Lying with Strangers

by James Grippando

  The prosecutor said, “I should point out that these are not handwritten letters in the conventional sense of the word. They are printed transcripts of chat-room conversations that were conducted by computer over the Internet. Some would call it cybersex.”

  The judge rolled his eyes. “Now you’re really over this old man’s head.”

  “The technical computer stuff isn’t all that important, Your Honor. The point is that Dr. Shields collected printed copies of these communications with the victim and hid them in a secret place, much the way lovers have been hiding their love letters for centuries.”

  “Well, submit these letters or transcripts with an appropriate motion, and the court will make its decision. Anything else?”

  “Nothing here,” said Ohn.

  “No,” said Tony.

  “We’re adjourned.” He banged his gavel and headed out a side exit to his chambers. The rumble from behind signaled the charge of a hungry media. They stopped at the rail, twenty feet away from the defense lawyers and their clients. Peyton didn’t even want to turn around, though she was already being pelted with questions from the other side of the rail. What about the letters? What did you write?

  At Tony’s insistence, the four of them huddled at their table. He spoke in a coarse whisper. “We’ll be mobbed on our way out. I want us single file, close together. Jennifer first, followed by Kevin, Peyton, and then me. And, Kevin, you are going to hold Peyton’s hand as you lead her out of here. Understood?”

  He seemed ready to protest, but Jennifer answered, “Understood.”

  “Don’t answer a single question from the media, and don’t look worried. But the minute we get back to my office, I want a full explanation of those letters.”

  “So do I,” said Kevin.

  Peyton felt harpooned.

  Jennifer started walking. Peyton extended her hand. Kevin took it, though his touch conveyed no warmth.

  Single file, the four of them collided with a loud and overheated press. Most of the cameras were aimed at Peyton. It was difficult to hear any single question above the shouting and commotion, but the loudest ones dealt with the alleged affair.

  “Is it true?”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Did your husband know about it?”

  Keeping her head up, she struggled to look past the frenzy and show no reaction. Still, it was impossible not to make eye contact with the really aggressive ones who got right in her face. Each time her eyes locked onto one of those excited expressions—even if only for an instant—it only confirmed her sinking realization that the prosecutor had delivered to the wolves exactly what they’d wanted.

  Her.

  49

  NO ONE SAID A WORD DURING THE CAR RIDE FROM THE COURT- house. Peyton and Kevin sat in the back of Tony’s Jaguar. Tony and Jennifer were up front. They agreed to meet back at Tony’s office in two hours, after they’d all had a chance to review the “material,” as Tony called it.

  As soon as the clients were out of the car, Jennifer unloaded on her husband. “I have never been so humiliated in my life.”

  “You? The judge slapped a gag order on me. Every reporter in Boston is now poring over these so-called love letters that Peyton supposedly wrote. And you were humiliated?”

  “Have you already forgotten the way he singled me out right in open court? He even called me by my first name: ‘As for you, Jennifer, I’m surprised you would condone this kind of nonsense.’”

  Tony stopped the car at the traffic light. “He’s just an old coot.”

  “He’s a respected jurist. And judges talk to each other. I have a reputation.”

  “Oh, and I don’t?”

  “It’s different. I’m a former prosecutor. I spent nine years on the other side, and I still have friends in the D.A.’s office who respect my credibility. You’ve spent your entire career doing criminal defense. You’re expected to…”

  “To be sleazy?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “It’s what you were thinking.”

  A horn blasted behind them. Tony grumbled and accelerated through the green light. Jennifer looked out the passenger window and said, “I just wish you would tone down the ego and respect my wishes.”

  “Honey, if you want out of the case, now’s the time.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. Finally, she gave him a little smile to defuse things. “You’re not going to get rid of me that easy, you turkey.”

  That softened him a bit. “Actually, I think your exact words were, ‘For better or for worse.’”

  “My word is my bond.”

  He steered into the entrance of their office building’s garage. “Does that mean you’re in for the long haul?”

  “You mean the marriage or the case?”

  “The case, smart-ass.”

  “I’m in. Unless, of course, the prosecutor drops the charges against Kevin.”

  “Fat chance.”

  She couldn’t tell him about the deal Ohn had offered her client. She could only guess how the love letters might change Kevin’s thinking.

  “Stranger things have happened,” she said, leaving it at that.

  Peyton returned to Tony’s office at five-thirty. Kevin was with her, but only in the sense that he was physically accompanying her. He’d hardly spoken since leaving the courthouse.

  They’d read the chat-room transcripts at home. Tony had kept one copy, so she and Kevin had only one set between them. Sitting down and going over them together had been out of the question. Kevin insisted on reading them first, which had proved to be a mistake. If he had let her go first, she could have at least given her side of the story before he got the shock of his life. As it was, he spent twenty minutes reading them and then another fifteen stewing alone in the living room as Peyton took her turn. By the time she was ready to talk, Kevin was anything but ready to listen. That was precisely the reason she opened the meeting in Tony’s office with the same refrain that at home had fallen on deaf ears.

  “I didn’t write a word of this,” she said.

  The team of four was seated at a round table in the conference room. The transcripts rested in the center of the smoked-glass tabletop.

  “Then what were they doing in a metal box in your closet?” asked Jennifer.

  “I don’t know. Somebody planted them there.”

  Jennifer looked skeptical. Tony said, “Let’s not prejudge here. First of all, it’s not at all obvious from the face of the transcripts that these chats were between Peyton and Gary Varne. The materials,” as he liked to call them, “have been doctored.”

  “I don’t know much about chat rooms,” said Jennifer. “How can you tell they’ve been altered?”

  “The best way is to show you.” He pulled his chair up to the computer on the credenza and logged onto the Internet. “I’ll enter any chat room randomly,” he said. With a few clicks of the mouse, the screen blipped twice, and he was in.

  “Here’s one on sports. Now, as we sit here and watch this online chat unfold, you see two things. First, each person’s screen name is spelled out in the left margin. Second, his or her typed message is to the right of the screen name. That’s how you know who is saying what.”

  Jennifer looked at one of the printed transcripts. “There’re no screen names here. Just the text of the message.”

  “Exactly,” said Tony. “Now let me show you what happens when you print a transcript of this chat.” He clicked the print button, and the printer churned out a single-page transcript. He laid it on the table beside the alleged Peyton chat.

  “Look at the top of the one I just printed.”

  Peyton said, “Today’s time and date.”

  “And, it gives the name of the chat room I was in. Significantly, none of that information is on these transcripts produced by Ohn.”

  Kevin asked, “So what’s going on?”

  “Somebody altered these transcripts,” said Tony. “Without the screen names or the tagline,
it’s impossible to contact the Internet carrier and find out the true identities behind the screen names. The prosecutor will never be able to prove who was in these chats.”

  “Why would someone remove that information?”

  “Because it was somebody else in the chat,” said Peyton.

  “Whoever altered these transcripts is the same person who planted them in my strongbox. Which means that he’s the same person who stole the gun that I ordinarily keep in the box, which also means that he is probably the same person who used my gun to shoot Gary Varne. I’m being framed! Doesn’t anybody get that?”

  She stopped, giving her theory time to sink in. Only Tony seemed impressed.

  “One other possibility,” said Jennifer. “Like the prosecutor argued, let’s say the wife keeps the transcripts locked and hidden in her strongbox, just as people have done for centuries with letters from secret lovers. It might be the wife who would remove the screen names and the tagline. That way, if anyone ever finds the transcripts, her husband wouldn’t be able to track down her lover.”

  “That’s not what happened here. I never had a lover.”

  “We’re really missing the obvious point,” said Kevin. The pain was all over his face. “I’ve tried to read these transcripts objectively, though it’s not easy when some guy is talking about how hot he is for your wife’s body. The more important material isn’t the racy, sexy stuff. It’s in the boring details. The woman in these chats never comes right out and says ‘My name is Peyton.’ But she might as well have. She talks about her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital, the neighborhood she lives in, where she went to medical school. She even talks about her husband the lawyer. She talks about things that only Peyton would talk about.”

  “But it doesn’t sound like me,” said Peyton. “Yes, one of the speakers mentions a few details that match my personal situation. But everything in there could easily be discovered by anyone who’s willing to do a little background search. The more important point is the voice—the word choice, the phraseology. All that cutesy chat room-ese, the lowercase letters and numbers substituting for words. It isn’t me. As my husband, you should know that.”

  “I’m not sure what I know about you anymore,” he said.

  An uncomfortable silence fell over the group.

  Tony said, “Clearly we’re not going to resolve this here. As Peyton’s lawyer, however, let me make this observation. These letters will never get into evidence at trial. For the reasons we just talked about, the prosecutor can’t possibly establish that they truly are transcripts of chats between Peyton and Gary Varne. We’ll object on a million grounds, and the judge will sustain it.”

  “Then why did Ohn wave them in front of the judge this morning?” asked Peyton.

  “He got the press going wild, and he dropped a bombshell on us. The two of you are behaving exactly as he’d hoped. I told you this earlier, Peyton. That’s the reason he charged you with second-degree murder and then didn’t even insist on bail. His strategy is for the two of you to slit each other’s throats. With the delivery of these transcripts this afternoon, he placed the knives right in your hands. I’m sorry to say, the knives are already bloody.”

  “What the hell do you expect from me?” said Kevin. “These letters may not have any dates on them, but in one of them they wish each other a Happy Halloween. How do think it makes me feel to know that I’ve been a fool for almost a year?”

  “You haven’t been a fool,” said Peyton, pleading. “I know this sounds crazy, but somebody was pretending to be me. Somebody is framing me.”

  “I’d love to believe you. I want to believe you. But who would go to all that trouble?”

  All four exchanged glances, as if the same thought had come simultaneously to each of them.

  “Now there’s the question of the hour,” said Tony.

  50

  DINNER WAS AT EIGHT. THE TABLE WAS SET FOR FOUR: PEYTON, HER husband, and her parents.

  Valerie and Hank Shields had stopped by the apartment in a joint show of support for their wounded daughter. Peyton’s mother insisted on cooking Kevin and her daughter a nice dinner. Technically speaking, she’d insisted only on cooking Peyton a nice dinner. It was her father who’d invited Kevin to the table. Valerie had never liked Kevin, not even during the happiest times of their marriage. She was never openly hostile toward her son-in-law, but she had a way of getting under his skin like no one he’d ever known.

  “So what do you think of all this, Kevin?”

  It was as if Valerie had whacked him in the head with her wooden spoon. Kevin finished his mouthful of spinach salad, and said, “All what?”

  “Oh, come now. We’re all adults. I’m talking about all this nonsense that Peyton was supposedly having cybersex on the Internet.”

  “Mother, please.”

  “I’m on your side, dear.”

  “Can’t we just have a nice dinner?” asked Hank.

  “We’re all family,” said Valerie. “I think it’s important for everyone to know where everyone else stands. Now, here’s the way I see it. In the first place, my daughter would never do something like this. But Kevin, as her husband, may not have the same level of confidence in her as I do. So I wish to point out this fact.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” said Kevin.

  “I want to,” said Valerie. “Because one thing that these seedy reporters don’t seem to mention is that my daughter is one of the busiest people on earth. She is a pediatric resident at the premier children’s hospital in the world. Her father and I have hardly seen her since she started medical school, and we live in the same city. She works anywhere from thirteen to twenty hours a day, six days a week. Does anyone at this table think for one minute that our Peyton has the time to sit in front of a computer and chat with this Gary Varne about the size of his penis?”

  “I’d really rather not discuss this,” said Kevin.

  “I just want to know, have you thought about that?” Hearing no response from Kevin, Valerie looked at her daughter. “Haven’t you explained that to him, Peyton?”

  Peyton took some wine, struggling with what she was about to say. “I guess I was hoping that it wouldn’t come down to proving myself by pointing out that there wasn’t enough time in my day to cheat on my husband. I was hoping for a little show of trust.”

  She was looking at Kevin. He was looking down into his plate. Finally, he looked up and spoke to Peyton’s mother. “I’m sure you mean well. But this is really a conversation that Peyton and I should have later, just the two of us.”

  “I agree,” said Hank. “Can we move on to something a little lighter? How about some lasagne?” he said. Conversation ceased, and it was just the clang of the serving spoon on dishes as Hank served the others and then himself.

  Valerie flattened her napkin in her lap and said, “You know, your father and I had a nice little lunch the other day.”

  “Where was that, sweetie?” said Hank, seeming not to have a clue.

  “You remember. It was a little hole-in-the-wall downtown. It’s called Murphy’s Pub.”

  Her father shot a quizzical look. “I don’t recall eating—”

  “Kevin,” she said, cutting off her husband. “It’s not far from your old office. Have you ever been there?”

  Kevin shifted nervously in his chair. Murphy’s Pub was where he had met Sandra for lunch last winter, when he was supposed to have been on his way to the airport for a seminar in New York. He wasn’t sure how Valerie knew about it, but it was clear she did. “Yeah,” said Kevin. “I’ve been there.”

  “You should take Peyton there sometime,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “Good. You do that.”

  Just like that, she’d swooped in like the Luftwaffe and dropped it—the five-hundred-pound bomb with Sandra’s name on it. Part of Kevin hated Valerie for doing it, but he also knew she was right. If he was going to be such a jerk toward Peyton about the cybersex letters, it was time he’
d come clean about his own secrets.

  “More wine?” said Valerie.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’d really love some.”

  After dinner, Kevin walked for an hour, no particular destination in mind, though he did drift in the general direction of Copley Square. In front of the reflecting pool at the Christian Science cathedral was where he had told Sandra to meet him at 10:00 P.M.

  Her text message had come earlier that evening. Let’s talk, it said. He presumed that she’d seen the news about the love letters between Peyton and her dead lover. His first instinct was to ignore Sandra, figuring that she wanted to rub salt in his wounds. After that uncomfortable moment at tonight’s family dinner, however, Kevin was beginning to suspect that she had his mother-in-law’s ear. If he was truly resolved to tell Peyton everything, he had to know what Sandra had been telling Peyton’s mother.

  The Christian Science complex was a monumental campus in a busy urban setting. The 670-foot-long reflecting pool in front of the huge basilica and smaller original church was reminiscent of the mall in Washington, D.C. At night, however, it was closed to the public. Sandra was waiting on a bus-stop bench on the sidewalk outside the locked iron entrance gate.

  “You came,” she said with surprise.

  “Let’s keep walking,” he said. Side by side, they continued up the sidewalk. Said Kevin, “I suppose you heard about what happened in court today.”

  “That’s why I’m not at home on my computer. Chat rooms are buzzing with ‘be careful what you type’ warnings.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you text-message me?”

  “Hopefully for the same reason you text-messaged back and ask me to meet you here tonight.” She shot a sideways glance that made him uncomfortable.

  “That seems unlikely, Sandra.”