Katarina

by Alona Jarden

  The lawyer who had accompanied me when I was accused of kidnapping Kate represented me, even when the two articles of first-degree murder, of her mother and stepfather, were added to the indictment.

  He was very angry at the lack of seriousness I had shown in previous court dates and had only insisted on one thing. He advised me not to plead guilty and to claim that I had been struck temporarily by insanity, due to an attack of jealousy and rage, an argument that wasn’t so far from the truth.

  "Your Honor, the prosecution would like to call Mr. Christian Briggs to the stand." Whispers spread among everyone in the room. My eyes scanned the crowd, searching for the one for which I was willing to deal with all this, but she wasn’t there.

  The last time I saw Kate was at the police station. I said confusing things and half-truths to her that must have troubled her, and no matter how hard I tried to contact her in order to fully expose the truth, she refrained from responding.

  I tried to get her to hear me in every possible way, but it wasn’t until two weeks ago that she answered my phone call and promised that she would come to the hearing. In exchange to appearing for my testimony, she demanded a promise that I would be accurate and truthful and would state things exactly as they had happened. A promise I had every intention of fulfilling.

  "Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" the clerk asked as I raised my right hand.

  "I swear."

  "Mr. Briggs, please sit down," the Judge gestured to the witness' seat, and so I did.

  "Mr. Briggs, please tell the court how you came to meet the murder victim," I was asked by the prosecution.

  "I object, Your Honor." My energetic lawyer jumped to his feet and continued firmly, "The prosecution assumes that the defendant knew the deceased and is trying to draw a reaction by using the word 'murder' without any justifiable cause."

  "But... You're Honor... She... She was murdered," the lawyer on behalf of the prosecution seemed confused.

  "And I really did know her," I added, and scooped up the first chuckles from the jury.

  "Objection denied," the Judge ruled and I was asked to answer the prosecutor's question.

  "I knew Kate's mother about three years before Kate was born. We lived in the same neighborhood. We met occasionally at the grocery store or at the local post office. If I'm being honest, not all of our meetings were accidental. Sometimes I'd made sure we meet."

  "Okay, so when did your relationship become of a romantic nature?"

  "As far as I was concerned, it was immediate, but she needed a little more time. She was an extraordinary woman, but with great sadness in her eyes."

  "Objection, Your Honor." The prosecution lawyer stopped me and looked at the Judge as he complained about my answer. "The defendant can’t tell whether her eyes were sad or not."

  "Sustained." The Judge turned to me. "Mr. Briggs, I'll ask you to respond in a concrete and practical manner."

  "But I did, Your Honor." I smiled and turned my gaze to the members of the jury. "I looked at the most beautiful woman in the world and told her the cheesiest line in the universe. I said she had something very sad in her eyes and it wasn’t long before we found ourselves in my apartment, or rather, in my bed."

  "So there was no sadness in her eyes? Was it just your way to hit on her?"

  "Yes and no..."

  "No, there was no sadness and, yes, that was your way to hit on her?"

  "Yes," I smiled and got a reprimand from my lawyer, who wasn’t aware of the agreement I’d made with Kate.

  "Mr. Briggs, when you say it wasn’t long before you got into bed together, what do you mean?"

  "Two hours."

  "Two hours?" the prosecution lawyer found it hard to believe. "Wasn’t the victim a married woman at the time?"

  "She was a married and imprisoned woman. A woman who was committed to a relationship that only caused her pain and suffering."

  "Are you saying she was a battered woman?"

  "No. She was not beaten."

  "Was her husband a violent man? Blunt? Verbally abusive?"

  "No, no. I understand where your questions are coming from, sir, but you're probably asking them coming from a past of fruitful and enjoyable relationships."

  "That's actually right, Mr. Briggs." A smile stretched on the face of the young lawyer.

  "Then you can’t understand the feeling of coming home every day to a man you're sick of. She used to hide out in my apartment for days and hours, refusing to return to him, claiming she had grown to hate him and that there was no trace of the man she fell in love with in the man waiting for her back home."

  "Mr. Briggs, is it true to say that you developed a long lasting romance and that your encounter wasn’t a one-time experience of loss of control?"

  "Yes, it would be right to say so," I replied, breathing deeply, recalling those beautiful days.

  "Would it also be correct to say that you were in an intimate relationship with one another?"

  "Obviously," I grinned.

  "And as far as you know, she wasn’t pregnant when your affair began?"

  "Kate's mother couldn’t get pregnant by her husband. She always claimed that her body rejected him, as she was disgusted by him."

  "Did she say what was so repulsive about him?"

  "She didn’t need to say much. It was obvious. He was a man without self-respect. He would erase himself and his wishes anytime someone spoke resolutely to him. Do you understand?" I turned back to the jury. "She thought she had found a man, but he turned out to be a doormat."

  "Mr. Briggs, I'll ask you not to address the jury." The Judge rebuked me and ordered the prosecution attorney to continue.

  For a few long minutes I answered his guiding questions while hiding nothing. I hoped that Kate was looking at me in some way. She could have been peeking through a crack in the door, catching some live stream of the hearing or sitting there in disguise. I just hoped she heard me keeping my promise to her and telling the court the whole truth, as she had asked me to do.

  "I remember that day as if it was yesterday." I felt a lump in my throat. "She performed the pregnancy test in my apartment and we celebrated its results while making long, passionate love."

  "Mr. Briggs, I ask you to answer only about what you have been asked."

  "There's no reason to be jealous, sir. You said you were in a loving relationship, didn’t you? Is passionate love making not a part of it?"

  "Mr. Briggs!" The Judge slammed his gavel while the jury again smothered some giggles at my jokes.

  "She claimed that she hadn’t been with her husband since she began to see me regularly, and we both agreed that this pregnancy was a divine sign."

  "A sign of what?"

  "A sign that she had to end her relationship with him and start living with me in the open. We spent days planning our lives together. We were going to call our daughter 'Kate' and move to the adjoining town, but all of our dreams were shattered a few months later, when the pregnancy started to show on her body."

  "What happened then?"

  "I didn’t know what had happened at the time, but she suddenly started talking differently to me. She explained how much her husband had changed and returned to being the man she once loved, blah, blah, blah."

  "Could you please elaborate on all that blah, blah, and blah?"

  "I tried to reach her logically. I tried to explain that she was letting her fears take over and that she didn’t need to be afraid of being left all alone, but she chose to distance herself from me anyway."

  "How about the other victim? Her husband? Did you have any contact with him prior to the night of the murder?"

  "Yes," I lowered my eyes as the tremendous impact of that horrific conversation struck me again. "I knew him from here and there. We had spoken."

  "Did you discuss the relationship you had with his wife?"

  "We did." Once again, I looked around the room and was dis
appointed when I didn’t see my daughter, before I continued to speak frankly. "When Kate was five and a half, he unexpectedly came to my apartment. At first, I didn’t understand how he thought she was actually his child, but his statements left me no room for doubt."

  "What did he say?"

  "He explained that they had never ceased to be intimate. He just smiled and said that she had been with both of us."

  "So you knew the child could be his?"

  "Kate is mine!" I clenched my fists on the witness stand and immediately reminded myself to relax. “As it turned out, the rag she married hadn’t been a rag at all. He was firm and determined to keep his family close to him, as he stood full of confidence in my apartment. He raised his voice and was nothing like the man she had described to me, when he confronted me and demanded that I keep away from his wife."

  "Would it be correct to say that the next time you saw the deceased was on the night of the murder?" the prosecution attorney asked me to proceed with the plot.

  "Objection, Your Honor." Again, my bouncy lawyer stood up and exclaimed in an excited voice, "The prosecutor is putting words into the defendant's mouth and is trying to guide him in answering his questions."

  "I will rephrase," the prosecution lawyer rushed to reply, even before the Judge responded to the objection. "When was the next time you saw the male victims?"

  "On the night of the murder," I answered with a smile on my face. My eyes turned to the jury but, this time, I didn’t succeed in making them smile or giggle in return.

  I hoped I'd managed to make them like me enough, and in fact, that was my plan. I wanted to show them that I didn’t conform to the definition of a cold-blooded murderer. I hoped they would be able to see that my beloved's lies drove me nuts, but as soon as my testimony focused on the night I stuck the kitchen knife in their bodies, they forgot the connection we had created and looked at me with judgmental eyes.

  I forgot about my promise to Kate and spoke openly of my own free will. I no longer wanted to lie. I was tired of all this. I didn’t care about the consequences, as long as Kate was back in touch with me, and my manner of speaking during this interrogation was her condition for agreeing to do so.

  "What happened the night of the murder, Mr. Briggs?"

  "I don’t remember the exact words we said to each other, but I remember what went through my mind."

  "Tell the court everything you remember."

  "I remember that I went there demanding that they didn’t take my place in my daughter's life."

  "Your alleged daughter." The prosecutor at me, ready for my outburst, but it failed to arrive.

  "Kate is my daughter, sir. I knew it then in my heart and I know it for a fact, today."

  "Objection, Your Honor. We have submitted laboratory tests proving that Kate is the suspect's biological daughter."

  "I'll withdraw the question," the prosecutor raised his hands in surrender. "Please, continue." He gestured toward me, pointing the way to telling the truth.

  "I went to their apartment in order to expose our love story to him. I hoped he would understand that his wife wasn’t who he thought she was. I meant to tell him everything she shared with me and that she wasn’t in love with him at all, but I was made a fool of."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I thought I would surprise him by revealing my feelings, but I was the one who was surprised when I discovered that I was nothing more than a sperm donor for them."

  "Can you please explain that, Mr. Briggs?"

  "I told him everything. I kept nothing back and explicitly detailed my having relations with his wife, while she stood next to him with her hands crossed and smiled. She didn’t seem worried about him hearing what I had to say and he didn’t seem touched by anything I had to say. He only looked at me with disdain, thanked me for my contribution to building his family and demanded that I leave his home."

  "Thanked you? How did he thank you?"

  "He explained to me that their relationship was better than ever and that her romance with me was all a part of their mutual plan to get pregnant."

  "What did you do next?"

  "I can’t remember," I felt my heart rate speeding up.

  "Is it true that you took the kitchen knife and murdered them both in cold blood, leaving them to bleed on the floor of their kitchen?"

  "I know that's what I did, but I have no memory from the moment the actual act was done, sir," I lied, disappointed with myself.

  "You don’t remember the second you stuck a knife into the bodies of those who played you for a fool? Have you no recollection of your sweet revenge against those who stole your flesh and blood and then threw you out as if you were nothing but garbage?"

  "I don’t." I was afraid that if he asked me that one more time, I would explain how much I’d enjoyed it when I inserted the blade of the knife in his body, and then hers.

  "But do you remember going upstairs? Can you remember kidnapping their daughter?"

  "She's my daughter!" My eyes widened as the doors of the courtroom opened and through them came my one and only. My one and only. Mine!

  My hysterical weeping on the witness stand led the Judge to declare a break in the hearing. My hands reached out to her and my voice broke into tears as I called her and begged her forgiveness over and over again, but she just sat there and gave me a look I had never seen before.

  That hearing was only the first of many, and it was clear that, at the end of the day, I would be found guilty and would be sentenced. I knew that whether I was convicted of manslaughter or murder in the first degree, I would spend the rest of my life in prison, but the second my eyes saw her, it didn’t matter anymore.

  I didn’t care if the skeletons in my closet were on display and I didn’t make any more efforts to make the jury like me. All I cared about was my Kate and I knew that her arrival at the courthouse was the first step in renewing our damaged relationship.

  Chapter 35

  Andrew

  Katarina was no longer in my possession and, if I'm being honest, it seemed that she never had been.

  The challenging period she had to overcome required restraint out of me. Restraint I didn’t know if I could manage, but I enjoyed being a source of information and support, for as long as that's what I was required to be for her.

  For the first few months, she came every day to the cabin, to me, after her therapy sessions. We sat on the porch rocking chairs and talked for hours. I shared more and more details from our childhood and was often amazed when she shared things that she had discovered, as they were in complete contrast to the theory I had built for myself about what had happened to her.

  "So it looks like I'm really his biological daughter," she said about three months after that day in the interrogation room. "Even the third lab test I ordered confirms it."

  "I... I can’t believe it, but..."

  "But that's the truth," she exhaled in an undefined way.

  "It doesn’t matter. You were still Katarina and he is still not the person who was supposed to raise you."

  "Andrew, I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up."

  "What is it?"

  "I think I understand that I remained Katarina." My eyes widened. "I still don’t know what part of me is Katarina, but it is clear that I am still the child that I was."

  I enjoyed every day she chose to come and sit next to me, but it seemed that my longing for closeness made her want to stay away.

  At first, she changed her expression every time I said a witty remark about us being meant to be together. After a while, she stopped greeting me with a hug, which had been a little piece of paradise for me, until, finally, she stopped coming to our morning meetings all together and narrowed our relationship to phone calls alone.

  Having no other choice, I settled for those phone calls.

  Whether I wanted to admit it or not, she was the driving force of my life. She was the reason I had studied psychology and developed the two-wee
k program, which I built to free her of her abductor. She was the reason I came to the United States. She was everything I thought about, but she disappeared from my life. Again.

  In the months that passed since she'd discovered who she was I didn’t only lose her again, I got lost on my own. Without her, I had no purpose or cause.

  The final step in my plan had been to return with Katarina to Costa Rica, but she didn’t want to be Katarina, nor return home with me.

  On the one hand, it was strange to go back without her, but on the other hand, even when I was in the United States, I wasn’t really with her.

  The media coverage that revealed what had happened between me and her was like a professional springboard that I couldn’t not exploit. People from all over the country came for imagery sessions in the cabin, which served as a clinic for me in Katarina's absence.

  Soon I became an expert on guided imagery and treated numerous people who had been traumatized in childhood, but I hadn’t seen the one patient I wanted for a very long time. It started to feel like history was repeating itself.

  A year after the day I thought would be the first of the rest of our lives together, I found myself secretly following her from afar, as I used to do before, when she didn’t know who I was.

  I saw she had returned to her customs, and I didn’t fail to see that the spark that used to be in her eyes was out.

  I wanted so badly for her to let me make her laugh again.

  I wanted to be there beside her to escort her as she went on to find out who she was in light of the memories, but she’d left me no choice. All I could do was respect her wishes and look after her from a careful distance.

  "Hey, psycho," she answered almost immediately to my phone call, as I watched her walking back to her car after she came out of her therapist’s clinic. I was at least glad to see that she had a big smile on her face when she saw my name on the screen.