The Psychopath Whisperer: The Science of Those Without Conscience by Kent A. Phd Kiehl Read Free Book Online

in slow motion. Then suddenly Gary turned, shot one more cold look in my direction, and went back into the housing unit. Grant followed him, without saying a single word to me.
    A few hours later I was sitting alone in the nurses’ station and Grant appeared at the half door.
    “Hey,” he said, “I wanted to let you know that I took care of that little problem with Gary. Seems he wanted to get it on with you this morning, but I told him you were not to be touched or it would be like he had touched me. And nobody fucks with me. I’ll see you later.” With that, he disappeared down the housing unit hallway. I wasn’t even able to choke out a word in reply.
    A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. I might have actually been in a fight this morning with an enormous sex offender.
    I left prison early that day and drove home in silence, deep in thought. I grabbed my dog, Jake, and went for a run along the beach to decompress. Later, over dinner, I finished reading
Games Criminals Play
. I had an epiphany.

Day 4
    I took a new route to my prison office the next morning, avoiding the common areas where the inmates had free movement. I passed out coffee beans to a couple of other guard pods, receiving smiles and thank-yous. I was smiling too, but I was a little nervous about what I was about to do.
    As soon as I was settled in my office, I called over to the nurses’ station. Dorothy picked up.
    “Do you have Grant down there this morning?” I asked.
    “Hold on,” she said. “Yes. He’s still in his cell. Want me to get him for you?”
    “Please. Send him down to psychiatry.”
    “Got any more coffee?” she asked.
    “Yup. I’ll be right down after this quick interview.”
    “He’ll be right down then,” she said.
    I went out to the main door and waited for Grant, dangling my little brass key.
    Grant appeared a few minutes later and walked quickly up the hallway. He was carrying a folder with paper in it.
    “You got more research for me to do?” he said.
    “Yup,” I said.
Something like that
, I was really thinking.
    “Good. Say, can you do me a favor this morning? I have this folder with my homework in it for group later today, and I need to make some photocopies so I can share it with the other guys.”
    “You know you have to order the photocopies and they come out of your personal fund,” I replied.
    “Yeah, but we’re friends; I helped you out, ya know. I went to bat for you with that sex offender.” His voice turned a little coarse. “You owe me.”
    “Sit down,” I told him firmly. “You and Gary are trying to scam me.”
    He stared at me. “That’s bullshit. I don’t work with sex offenders, man. This is the thanks I get for saving your life?”
    There was some truth to his statement—violent offenders never associated with sex offenders.
    I stared back at him and then pressed him again: “I’m calling you out; you are trying to play me.”
    And then he cracked. “Is this conversation still confidential?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I replied.
    He fell into a full laugh. “How’d you figure it out?”
    “I’m new, but I’m not stupid,” I replied, not mentioning that I had lost quite a bit of sleep this week trying to figure out what thehell was going on, or that I felt like I had aged a year in only a couple days.
    “No hard feelings, right? Ya know, we have to test you. It’s just something we do with all the new guys.” He was smiling ear to ear.
    “I can tell ya that we’ve gotten quite a bit of fun out of a few folks before. Gary and I have been perfecting our moves; we thought we had you going pretty good,” he said. “Especially since you told us everything we did with you was confidential. We figured unless we really hurt you, we were golden; you can’t tell anybody about the scam.”
    I now had a useful warning to pass along to any colleague working in prison—make sure your inmates don’t use the confidentiality, which is there for the inmates’ protection, to