by Kate Gable
"We didn't mention this earlier, but she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder."
"What does that mean?"
"It's difficult to explain, but it's a mental illness with a distorted sense of self and strong emotional reactions. She has a hard time with relationships, and she often struggles with feelings of emptiness, abandonment, and general detachment from reality.”
Mrs. Reynard rattles off the description as if it’s a text she had memorized.
"So, what was it like to have her live here? What was she like?" I say, prodding for more details.
"Courtney lies all the time," Mrs. Reynard says, shifting back and forth between past and present tense. It's almost as if she isn't fully accepting the fact that her daughter is dead. "She stole her grandmother's credit cards and her identity."
"She did?"
"Yep." She nods. "She bought a house."
"What do you mean?"
"It's ridiculous. She bought one of those dilapidated houses for $50,000 in Kentucky. The ones that they have on those websites, Cheap Old Houses or something like that. The whole thing is just a mess. She bought it with her grandmother's money and registered it under her name. Now, we owe all these taxes, and I don't even know if we can even sell that house again."
Wow, I say to myself.
"She stole my identity as well, or rather, my credit cards. We had to keep all of our private information locked up. She bought clothes, jewelry, whatever. She didn't even care that we would find out when the statement came. She pretended to be other people online."
"Okay. Tell me more about that." I want to ask her why she hadn't told me any of this before, but it doesn't feel like the right time. So, I bite my tongue.
"She's uncontrollable," Mrs. Reynard says.
Again, present tense. Why? Why does she keep lapsing into this? She was just at her daughter's funeral and now it seems like she doesn't believe she's dead.
"My daughter is totally uncontrollable," Mrs. Reynard says.
A tear runs down her cheek.
She doesn't say anything for a moment, and I don't ask any questions. We sit here in silence, but then it gets to be too long. I prod her again.
"What did you do when you found out?"
"About what?" she asks.
"About the house, the credit card theft, the purchases, the identity theft, all of it."
"We talked to her about it. We fought about it. She promised not to do it again and then she did. We had to hide everything in our house like we were living with a thief. Do you know what that's like?”
Mrs. Reynard looks up into my eyes and glares.
"I can't even imagine," I say. "What about the people that she talked to online? Have you caught her talking to these men?"
"I banned her from using the computer. I took it away and she bought another one. She had her phone. I took that away. She used her iPod. How the hell do you even use an iPod to go online? I have no idea. She didn't listen to anything we said. We made threats. I was going to call the cops, but my husband stopped me. He didn't want her to have a record, even one for a juvenile. We just couldn't do anything to control her."
She takes a sip of her tea and then looks straight into my eyes again.
"I caught her using all of these fake identities, pretending to be in her twenties while she was on these dating sites. It was ridiculous. Some thirteen year olds can possibly pass for being eighteen, but not Courtney. She looks like a child. When she put on makeup and got dressed up, she looks even younger.”
I wait for her to continue.
“Looked even younger,” Mrs. Reynard corrects herself. “I’m sorry I keep doing that.”
"Did she use her real pictures online?" I ask, after shifting my weight in the seat.
“I don’t know. Probably not when she was talking to strangers. She would just meet up with these guys as this fake person and when they would ask her about why she looks different, she would just say that she doesn't. I mean, how does that work?"
I take a deep breath and exhale, trying to collect my thoughts.
"That was a very dangerous thing that she was doing,” I finally say.
"Yeah, I know."
“Did she know you knew?"
“No… Well, sort of," Mrs. Reynard says. "She left her computer out a few times, logged in. I read the messages. She always used Facebook because older people are on Facebook. She was never on TikTok where you'd find all the people her own age. It's like she wanted this to happen."
"You don't mean that," I say.
The words escape my mouth before I can stop them. I realize that they are steeped in judgement and it's the last thing that she probably wants to hear, but she doesn't say anything and barely reacts. "What happened that night?"
"Nothing. I was home, just like I said."
"You didn't use her computer, not even to check on her?"
"No. Not that night. I went upstairs, I went to bed and took an Ambien. I haven't been sleeping well for years. I take them almost every night and I know it's not good, but I just need to rest."
I swallow hard.
"Why would Courtney pretend to meet up with Jesse again?" I say, tilting my head.
I have to play this just right. I have to add just the right amount of pressure or I'm going to blow it. If I push her too hard and she's not ready to say it (whatever it is), she can clam up and I'll have little to go on.
"She did? You know who Jesse is?"
"Yes. I saw the messages. I saw that they had met and that she kept messaging him after that. He didn't want anything to do with her, huh?
“Well, someone had logged into his account and pretended that they were still talking. Someone did it from your house."
Her face drops. Before she says anything else, Dr. Reynard walks into the kitchen.
I jump, but I catch myself and plaster a casual smile while waving hello. I cover the recorder with my hand and quietly slide it into my pocket without turning it off.
"Were you on Courtney's computer that night?" Mrs. Reynard asks her husband.
"What night?"
"That night. The night that she disappeared."
"No," he says. Standing in the doorway with his shoulders broad, he shakes his head.
"Yes, you were," Mrs. Reynard says. "I remember she had the laptop down here. You opened it and you looked at it."
He walks past her to the fridge.
She continues anyway with, "Did you see the message from Jesse?"
"Who's Jesse?"
"You know who Jesse is. He's that guy, that trucker that she met up with who turned her away."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, but I think it's time for Detective Carr to leave. We need to have some time to grieve."
"You need some time to grieve? Really? Don't make me laugh," Mrs. Reynard snaps. "You could barely wait until her funeral was over to go back to the hospital."
"I had an emergency, Maureen, you know that."
"Someone could have covered for you; I know that much. You didn't want to be here. You didn't want to deal with this…with her death."
"Yeah. So, what? Work's how I deal with everything, you know that."
"What about me? What about me needing my husband after my daughter was brutally murdered?” She gasps for air as she says that.
"Listen, Detective Carr, I think we all need to just relax a little bit and we can talk to you about this some other time,” Dr. Reynard says in a cold, detached tone of voice.
"Why did you write that message from Jesse? How did you even log into her computer?" Mrs. Reynard continues.
"I did no such thing, and you know it," he snaps. "Courtney snuck out and someone grabbed her. Some sick person did this to her. He watched her suffocate and die. Detective Carr and the LAPD have to figure out who did it. Not us."
A shiver runs down my spine, followed by another that runs down the back of my neck, followed by another. How could he know that? How could he know that she had suffocated and
that the guy who hung her watched her die?
Dr. Reynard approaches me and takes a step away to usher me through the door, but I don't move.
"How did you know that?" I ask. "How did you know that Courtney didn't die quickly?"
"What do you mean?"
"That was never revealed to anyone. She was found hanging, but no one told you or anyone else that she had suffocated and that she wasn't dead when she was hung there."
"Wait a second.” Mrs. Reynard gets up from her chair. "You weren't here that night."
"Be quiet," he says.
"You weren't here when I went to bed. When I woke up, I looked over where you were supposed to be, but you weren't there. Bill, where were you?"
"I was right there with you. I don't know what you want me to say. You really think I, what, killed Courtney? C’mon."
Mrs. Reynard’s eyes widen as she stares at her husband in disbelief.
"You weren't here that night,” she whispers, shaking her head.
My stomach ties in knots and I take a few steps toward him, reaching for my weapon.
This is it. I'm going to arrest him.
Just as I start to pull it out of the holster, Dr. Reynard turns and points a 9mm at me.
"Tim, what are you doing?" Mrs. Reynard gasps, placing her hand over her mouth. Her already pale face turns practically green as all the blood drains away.
"You get away from me," he snaps at her.
I take a small step away and then another.
"Not you."
He grabs my hand and pulls me close. He places the gun to my temple and I can feel my heartbeat against the smoothness of the steel.
"You think you can just come in here and accuse me of these things?"
I take a few forceful deep breaths as he presses the weapon harder against my head.
No matter what happens, I have to stay calm.
I still have two aces up my sleeve; he doesn't know that I have a weapon and he doesn't know that all of this is being recorded.
24
"Dr. Reynard, please put the gun down," I say as calmly as possible.
I feel my heart pumping, practically jumping out of my chest. My heart is beating so hard that I can barely hear or think as the blood rushes around in my head. "Dr. Reynard, please put the gun down."
"No," he utters through his clenched teeth.
"Tim, do as she says. What are you doing?" Mrs. Reynard yells.
"Maureen, shut the hell up. This doesn't concern you."
"It doesn't concern me? You have a gun pointed at the detective's head."
I swallow hard. I hate to say this, but she's making it worse. The energy in the room is amplifying.
Then someone says, "Mom? Dad?" It's a tiny little voice belonging to their five-year-old.
He's dressed in pajamas, with little trucks and monkeys on them. The pants and shirt are mismatched, like they belong to two different sets.
His hair is tousled and he looks like he's been sleeping.
"Dennis.” Mrs. Reynard runs over and wraps her son up in her arms.
"Take him upstairs," Dr. Reynard commands.
“No,” she whimpers.
I hold my breath. I pulse my fingers inside my palm nervously shifting my weight from one foot to another. The barrel of the gun is still pressed tightly to my temple.
"We're staying here until you let her go.” Her voice is quiet but filled with resolve.
"I'm not letting her go, Maureen!” Dr. Reynard yells, his eyes are bloodshot.
His forehead is covered in sweat and there are big underarm stains on his button-down shirt stretching down his back and up his front.
I don't know what to do.
If it were just the two of us, I could reach for my weapon and try to shoot him, but it's a close call.
He's pressing his weapon right to my temple. If I hesitate, if I don't get it right, I'm dead.
"You haven't done anything wrong yet, Dr. Reynard. You can still let me go and we can just talk about this.”
This isn’t true, of course, but I have to try something.
“People know I'm here, but no one suspects this to be anything but a general interview,” I add, careful not to make it a threat.
"You can't believe that," Dr. Reynard says, pushing the gun further into my skin. "Go sit down."
I do as he says. I take a seat in the chair where I’d sat behind the marble table in the kitchen.
Dennis, their son, starts to cry.
"I don't want to play cops and robbers now," Dennis mumbles through the tears. “Make Daddy stop.”
Mrs. Reynard tries to calm him down, but it's to no avail.
"You've done nothing wrong," I repeat myself. "You can take all of this back."
"No, I can't," he says, shaking his head.
"Tell me what happened,” I say, knowing that the recording is still going.
"She just wouldn’t stop. She wouldn't stop, Maureen!" He turns around and yells in the direction of his wife. "Courtney would just lie and lie."
"I know about the house," I say, pivoting the conversation.
"The house was the least of it. It cost fifty grand for some old, dilapidated plantation in Kentucky. Five acres, 2,000 square feet, not a single straight piece of wood in the place, but who cares?”
“So, that wasn’t a big deal?” I ask.
“It was, but it wasn’t the stupidest thing she did.”
He gestures wildly with the gun as he talks. I see a moment here and there where I could reach for my weapon and shoot him, but then I glance over at his son.
He'll remember this.
If I kill his father right in front of him, he will never be okay.
"Take Dennis away!” Dr. Reynard yells and my blood runs cold.
"No," Mrs. Reynard snaps back.
She holds him tighter. She's still in the doorway and I want to ask her to leave, but I'm afraid of what will happen if she does.
"Courtney wouldn’t stop lying. She just got such satisfaction out of it. Do you know what she did besides the house?”
“What?" I ask.
"She went to my work and took one of my lab coats. You know, the one with my name on it? She saw my fucking patients. She actually walked up to the emergency room and she had the audacity to take them in the back, ask them about their medical histories, ask them what was wrong, and then treat them.”
His eyes flicker wildly as the anger brewing inside of him reaches a boiling point.
"I'm really sorry," I say quietly.
But what I really want to ask is why.
What I really want to tell him is that maybe she was just trying to be like him, to emulate him. But I worry that will just make him angrier.
"How dare she pretend to be me?" Dr. Reynard demands to know, using the gun as if it were a pointer in a lecture hall.
I look closer to see how tightly he’s holding it in his hand and debate as to whether or not I should shoot him next time he pulls it away from me.
If I do as I was trained, I’d have to aim center mass, right in the heart and he'd die right before us.
But what happens if I shoot him in the arm or the leg?
What will happen to that gun?
How good is he with it?
What if he knows how to use it?
What if he shoots his wife, his child, or me?
“What happened at the hospital?” I ask, trying to calm him down, but it has the opposite effect.
"My daughter pretended to be me. I found out about it that night!” he roars. "Did you know that she did that, Maureen? That she embarrassed me like that? She went to my work and she actually prescribed people medication. She could have killed someone. I could have lost my license. My boss called me into his office. You know how much I hate that son of a bitch? His cockiness, his self-importance? Do you know what it was like for me to sit there and to listen to that lecture like I was a little child? No one had talked to me that way for years. Not since my father…”
"What are you trying to tell me, Tim?" Mrs. Reynard asks, standing up.
She pulls away from her son and puts her hand over her face to cover up something that just occurred to her.
Dr. Reynard and I exchange glances.
I already know the answer; what I don't have is proof.
"What did you do, Tim?" She runs over and throws her fists at his chest. "Tell me what you did."
"Nothing. Nothing that wasn't absolutely necessary, Maureen, and you know it. It was ... Nothing. I didn't do anything." He flip-flops back and forth, dodging the question.
Mrs. Reynard looks into her husband’s eyes with a wild look of disbelief.
"You killed her?" She asks, gasping for air.
”It was an accident," he says, tears streaming down his face. "It was... It was an accident. I didn't mean for it to happen."
"What did you do?" She hits him with her fists, shaking his shoulders.
"She impersonated me, Maureen. She didn't have the right to do that."
"What did you do?" she whispers, tears streaming down her face.
"I went up to her room to talk to her. I didn't tell you because I didn't know how to tell you. I didn't want you to worry. I just wanted to handle it."
"What did she do? What did she say?” Mrs. Reynard pleads.
"She just ... She lied about it at first. She denied ever even being there. When I kept pushing her, she told me to fuck off. She told me that it was none of my business. She told me that she could do whatever the hell she wanted to. She was completely out of control and I couldn't handle it anymore. I just grabbed her. It was just an accident."
"What? What was an accident?” She pushes, looking deep into his eyes.
I glance down at the gun in his hand. It's still tucked into his palm. His fingers are wrapped tightly around it. It's almost as if it has somehow become an extension of his hand. He's big, tall, and isn't a stranger at the gym. There’s no way I can overpower him.
There's Mrs. Reynard to think about. What would she do if I attacked her husband? I could shoot him, of course, but Dennis is standing in the doorway, pressed against one side of the wall. His eyes, which are as big as saucers, have a lost, far away expression in them. He looks confused and on the verge of tears.
I want to ask him to go upstairs, but I don't want to remind his parents that I’m still here.
