The 3rd Victim

by Sydney Bauer

And so a now completely defeated David lifted his briefcase in front of his chest so that he might weave his way more easily in and out of the spectators around him. He reached the front of the room and glanced right for the briefest of seconds to see the unmistakable horror on Roger Katz's face, but it was no compensation.

  ‘I am David Cavanaugh,’ he said to Sienna Walker as he placed his briefcase on the familiar defence table as calmly as he could manage. And then he lifted his chin to look at her.

  ‘It is nice to meet you, Mr Cavanaugh,’ she whispered, her pale eyes meeting his. In all his years as a defence attorney, no one had ever looked at him in the way that Sienna Walker just had. Her expression betrayed her agony at the loss of her child and a fear at her own predicament, but her jaw was set, her teeth fixed together, which left the contradictory impression that this woman was stronger than she looked, and that she was determined to fight. And then she blinked, and all he saw was pure and utter sadness.

  ‘You need to enter a plea,’ he said, gathering his thoughts once again.

  She nodded before whispering, ‘I did not kill my daughter.’

  And so David turned toward the front of the room and entered a plea of ‘not guilty’, proclaiming his new client's innocence, for all the world to hear.

  16

  Despite what everybody assumed, twenty-year-old Madonna Carrera was not named after the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not that this wasn't the natural assumption to make, given Madonna was the eldest of eight Carrera children in a family more Catholic than the Pope.

  Madonna was in fact named after the singer, largely because her mother, Louisa, under that delicate wedding veil, had had a bun in her oven when no one in the family had suspected. And considering Louisa's favourite CD at the time was Madonna's Immaculate Collection – her favourite single on said CD being the 1984 masterpiece ‘Like a Virgin’ – and further considering the newlywed Louisa Carrera had a sense of humour more wicked than the devil himself, she felt it only fitting that her firstborn should be named after a woman she both admired and secretly aspired to be. Madonna liked Madonna. She liked her because she had spunk and determination and drive to get to the top. And just like her namesake, the younger Madonna looked at all of life's opportunities as a means to get ahead, this latest career situation being just that.

  It was mid-morning and the waiting room was empty, but only because she had called to inform Dr Davenport's first patient that the doctor was running late. Madonna shifted in her seat and made the decision to put the tissue box in front of her at the back of the bottom drawer to her right. There was no way she was going to spend six whole weeks feeling like she was sitting at some neatness-obsessed old spinster's desk. Mrs Wallace was the elderly secretary slash nurse (the woman thought that a nursing degree bought her the right to lord it over every other secretary in the building) with the pole up her butt and the clothes that looked like they were made out of carpet who had just taken her way-overdue six weeks vacation and overtime leave.

  Wallace had worked for the doctor for close to two years – and now that she was reportedly putting her feet up on the deck of some mind-numbingly boring geriatric cruise ship, Madonna, whose own boss Dr Macintosh was on some equally as dry sabbatical in Kansas City, had applied to fill in.

  This was nice, thought Madonna as she sat back and scanned the waiting room around her. She had heard Dr Davenport had paid a fortune to some fancy interior decorator to come renovate his rooms and now that she was here, she had no doubt that the rumours were true. The abstract paintings on the walls were originals, the fabric on the chairs plush, the carpet was thick, the piped music contemporary and, more importantly, the magazines were interesting and current which, as far as Madonna was concerned, was the number one sign of a good physician – straight up.

  And Dr Davenport was a good physician, no doubt about that. Everybody in this Beacon Hill surgery – the four-storey, red-brick, flower-boxed Charles Street building housed five specialists in total, all charging their patients astronomical fees the moment that they walked in the door – thought they were pretty good, but Dr Davenport thought he was better, and Madonna had no doubt he was right.

  During Madonna's interview for this temporary position, Dr Davenport had made it very clear that his patients were not patients but ‘clients’, that they were paying a lot of money for his ‘services’, and that they deserved a ‘big bang for their buck’ – a figure of speech that left all sorts of wonderful images in Madonna's mind, most of them to do with banging the man before her on a bed of crisp one hundred dollar bills. He went on to talk about his determination to make his clients feel comfortable, cared for – and basically bursting to come back for more.

  ‘Why would they want to come back if you've cured them?’ Madonna asked, hoping her question sounded appropriately inquisitive.

  Davenport smiled. ‘My clients are not sick, Madonna, they are merely limited in their options, and we need to think of ourselves as people who can expand the possibilities available to them.’

  ‘They want to have kids and they can't.’

  ‘Not exactly, but close. These are people who can afford to be choosy, their circumstances have seen to that. And we are here to assure them that they have come to the best – and that their needs will be met above and beyond their expectations, and that all business entered into will be conducted with the utmost of discretion.’

  ‘Business,’ Madonna said with a smile, pleased that she was catching on. ‘The baby business.’

  ‘No, the reproduction business.’ Another smile. ‘There's a difference.’

  Madonna had nodded as if she knew exactly what the doctor was telling her, when in all honesty, she had no clue. Not that any of that mattered, because Madonna was here, and the working conditions were awesome, and her boss was a god, and their clients were rich, and her salary would close to double in the six weeks of bliss that lay ahead.

  And so it was no wonder that as the first clients entered through the clean, white-painted door, and as Madonna smiled pleasantly while explaining the doctor was running a little late, and as she offered them a coffee and handed them the latest Vogue Living and GQ, she offered a silent prayer to her namesake – the virgin, not the entertainer – that Mrs Wallace's cruise ship would do a Titanic and end up lying peacefully, unreachably, on the sandy Atlantic floor.

  17

  Sara was looking directly at him as he entered the reception area. Her expression was all soft and caring but tinged with that familiar crinkle of concern.

  Within a second David felt like an ass – for being … such a shit! He'd been angry that she disagreed with him, and pissed off that a good-looking rich guy like Hunt wanted to woo her on the dance floor, offer her a job. None of that was her fault. She had a right to her opinion, and considering Sara was as smart as she was and looked the way she did … well, David wasn't stupid. He saw the way men glanced at her and knew most of them would give their right arm to change places with him – dumbass that he was.

  ‘I'm sorry,’ he said.

  She shook her head, already walking toward him, a concerned-looking Arthur and Nora rising from their seats in Arthur's office beyond. ‘Actually,’ she whispered, ‘I kind of like it when you're jealous.’

  ‘Who said I was jealous?’ He let his fingers trace her hand as the other two entered reception.

  Sara glanced behind her. ‘You can make it up to me later,’ she said, just as Arthur met his eye.

  ‘We heard what happened,’ said Arthur. He gestured for them all to congregate back in his office, which they did, David throwing his briefcase and wet overcoat on the side-wall sofa, prompting Nora to pick up his coat and hang it on the rack by the door.

  ‘You got snowballed,’ Arthur continued, David having previously told him and Nora about his conversation with Hunt the day before.

  ‘Avalanched more like it,’ David replied as he started to pace Arthur's thick Persian rug. ‘But it doesn't make any sense. Hunt has no say over the court's
docket. He doesn't control Judge Weeks. So how did he make what just happened happen?’

  It was a very good question, considering the variables at play. First up, David did not have an arraignment at the Municipal Court every morning, in fact he had not been there in over a week. And even when he was, on a normal day David would have been out of that courtroom in seconds, but the crowd, his being held up by running into Simba – if this morning's events were all part of Hunt's design, then luck was most certainly on his side.

  ‘David's right,’ said Sara. ‘This must just be a coincidence.’

  Arthur rubbed at the top of his nose where his glasses cut a groove. ‘Possibly, but I know men like this Hunt and they rarely rely on chance to reach their objectives.’ He turned to David. ‘Whatever the case, son, you have a situation on your hands. You said Joe believes the evidence points solely at the mother.’

  ‘He does. And there's no way they would have arrested her unless they had enough for probable cause.’

  ‘Perhaps Katz persuaded him.’

  ‘Not on this one. The last time I spoke to Joe he was determined to build the case before he went to the Kat.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘You need to speak to him, find out what he's got.’

  ‘I know that, Arthur, but now he'll be limited in what he can tell me, considering I represent the accused.’

  He met Sara's eye once again, and he could see that she was trying to gauge his feelings on what had just occurred.

  ‘It goes against your gut instinct, doesn't it?’ she asked then. ‘I'm sorry, David, this isn't fair.’

  But he didn't reply, and as the silence stretched on, all three turned to look at him, perhaps sensing that what Sara was suggesting might not be one hundred per cent correct.

  ‘David?’ said Sara. ‘What is your gut telling you?’ She moved toward the window, leaning against its ledge.

  ‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘My gut shouldn't be telling me anything. I barely had a chance to speak to the woman.’

  ‘Maybe so, but I know you, David, and you have a sixth sense about people the moment you meet them.’

  David still didn't answer.

  ‘When she did speak,’ attempted Arthur, ‘what did she say?’

  ‘I asked her how she wanted to plead and she said … she said she didn't kill her daughter,’ replied David.

  ‘That's the way she put it?’ asked Nora.

  ‘Yes.’

  Sara's eyes shot to Arthur and then Nora before turning back to David. ‘Oh my god, David – you believe her.’

  David hesitated, offering her the slightest of nods before: ‘I … maybe … but … What else is she going to say, Sara? Every guilty defendant claims their own innocence.’

  ‘You're right. But you don't believe most of them.’

  But David was not ready to trust his instincts so completely, especially when a man like Hunt was so closely tied to the case.

  ‘There's something else we need to consider,’ said Arthur, and David knew exactly what his boss was about to say.

  ‘Hunt told me she was guilty,’ said David.

  ‘Yes. So either he is telling the truth, or incorrectly speculating on her emotional condition, or … or has an objective we are yet to identify.’

  ‘Isn't that a little harsh?’ asked Sara. ‘I mean, granted the guy is arrogant as all get-up, but perhaps he was just doing what he claims to be doing – trying to help a friend. He knows you're the best at what you do, David.’

  It was possible, thought David, but there was something about Hunt's tenaciousness that told him not. ‘Even if that was the case, why would he want to engage someone who is best friends with the lead investigator on the case? He knows I respect Joe's opinion.’

  ‘Right,’ offered Sara, ‘but maybe Hunt thought your friendship with Joe could work to Sienna Walker's advantage – that you would be privy to certain details of the investigation that other defence attorneys might not.’

  ‘I don't think so,’ said Arthur. ‘Hunt would know Joe is a professional and that there'd be no way he'd compromise his responsibilities as head of Homicide to swing a few favours for a friend.’

  They all knew that Arthur was right.

  ‘Maybe it was a personal decision,’ suggested Sara, throwing up another alternative. ‘He knows you have a public profile in this city – that you're married with a small child and …’

  ‘You think he wanted to hire me because we have a baby girl?’

  ‘It's possible,’ chimed in Arthur. ‘You're a husband, father of a little girl. If someone in your circumstances can stand up in court and say that they know this woman is incapable of such a crime, then perhaps a jury could do the same?’

  Arthur made a good argument, but David was still not convinced. There was something more to Hunt's motives, he just couldn't figure out what.

  ‘Oh for goodness sake,’ said Nora, finally breaking the silence. ‘Are you all so blind?’

  The other three turned to look at her.

  ‘You're trying too hard to solve the problem. Yes, David is good friends with Joe, yes, he is a respected attorney and a wonderful father, but that is not why Mr Hunt wanted to engage him.’ She shook her head. ‘Certainly not. No way in the world.’

  ‘Then why, Nora?’ asked David, taking a step toward her.

  ‘Don't you see, lad? For years now the people of this city have watched you stick your neck out, risk your own life even, to prove the innocence of your clients. Your pig-headedness …’ she smiled as she said this, ‘… means you never give up, you fight to the death, and as a result, whether you like it or not, you have earned a reputation as someone who stands up for not just the person you are representing, but the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty.

  ‘You instil a sense of trust, David, a trust so strong and genuine that a jury has little choice but to sit up and listen to what you have got to say. You do not defend the guilty, lad. Never have and never will. And that is why Mr Hunt needs so desperately to engage your services – not because of what you do, but because of who you are.’

  18

  The following morning

  Sienna Walker stepped forward, placing her pale, naked body directly under the icy spray that shot from the showerhead like bullets. She was freezing. But her insides boiled with torment and anger and fear.

  She closed her eyes, and to her surprise the water became rain – strong, ice-cold rain the likes of which she had felt on her smooth pink face as a child. And despite her knowing she needed to focus on the now, she allowed the memory to continue, picturing herself running inside her substantial Surrey home, tossing off her Paddington Bear coat and shedding her bright blue boots before heading to the library where she curled up in her father's favourite armchair in front of the sweet-smelling eighteenth century fireplace.

  Despite it all Sienna felt the gratitude overwhelm her as she understood the debt she owed her late parents for giving her the life she had once taken for granted, a life filled with everything from British literature to comfortable armchairs, to lazy bloodhounds named Sleuth. Her mother and father were at pains to supplement her first-class education with other experiences designed to heighten her senses, whether it be encouraging her to swim the icy lakes, to climb the tallest elms, or to skip barefoot across the endless snow-covered glens.

  She wished she could repay them, just as she wished many things when it came to the void that was left by their passing. There was so much they did not get to see – so much they did not know. She wondered what they would think of the fragile shape now cowering under the too-cold shower in Boston's Suffolk County Jail. The Harrington that became a Walker – the girl with so much promise who gave up her life to become …

  ‘Walker,’ called the female guard. ‘Spa time is over.’

  Sienna opened her eyes, taking in the tiny shower recess around her. It was located between what the deputies called the ‘dirty’ and the ‘clean’ rooms. She backed away from the powerful jet which im
mediately ceased to fire and accepted a grey, threadbare towel from the deputy whose middle was encircled by a too big Sheriff's Department's belt that caused her thin frame to swagger.

  ‘You can put these on,’ said the deputy, holding out a bundle as Sienna clung to the towel now wrapped tightly around her. ‘And don't bother asking for a smaller size. This isn't Neiman Marcus.’

  Sienna held up the red jumpsuit – the waist was so large she knew she would have to wrap the pull cord around her twice – and then she looked up to see a large, round, tanned woman approaching with her latex-gloved hands outstretched.

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Sienna.

  ‘She's the nurse. She is going to speak with you and check you over, see if you're fit to enter the general population.’

  ‘You're worried I will pass on some sort of disease?’ asked Sienna, clearing her throat.

  ‘We're not worried about the general population, honey, we're worried about you. It's in your interest that we record your state of health on entry.’

  Sienna shook her head. ‘I don't understand,’ she said.

  ‘This isn't a jailhouse version of The Truman Show, you know. The women in here read the papers and listen to the news. Lots of them are mothers – they've got kids waiting for them on the outside and … well, let's just say some of them might have a bone to pick.’

  Sadly, Sienna understood. ‘This is like the “before” shot,’ she said, ‘in case there is an “after”.’

  But the deputy did not answer.

  ‘I didn't kill my daughter,’ said Sienna then, knowing even as she said it that it really made no difference to this woman one way or another.

  ‘Not for me to decide,’ said the deputy, before taking a seat at her desk nearby, her hand scanning down a checklist of Sienna's personal details. ‘You didn't list a next of kin,’ she said.

  ‘I don't have one.’

  ‘Nobody?’

  ‘No.’

  The deputy lifted her chin, her face softening just a little. ‘Look, I know this is intimidating at first, but things tend to get easier – once you get used to it.’