Angel of the Dark

“Objection!” It was practically a howl from Alvin Dubray. “She was turned on by the killing! Sex was consensual.”

“With those injuries?” Ellen Watts shot back. “The police reports all said ‘rape.’”

“The police didn’t know she was in on it!”

This was television gold, watching the defense “team” rip each other’s throats out. After two weeks of William Boyce’s monotone speeches for the prosecution, Judge Federico Muñoz finally had the spectacular trial he felt he deserved, complete with a balcony full of salivating television crews and news reporters. Tomorrow his name would be on everyone’s lips.

“I’ll allow it,” he said graciously, “but I hope you have some expert psychiatric witnesses for us, Ms. Watts. The jury’s not interested in the opinions of amateurs.”

Ellen Watts nodded gravely, dismissing Janet Hooper and calling her next witness.

“The defense calls Dr. George Petridis.”

A handsome man in his early fifties, wearing a three-piece suit with a vintage silver pocket watch, Dr. Petridis was chief of psychiatr

y at Mass General Hospital in Boston. He radiated authority, and both Alvin Dubray and William Boyce noticed with alarm the way the jury members sat up with attention when he spoke. Even Frankie Mancini seemed interested in what the esteemed doctor had to say. Throughout his testimony, you could have heard a pin drop.

“Dr. Petridis, what is your relationship with the defendants in this case?” Ellen Watts asked.

“I treated both of them in the late 1980s, when they were teenagers. I was working as a psychologist for New York State Child Welfare Services at the time, dealing almost exclusively with adolescents.”

“Prior to these homicides being brought to light, did you remember these patients at all? Twenty years is a long time. You must have counseled hundreds of kids since then.”

The doctor smiled. “Thousands. But I remembered these two. I also keep meticulous notes, so I was able to check my memories against what I recorded at the time.”

“And what do you remember about the defendants?”

“I remember an intensely codependent, symbiotic relationship. She was a sweet kid with a lot of problems. She was clearly psychotic. I prescribed Risperdal from our very first session, but she was resistant to the whole idea of drugs. The boy disapproved.”

“What form did her psychosis take?”

“Well, she was a fantasist. At best, she had a very fluid sense of self. At worst, no conscious identity at all, at least none that bore any resemblance to reality. I suspect maternal, prenatal drug use was a major factor. Effectively the kid was like an empty shell, a mold waiting to be filled with somebody else’s consciousness. In a very real sense, the boy ‘created’ her.”

In the front row of courtroom 306, Danny McGuire shivered. “I have no life.”

“Changing her name was probably the clearest external manifestation of her condition. Sofia was the name of her exotic, Moroccan alter ego. It was a psychotic affectation, lifted from a romantic novel one of the nurses had given her as a child. Frankie recognized her attachment to this story and her need for a past, an identity. He pretty much took the two things and meshed them together.”

Ellen played devil’s advocate. “Is a seventeen-year-old boy really capable of that sort of sophisticated manipulation?”

“Usually, no. But in this boy’s case, absolutely. He was highly intelligent, highly manipulative, a uniquely adaptable and capable individual. He was amazing, actually.” Dr Petridis looked across at Frankie Mancini rather like a zoologist might look at a particularly fine specimen of some unusual species.

“In your opinion, was Frances Mancini psychotic?”

“No. He was not.”

“Did you prescribe any psychiatric medication for Mancini at any time while you were treating him?”

The doctor shook his head. “There’s no pill that could have cured Frankie’s problems. We tried talking therapies, but he was highly resistant. He knew what he was doing, with Sophie, with everything he did. He had no interest in changing.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Petridis. But are you saying Frances Mancini was ‘bad’ rather than ‘mad’? That he did what he did deliberately and consciously, knowing that it was wrong, that it was evil?”

Dr. Petridis frowned. “Bad and evil are both moral terms. I’m a psychiatrist, not a judge. I can tell you that Frankie certainly wasn’t ‘mad’ in the sense of insane. Like most of us, like Sophie, he was a product of his childhood.”

“Did he talk to you about that?”

“Oh yeah,” said Petridis solemnly. “He talked.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Dr. George Petridis outlined the horror story that was Frankie Mancini’s childhood. As he spoke, at least two female jurors were reduced to tears. In the front row, the trio of Matt Daley, Danny McGuire and David Ishag listened intently, hanging on the doctor’s every word. For Danny McGuire in particular, it was like finally being given the answers to a crossword puzzle that had defeated him for years. With each word, the Azrael murders began to make more sick, twisted sense.