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“The guy who hit us?”
He was referring to Sergeant Ramsey. “No, the one who tried to kill me.”
“I’ve read about that son of a bitch.”
Sam appreciated his forceful tone. “How is it that some of the people who wear the badges and swear the oath do everythingotherthan uphold the law?”
“Officers like us can’t understand that mentality.”
“I’ll never comprehend it. I worked closely with him for years. I detested the guy, and he detested me right back. But never in all that time did I think he was capable of the things we already know he’s done, let alone what we’re investigating now. We just thought he was a miserable coworker, not a psychopath.”
“It has you questioning your instincts because you didn’t see it.”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“Don’t do that. Psychopaths hide in plain sight. When I was with the FBI way back in the early part of my career, I worked on a unit that tracked a serial killer in the Midwest. Our team became subject-matter experts and ended up consulting on a number of other similar cases.”
“Wow. I had no idea.”
“I didn’t just land on your detail out of nowhere.”
Sam laughed. “I suppose that’s true.”
“He had a really cool career with the FBI and ATF before coming to the Secret Service,” Jimmy said.
“Don’t tell all my secrets at once, young Jimmy,” Vernon said. “I need to retain my aura as an international man of mystery.”
Sam and Jimmy laughed.
“All right, then, Mr. International Man of Mystery… Tell me what you know about psychopaths.”
“They tend to fall into four categories—narcissistic, borderline, sadistic and antisocial.”
“I can see Stahl in the last two—sadistic and antisocial. He seemed to take great pleasure in tormenting the people who worked for him, and no one liked him.”
“Not to mention what he did to you the second time,” Vernon said, glancing at her in the mirror.
“Not to mention.”
“Anyone who can do something like that to another person is a textbook psychopath,” Vernon said forcefully. “They also lack compassion and empathy, but can phone it in when needed, such as a police officer on the job doing the bare minimum while satisfying his psychopathic tendencies on the side. I think if you were able to go back to examine his childhood and life before he joined the department, you might see the signs were there.”
Sam made a note to have someone investigate Leonard Stahl’s earlier life. “Wouldn’t that have shown up in the due diligence the department did before they hired him?”
“If they did it,” Vernon said. “We’re talking thirty years ago, right?”
“Yeah, about that.”
“Who knows how thorough they were in vetting people back then, especially if they were desperate for officers? That tends to happen after times of unrest when people get to see the downside of policing or in cases of police behaving badly, which gives potential officers pause about wanting to join a department.”
She wanted to talk to Dr. Trulo about what sort of psychological tests had been given to prospective officers at the time Stahl was hired. Sam recalled a rigorous screening after she applied, but who knew what they did thirty years ago?
Her father would have known, and she wished more than anything that she could call him to ask. Since she couldn’t, she sent a text to Captain Malone.Question: What kind of psychological testing did you guys go through before joining the department?
He replied a few minutes later.Not much. Wasn’t as big of a thing back then as it is now. The department was vigorously recruiting when our group came in following a hiring freeze that had left them seriously shorthanded.
We need to do a deep dive into Stahl’s past, his childhood, etc. Especially in light of what Gonzo and Cruz learned yesterday.
Will ask someone to do that and report back.
