by Sydney Bauer
David had said nothing, hoping his friend would go on.
‘You know, weeks after her death, we had this meeting – me and Amanda, the insurance turd and Harrison. And Harrison said something about people often changing their wills and life insurance policies at the same time. He said nine times out of ten, people address those sorts of things across the board – wills, life insurance, health checks and so forth. And for some reason the health check thing stuck in my mind.
‘And then I saw that video and, Jesus, DC, despite everything else I realised that Stephanie did have a health problem. Her husband was like a disease, slowly sapping her life away.’
Which was the truth, David knew . . . but perhaps not all of it.
‘Gus, it’s David,’ he said, as he put his cell on speaker so that he could negotiate a left-hand turn out of the Mass General parking garage and onto Fruit Street.
‘Hello!’ said the Swedish-born ME, a genuine delight in his voice. ‘Mannix tell me your situation. I am so glad you and Sara are all right.’
David knew that he meant it. ‘Thanks, Gus,’ he said. ‘Listen, I know you guys are snowed under . . .’
‘Yes, but not so much. The governor approved the employment of two more examiners. My load has eased, just a little.’
‘That’s great news. I was wondering if you could check something for me.’
‘I will conduct autopsy on Malcolm Tyler today and Katherine de Castro tomorrow.’
‘Okay, thanks, but . . .’ said David, not sure how to approach his question without raising Gus’ suspicions. ‘This is about Stephanie Tyler. You mentioned the last time we spoke, that Stephanie was an organ donor – and that her organs and tissues were harvested not long after her death.’
‘That is correct.’
‘And doesn’t the New England Organ Bank send you some report to clarify this?’ David was pretty sure this was the case. He had once worked on a previous case where such a report was used in evidence after a family disputed their deceased loved one’s decision to be a donor.
‘Yes,’ said Gus. ‘The NEOB give report on all organs and tissue given to organisations such as Lifenet for processing. They also explain what organs have been passed on for research to various approved research protocols.’ Gus took a breath. ‘Why, you need this?’
‘Not me,’ he lied, ‘but the children. They want to donate some of their mother’s fortune to the various transplant and research organisations.’ Another lie. ‘Do you think you could get someone to pull the report and leave it at reception? I’ll race by and look at the list and leave it for you to re-file.’
‘That would be fine. That is very kind of the children.’
‘They are good kids, Gus,’ he said, still hoping, that beyond all else, this was true.
Amanda Carmichael met him at her office door. ‘Hi,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘Come on in.’
David moved into her office, the two of them standing somewhat awkwardly until she directed him to her sofa.
‘The kids are here,’ she said. ‘I put them in the conference room until you arrived. I got my assistant to get them some sodas.’
And David saw the irony in her words – ‘kids’, ‘sodas’ – mere days before she was trying them for murder as adults in an adult court.
‘How are they doing?’ he asked.
‘Pretty good under the circumstances,’ she said, before adding, ‘David, I am so sorry. It’s just that the evidence pointed directly at the boy and . . .’
‘It’s okay.’
‘No, no it’s not. I should have listened to you, I should have listened to myself when my instincts told me Jeffrey Logan was . . .’
‘Logan fooled a lot of people, Amanda.’
‘Maybe so, but in my case I think I let it happen – for selfish reasons. Do you understand?’
‘I understand you are doing the right thing by the kids by helping their grandmother,’ he said.
Amanda smiled. ‘Thanks.’
‘How’s Sara?’ she asked after a pause.
‘As of ten minutes ago she was still resting.’ Moments after leaving the ME’s office, David had called Lisa to check on Sara’s status and his sister assured him she was still sound asleep. ‘They call it a false labour. The pains stopped late last night and the baby seems to be doing fine so . . . all they recommend now is for her to rest and me to wait.’
‘Not something you’re good at.’ She smiled.
‘Never been my strong point.’
She smiled again. ‘I have arranged for the children to go into foster care until their grandmother’s situation is sorted out. With any luck she’ll be free to take them before the week is out.’
‘So maybe things have a way of working out after all,’ he said, before they drifted into silence once again.
And then Amanda lifted her eyes, her bright blue orbs meeting his pale green ones. ‘Listen, David, I . . .’
‘It’s okay,’ he interrupted, knowing exactly what she was going to say. ‘I think we were both scared of what we had gotten ourselves into, and the consequences it had for us, and the people that we loved.’
She nodded once again, perhaps deciding there was no more to be said. ‘So we’re good then?’
‘We’re good.’ He smiled, before standing to take her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘What for?’ she asked.
‘For doing your job.’
‘I went about it the long way, David.’
‘That’s okay – you got there in the end.’
J.T. Logan ran to him the minute he walked in the door – his long skinny arms reaching around David’s middle, his face now buried in his chest. David held him tight, before looking up at his sister – her wavy hair free, her blue eyes moist, her face the spitting image of her mother’s – and lifting his arm so that she might join them in their huddle, which she did, placing one arm around David, and other across her brother’s shoulders.
Moments later they sat down at the conference table, David on one side, the kids on the other. David took a breath before saying what he needed to say.
‘When were you going to tell me?’ he asked, Chelsea lifting her head sharply in response, J.T.’s deep brown eyes darting between Chelsea and David and back once again.
‘Tell you what?’ Chelsea asked.
David said nothing, merely pulled the New England Organ Bank report from his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the table in front of him.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘It’s an organ and body tissue transplantation and research report. The NEOB issues one for every donor and sends it to the ME’s Office as part of their obligatory paperwork. This one lists the organs and tissue that were taken from your mom – her brain, liver, her spleen, her kidneys, sections of her lower intestine and so forth – and explains what happened to them post-removal.’
The kids said nothing.
‘The Center for Liver Research and Diagnostics who were given your mom’s liver rejected it for any productive research outright given it was in the final stages of cancer – a secondary cancer which, according to the report, had most likely started in her bowel.’
‘I . . . ah . . .’ began Chelsea.
‘I know she was dying, Chelsea,’ he said, wanting her to know that there was no point in denying it. ‘So now you need to tell me what happened, starting with . . . how long did she have?’
‘She . . . two weeks, maybe a month,’ Chelsea offered, this time without hesitation. ‘She didn’t find out until the cancer was well advanced.’ She took a breath. ‘The doctors said chemotherapy would most likely be a waste of time so she made the choice to set things straight so that we would be okay after she was no longer around to look after us.’
‘So it was her idea,’ said David. ‘All of it.’
‘No,’ said J.T. ‘It was Father’s idea. It had always been Father’s idea. It’s just that Mom came up with the plan to beat him to it.’
‘Your fathe
r did not know that your mother was dying?’
‘No,’ said Chelsea.
‘So you told your mother of your father’s plans and she took control of her own murder so that she might liberate you two from him.’
‘Yes.’
‘She committed suicide.’
‘Yes.’
‘With your help.’
‘Yes,’ said Chelsea. ‘And despite how it all went down, we have no regrets,’ she said, gripping her brother’s hand on top of the table. ‘She said it was the last thing she would ask of us and, given all that she had sacrificed on our behalf, it was the very least we could do.’
And then Chelsea Logan took another long, deep breath before starting, once again, at the beginning.
*
‘He’s here,’ said Chelsea, after seeing her father’s car turn into their narrow Beacon Hill street. She had been standing at the window for the past half hour; her father was running late.
Chelsea met her mother in the hallway, and Stephanie felt the nausea boil in her stomach as she took her daughter’s hand.
‘All right,’ she said, praying that she would have the courage to see this through. ‘We don’t have much time so you must do exactly as we discussed.’ She turned towards her son, crouching so that she might meet his eye.
‘J.T., as soon as it is done you must remove the evidence and put it in the laundry and down the toilet like we discussed.’ They had gone over the details a million times, but for some reason, she felt the need to voice them one more time. ‘Then you have to come back here and wait in the hallway so you can play out the rest as part of your father’s plan. This will not work unless you stick to his strategy, do you understand?’
But J.T. was sobbing, unable to respond.
‘Please, my love,’ she said, her own tears now streaming down her face. ‘This is the only way. I love you both so much.’ She grabbed for Chelsea’s hand once again. ‘I will always be here,’ she said, her other hand now flat against her little boy’s chest. ‘In your heart, and he will be gone and you and your sister will be free and I will live on in you and your grandchildren and their grandchildren and . . .’
But then they heard the grinding of the automatic garage door, and she held them quickly and kissed them both before moving into the kitchen.
The rifle had been set up over an hour before. The heavy red oak hat stand had been placed at the end of the table, her husband’s long-sleeved T-shirt then stretched and pulled over the top. She had slotted the rifle through the right T-shirt arm, before tying it to the hat stand with the strongest string she could find – an extra length of twine looped around the trigger and draped lengthways, across the table, waiting for her to take her seat.
‘Quickly now,’ she told herself. ‘There is no time, you have to move.’
She checked on her props – the wine and the Vanity Fair, now placed equidistant on the table before her – and then she reached forward to grab the string so that she might pull, tightly, and force the trigger into compression.
She took a breath, and then another, counting them down until she had the courage to choose the one that would be her last. Then she closed her eyes and said a prayer for her children, and a final one for herself, before grasping the string and . . .
Snap!!!!
Nothing.
The string broke! The STRING BROKE, and she had no choice but to call for her children.
‘God, no,’ she said, pushing back her chair and rising from the table and rushing into the hallway once again. ‘J.T.,’ she said, sadly, simply, because he was the closest to the kitchen door. ‘Quickly. Chelsea,’ she yelled towards the top of the stairs, ‘stay exactly where you are.’
She grabbed J.T.’s hand and pulled him into the kitchen before getting on her knees and placing her hands on his cheeks and clasping them, hard – willing him to focus, forcing him to listen to what she had to say.
‘J.T.,’ she began. ‘There is no time. Your father will walk into this house at any minute. The string has broken. You need to get behind that hat stand and underneath that T-shirt. You need to place your finger on that trigger and you need to squeeze.’
‘NO!’ he yelled.
‘YES! There is no other way.’ She was sobbing. ‘Please J.T. Do this for me. I cannot die knowing you are left with him. Please, my son. Please give me this gift. Allow me to end this the way I want to. Let me die so that you can live the way you and your sister deserve. I beg you, my love. Please, DO THIS FOR ME SO THAT I CAN DO IT FOR YOU.’
J.T. nodded, ever so slightly, as his mother pressed her lips firmly on his forehead and whispered, ‘Make sure you close your eyes. I love you,’ then moved back to the chair for the very last time.
And then a shaking J.T. manoeuvred himself underneath his father’s T-shirt, and slotted his long skinny arm through the now tight right-arm hole. He placed his finger on the trigger, closed his eyes, and then he yelled, ‘I LOVE YOU, MOM,’ and then . . . and then . . . he fired.
‘So you pulled that trigger?’ asked David.
‘Yes.’
‘And flushed the string?’
‘Yes.’
‘And removed the T-shirt so you could take it to the laundry and make out that . . . that your father killed her and was trying to hide the evidence.’
‘We used the toilet off the kitchen to flush the string,’ said Chelsea. ‘But we had to go down the hallway to reach the laundry, and by that stage Father had heard the shot and was already well inside the garage. So . . .’
‘He met you in the hallway on the way to the laundry,’ continued David. ‘You lost time, after the string broke, which ruined your entire plan.’
‘Yes.’ Chelsea nodded. ‘And the funny thing was, Father knew exactly what we had been up to. He didn’t even need to go into the kitchen. He just took control. He told J.T. that unless he put on the T-shirt he would kill me. He wrapped his handkerchief around the rifle and held it to my head – and then he called 911.’
‘And all this explains why your father’s ears were intact and why yours, J.T., were not,’ he said, looking at the boy. ‘And why, given the gun was resting on the T-shirt that was still draped over the hat stand when it exploded, you had no recoil burns on your shoulder and . . .’
‘Everything else was as we told you,’ said Chelsea, as if imploring him to understand. ‘Don’t you see, David, my father’s way . . . that is the way it would have been if we had not intervened. Father changed Mom’s insurance, he drilled us on how it would all go down. It was just that in the end, Mom wanted it to happen on her terms – so that we would be free.’
‘It was a stupid idea,’ David said, the fruitlessness of it all adding to his frustration. ‘Stephanie – she knew better, she should have come to me, she should have asked for my help.’
‘But she did ask,’ said Chelsea. ‘She just waited until she was dead, for if she had approached you while she was still alive, my father might have found out . . . and then, she knew, it was me or J.T. who would have suffered.’
And then a memory came back to him – a conversation he had had with Joe Mannix many weeks ago. Joe had asked why a smart woman like Stephanie did not run – why, if she knew her husband was planning to kill her, she did nothing but sit there and wait for her moment to die.
But now David understood exactly why Stephanie had made that decision. It was not because Logan had sucked the life out of her, the cancer was doing that. On the contrary, if anything, it told him that Stephanie remained the fighter she always was. Logan simply fuelled her determination to use her own death for his demise – so that, in a manner of speaking, she could take him down with her, effectively setting her children free.
‘And then your father confessed,’ said David.
‘Yes.’
‘And everything . . .’
‘. . . everything went wrong,’ said J.T.
‘Until now,’ said Chelsea.
And then there was silence once again.
‘Y
ou should have told me earlier,’ said David.
‘We tried to – at least, I tried to tell Sara.’
David recalled Sara’s report of Chelsea’s odd behaviour in their very first meeting together – her fixation with the hat stand and the concept of ‘reaching’ across the table.
‘But I knew Father was listening so there was little that I could do. J.T. and I . . .’ she paused ‘. . . we decided it was safest to stick to Mom’s story. And then I was arrested and realised that nobody would believe us in any case. So we kept our mouths shut until we had the chance to meet with you together. And then . . . then I guess we left out some of the details, so that we could point the finger at my father, exactly where it belonged.’
David could think of nothing more to say.
‘Please, David,’ Chelsea began, her eyes searching his for some indication as to what he was going to do. ‘I know we should have told you, but in the end we had nothing to cling to but the legacy our mother had given us. She wanted us to have the life she could not – and while we did not know her before she met our father, we always had the feeling she wanted us to live as she once lived, before the walls closed in around her.’
David was not sure what to say, and even if he wanted to, he had no time to respond, as a knock on the conference room door made them all jump, and Amanda Carmichael walked slowly into the room.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, realising the children had been crying. ‘I’ve interrupted.’ And then, perhaps noticing the red in David’s own eyes she continued: ‘Is something wrong? I mean, if there is any other way I can help – if there is something else you want to run by me, I might be able to . . .’
David turned back to the children, their eyes now set on his. And in that moment he realised that the lies, the deception . . . they were the only tools these children had to bring their father to justice. They had stuck to their original premise to protect their mother’s memory – and no matter what, David knew, he had no right to take that away from them.
‘There’s nothing, thanks, Amanda,’ he said, scooping the New England Organ Bank report off the table. ‘The kids are just glad this is over.’
