“I’ll take the interviews,” Eddie said, flipping the top off the box and pulling out a binder with a DVD held in place by an elastic band. “You take the rest.” He popped the DVD into Kate’s laptop, plugged in her earbuds and fixed his attention on her laptop screen.
Kate began with the M.E.’s preliminary findings. She did her best to maintain a professional objectivity as she read the descriptions of Elise’s injuries. But to know that the “unidentified patterned injury” had been caused, according to Nick, by someone striking her with a blackjack while she slept made Kate feel sick. She visualized how Elise smashed her head against the concrete stairwell after falling over the balcony, resulting in a “depressed skull fracture in upper occipital region.” Kate wondered how the injuries she had inflicted on Craig Peters were described by Dr. Guthro.
Eddie hummed lightly under his breath as he listened to the statements, flipping to the transcribed notes in the binder every so often and shaking his head. “What kind of question is that?” he muttered more than once.
Kate finally finished her assessment of the M.E.’s report and dug into the evidence box for the next file folder. Therapy Notes from Dr. Jamie Gainsford, Clinical Psychologist was written in black marker on the tab.
“Did you know the police had gotten hold of Elise’s therapist’s notes?”
Eddie paused the DVD. “Interesting. That’s unusual. Although from what I’ve seen, they don’t have much to go on. They probably were desperate.”
Kate poured herself another cup of coffee. Dr. Gainsford had kept scrupulous notes—the dates coincided with the appointment times recorded in Elise’s PDA. But they were handwritten.
“These aren’t transcribed, Eddie.” She waved the first page at him.
Eddie glanced over the page. “Doesn’t matter. He’s just required to keep a record. A lot of therapists don’t have secretaries or even receptionists. They run things themselves. I’d only be concerned if the records were spotty.”
“No. The dates all match up.” Kate settled back in her seat with the file. Eddie turned the interviews back on. She was glad he was occupied with the video because she felt slightly clandestine reading the therapist’s notes. Maybe because she was curious to see what made Randall’s ex-wife tick. She wanted to know what kind of woman Randall had chosen to be his mate, what kind of woman could screw around on a man like him.
It didn’t take long for her curiosity to change into discomfort. Dr. Gainsford’s notes were terse and to the point, providing a telescopic view of Elise’s innermost fears and anxieties. Those should have died with her. But now they would be shared with all kinds of people who would dissect the notes—and subsequently dissect her. It didn’t seem fair that this woman was a victim of a horrible crime and was now subject to the most intimate scrutiny in an effort to make the perpetrator pay. First her body had been taken apart. Now her mind was fair game to everyone who had a point to prove.
And her heart was, too. Her pain over her relationship with her ex-husband and her son were discussed at every session. It was uncomfortable to read. Did Randall know how much anguish he had caused? Kate wondered. She hoped not. She didn’t think he was that heartless.
June 8. Client distressed. Ex-husband forced her to have sexual relations. Emphatic that it was nonconsensual. Refer to rape-counseling center?
Kate’s fingers trembled. She reread Dr. Gainsford’s note. She had not misread it.
Oh, God.
She dug her fingertips into her temples. Think, Kate. He admitted to having had sex with her. But rape? Was it true? Or was Elise exacting some kind of revenge on him? But telling her therapist would achieve nothing; the notes were confidential.
Had Randall raped his ex-wife?
“Eddie,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady despite the pounding of her heart, “have you come across any witness statements that suggest Randall sexually assaulted Elise?”
Eddie paused the video and gazed at her over his reading glasses, which appeared ludicrously small on his fleshy nose. “No. Is that what she told her therapist?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.” He reached into his jacket, then withdrew his hand. There were no windows he could open in this high-tech office tower to let cigarette smoke escape. “You need to talk to Randall about this.”
Kate shook her head. “You do it.”
He lowered his pen. “Why me?”
She looked away. “I can’t.”
His eyes sharpened. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to know the answer.”
“Kate, I’ve known Randall for a long time. I’ve defended rapists before. He isn’t one of them.”
“How can you be sure?”
“It’s a dead woman’s rantings to her therapist, Kate.”
“You mean confidential records where the victim would have no reason to lie.”
Eddie took off his glasses. “Maybe she had a reason to lie to her therapist, Kate. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to admit they’ve made a mistake. Even to themselves.”
Kate stared at him. “Or maybe Randall was under so much stress between all the stuff happening in the firm, and then his son stealing his money, that he just lost it. He told me he’d been drunk when it happened. And he was drunk the night Elise was murdered. He doesn’t remember a thing.”
Eddie arched a shaggy brow. “A blackout, huh?”
“Yes.”
“That adds a twist. Has he been able to piece together any of his activities?”
Kate shook her head. “No. He was alone that night. He has no one to corroborate where he was until the harbor patrol found him.”
Eddie gave a slow whistle. “I don’t think he’s capable of murder, Kate.”
“But he’s doubting himself, Eddie.” Kate had seen it in his eyes. “And with these notes…” She shook the file folder. “Elise was afraid of him.”
“Listen, let me tell you something. This debate we’re having shows exactly why our job is so important. We are surrounded by evidence—” He gestured toward the papers and reports that were spread all over the table, a white two-dimensional bridge that connected his chair to Kate’s. “And it’s all written in black and white. Some of the facts are indisputable—Elise Vanderzell took sleeping pills, has an unexplained skin-pattern injury, was killed by brain hemorrhage due to cracking her skull from a fall.”
He held up his glass of water. “See how clear this is? It’s transparent. And yet, if you stick this piece of paper behind the glass, like this—” he took the page of Dr. Gainsford’s notes from Kate’s hand and placed it behind the water “—it’s not so clear, is it?” Kate stared through Eddie’s glass of water. The words undulated on the page. Some were illegible, others magnified. “And that is because when we believe a fact is indisputable, it is, in actuality, distorted by the perception of those who interpret it.” He passed Dr. Gainsford’s notes back to Kate with a flourish. “Nothing is as it seems.”
“That’s a wonderfully existential perspective, but we need a theory of the case, Eddie.”
“You are quite right.” He gazed at her like a fond father whose child had just surprised him with her percipience. “You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Fine.” Kate blew a strand of hair off her forehead. “I think either Randall did it or his son did. But if Randall suffered a blackout because he was so drunk, how could he have committed the crime the way Nick described it? And leave no trace evidence for the police to find?”
“Kate—” Eddie stuck one arm of his reading glasses between his teeth “—you obviously don’t know many drunks. Let me tell you from personal experience that you can have a blackout and act in a nonintoxicated manner.”
“So Randall could have committed the murder?”
“In theory. Yes.” Eddie put his glasses back on.
“Damn.” Kate exhaled. Then straightened. “But since we’re defending Randall—and he hasn’t admitted any guilt—we need to build a case a
round Nick.”
Eddie leaned back in his chair. “Go on.”
“He is obviously capable of violence. His attack on his father was premeditated. Then he accused his father of murder. I think Nick was trying to deflect suspicion from himself.”
“It’s very possible. But what about an unknown party? Do you think there could have been an intruder that has not yet been identified?”
Kate shook her head. “The only eyewitness is Nick, and he claims the intruder was his father. There aren’t any other suspects. Except Nick, of course.”
“The underachieving son of overachieving parents. Who each have a big life insurance policy.”
“Exactly.”
Eddie tapped his fingers on the table. “But Randall has emphatically stated that he does not want our defense to point any fingers at his son.”
“So we’re back to where we began,” Kate said, her voice glum. She stared at the therapist’s file. Eddie was right—if they couldn’t pin this on Nick, they would have to thoroughly discredit the evidence the Crown provided, starting with Dr. Gainsford’s notes. Surely there was some gray to be found in the spaces between those damning black-and-white words.
Eddie pushed back his chair. “Now, if you will excuse me, I need to obscure my thoughts in a tobacco-induced haze.”
Kate nodded. “I’ll finish up here. Then I’ll take this evidence over to Randall. He needs to know what will be said about him tomorrow.”
He’d been blindsided by his son, his firm, and now, it would appear, his ex-wife. Kate didn’t know whom she believed anymore, but she would not allow Randall to be blindsided on her watch.
That being said, he’d better not have lied to her.
Jamie put his cell phone down on the table in his cabin and rubbed his hands. His nerves tingled with excitement. This was the feeling he had at the end of a long stakeout in the South African bush, when he knew the wait was about to end, that the prey was about to cross into his sights.
Ralph Moore, the Crown prosecutor who had taken over Randall Barrett’s bail hearing, had just called him. He’d been reviewing Jamie’s notes and had a few questions.
Barrett’s hearing, he informed Jamie, was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Jamie had tried to cover his surprise—he hadn’t thought it would be so soon. If Randall got bail, he would want to be with his family.
And that meant Jamie’s opportunity to snatch Lucy would be significantly reduced.
He needed to act quickly.
The waiting was over.
60
Monday, 7:12 p.m.
Randall Barrett stared at the document box in his cell. He had thought he’d hit rock bottom on Friday when he’d been strip-searched, had all his personal belongings taken away and been assigned a prison ID number. The final indignity had been when he had to sign out a razor. Never again would he take for granted his possessions.
The first night had been grim. The correctional center was located on the outskirts of an industrial park. They’d put him in a cell by himself—for his own protection, they told him. He’d spent the night awake, lying on his narrow bed, listening to the strange noises, the yelling, the catcalls, everything hollow and metallic with nothing on the walls or the ground to dampen the sound. He thought of his massive, comfortable bed, the cool serenity of his garden, the crickets he’d hear at night. The low, throaty call of the mourning dove in the early morning. Charlie snoring at his feet. He remembered he had tickets to the symphony benefit at the end of the month. He’d tell his mother to use them.
His thoughts skittered randomly, skipping from one stepping stone to another, trying to avoid toppling into the river of worry that rushed through him: Lucy, Nick, his mother. They were his family. They needed him to steer them through this disastrous turn in their lives.
And he couldn’t.
He’d failed the ones he loved the most.
What kind of man was he?
How had he ended up in this place?
The box with the Crown’s evidence had provided a set of answers. They repelled him. Was it because they were the ugly truth?
Every time he thought he’d hit rock bottom, he was in reality descending to another level of misery whose depths had not been plumbed. There was no rock bottom. Just thin ledges on the sides of the abyss. And they kept crumbling out from under him.
Like this morning. When Kate had arrived. He’d stared at her, drinking in her trim figure, her gleaming hair, her calm assurance. He was consumed with a need to be with her. She was his only connection to his old life, to his old firm, to the world that had rejected him. His heart leaped, foolishly, with hope.
She hadn’t been able to meet his eyes.
He knew she needed to maintain objectivity. He kept telling himself that was why she was so disconcertingly cool. Why she hadn’t visited him over the weekend. She needed to keep her distance because she was too emotionally involved with him, he’d thought.
Instead, he discovered she kept her distance because she no longer trusted him.
And thus, he discovered, another ledge had given away. But he did not anticipate the depths to which he’d fall until he opened the evidence box.
How many times had he lugged the identical bland brown boxes to hearings, or stacked them in the corners of his office and asked clerks to review their contents? They were a professional appendage, a practical necessity. Not a Pandora’s box that would reveal the pain he had wreaked on a woman he’d once sworn to cherish and protect.
He’d sifted through the papers, slowly, carefully. The police had only allowed him certain information prior to his arrest. Now he was given the full accounting of the horror of Elise’s murder through Nick’s damning statements, the M.E.’s clinical findings and Lucy’s traumatized recounting of her mother’s final hours.
But it was Dr. Gainsford’s notes that sent him free falling into the abyss.
At first, the notes had simply magnified his guilt about leaving Toronto. Elise had told her therapist she felt tremendous stress parenting her two children without Randall being in the same city to share the load. That she believed many of Nick’s behavioral issues were related to Randall’s absence.
Of course, he knew all this. She’d yelled most of these accusations at him at some time or another. But seeing them written in Dr. Gainsford’s scrawl gave his ex-wife’s perspective an unnerving weight.
He’d always felt justified in moving to Halifax; after all, it was Elise who’d made him a laughingstock of the Toronto bar. As he read the chronological summary of Elise’s visits to Dr. Gainsford, he could see how this distance had contributed to many of the crises that Elise had either precipitated or had to manage.
He’d hoped that time and distance would ease her hurt, but according to Dr. Gainsford’s notes, it magnified her feelings of abandonment and neglect.
He’d had no idea how fragile her emotional state had been when he confronted her over Nick’s theft in June. And he was sure he’d made it worse. He crossed a boundary with her, opening doors long barricaded. Then retreated from her to the point where she did not confide in him about her pregnancy. Or her abortion. He fervently hoped that her therapist provided her with some good support. He flipped the pages until he found June’s entries.
…her ex-husband forced her to have sexual relations.
He froze. Reread the notation. Subsequent entries were equally damning: patient fears for her safety…ex-husband is emotionally abusive…threatening.
Jesus. He came across as a textbook wife abuser.
No wonder Kate had looked at him like that.
The abyss yawned below him. The air around him was black with remorse. Thick with shame.
He sprang to his feet, pacing his cell. His blood pounded a rhythm of denial. Why did she lie to her therapist? He’d never threatened her.
A thought stopped him. Did she believe this was true? Did she think he would hurt her?
He was sure he hadn’t forced her. He’d never forced a woman in
his life. The thought disgusted him.
But did Elise think he forced her?
He’d closed his eyes while they had intercourse. He couldn’t bear to look at her face.
Jesus. Maybe he had forced her.
No. She moaned when she came.
He exhaled a deep breath. She had an orgasm. He hadn’t forced her.
But why did she tell her therapist that he had?
Calm down, Barrett. Notes weren’t always foolproof; maybe Dr. Gainsford misheard her. But the rest of his notes for the month of June were consistent with the claim that Elise was fearful of her ex-husband.
Randall knew he hadn’t raped Elise; he truly believed it was a consensual act. But the rest of what she’d told Dr. Gainsford…
Had she really been scared of him?
And if she believed him capable of violence…
Had he really killed her?
“I hate to ask this of you, but I’m in a bind,” Randall’s mother said. Somehow Penelope Barrett had gotten hold of Kate’s cell phone number.
Kate slowed down to a walk. It was early evening. She’d taken Alaska out for a run, craving the endorphins that would calm her nerves. Tomorrow afternoon was Randall’s bail hearing and she needed to unwind. Either that or she’d end up joining Eddie on the sidewalk, smoking her nerves into submission.
“Of course,” Kate responded, wondering what Randall’s mother could want with her.
“Charlie is supposed to be picked up from the veterinary hospital tonight. But she still needs to be monitored regularly. And the vet wants to check her on a daily basis for another week. She’s worried about infection.” Penelope Barrett cleared her throat. “The problem is that Animal Cruelty won’t release Charlie to my care because Nick is staying with me. They want her to go to a foster family.”
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