Lying with Strangers

by James Grippando

  She didn’t react. “Have you been thinking about us at all?”

  “Honestly—and I’m not saying this to be mean—I’ve tried not to.”

  “And have you been successful?”

  “Yes, pretty much. Until tonight.”

  “What happened?”

  “Peyton and I had dinner with her parents. Her mother made it crystal clear that she knows something about you and me. At the very least she knows about our lunch at Murphy’s Pub last winter.”

  “Aye, Kevin. After all you two have been through, you still haven’t told Peyton about us?”

  Her tone made him feel even worse than Valerie’s little stunt had. “No. I haven’t told her.” He paused, then said, “Have you?”

  “Me? Of course not.”

  “Did you say something to Peyton’s mother?”

  She stopped walking and looked him in the eye. “Are you accusing me?”

  “I’m just trying to find out how my mother-in-law knows about us.”

  “Well, it wasn’t from me,” she said. “I told you before—at Murphy’s Pub, in fact—that I don’t play the kind of games that Peyton plays with you. When I’m in a relationship, it’s not about outsmarting the other person. It’s about trust. Complete and unconditional trust. That got me burned in my first marriage, but I can’t let that change who I am because…well, to put it in terms that you and Peyton can understand, because that would mean my ex-husband wins.”

  Kevin looked away, the traffic noises whirring in the background. Then he allowed his gaze to shift back to Sandra, and her expression surprised him. He had prepared himself for anger or disappointment, even bitterness. He had also braced himself for smugness and gloating, her savoring the sweet satisfaction of seeing an ex-lover get his due. But her eyes showed just a hint of something that he hadn’t expected in the least.

  She seemed a little desperate.

  “I should go,” he said, then started away.

  “Kevin,” she called.

  He stopped and faced her.

  She stepped toward him, then leaned closer than she’d been since the one and only night that had changed everything. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “If you need an alibi for the night Gary Varne was killed, I could be it.”

  The look in her eyes cut to his core. He took a step back, saying nothing.

  “You don’t have to say anything now,” she said. “Just think about it.”

  A bus rumbled past them on Huntington Avenue. “Good night,” he replied. Then he just started walking, alone, not even sure he was headed in the right direction.

  51

  PEYTON’S PARENTS LEFT AROUND TEN-THIRTY. HER MOTHER LEFT BEHIND a stack of newspaper clippings. She’d been saving them all, as if Peyton wanted to keep the smear campaign for her scrapbook.

  What on earth goes through that woman’s mind sometimes?

  Peyton walked to the front window and checked outside. No sign of Kevin. Earlier she’d dialed his cell phone but got no answer. She seemed to be losing the adultery issue on all fronts. Kevin didn’t believe in her innocence, at least not completely. And the prosecutor’s release of the bogus chat-room conversations had certainly killed her sympathetic image as a young doctor who was devoting her life and talents to the treatment of sick children. Reality aside, she was now cast as an adulteress who had quite a naughty way with words in the Internet chat rooms. Surely they’d already been posted verbatim on the Internet, tonight’s cheap titillation for lonely old losers from Boston to Budapest.

  She resisted the impulse to watch the eleven o’clock news. It would only depress her. By ten after eleven, however, her curiosity compelled her to see how the coverage was playing out. The set switched on in time for her to catch one of the many legal analysts talking about the prosecutor’s motion to pierce the attorney-client privilege, a substantive issue that had been lost in all the hoopla over cybersex. He was a law professor, a distinguished-looking fellow with a gray beard and spectacles, who seemed to be enjoying his moment in the sun at Peyton’s expense, pontificating about various hypotheticals.

  “Of course, if you were to talk to anyone at the district attorney’s office, they would probably tell you that if Dr. Shields was truly innocent, she wouldn’t object to turning over the privileged files.”

  Peyton switched off the set. She’d heard enough.

  How does a girl win this fight?

  She tossed the remote onto the couch and headed for the bedroom. Television was no option tonight. Maybe a good book instead. She flipped on the light in their home office and went to the storage closet. It was filled with books, mostly from a bygone era when she’d had time to read for pleasure. There was nothing new on her side, so she scanned Kevin’s shelf. From the looks of things, the only books he’d read lately were titles like How to Get Happily Published, How to Write the Perfect Query and Synopsis, How to Get Rich Telling Other People How to Get Published.

  She continued through another row of nonfiction, then froze. She knew that in the name of research Kevin had purchased some unusual reference books about things like autopsies and knife wounds, even one about hanging yourself. It seemed a strange coincidence that this particular book was right at the top of his stack. It was as if he’d consulted it recently.

  How to Beat a Polygraph was the title.

  Her impulse was to confront him as soon as he got home, but she knew what he’d say—research. He was a crime novelist now and needed to know such things. She was willing to concede that perhaps at some point in his writing he truly had needed to know about polygraph exams. A deep concern, however, was buzzing in her mind.

  What suddenly had made him think he needed a refresher?

  She returned the book and shut off the light.

  It was almost eleven-thirty, and Rudy was worried. He’d been waiting in their private chat room for almost thirty minutes, and Ladydoc was nowhere to be found.

  He’d thought surely she’d come tonight, with all the buzz over their past chats. Perhaps she’d felt betrayed by the transcripts he’d left in the strongbox. She might even have jumped to the conclusion that he’d stolen her gun and killed Gary Varne. He needed a chance to explain himself. All he’d wanted was her attention. He’d put the letters in the box long before she’d come back to their chat room the other night, and by then the police had already taken the box. That “reunion” chat had been too brief anyway. She’d seemed tentative, afraid to open up to him, afraid to commit to another chat. He just wanted things to be the way they used to be.

  Where are you, Ladydoc?

  The computer screen was blank. He felt drained. She had no right to be mad. He had hundreds of other transcripts of their late-night chats, scores of them more sexually explicit than the ones he’d planted in the box. His goal hadn’t been to embarrass her. He had no intention of letting strangers intrude on their private place in cyberspace. That was the reason he’d removed the screen names and taglines from the transcripts. He didn’t want scores of imposters contacting him, scores of other suitors contacting her.

  He was growing tired. The bright light from the LCD in his dark little apartment was rough on the eyes. Finally there was a hint of activity, then a message at the top of his screen.

  “Ladydoc has entered the room.”

  He was suddenly wide awake.

  “sorry i’m late,” she wrote. “wuz up watching the news.”

  “u r famous,” he replied.

  “thanks 2 u.”

  “thanks 2 gary Varne.”

  The screen was still. He feared that he’d offended her. “i didn’t mean that. r u ok?

  “i want 2 see u.”

  He paused. Chatting with her was one thing. He had so many stolen passwords that no one would ever be able to trace a conversation back to him. Seeing her in person was a whole different level of risk. And her track record wasn’t good.

  “last time u stood me up.”

  “i got scared.”

  “and i got burned. w
e picked the perfect spot. we had the time all set.”

  He grew angrier as he typed, not even realizing that he was switching out of cute chat room–ese. “I went there and waited for hours. HOURS! You could have told me you were scared. You just didn’t show up.”

  “i wuz busy.”

  “LIAR!!!!!!! I went back to our chat room for a week. YOU NEVER CAME!!!!!”

  “i did come back.”

  He could have punched the screen. “You came back to dump me.”

  “u don’t know what was going on in my life then. i had 2 end it.”

  “So did I. Which is how you ended up in Jamaica Pond.”

  She didn’t answer immediately. He’d always assumed that she knew who’d run her off the road, but the delayed reaction had him fearing that he’d said too much.

  “Still there?” he typed.

  “u r scaring me.”

  He closed his eyes, brought his anger under control. “Sorry. I didn’t let you drown last time. I won’t let you drown this time either. So long as you do as you’re told.”

  “what do u want me 2 do?”

  “Prove that you’re worth saving a second time.”

  “how do i do that?”

  “You know how.”

  There was another pause. His heart pounded with anticipation.

  “i wish i could see u.”

  “What do you want to see?”

  “u kneeling over me, huge, towering over me.”

  A thin smile crept to his lips. He reached inside his shorts and typed with the other hand. “keep talking, baby. you know what i like.”

  Part III

  AUTUMN

  52

  AUTUMN BROUGHT BUTTERFLIES. PEYTON COULD FEEL THEM FLUTtering in her stomach, as the end of summer meant the beginning of her trial. At first, the six weeks between indictment and trial had seemed like plenty of time to grow accustomed to the notion that she would stand before a jury. But no amount of time could lessen the blow of having to answer for a murder she hadn’t committed.

  It almost didn’t seem real, she and Kevin finally seated at the mahogany table beside the husband-and-wife team hired to represent them. Jury selection had taken all of Monday and part of Tuesday, with lawyers for both sides employing what appeared to be some combination of voodoo and pop psychology to pick the perfect group of so-called peers. By 3:00 P.M. Tuesday they had a jury. Eight women and four men, including an elementary school teacher, a janitor, two housewives, a bus driver, a grad student from MIT, a self-proclaimed artist, two folks between jobs, and three retirees. Tony and Jennifer had seemed satisfied. By the same token, so had Charles Ohn.

  After a short break, they returned to the courtroom for opening statements. Peyton’s parents sat in the front row of public seating, directly behind their daughter. Kevin’s father was deceased, and he hadn’t seen his runaway mother since childhood, so he had no family in attendance. The press gallery was filled to capacity, well beyond the handful that had watched voir dire. Likewise, the general audience had nearly doubled in size since the break. It was as if the scouts had phoned their friends to tell them that things were about to get interesting. Peyton had the sickening sense that they were.

  “Mr. Ohn,” the judge said, “please proceed.”

  The prosecutor rose and stepped to the well of the courtroom, that stagelike opening before the bench where lawyers could seemingly step away from the action and speak directly to the jury, as if delivering a Shakespearean soliloquy.

  Ohn buttoned his suit coat, bid the jurors a good afternoon, and dived right into his theme, no notes, no mincing words.

  “A wife cheats on her husband. The husband finds out about it, and he’s furious. The wife tries to break off the affair, but her lover won’t let go. The lover ends up dead.”

  The courtroom was utterly silent. For a moment, it seemed as if he might return to his seat, having said enough.

  “Who did it?” he asked in hushed urgency. “Who killed Gary Varne?”

  “Was it the husband acting out of jealousy?” Ohn said, his voice rising. “Or was it the wife trying to bring an end to the affair forever?”

  Across the courtroom, Peyton shrank inside. The prosecutor was glowering at her.

  He continued, his tone matter-of-fact. “Gary Varne was shot in the back of the head at close range. The murder weapon was a thirty-eight-caliber firearm. The gun was never found, but Peyton Shields owned a thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson handgun that mysteriously disappeared from her apartment after the murder. The victim’s body was found in the trunk of the defendants’ car with Peyton Shields passed out in the driver’s seat. A spilled bottle of sleeping pills lay on the seat beside her.

  “I ask you again: Who killed Gary Varne?”

  He paused, and for Peyton the silence was insufferable. Half the jurors were looking at her, the other half at the prosecutor.

  Ohn opened his arms, palms up. “The answer will be Peytonly obvious,” he said, a wordplay on “patently.” He gave the jurors a long, satisfied look, as if to assure them that the government had charged the right defendants. Then quietly he returned to his seat.

  Peyton and her lawyer exchanged glances. For seven weeks the defense had been waiting for some signal from the prosecutor as to which of the two defendants would be tagged as the trigger person and which would be tagged as the accomplice after the fact. Ohn hadn’t completely precluded the possibility that he’d go after Kevin for murder too. But his “Peytonly” pun was the most significant signal they’d received so far.

  “Mr. Falcone, your opening statement?” said the judge.

  As Tony rose, Peyton saw the ambivalence in his eyes. She was fully aware of the joint defense team’s advance strategy on opening statements, but with Peyton now the apparent focus of the murder charge, Tony seemed to have the same reservations that she was having.

  “Defendant Shields will defer her opening to the start of her case,” he announced, sticking to the plan.

  “Very well. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, defendant Shields has elected to save her opening statement until after the state has presented its case. That’s her right to do so, and if any defense is necessary, you will be hearing from her lawyer at that time. Ms. Dunwoody, you may proceed.”

  Kevin’s lawyer rose and stepped to the lectern. Behind Peyton was a quick shuffle of reporters jockeying for position, then silence. Jennifer began, serious yet cordial in her delivery.

  “A cheating spouse, a dead lover. If it were really all that simple, this jury would have the easiest job on the planet.

  “But it isn’t easy. Your job is to make the prosecutor prove his case against Kevin Stokes and Peyton Shields beyond a reasonable doubt. That standard applies to each of them. They are husband and wife, but the charges against them are separate. Each has been charged with second-degree murder. Each has been charged as an accessory after the fact. It’s as if the prosecutor wants you to tack a scarlet letter on each of their foreheads and simply conclude that they did it. They did it.”

  She shook her head, saying, “He’s got it all wrong, folks. There is no they. To convict my client, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it. To convict Dr. Shields, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it. It isn’t enough that one of them might have done it. Two weak cases do not add up to a conviction.

  “I submit that after all the evidence is in, you will conclude that neither one of them killed Gary Varne. But bear in mind, if your conclusion is that one or the other might possibly have done it, your verdict must be the same. Not guilty.”

  She allowed her message to sink in, then returned to her seat.

  Peyton tried not to stare, but she was gauging the jurors, taking their pulse. It was a stoic bunch. Either that, or they’d already condemned her.

  Judge Gilhorn broke the silence. “It’s almost five o’clock, so let’s reconvene tomorrow at nine. Jurors are reminded of their oaths. We’re adjourned,” he sa
id with the bang of a gavel.

  All rose, and as the judge exited the courtroom Tony was quietly congratulating his wife on a job well done. Peyton caught Kevin’s eye. Though she could only guess what he was thinking, she would have bet that she was right.

  All this talk about reasonable doubt was nice. But it would have been even nicer to hear someone say a little louder and a lot clearer that neither one of them had done it.

  53

  WEDNESDAY MORNING TECHNICALLY MARKED THE THIRD DAY OF THE trial, but for Peyton it felt like the real beginning. It was time for live human beings to flesh out the accusations that the prosecutor had hurled at Peyton and her husband. It started with Steve Beasley.

  The last time she’d heard Steve’s voice was her infamous phone call to the Waldorf-Astoria from Gary’s apartment. It would have suited her just fine never to have heard it again.

  The witness walked straight to the stand with little expression on his face. He didn’t look at Peyton, which wasn’t remarkable. She’d never been his friend, having known him only through her husband. But his failure even to glance in Kevin’s direction struck her as bad news indeed.

  He swore the oath and looked only at the jurors, with an occasional glance at the prosecutor. He seemed to keep the entire left half of the courtroom out of his line of sight, as if the whole thing was made easier by pretending that she and Kevin weren’t even there.

  “State your name, please.”

  The questions kept coming, and his answers flowed like lines from a script. Peyton had seen the transcript of his grand jury testimony, so nothing came as a surprise. Still, reading it on a printed page had been one thing. It pained her to hear the most sordid part aloud in a packed courtroom.

  “What, exactly, were the words you overheard while speaking on the telephone to defendant Shields?”

  The witness looked at the jurors, as if to make sure they were listening. “I heard a man say, ‘Don’t be shy, Peyton, I’ve already seen you naked.’”