18

I stopped at the sheriff’s office the day after Labor Day to talk to the chief deputy. Kenner was standing in front of his four drawer file cabinet thumbing through a row of files in the top drawer. “Come in, Corky. What’s up?” He pulled the selected file out and dropped it on his desk as he sat down to face me.

I sank onto a chair across from Kenner. “I talked to the Engens yesterday, and they are having a really hard time dealing with the Molly case.”

He nodded several times. “Understandable. Yeah, I’d say very understandable.”

“I told them I’d talk to you since you’re so good at what you do, you know, with debriefing.”

His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes searched mine. “They want a debriefing?”

I nodded. “I think it would help them a lot.”

“I’ll give them a call.”

 

“Thank you, Mike.” I released my breath, relieved the Engens would get the help they needed to work through their ordeal.

“No problem. I should have thought of it myself.” He punched his right fist into his left palm. “In fact, I’ll take it one step further.”

He picked up his desk phone and hit a number. “Karen? I need a few things. First, check to see if we can get a conference room for a week from Thursday—that should give us enough time to pull this together. I need to contact a couple to do a debriefing. If they’re free, we’ll send letters out to all the neighbors out around Wolf Lake, invite them to be part of it, if they want to . . . That’s right. Thanks.”

The chief deputy hung up the phone and slapped his desk. “Done.”

The file on the Molly case had grown to about eight inches thick in a very short time. In addition to the reports every deputy on the scene had written, there were pages and pages of interviews with area residents. And Sergeant Olansky had sent the reports from the Minneapolis Police Department. I made a copy of Molly’s picture and taped it to the inside back cover of the memo pad I kept in my breast pocket.

If the horror done to her was in the name of vigilante justice—someone targeting hookers—what had led the killer to decide the crime of prostitution deserved torture, murder, and dismemberment? The things that happened to a prostitute on a regular basis were punitive in and of themselves. What had led Molly to work the streets? Abuse, drugs, money, booze?

I was reading over one of the neighbor interviews when I got a call from Ray Collinwood, the new Winnebago County Attorney. He had been appointed by the county board when Arthur Franz, the former county attorney, was killed by Alvie Eisner.

“How’s it going, Sergeant?” Collinwood coughed and cleared his throat.

A loaded question. “It’s going. How about you?”

I heard his office chair creaking under his substantial weight as he moved. “The same. Say, I wanted to let you know we got the Alvie Eisner trial on the docket. Jury selection starts a week from Monday, the twenty-first.”

I was taken aback. “Seriously? How did you manage it so fast? Two months from arrest to trial—that’s almost unheard of.”

“Let’s just say we were very, very motivated. She got our boss, and you know how much we thought of Arthur around here.” Collinwood’s voice cracked with emotion. “We’re slapping her with three counts of murder one, in addition to murder three for the going-on-thirty-years-ago murder of her uncle, first degree assault with a deadly weapon, and so on.”

A chill ran up my spine. I had stood on her uncle’s grave under an oak tree, next to a swing, without realizing it. “I hope you can make the first degree murder stick. You should have no trouble proving premeditation.”

“That famous word—should.” Collinwood grunted.

“What are they doing about a public defender? Is it still that one from Sherburne County, the one who represented her at the first appearance and arraignment?”

“You haven’t heard. Eisner hired a private attorney.”

A private attorney. “She what? Who’d she get?”

“Ronald Campion.”

“Ronald Campion? You have got to be kidding. He charges beaucoup bucks. How in the world can Eisner afford him? He’s not doing it pro bono, is he?” I tried to envision Eisner locating, and enlisting, an attorney of Campion’s stature.

Another grunt. “Campion? I doubt it, but could be for the publicity, I suppose. Maybe he thinks he can come up with something really creative to get a minimal sentence. Then he could charge his future clients even more than the immoral amount he gets now.”

“Man.”

“I found out in discovery he was looking at the insanity route, of course. Judge ordered two separate evaluations: one by a psychiatrist and one by a psychologist. They did testing, interviews, and both came up with—” I heard papers moving “—schizoid personality disorder—”

“Schizoid? Is that a form of schizophrenia?” I jotted the words on my memo pad.

“No, I looked it up. It’s called an ‘eccentric personality disorder.’ People with it often appear odd or peculiar—”

“I could have made that diagnosis, if I’d known what it was.”

“They avoid social activities, interaction with others—you know, they’re loners. May seem dull or aloof. Have limited range of emotions, so they appear apathetic—don’t seem to have much sense of humor. They have what they call ‘flat affect.’”

I made a list of the symptoms as Collinwood dictated. “Eisner could be the poster child for flat affect. No emotion in her expression at all. She has that perfected.”

I heard him shuffling more papers. “The Psychiatric Society of America has criteria listed in their Comprehensive Guide of Mental Disorders. To be diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, you have to have four of the characteristics on the list.”

“You have the list?”

“Yup, right here—I’ll read it. ‘They do not desire or enjoy close relationships, even with family members. They choose solitary jobs and activities. They take pleasure in few activities, including sex. They have no close friends, except first-degree relatives. They have difficulty relating to others. They are indifferent to praise or criticism. They are aloof and show little emotion. They might daydream and/or create vivid fantasies of complex inner lives.”

I looked at the key words from the list I’d scribbled while Collinwood was talking. “From what I know about Eisner, I’d say she has at least four of those. So it’s a personality disorder and not insanity?”

He let out a loud breath. “In her case, good question. The disorder is a mental illness, but so is depression—doesn’t mean a person is insane. As you know, the insanity plea says the defendant is not guilty because they lacked the mental capacity to realize that they committed a wrong or appreciate why it was wrong. Rarely, rarely works.

“Oh, I meant to tell you and we got sidetracked. The psychologist added another diagnosis—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Must have gotten the incest by the uncle information out of Eisner.”

I tapped my pen on the table. “Oh, great. That could add a whole new spectrum.”

“I know. But Campion agreed to the trial date, so he must figure he’ll have all his ducks in a row by then. I’m sure he’ll call in expert witnesses. I should have his witness list by the end of next week. Why don’t you look at your schedule and figure out a time when you can come in for a pretrial prep meeting.”

“Will do. I’ll check and let you know.”

Alvie Eisner’s trial would start in less than two weeks, and I couldn’t wait to put it behind me for good.