See No Evil

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dillon Kincaid stared at the girl who had announced an hour before that she had killed Victor Montgomery and four others.

They were in an interrogation room. Faye Kessler was seventeen, and in a capital offense they didn’t need parental permission to talk with her. They had, though, attempted to contact her father. Will had read Faye her rights and she clearly understood them.

“I’m not stupid,” she said.

Not stupid, Dillon thought, but her eyes were dead. Staring into those dark orbs Dillon had no doubt that Faye Kessler was capable of murder.

Not only had Faye told them she’d killed five people, she had the evidence to prove it. In front of him, Will tapped the Polaroid photograph of Garrett Bowen hanging from his chandelier.

Dillon couldn’t get over how pale and slender Faye was, perhaps in the beginning stages of anorexia. She wore a long, thin sweater, its sleeves covering her hands. She played with the frayed yarn ends constantly. Her mousy brown hair was shoulder length, clean but limp. She wasn’t an attractive girl, her face too long, nose too large, and forehead too high. But her eyes drew Dillon in, so deep and empty Dillon might have been afraid of this girl if they’d met under different circumstances. He wondered if she was on drugs. He’d get her a medical exam as soon as they were done, but for now a confession came first, especially since she appeared lucid and relatively healthy.

“Why did you come in today?” Will asked, their conversation being recorded.

“I told the cop behind the desk. I killed some people.”

“Who did you kill?”

“Do you want to hear about the first one or the last one? Or the others maybe?”

“Why don’t you start with this picture?” Dillon picked up the Polaroid in front of Will and showed it to her.

She stared at the picture, her face expressionless. “That’s Dr. Bowen.”

“Yes. Did you take this photograph?”

“Yes.”

“Is this the only picture you took that night?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted it to remember him by.”

“And did you kill him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Dillon asked.

“Because.”

“Just because? You just felt like it?”

“We hated him.”

“Faye, who else hated him besides you?”

“Skip and Robbie.”

“Do you have full names for them?” Will asked.

“Skip’s real name is Dennis Richardson Jr. No one calls him Dennis, though, not even his parents. Robbie is Robert Haxton.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dead.”

Dillon hadn’t been out to the latest crime scene, but Will had described a violent and bloody murder. Skip Richardson had been butchered.

Faye showed no remorse, didn’t even raise her voice. There was not a quiver of emotion in the timbre. She looked from Dillon to Will with no apparent concern about her fate.

“What happened to Skip and Robbie?” Will asked.

“Robbie was a hothead. His father beat him, you know. All the time. I didn’t understand why he took it since now he’s bigger than George.” She shrugged, as if telling an unimportant story. “Robbie tried to kill Emily’s aunt. It was a stupid idea, but he did it all on his own. Just because he saw her at Dr. Bowen’s party Saturday night. Skip and I decided he was being stupid, so I brought him out to that huge quarry near San Marcos. We put him in some part they don’t really use anymore, so I didn’t think they’d find him for a while. We told him he had to leave the country. Gave him some money. Skip rigged the quarry to dump some big rocks on him when he got in his truck. It took half the day to set it up, but Skip is really good with mechanical things and made it work.”

“You and Skip killed Robbie. He was your friend?”

She nodded. Again, emotionless.

“So what happened to Skip?”

“I killed him.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to.”

Dillon had to work to refrain from showing emotion. Will was unsuccessful in hiding his anger and contempt.

“Because you wanted to?” Will asked, the words punching the air.

She nodded, waiting for the next question, casually rolling the edges of the sleeves between her fingers.

“Did Skip do something that upset you?”

“Not really. He was mad that Robbie tried to kill Emily’s aunt. Really angry. I didn’t like that.”

“How did you kill Dr. Bowen?”

“Robbie, Skip, and I came into the house during his big party and we hid upstairs until everyone had gone. It’s a big house, lots of places to hide and no one knew we were there.” She smiled at the memory. “When Dr. Bowen came upstairs, Skip hit him with the Taser gun we stole from Judge Montgomery’s house. Then we got the noose over his head and threw him off the balcony.”

“Why did you hang him?”

“I’m not sure. It was Skip’s idea. Or maybe Robbie’s. Well, we were just talking about it and thought it would be fun to try.”

Dillon had met hundreds of killers during his nearly eleven years as a psychiatrist. Never had he met someone as even-tempered and matter-of-fact as youthful Faye Kessler. Many killers had no remorse for the actual murder, but most didn’t want to go to prison. They would lie, manipulate, yell, plead, cry, promise the moon, do anything to get a lighter sentence or convince anyone that the killing was justified.

Faye Kessler was either a brilliant actress or one of the few true psychopaths Dillon had met.

“How did you get the noose up the chandelier?” Will asked.

“There’s a button by the front door. Skip knew about it because he has one in his house. It lowers the chandelier, for cleaning I guess.”

She had definitely been at the crime scene.

“Why did you set up Dr. Bowen’s death to look like a suicide, but then wipe down the banisters?”

“Robbie forgot to bring gloves.” She sighed and shook her head, as if Robbie were simply a forgetful child.

“Why? Why did you kill Dr. Bowen?”

“We didn’t like him. He was so snooty, always wanting us to talk about our feelings, why we did this or that, or whatever. He tried to have so much control over us.”

“Control?”

“Yeah. If he didn’t like something we said or did, he was going to file a report with the court and have us institutionalized. He did it before, you know.”

“To whom?”

“I don’t know, we just knew.”

“Did you kill Judge Montgomery?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“He hurt one of our friends.”

“Who?”

“Emily. She goes to my school. She was on Wishlist with us.”

“How did you know it was Emily?”

“Wishlist is supposed to be all secret and stuff, but Skip was a brainiac when it came to computers and stuff. Anytime someone new posted, he’d hack around and discover who it was.”

“Do you have a list of everyone on Wishlist?”

Faye frowned. It was obvious she wasn’t expecting the question.

“I don’t.”

“Did Skip have the list?”

“He might have.”

“And you and Emily went to the same school?”

Faye nodded, more comfortable with this line of questioning.

“We had Western Civ together last year. She was nice to me. Not everyone is nice to me because I’m ugly.”

“But you’re not ugly, Faye,” Dillon said.

Faye looked down at her hands, still worrying the fabric at the end of the sweater. “It’s okay. I know I am. Emily was beautiful but she was so sad, too. We talked some. Found out we both saw Dr. Bowen. She told me about the vandalism, though I already knew about that. It’d be on the news and, well, everyone at school knew. So when she started posting on Wishlist, I was pretty sure it was her and Skip confirmed it. So then we just listened to what she had to say.” Faye looked up. For the first time, Dillon saw complete clarity in her eyes. “No one listens to kids. Parents and teachers are too busy to be bothered. And Dr. Bowen didn’t really care what we said, just cared if he could fix us for some magazine article or something. Some of us aren’t even broken.”

She looked back down. “But some of us are. And sometimes you can’t fix what’s broken, and you can break things that are just fine the way they are.”

Dillon asked in a low, compassionate voice, “Why were you seeing Dr. Bowen?”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” She stared at Dillon, eyes narrowing. “You’re a shrink, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m a psychiatrist.”

Anger flashed across her face, the first real emotion aside from compassion for Emily. “You’re all control freaks. Everyone has to fit in some compartment or category. Circles in fucking circles and squares in fucking squares. Why can’t you just leave us alone? Why can’t you just shut up?” Faye was working herself up, had risen from her chair during her tirade. The switch from complete calm to anger had been startling.

“Faye,” Will said. “I need you to sit down.”

“I want him gone. Out of here.”

Dillon stood. “If you want to talk later, Faye, you can ask for me.”

She spat in his face.

Dillon walked into the observation room, shaken. Julia handed him a tissue from her purse and he wiped off Faye’s spit. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine. Faye’s not.”

Dillon had always believed that troubled people could be helped. With the right combination of therapy-and drugs, if necessary-he thought most people could overcome whatever psychosis or chemical imbalance they had and go on to lead relatively normal lives.

He stared at Faye through the observation window, realizing that he didn’t know enough right now to help her. But he wanted to. Something inside her was crying out for help.

He feared it was too late.

Will continued with his questions after Faye calmed down. Dillon, Connor, and Julia watched through the one-way mirror.

“Did you also kill Paul Judson?”

“Who’s he?”

“The teacher from-”

She nodded, cutting Will off. “Oh, yeah, right. The principal. Shot him through the eyes. Skip did that. I was supposed to. Robbie and Skip didn’t think a girl could do what we’d planned. But I don’t like guns. That’s why I used a knife on Skip.”

Will asked Faye, “Why did you kill Jason Ridge?”

Faye shook her head, her face blank. “I don’t know him. I didn’t kill him. He doesn’t go to my school.”

“And you don’t know Shannon Chase? Michelle O’Dell?”

“No.”

“Do you know a girl named Cami? She was at Bowen’s party Saturday night.”

A brief flicker, then nothing. It might have been Dillon’s imagination.

“No.”

“What about Judge Vernon Small?”

Faye shook her head. She counted on her fingers. “Skip, Robbie, and I killed that principal because he cost that nice kid his basketball scholarship, then the judge because he hurt Emily, then Dr. Bowen because we didn’t like him. Then I killed Robbie and Skip. They were getting stupid.”

It sounded logical the way Faye put it, but something was off in her statement. Dillon couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was bothering him.

“Why did you turn yourself in? You killed the only two people who knew what really happened. You might have gotten away with it.”

Faye sighed. And for the first time, Dillon believed she spoke the whole truth.

“I’m tired. I just can’t do it anymore.”

Observing in the back of the room, Dillon turned to Chief Causey and Stanton.

“This kid needs to be on a 24/7 suicide watch. At the hospital secure ward. Complete medical exam. Faye Kessler can’t be alone, even to urinate.”

The phone rang in the observation room and Causey answered it. Everyone watched his face harden. He hung up. “Faye didn’t lie about Robert Haxton. The quarry manager checked the area on our request. He found the kid crushed to death in his truck.”