Homicidal Intent - Couverture souple

Chern, Vivian

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0440237203 ISBN 13 : 9780440237204

Editeur : Dell Pub Co, 2001

Synopsis

Book by Chern Vivian

A propos du livre

Extrait

I was defrosting in the bathtub on the coldest and snowiest night of the year. The tub was a little crowded. I perched my feet on Greg’s chest, wiggled my toes, and admired the pedicure I had gotten that morning. Greg didn’t even crack a smile.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“I thought you liked this time of year. The lights, the decorations. I feel like a little kid.”

“You don’t want to be a kid these days.” Greg splashed some water on his face, rinsing off the bubbles. “I got a new case today.”

“That boy?” I asked, knowing immediately the one he meant. The city hadn’t announced its final choice of prosecutor yet, but I had suspected that the case might become Greg’s. Despite his dark coloring, in the district attorney’s office he was the proverbial fair-haired boy.

“Yeah. Can you imagine? Barely twelve and already a murderer. And he’s being tried as an adult — by me. It’s going to be tough.” He picked up a handful of bubbles and slathered them on his face, as if donning a mask to hide his defeated expression.

I watched the steam rise toward the ceiling. Maybe love wasn’t enough to counterbalance the sordid events and disturbed people that were our daily bread. Every day, something new happened that I found impossible to forget. Sometimes I wondered when my brain would run out of room for my collection of horrors.

“What’s he like?”

“The Devinski boy? Seems like a regular kid. Kind of angry.”

“Did you meet the parents?”

“Not yet. I don’t think they want to talk to me. They are only communicating through their lawyer.”

Greg paused, and I waited for what I knew would be his next words.

“I can’t wait to go up against her.” His usual enthusiasm crept back into his voice, exactly as I had expected. Natalie Diamond was well-known as an ambitious, utterly ruthless criminal defense lawyer. She was very much in demand by New York’s criminals, at least those who could afford her astronomical fees. The fact that the Devinskis had retained her to represent their son had been on the news within hours of the school shootings. But what worried me wasn’t her legal prowess or that she was going to make Greg’s life miserable in court.

“Any chance that he’ll plead guilty and spare you the trial? After all, everyone knows that Jason Devinski shot those girls. A hundred witnesses saw him.”

“I think they’re going to go for your favorite defense.”

“An insanity defense? He’s only twelve. By definition, I would say he doesn’t have the same capacity as an adult to distinguish right from wrong. But the chance of him being mentally ill ... I don’t think so.”

I worked with some pretty shady characters in my private forensic psychiatry practice. The criminally insane were always challenging and never boring. But I rarely worked with children and had never been involved with either the prosecution or the defense of child murderers.

“Are the parents divorced?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Greg said, with a strangely satisfied look on his face.

“It’s a horrible case. And bizarre. So many kids killing other kids, or their parents, or even strangers, lately. And all of them have been out in the boondocks. Here in the city, I guess I thought we were at least immune to murderous children.”

“A lot of cases in Arkansas and Michigan.” Greg ticked off the locations on his fingers as he spoke. His nails were bitten even lower than usual. “One in Ohio, one in Oregon. I’m probably missing some. Don’t forget Colorado, the worst one. And now this one, in Manhattan.”

“Somehow, I never thought that we’d have a kid shooting into a crowd in New York. School shootings always seemed like a problem that wouldn’t reach us here.”

“It’s a national trend now. I wonder why.”

The water had started to get cold, and the romantic aspect of our shared bath had chilled off long ago, when we started talking about Greg’s case. I was a bit disappointed that our bathroom had just become our home office. Now I was not only thinking about Jason Devinski, the murdering little boy, but simultaneously of Natalie Diamond, the famous photogenic lawyer. I wanted to remind Greg that I had an exciting and glamorous career too. Or at least to remind myself.

“I got a job offer today,” I said as I got out of the tub and reached for my bathrobe. Greg was right behind me, eager to relight whatever flames had been doused by the bathtub conversation.

“Doing what?” he asked, standing close behind me and kissing my neck.

“I got a call from this pharmaceutical company. They asked me if I was interested in being a consultant for them.” See, I’m cool and important too, I was saying. “They even said they’re going to send some opera tickets over for us. As a sort of bonus.”

Greg wasn’t listening. He kept kissing. “Tell me later. You know what they say about all work and no play.” I didn’t point out that one of the perks of private practice was the ability to control my own schedule, and that I had taken the opportunity to give myself a week off, starting about two hours ago.

“You’re going to be seeing a lot of Natalie Diamond,” I said, stepping away.

“Are you upset about that?”

I couldn’t say anything. Guilty as charged.

“Tamsen, let’s get this straight right now. Natalie and I are on opposing sides of this case. I barely know her.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m just je'n'secure.” It was a word we had invented, meaning “pretentious and insecure.”

“Okay, so now where were we?”

“They wanted a consultant for their new medication,” I said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

I had almost forgotten what I wanted to tell him when I heard the intercom buzz from the kitchen. I was tempted to ignore it, but women have difficulty ignoring stimuli like crying babies and ringing doorbells. It’s an evolutionary protection for advancement of the species.

“Yes?” I shouted into the intercom, while Greg reached for his sweatpants.

“There’s a gentleman here to see you,” the doorman said. “A Mr....” He conferred with somebody. “Mr....” The doorman made a sound that sounded like a growl with a cough in the middle of it. “Can I send him up?”

“I don’t know him. I don’t know who he is.” I was still a bit disoriented. The blood that had rushed away from my brain was having trouble finding its way back.

I heard voices in the background again, then a new voice, deep and resonant despite the distortion of the intercom system, said, “Dr. Bayn? I’m an associate of Ginny Liu’s. May I come up?” Ginny Liu was the pharmaceutical company representative who had stopped by my office earlier that morning, bearing gifts of pens, drug samples, and encouragement for me to provide the requested few hours a week of psychiatric consultation for her department. The voice must belong to the messenger who’d brought over the promised opera tickets.

“Come on up,” I said reluctantly, and ran into the bedroom to put on some clothes.

When the bell rang a few minutes later I had put on some fuzzy leggings and an oversized sweatshirt, cozy hanging-out-at-home-why-are-you-interrupting-me clothing. People in this city don’t just casually drop in on each other, especially not on Christmas Eve, and especially when you’ve never even met them. Why couldn’t whoever it was have just left the envelope with the doorman?

I opened the door to a tall, well-preserved middle-aged man. He wore a snow-dusted black cashmere overcoat and held an expensive-looking pair of leather gloves, the kind with the stitches hidden on the inside. He didn’t look like a messenger.

“Dr. Bayn, thank you so much for seeing me.” He held out his hand, which was as smooth and manicured as his tanned face. His smile revealed perfect white teeth but didn’t seem to reach his blue eyes. The man looked as perfect, and as nondescript, as a crash-test dummy. “Parker Grandines. Ms. Liu found you for us.”

“Grandines?” I repeated. I shook his hand, sure that surprise was written all over my face. I’ve never been good at poker, and not just because I keep forgetting the rules. “You mean you own the company?” In response, he handed me a card: Parker Grandines, Chief Executive Officer, Grandines Pharmaceuticals.

“Grandines is a privately held company,” he replied. “It’s been in my family for, oh, two hundred years, in one form or another.”

“Umm. What a ... surprise. That you’re here, I mean. To see me.” Surprise was putting it mildly. It’s a wonder I didn’t tip over and fall unconscious, from the shock of having the CEO of Grandines Pharmaceuticals appear on my welcome mat.

I was looking at a rich man, Old Money, the kind of person I read about but only occasionally met.

I took his fancy coat and offered him a seat on our sofa.

“I know how unusual this must seem to you,” Mr. Grandines said.

I nodded. Greg stood in the hallway leading to the bedrooms, watching us. I didn’t think that Mr. Grandines had noticed him.

It went against everything I had been taught since birth to not offer Grandines a drink or coffee, but I hadn’t invited him and ...

Présentation de l'éditeur

They told her to peer into the mind of a killer.
They didn’t say which one....

It happened in a place of privilege in New York City, when a twelve-year-old boy committed an act of violence that stunned the city and the nation. Now forensic psychiatrist Tamsen Bayn has been hired by her fiancé, who is also a lead prosecutor in the case, to interview the accused boy’s parents and unravel the mysterious causes of an inexplicable crime.

But when she does, Tamsen discovers something more shocking than the psychological history of a family and the pain of a deeply troubled boy. Tamsen begins to examine a shadowy connection between this crime and a pattern of violence around the country.

Suddenly Tamsen is caught between science and the law, between the man she loves and a truth she must pursue. Inside an explosive mystery that involves genius, greed, hope, and murder, Tamsen may become the most dangerous player of all: the one who knows too much....

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Dell Pub Co
• Date d'édition: 2001
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0440237203
• ISBN 13: 9780440237204
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 390
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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