It seems unlikely to me that Lander is the kind of guy who would tell his secrets to a diary, but you never know. I put the financial notebook down on the desk and pick up the book. But when I open it I don’t find words—I find pictures, drawings that look like they were done quickly but are actually pretty good.

They’re caricatures. The first one is of a woman with a perversely large bustline and dollar signs in her eyes. She carries a Chanel purse, peeking out of which is a little shih tzu or something with a diamond collar. The words Dogged Girl are written boldly underneath the image.

Another is of politicians made to look like marionettes. That one’s labeled Thrusting Spell, whatever that means.

There’s a drawing of a crying woman in a hospital gown, on her knees, clutching at the pant leg of a man wearing a crown as he tries to walk away, titled A Cad Feels Spewing Sorrow.

And then there’s a drawing of a man in a suit, a nail sticking out where his heart should be. He stands arm in arm with a much older man whose suit pockets are turned inside out as he hands what is apparently the last of his fortune to a smiling boy with shark teeth. The boy looks like he’s going to eat the money being handed to him . . . Scratch that, he looks like he’s going to bite off the man’s entire hand. The title of this piece is actually pretty self-explanatory: Bite, Torture, Ruin.

The weird thing is that the boy with the sharp teeth looks a little like Lander.

The last picture I find is of a man who looks a lot like the older man from the last drawing. Except in this image, he’s the one with the sharp teeth, and he’s snarling down at a man who’s lying on his side, apparently sleeping and peacefully unaware of the threat looming overhead. The picture is rendered so we only see the sleeping man’s back. The title of that one is E’s Wolflike Indecency.

Pretty dark stuff for a spoiled rich kid.

But that’s not a big surprise. What does surprise me is his talent. I take a moment to photograph each picture. He did these drawings for himself, and they were clearly inspired by things, events, and people, which means this sketchbook is a journal of sorts. I just have to figure out what it’s really saying.

I turn the page again. There’s a list of names:

Ahmadi

Akbari

Najafi

Narndar

Talebi

???