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Name/Nickname: Diana Shea (AKA Di)
Gender: Female
Birthdate/"Permanent" Story Age/Astrological Sign: NA; fifties/early sixties; NA
Birthplace/Current Location: Bismarck, North Dakota; Minot, North Dakota
Height: 5'4"
Weight/Body Type: Slightly above average; somewhat heavy but relatively fit
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Auburn, graying; medium/slightly above shoulder length, straight
Race/Ethnic Background: Caucasian; Irish-American
Relationship Status: In relationship (Den Heikkinen, boyfriend); formerly romantically involved with Wesley Singer
Orientation: Heteroromantic heterosexual
Siblings: NA
Profession: Former police officer, Bismarck (ND) Police Department; chief of Kappa Security, Kristeva property
Distinguishing Characteristics: Levelheaded, calm under pressure; looks unintimidating but is quite skilled at her job; well respected by the other members of Kappa Security; spotless employment history, trustworthy/reliable; polite but somewhat reserved around people she doesn't know well; grows to trust others through their actions rather than their words
General Appearance: Slightly shorter and heavier than average, but isn't hampered by this in her work; rather plain appearance, doesn't tend to attract attention; straight auburn hair (slightly graying) parted and cut in a bob; always dresses formally in public, usually in skirts and suit jackets--wears the official Kappa Security dress suit ("uniform") while working on the Kristeva property (navy blue jacket and skirt or pants with Kappa Security logo on breast and back, dress shirt, tie)
First Appeared In: IDentity(?)
Character Summary: Not much is currently known about Diana Shea's early life; it's assumed it was relatively uneventful. She graduated the police academy and joined the Bismarck Police Department, but had been employed barely three months when an outing with a fellow police officer ended in a date rape; she decided not to report the incident, as he'd been on the force longer than she had, and, as she later explained to Wesley Singer, "He said nobody would believe that he'd had to rape an ugly cow like me." After searching job listings and coming across a security position on the property of Minot doctor Ivan Kristeva, she resigned from the BPD and used her sergeant's reference and police training experience to obtain an interview with the chief of Kappa Security, Luke Jonas. Despite Jonas's brusque, unwelcoming attitude, Shea secured the job, and moved to Minot to live on the vast Kristeva property as per the job requirements. Instructed to leave her car to be parked elsewhere and locate the assistant chief of security, Den Heikkinen, for orientation, Shea had to wander outside the main household in the rain, as a security officer refused to give her a ride and the nearest entrance to the house was locked. She finally spotted another security officer inside and knocked to get his attention; once he'd brought her a towel to dry herself off and heard her explanation of events, he introduced himself as Heikkinen and apologized for the series of misunderstandings, promising to talk to the officer who'd refused her a ride. He took her on a brief tour of the household, showing her to her new quarters, and telling her what to expect her first day on the job. He also advised that she try to keep out of Jonas's way as much as possible if she wanted things to go smoothly; based on what little she'd seen of him so far, Shea agreed.
Shea quickly fit into the daily routine of Kappa Security life, and did well at her job, though it wasn't long before she began to notice small strange things that indicated that not everything occurring on the Kristeva property was as it seemed. There was a particular hierarchy to the security team, with certain members seeming more "in the know" about things than others; Jonas and several older members of his inner circle were included in this, while most of the younger/newer security officers were not. Certain areas of the property were also considered off limits even for most of the security staff. When Shea mentioned to Heikkinen (who appeared to be aware of this hierarchy, though uninvolved in it) that there was very little security around the horse stables, he advised her to stay away from them as Jonas and his subordinates were in charge of that area and no other help was needed; when Shea expressed puzzlement, he added, "It's best not to ask too many questions."
Shea also soon realized that many of her fellow newer security officers despised Jonas and gave him a wide berth, just as she did. This avoidance extended to the Kristeva children, Chrissie and Max, as well; while the younger Max didn't talk much, the chatty Chrissie confided in Shea that neither of them liked or trusted Jonas, as he was "mean" and simply gave them a bad feeling. While Jonas had little power to get the Kristeva children in trouble, since their father was so prominent that even Jonas didn't dare antagonize him, he wasn't above threatening the children in private, also warning them to keep away from the stables unless accompanied by an authorized adult. Shea found this especially strange, since Chrissie said that Max's horse, Thunderhead, was housed there, yet the children had little access to him, and rarely ever rode the horses. Not long after, Thunderhead was killed, supposedly by coyotes, and the remaining horses were sold off and the stables cleared out, though still off limits. Shea quickly learned which members of the security staff to trust and which to keep at arm's length, herself, although the pervasive secrecy behind events occurring on the property, including Thunderhead's odd death, made her uneasy.
Shea's unease grew when Jonas allowed a Minot police detective, Wesley Singer, access to the property, and seemed to be filling him in on Kappa Security activities she had no knowledge of; the rumor she heard was that Det. Singer was corrupt, and Jonas was considering employing him for this reason. Shea was instructed to show Singer around the property, which she did with much reluctance despite his polite demeanor. Jonas left her in charge of keeping an eye on the detective when he wasn't around, something that frustrated both of them, since Shea didn't trust him and Singer appeared to want more open access to the property and Jonas's inner circle and didn't appreciate being "babysat." Shea interacted with him as little as possible, as she was beginning to suspect that whatever was going on on the Kristeva property was illegal and possibly involved an unwilling Max, who had become even more silent and withdrawn. When Singer showed up one day with a bleeding cut on his arm, however, Shea took him to the closest first-aid station to rebandage it, and the two talked a little; they were interrupted by Jonas, who appeared and demanded to know what they were doing in an off-limits area of the household. Singer took the blame, saying he'd insisted that Shea bring him to this first-aid station rather than a more distant but acceptable one. Jonas let them both off with a warning; Shea realized that Singer's lie had likely saved her job, and wasn't sure what to make of this.
Late one night, alerted by a commotion in the halls and outside, Shea hurried to one of the primary entrances to find several unknown men, security officers, and Det. Singer arguing heatedly; Singer held Max, wet and seemingly unconscious, in his arms. Jonas arrived and Singer told him that he'd interrupted the strange men in the act of trying to drown Max in a watering trough near the stables. He demanded to be allowed to take Max to the hospital, but Jonas refused, sending the strange men away and calling for the in-house physician, a close friend of his, to be called instead. When Max's mother, awakened by the noise, appeared, Jonas told her that Max had nearly drowned while playing in one of the household's numerous bathtubs; both Singer and Shea were startled by this explanation, but unable to fill Mrs. Kristeva in on the truth; Jonas convinced her that their personal physician could care for Max more effectively than the hospital could, and she was escorted back to her room. Once she was gone, Jonas told Singer that his access to the Kristeva property had been revoked, and to leave immediately. Singer angrily obeyed, and left.
Shea lingered behind but out of the way as the others began to disperse; in the hallway she ran into Heikkinen, who had seen most of the events unfold on the security cameras. She explained what had occurred to the best of her ability; Heikkinen informed her that the cameras had picked up no activity near any of the bathing areas, but Singer and the others had entered the house from the direction of the stables, where no cameras were located. Realizing that this meant Singer had likely been telling the truth--and that Jonas had probably lied, jeopardizing Max's life while Singer had been trying to save him--Shea decided to look for clues as to what had really happened. She first checked all the bathtubs in the sprawling household, finding each to be dry and apparently unused; then she went to examine the horse stables, noticing the trampled, muddy state of the soil around the nearby watering trough and photographing it with her camera. Within the stables themselves she found nothing untoward but a half-melted candle which she took anyway. Before returning to the house she removed the camera film and hid it away with the candle, replacing it with an unrelated roll; this action proved to be prudent, as Jonas accosted her on her way out, seizing her camera and exposing the film to the light before returning it and requesting that she pack her belongings and be ready to leave within the week. She left later that morning instead, and after setting up in a hotel and looking up interviews for a new job, pondered getting in touch with Singer about what she'd discovered, since his apparent rescue of Max--and firing by Jonas--had her just about convinced he wasn't a crooked police officer after all, but was undercover and investigating Jonas and the Kristevas without their knowledge. She visited the Minot police station and asked the captain, Don Bowen, whether Singer worked there and if she could speak to him about the "Kristeva investigation"; Bowen offered to talk with her himself instead, though, not knowing if he was trustworthy or not, she insisted she could only speak with Singer. Bowen arranged for the two to meet in a nearby park.
Shea arrived the day of the meeting and waited a while; just as she was beginning to grow frustrated, Singer appeared, wearing a baseball cap and explaining he'd been watching her a while to make sure she hadn't been followed. He refused to answer Shea's question about whether he was an undercover officer or not; "I'll take that as a yes," she said, and after Singer gave only vague responses regarding his true motivations for visiting the Kristeva property, she explained what had occurred after his departure, including her findings that Jonas's story had been a lie. Singer seemed genuinely remorseful about Shea losing her job, though she explained she was more upset by the fact that she could no longer keep an eye on the Kristeva children's welfare. After agreeing that she should contact Den Heikkinen and instruct him to keep the children safe, she gave Singer the film and candle, and asked if she could do anything else to aid in his investigation, even though she wasn't entirely sure what it was about, yet. They decided to ask Chrissie Kristeva, whom Shea was still in occasional contact with, to surreptitiously collect information, without filling her in on why. When Shea met with Chrissie again, the girl readily agreed to take photos of the horse stables and report on any suspicious activity she saw; Shea was surprised when Chrissie asked if the request had anything to do with the "police officer" who'd been visiting the estate until recently. She promised to avoid Jonas, an apparent target of the investigation, as much as possible.
Shea continued to meet with Singer, who was staying at an assortment of motels, over the following days; once he seemed to find her trustworthy, he began tentatively explaining the goal of his investigation: Evidence had been building that a criminal cult group was operating in Minot and one of its bases of operations was located on the Kristeva property, with Kappa Security acting as a front; not all members of the security force were involved, though several higher-ups such as Luke Jonas were, and they answered directly to Dr. Ivan Kristeva, the head of the household. The cult was known to engage in child exploitation and Singer believed Max could be a victim. The two of them suspected that the disused horse stables were an area of suspicion where cult-related activities might take place, which would explain their off-limits status, lack of security cameras, and Max's apparent fear of the place, which Chrissie reported and managed to capture in a candid photo she took of her younger brother. This photo had an impact on Singer, who confided in Shea his own fears of losing touch with his niece, Cheryl, whom he'd been looking after as his own since her parents' deaths, should he and his wife divorce, which was looking more and more likely due to his overinvolvement in his work. When he broke down over this, Shea attempted to comfort him and they ended up spending the night together after he asked her to stay; due to her past experience Shea was briefly uncertain about getting too involved, though Singer seemed respectful of her boundaries and they grew close over the weeks of their meetings. Seeing nasty bruises on Singer's abdomen one day, she feared that members of Jonas's group had beaten him; Singer seemed rather embarrassed to admit that these, as well as the cut to his arm that Shea had tended to previously, had been caused by his jealous and unstable wife when he had gone to visit Cheryl. He stated that once his investigation was over, he wished to take custody of Cheryl and be with Shea; Shea agreed.
Filled with foreboding, Singer hastily penned letters to a handful of people--including Cheryl, Brenda, Diana Shea, Sgt. Mark Kincaid, Luke Jonas (the shortest letter), and Max Kristeva (the longest letter)--and, after again asking Shea if Den Heikkinen was trustworthy, which Shea insisted he was--handed them over to the assistant chief of security, instructing him to deliver them to their intended recipients when the time was right. (When Heikkinen asked when that would be, Singer paused, then said he would know when.) Sensing that Heikkinen himself had feelings for Shea, he told him to also keep an eye on Shea and the Kristeva children; Heikkinen promised.
On his drive back to his motel in the dark, Singer found himself pursued and then boxed in by a few vehicles on a desolate road; dreading what must be coming, he nonetheless kept a level head, and attempted retrieving his gun, but wasn't quick enough before one of the other men's guns was aimed at him. He followed their request to vacate his vehicle (in which another one of them drove off) and was handcuffed and placed in one of the cars and driven away. When the driver jokingly asked why he was so quiet, Singer replied that they hadn't blindfolded him, so he knew what that must mean.
Singer was taken to a large, seemingly abandoned building and led through a series of halls before ending up in an empty room with just a few pieces of furniture, such as a chair and table. His captors struck and kicked him several times, just enough to daze him, before setting him in the chair and waiting. Not long after, Luke Jonas arrived--something which didn't surprise Singer in the slightest--and after briefly explaining how poor the police's attempt to infiltrate Four P had been, as well as making clear how much Singer's presence on the Kristeva property had annoyed him, he instructed the other men to tie Singer to the table and work him over for a while, but not kill him yet. They did as they were told, and took turns beating and torturing Singer with various implements for a time. Singer had almost lost consciousness by the time Jonas returned with a frightened Becky in tow and told them to take a break. The men left, and Jonas spoke with them outside the door for a moment; Singer took the opportunity to weakly tell Becky, "It's okay. This isn't your fault."
Jonas reentered then, telling both Singer and Becky that neither one of them had told on the other, but they had one more chance to make themselves useful. He took Becky into an adjacent room where a third man was waiting to keep an eye on her, and had her sit near the partly open door; he explained that she would have to listen in on anything else that happened to Singer, and if at any point either one of them wanted it to stop, all they had to do was say so, and come clean with what they knew about the other person. The other cultist kept Becky seated by the door and prevented her from covering her ears while Jonas tortured Singer a second time and then raped him; still, neither outed the other, and eventually Jonas called back his two accomplices (both were stunned at Singer's condition) and told Singer that since they had no concrete evidence on Becky, they would let her go for now (he made no promise about her future welfare), but Singer was a loose end who needed to be eliminated; as he hadn't spared himself by turning on Becky, his death would be relatively quick. He instructed the third man to escort Becky away, while the other two were to load Singer in a waiting van and transport him to a dumping site. Singer was untied and half-carried, half-dragged outside to an idling van, tossed in the back, and the doors slammed shut behind him. When Singer blinked the blood from his eyes, he realized he wasn't alone--a child was huddled in the back of the van with him. Recognizing Max Kristeva, Singer did his best to conceal his pain and, letting Max know he was a police officer, tried to reassure him that things would be all right. When he noticed Max looking at his necklace, he explained that it was a mandala and that it meant "whole, everything working together, all in one piece." He promised Max that if they worked together, Max would get out of the situation safe and sound.
The van eventually stopped and the two were pulled out, finding themselves upon the Souris Narrows Bridge. Both were made to kneel at the side of the bridge. Singer threatened them not to harm Max, as his father had declared him off limits; the driver replied that Max wasn't going to be physically harmed, though he had to be taught the same lesson that Singer had failed. While the two men argued over the wisdom of killing a police officer, Singer again told Max that he would be all right, and the cult wouldn't hurt him again. The driver then abruptly cut Singer's throat right in front of Max; when the boy recoiled, Singer's blood spattering him, the man warned him that if he ever told anyone about this or anything else that had happened to him, "then that"--pointing to Singer--"is you." Max immediately shut down; Singer's body was thrown from the bridge into the Souris River below, and, loading the boy back into the van, the men drove away to inform Jonas that the job was done.
When Singer failed to report back to Capt. Bowen at the police station, or get back in touch with Shea, both grew worried; when they got in contact with each other and realized no one had heard from the detective yet, not even his family, their feeling of foreboding increased. Bowen was forced to abandon the idea of infiltrating the cult, and left the next stage of the investigation up to Sgt. Kincaid. Shea, certain that Jonas had somehow had a hand in Singer's disappearance (and, she was just about positive, his death), returned to the Kristeva property, ostensibly to pay a social visit, but in reality armed with her gun, ready to kill Jonas. Heikkinen, who'd spotted her arrival on the security cameras, managed to intercept her before she could locate Jonas; despite Shea's pleas to let her go through with it, he refused to let her ruin her own life in the process, telling her to be patient, and that someday Jonas would get what was coming to him.
Meanwhile, despite widespread rumors that Singer had run off with his cult informant, Cheryl still held out hope that he would be located at some point, unable to believe her uncle would ever abandon his job or her. Brenda had no such hope, fully believing the rumors, and was legally divorced from him some years later, taking back her maiden name. She and Cheryl cared for each other until she became terminally ill, and her mental state deteriorated further, as well; she spent the last few years of her life in hospice care. After her death, Cheryl continued living in the old Singer house, visiting the police station every so often to inquire about her uncle's case. She eventually stopped visiting when the case went cold, but after seeing a news item about the creation of a missing persons unit in Minot, stopped by the station again to speak with the sole detective currently in the MPU, Det. Max Kristeva. Perplexed that not only had Cheryl been incorrectly informed that the case was "closed," but also that a case involving a missing police officer had been allowed to go cold in the first place, Kristeva promised to dig deeper and find out what was going on. During one of her visits, Cheryl noticed that Kristeva wore a mandala necklace, and, assuming that he'd bought it in memory of her uncle, urged Kristeva not to get too consumed with his work. Kristeva, meanwhile, had no memory of where he'd come up with the mandala image, nor could he understand at first why Cheryl's notes about her uncle's case contained a photograph of him as a child. He wasn't yet aware that, the moment Singer was killed, his own personality had fractured, and though he'd unconsciously forgotten that period of his life, he'd been attempting to emulate--or "become"--Det. Singer ever since.
In following years, Singer's skeleton--at first unidentified--would be found in a washed-out section of road near the Souris Narrows Bridge--a knife groove barely visible in one of his neck vertebrae--and his car pulled from the bottom of a lake, with a cinderblock still wedged against the gas pedal. Kristeva, along with his partner Det. Chance Devetko, would start trying to open the case back up to the light of day, uncertain--and uneasy--about who on and off the police force was responsible for covering up key details, and why.
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