Waking Hours (43 page)

“Which does what?” Scotto asked.

“Midazolam is a potent amnesiac,” Banerjee said, “which explains why none of the people at the party can remember anything. It’s commonly used in surgical sedation. Sometimes doctors give what’s called a kiddie cocktail containing Versed to small children who are terrified of pain or shots. Also used for in-chair anesthesia by—”

“Dentists,” Dani interrupted. “Amos Kasden’s father is a dentist.”

Irene was about to speak when Phil anticipated what she was going to say.

“I’ll have someone find out if Amos’s father is missing a bottle of Versed from his supplies,” Phil said. “Soon as we’re done here.”

“The problem is putting Amos at the scene,” Irene said. “We have nothing.”

“The blood on Liam’s shirt matches the victim’s, by the way,” Banerjee said. “And the mud on the bottoms of everybody’s shoes matches the crime scene. Also traces where people stepped in the blood that was spilled at the scene.”

“Have we challenged the video that puts Amos in the dorm?” Irene asked.

“We did,” Stuart said. “Successfully. Thanks to Dani’s assistant, Mr. Gunderson, who so kindly obliged us with the specifications for the St. Adrian’s security system.”

“He did?” Irene asked.

“He did,” Dani said.

“How?” Irene asked, turning to the assistant DA. “Never mind. I don’t care. What did you learn?”

“I took what Tommy told me about the security system at St. Adrian’s and then I went online to get the system specs. The footage of Amos entering his dorm and walking from his room to the bathroom and back again is 760 pixels. It’s not hi-def, but it’s pretty good. However, the cameras used by the school’s security system only deliver 300 pixels. If they recorded everything at 760 pixels, they’d use up the storage capacity of their servers in no time. Which means the footage we saw of Amos was taken with a different camera. Maybe a Flip or one of the older pocket cams. The new ones are all higher resolution.”

“Taken by whom?” Irene asked.

“Probably by Amos,” Stuart said. “He could have shot the fake footage, not sure when but at approximately the same time to get the light right, with the camcorder mounted somewhere at the same angle, edited it, and then hacked the server and either deleted the real footage and pasted in what he shot, or just left a flag that would open the new .avi file he made instead of opening the real file whenever anybody wanted to review what happened that night. The system is firewalled from external attacks but not from attacks inside the firewall. He’s conversant with the technologies. It’s not out of the question.”

“Okay,” Irene said. “So we need blood samples from Amos.” She turned to Banerjee. “Would it still have traces we can match?”

Banerjee shrugged.

She turned to Dani.

“Doubtful. The metaboloids would have passed through his system by now,” Dani said.

“So what are we looking at?” Irene asked. “Logan said they were playing a prank. So now Logan and Amos—”

“Old buddies from Cub Scouts,” Phil reminded everyone.

“So Logan and Amos hatch a scheme to win $10,000 from a website— what was it called?” Irene asked.

“Something like screamschemes dot com or dot net, I think it was,” Stuart said.

“And this is a site where people can post their scary prank videos,” Irene summed up. “So their plan is to scare their friends into thinking they killed Julie, so presumably they video the whole thing. Do we know where the video is?”

“It could be anywhere,” Phil said.

“But then something goes wrong,” Irene said. “Plan A misfires. What happened? Logan confesses and leaves the country . . .”

“He didn’t confess,” Dani said. “He said, ‘I
think
I killed her.’ He doesn’t know what happened. He’s got the whole cocktail of hypnotics and amnesiacs in his blood like everyone else. But only he knows what Plan A is. The prank.”

“Who else knows?” Scotto said. “Liam?”

“I don’t think so,” Dani said. “If he knew they were going to play a mean trick on Julie, he would have warned her.”

“But they weren’t playing a trick on Julie,” Phil said. “They were playing a trick
with
Julie. She had to be in on it.”

Dani thought about it. It made sense, to a point.

“Except that in the end, the joke turned on her,” Dani said. She thought of the difference between Logan and Amos. Logan was self-centered, entitled, and narcissistic enough to play a mean joke on a girl without regard to her feelings, but was he psychotic enough to be a killer? She estimated the odds for someone with his background as one in ten. Did Amos have the precursors and psychological predictors for depravity or violence? He had all of them. The odds that he could become a killer were nine in ten.

“Maybe that was the real plan all along,” Dani said. “Julie thinks she’s going to get even with the girls who played a prank on her at a slumber party in seventh grade. She pictured them all laughing about it afterward. Maybe even growing closer friends when it was all over. ‘Ha ha—I got you guys.’ Peer acceptance in teens is a powerful motivator.”

“Logan says to her, ‘Here, swallow this,’ ” Irene speculated. “ ‘It will look like fire is coming out of your mouth.’ Something like that? She believes him?”

“She does if he’s drugged her,” Phil said. “If she’s suggestible.”

“So Julie thinks they’re going to play an elaborate prank,” Dani said. “She’s going to pretend they’re killing her, and yell and scream, and she’s covered with blood.”

“Dog blood,” Stuart added.

“Dog blood,” Irene echoed, “except that whoever is bringing it dumps it along the way. Why?”

“Because he knows he’s not going to need it. Or they know,” Phil said. “Is it Logan and Amos, or just Logan, or just Amos? Do we know Amos is capable? He seems kind of wimpy.”

“Let me tell you what I learned about Amos Kasden,” Dani said.

For the next five minutes, she related what she’d learned from her conversation with Ed Stanley. She described the impaired emotional and cognitive development of severely abused children. She explained how the fantasies abused children create to help them survive can develop into adult psychopathologies. She described dissociative identity disorder and how, in her opinion, it was likely that Amos suffered from it.

When she finished, the room was silent for a moment as everyone took in what she’d said.

“Wow,” Irene said. “Excellent work, Dani. John will be proud of you. So are you thinking Amos is leading Logan?”

“He knows how to push people’s buttons,” Dani said. “Tommy and I both found that out. I think it’s an aspect of the survival instinct, exaggerated to the extreme. An abused child needs to know what other people are thinking or feeling. He has to be hypersensitive to the mood swings and the psychological dynamics that threaten him and change from moment to moment.”

“How does he push Logan’s buttons?” Irene asked.

“By impressing him with how outrageous he can be. Logan self-identifies as one wild and crazy guy. Amos is the only guy he knows who is wilder and crazier than he is,” Phil said. “But he doesn’t know the half of it.”

“What I can’t figure out is how they got to Bull’s Rock Hill,” Irene said. “We know they’re drinking whiskey and beer and then this ‘zombie juice’ at Logan’s house. So they need at least two cars. Is somebody the designated driver? How do they get from Logan’s house to Bull’s Rock Hill?”

The room fell silent.

“Actually,” Dani said, “they wouldn’t have to.”

“Because?”

“We don’t know that
they
were there,” Dani said. “We just know that their
shoes
were there. And their blood.”

“Talk to me,” Irene said.

“Suppose it goes like this. Amos drugs everybody,” Dani said, feeling the picture become clearer and clearer, “maybe not Julie, or not as much, because she has to be able to walk. He thinks he’s drugged Liam, but actually, Liam has just had too much hard liquor and passes out. After everybody is sedated, Amos takes their shoes. And he gets a blood sample from all of them with a syringe. He draws it somewhere where it won’t leave a mark, and they’re feeling no pain so they’re not going to notice or remember. Maybe under the tongue.”

“I can see this,” Phil said.

“So he and Julie go to Bull’s Rock Hill,” Dani continued, “just the two of them. He doesn’t need Logan. He puts on the other kids’ shoes, one pair at a time, and walks around to make sure they get blood on them and leave footprints. He mixes the blood together and uses it to draw the symbol on Julie’s stomach, to make it look like some sort of satanic ritual.”

“What do you mean, make it
look
?” Phil said. “That’s like the line, ‘I can’t tell if my wife is pretty or if she just
looks
pretty.’ Does it
look
like a satanic ritual, or
is
it one?”

“Good point,” Dani said. “Because if you think about it, there’s no reason for the fire. Why call attention? Somebody might have seen it. Amos has something in mind, satanic or maybe something he just made up.” She turned to Baldev Banerjee. “How long do these chemicals burn?”

“No more than a minute or two, I should think, but quite hot,” Banerjee said.

“What’s his point?” Dani tried to think. “It might have impressed somebody, like the way a magician impresses an audience with a big flourish of fire or doves flying out of a hat, but if there’s no one there but Amos and the girl, who’s he trying to impress?”

“Who indeed?” Irene said.

“Whoever sees the video,” Stuart said.

“And just to make sure the cops know where to look,” Dani said, “Amos takes Liam’s cell phone from his pocket, after he passed out at Logan’s house, and leaves it in the bushes at the crime scene. Then after he kills Julie, he goes back to the party, puts everybody’s shoes back on their feet, smears a little of Julie’s blood on Liam’s shirt, and goes home. And before all this happens, he practices on a dog named Molly to make sure it all works, and when he’s done with Molly, he throws the carcass in the lake.”

“So why does Logan flee the country?” Irene asked.

“Logan didn’t flee the country,” Dani said. “His father put him on a plane to keep him out of trouble.”

“We’ve got enough to go after both,” Irene said. “Let’s bring Amos in. And get an arrest warrant for Logan Gansevoort. We’ll sort it out once they’re in custody.”

37
.

Tommy spent the afternoon at the library hoping to find out more about the history of St. Adrian’s Academy in the town records. He found a reference to the school as a stop on the Underground Railroad during the years preceding the American Civil War, and another mentioning it as a place General Washington used temporarily as headquarters during the Revolutionary War, but no record of the actual founding of the school. Nor had anyone, to Tommy’s surprise, written the school’s official history. It was a place that had long strived for privacy and discretion.

He’d gotten a text from Dani that sounded like she’d made more progress than he had.

G
OOD NEWS
. A
RREST WARRANTS FOR
A
MOS AND
L
OGAN
. C
ALL ME
.

Tommy was in the library men’s room washing his hands when he realized he wasn’t alone. He turned to see a familiar face.

“Hey, Tommy,” the man said.

“Vito Cipriano,” Tommy said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working,” Vito said.

“You’re a men’s room attendant?” Tommy said. “That’s a step up.”

“Very funny. It’s a public library, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Tommy said. “Stick around, because in half an hour my aunt’ll read
Green Eggs and Ham
to you and the other children.”

“Don’t tell me you’re still mad at me,” Vito said. “C’mon, Tommy— everybody was taking shots at you after you dumped Cassandra. That’s what we do.”

Tommy considered his options. He’d had a fair amount of practice dealing with tabloid reporters. Vito Cipriano, a pudgy bald-headed creep with a goatee and a pseudo–New York hipster stink to him, was no smarter than any of the others, though he certainly thought he was.

“Actually, I think I got a lot more coverage from you guys after I dumped Cassandra than I would have if I’d married her,” Tommy said. “I probably made an extra ten or fifteen million because of you.”