Guilt By Degrees

76

Toni and I pulled the plug about an hour later, but Bailey stayed at the bar to spend some time with Drew. It wasn’t late, but it’d been a long day, so by the time I got back to the room, I was feeling warm and fuzzy but very tired. So I nearly missed seeing the note the night manager had slipped under my door, telling me to call him. Someone had left a package for me at the front desk. In light of recent events, he’d decided to have it checked out first. But the scanner had shown only a bottle with nonsuspicious liquid and a piece of paper. No dangerous materials. I told him to have it sent up.

I slipped off my shoes and sank onto the couch. It sounded like someone had sent me a bottle of hooch. Who was that thoughtful soul? Daniel? Or maybe Graden? Maybe this was Graden’s makeup gesture. The thought made me smile, and I kept smiling when I took the box from the bellman.

“Thanks, Jason.” Feeling magnanimous, I gave him a five-dollar tip and brought the box back to the couch and set it on the coffee table. The weight of it told me it was bigger than a wine bottle.

Using my car key, I slashed open the strapping tape and looked inside. It was a huge bottle of Russian Standard Platinum. My favorite vodka. It had to be from Graden. Not even Daniel knew it’d become my new favorite. My smile broadened as I lifted the bottle out of the box. Then I saw what was lying under it.

A photograph of me and Daniel, standing in front of Checkers. My hand on his chest. I stared dumbly at the image for a few seconds before recognition hit me: it’d been taken a couple of weeks ago, the night we’d had dinner together. What the…?

It was just a photograph, but the image radiated menace. I stared down at the photo but refused to touch it. Because I knew exactly who’d sent it. Lilah.

I felt a hot ball of anger start to burn in the pit of my stomach. If it was meant to make me feel guilty, she’d failed. I glared at the photograph with contempt. No. Lilah’s message was far more sinister than that.

This little “gift” was meant to make me feel vulnerable. It didn’t. All I felt was fury. If Lilah had shown up at my door in that moment, I would’ve beaten the crap out of her with my bare hands. I wanted to throw the whole box out the window. But on the off chance she or one of her hounds of hell had left prints, I knew I had to preserve it for examination. I wrapped my hands in a towel and moved the box to the end table. I’d take it in to SID with Bailey tomorrow.

When the sharp edges of my anger had worn off, I decided I needed an expert opinion. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock, but that was the shank of the evening for Dr. Bruno Spagnotti, my favorite forensic psychologist-or, as I privately called him, “the Scumbag Whisperer.” Short but with a powerful upper body, and a fuse that was both at once (short and powerful), Dr. Spagnotti had a big voice, a brusque demeanor, and a reputation for meting out visceral tongue-lashings from the witness stand to anyone who dared waste his time with “dumb” questions. But juries never seemed to doubt a word he said. On any given day, this could be a very good or a very bad thing for either side. Dr. Spagnotti had no favorites.

We’d met during a case I’d handled in the Special Trials Unit: a serial killer who raped and then set fire to five elderly women. The defense had called Dr. Spagnotti to persuade the jury that the defendant’s obvious mental disturbance-while not amounting to legal insanity-was sufficient to prevent him from premeditating the murders. It took Dr. Spagnotti just five minutes to leave that defense ploy in ruins. With a patience he never showed anyone but a juror, he explained that the crimes had to have been premeditated: victims of a similar age and appearance were deliberately targeted, and the defendant made sure to attack only when they were home alone. The jury came back with five verdicts of first-degree murder in less than an hour.

Since I knew Dr. Spagnotti hated chitchat as much as he hated dumb questions, I immediately launched into the reason for the call and told him about the case, about Zack, about Lilah, and of course about the package she’d just sent me.

“First of all, your blackmail theory, unusual as it is, does seem to fit this puzzle rather well,” he remarked. “And I can’t say I’m surprised that union ended in carnage.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying you think Lilah killed Zack?”

“That’s your bailiwick, not mine. I was just reflecting on the volatility of the situation and those two personality types. Not to say someone else couldn’t have killed Zack. I’d say it’s likely Zack had a number of enemies-given his nature and what he did for a living.”

“And what would you say his ‘nature’ was, psychologically speaking?”

“Psychopathic,” Dr. Spagnotti replied, in a tone that broadcasted duh. From what you’ve told me, they’re both fairly classic.”

I remembered the conversation I’d had with Bailey. “Then normal parents can wind up with a psychopathic kid?” I asked. “Because Zack’s parents don’t seem to have a mean or weird bone in their bodies.”

“Psychopaths can come from perfectly normal, unremarkable homes. As a general rule, a psychopath is born, not made. That’s not to say environment doesn’t play a part-it does, or at least it can.”

“But not in this case?”

Dr. Spagnotti humphed and exhaled loudly, the sound like a blast of wind rushing through the receiver, a cue that I’d ventured dangerously close to dumb-question territory. “Not as far as I’m concerned, though his relatively normal upbringing may have prevented him from becoming homicidal. But that wasn’t the question, was it? The question was whether I thought Zack was a psychopath, and the answer is yes.”

I chewed on that for a moment, but then Dr. Spagnotti broke in.

“You say Lilah was acquitted. Did she give a statement to the police or testify at her trial?”

“Both, actually.”

“She did well, didn’t she? I’d bet particularly in front of the jury.”

“On the money. Is that typical?” The last serial killer I’d had on the stand-and a psychopath if ever I saw one-was a complete idiot.

“It’s Psychopath 101. They’re often glib, frequently charismatic, and they’re adroit liars. Lilah also has the particular advantage of being a lawyer. I’d guess she had that jury eating out of her hand. Especially the male jurors.”

“You nailed it.”

Dr. Spagnotti grunted. “But Lilah’s encounter with Graden, sending you this package-it’s obvious she’s stalking you. I’d say obsessively. And she’s moving in closer. She went through Graden before, but this time she went at you more directly. I’d predict her next moves are going to bring her even closer to you.”

Even more than his words, Dr. Spagnotti’s dark tone gave me pause.

“I agree, it’s weird. And it really pissed me off at first. But when I sat back and thought about it, neither of those moves struck me as all that dangerous-”

He interrupted impatiently. “You’re missing the significance of those moves. Getting close to Graden, sending that package-those were just opening salvos. I’d say it’s a hundred to one she’ll escalate to violence at some point. I strongly recommend you get off this case, Knight. Let someone else handle it.”

“I’m okay, Doctor. I’ve got lots of security. And, besides, who says letting go of the case will make her stop…obsessing about me?”

“You don’t want to listen to reason, then don’t,” he said irritably. “I’m no clairvoyant, I just play the odds. The odds are strongly in favor of you landing in the morgue sooner rather than later.”

The ominous tone was meant to scare me, and it did. Just not enough to make me back down. “Can you tell me why she’s obsessed with me?”

“What difference does it make? You’ll be just as dead.” After a moment, he sighed and relented. “Look, I can only speak in general terms, because I don’t treat her. But my educated guess would be that you have something she covets.”

“Do you think she’s envious of my relationship with Graden? And that’s why she came on to him?”

“Could be,” he said. “Though that seems more likely to have been a way of letting you know she can get to you-as does this package.”

“I found out that Lilah got sent away to boarding school when she was only ten years old,” I said. “Might that be a sign of early criminal conduct?”

“Or that her mother wanted her out of the house, given what you’ve told me. Who knows? But I must say I’d be surprised if that hit-and-run killing of the Asian boy was the first criminal act she’d ever committed.”

“There was no indication that she got into trouble at boarding school,” I said. “In fact, she did very well. Got straight As.”

“So? All that tells me is that she was smart enough not to get caught. Besides, I’m not talking about her getting away with homicides, I’m talking about small-time stuff, kid crimes.” Dr. Spagnotti stopped and was silent for a moment. “I’m struck by the fact that you’ve got her history in boarding school. Seems to me you’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble for a case that hasn’t even been filed yet. Do you research all your defendants’ childhood histories this way?”

“Sometimes.”

But after I’d hung up, I had to admit that I couldn’t remember when.