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I thought it would’ve been much harder to get information out of him, but he’s just gushing with it.
“What about Ana’s social life?” I ask. “Her mother says she didn’t have a boyfriend, but maybe she told you more.”
He shakes his head. “Ana didn’t form healthy attachments and her mother prevented her from even trying most of the time. That woman hovered over her like a hawk. There were definitely subtle Munchausen by proxy elements to the way Ana was raised. Meaning that the mother was deliberately making her daughter out to be sicker than she actually was so she could take care of her.”
Having spoken to the mother, and despite the fact that I didn’t like her very much, I still think he’s being a little harsh in his assessment of her.
“A line of inquiry we’re also following is that she went to the river to meet someone,” Sojer says. “Possibly a drug dealer, or maybe a friend.”
We hadn’t discussed the friend part of this line of inquiry—it’s just a thought I had during the last interview—so him mentioning it came completely out of left field.
“She didn’t mention anything of the kind to me, either the drugs or the friend part,” Dr. Kline says. “She only spoke of how the river would calm her. Though she did mention once that smoking marijuana sometimes worked to make her feel happier. But it interfered with her concentration at work, so she didn’t like to smoke it.”
The receptionist opens the door, the smell of fake spring accompanying her, and announces that the next patient has arrived. He tells her he’ll be ready in a minute and stands up.
“A stab through the heart does indicate a certain level of intimacy, I’ll give you that,” he says to us. “So it might have been someone who helped her die. After her three failed suicide attempts, she did not trust herself to try again, she told me.”
“But how likely is it that she was able to persuade someone to kill her?” Sojer asks, also standing up.
“It happens, as I’m sure you two know. I would also look into her having done it to herself. The positioning of the wound doesn’t rule it out, does it?” the doctor says.
It's a rhetorical question and he indicates that we should leave after asking it, and I stand up slowly. I do not like how much he knows about this case.
“That possibility has not come up,” I tell him. “Where were you on Sunday night between midnight and four AM?”
I get that laser beam look from him again, and from up close, it cuts right to the quick.
“I was at home, with my wife, sleeping. And I resent the implication of suggesting I might have done this,” he says in a clipped voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient to help.”
I tell him we might be back with more questions, then follow Sojer out of the office, making room for a short brunette in a fake fur coat to enter it. A man in a grey overcoat enters the anteroom just as we’re about to leave it, and is greeted with a very enthusiastic, “Hello Dr. Lap, did you have a good lunch?” from the secretary.
He assures her he did and says a warm hello to us as well, as he holds the door open so we can exit.
Sojer jogs down the one flight of stairs and practically runs across the interior courtyard of the building. I don’t try to keep up as I follow him.
“You think Dr. Kline could be a suspect?” he asks with the air of someone who’s been holding the question in with great difficulty.
“He knows too much about the case,” I say simply. “Maybe it’s just professional curiosity, as he says, but it could be more.”
“All right, I can look into it,” he says and jots a note down in his pad.
“See if he treated any of the other victims and check his alibi with the wife,” I say. “But start with getting a more thorough background on him in terms of his work as a forensic psychologist. Have you ever heard of him before?”
He shakes his head. “There’s a list of specialists we have at NPB, and he’s probably on it. I’ve never worked with him personally.”
“Find someone who did, dig around,” I say. “But not too obtrusively for now. Just enough to get a general picture.”
“I’ll get right on it,” he says and pockets his pad. “Should we meet at the mother’s apartment at six?”
I shake my head. “I’ll handle that.”
He nods and takes off, not making an issue of it. He’s definitely very obliging and seems to be genuinely invested in working this case. But the shift in his attitude is strange.
The Sojer I came to know on the last case we worked together would’ve taken issue with me giving him orders, for one thing. But maybe I’m reading too much into it.
I’ll be taking Eva with me to search Ana’s room. She needs to get to know the victims, it’s how her process works, and she’s a lot better than me at zeroing in on what makes people tick. We’ll need that, and fast, because the sooner we find a solid connection between the victims, the sooner we’ll find the killer.
After a night and a day of reading through the reports, Eva probably already has a pretty good grasp on the other victims as well, and she might have already found a connection.
