The Trust Game

This story is from Volume II of No Ordinary Evil.

Author’s Note This story is inspired by real events. For the sake of narrative flow, all names, places, and certain details have been fictionalized. While the characters and settings presented here are inventions, the underlying crimes, methods, and tragic scale of the case are drawn from documented history. This work is intended as a dramatic retelling, not a verbatim account. Reader discretion is advised.

In May 2000, Elena Varga had arranged her life with the precision of an engineer.

At thirty-two, she was elegant, quick-witted, and a bit accomplished. She studied physics as an undergraduate, earned her master’s degree in systems engineering, and landed a highly paid position at Asterion Orbital Systems, a fast-growing space technology company in Harbor Point, Connecticut. Asterion built satellite guidance systems, flight computers, and navigation components for commercial and government customers. It was the kind of place that hired people who could solve hard problems.

Elena, it seemed, was one of them.

The very same month, she married Michael Varga, her longtime boyfriend and fellow hard-charger. They had met years earlier in a graduate study group, when Michael was still piling one degree on top of another and teaching nights to cover tuition. Compared to Elena, he was quiet, analytical; the kind of man who could spend an evening discussing probability models and consider that a nice date.

Their wedding was small. Seventy friends and relatives gathered for dinner, music, and photographs. Afterward, the couple moved into a condominium Elena’s parents had helped them buy in Bellweather, New York, close enough to Harbor Point for Elena’s commute and close enough to the city for Michael’s doctoral work at Hudson Institute of Technology.

But one member of Elena’s family had not attended.

Her younger sister, Nina.

Elena told Michael that Nina suffered from severe psychiatric problems and could become paranoid and unstable when she felt abandoned. For that reason, Elena’s family had never told Nina that Elena had married. Elena worried that learning about Michael might trigger an episode. Michael found the arrangement strange, but he loved his wife and trusted her judgment.

Then Elena began inviting Nina to visit.

Whenever Nina was supposedly coming over, Michael had to disappear. Elena would remove the wedding photographs from the walls. Michael packed his clothes, books, toiletries, laptop, and anything else that suggested a man lived there. Then he checked into a nearby hotel until the visit was over.

The first time, he laughed about it. By the fourth or fifth time, the joke had worn thin.

Still, Michael rarely argued. Elena became emotional whenever he questioned the arrangement, and he told himself there were worse things than spending a weekend alone reading a stack of research papers.

Their marriage settled into something that looked quite successful from the outside, but increasingly lonely from within.

Michael was working toward a doctorate in human factors engineering and teaching statistics two evenings a week. Elena threw herself into Asterion. She joined a recreational volleyball league, stayed late at work, and occasionally met coworkers for drinks at a bar near the company’s headquarters.

On the nights they were home together, Elena often talked about work. At first, it was ordinary office gossip. Promotions. Rival departments. Failed tests. Engineers who took credit for other people’s work. Managers who could turn a six-minute problem into a two-hour meeting.

Then, in the summer of 2001, Elena began telling Michael about something far more interesting.

A love triangle.

The woman at the center of it was Elena’s friend Rebecca.

According to Elena, Rebecca had fallen for a brilliant Asterion engineer named Luke. Luke was thirty-five, handsome, technically gifted, and worked on spacecraft propulsion and guidance projects.

There was only one problem. Luke already had a girlfriend. Her name was Claire.

Elena said Rebecca knew about Claire almost from the beginning, but Rebecca believed Luke would eventually choose her. She and Luke met secretly after work. They took weekend trips. They went skiing. They camped. Rebecca told Elena intimate details about their sex life, their arguments, and Luke’s promises that he needed more time.

Michael was fascinated at first.

“So he’s dating both of them?” he asked one night.

“That’s what Rebecca says.”

“And Claire doesn’t know?”

“Not about Rebecca.”

Michael shook his head. “Then Rebecca should tell her.”

Elena frowned. “She can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because Luke would hate her for it.”

Michael stared at his wife.

“He’s cheating on both of them.”

“I know.”

“So why does Rebecca care if he gets angry?”

Elena had no answer that satisfied him. But she kept talking about Rebecca.

Within months, Rebecca’s love life became the dominant story in their own life. Elena discussed it over dinner, in the car, while Michael was reading, while they were getting ready for bed.

Rebecca thought Luke loved her.

Rebecca thought Claire was manipulating him.

Rebecca thought Luke was going to leave Claire.

Rebecca had seen Luke and Claire together.

Rebecca had called Elena crying.

Michael began to feel as though Rebecca lived with them.

Then Claire left Asterion for a better job at Vector Spacewerk, another aerospace company with offices in New Jersey. Rebecca was thrilled. She assumed the distance would finally break Claire and Luke apart.

It didn’t

Claire arranged to do much of her work remotely and remained in her condominium in Harbor Point. Luke spent more time there, not less.

Then he broke things off with Rebecca. According to Elena, Rebecca was devastated.

That was when the story stopped being office gossip.

One evening Elena asked Michael if he still had the night-vision binoculars he had bought years earlier.

“I think so.”

“And the little directional microphone?”

Michael looked up from his laptop. “Why?”

“Rebecca wants to watch Claire’s place.”

He thought she was kidding.

She wasn’t.

Elena explained that Rebecca wanted to know how often Luke stayed at Claire’s condominium, when he arrived, when he left, and whether he had begun moving belongings into the apartment.

“And you’re going with her?”

“She doesn’t want to sit out there alone.”

Michael closed the laptop.

“Elena, this is getting weird.”

“I know. I told her.”

“Then don’t go.”

“She needs me.”

Against his better judgment, Michael dug the equipment out of the back of the closet and gave it to her.

The surveillance escalated.

Rebecca somehow obtained Luke’s voicemail password and began listening to his messages. When she learned where he would be, she sometimes appeared there by coincidence. Once, she discovered his travel itinerary and arranged to be on the same flight home, in the seat beside him.

Elena occasionally played intercepted voicemail messages for Michael and asked him to interpret them.

“Does that sound serious to you?”

Michael listened to a woman’s voice talking about dinner plans.

“It sounds like two people making dinner plans.”

“You don’t hear anything else?”

“No.”

Elena replayed it.

Next came the lock picks.

She returned home one afternoon with a small pouch containing several picks and tension wrenches.

Michael stared at them.

“What are those?”

“Rebecca bought them.”

“For what?”

Elena hesitated.

“She wants to get into Claire’s condo.”

Michael laughed once, waiting for the punch line.

There wasn’t one.

“Absolutely not.”

“I told her it’s crazy.”

“Then why are they here?”

“She asked me to learn how to use them.”

Michael tried one on the bathroom door. Elena tried next. Neither could open even the simple interior lock. After that, Michael tried to stay out of it.

By early November 2002, Elena abruptly stopped talking about Rebecca.

Michael assumed the insanity had finally exhausted her.

In truth, the silence made their marriage feel emptier.

One evening, after a long day at Hudson Institute, Michael attended a meeting with engineers from Vector Spacewerks. The group was reviewing a thermal protection experiment, but everyone in the room seemed distracted.

Finally Michael asked if something was wrong.

One of the engineers looked at him.

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“One of our people was murdered.”

The victim, he was told, was a young engineer who had recently joined Vector from another aerospace company in Connecticut.

Michael felt something cold move through him. When he got home, Elena was reading on the couch.

“Wasn’t Claire working at Vector?”

Elena looked up.

“Yeah.”

“Someone there was murdered.”

For a fraction of a second, Michael thought he saw something change in her face.

Then it was gone.

“I hadn’t heard.”

“You think Claire is okay?”

“As far as I know.”

A few days later, Michael asked about Rebecca.

Elena told him Claire had moved away and that Luke and Rebecca were together now.

The answer surprised him.

After everything Rebecca had done, after the stalking and listening and lock picks, she had gotten exactly what she wanted.

Michael decided he did not want to know anything more.

Four months later, on a Saturday afternoon in March 2003, Elena walked into Michael’s home office smiling.

“I heard about a game at work.”

Michael looked away from his computer.

“What kind of game?”

“A trust game.”

The timing seemed almost perfect. Their marriage had been strained for months, but that weekend had been unusually good. They had visited family. They had talked easily. Elena had even suggested it might finally be time to tell Nina that she was married.

Michael wanted to believe they were finding their way back to each other.

So when Elena explained the game, he agreed.

The rules were simple, if odd.

One person would lie on the carpet blindfolded with his or her wrists secured above the head to the rung of a heavy chair. The other would press household objects against the person’s body. The blindfolded player had to identify them without touching.

On Sunday afternoon, Elena brought out a pair of handcuffs and black pantyhose for a blindfold.

Michael raised an eyebrow.

She laughed.

“It’s not that kind of game.”

Elena went first.

Michael cuffed her wrists to the chair and tied the blindfold. He placed one of their small dogs against her side.

She guessed wrong.

Then a camera.

Wrong again.

A cardboard box.

“Box.”

“Very good.”

After several objects, Elena said it was his turn.

Michael lay on the carpet. Elena secured his wrists, tied the blindfold, and began.

The dog.

“Easy.”

A printer cartridge.

“Printer ink.”

A shampoo bottle.

“Come on. You have to make it harder.”

Elena did.

He could hear her moving through the condo, opening cabinets and drawers, searching for something that might finally fool him.

Then she returned.

“Last one.”

Michael heard fabric rustle. He felt Elena settle over him, one knee on either side of his legs. Something smooth touched his cheek. Cylindrical. Then he smelled wax.

“A candle,” he said.

The blow to his chest was so violent that for an instant Michael thought someone had dropped a weight on him.

Elena screamed.

Before he could understand why, a second blow struck his chest.

Harder.

Michael gasped.

“Elena?”

“Oh my God.”

“What happened?”

“I think I hurt you.”

He was still blindfolded. Still handcuffed.

“Elena, take this off.”

“It was an accident.”

“Take the blindfold off.”

She did.

Elena stood over him, wide-eyed.

Michael looked down at his chest. He could see only two small marks in his shirt.

Yet something inside him felt catastrophically wrong.

“Where are the cuff keys?”

Elena began searching the room.

“I can’t find them.”

“Elena.”

“I don’t know where they are.”

“Break the chair.”

She stared at him.

“Break the chair.”

Eventually she knelt and snapped one of the wooden rungs, freeing his cuffed hands from the chair.

Michael rolled onto his side.

“Call 911.”

Elena hurried from the room. She returned holding a glass of juice.

“Drink this.”

Michael stared at her.

“What?”

“It’ll make you feel better.”

“Put that down and call an ambulance.”

She reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and began pacing through the condo.

Michael heard fragments.

“My husband.”

“Bleeding.”

“Please hurry.”

He tried to stand but collapsed again.

Minutes passed.

No sirens.

He asked her to call again.

She put the phone to her ear.

“Let me talk to them.”

Elena turned away.

“They don’t need to talk to you.”

“What?”

“They said you should stay calm.”

“When are they coming?”

She paused.

“Twenty-five minutes. Maybe thirty.”

Michael stared at her.

“That makes no sense.”

“They’re short-staffed.”

He began to understand that something was wrong beyond the pain in his chest.

He forced one handcuff until the cheap locking mechanism broke. Then he dragged himself upright.

Elena appeared again, this time holding a medicine cup.

“Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Cold medicine. It’ll help you relax.”

Michael shoved it aside.

“No.”

He staggered toward the living room and collapsed onto the couch. He could feel himself fading.

“Drive me.”

Elena hesitated.

“Now.”

She helped him into a jacket and guided him to the car.

North County Medical Center was ten minutes away.

Elena took the scenic route.

She drove slowly along winding secondary roads. At one point she pulled over and suggested Michael lie down in the back seat.

“Drive.”

Eventually the hospital complex appeared.

Michael felt relief.

Then Elena passed the emergency room entrance.

“Elena.”

She continued behind the hospital toward a nearly empty parking lot beside the behavioral health building.

“What are you doing?”

She parked at the far end. The engine stopped. Michael heard her keys hit the floor.

Elena leaned down as if searching for them. Then she got out, walked around the car, and opened Michael’s door.

She had a knife in her hand.

Michael finally understood what the two little marks in his chest were.

The candle had never stabbed him.

His wife had.

Four months earlier, police in Harbor Point, Connecticut, had received an anonymous call from a pay phone.

The caller sounded frightened.

She said she had witnessed an assault inside a condominium at 18 Breakwater Cove.

Then she hung up.

Officers arrived within minutes. The door was unlocked. Inside they found a scene of extraordinary violence.

Furniture had been overturned. Plants were smashed. Dishes and papers covered the floor. Blood streaked the walls and pooled through the hallway.

Near the center of the wreckage lay thirty-two-year-old Claire Serrano.

She had been beaten and stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck, chest, and head. One wound had driven so deeply into her chest that the blade had penetrated nearly through a lung.

There was no evidence of sexual assault. Nothing valuable appeared to have been stolen. There was no sign of forced entry.

In fact, Claire had probably opened the door for her killer.

By evening, her boyfriend arrived.

His name was Adrian Cole.

Adrian worked at Asterion Orbital Systems, where he had met Claire before she left for Vector Spacewerks. He was tall, athletic, and visibly stunned by what he saw outside her building.

He also became the obvious suspect.

Detectives quickly learned that Adrian had been spending most nights at Claire’s condo while keeping another apartment of his own.

But Asterion’s security system gave him an almost perfect alibi. Cameras showed him inside the building. Electronic badge logs recorded his movements. Coworkers had seen him.

He had been at work when Claire was killed.

Still, detectives thought Adrian was hiding something.

When they asked whether Claire had enemies or whether their relationship had problems, he became evasive. He did not mention another woman.

The anonymous caller could not be identified. The pay phone was half a mile from Claire’s condo. The crime scene produced no useful fingerprints and no obvious foreign DNA.

The murder investigation stalled.

Until Elena Varga tried to kill her husband.

In the hospital parking lot, Elena lunged. Michael barely moved before the knife struck his chest again.

This time he saw it.

Elena raised her hand for another blow. Michael caught her wrist.

He pushed her away and spilled out of the car.

She came after him.

Michael grabbed the blade with his bare hand and tore it away. Blood was filling his chest cavity. One of the wounds had damaged an artery.

He staggered toward the behavioral health building.

Two people had stepped outside.

“Help.”

Elena grabbed at his clothing.

“Michael, stop.”

He kept moving.

“You have to tell them it was an accident.”

One of the bystanders was a medical resident. He saw Michael’s blood-soaked shirt and ran toward him.

Elena changed her story.

“He attacked me.”

Michael shook his head.

“Just leave him with me,” Elena said. “I’ll take him to the emergency room.”

Michael looked at the resident.

“No.”

Then he collapsed.

As sirens approached, Elena ran. Police caught her minutes later.

That night, surgeons saved Michael’s life.

Police found Elena’s cell phone in the parking lot.

And the case changed.

The phone showed that Elena had never called 911 from the condo.

Not even once.

While Michael lay blindfolded, stabbed and bleeding, Elena had paced through the rooms pretending to speak with emergency dispatchers.

The number she had actually called belonged to Adrian Cole.

She had called him repeatedly. She had left messages inviting him to come to her home that evening.

Suddenly the name meant something to Harbor Point detectives.

Adrian Cole.

Claire Serrano’s boyfriend.

When detectives confronted Adrian, the secret he had withheld after Claire’s murder finally came out. He had been having an affair with Elena Varga.

He claimed he had no idea she was married.

The investigation moved backward.

Every strange story Michael had heard over the previous two years was reconsidered.

Rebecca.

Luke.

Claire.

The surveillance.

The voicemails.

The airport.

The lock picks.

There had been no Rebecca.

Rebecca was Elena.

And “Luke,” the man Rebecca could not give up, turned out to be Adrian Cole.

Elena had taken the details of her own affair and retold them to her husband like the story belonged to someone else. She had sat across from Michael at dinner and asked him to analyze the motives of the man she was sleeping with. She had played Adrian’s messages for him. She had convinced Michael to provide surveillance equipment that she then used to watch Adrian and Claire.

Even Nina had served the deception.

Elena did have a younger sister with serious mental health problems. But the weekend ritual of erasing Michael from the condo had not been necessary to protect her.

It had been useful to Elena.

Whenever Michael packed his belongings and checked into the hotel, Elena could bring Adrian into the home without revealing that she had a husband.

Adrian believed he was dating a single woman. Michael believed he was married to a devoted wife helping a troubled friend. Claire believed Adrian had finally chosen her.

Elena had built a separate reality for each of them.

But by the fall of 2002, Claire had become the obstacle.

Detectives reconstructed what happened to Claire on the morning of her murder.

Elena arrived at Asterion shortly after eight. At 10:53 a.m., she swiped her badge and left the building.

She drove to Claire’s condominium. Before approaching the door, Elena checked her hair in the rearview mirror. She put on gloves. In her pocket was a knife with a five-inch blade.

Then she knocked.

“Claire?”

Footsteps approached inside.

“It’s Elena from Asterion. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Claire knew her. She opened the door.

The fight moved through much of the condominium. Claire fought hard enough to overturn furniture, smash plants, scatter dishes, and cover rooms with blood.

Eventually Elena drove the knife deep into Claire’s chest.

Afterward, she went into the bathroom. She leaned over the scalloped sink, caught her breath, and wiped blood from her face. Then she wrapped a coat around her stained clothes, left the condo, and drove to the pay phone.

She called police herself.

In a frightened voice, she reported seeing an assault.

Then she returned to Asterion. Her badge recorded her reentry at 1:53 p.m.

That evening, when a coworker called to say Claire had been murdered, Elena acted shocked.

Within weeks, she was at Adrian’s side, comforting him.

Eventually their affair resumed.

That was why Rebecca suddenly disappeared from Elena’s stories. Elena no longer needed her. She had Adrian again.

Only Michael remained.

The trust game was supposed to solve that problem.

But Michael survived. Detectives now had a compelling theory linking Elena to Claire’s murder, but theory was not enough.

Years passed before forensic examiners returned to evidence collected from Claire’s condominium. The scene had been drenched in blood, almost all of it Claire’s.

Almost. On one scalloped handle of the bathroom faucet, technicians found a tiny bloodstain. It contained a mixture. Claire’s DNA was there. So was Elena Varga’s.

The cut Elena had received while fighting Claire had left behind what the killer herself never noticed.

One drop.

Elena was convicted of attempting to murder Michael and received a twenty-five-year sentence in New York. A couple of years later, she was convicted in Connecticut of murdering Claire and received another fifty years, to be served after the first sentence.

For two years, Elena had hidden her life inside stories. She invented a woman to carry her obsession. She invented a reason to send her husband away. She invented emergency calls while he lay dying on the floor.

But some things don’t need to be believed. A badge reader recorded when she left work. A phone recorded whom she actually called.

And a drop of blood remembered where she had been.