Chat - Archer Mayor [110]
Joe watched them both—highly schooled, well spoken, respectfully mannered—their emotions muffled under the careful professional language of their analytical training. Still, what they were saying didn’t differ from what he’d heard between the down-and-out of his experience. People made assumptions, took one another for granted, behaved selfishly, maybe even acted to correct the wrongs the other refused to address.
He wondered if, given the mood, that last point might not be broached, the half-forgotten gun notwithstanding.
“Dr. Gartner,” he began, “what made you focus on these two? Were they like the man who went after Gwennie?”
“I thought so,” she agreed. “They were so quick to assume . . .”
She paused. He waited a couple of seconds and then tried a slightly different approach. “What made you go online in the first place?”
That seemed to help. Her face became more animated, the latent researcher brought to life. “I wanted to find out what the appeal was. I wanted to understand what Gwennie was looking for. It was amazing. I only read the exchanges at first, people going back and forth. Some of it was like eavesdropping on any conversation—even most of it, I guess. But there was this undertone. Maybe I was looking for it, too, reading into the comments. But I began to see where a lot of the chats were leading. I could see how seductive so many of the men were, and how willing the girls were to follow them—the total anonymity breeding a lack of inhibition.”
She stopped again, still staring at the floor, but neither man interrupted. They could instinctively tell she was gathering her memories, putting them in order to get them out at long last.
“I began to get angry,” she continued. “All the sadness, the loss. Everything we’d gone through was brought together in my head. It was like a laser beam gathering light. I began to fantasize putting an end to it all. It made me feel better.”
Joe glanced at John Leppman, trying to read his mind. His face was slack with remorse and guilt—his closest and most valued patient had been overlooked or, perhaps worse, dismissed.
“I don’t know why I chose those two,” Sandy said. “Something clicked with the first one’s name. Gwennie loved the Rocky movies, and I always loved Norman Rockwell. Maybe that was it. And he was so horrible, too. When I started chatting as Mandi, he came on like a boy in high school, all awful one-liners and disgusting innuendos. He thought he was such a Don Juan.”
Her cheeks had colored as she spoke, and her voice grew in strength. The growing rage she was describing hardly needed better illustration.
“I began fantasizing about him—what I would do if I ever got him into a room alone.” She laughed once, very quietly, almost a sob. “I came up with plan after plan, each time making it more real. The Taser had to be a part of it—the same thing that pig had used on Gwennie. That seemed only fair.”
“You got Wendy to steal the cartridge without her dad knowing?” Joe asked.
She looked up at him, a sad smile on her face. “Poor Wendy. I didn’t ask her to do that . . .” She stopped in mid-thought, reconsidering. “Not directly, but I suppose I did. I’d been telling her of my fantasies.”
Her husband groaned next to her, barely audibly. Her head jerked in his direction, and Joe thought she’d break from her monologue to give him a tongue-lashing. But she stopped at the last second and merely stared at him for a moment.
She returned to Joe, ignoring Leppman. “She was feeling as I was. Dangling. She needed an outlet, too. She wanted to help, and when she was with him on that tour of the police department and she suddenly saw the cartridge we needed, she took it.”
By now Leppman had slumped into his chair, his hands in his lap, his eyes unfocused, all energy seemingly drained from his body.
“She also helped you drop his body into the river,” Joe suggested.
She shook her head but answered affirmatively,