In the Woods

"She couldn't stand the fact that Katy was getting all the attention and admiration. Sir, I'd put a lot of money on this. I think that years ago, as soon as she realized Katy had a serious talent for ballet, Rosalind started poisoning her. It's horribly easy to do: bleach, emetics, plain table salt-your average household has several dozen things that can give a little girl some mysterious gastric disorder, if you can just convince her to take them. Maybe you tell her it's a secret medicine, it'll make her better; and if she's only eight or nine, and you're her big sister, she'll probably believe you… But when Katy got her second chance at ballet school, she stopped being convinced. She was twelve now, old enough to start questioning what she was told. She refused to take the stuff any more. That-topped off by the newspaper article and the fund-raiser and the fact that Katy was becoming Knocknaree's main celebrity-was the last straw: she had actually dared to defy Rosalind outright, and Rosalind wasn't going to allow that. When she met Damien, she saw her chance. The poor little bastard is a born patsy; he's not all that bright, and he'd do anything to make someone happy. She spent the next few months using sex, sob stories, flattery, guilt trips, everything at her disposal, to persuade him that he had to kill Katy. And finally, by last month, she had him so dazed and hyped up that he felt like he didn't have any other choice. Actually, he probably was a little insane by that time."

"Don't be saying that outside this room," O'Kelly said sharply and automatically. Cassie moved, something like a shrug, and went back to her drawing.

A silence fell over the room. The story was a hideous one in itself, ancient as Cain and Abel but with all its own brand-new jagged edges, and it is impossible for me to describe the mixture of emotions with which I had heard Cassie tell it. I had been looking not at her but at our frail silhouettes in the window, but there was no way to avoid listening. She has a very beautiful speaking voice, Cassie, low and flexible and woodwind; but the words she said seemed to crawl hissing up the walls, spin sticky dark trails of shadow across the lights, nest in tangled webs in the high corners.

"Got any evidence?" O'Kelly demanded, finally. "Or are you just going on Donnelly's word?"

"No hard evidence, no," Cassie said. "We can prove the connection between Damien and Rosalind-we've got calls between their mobiles-and they both gave us the same fake lead about some nonexistent guy in a tracksuit, which means she was an accessory after the fact, but there's no proof that she even knew about the murder beforehand."

"Of course there isn't," he said flatly. "Why did I ask. Are you all three on board with this? Or is this just Maddox's personal little crusade?"

"I'm with Detective Maddox, sir," Sam said firmly and promptly. "I've been interrogating Donnelly all day, and I think he's telling the truth."

O'Kelly sighed, exasperated, and jerked his chin at me. Obviously he felt Cassie and Sam were being gratuitously difficult, he just wanted to finish Damien's paperwork and declare this case closed; but in spite of his best efforts he is not a despot at heart, and he wouldn't override his team's unanimous opinion. I felt for him, really: I was presumably the last person he wanted to look to for support.

Finally-somehow I couldn't bear to say it out loud-I nodded. "Brilliant," O'Kelly said wearily. "That's just brilliant. All right. Donnelly's story's barely enough for us to charge her, never mind convict her. We need to get a confession. What age is she?"

"Eighteen," I said. I hadn't spoken in so long that my voice came out as a startled croak; I cleared my throat. "Eighteen."

"Thank Christ for small mercies. At least we don't have to have the parents there when we interrogate her. Right: O'Neill and Maddox, pull her in, go at her as hard as you can, scare the bejasus out of her till she cracks."

"Won't work," Cassie said, adding another branch to the tree. "Psychopaths have very low anxiety levels. You'd have to stick a gun to her head to scare her that badly."

"Psychopaths?" I said, after a startled instant.

"Jesus, Maddox," O'Kelly said, annoyed. "Less of the Hollywood. She didn't eat the sister."

Cassie glanced up from her doodle, her eyebrows lifting into cool, delicate arcs. "I wasn't talking about movie psychos. She fits the clinical definition. No conscience, no empathy, pathological liar, manipulative, charming, intuitive, attention-seeking, easily bored, narcissistic, turns very nasty when she's thwarted in any way…I'm sure I'm forgetting a few of the criteria, but does that sound about right?"

"That's enough to be going on with," Sam said dryly. "Hang on; so even if we go to trial, she'll get off on insanity?" O'Kelly mumbled something disgusted, no doubt to do with psychology in general and Cassie in particular.