Nemesis (11 page)

 

Part Two

TAMARA

 

10

She knew something was wrong as soon as Jake Runyon walked into her office.

Man always had the look of a business exec when he was working, neat, clean, freshly shaved. Not today. His suit and shirt were wrinkled, collar undone and tie crooked, beard stubble darkening his cheeks and chin. There was some kind of iodine-treated gash on his neck, too, angling up out of the open shirt collar. And his expression … grim. Real grim.

“Sorry about how I look,” he said. “I spent most of the night in jail.”

“Jail? Why? What happened?”

He told her. And the more she heard, the madder she got. Thoroughly pissed by the time he was through, but not at him. None of it was his fault, no matter that he tried to shoulder some of the blame. She let him know it, too. Told him he had enough to deal with without guilt-tripping himself.

“A hoax,” Tamara said. “A damn stupid
game
. Where did she come up with such a wacked idea?”

“She's a TV junkie, maybe that's where.”

“Well, she won't get away with it, the hoax or the phony rape charge. Case'll never get to trial. Dragovich said so, right? He's not the kind of lawyer who makes promises like that unless he's looking at a sure thing.”

“It'll be on my record just the same.”

“Nobody who matters will care.”

“Except maybe the State Board of Licenses.”

“Don't worry about that. Not likely one of their investigators will come sucking around.”

“Unless Daniels goes to the media.”

“Let her. It wouldn't make any difference.”

“So Dragovich tells me.”

“Man knows what he's talking about, right? He's got your back, so do Bill and I—all the way. You know that.”

“I know it. Thanks.”

“Meanwhile, business as usual.”

“Sure. Business as usual.”

Flat voice, flat-eyed stare—not at her, at whatever was running around inside his head. Still dumping on himself, probably. She felt sorry for him, an almost maternal kind of sympathy. Yeah, right, maternal. Earth Mother Tamara, who'd never even come close to having or wanting kids. Besides, the man was almost as old as Pop.

“Listen,” she said, “why don't you take the day off, get some sleep. Come back to work tomorrow fresh—”

“Sleep and time alone aren't what I need right now. I'll stop by my apartment, shower off the jail stink and change my clothes, then get back to work.”

“On what?”

“The Patterson skip-trace. I'm through with Daniels, on advice of counsel.”

“Better that way. She's my meat from now on.”

When Jake was gone, Tamara sat fuming for a time before she called Bill to tell him the news. She hated to bug him with a thing like this, when he had so much to deal with at home, but he'd want to know.

Pissed him off just as much as it did her. He said, “Just when you think you've come up against every kind of crazy there is. Hell of a thing. How's Jake holding up?”

“Okay, but he's blaming himself.”

“Not his fault.”

“I told him that. Still says he should've seen it coming.”

“So should we, comes to that. But you always give the client the benefit of the doubt when there're threats involved. I wouldn't have handled it any differently. Neither would Alex or any other investigator.”

“Told him that, too.”

“The rape charge won't hold up once the extortion claim is exposed for what it is.”

“If it's exposed.”

“It will be. Too many holes in both stories. Jake'll come out of it all right, license intact.”

“He's worried the arrest'll still be on his record.”

“It won't be for long. We'll help him get a judge to expunge it.”

“Bitch is liable to put him through a lot more grief before anything's resolved. What the hell kind of woman is she, anyway?”

“The sick kind.”

“Yeah, well, she'll be a lot sicker if I have anything to say about it. Jake's staying clear of her now, but I'm thinking maybe I ought to put Alex on her case, see if he can turn up anything that might help.”

“Not a good idea,” Bill said, “at least not right now. If Daniels goes any further off the rails, then yes. But right now we're better off staying clear. Let the police handle it, see what develops.”

Tamara knew he was right, but the idea of doing nothing chafed at her after the conversation ended. So did the mystery of Verity Daniels's character, or lack of one. Compulsive liar, sure. Vindictive, sure. Bored rich bitch, no interests aside from the boob tube, bland personality, lousy track record with men … but none of that quite explained what made her tick. Or what she got out of making up all that bullshit about extortionists, knife-wielding dudes in ski masks, sexual advances and attempted rape. A few cheap TV-movie thrills, or was there more to it than that?

Tamara spent some Net time checking on compulsive/pathological liars, the distinctions between that type of individual and the true sociopath. Lot of information, but not enough to suit her. So then she called Dr. David Zinberg, her psych professor when she'd been at S.F. State. Dr. Zinberg had retired a couple of years back, and been willing once before, on a different type of case, to let her pick his brain. Luckily she caught him home and not too busy to talk. He was his usual mildly irascible self—on the phone, in person, in the classroom, always the same.

“You're not going to quote me on anything I say, are you, Ms. Corbin? Or require me to testify in court?”

Tamara smiled a little. Those were the same things he'd asked before agreeing to the previous Q&A. Cautious old guy, jealous of his time, and concerned that something might interfere with his retirement pursuit—writing “a definitive biography” of some obscure French contemporary of Freud.

“No, sir,” she said. “Strictly for my own information. Trying to understand the psychological makeup of a certain type of person.”

“Proceed, then.”

She laid out Verity Daniels's pattern of behavior, including the extortion hoax but without going into specifics or stating gender—keeping it general, hypothetical. “What would you say is wrong with a person like that, Doctor?”

“I can't answer that question without certain knowledge of the subject's family and medical history. However, an educated guess is that the compulsion to lie and concoct elaborate fabrications is a form of the umbrella term CPI. That is, constitutional psychopathic inferiority. Generally speaking, mental illness in which an individual's lack of a moral center produces social discord.”

“Born that way? Some sort of genetic quirk?”

Dr. Zinberg sighed. “Inherent in the person's basic nature, yes. And perhaps exacerbated by a difficult childhood—neglect, lack of social interaction, loneliness. A child's cry for attention perverted by circumstances as the person grows into adulthood. That is all the speculation I'm willing to indulge in, Ms. Corbin. Academic questions only, please.”

“Compulsive liars tell lies regardless of the situation, right?”

“Correct. Lying, distorting the truth about both large and small issues is habitual to them, literally a way of life. They take comfort in it—it feels right to them. Whereas they find telling the truth difficult, uncomfortable.”

“Sort of like an addiction.”

“It
is
an addiction,” Dr. Zinberg said. “In the same sense that drugs or alcohol or sexual promiscuity are an addiction to individuals seeking satisfaction on the one hand, escape from disagreeable or painful matters on the other. Lying provides a safety net, and in so doing makes the person increasingly bold and reinforces the compulsion to tell even more lies.”

“Do they believe the lies they tell?”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely. Belief is part of the safety net, necessary in order to self-justify the compulsion. The larger, more complicated the fabrication, the greater the individual's need to believe in it.”

“Plus it gets them more attention, feeds their egos.”

“Yes.”

“Sort of along the lines of Munchausen by proxy.”

“No, Ms. Corbin. You mustn't confuse those who have Munchausen by proxy with the constitutional psychological inferior who compulsively lies. The illnesses have similarities but they are not the same. The compulsive liar is afflicted by narcissistic personality disorder or by borderline personality disorder.”

“What's the difference between the two?”

“Both the narcissist and the borderline are individuals whose entire world revolves around their own needs and desires. Lies, deception, little or no concern for others and how their behavior affects others are symptomatic of both. The primary difference is that the narcissist is so involved with his own self-image that he buries his emotions entirely. The borderline is concerned with his immediate needs and has no control over his emotions, though he is capable of a limited amount of empathy, if and only if, it pertains to him. In the narcissist's universe, others are no more than dependent satellites. The borderline's universe is often deliberately fused with that of others, for as long a period as the individual finds it suitable or beneficial.”

“So it'd be the borderline who's capable of making up intricate hoaxes for their own amusement?”

“Yes. Amusement, gratification, pleasure.”

“Sexual pleasure? If it was part of the fantasy?”

“Yes.”

“And after a time the fantasy becomes totally real to them? Like the other lies they tell?”

“Precisely.”

“Suppose the borderline is found out, confronted? How would they react?”

“BPDs, like NPDs, are fearful of abandonment and prone to buildups of excessive rage when subjected to unusual strain,” Dr. Zinberg said. “When faced with the threat of abandonment, the narcissist takes the initiative and abandons first, while the borderline clings until actually abandoned. Then typically, the individual loses control and turns on the offending party or parties, in order to maintain the perceived safety of his world.”

“How can you deal with somebody like that?”

“There is no cure for the disorder, per se. However, in some cases extensive therapy from a competent analyst—”

“No, I mean how does the average person deal with it? Is there any way you can reason with a borderline, make them understand what they're doing is wrong?”

“It might be possible, temporarily, if the BPD were in a receptive mood and saw significant benefits in a given situation. In most cases, however, their needs and desires are too tightly bound for rational discourse to have a positive result. Such an attempt, in fact, would likely have an adverse effect. It would be perceived as an attack on the BPD's universe, and be met with denial and defensive outrage.”

So much for that notion.

Tamara thanked Dr. Zinberg, who reminded her again before ringing off that she mustn't use his name in any professional context. Academics. The older they got, the stranger they got—at least the ones she'd had experience with. She wondered if it was because they were a little funky to begin with or if they got that way because of all the bored, blank-eyed faces staring at them over thirty, forty, fifty years of classroom teaching, the futility of having their stored-up knowledge slide dimly in one ear and out the other. Sort of like trying to educate rooms full of zombies.

What the retired prof had told her was depressing. Verity Daniels sounded like a classic borderline loony, which would make it even harder for the cops to crack her. She'd stick like glue to the phony shakedown story and the phony rape charge. Would her hunger for attention and excitement prod her into hiring some shyster to sue Jake, sue the agency? Possible. There wasn't much chance she could win that kind of lawsuit, but you never knew what might happen in a courtroom or judge's chambers. Yeah, and fighting legal battles was expensive no matter what the outcome.

All right. Tamara pulled up the Daniels file, read through Jake's reports and her own background notes, then added what she'd learned from Dr. Zinberg. A lot of information, much of which corroborated Daniels's sickness, but there had to be more. Details on her early life. Details on the breakup of her marriage, on her relationship with Jason Avery, on the probable affair with her boss at Gateway Insurance, on other past relationships with both men and women. The more they knew about her, the better armed Jake's lawyer and the police would be. Tamara set out to see what else she could find on the Net.

Daniels had been born in Visalia, raised in a single-family home by a working mother, father unknown. Only child of an only child. No living relatives except the smart lottery winner, her mother's brother, in Ohio. Mediocre student; might not have graduated high school if even back then underachieving kids weren't being handed diplomas by underachieving school systems. No trouble in school or with the law. Moved just after graduation to Martinez, where the mother, a bookkeeper, had gotten a better-paying job. Six months after the move, mother'd been killed in an alcohol-related traffic accident and Daniels was on her own. Small life insurance policy allowed her to keep on living in the same apartment. First couple of jobs menial and short-lived: clerk at Burger King, waitress at IHOP. No reasons given for termination of employment. Had just enough typing skill to sign with an office temp employment agency. Learned enough during the year she was with them to get herself hired by Gateway Insurance in a secretarial capacity.

At Gateway eight months when she met Scott Ostrander, place and circumstances unknown. Married him three months later, moved to Orinda. Pregnant six months after that, miscarried in the first trimester. Moved back to Martinez after the divorce. Blanks where her job at Gateway was concerned, and what if anything she'd done with her life until the relationship with Jason Avery—again, no details on how or where they'd met. Everything relevant from that point until she inherited the two million was already in the file.