I was confused again. I didn’t know how he knew so much about Silas, and how it was he was able to process information about him. “When he was a little boy, do you remember anything about living with him and his mother?”
“Yes. Of course I do. What do you need to know?”
“Did you notice any kinds of problems, like maybe he was acting out in school, or something like that?”
He shook his head. “Silas was a very bright boy. He was only five years old when I last saw him, and he was already in the third grade. He just leapfrogged in front of everybody. And yes, he did have a lot of problems in school. Of course he did. He was much younger than all the other kids in his class, and much smarter than them, so he was a lot smaller than all of his classmates. So he started fights. Lots of fights.” He smiled. “I’m afraid that he might be too much like his old man.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
He sighed. “I can’t tell you anything. What I can tell you is that I don’t –” He paused, and looked up at the ceiling, and then lowered his voice. “I don’t belong here. I’m just here because I was protecting my son. I was protecting my son. And nobody can ever tell me that I did the wrong thing.”
I wondered what he was talking about. “What do you mean, you were just protecting your son?”
“Listen, I know that I would have ended up here sooner or later, even if I didn’t take the fall for my son. Sooner or later, I would’ve ended up here because they want me in here, so I don’t regret what I did for him. Not at all. The people in the government, they want me in here. So I knew that when I told the police that I was the one who set the fire, and not my son, that I was doing the right thing.”
I swallowed hard. I got the gist of what he was saying, but I didn’t really want to acknowledge it. Yet, it was staring me in the face. “Are you saying that Silas set the fire that killed his own mother?”
He just stared at me. “I’ve said too much. I don’t want my son to get in more trouble.”
I blinked my eyes. On the one hand, this man was clearly delusional, and he was suffering from schizophrenia. He had a multitude of paranoid fantasies. So I didn’t know if I could believe him.
Yet, what if it was true? This man was strangely lucid when he spoke about his son. He knew all about Silas being accused of murder. And it was certainly possible that a five-year-old boy, with an extremely high IQ, and an attachment disorder, could have done that to his mother. I had seen stranger things. Plus, his therapist did indicate that Silas had an unhealthy interest in fire.
I thought about what his adoptive mother said to me about the night Silas’ mother died. She told me that Silas was able to get out of the house, because his bedroom door opened up into the backyard, so he was able to walk out of there. But his mother was not so lucky. Her bedroom did not face the backyard. In fact, she was on the third story.
Was Silas an arsonist as far back as the age of 5?
If he was, that would certainly complicate this case.
To say the very least.
Chapter 11
As I drove back from Fulton, I got on the phone with Anna. I was going to have to get Silas’ mental health records. He had signed a release for me to get those records, because he knew that I was going to have to get them. But as with the earlier issue, I wanted to get those records a lot faster, so I had Anna get them for me.
“I’ll have them emailed to you by the time you get back to your office,” she said.
I thought about what I found out from Silas’ adoptive mother as well as his birth father. They were both painting a picture of somebody who was extremely troubled, to say the very least. His adoptive mother, Arlene, suspected him of crimes committed around the neighborhood. And his father, if he was speaking the truth, which was highly doubtful, but if he was speaking the truth, Silas had killed his own mother when he was only five years old. By setting a fire.
I had a feeling that I was soon going to find out the truth. And that truth was that Silas was a violent person with an unhealthy obsession with fires, possibly suffering from pyromania, and who had no qualms about killing people in these fires. I mean, if he killed his own mother in a fire, why not also kill his wife in a fire? I also thought about the letter that I received, about how the whole BDSM thing was just a cover for the fact that Silas apparently chained his wife to the wall, so that she would be helpless when he set the fire that killed her. How could I cast doubt on that letter? After all, when I went to see that dungeon, it really wasn’t much of anything. I couldn’t really tell if it was a dungeon ever, or if it was something else, like a guesthouse. I couldn’t tell that. That bothered me.
I called Harper while I was driving.
“I wanted to give you an update on Silas,” I said to her when she picked up. “Here’s what I found out. I think that my client is a psycho. A very intelligent psycho who happens to be fascinated with fire, and who possibly killed his own mother in a fire when he was only five. He might have only been five at the time, but he was already in the third grade. And, apparently, he has at least one personality disorder, and that’s attachment disorder. Right now, Anna is getting the records for me from Silas’ stay in a mental hospital, and I’ve a feeling that when I get those records I’m going to find out that he has a lot more personality disorders than I even know about.”
Harper was silent. “Damien, be careful. Please be careful. I know that you deal with people who are seriously disturbed all the time, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer. The worst kinds of people to deal with are the ones who combine personality disorders with high intelligence. If it’s true that he set a fire and that killed his mother when he was only five years old, then he might be quite dangerous indeed. Just be careful.”
“I’m not only going to be careful, but I think I better get off the case.” A part of me wanted to do that, but another part of me didn’t want to. After all, I was a criminal defense attorney. Harper was right. I dealt with people like Silas all the time. It was what I did. Granted, usually the people that I dealt with did not have a genius level IQ, and the power that Silas had, but in my law career, I had dealt with my share of people who were disturbed. In fact, that was most of what I dealt with. So part of me wanted to keep going on this case, and just be wary of anything that he told me. If I found out that he had been diagnosed with something such as narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, I was just going to have to take that into account anytime he told me anything. Because if he had a severe personality disorder, then most of what he would tell me would probably be lies.
“You can do what you want, nothing is stopping you,” Harper said. “But, I’m glad that you’re getting this information, so at least you can know exactly what it is that you’re dealing with.”
“Yes, that’s true. Not to mention the fact that if I find out this information, and I think that Silas was guilty of murdering his wife, I can take the information and try to get a good plea deal for him.” I didn’t like to try a case when I knew for a fact that my client was guilty. To me, trying a case with a client I knew to be guilty carried too much risk with it – such as the danger of getting the person acquitted, and that inevitably meant that a dangerous person was back on the street. Of course, when dealing with clients such as Silas, there was always a fly in the ointment, namely that these clients often wouldn’t take a plea deal. They usually couldn’t be convinced about the danger that they were in, and they would typically insist on a jury trial, come hell or high water. After all, people with severe personality disorders were used to getting their way with people. They had the intelligence and charm to snow almost anybody. They were only reasonable in thinking that they could snow a jury just as well. Silas was probably just this kind of person, and he probably would never take a plea deal. That was a very real possibility, and I knew I had to face the facts.
I saw my office coming up, and I was anxious to see what Anna had come up with for me. When I got to my o
ffice, the first thing I did was boot up my computer, and I saw that there was an email from Anna with an attachment.
“I’ll call you back, Harper,” I said. “I have to see what it is that Anna has sent me about Silas. I need to see for myself if my suspicions are true about him. After all, his adoptive parents are living hand to mouth in a very small house, with very old furniture and very old carpeting, and they can barely make ends meet. Meanwhile, Silas is a billionaire. That alone tells me that there’s something wrong with him, that he would just allow his parents to live like that, while he could easily give them enough cash that would more than take care of them for the rest of their lives.”
I hung up the phone, and I got on the computer and downloaded the attachment. In this attachment was reams and reams and reams of records from Silas’ stay in the mental hospital. I saw that he went into the hospital when he was 25 years old. This was after he had started his company, but before it became public, which sent his net worth into the stratosphere. Apparently, according to his records, he was in the hospital for an entire year. That alone told me that there were some issues that were very serious. It wasn’t a simple stay in a mental hospital, where somebody might go into the hospital for a week, while their meds get straightened out. No, this was something much worse.
The only thing that cheered me about what I was reading was the fact that Silas apparently had gone into the hospital of his own free will. That meant that he knew that he was having problems, and he was trying to deal with them. So that was one good thing. He had taken responsibility.
I read about what it was that the psychologists and psychiatrists had made notes about him while he was in the hospital. While he was in the hospital, he was being treated for bipolar disorder, which apparently he really was suffering from. He had attempted suicide one week after he got into the hospital, and his meds were changed at that time.
I started reading about some of the other symptoms that he was exhibiting while he was in the hospital. Apparently, he had told the other patients that he was somebody whom everybody admired, and that every woman wanted to be with him, while every man wanted to be him. He told anybody who would listen that he was going to be president of the United States one day, and that when he was, everybody was going to bend to his will.
This did show that he thought a lot about himself, but then again, he was intelligent enough to do all of those things. He was smart enough to be president, as he had the drive to start his own company and make it an international concern that was grossing millions every single year. So, while the psychologist had decided that he was exhibiting delusions of grandeur, it might’ve just been something else.
The psychologist also said that he had noted that Silas had a lack of empathy for the people around him. He was not able to show the least bit of care for the other patients. For instance, somebody who he played cards with every day committed suicide, but he seemed to not care about that fact. In fact, it was written that he refused to go to the funeral, and that he made comments about his friend like “He brought it on himself, so why should I care about what happened to him?” Apparently, this was not an isolated incident, as many of the people that he acquainted himself with had issues that Silas walked away from. He simply couldn’t put himself in their shoes.
After reading some of the other notes, I saw that the preliminary diagnosis for Silas was indeed narcissistic personality disorder. According to the notes, he had all the hallmarks of this kind of disorder. He would only talk about himself, never bothering to find out about anybody else around him. He believed that he was superior to everybody around him, which, intelligence-wise, he probably was, but he apparently belittled everyone that he knew. He would only focus on the flaws of others, and he never took responsibility for any of his own flaws. He also could not take any kind of criticism, and he was constantly looking for someone to validate him. In fact, if someone criticized him, he would fly into a rage, even if the criticism was small and minor. He also apparently felt entitled, in that he expected people around him to do everything for him, and he never quite understood why it would be that they would not want to do things for him. Not only that, but he also apparently used people for his own means, and he was also extremely envious of others.
In other words, it seemed that he fit all the criteria of someone who was suffering from this kind of disorder.
I put my head on the desk. I was confused about what I was going to do, yet I questioned why I was desiring to get off his case. He was paying me a lot of money. A lot of money that I could use. So there was that. But I just didn’t know if I was equipped to deal with somebody who quite possibly was a very dangerous person. Not that I didn’t deal with dangerous people all the time. But there was something about this guy, that just sent chills up and down my spine, and maybe question why I even took the case in the first place. I just had a horrible feeling about him from the very beginning.
It turned out that my gut was right. As it always was. I thought when I met him that he killed Ava. Granted, I had not yet worked out a motive for killing her, but if he was the kind of person I thought he was, it wouldn’t take much to set him off. Perhaps she just pissed him off. Maybe she started out catering to his needs, but then she decided she was going to stop, and, just like that, he decided that he was going to kill her. I didn’t know. What I did know was that the puzzle pieces were coming together, and it was becoming more and more clear that I was dealing with somebody who was most likely a psycho.
As I was looking at the records, I looked up.
Silas Porter was standing in my doorway, and he was looking at me.
And he did not look happy. To say the very least.
Chapter 12
“Can I help you?” I asked him defensively. What was with this guy, always barging in like this? Seriously, did he think that he was my one and only client?
He had that same inscrutable expression that he had when he first met me. That expression that told me very little about what was going through his mind. “I wanted to check on what it was that you found out about my case. Have you talked to the prosecutor?”
I shook my head. “No. Your case hasn’t gone to the Grand Jury yet, so you have not been formally charged with anything. I know that you were preliminarily charged, but you have to understand that the formal charges don’t come until the Grand Jury reviews your case and decides whether or not there’s enough evidence to bound you over for trial. That’s how it works in this jurisdiction. So, I don’t think that the permanent prosecutor has been assigned to your case yet. I will tell you that I’ve spoken with the temporary prosecutor, the one who handled the initial appearance on your case, and she told me that at the moment the only offer in your case is life in prison without the possibility of parole. I figured that this was probably something that you didn’t want to consider and–”
All at once, I saw fury in those light eyes. However, his voice was completely controlled. “Mr. Harrington, I thought I was clear. I will not entertain any kind of plea agreements in this case. I told you that my wife died before the fire had ever come in, and I think she died of natural causes. Now what was it that you found out about Ava and her health?”
“I found out that she was perfectly healthy. I got her medical records, and there was nothing wrong with her. Her heart was fine. Everything checked out with her when she last got a physical. So I don’t know what caused her to just die of natural causes, as you say that she did.”
He sat down. “Well, you’re going to have to keep looking. Keep trying to figure out why it was that my wife died like that.”
I looked at him. I decided I was going to gauge the reaction to what I was going to say to him next. “I have put in a motion to have your wife’s body exhumed. According to the preliminary autopsy, there wasn’t any kind of traceable poison in her system, however I don’t know if they would necessarily be looking for that. I understand that her body was in such a state that’s entirely possible that they would not be able
to discover if there was poison in her tissues at all. However, I have to try. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Somebody poisoned her. That’s the reason why she died.”
I looked into those eyes, and I saw that he was a bit perturbed by what I was saying. However, it didn’t seem like he was totally opposed the idea. “Do you think I poisoned her?” he asked me.
“I don’t know. Did you?”
He just stared at me. I had no idea what he was thinking, however I knew that it probably wasn’t good. “Do you think I’m capable of doing something like that?”
I thought about everything I had found out about him these past few days. About how his father said that he set a fire that killed his mother when he was only five. About how his adoptive mother was living in such a state, and he wasn’t helping her out at all. About how she said that she was happy to get him out the house when he was only 15, and how he ran away many times. And when he ran away, there were crimes that happened all over their neighborhood. I thought about what the psychologists at the mental institution, where he spent a year, wrote in their notes - that he was suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. I thought about all those things. However, I decided I wasn’t going to say anything about any of those visits. Not yet. Something told me that he probably already knew that I made these visits, however, I wasn’t going to necessarily come out and say that to him. “Mr. Porter, I believe that anybody is capable of anything. If somebody pushes somebody’s buttons just right, then even the most mild-mannered person is capable of killing somebody. So yes, I do think that you’re capable of poisoning your wife.”
Secrets and Lies Page 8