Victims

CHAPTER
8

Walking to the Seville, I thought about the question mark in the pizza box. An old case I’d forgotten.

Milo had assumed a taunt but maybe a question really had been posed. I called his office. He said, “You get an appointment with that shrink?”

“Just finished meeting with him.” I summed up.

“Post-traumatic hoohah and a bully named Samantha? It’s a start, thank you, Doctor.”

“Unfortunately, Shacker’s bound by a confidentiality clause, couldn’t tell me what company Vita worked for.”

He said, “Well-Start Health Management and Assurance. ‘Your well-being is where we start.’ ”

“Oh.”

“Found some of her papers tucked in a kitchen cabinet, including five years of tax returns. She spent two of them at Well-Start, did temp office jobs before that, averaged around thirty G a year. Last year she deposited five hundred eighty-three G in a brokerage account, which threw me, but now it makes sense: a fat, onetime settlement. The money’s been sitting in preferred stock paying around six percent interest. A little over thirty-three G a year, so she was getting paid more not to work.”

I said, “It sounds like a job she could’ve enjoyed.”

He said, “The chance to torment people every day? Fits what we know about her. I’m gonna try and find this Samantha, work my way through everyone Vita accused of harassing her. Meanwhile Reed and Binchy are visiting every damn pizza joint in a ten-mile radius, see if they can find someone who uses those boxes. I put in a call to the manufacturer, maybe they ship to private parties as well and I’ll get lucky and they’ll find some weirdo put in an order. Any other insights?”

“That question mark,” I said. “I’m not sure it was a taunt.”

“What then?”

“Maybe our bad guy was referring to himself: I’m curious.”

“About what?”

“The mysteries of the human body.”

“A do-it-yourself anatomy lesson? Seemed more to me like abusing the victim.”

“Could be.”

“You really see this as mining for gore?”

“The way everything was ordered, the meticulous cleanup reminded me of a patient I saw years ago, when I was a postdoc. Ten-year-old boy, extremely bright, polite, well behaved. No problems at all other than some pretty freaky cruelty to animals. Sadistic psychopaths often start by torturing small critters but this kid didn’t seem to derive any pleasure from dominance or inflicting pain. He’d capture mice and squirrels in humane traps, hold gasoline-soaked rags over their noses till they died, make sure never to bruise them. ‘I hold them just hard enough,’ he told me. ‘I never hurt them, that would be wrong.’ Their death throes bothered him. He shuddered when I asked him about it. But he viewed his hobby as a legitimate science experiment. He dissected meticulously, removed every organ, studied, sketched. Both parents worked full-time, had no idea. His babysitter found him conducting surgery behind the garage and freaked out. As did Mom and Dad. The adult reactions frightened him and he refused to talk about anything he’d done so they sent him to Langley Porter and I got the case. Eventually I got him to talk, but it took months. He really didn’t understand what the fuss was about. He’d been taught that curiosity was a good thing and he was curious about what made animals ‘work.’ Dad was a physicist, Mom a microbiologist, science was the family religion, how was he any different from them? The truth was, both parents had odd personalities-what would now be called Asperger spectrum-and Kevin really wasn’t much different.”

“What’d you do with him?”

“I arranged for anatomy lessons from one of the pathology fellows, had his parents buy him books on the subject, and got him to pledge to limit his interest to reading. He agreed reluctantly but let me know that once he was old enough to take biology with a lab he’d be doing the same exact thing and everyone would think he was smart.”

“Maybe we should find out what happened to this little genius.”

“What happened to him is when he was seventeen he went hiking in the Sierras looking for specimens, fell off a cliff, and died. His mother thought I deserved to know because I was one of the few people Kevin talked about with any positivity.”

“So maybe I’ve got myself a Kevinoid who never got help.”

“A grown-up Kevinoid still stuck in a childhood that could range from eccentric to highly disordered. The urges are durable and now he’s got the maturity and the physical strength to pull off a grand expedition. The precision I saw suggests he’s done it before, but I haven’t been able to find anything similar. So maybe up until this point he’s adopted the optimal strategy: hide or get rid of the body.”

“Why switch to show-and-tell with Vita?”

“He’s bored, needs a bigger thrill. Or the killing had to do with Vita, specifically. If you can find the ex-husband or the sister, they might shed some light on it.”

He said, “Sure, but first let’s see what mean ol’ Samantha has to say for herself.”

Armed with the fact that Vita had worked for Well-Start, finding her tormentor was easy.

During the time it took Robin to shower, I pulled up several photos on the company’s employee website, including a group shot, from last year’s “Quality Control Department” Christmas party.

Twenty-two unremarkable human beings who got paid to make life difficult for sick people. Not a set of horns in sight. No evidence of guilt eroding holiday spirit.

Samantha Pelleter was chairperson of the Celebration Committee and she appeared in three photos.

Short, pudgy, fortyish, blond. Mile-wide grin.

Being elected or appointed chairperson implied she had leadership qualities and that wasn’t at odds with her playing a dominant role in any harassment. But no way was she big enough to overpower a woman as substantial as Vita.

Leadership could also mean subordinates.

I called Milo again. He said, “Just found her myself, meeting her tomorrow at eleven. I’m assuming you don’t want to miss the fun?”

“Where’s it happening?”

“Her place, she’s on reduced hours due to budget issues. Sounded scared witless about being contacted by the police but didn’t put up a fuss. As to her curiosity level, we’ll see. Meanwhile, mine’s spiking out of control.”