Arachnophilia

"We have so much to learn from nature," Virginia Lindley said.  She took a long string from her pocket, looped it between her thumbs and started fiddling.  The motion oddly reminded Scott Greenfield, the 18-B attorney appointed to represent her, of his teenage daughter texting. 

"That's fine, Mrs Lindley," he said absently, leaning back in his chair and opening a thick file.  The first page had her picture pinned to it.  He started to skim through the papers, glad to have a quiet moment in a consultation room away from the utter chaos unique to New York’s Riker Island jail complex, when his cell phone rang.  Before the recession, he would have turned it off before meeting a client, but these days what with Bloomberg cut backs and his private income dropping away, he answered his own phone.

"Greenfield here." He smiled apologetically at Mrs Lindley.  Her face, framed by an unkempt mass of grey hair, wrinkled into a smile back. Mad as a box of frogs, he thought as he listened to his wife complaining that she couldn't find his receipts.

"They're in the yellow envelope in the top drawer." She was doing his books now, which had sounded good at the time.  Now, he actually missed his accountant.  Never thought that day would come. "Thanks, dear."  He fumbled with the screen, got out a pen and a legal pad and went back to the papers. 

"Doctor," Mrs Lindley said.

"Sorry?"

"It's Doctor Lindley." 

Greenfield looked back at the notes.  "Yes, I see.  You have a doctorate in biology.  That makes sense, doesn't it?"

She nodded, her fingers flicking the string in a complex pattern.  He checked his watch and sighed.

"May I be frank with you, Dr Lindley?"

"Of course," she said.  "We won't be long."

I won't, he thought.  You, on the other hand...

"We can play this one of two ways.  The first is that it was an accident."

"An accident?"

"We can say the spiders got out of their cages accidentally."

She paused, the string between her fingers arranged in a chaotic tangle.  "I see.  Well, some of them did get out.  There were so many towards the end.  I do so love spiders.  They’re so quiet and patient."

"Of course."

"Can we say how terribly noisy it was in that building?"

"I don't know that's relevant."

"It is to me," she muttered.  She started to twitch at the string again. Her fingers were quite nimble.

"Some spiders got out before the... incident?"

"Yes, I had to use some old aquariums while I was waiting for the lab equipment.  They weren't secure.  Spiders are cunning, you know.  They paralyse their prey after laying in wait, and then wrap them in silk.  They are masters of camouflage. "

"And your neighbors complained."

Her fingers froze. 

"My neighbors acted like it was Armegeddon," she said sharply. "They banged on my door and shouted like animals.  Mrs Perez was hysterical."

"I see."  He stared at her for a long time.  "Our second option is to request a psychiatric evaluation."

She chuckled and started wriggling her fingers again.

“You do realise the seriousness of the charges against you?”

She chuckled again.

“Your spiders…”

“My spiders did what spiders do,” she snapped.  “They found quiet, safe spaces to hide.  They waited patiently for an opportunity.  When the opportunity presented itself, they struck.”

He put down his pen and stared at her.

“They killed people, Dr Lindley.”

She didn’t reply.  She just kept playing with the string.

“You let poisonous spiders loose in your apartment building.”

No response.

“There’s a big long list here of the spiders they found.  Brown recluse?”

“Loxosceles recluse.”

“Redback?”

“Latrodectus hasseltii.”

“Funnel web spider, what the hell is that?”

“Atrax robustus.  They’re Australian.  I just wanted to be left alone, Mr Greenfield, to do my studies and to be with my lovely spiders.”

“Mrs Perez is in a coma.”

“And I wanted peace and quiet!” she shouted.  For a moment he could see how this little old lady could have deliberately released hundreds of poisonous spiders in a crowded apartment building.

“Ok, ok, I’ll book a psych evaluation for you and we’ll take it from there.  Can I get you anything in the meantime?”

She shook her head and smiled.  “There, I’m finished.”  She opened her hands to display an intricately woven web.

“Yeah, I got the whole web thing early on.  I’ll be back after the psych results come in.  If there’s nothing else…”

She pounced. 

She lunged forward, wrapping the web around his face.  She jerked back and slammed his head down on the table top.  She gathered up his pen and jammed it into his neck, hard, precisely.  She didn’t go for the throat.  Instead, she deliberately penetrated his spinal column.  He lay helpless, twitching and making choking noises.

“Spiders use their venom to paralyse their prey.  I had to make do.”

She unravelled the string and looped it around and around his hands and his face while he hovered in and out of consciousness, unable to move or speak.

“They wrap their prey in a cocoon.”

She rummaged in his pockets, finding his keys and ID badge.  She took her picture from her file, dipped the back of it in his blood and stuck it to his badge.

“And they camouflage themselves.”

She tidied herself up, fixed her hair and neatly fixed the badge on her sweater before she unlocked the door and slipped out of the building.

“We have so much to learn from nature, Mr Greenfield.”