Will changed the subject. “My understanding is that you just inherited a few million dollars.”
Eric sighed. “I guess all cops have to think that way. I don’t care about the money. My mother was independently wealthy and I received most of her estate. That was worth three times what my dad was worth. The only thing he got from her estate was the house.”
“What about anyone who threatened your dad? Was he scared? Angry about something?”
“Dad never got angry, even when mom died. He was unique.”
“What happened to your cousin Tristan after his mother died? Did he continue to live with you?”
“Let’s see, he was eighteen at the time. He moved out almost immediately. Tristan and Dad didn’t see eye- to-eye about a lot of things, and-”
He stopped.
“What?” Will prompted.
Eric frowned. “Tristan is the reason Wishlist was created in the first place. After Aunt Monica died, Tristan started cutting himself. He refused to talk to Dad about it, but agreed to the anonymous counseling. It seemed to work wonders. Tristan stopped self-mutilating, focused on his art, and now, seven years later, he’s a rising star in the art world. I got to hand it to him, he’s done well.”
Connor stared at Tristan’s painting across the room. At first he only saw swirls of pink and red, jagged lines fading toward the edges. Other, darker colors seemed randomly thrown onto the canvas. But from this distance, Connor made out the hint of a female shape. And the jagged lines were shadows. The fading out was drip marks.
The skin crawled on the back of Connor’s hand. Tristan’s paintings were creepy.
Faye kept the knife under the blanket. She rolled it between her fingers. Back and forth, back and forth. It nicked her once and she jumped in pleasurable surprise. She liked being surprised. It was why she liked being cut on her back. She could anticipate it, but not know the moment when it would come. Then the sting was far more exquisite.
She was going to miss her angel. For a moment, she wondered if she’d done the right thing. Maybe somehow they could have run away together.
But she had to take the blame. After all, she had killed.
Faye didn’t want to go to prison. And she damn well didn’t want to talk to any more shrinks. Playing with your mind while pretending to be your friend. They didn’t know shit, only wanted to live vicariously through you because they had no lives of their own.
She remembered one session with Dr. Bowen. He wanted to know all about her sex life. He was probably getting off on her description, so she made it as lewd and lurid as possible. She described how her lover had cut her breast, then he sucked her blood. She then did the same to him. They came together as the pain and the feelings peaked.
She smiled. Bowen never even guessed Faye was talking about his own flesh and blood.
Taking the knife in hand, she cut deeply from the inside of her right elbow to her palm. The instant, burning pain almost stopped her. She almost called for a nurse.
Instead, she bit her tongue and watched the blood spread, seeping through the sheet, through the cotton blanket, spreading…
THIRTY
“Faye’s dead,” Cami said.
His hand shook as he held the phone to his ear. “Wh-what?”
“I was watching the hospital, just to see what they were going to do with Faye, and Julia Chandler went into her room. Right after she came out, a nurse went in and then called for doctors and an alarm went off. I saw them take Faye’s body from the room.”
Didn’t Faye know how much he needed her? That they were a team? He was empowered with her at his side, knowing and understanding his dark needs. Offering him her trust and faith.
Now she was dead.
“Why would Chandler hurt her? She has no reason.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t something Chandler did, but something she said. Threatened her. You know how those prosecutor types all think they have the authority to do anything they damn well please. Maybe she told Faye she’d be locked up for life, or put on Death Row, or that they were going to put her on drugs to force her to talk. I don’t know, but I think she was driven to suicide. Faye is dead and I just know Julia Chandler is responsible.”
That made sense. Julia Chandler had been talking to everyone. She’d made the connection to Jason Ridge. She had been a problem and he should have done something about her earlier, but he never thought it would go this far. He didn’t think Faye would end up dead, or that Chandler would push her to kill herself.
Didn’t they have any propriety in that hospital? Didn’t they have doctors who cared about their patients?
What was he thinking? There was no Hippocratic oath. Doctors did whatever the hell they wanted. They had all the control.
Like Garrett Bowen. He decided to be God for a day and stole the only solid thing in his life.
“Are you there?” Cami’s voice grated on him.
“I’m here.” He squeezed his eyes closed, surprised to find he was crying.
“What are you going to do about Julia Chandler?”
There was a knock on his front door. “Hold on.”
Cautious, he glanced out his bedroom window, then pulled back.
“I’ll take care of it.” He hung up.
In her office, Julia released a long, pent-up sigh. She’d spent the last hour being reprimanded by Andrew Stanton for interfering in an investigation. She justified her actions without emotion, the entire time scared to death that he’d fire her.
In the end, he put a reprimand in her file and took her off leave effective next Monday.
She planned to flip through messages, talk to her legal assistant, and wait for Connor to call when he was done talking to Garrett Bowen’s son. Her cell phone rang.
“Is this Julia Chandler with the San Diego District Attorney’s Office?” the voice said.
“Yes.”
“I’m Harriet Jameson from the Palo Alto Police Department. I spoke with you yesterday about a student at Stanford, Michelle O’Dell.”
“Right. Did you talk to her?”
“No. The address you gave me is a mail drop, not a residence. I ran the phone number and discovered it’s a cell phone forwarded to another cell phone with a six-one-nine prefix.”
“San Diego,” Julia said.
“I talked to the dean of students first thing this morning. He went through the student records and said that a Michelle O’Dell of San Diego, California, is a registered student in an independent study program.”
“Which means what?”
“She only has to meet with her counselor once a month and turn in her assignments. The last meeting was two weeks ago and she is current with her assignments.”
“Thank you, Harriet. I appreciate your following up for me.” Julia hung up the phone.
Michelle O’Dell wasn’t at Stanford. She was most certainly the mysterious “Cami” Connor had run into at Garrett Bowen’s house. And she was also probably the “Cami” that Faye had responded to, but denied knowing, during her interview, as well as the lascivious blonde Billy Thompson said had tried to recruit him.
Michelle O’Dell had been Shannon’s best friend. Had Shannon told her everything that had happened with Jason Ridge? Maybe Michelle blamed herself in some way for Shannon’s suicide, that she hadn’t helped her friend after Jason had gotten just a slap on the wrist.
But why such an elaborate plan? What did Michelle hope to gain from this string of murders?
She was just leaving to walk to the parking garage down the street when her cell phone rang, again.
