“And this one.”
I confronted Jas about it today, told her I was going to take her to a doctor. Just to talk, maybe there’s something bothering her that she needs to get off her chest. She picked up a hammer and threatened to hit me with it if I made her see a doctor. I told Roscoe I’m going to go to the police tomorrow, to ask them what I should do. He said he would talk to her to see if she’ll tell him what’s bothering her. But she’s his little girl, his perfect little girl who can do no wrong. He doesn’t say it, but I think he thinks I’m overreacting. Or making these things up. I don’t know what else to do, how to reach my daughter. It’s tearing my heart out. She’s my little girl, but she’s turned into … she’s turned into a monster. There, I wrote it. I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. But I’m not doing her any good by ignoring what I’m seeing. It’s only getting worse. And I now fear for my safety. If Roscoe’s not taking this seriously, I need to do it myself.
Vail looked up. Tears pooled in her eyes. “This is …” She cleared her throat. “This is heartbreaking. There’s nothing Rhonda could’ve done for Jasmine.”
Vail turned the page but that was the last entry. “Is there another notebook?”
“That was the last entry, Karen. Rhonda Marcks was found dead the next morning.”
Jesus Christ.
“It’s hard to know for sure, because we’re only making reasonable assertions about the degree of Marcks’s psychopathy, but it’s possible he would’ve eventually looked at his daughter as a lost cause, too. Jasmine shocked him, I’m sure, when she threatened to go to the police and rat him out for killing Rhonda. When exactly their relationship totally deteriorated, I don’t know. Even though it probably happened over time, that’s the point when he started to see who his precious daughter really was. But you’re only looking at one side of the equation. Jasmine wanted her father dead, too. In the worst way.”
“Why?”
“Who’s the only person who knows the truth about what she’s done? That she’s the Blood Lines killer?”
“Her father.” Vail thought a second. “Jasmine knew how he’d react. The only thing that could spoil her time in the limelight would be her father coming forward with a story that his daughter was really the Blood Lines killer. Who knows if anything would have come of it. He’d have little to no credibility.
“Curtis would’ve had to reopen the investigation to dot the i’s, but really, unless Marcks could provide key evidence that would definitively prove that his daughter was the killer and that she framed him, it’d be just a lot of noise from a convicted killer who’s trying to save his ass and use a get out of jail free card.”
“All true,” Underwood said.
“So she hired the biggest, baddest dude at Potter to attack him? To kill him?”
Underwood frowned disapprovingly at Vail. She suddenly felt like a rookie profiler being schooled by the mentor.
“No,” Vail said, correcting herself. “This is personal. And having someone else do the kill wouldn’t be fulfilling.”
He winked at her. “You got it.”
Vail stood up and paced, thinking it through. “So the only thing that makes sense, then, is that she would somehow try to facilitate the escape.”
“Right again.”
“Did she tell you this?”
“In so many words. I had hours to piece it together. But from what I was able to gather, she did, indeed, help Marcks escape.”
“What could Jasmine possibly do to—”
“She worked at the Department of Corrections as—”
“Oh shit.” Numbers. “She worked in the back office. She had access to their computer systems.” Vail brought a hand to her forehead. “She studied computer science.”
“She hacked into the system,” Underwood said. “She said she replicated a judge’s transfer order for another prisoner, forged it to read as a transfer for her father to be moved to Potter.”
Vail sat down hard. “Where Marcks’s childhood buddy, Lance Kubiak, was a correctional officer.”
“I didn’t get the full story, but Kubiak was involved on some level.”
“She did that before the book came out, before he wanted to kill her.”
“I bet she regretted that move.”
Vail shook her head. “Don’t think so. She couldn’t be sure he’d attempt an escape, but she knows her father and felt he would try to exploit the situation. The book, and the media attention it’d bring, would drive the nail in further, baiting him, getting his ire up and motivating him to attempt an escape. She manipulated him, just as she manipulated me. And she gave him the tools he’d need to break out.”