The Nightmare Thief Read Free Page B

vibrated. Evan glanced her over. So. This was the deadshrinker.
    Jo looked the compleat Californian: Doc Martens and a Mickey Mouse watch, the hint of East Asian heritage a few generations back. She wore a Coptic cross on a chain around her neck. The light in her brown eyes looked both engaging and shrewd.
    Evan bet that 90 percent of people who heard the words forensic psychiatrist got tongue-tied and skittish, worried that Jo was sizing them up for tics and compulsions. Because she was one of them.
    Jo led her to a table by the windows. “I’m performing a psychological autopsy on Phelps Wylie. His law firm has asked me to investigate his mental state and try to determine the manner of his death.”
    “And how’s that going?”
    “It’s frustrating.” She sat down. “Wylie’s life contradicts every assumption the sheriffs drew about his death. He didn’t hike. Didn’t like the mountains. He did like gold, but in the form of bullion traded by his corporate clients. And he liked booze, but when it was poured into champagne flutes at the opera house.”
    “Bear Grylls he wasn’t,” Evan said.
    “Not by a New York mile. You know how a psychological autopsy works?”
    “You examine a victim’s psychological life to figure out how he died.”
    “Yes—when a death is equivocal. That is, when the police and medical examiner can’t tell whether it was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. When they hit a dead end, they call me to evaluate the victim’s mental state,” she said. “I’m their last resort.”
    “And I’m yours.”
    Jo’s expression turned piquant. “I’m aware of the irony.”
    Evan paused. Her skittishness was abating, because she saw on Jo’s face the same drive and foreboding she felt herself.
    “This investigation is getting to you, isn’t it?” she said.
    “It’s under my skin like a tick. Tell me about Wylie. I need background, insight, some clue to Wylie’s personality and motivations, any evidence that will help me build a timeline of his final twenty-four hours.”
    “Did he have a psych history?” Evan said.
    “None.”
    “Think his death was from natural causes?”
    “What, he dropped dead picking wildflowers, in a flood channel, and got washed into that mine by a convenient downpour?”
    Jo’s tone was caustic. Evan liked that. She batted down a smirk.
    “Do you think Wylie was murdered?” she said.
    “Possibly. Do you?”
    “I’d lay money on it. He was a baby barracuda, angling to reach the top of the legal food chain. He made enemies. And his friends say that before his disappearance he seemed preoccupied and brooding. The word edgy has come up more than once.”
    Jo nodded. “And then there’s the car.”
    Shortly after Wylie disappeared, his Mercedes turned up near the Mexican border, stripped, abandoned, and wiped clean of fingerprints.
    “The gold mine is in a remote part of the Stanislaus National Forest. So maybe the car thief stumbled across the empty Merc on an isolated logging road and decided to take a five-hundred-mile joyride. But color me skeptical.”
    Evan nodded. “If you determine Wylie’s state of mind, will that prove how he died?”
    “Not necessarily. I don’t have a Magic Eight Ball that says murder or accident. Clients who think I can dowse for death end up disappointed.”
    “Your psychological autopsy broke open the Tasia McFarland case.”
    Jo’s gaze sharpened. “That case ended with the man I love shot and wounded, and the media crawling over me like scorpions. So be aware that I tread carefully when dealing with the press.”
    Evan’s eyes widened. “Tread carefully? You fought a battle royale against the Creature from the Channel of the Blondes. And you took her down, live on national television. For which, by the way, I should throw confetti over you.”
    Jo laughed.
    “And if you’re so wary of the press, how come you called me?”
    “You have a background as a lawyer yourself. You’ve been looking at the