by Lisa Gardner
“Objection! Inadmissible and not even relevant. Continue to make such underhanded references”—Delaney glared at Fitzpatrick—“and I’ll be forced to demand a change of venue given your deliberate contamination of the jury pool.”
The judge banged her gavel again. “Sustained, though I’m not sure what underhanded references you two are bickering about. Feels to me we have enough to discuss with the case at hand.”
Flora looked askance at D.D., who murmured in the woman’s ears, “Evie shot and killed her father when she was sixteen. It was ruled accidental at the time and no charges were ever filed—I should know, as I was the investigating detective. Delaney’s right: Given that, the incident is inadmissible. But Fitzpatrick isn’t playing to the judge. She’s playing to the press, who I can guarantee you are right now scrambling to figure out what about ‘Mrs. Carter’s previous history’ is worth such a fuss.”
“Your Honor,” Delaney was saying. “My client does not deny being at the scene of the crime, nor even holding the murder weapon. In fact, she’ll even concede she fired the gun. What ADA Fitzpatrick has failed to mention is the slight problem with the police’s timeline of events.”
The judge turned, regarding ADA Fitzpatrick with interest, while on the other side of D.D., Phil stiffened. D.D. got it a second later. “Oh shit.”
“Your Honor,” Fitzpatrick began, but Delaney was already on a roll.
“Eight minutes, Your Honor. There’s an eight-minute gap between the time neighbors first called in the report of shots fired, and the police arrived on the scene and also heard shots fired. That’s because there was not one shooting last night but two. The first was the fatal shooting of my client’s beloved husband and father of her unborn child. We can prove, in fact, Your Honor, that my client wasn’t even home at the time of her husband’s death. She arrived minutes later, discovering the dead body. At which point, she did pick up the gun. She fired the weapon.
“She committed the second shooting, Your Honor. Except her victim was a laptop. Which, let’s face it, we’ve all wanted to shoot at one time or another. So, yes, my client handled the murder weapon and, yes, she had GSR on her hands. But she did not kill her husband. We demand the dismissal of all charges as well as my client’s immediate release at this time.”
The judge regarded Delaney, then the ADA, whose face was now set in a grim line, then Delaney again. “Well,” the judge said, “it sounds like we have plenty to discuss at trial. Given there is sufficient evidence worth presenting, charges are not dismissed. However, I will grant bail. Five hundred thousand, cash bond.”
The judge banged her gavel. Evie Carter, who’d never looked left or right, was led from the room. A moment later, every reporter in the place had leapt to his or her feet and was racing to the door.
Phil, D.D., and Flora stood to the side to let the rush pass.
“I’ll be damned,” D.D. murmured. “She’s gonna do it.” She glanced at Phil, who nodded his agreement.
“Do what?” Flora demanded.
“For the second time in her life, Evie Carter’s gonna get away with murder.”
CHAPTER 6
FLORA
MY FATHER DIED WHEN I was young. Traffic accident. So long ago, I no longer really remember him. The images in my mind are less from real memories than from the photos my mother still has up around the house.
Jacob, on the other hand, the man who kidnapped me, raped me, tortured me . . . six years later I still dream about him three or four nights a week.
Samuel Keynes, my victim specialist and a trained psychologist, has done his best to explain it to me over the years. Something about the omnipotence of an abductor. It wasn’t just that Jacob snatched me off a beach or locked me in a coffin-sized box for days on end. It was his total control over every facet of my life. I ate when he willed it. I drank when he permitted it. I lived, second by second, day by day, because he decided, for that instant, to allow it.
Stockholm syndrome is when a victim starts to bond with her captor, partially due to the captor’s role of complete power over her life. Did I bond with Jacob? The question isn’t as simple as I’d like it to be. I hated him. I still hate him. I worked hard every day on my own survival. Counting backward and forward in the long hours I was trapped in a box. Wiggling my toes, moving my limbs as the space would allow. Then, when he finally let me out, I observed, I learned, I adapted.
I don’t think I ever truly liked Jacob or saw him as a human being. He was a monster, plain and simple. But he was a monster who held the other end of my leash, so I tried to understand him. Anything to survive another day.
But not all days were awful. Not all moments torturous. After weeks turned into months, Jacob would sometimes show up with little surprises. DVDs of a favorite TV show I’d mentioned. Movies for both of us to watch. There’s a lot of time to pass in a long-haul rig. We’d look for license plates from all fifty states, play the alphabet game.
I never believed Jacob was human. But sometimes, like a lot of predators, he did a decent impression of one.
And to this day, he remains the single-most powerful relationship of my life.
Which is why I do my best to talk about him as little as possible. But if I’m being totally honest with myself, I’m not angry to finally be breaking my onetime, one-tell policy. I’m simply relieved to finally get the monster out of my head.
* * *
—
SAMUEL AGREES TO meet me after lunch. He’s an incredibly busy victim specialist, working for the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance (OVA). A lot of his cases involve high-level executives kidnapped in various far-flung countries. Samuel’s job is to help the families understand the process, from the law enforcement steps involved in locating the evildoers to what it might be like when their loved one finally returns home. He also works with the victim him- or herself. Among other things, he generates a “strategy for reentry.” It’s to help guide both the family and the victim as they transition back to the real world.
Eight years ago, I had no idea such plans existed. Eight years ago, I didn’t understand that anyone would need a ten-point plan for reentering the “real world.”
Final step of being a victim specialist: supporting the family and victim through what can be a very long legal process, where they will still be asked to make statements, revisit statements, testify in this hearing, testify in that hearing. Part of the FBI’s impetus for creating the OVA is the modern trend of high-profile crimes (say, a five-year abduction case) and mass-casualty events (shootings, bombings, arson) that can take years to wind through the legal system.
See, one day, you’re a normal person with an ordinary family. Then, in a single instant, you’re not. You’re a young girl, waking up in a coffin-sized box. You’re a mom, back on her farm in Maine, getting a call from her daughter’s friends, asking if maybe her daughter has unexpectedly returned home from Florida.
It begins. The onslaught of local, state, federal investigators. The media camped out in the front yard. Maybe even taunting postcards from the predator himself, stoking fears, inflicting fresh terrors.
My mom had to learn how to work national media. Samuel is one of the people who prepared her. What to wear, what to say, the necessity of humanizing her daughter to an unknown kidnapper in order to increase the chances of his keeping me alive. My brother, Darwin, returned home from college to run the social media campaign. Again, with Samuel’s guidance. Posting pictures from my childhood. Quotes from friends. I don’t know how they did it, to tell you the truth. It’s one of those things we still never discuss. I don’t describe my time with Jacob because I don’t want to hurt them. And they don’t mention the four hundred and seventy-two days they lived in constant fear of letting me down or maybe, through their own inexperience, making it easier for my captor to kill me.
Samuel helped them. I know that. And some kind of relationship was forged betw
een him and my mother. They left it alone for years. Samuel’s doing, my guess, given the man has the emotional core of carved granite.
But my own plan for reentry was much shorter than many. Dead Jacob meant no trial. Samuel checked up on me for a good year after I came home. Made sure I understood the resources available to me, prodded me to utilize all my “tools,” as he liked to put it. He should’ve cut me off ages ago. I’m six years back to the real world, hundreds of pages, at least, beyond my “strategy for reentry” plan. But Samuel has always taken my calls, and this morning, when I reached him nearly hysterical, he never even batted an eye.
So here we are again. All these years later, and still about to hash out the same old story.
“Have a seat,” Samuel tells me, having met me in the lobby of the FBI building and escorted me upstairs. His office isn’t huge, but he does have windows, which I guess makes him a feebie of distinction.
I can’t sit. I pace. Five feet this way, three feet that way. He really needs a bigger office.
I left D.D. at the courthouse. She’s not happy with me, having wanted to accompany me on this visit. But we both knew that was never going to happen. I might be her CI, but I still live by my rules. Besides, her crankiness is nothing new to me.
“I want to read the file,” I say now, cutting straight to the chase. “The FBI must have a file on Jacob. I want to see it. Every word.”
“Have a seat,” Samuel says again.
“Is he a suspect in other crimes, murders, disappearances? I talked about the things I saw—I told you. But I was only with him for a year. And we both know, there’s no way I was his first victim. He’d been busy way before me.”
Samuel stands behind his desk. He’s known for his wardrobe: Today’s perfectly tailored suit appears to be Armani, dark charcoal, and paired with a light gray shirt with white collar and cuffs, topped by a rich blue silk tie. How Samuel pays for his wardrobe, let alone his Lexus, is one of the many things he never discusses. I have my secrets. He has his. It’s what I like about him.
Since I won’t sit, he joins me, walking with his hands clasped behind him, dark-fringed eyes perfectly serious, black-is-beautiful bald head gleaming beneath the lights. I imagine it takes him serious time to get ready every morning. Trimming his sharply etched goatee. Picking out the suit, the shirt, the tie for the day. Let alone his collection of bespoke shoes and cashmere coats. Samuel is a scarily beautiful man. He uses his wardrobe to further enhance his skills. If others are stupid enough to get distracted by the packaging, that’s their problem, not his.
In contrast to my victim specialist, I wear jeans, worn combat boots, and a hoodie, the uniform of disenfranchised urbanites everywhere. When I first returned after my kidnapping, my mother would bring home bright summer dresses, which I never wore. She only recently stopped shopping for me. I wonder now if that’s because she finally figured out this is the new me, or if Samuel intervened on my behalf. Either was possible.
“You’re sure this Conrad Carter is the same person you saw in a bar?” Samuel asks now, pivoting at the wall, heading back toward me. He goes to one side of the twin chairs; I head for the other.
“Yes.”
“And he was there to meet Jacob?”
“Yes! He didn’t just sit down next to us; Jacob turned toward him. Jacob, like . . . talked to him. Jacob didn’t talk to others.”
Samuel tilts his head to the side, regards me steadily, as we reach opposite sides of the tiny office.
“I think they had a deal,” I say. “I think Conrad was there for me. Like . . . Jacob offered me to him or something. Some predators do that, you know. Trade around their victims. Or, hell, Jacob sold me for fresh drugs. He’d clearly been on a bender.”
Samuel nods. “Had Jacob done such a thing before?”
“No. But sometimes he’d pick out some random guy at a bar, then tell me I had to make the new guy want me.”
More nodding. More staring. Samuel has eyes like molten chocolate. When he uses his weapons like this, it always makes me wonder: If Jacob Ness made me, then who made Samuel?
“Some predators talk,” I say now. “In chat rooms, on super-encrypted sites, predators have been known to share tips.”
Samuel nods.
“So maybe this Conrad guy was another monster. He and Jacob connected somehow—Jacob had his laptop in the rig. And in some chat room, they made arrangements for the evening. Jacob promised me to Conrad. In return for what, I don’t know. Drugs, a fresh girl of his own.”
“But you didn’t go home with Conrad.”
“No. I ate and drank till I vomited. That put a damper on the evening.”
“You made yourself sick intentionally?”
“Yes.”
“Because to directly disobey Jacob would mean punishment, if not death. And to have sex with Conrad would mean punishment, if not death?”
I hadn’t thought of it that bluntly, but now I nod.
“You read the situation. You trusted your instincts. You survived.”
I sigh, whack the back of the chair. “Samuel! I’m not here for a fucking pep talk. I want the file. You’re FBI. The FBI loves files. Give me my fucking file!”
Samuel smiles. It’s a devastating look on him. Good luck to my mom, I think, because no man this beautiful can be easy to manage.
“No,” he says.
“What do you mean—”
“No. Big n. Little o. No. I will not give you the file.”
“That’s total bullshit—”
“That’s FBI policy. You’re neither an agent nor a member of law enforcement—”
“I’m a CI, working with the Boston police!”
He continues, “You have no right to the file.”
“Bullshit! You wouldn’t even have Jacob Ness if it weren’t for me. Half that file is my life story. Mine!”
“Technically, we wouldn’t have Jacob Ness if it weren’t for SSA Kimberly Quincy, who tracked him to the motel where he was holed up with you. She put together the data in the file. She organized the SWAT team that rescued you.”
I remember her. Not well. Those first few moments, hours, after the hotel room door blew in . . . I think I stood outside my body. I watched it all as a movie, happening to someone else. When she first approached me, asked me my name, I stared at her blankly. My name? It took a shockingly long time to answer that question.
Later, I read accounts of other survivors going through the same thing. First thing any captor does is take away your identity; Jacob forced me to go by Molly. Meaning SSA Quincy wasn’t just asking me a question; she was making me take the first step toward the person I used to be.
And have never been again.
“It’s my file,” I say, and there’s a tone of pleading in my voice. I realize I’m on the edge of tears. Me, who never cries. I don’t know what’s wrong. Since waking up this morning, since turning on the news, seeing the dead man’s face . . . I’m not myself. I don’t know who I am. I churn, I churn, I churn.
“Flora,” Samuel says at last, “please sit down.”
This time, I do. I collapse in one of the leather chairs. They’re hard and slippery and I hate them. Yet having sat, I feel like I’ll never get up again.
This is why D.D. couldn’t come. This is what she still doesn’t know.
I’m not always Flora Dane.
Sometimes, even all these years later, I’m still Jacob’s victim. Now I put my head in my hands and I don’t look at Samuel, because I don’t want him to see me like this either. Like I’ve been undone. Turned inside out. And there’s no me again, just this terrified girl, desperate Jacob will return at any second, even more terrified he won’t and that will be it. I’ll die alone in a coffin-sized box and my mom will never find my body.
The way my mom looked on TV. In clothes that weren’t her clothes. But her voice, ne
ver breaking. So strong. The silver fox charm resting in the hollow of her throat. A fox to show me, hundreds or thousands of miles away, how much she still loved me.
I’m rocking back and forth. Not making a sound, because I can’t afford to wake up Jacob. Except he’s dead. Except he’s still in my head. Except I want it to be over. Except I want it never to have happened. Except I’ll never get over him.
Samuel sits down. I’m aware vaguely of his movements. Most likely, he has his elegant fingers steepled in front of him. His position of patience. If I’m a void of darkness, then he has a well of serenity. I hate him for it. But then, I hate everyone right now. Myself most of all.
“There are other victims,” I whisper at last, still not looking up.
“Yes.”
“Their information, it’s in Jacob’s file.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want me to know. You think I’ll use it to torture myself more each night.”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
He won’t answer.
“Could I have made a difference? If I’d escaped earlier? Cooperated more with this Quincy agent?” My voice is nearly breaking.
“No.”
“Then let me see the file.”
“No.” He unsteeples his fingers, leans forward. “Because me knowing you couldn’t make a difference isn’t the same as you believing you couldn’t have made a difference.”
I know what he means. Survivor’s guilt. The toughest affliction for people like me.
“I should’ve told her about Conrad. SSA Quincy. I should’ve mentioned some of the times Jacob took me out to bars.”
“When did he take you out?”
“Nighttime.”
“Day, week, month?”
“I don’t know. Winter. Someplace in the South.”
“What bars? Do you have a list of names?”
