"No, not investigators. Someone else. Maybe a woman, professional looking, standing apart from the crowd?"
Janine closes her eyes for a moment, and I can practically see her sorting through memories, trying to recall details from what must have been an emotionally overwhelming day.
"There were a lot of people," she says finally. "Colleagues, community members, people whose names I never knew. But…." She pauses, something flickering across her features. "There was someone. A woman in a dark suit who seemed to be taking notes or making observations. I remember thinking it was odd because she wasn't interacting with anyone, just watching."
My chest tightens because this confirms Lila's fragmentary memory, suggests that her paranoid recollections might be accurate rather than trauma-induced delusion.
"Do you remember what she looked like?" Lila asks, her voice carefully controlled despite the tension I can feel radiating from her body.
"Tall, well-dressed, professional bearing. Dark hair pulled back very precisely. She had the kind of presence that made you notice her even in a crowd of hundreds."
"Janine," Lila says slowly, "do you know a woman named Evelyn Shaw?"
Recognition doesn't immediately cross Janine's features. She tilts her head, considering the name with the kind of concentration that suggests she's searching her memory for connections.
"Evelyn Shaw," she repeats. "I don't think so. The name isn't familiar."
Lila reaches for her phone, fingers moving across the screen with practiced efficiency. After a moment, she turns it toward her aunt, displaying what must be Shaw's professional photograph.
"Do you know this woman?"
Janine leans forward to study the image, and I watch her expression change from polite interest to surprise to something that looks uncomfortably like concern.
"Oh," she breathes, recognition dawning across her features. "Yes, I know her. But that's not…I mean, I didn't remember her name as Shaw."
"Who is she?" Lila asks, though from the careful control in her voice, I suspect she already knows the answer will be significant.
"She's one of the psychologists who evaluated you after your father's death. The police department required a psychological assessment for all family members in cases involving officer fatalities. Standard protocol." Janine's brow furrows as she continues studying the photograph. "But she looks…older here? More mature than I remember."
The pieces click into place with horrifying clarity. Shaw wasn't just observing Lila at her father's funeral—she was there in an official capacity, conducting a psychological evaluation of a traumatized teenager who'd just lost her father to violence.
She had access to Lila's most vulnerable moments, to her psychological responses, to her coping mechanisms and emotional patterns. She was able to study Delilah Jenkins up close, to document her reactions and behavioral markers with professional authority and institutional protection.
"What did she evaluate you for?" I ask, though I'm not sure I want to hear the answer.
Janine answers before Lila can respond, her voice carrying undertones of old frustration. "That's what bothered me about the whole thing. Standard psychological evaluation after trauma should focus on immediate safety,coping mechanisms, support systems. But she asked…unusual questions."
"What kind of unusual questions?" Lila's voice has gone very quiet, very controlled.
"Questions about your relationship with violence. How you processed difficult emotions. Whether you had any…what did she call them? Antisocial coping mechanisms." Janine's expression darkens with remembered concern. "She seemed particularly interested in whether you showed appropriate grief responses, whether you understood the difference between justice and revenge."
The implications hit like physical blows. Shaw wasn't just documenting Lila's psychological state—she was probing for evidence of the very responses that would suggest unusual understanding of violence, unusual comfort with concepts of justice and methodical retribution.
She was looking for signs that Delilah Jenkins was exactly the kind of person who might collaborate with a killer.
"That's why I found Dr. Walsh for you," Janine continues, her voice growing firmer with protective anger. "I didn't like the direction that woman's questions were taking, didn't like the way she seemed more interested in cataloguing your responses than helping you heal. Dr. Walsh actually cared about your well-being."
Shaw had been studying Lila since she was sixteen, documenting her psychological patterns, building a profile of someone whose responses to trauma were…unconventional. Someone who might be psychologically predisposed to understand and even appreciate methodical violence when it served what she perceived as justice.
Someone who might be exactly the right kind of person to reconnect with a killer nine years later if the proper psychological pressure was applied.
"Delilah?" Janine's voice carries sharp concern now. "What's this really about? Why are you asking about that woman?"
I look at Lila and see that she's gone very still, very pale. Her hand in mine has gone cold, and I can practically see her mind working through the implications of what we've just learned.
Shaw has been manipulating her for nine years. Not actively, not continuously, but with the patient planning of someone who understood from the beginning that Delilah Jenkins was psychologically interesting enough to warrant long-term observation.
The copycat murders aren't random violence designed to draw us together. They're the culmination of an experiment that began the day Shaw first interviewed a traumatized teenager and realized she was looking at someone capable of extraordinary psychological complexity.
