CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Detective Moore walked into the station holding Diana’s arm. She lifted her eyebrows to the officer on the desk, and she pressed a button behind the desk to unlock the door to the right with a loud buzz. Moore pushed through with Diana, and Alison followed behind.
"I’ll take you to booking, and once we have you in the system, we can call your lawyer to come down here," Moore said.
Diana kept her mouth closed, not saying a word.
"Captain wants to see you," Office Briggs called as he approached.
"I’m on my way to booking," Moore replied.
"Is that…Is she…?" the officer asked, looking at Diana. His eyes were wide with surprise.
"What’s going on?" Alison asked. "Something’s happened. Has there been a development?"
"Yeah," the officer stated, his eyes flickering between Alison and the suspect who had just been brought in. "I can take her to booking. You should go and talk with the Captain."
Moore stopped walking. She looked at the officer, then at Alison. Alison nodded. Something had happened while they were away, and they needed to find out what.
"Diana Shepherd," Moore told the officer. "Book her and then call her lawyer. No one’s to talk to her until I get back, okay?"
"Got it," Officer Briggs said.
Moore let go of Diana's arms, and Officer Briggs took her away.
Moore strode off quietly, with Alison hurrying to catch up. Neither of them paused as they headed for the Captain’s office. Alison tried to figure out what had happened since they’d been gone. It was obviously connected to the current investigation. They can't have had another death.
"Good," Captain Lawson said when they arrived at his office.
Alison hadn’t met the Captain before, but he made no move to introduce himself, and from the way he spoke comfortably in her presence, he knew who Alison was.
"They just found a fourth victim," the Captain said.
"What?" Alison gasped. She’d thought it might be the case, but it was still shocking.
"That’s four victims in a little over three days," Moore said as she began pacing the small office. "And not only that. The killer is doing two a night. Is that what we should expect now? If we find one dead body, we should expect another."
"I don't want to hear your moaning, Detective," the Captain said. "I want results."
"We have a suspect in booking," Moore said quickly. "She doesn’t have an alibi for last night, and she had a motive to kill Judge Greene."
"Who’s the latest victim?" Alison asked.
The Captain opened a file on his desk. "Nathan Cross."
"Dr. Cross," Alison said. "I know him. I know of him. He’s a psychologist."
"Yeah, that’s what it says here," the Captain said. "Same thing as before. Multiple knife wounds, a note pinned to his chest, and all that."
"He evaluated individuals before trials," Alison said.
"Not only defendants, but witnesses, jury members, everyone.
He fits with what we know so far. Psychiatrist, expert witness, judge, and now, a psychologist. Four people involved in criminal trials are deciding whether someone should go to jail.
There has to be a case that connects all four of them.
Diana Shepherd knew Langford and Holland, and she mentioned that she had spoken out about them, but we didn't get a chance to find out how she knew them. "
"On it," Moore said. "If they’re connected to the murder case from eight years ago, then we have her. I’ll check on both of them and Nathan Cross. We go in there with that information and see what she has to say for herself."
"Okay, then get out there and get it done," the Captain said.
Moore left the room very quickly as if that was the expectation, and Alison followed.
"This is fast," Alison said when she caught up to Moore. "Fast for four murders, but to pair them like this and do two in a night. I haven’t seen anything like this, not firsthand. It feels planned but not planned. The killer would have had to have known where the victims would be; there are far too many moving parts for that. It’s bold.
It shows a strong desire to kill the people they blame. "
"We might have her in booking right now," Moore said. "No alibi for last night when two people were killed. If we can connect all four to the trial, then she’s our killer."
"You check that," Alison said. "I’ll go over the photos from the Cross crime scene as they come in, and I’ll see if we can get an approximate time for Judge Greene’s death. And I want to know how Diana’s family was killed. That could be important."
***
"Stabbed to death," Moore said. "It was a home invasion.
Diana was out at the time, working downtown in the Western Building.
Michael Hartman entered the home, took a knife from the kitchen, went upstairs, and stabbed the father to death before stabbing the child to death. There was a lot of blood."
Alison sat back in the chair Moore had brought into the office for her. "That makes sense. This has to be it. Eight years ago, Hartman brutally killed a father and child, and now someone is doing the same to those involved with the trial."
"Not someone," Moore said. "Diana Shepherd.
She was the one who found them when she got home from work that evening.
She entered her home, didn't notice the back door had been broken into, and went upstairs to find her husband and son dead in the bedroom. Then, she had to sit idly by as the man who did that to her, the man who split her life apart, was not sent to prison. That’s enough to make anyone snap. "
"Why now?" Alison asked.
Moore raised her eyebrows as she looked across the desk at Alison.
"I’m not trying to disprove you, but I need it to make complete sense before we go in there and talk to her again," Alison said softly. "Why wait eight years to do this. The appeals are long over. The dust has settled. Why not act sooner?"
"The anger has been building," Moore said.
"Maybe she tried to go down the conventional path, the legal path, and when she realized that wasn’t going to change anything, she just snapped.
You said it yourself, right? The killer went into a frenzy.
I mean, you can't kill two people in cold blood like that in one night without becoming a little unhinged beforehand and more unhinged after. "
"The article?" Alison asked.
"She knew she didn't have an alibi, and thought that it might throw us off the scent," Moore said.
"It looks that way, right? We check her out, and she has an article about how they are close to a result against Judge Greene, and he’s dead that very morning.
No one would immediately suspect her of murder. "
"Yeah," Alison said. "Maybe she comes clean after speaking with her lawyer."
"You don't think she did it," Moore said.
"I really don't know," Alison said. "This is a weird one by many standards. Obviously, the murders are brutal, and they do point toward replicating what happened to Diana’s family. There’s a lot of planning, then this frenzied killing, two people in a night, and that happened twice. It’s almost as if someone is slipping in and out of some psychosis. They plan it out so they won't be caught, both in the moment and after, and that’s what’s happened so far, and maybe we have the killer in custody.
We don't know yet. In that moment, thought, slashing at a victim, covered in blood, and then having the composure to go and do it all again? It’s unsettling. "
"You think we’re dealing with some sort of split personality?" Moore asked.
"I don't know what we’re dealing with, but to put it in simple terms, then yes, maybe. Someone who has some rationality and logic, but also someone who’s animalistic and driven to kill. Perhaps Diana Shepherd fits the bill."
"I think she more than fits the bill," Moore said.
"The Hartman case connects them all. Greene presided over the trial, but we already knew that.
He was the one Diana blamed for failing to overturn the jury's verdict.
Langford and Holland both collaborated to assess the defendant before the trial.
Holland didn't present the information in court.
She was Langford's assistant for a brief time back then.
Both of their names are on the court documents.
And Nathan Cross was brought on by the prosecution as an expert witness to help confirm the insanity plea and keep Hartman out of jail. That looks pretty damning to me."
"Unless something else pops up and slaps us in the face, then we have our connection," Alison admitted.
"Before we do anything else, we need to let Derek know. He needs to get the word out to anyone else connected to the case, anyone who might now be in danger. It’s obvious why the four deceased might be blamed for the outcome, but who else was involved? Are the jury members in danger, too?"
"Maybe not," Moore replied. "Their names wouldn’t be on record. Diana Shepherd could obtain the court records and the names of those involved, but the jury members would have some anonymity. Perhaps she could find out, but it would be far easier to get the four names of the deceased."
"Derek will be able to find the names if they’re available, and if not, then a member of the public won't be able to access them unless they have someone to gain access for them."
"Judge Greene?" Moore wondered. "If he was lured to the courthouse last night by Diana Shepherd, she might have gotten him to access any closed records before she killed him, and—" Moore stopped talking and stared at her screen.
"What is it?" Alison asked.
"Is it possible that she’s putting on an act?" Moore asked.
"What do you mean? Diana?"
"Yeah," Moore said. "You spoke about someone slipping in and out of another personality when they kill, right? Is it possible that she’s only recreating that to make it look like the murderer from eight years ago?"
"What did you find?" Alison asked, sitting forward.
"That’s a big part of why Hartman was assessed with insanity," Moore said.
"He claimed that he had a psychotic episode and didn't remember anything that happened on the day he killed his husband and son.
" Moore looked away from the screen and rubbed her eyes.
Then, she looked at Alison. "Is that a thing? Can that actually happen to someone?"
"Yeah, it can," Alison replied. "We understand the human mind better than ever before, and we’ve only scratched the surface. People can have psychotic episodes where they completely disassociate from reality and have no memory of what they’ve done during that time. It’s like blacking out."
Moore drummed her fingers on her desk for a few seconds.
"Okay, so yeah, I can understand that part. I’ve seen things as a detective where people have blacked out, and I never did in my younger days, but I know people who’ve blacked out before, so I understand it as a concept, but can you prove it?
Can't someone just pretend to have blacked out, and you’ll never know. "
"In my line of work, I’ve seen a lot of people try, or read about it, word of mouth, and all that," Alison said. "I think that’s a misconception, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Blacking out is definitely used as an alibi, but it’s not a very good one.
On the surface, someone can be very believable about blacking out, but as I said before, we’ve come a long way with the human mind. "
"Okay, so how do you test for it?" Moore asked.
"There are a number of signs that a psychiatrist can look for during an assessment," Alison replied. She wasn’t an expert in those kinds of assessments by any means, but she knew enough to give a rough description. "They’ll check current symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking, and then compare that to other sessions over time. Consistency is a big part of the assessment. It can be an art more than a science, but if someone’s faking, they usually overplay their symptoms or give what could be considered stereotypical symptoms."
"So, the assessor could be fooled?" Moore asked.
"Anything is possible," Alison countered.
"We all make mistakes in our jobs, but on the whole, we get it right.
Maybe a psychiatrist would misdiagnose one case out of…
I don't know, twenty? Thirty? But I know I’ve made mistakes, too.
I don't want to speak for you, Detective Moore, but you must have also. "
"I don't like to admit to that, but yeah."
"Maybe in the case of Hartman, the diagnosis was wrong, but that would be the exception to the rule," Alison said. "It’s not only the assessment, the multiple assessments; there’s also standardized tools to detect exaggeration and malingering.
The MMPI-2 and SIRS tests both have validity scales to catch unusual or improbable symptom patterns, and we can compare responses to know profiles of genuine patients versus those who are faking it. "
"Okay," Moore said. "I don't know about any of this, but I know you, and I take you at your word. Either way, it doesn’t matter if Hartman was faking it or if he didn't remember anything after he killed two people. Diana believes he should have gone to jail, and now, she’s punishing those who kept him out of jail, and she’s modeling the murders after what he did to her family. "
"That leaves me with one important question," Alison said. "Why not go after the man who killed her family?"
"He’s in some facility somewhere, and she can't get to him."
"She plans to kill four people and accomplishes that without being caught?" Alison asked. "If she can do all that, she must be able to think of something. I get why she would blame the four deceased, but no one is more to blame than Hartman. He killed her husband and son."
A knock came at the slightly open office door."
"Yeah?" Moore called.
Officer Briggs poked his head into the office. "They’re ready for you. Interview room three."
"Thank you," Moore said. "Let’s find out why she didn't go after Hartman himself."