by Torre, A. R.
“Do they have any leads?”
“Actually, the kid said it was one of his teachers. They brought the guy in for questioning, and Judge Glenn gave them a warrant this morning.”
“They find any evidence?” Martin tented his hands atop his stomach, his full attention on Robert. Between the two of them, they had freed hundreds of accused criminals from a life behind bars, and most of the time, a missing piece of evidence had been the weak link that had dictated the verdict.
“They found a shoebox in his house.” He met the man’s eyes. “It had souvenirs from each of the boys, including Gabe.”
Martin winced. “I’m sorry, Rob.”
“It’s fine.” He took a final bite of the doughnut and forced himself to chew, his mind refusing to let go of the detective’s words. They found some of Gabe’s hair in the box. It matches his DNA. There’s a few other things here. A key chain. We’ll need you to come down and identify it. Robert coughed, then swallowed, willing his voice to remain calm. “They’re charging the teacher for all six murders and putting him in Central.”
“Well.” Martin’s bushy white eyebrows raised in the middle of his dark forehead. “That’s great. That’s got to give you some peace.”
Robert stayed silent.
“What?” His partner hunched forward. “What are you thinking?”
“Something’s wrong.” Robert shook his head. “It’s too easy. Scott Harden escapes, makes it all the way back home without this guy catching him. And he knows the killer? BH’s other victims didn’t attend Beverly High. So why break routine? Why take a kid who can ID him? It’s too risky.”
“You’re looking for reason and forgetting that the BH Killer is a human. An unstable human. Don’t look at it through a prosecutor’s lens.”
“I have to. I’m pointing out the same things they will.”
“Robert . . . ,” Martin warned him.
“There’s not enough to go on. It’s the word of a teenage kid and a box that could have been planted—”
“Come on.” Martin’s voice was calm and comforting, and there was a reason he was one of the most successful attorneys in California. He could manipulate a jury’s entire mood with just the lilt of his voice. “You’ve got a victim’s eyewitness and evidence. He’s it. We’ll make sure he pays for what he did.”
“I’m worried it’s not him.” Robert leaned back and crossed his arms, steeling himself for his partner’s response to his next words. He had been up all night thinking over Randall Thompson’s arrest and the evidence against him. The man would need an attorney, and the public defenders would be playing hot potato to avoid the representation. Martin had always given him a fair amount of leniency in things that involved Gabe, but what he was about to say wouldn’t go over well. “I want to represent him.”
Martin stared at him for a long moment, then laughed. “Is that a joke?”
“As I said, I don’t think it’s him.”
“No, you said you’re worried it’s not him.”
“Fine.” He sighed and amended his statement. “I don’t think it’s him.”
His partner in the firm moved closer to the desk and rested his elbows on the surface, pinning him with laser eye contact. “This is Gabe’s killer we’re talking about. Your son was like my own. I’d be more in support of you saying you want to deliver justice via a prison shank. You don’t think isn’t good enough, Rob. You want this to go to trial without cutting off this asshole’s balls, then fine. But sitting on his side of the defense table?” He studied him. “If you were anyone else, I’d think you were trying to sabotage his case, but you’re too ethical for that.”
“I don’t have an ulterior motive here. I don’t think he’s the guy, which means the police have stopped looking for the real guy.” Robert shrugged and hoped it came off as believable. “I’ve thought it through, Martin. I’m reaching out to the courts this afternoon to set up a meeting.”
Martin let out a sigh. “You’re a grown man, Rob. You know the case better than anyone. But this feels rotten. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. I’m not asking permission.” Robert balled up the napkin and tossed it into a round wastebasket beside Martin’s desk. He needed to end this meeting, before the questions began. Martin would nail him with brilliant, precise, and unavoidable inquiries that Robert wouldn’t have answers for because it made no logical sense for him to come within a thousand feet of the Randall Thompson case, not unless he was standing opposite him in the courtroom.
“Okay, but one last thing that has to be said. This is a huge conflict of interest.” Martin stood and walked around the desk, his arms crossing over his wide chest and pinning the front of his blood-red tie into place. “You lose this case, and he’ll sue us. Say that you intentionally botched it. He’ll say you destroyed evidence and led witnesses and didn’t properly represent him.”
“I’m not going to lose.”
Martin let out a frustrated laugh. “What am I missing here? You think he’s innocent? Fine. Let the police and public defender handle that. There’s nothing good that will come from your involvement.”
“I need to meet with him. See what he says. Being his potential attorney gives me face time that I wouldn’t otherwise have.” He squeezed the man’s thick shoulder. “If I don’t believe what he says, I’ll walk. You know I’ll walk.”
Martin shook his head. “He’s not going to want you as his attorney. I can’t imagine he wants to discuss his activities with the father of one of the boys he killed.”
Robert said nothing. He’d spent the evening digging for everything he could find on Randall Thompson. The man worked as a high school science teacher, drove a five-year-old Honda Accord, and lived in a two-bedroom teardown. He couldn’t afford to pass up free legal representation from the top criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, no matter who that attorney’s son was—had been. Robert released Martin’s shoulder and headed for the door, pausing when his partner spoke.
“The press is going to crucify you for this. I know you think he might be innocent, but what if he’s not? What if he killed Gabe and all those other boys?”
Robert glanced back over his shoulder and pulled the door open, wishing he could tell the man everything. “Just trust me.”
The big man winced. “That’s the problem. I don’t.”
CHAPTER 10
I stood at the dining room table and studied a puzzle piece and the box, trying to find a match between the two. Clementine wove between my legs, her tail tickling the backs of my bare knees. I twitched away. “Clem, stop.”
She leaped onto the closest chair and mewed for attention. Setting the box on the table, I petted her head and stared down at the board.
Today was not a good day. My two o’clock appointment had gone completely silent on me, which might have been a pleasant change of pace if I wasn’t already paranoid about my skills as a shrink.
I never used to worry about this. I’d always been a little overly cocky, convinced that I could wave my pen, open my mouth, and spew out a brilliant dialogue that would twist my clients’ brains into performing however I wanted them to. But ever since John and Brooke had died, I had sunk further and further into the belief that my emotional radar was temporarily—or maybe even permanently—on the fritz.
Take my last meeting with John. He’d been furious at Brooke. I remember sitting across from him and feeling the spittle hit my cheek as he had ranted about the man he thought she was seeing.
I hadn’t believed it, but my job wasn’t to judge his wife’s innocence—only to filter and analyze his thinking. The majority of trust issues were rooted in real-life experience, originating as far back as childhood. John had continually balked at discussions of his adolescence, which only gave further credence to his trust issues as a natural defense mechanism. If my psychological tuning fork had been in proper pitch, I would have ignored efforts to diagnose the root of his insecurities and instead focused on
the more glaring possibility—that his anger would cycle out of control and into physical violence.
From my television in the living room, a game show came on. I glanced over and watched the host bound toward the stage, high-fiving the audience as he went.
I’ve always held an ugly hypothesis about marriage—that at some point, one spouse secretly wishes the other would die.
It’s not a popular theory. When I broach it at psychology events and forums, it always sparks an argument, some doctors jumping into denial with gasps and sputters and an insistence that they’ve been married forty years and NEVER ONCE wished death on their spouse. But deep inside, in the dark place that they squash down and pretend doesn’t exist . . . I know there’s always been a true and weak moment where the thought—the hope—flickers. For most people, it’s fleeting. For some—like John—it was a splinter. A deep splinter that broke off under the skin, the sort that was almost impossible to remove unless you peeled back the entire area, and no one would do that, so it festered. It grew infected. It killed and ate away at surrounding healthy tissue and throbbed and ached and dominated every thought and action until it controlled an entire life.
I had listened to so much deliberation and thoughts about hurting Brooke that it had become background noise. I’d become desensitized to it. I had accepted the fact that John fantasized over killing Brooke and had stopped being aghast at the idea because I didn’t believe it would ever happen. They’d been married fifteen years. If he was really going to kill the woman, he would have done it already. So what if he thought Brooke was having an affair? He’d been almost as irate a year earlier, when she’d parked on a hill and hadn’t fully engaged the emergency brake and the sedan had rolled into a parked car.
This wasn’t my fault. I pushed a five-sided piece into place and mentally chanted the words, trying to find truth in them.
This wasn’t my fault. I’d argued with him in Brooke’s defense. Stood up for the woman. Pointed out all their history and his false insecurities.
This wasn’t my fault. Maybe she really did have a heart attack.
I lifted my wineglass and took a deep sip, holding the smooth merlot on my tongue for a moment, then let it seep down my throat.
The doorbell rang, a sharp ding-dong of intrusion, and I turned at the sound as Clementine sprinted past me and hid under the couch.
Robert Kavin stood on my front stoop, a bouquet of flowers in hand. I paused in the foyer and hesitated.
It was late, almost nine. Too late for a pop-in, though I had a staunch policy against them at any hour. I could just ease back around the corner and into the dark hall. Stay away from the windows in the hope he would lose interest and head home.
“Gwen.” He placed his hand on the door. “I can see you through the glass.”
Of course he could. I had hoped the dim interior light would hide me, but luck hadn’t been kind to me lately. Swallowing a curse, I flipped open the dead bolt.
“Hi, Robert,” I said crisply, as coldly as I could considering the fact that he held out a bouquet of pink tulips, his face contrite and apologetic. It had been years since I’d gotten flowers. I took them from him and struggled not to bury my face in them and inhale their scent.
“I know it’s late, but I needed to apologize.”
With the flowers in hand, I had limited ability to bar the door, so I settled for my stoniest tone. “Go ahead.”
“I shouldn’t have looked at the file. Shouldn’t have gone in your office. Honestly, I shouldn’t have even fixed breakfast without you. I’m sorry.”
I digested the apology and found that it tasted sincere. A stronger woman would have argued some key points, dressed him up and down for his actions, then ripped the heads off his flowers and thrown them back into his face, but it was chilly outside, my sleep shorts weren’t warm enough to combat the open door, and it was hard to be cruel to anyone who had suffered the loss of a child. “Okay,” I said agreeably. “Thanks for the flowers.”
He looked surprised at the easy acceptance, then slowly nodded, stepping back from the door. “Sure. I really am sorry.”
“Yeah.” I studied him in the porch light. He was in a suit, this one without the third piece, his tie undone and hanging around his neck, the top button of his shirt unfastened. He looked like he needed food and sleep, and I could help with one of the two.
I stepped back and held open the door. “Want to come inside? I’ve got lasagna I can heat up if you’re hungry.”
He smiled sheepishly, and it was criminal how good the expression looked on his handsome features. “Sure,” he said slowly. “If you’re up for the company.”
Robert ate three huge squares of lasagna, then attacked the ongoing puzzle. I sat cross-legged on a padded dining room table chair and watched his hands move across the board like a Mensa kid in front of a Rubik’s Cube.
“Plus, there’s travel.” He clipped a dark piece into the border trim. “I don’t want to worry about them in a crate at a kennel.”
He was naming the reasons he didn’t have a pet, which were all valid, if you were considering pets as sterile objects and completely discounted the joy they brought to your life.
“How much do you travel?” I swirled the wineglass and watched the dark liquid sweep around the sides.
“Not much,” he admitted. “I went to Tahoe last summer. But, you know. At some point I will.”
“Sure.” I took a sip. “A workaholic married to his job. From one addict to another, traveling isn’t actually going to happen. You know that, right?”
He grimaced.
I picked up a piece and studied the design. “I’m sorry about your son.”
In the days since Robert had left my house, I had researched him online. His impressive court record and legal accolades were buried on the sixth page of results behind the national news stories, press releases, and hundreds of videos and posts looking for leads and justice for Gabe Kavin. Half the news results were from the disappearance period. The other half were after they found his son’s body behind a recycling plant in Burbank, a crude heart carved into his chest, his genitals tossed into the trash. The BH Killer’s signature marks, and his official sixth victim.
He looked up from the puzzle, and our eyes met. In the dim light of the bar, I hadn’t seen the full extent of his sorrow. The drench of pain was haunting his eyes. Pulling at his face. Heavy in the sag of his posture.
I’d treated a few parents after the loss of a child. The grief wouldn’t go away. It would dilute in his eyes. He would grow better at masking it, disguising it, but it would always be there. Losing a child was like losing a limb. You were reminded of it every time you moved, until the consistent adjustments to life became a permanent part of you.
His mouth pinched together in a flat line. “Nothing to be sorry about. The apologies don’t bring him back.”
No, they wouldn’t. I changed the subject. “I’m assuming you’re being kept abreast of the arrest.”
“Yep.” He picked through the pile of homeless pieces. “Are you familiar with the BH deaths?”
Killers were my obsession, and Los Angeles’s most famous serial killer had been under my microscope from the beginning. I half rose from the chair and lifted the wine, pouring more in my glass. Without asking, I topped his off. “It’s in my wheelhouse, so yes. I’ve kept a professional interest in the killings.”
“You said on the night we met that you do a lot of expert testimony.”
“I do.”
“Psychological profiles?”
“At times.” Where was he going with this?
“Done one on a serial killer before?”
“Just in med school.”
He said nothing, and I waited out his thought process. Spotting a potential connection, I fit the puzzle piece in and locked it into place.
“I’d like to hire you.”
“For what?”
“A psychological profile on the BH Killer, to start.”
With
what I already knew about his kills, I could whip up a half-decent profile within a day. But half-decent probably wasn’t what Robert Kavin was looking for. “Why?”
“My son died at his hands.” His glare challenged me to question the request. “Do I need another reason?”
“No,” I said slowly. “But your son was found nine months ago. Why wait until now for a psych profile? They have the killer.”
“I didn’t know you nine months ago.”
I bought a few seconds by taking a slow sip of merlot. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it. I was itching to push him out the door and sharpen my pencil. But something was off here, and I needed to put my finger on what it was. “Do you have the case file on your son?” He shouldn’t. It’d be a horrible thing for him to possess. Yet something in his self-assured manner told me he did.
He nodded.
Ah, the psychological trauma that each autopsy photo, every casual case note, had to cause. I tried not to outwardly wince.
“I have his, and I can get you the others soon—in the next few days.”
The others? I inhaled at the possibility of reviewing the full details of all six victims. “How are you getting those?”
“Just know I can get them.”
I frowned, skeptical. “Right.” If it was true, if I could look at all six of the BH victims and their circumstances . . . it’d be a psychologist’s dream. And to make it all better—the killer was already behind bars. I could visit him. Talk to him. Do a proper psych analysis, assuming I could get authorization from his legal team.
I realized I was staring at him. I straightened in the chair. “Okay. I’ll do it.” I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice, but it still coated the words.
The corners of his mouth lifted, but it wasn’t a smile. It was disappointment, and I didn’t have time to process it before he spoke. “I’ll bring you a copy of Gabe’s file tomorrow.”
“That would be great.” I watched as he tossed a piece down without finding its place.
“I’m going to head home. Thanks for the food and the hospitality.”