Maria pursed her lips. “I think it was Mike or Matt or Mark… something like that. And no, I don’t know how he met Cassie. But why are we even talking about him? Lester is the one who’s been stalking me! Just like he wrote those notes in Charlotte!”
“Didn’t you tell me that Lester denied writing the notes when the police talked to him?”
“Of course he denied writing them.”
“And it never crossed your mind that it could have been this… Michael? The boyfriend?”
“Why would he? He didn’t even know me. He told the police he didn’t do it.”
“So did Lester.”
“Have you been listening to me? Lester’s crazy. The notes are crazy. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together.”
“Do you still have any of the original notes?”
Maria shook her head, her frustration surfacing. “I threw them away when I moved here. I didn’t want anything to do with them. The Charlotte police might still have a couple of them, but I can’t be certain about that.”
“When you say notes, what do you mean?”
“Just a sentence or two.”
“So… not like this one.”
“No. But again, he used the same words and phrases. And there were two short notes that do fit the pattern.”
“In other words, this letter is different.”
“Obviously.”
Margolis tapped his pen on the report in front of him. “Okay. Let’s say it is Lester. When you say his notes were threatening, what do you mean? Did he say he was going to hurt you in any way? Or harm you?”
“No, but it was clear that he blamed me for his sister’s death. Actually, his whole family blamed me in the end.”
“What was the family like?”
“They were just… odd,” she said. “Their whole dynamic, I mean.”
“How so?”
Colin turned toward her, realizing that he hadn’t heard Maria talk about them in much detail.
“Avery Manning – the father – was a psychiatrist, and from the very first meeting, he considered himself an expert when it came to criminal behavior. He never let Cassie meet with me alone. He was always there, and he dominated the conversations. Even in the hospital, when I was trying to get the story from Cassie, he would answer for her. It got to the point where I had to ask him to step out of the room, but he refused – the most he would do was retreat to the corner, promising to remain silent while she talked. Even then, I had the sense that Cassie was very careful with her words, like she was trying to say things exactly the way that he wanted. Almost like they’d rehearsed. I think that’s why she… embellished her stories at times.”
“Embellished?”
“Cassie told me that Laws had hit her before. If true, that would have been important, because we might have been able to make a more serious charge stick. Cassie told me that Laws struck her in a parking lot, and that Lester had witnessed it. Both Cassie’s and Lester’s stories were identical, almost word for word, but when we investigated, we learned that Laws was in another state on the date and time in question, which meant they both were lying. When we talked to Cassie about it, she wouldn’t back down. That only made the plea bargain even more necessary. Laws’s attorney would have had a field day with her if she had to testify.”
“And the mom?”
“Eleanor. I only met her twice, and she was completely under Avery’s thumb. I’m not sure she ever said anything. Just wept the whole time.”
Margolis continued to jot notes as she talked. “Now let’s talk about Lester. What was he like?”
“Again, I only met him twice, and he was like two entirely different people. In the first meeting, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. The most normal of the bunch, in fact. But when I met him the second time, after I informed them of the charges against Laws, he changed. Almost like… he was afraid of me. He’d mutter that he shouldn’t be here, that no one in the family should be near me because I was dangerous. His father kept telling him to be quiet, and then he’d just sit there, fidgeting and staring at me like I was in league with the devil.”
“Do you know the name of the psychiatric hospital where he was committed?”
“No.”