Guilty Minds

“Christ,” she said, glancing at me, looking queasy. “She cooperated all right. She did a great job. She fooled me.”

“Is it possible the owners of Slander Sheet were behind this? That they were the ones who pressured Kayla to make this accusation, for whatever reason-and then had to cover it up?”

“It’s possible, yes. When you say ‘cover it up’…”

“Made Kayla’s death look like suicide.”

“Wow,” she said. “You mean, did they have her killed? I guess I wouldn’t rule it out. Do the police think it was a suicide?”

“The homicide detective is a novice. This may even be the first homicide he’s investigated, I don’t know. And it looks like suicide, so he convinces himself it’s suicide. His mind is locked in to the suicide theory. He’s got tunnel vision. Confirmation bias. It happens all the time, especially with inexperienced detectives.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t suicide?” she asked.

“Because I talked to her a few hours earlier. And she wasn’t suicidal. And if it was murder, that’s on me. I’m the one who promised to protect her.”

She finished her cup of coffee and avoided my eyes. “That girl was a pawn. It breaks my heart.” A pause. “So, a question. What did you want me to come over for?”

“Because I want to find out who murdered Kayla Pitts and flush them out. I need someone who can help with the Slander Sheet end of things. I want to know who the shadowy owners are. And I wondered whether I could count on your help.”

She gave a half smile. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

44

At a few minutes after seven I sat bolt upright in bed and remembered that Kayla’s room was going to be cleaned this morning and I didn’t want that to happen yet. No matter what the DC police wanted.

Mandy and I had talked until almost three in the morning, and I wasn’t going to last long on four hours of sleep. But I forced myself to get up. I ordered coffee from room service and opened the connecting door to Kayla’s room. It was dim: The drapes had been drawn, probably by the mobile crime techs last night, for privacy. I checked the door to the hallway, found that the Do Not Disturb sign was still hanging on the handle. Maybe the sign would have kept the housekeepers from entering the room. But maybe not; maybe the night manager’s orders would override the sign’s authority.

The room still smelled of Kayla. I could detect a very faint waft of patchouli near the rumpled bed. Her clothes were discarded on the floor nearby. I suppose I was looking for signs of struggle, but I am not a homicide detective. Then again, neither was Balakian, really.

I took a deep breath and then went into the bathroom and turned on the light. The blood on the tub and the tile wall had dried. There was blood on the floor as well, next to the tub. It was reddish-brown and glossy. It was no easier to see it this morning than it had been last night. I stood and surveyed the scene. I saw the broken wineglass and the shards of glass on the vanity and the floor and decided I’d better get into some shoes or, barefoot, I’d get cut.

When I returned wearing a pair of sneakers, I stood at the verge of the bathroom, looked around again. Slowly. I tried to imagine how Kayla did it, if it was really a suicide. She’d been deeply frightened, no question, but would simply being frightened lead someone to kill herself? No, it didn’t make sense. But maybe the feeling of hopelessness caused by the situation she found herself in. That might be enough to do it.

Possibly. I thought it through.

So having decided to end her life, she looks around the hotel room for something to do it with. She’s going to slit her wrists, because she’s heard you can bleed out that way and die peacefully.

It wasn’t true, of course. The vast majority of people who cut their wrists survive. As many as ninety-nine percent. It’s most often a form of self-mutilation, a display, a cry for help, not an effective means of suicide. And it’s quite painful.

But maybe she doesn’t know this. Someone has to be in the one percent.

She doesn’t have a knife. She doesn’t even have a shaving razor. But she has a wineglass. She smashes it on the bathroom vanity and selects the sharpest shard.

She runs a bath, because that’s how she’s heard it’s usually done, in a bath. She tries; she pokes the shard of glass into the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist and discovers that it’s extremely painful. She runs it along a vein and then stops because it hurts so much. Those were the so-called hesitation marks that Detective Balakian had noticed. Homicide detectives look for hesitation marks as evidence of a true suicide. Textbook, Balakian had called it. This is textbook, man.

I stopped.

Textbook.

Either poor Kayla really did kill herself or someone made it look that way. And if someone killed her and set it up to look like a suicide, whoever did it was no amateur. No, it was someone who knew what a suicide scene should look like. Right down to the hesitation marks.