Connor was waiting for me in my office, coffee in hand and eyes shining as though he’d welcomed his firstborn into the world moments ago. “This place is in an uproar.” His finger twirled at the windows framing my office door as he handed me a coffee.
Sighing contentedly, I took a long drink of the coffee. I’d been in too big a hurry to get into the office to make coffee before leaving the house. “What do we know?”
“Only what the press has released so far,” he stated loudly when a couple of colleagues passed by, their pace slowing. Once they were out of sight, Connor scooted the chair across from me closer. “Samuel managed to get out of the landlord who found Skovil’s body that he hanged himself.” He must have realized how widely he was smiling, because he took a drink of his coffee and cleared his throat.
“Have I mentioned how much I appreciate the fact that you’re dating a man who works for the local media?” I clinked my coffee against his.
“This does not leave this corner office, you understand?” Connor’s forehead wrinkled in mock seriousness. “Let the rest of these buzzards find out on their own in a few hours.”
Leaning across my desk, I aligned my eyes with his. “I am the keeper of secrets, you should know that by now.”
“The keeper of them and the holder of many.” Connor looked away, reclining back into the chair. “Apparently the landlord said the apartment stunk to high heaven, so that could mean Skovil offed himself the minute he got back from court or it could have something to do with his housekeeping. Or lack thereof. That apartment complex he was holed up in downtown is a few pounds of trash short of being deemed a landfill.”
I scanned a few of the local news station pages on my phone to see if there were any updates. “Sometime Thursday afternoon to last night, right? That’s up to seventy-five, eighty hours of time he could have done it in. Hopefully the coroner assigned to Skovil will be another one of the good friends you seem to have in every profession in this city.”
Connor held out his arms. “What can I say? I’m a friendly guy.”
“That’s why I threatened to quit last year when Watson suggested reassigning you to a different prosecutor. You’re irreplaceable as a paralegal, but you’re invaluable given your connections in the community.” My fingers drummed across my desk. “I wonder why in the hell he did it. Darryl Skovil did not strike me as the type to end his life. Especially immediately following an innocent verdict that would have put him in prison for three to five had it gone the other direction.”
“I don’t know what was going through his head when he slipped that noose around his neck, but whatever it was, let’s hope its contagious where other child molesters are concerned.”
“From your lips to god’s ears,” I muttered while Connor made a sad attempt at crossing himself.
“Maybe he was drunk? Stoned out of his mind?” Connor slipped his phone out of his back pocket. “Maybe he was suddenly invaded by a conscience or sense of morality? Don’t know and don’t really care.” His finger lifted into the air when he checked his phone. “Scratch that. I do know but don’t really care. Or I will know soon enough.”
I tipped my coffee at his phone. “Your friend, the medical examiner?”
“What was that you were just saying about me being invaluable?” He tapped his ear in my direction. “And how will that translate into my raise this upcoming year?”
“Please. You already make as much as some of the first-year attorneys here. How much more do you want to make?”
Connor’s smile stretched. “Whatever sum invaluable equates to.”
“Fine, but when you’re making more than me in a few years, you’re picking up the tab on lunch.”
The skin between his brows creased as he read the message. “Benjy says we probably won’t know if there was any alcohol or drugs in his system until later today, but based on rigor mortis, he’s estimating Skovil’s been dead for twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”
My eyes narrowed. “So he didn’t do it right after the verdict, but surely he had to have been considering it. How many people commit suicide without having at least contemplated it in advance?” My teeth worked at my lower lip. “The psych eval we had done didn’t mention anything about suicidal tendencies, but I want to run through those notes again to see if there were any red flags I might have missed.”
“I already emailed you the report so it’s fresh at the top of your inbox.” Connor swished his thumb against the pads of his other fingers, mouthing, “Show me the money.”
“Do you know if the victim’s families have been notified?”
“Not that I know of,” he replied.
I made a quick note on my daily calendar. “I’ll do it. I’m the one who had to tell them the man who hurt their children wouldn’t be punished for his crimes. I should be the one to tell them punishment found him via an alternate route.”
Connor punched something into his phone. “As soon as I know anything else, I’ll be back in here with my invaluable self.”
He was halfway to the door when I called his name. “Why do you think he did it?”
“Because he was a sick, sick man.” His shoulders moved beneath the argyle cardigan. “At least this time he turned that sickness inward instead of spreading it.” Connor pulled open the door, stopping short. “Why? What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I am curious.”
“Would it really matter if he was so high he didn’t know what he was doing or if he tripped into a rope and accidently hanged himself?” Connor gave me a moment to answer, but I stayed quiet. “The stars aligned and a bad man is dead. Who cares about the why or the how? The end result is all that matters.”
“Careful or one of my dad’s old office cronies is going to overhear you and sew a scarlet V into your cashmere sweater.”
His eyes narrowed. “A scarlet V?”
“Vigilante,” I whispered. “The dirtiest word in my father’s law-loving book.”
Six
There was a reason people dreaded Mondays. All the junk from the weekend floated to the surface.
I hadn’t expected to awaken to the news of Darryl Skovil’s suicide at four thirty in the morning. Nor had I been expecting a call from Prescott Prep on Andee’s first day back after her day-and-a-half suspension, requesting my presence at my earliest convenience.
After sticking my head in Connor’s cubicle to see if he’d drudged up any new information, I raced to Sammamish, where Prescott was situated on a grassy knoll surrounded by the ever-encroaching vegetation of the Pacific Northwest, shining in the midday sun as though it had been plucked straight from the pages of a fairy tale.
The impression was short-lived.
The secretary greeted me with that same smile, apologetic yet accusatory, and said Principal Severson was waiting for me. A hundred scenarios ran through my head as to what it could have been this time, anger seeping in that Andee would pick today of all days to get into trouble again, as though she had a clue about the news I’d received pre-dawn.