautiful wood underneath all this concrete and plastic, just like downstairs," Hollander said, shaking his head.  "Damn shame.  I would have left it exposed if the decision were mine.  When you build a fortress, people act like they belong in one."
    At the entrance to the unit two iron doors with chicken-wire windows were separated by a guard station behind half-inch plate glass.  The guard flipped a switch to unlock the first door for us.  Hollander paused before instructing him to let us through the second one.  "Fifteen minutes, max," he said.  "And if Ms. Matheson seems to be losing control or beginning to voice her delusions about being a physician, you'll need to leave immediately.  Understood?"
    I nodded.
    Hollander signaled the guard.  The lock clicked.  We