Chapter 50
Chapter
50
No subpoenas or other communication arrived from Flick. Milo and Petra were busy refining their murder books pre-trial.
Unnecessary, as it turned out.
Three days after our visit to Flick, he was found dead in his isolation cell by a deputy making her rounds, lying in a massive pool of blood. A pile of legal books and math texts that he’d requested were stacked neatly in a corner, unstained.
Milo called to tell me. I was at my desk, reviewing notes on a custody eval.
I said, “How’d he do it?”
“With a pen. They gave him a few to do his trial prep. Felt-tips to avoid problems with ballpoints. He snapped off one of the plastic clips, sharpened it, and tried to slice open his own neck. Big mess, from what the deputy told me, had to hurt but he lacked the gumption to dig deep enough. Even though he’d stockpiled and swallowed a whole bunch of extra-strength Tylenol they’d given him for headaches. After the neck didn’t work out, he moved on to his wrist. Did it the right way—longitudinal.”
“Sounds horrific.”
“Sure does,” he said. “And it makes me wonder.”
“About what?”
“When we saw him he was so goddamn arrogant. Then to just toss it all in and destroy himself? Remember what you said when we left the jail? He was torn down. Did I rip him up to the point where he couldn’t take it anymore?”
“No reason to think that,” I said. “And spare yourself anything close to guilt.”
“Why?”
“He was highly disturbed and unpredictable.”
“Still—”
“No still,” I said. “He murdered a lot of people in cold blood and would have kept doing it. Plus, this saves a bunch of families having to endure his antics at a trial.”
“True,” he said. “I need to keep that in mind. Actually was talking to Donna Batchelor when the message came in and for the first time she sounded kinda happy. Before that I’d informed Dr. Rosales and he started crying. I was about to call Hannah Gardener, then Shari Flores to thank her for alerting us to Whitney’s case.”
“There you go.”
“Okay, thanks. Send me your bill.”
After I hung up, I sat there, wondered why I felt uneasy.
A pen clip.
I wrote at least six people on a piece of paper and stared at it. When that wasn’t enough, I downloaded the photos of Flick’s victims. Studied them, one by one.
Woman in a boat. Little boy watching her die. Terrified by abandonment.
A gifted teacher slaughtered while taking out the garbage.
No need to go beyond that.
No reason to give any of it another moment of thought.
I went to get a cup of coffee.