See No Evil

Dillon asked Emily, “How do you know about that?”

Emily frowned. “I–I don’t know how I know.” She leaned back and thought. “Something I read maybe?”

“Something on Wishlist?”

“Maybe. I really don’t remember, but I know I heard it somewhere. And I remember thinking he was as big a hypocrite as Victor.”

“Emily, have you ever been approached by someone who asked you to help them mete out justice?”

She shook her head. “No.” Then her eyes widened. “But I did get a weird text message on my phone a couple months ago.”

“What did it say?”

“Could I meet at Starbucks Wednesday afternoon.”

“The Wednesday Victor was killed?”

She shook her head. “No. Long before. Like in January.”

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know. I responded and asked who wanted to know.”

“And did you get a message back?”

“Yeah. It said, ‘A friend from Wishlist.’”

“Did you meet the friend?”

“No. This was right after I sent that message to the list about wanting to castrate Victor. It sort of freaked me out. I didn’t think anyone knew me on the list.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” Will asked.

“Because I just remembered. Honestly, so much has happened this week, that stupid message wasn’t on my mind.”

Outside Emily’s room, Dillon handed Will a tape of Emily’s first interview, the day after Victor’s murder. “You’ll see her comments today and her comments then are the same.”

“Would you have given this to me if they differed?”

Dillon shrugged. “So now what?”

“I have a helluva lot of legwork in front of me,” said Will. “I have Emily’s cell phone records, and haven’t had a chance to search through them further back than the last couple weeks. And I want to verify her statement.” He shook his head. “This case is like an octopus of victims with no body. And what does this Jason Ridge have to do with it? He’s dead.”

“He was a patient of Bowen’s,” Dillon said.

“And he raped a girl and was given a Deferred Entry of Judgment by Judge Small, who’s also dead,” Julia said. “Ridge’s slate was wiped clean so he could play football.”

She turned to Dillon. “Did you ever get Montgomery’s campaign reports?”

“They’re in my office. I haven’t had a chance yet to go through them.”

“We should pull Small’s, too. They’re online through the county elections department,” Julia said. “Small, Montgomery, Bowen, all dead.”

“Montgomery didn’t have a connection to Ridge.”

“Not that we know about,” Julia said.

Will slammed his notepad shut. “You need to look at the facts, not conjecture.”

“The fact is that Small, Ridge, and Bowen were all involved in Ridge’s DEJ and they’re all dead,” Julia said. “I don’t know how Victor fits in, but he does. Maybe just as a smoke screen.” She nodded, convincing herself as she said it. “That’s it. A fakeout. To lead the police down the wrong path. What about Paul Judson? He was shot in the eyes after the Wishlist message from Billy Thompson suggested he needed his eyes examined.”

Connor put up his hand. “Billy came to me this morning. I forgot about it when Julia was run off the road. But it’s important.” He told them about a girl, eighteen or nineteen, who had approached Billy, gave him a sexual favor, and asked him to become part of a special group. “Billy has solid instincts and walked away from the situation, but after I talked to him about Judson and Wishlist he remembered the girl and thought it might be connected.”

“Are you suggesting that maybe someone in this group was trying to recruit him?” Will asked.

Dillon said, “It makes sense. They must have some method of recruitment. People in Wishlist are the perfect recruits. They all have anger management issues. Most probably have other mental problems as well-ADHD, sexual abuse, kleptomania-it’s the perfect recruiting ground. And someone like Bowen who knows all their weaknesses, knows how to manipulate them, could turn them into killers.”

“You believe that?” Will said.

“I do,” Dillon said.

“But Bowen is dead.”

“Maybe they turned on him,” Dillon said.

“Or maybe,” Connor interrupted, “he was one of their intended victims all along.”

Will jumped up. “I need to meet with Bowen’s next of kin. If we’re on the same side again,” he said pointedly to Dillon, “do you want to join me?”

“Sure, but why?”

“Bowen’s son is a psychiatrist-in-training. And he stands to inherit a few million bucks.”

“People have killed for much, much less.”

Eric Bowen didn’t seem terribly distraught when Will and Dillon met him at the Coroner’s Office.

“You don’t have to identify the body,” Will told him. “We’ve already made a positive ID from fingerprints.”

“I just want to see him,” Eric said.

“They’ll arrange it.” Will nodded to the coroner’s assistant to prepare Bowen’s body for showing. “Do you mind answering a few questions?”

“Not at all.”

“Were you close to your father?”

Eric shrugged. “Yes and no. He was a hard man to get close to, but we had an okay relationship.”

“Did he seem upset about anything recently? Did he seem different than usual?”

“At his party last night, he was his usual self.”

“Which is what?”

“Arrogant, generous, and solitary.”

Dillon asked, “What do you know about his online therapy group, Wishlist?”

Eric’s jaw tightened. “I told him he was opening himself up to lawsuits. He didn’t like my advice, so we never talked about it again.”

“Do you know how the group started? Where the list of members might be stored?”

“There’s no list. Dad wanted it to be truly anonymous. He kept no records of who said what. He didn’t want people using their real names or talking about specific people. He intended it to be a forum for kids to talk to each other and learn that they’re not alone with their fears and problems. Good in theory, I suppose, but Dad didn’t want to see the problems. He only saw the potential for recognition. He wanted-needed-to be recognized in his field.”

Sadness crossed the son’s face.

“He told me he started the group for teenagers who self-mutilate,” Dillon said.

Eric nodded. “Yeah, he did.”

Will changed the course of the conversation. “Your mother died of cancer many years ago, before Wishlist.”

“Yes.” His voice cracked.

“I’m sorry, Eric,” Will apologized. “I’m just trying to understand what happened to your father.”

“When you called me, you said he committed suicide.”

“Additional evidence has come to light that indicates your father’s death may have been made to look like a suicide.”

“What does that have to do with my mother?”

“Today is the anniversary of her death, correct?” Will looked at his notes. “In your father’s appointment book, it indicated that he planned to go to the cemetery this afternoon.”