A taint in the blood by Dana Stabenow Page A
Authors: Dana Stabenow
Tags: Fiction, General, detective, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, Women Private Investigators, Fiction - Mystery, Crime & mystery, alaska, Crime thriller, Mothers and daughters, Shugak; Kate (Fictitious character), Women private investigators - Alaska, Murder Victims' Families, Arson Investigation, Women prisoners
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with William over how much time he was spending playing basketball, as opposed to doing his homework.
Kate snorted over that last piece of "evidence." Like there was a parent out there who hadn't fought with their teenager over something.
Both boys had been drugged with scopolamine. The coroner had gone on at length about the derivations of this substance (the nightshade family—chiefly from henbane). It acted by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses. The symptoms were dilated pupils, rapid heartbeat, and dry skin, mouth, and respiratory passages. An overdose could cause delirium, delusions, paralysis, and stupor. It was found in a lot of nonprescription sedatives, one of which just happened to be found in Victoria's medicine cabinet.
More damning was the insurance policy—for a cool $1 million—she had taken out the week before on William. However, she had taken out insurance policies on Oliver and Charlotte as well, and Charlotte had been with her mother when William was killed.
Kate went back to the trial transcript. Certainly, Victoria hadn't had the most vigorous defense, but it didn't necessarily look incompetent, either. She made a note of the attorney's name, one Henry Cowell. He was probably retired, but if he was still alive, the bar association would have his address. A talk with him might prove useful.
On the whole, despite her disdain for circumstantial evidence— like every law-enforcement professional, she wanted to find the perp standing over the body, smoking gun in hand—she was inclined to believe that the jury had come to the only possible verdict. Victoria was guilty of filicide, one of those wonderful clinical terms dreamed up by shrinks to put a bearable distance between the act and the description thereof. It was what it was, the murder of a child by its parent.
The death of a child by itself was traumatic enough. Parents were not supposed to outlive their children, it was unnatural. A child's death guaranteed the mutual sympathy and terror of parents everywhere. The deliberate taking of a child's life by a parent invoked a horror akin to what one might feel at a display of cannibalism.
What was that old Greek yarn, something about a husband seducing his wife's sister and, in revenge, the wife killing their sons and feeding them to him? It would be pretty to think that such things happened only in ancient legend. Kate knew the truth, and it wasn't pretty, not at all.
Mothers, who committed less than 13 percent of all violent crimes, committed 50 percent of filicides. Children under the age of five were the most at risk.
Kate looked back at the file. William had been seventeen. Not even close to the profile.
Filicide was usually characterized by a display of great violence— beating, shaking, stabbing, suffocation, poisoning—with little or no advance planning. And there was always postpartum psychosis, which the statistics said struck only one mother in five hundred, but which Kate had recent cause to know could sometimes lead a mother to a serial killing of her own children immediately after birth. The last time Kate had looked at the FBI stats, the experts had a mother killing a child in America every two or three days.
There were far too many ways to kill children. It happened when an exhausted mother shook a baby to make it stop crying and instead shook it to death. It happened when a fourteen-year-old got pregnant and stuffed her newborn into a garbage can. It happened when a wife tried to leave an abusive husband and, in retaliation, the husband killed all three kids, the wife, and then himself. It happened when whatever filter the parent had screwed to her lens allowed her to see the child as a threat, and it happened when that filter let her believe the best thing she could do for the child was kill it.
Kate had had coffee with a fireman awhile back, and he had told her that there was a feeling among arson
Kate snorted over that last piece of "evidence." Like there was a parent out there who hadn't fought with their teenager over something.
Both boys had been drugged with scopolamine. The coroner had gone on at length about the derivations of this substance (the nightshade family—chiefly from henbane). It acted by interfering with the transmission of nerve impulses. The symptoms were dilated pupils, rapid heartbeat, and dry skin, mouth, and respiratory passages. An overdose could cause delirium, delusions, paralysis, and stupor. It was found in a lot of nonprescription sedatives, one of which just happened to be found in Victoria's medicine cabinet.
More damning was the insurance policy—for a cool $1 million—she had taken out the week before on William. However, she had taken out insurance policies on Oliver and Charlotte as well, and Charlotte had been with her mother when William was killed.
Kate went back to the trial transcript. Certainly, Victoria hadn't had the most vigorous defense, but it didn't necessarily look incompetent, either. She made a note of the attorney's name, one Henry Cowell. He was probably retired, but if he was still alive, the bar association would have his address. A talk with him might prove useful.
On the whole, despite her disdain for circumstantial evidence— like every law-enforcement professional, she wanted to find the perp standing over the body, smoking gun in hand—she was inclined to believe that the jury had come to the only possible verdict. Victoria was guilty of filicide, one of those wonderful clinical terms dreamed up by shrinks to put a bearable distance between the act and the description thereof. It was what it was, the murder of a child by its parent.
The death of a child by itself was traumatic enough. Parents were not supposed to outlive their children, it was unnatural. A child's death guaranteed the mutual sympathy and terror of parents everywhere. The deliberate taking of a child's life by a parent invoked a horror akin to what one might feel at a display of cannibalism.
What was that old Greek yarn, something about a husband seducing his wife's sister and, in revenge, the wife killing their sons and feeding them to him? It would be pretty to think that such things happened only in ancient legend. Kate knew the truth, and it wasn't pretty, not at all.
Mothers, who committed less than 13 percent of all violent crimes, committed 50 percent of filicides. Children under the age of five were the most at risk.
Kate looked back at the file. William had been seventeen. Not even close to the profile.
Filicide was usually characterized by a display of great violence— beating, shaking, stabbing, suffocation, poisoning—with little or no advance planning. And there was always postpartum psychosis, which the statistics said struck only one mother in five hundred, but which Kate had recent cause to know could sometimes lead a mother to a serial killing of her own children immediately after birth. The last time Kate had looked at the FBI stats, the experts had a mother killing a child in America every two or three days.
There were far too many ways to kill children. It happened when an exhausted mother shook a baby to make it stop crying and instead shook it to death. It happened when a fourteen-year-old got pregnant and stuffed her newborn into a garbage can. It happened when a wife tried to leave an abusive husband and, in retaliation, the husband killed all three kids, the wife, and then himself. It happened when whatever filter the parent had screwed to her lens allowed her to see the child as a threat, and it happened when that filter let her believe the best thing she could do for the child was kill it.
Kate had had coffee with a fireman awhile back, and he had told her that there was a feeling among arson
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