Straw Men

by Martin J. Smith

  “Typical, in a way,” Perriman said. “It’s been eight years. What she described to you as ‘erased’ memories may not have been damage at all. Maybe it was just easier not to remember than to remember, and now all this is forcing the issue.”

  Christensen shook his head. “I don’t think it’s repression. More like regeneration. The memories were in there, but the retrieval circuits weren’t working. Like Alzheimer’s, but trauma-induced. Now, for whatever reason, those circuits are reconnecting.”

  “Because of these fresh traumas.”

  “Maybe.”

  Perriman nodded. “Interesting.”

  The night before, Christensen said, Teresa had been scared by the latest call, terrified by what the caller seemed to know about her.

  “Then tonight, anger. The pot boiled over,” he said. “She was just plain pissed. Three hours she talked. Things just poured from her. Questions. Suspicions. Accusations. This is an angry woman who wants answers I’m not sure she’ll ever get.”

  Perriman leaned back in his ancient leather chair. Its springs creaked, the only sound in the room except for the ticking wooden wall clock.

  Perriman laced his fingers across his chest. “What questions?”

  “She’s questioning everything now. The voice she hears that’s not DellaVecchio’s. How this caller knew about her pubic hair. The way the cops say it happened. How the guy got into her house that night. So much of what she remembers came from her husband, the personal memories. Now she’s wondering why things don’t add up, wondering about him.”

  Perriman drummed his fingers. “What’s he like?”

  “They’d split before it happened. For reasons I’m still not sure I understand, he came back,” Christensen said. “And he really did help her rebuild her past, replaced the missing things from her childhood, college, their marriage.”

  “The tragedy brought them together again?”

  “Apparently. There’s a strong bond there. He gave her back something she’d lost, and she appreciates that. But there’s a cop inside her, too.”

  “The cop wants answers.”

  “Exactly. Like the DellaVecchio ID. She knows something was wrong there. Hell, Chaytor, she knew DellaVecchio’s name as soon as the investigators showed her his picture. Said it right out, as a matter of fact. How? She wants to know.”

  “She doesn’t remember?”

  Christensen shook his head. “She remembers the mug shot ID process vividly. They showed her hundreds of faces, but as soon as they gave her the six-pack of shots with DellaVecchio’s face in it, she blurted his name. Doesn’t know how she knew the name, but she did. And the investigators never asked her to explain it. Eight years go by, and now the cop in her wants to know why nobody questioned that. That should have been a red flag to the cops on the case. How would she know his name? Was there some sort of prior relationship there they should know about? But nobody ever asked.”

  “You think it was planted?”

  “Like a seed, Chaytor. Set aside the question of why. Here was a woman with great gaps in her memory, and she was relying on people like her husband to fill those gaps. At the same time, the police were developing a case against DellaVecchio. You can bet her husband was aware of that. He wasn’t directly in the loop, but his best friend oversaw the investigation. I’m sure they talked.”

  “So you think her husband helped skew her memories?”

  “If he was convinced DellaVecchio was the guy, why wouldn’t he try to goose her a little? He knows she’d be no help whatsoever during the prosecution if she couldn’t remember anything from that night. So as long as he was rebuilding her memory, why not prime her so Carmen DellaVecchio’s name and face were a top-of-the-mind thing for her when trial time came? These are all cops, remember? Cops with a personal grudge and what looks like a solid suspect. Can’t you see it working that way? Can’t you imagine them trying to push Teresa just a little so the case would gel?”

  Perriman closed his eyes. He stayed that way so long Christensen wondered if maybe he’d fallen asleep. Finally, he nodded his head and said, “Layering.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It wouldn’t have to be overt. And it wouldn’t have to be all at once. Maybe she had some memory of the attack, and all they did was reinforce the memories they needed, or undercut the ones that didn’t fit their theory. Was there any memory of the attack?”

  “Nothing significant. Not until the last couple weeks. What are you thinking?”

  “Let’s assume she remembered nothing,” Perriman said. “Maybe her story, what became her story, was created in layers, like a painting. What if whoever, for whatever reason, started with a base coat? A description of the kitchen, maybe. Later, maybe he tells her that’s where she got hurt. Suddenly she’s got an image to build on, and her mind goes to work. Now she can see herself in that place, even if she doesn’t know what happened there. She’s in the hospital. She’s in pain. Obviously, something bad happened there. Then maybe her husband tells her what it was. And that’s where it really starts.”

  “Because he’s telling her the version the police have recreated, the one with DellaVecchio already singled out.”

  “But at that point she’s got an attacker with no face. So she starts trying to fill in those details. She wants to. She needs to. Memory abhors a vacuum, and her mind won’t let it alone.”

  “The cops already have some details,” Christensen said. “The bloody shoe print. The letter she’d received. Suddenly her attacker is a guy who wears those kind of sneakers, the kind of guy who’d stalk a woman. She’s getting an image.”

  “DellaVecchio, if I recall, had a record.”

  Christensen clapped his hands together, startling the old man. “The lineup!” he said. “Brenna got the transcript of the police lineup process. Soon as DellaVecchio walked in, one of the cops said, ‘Guy’s got a record a mile long.’ It’s right there in black and white. So it’s reinforced at that point, too.”

  Christensen stood up and put his hand to his forehead. “And the TV coverage! Another visual cue. Remember, the cops released DellaVecchio’s mug shot a few weeks after it happened. They never said he was a suspect, just that they wanted to question him about the case. They do that to get the name and face out there, trying to flush out people who might know something. But God, if she’d even watched the news once—”

  “His face leaves a strong impression,” Perriman said. “And in that context, what else could he be but a criminal? So now she’s got a face. With a police record. That’s what I mean by layering. The layers build, one on top of the other—”

  “Until she gets to court,” Christensen said.

  “And by then, she’s filled in all the details. The painting is finished.”

  Christensen recalled the precision of Teresa’s testimony, the riveting detail, her unshakable confidence when she leveled that accusing finger at DellaVecchio.

  “Now,” Christensen said, sitting again, “why?”

  Perriman shrugged. “To make the case. Why else would they massage her like that?”

  “I could believe that. Cops aren’t shy about messing with evidence, physical evidence, some of them anyway. Why not tinker with a victim’s memories? Teresa was an empty canvas.”

  “The pressure was intense,” Perriman said. “That attack was so brutal, people wanted a fast arrest.” The old man lifted one wavering hand and gestured across his desk. “Now, let me ask you something: Do you think you know everything the police had?”

  Christensen stood up again. “I don’t follow.”

  “I’m no lawyer, thank God almighty. Certainly not a detective. But I wonder if maybe there was evidence that never made it to court? Something damning about DellaVecchio, but something inadmissible?
Looks to me like these people were sure of who they were after, sure enough that they may have bent the rules a bit to get him off the street. What made them so sure?”

  Christensen considered the question for a long time, punctuating the process by saying, “Brenna might know.”

  Perriman looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Can I ask you something else, Jim?” He waited for Christensen’s nod. “How deeply do you trust this woman?”

  “Teresa?”

  “No.”

  Christensen wasn’t prepared for that answer. “Brenna? I—”

  “She’s got a lot invested here, doesn’t she? Professionally, I mean. She got her tail whipped the first time around, so there’s a payback issue here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just worried about you.”

  Christensen felt suddenly defensive, remembering Burke Padgett’s ham-handed implication about Brenna’s tunnel vision, his suggestion that her zeal to overturn DellaVecchio’s conviction had blinded her to the possibility of his guilt and the danger he posed.

  “I’m a big boy now,” Christensen said, more sarcastically than he intended.

  “There’s other evidence against DellaVecchio, some of it pretty strong,” Perriman said.

  “I know that,” he said. “Chaytor, why are you doing this?”

  His mentor studied him across the cluttered desk between them. “You’ve done some remarkable work here, Jim. You know how I feel about what you’ve accomplished. In life, not just in this case. But we’re still talking about memory, and that’s always uneven ground. You have to step carefully. Brenna doesn’t. Her mission’s entirely different.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  Christensen ended the discussion with a brisk wave of his hand. “Absolutely.”

  Perriman paused, then nodded. They both looked at the wall clock at the same time. A few minutes later. Christensen was pulling on his coat and stepping out Perriman’s front door. He trusted Perriman completely, but the old man’s final question had him wondering about Brenna against his will. And what about the others in this unfolding drama? DellaVecchio, Brenna’s loathsome client. Teresa and David Harnett. Dagnolo, Kiger, and Milsevic. They were working together, supposedly, but who among them did he trust?

  Alone, he groped his way down the steep stairs in the dark.

  Chapter 24

  Christensen bore down as North Highland began its slow climb toward Highland Park’s Reservoir No. 1. There was almost no traffic noise this time on a Saturday, only the soft sound of his running shoes on the damp pavement, the sound of his breath in the cold midmorning air, and the occasional bellow of a hungry lion at the nearby Pittsburgh Zoo.

  Annie was still asleep when he left. Taylor was up, but so focused on his new 3-D puzzle of Notre Dame cathedral that he wouldn’t have noticed if the Virgin herself sat down next to him. Brenna was hunkered down, too, unapproachable behind the closed door of their home office as she reviewed her strategy for the DellaVecchio hearing on Monday morning. Because of lab delays, there’d been no test results from the possible semen stain and other evidence found on the apartment building roof, or at least no public statement from Dagnolo clearing DellaVecchio of suspicion.

  He’d told Brenna nothing about Teresa’s latest memory conflicts, and so she was taking nothing for granted. Without additional evidence, the hearing would proceed as originally scheduled. Brenna assumed Dagnolo would try to discredit the DNA evidence that contradicted his crime theory. To be safe, she assumed, too, that Teresa Harnett would repeat the same story and identify DellaVecchio as she always had. And if lab tests later put DellaVecchio on the roof the night those shots were fired?

  “I’ll deal with that then,” Brenna had said.

  Christensen willed himself up the hill. It wasn’t steep, but it was painfully long. He shortened his stride and quickened his pace, then blew a long warm breath into a vapor trail. He checked the timer on his runner’s watch. More than a minute slower than his pace on this route just a year ago. Time was catching up to him.

  As he entered the park, about to cross the road onto the serpentine path that would take him around the reservoir, he heard the low drone of a slowly approaching car. What registered when he glanced back was the three-pointed star of a Mercedes-Benz, but the car was moving so slowly he stepped without hesitation into the intersection. He was halfway across the road when he heard the car’s horn, a short blast.

  When he looked again, the black sport-utility was stopped at the far curb. The headlights flashed once, and as soon as he was across the street Christensen stopped and stared. The driver lowered the tinted window.

  Teresa looked haggard. She waved him over, but from the apprehension on her face this was not a chance encounter.

  “You really do run the same circuit every Saturday morning, like you told me,” she said as he approached. “You’re in a rut.”

  He smiled. She didn’t.

  “I like ruts,” he said.

  “Sure makes you easy to find. Mind if we talk?”

  “Now?” he said.

  They were scheduled to meet that afternoon at four, after David went to work. “He called in sick,” she said, as if she’d read Christensen’s mind. “There’s no way I could get out without him wondering. But he’s gone right now, off doing errands, and we live just across the ravine. Thought I’d take a chance, and here you are.”

  Christensen was breathing hard, starting to sweat despite the cold. “I’m not really—”

  “Please, Jim. A few minutes?”

  In her pleading eyes, Christensen saw no room for discussion. “Where?”

  “Get in.”

  The reservoir loop wasn’t long. Teresa drove halfway around before she spoke again, and then only to ask if he wanted the heater off.

  “Unless you want me sweating right through these leather seats,” he said.

  Teresa obliged, then pulled the SUV into a small parking lot nearly hidden in a grove of trees. She checked to make sure that cars passing along the road couldn’t see them, then cut the engine. As she sat in profile, Christensen could see the faint line of an old incision that began just under her right ear and ran along the underside of her jaw to her chin. Another one followed her scalp line from her widow’s peak to eye level, then turned and disappeared into her dark hair. She’d left the house without her normally heavy mask of makeup.

  “You OK?” he asked.

  She faced him. “Not pretty, is it?”

  “No, I mean why are you here? If it’s just to tell me you couldn’t make it this afternoon, calling would’ve been fine. You’ve got my home number.”

  “I remembered something else,” she said, fixing her eyes straight ahead. Christensen looked, saw nothing but trees.

  “About the attack?”

  “Before that.”

  “Tell me.”

  He waited for her to blink. Finally, she said, “I got flowers. In a box, long and skinny. Tied with a green bow. No card. In my mind, the way I remember it, it was just a couple days before the attack.” She blinked, finally, then turned to him again. “Roses. Two of them.”

  Christensen was confused. “You testified about them at the trial, Teresa. I remember that. Two red roses. You opened them because you hoped maybe they were from David, trying to make up. And when you realized they weren’t you just tossed them because there was no card or anything.”

  Christensen closed his eyes, trying to recall Teresa’s testimony about the incident. It had little impact on the trial, because no one could ever prove who had left the flowers on Teresa’s doorstep or why. But that hadn’t stopped Dagnolo, who let the mysterious delivery subtly reinforce his stalking theory for the jury. The flowers fit neatly into Dagnolo’s fant
asy that DellaVecchio had, in some perverse way, courted Harnett before he attacked her.

  “They weren’t red,” she said. “Well, one of them was. I remember now. The other one was white.”

  Christensen shifted in his seat. “Do you feel that’s significant?”

  “I don’t know. I just remember them now, lying there in the box all by themselves. No baby’s breath. No tissue paper. It seems odd, doesn’t it? One red, one white.”

  Christensen watched her, letting her talk.

  “It seems like a little thing until you think about it,” she said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That it’s weird, is all,” she said. “I mean, nobody sends two roses unless the number two has some significance, right? And different colors? Why would somebody do that?”

  “So you think the colors mean something?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Red and white,” she said. “Love and death.”

  Christensen’s body heat was fogging the car’s windows. It suddenly bothered him that they couldn’t see out, but Teresa made no effort to clear them. He turned her words over in his mind. Love and death.

  “The D.A. always felt your attacker was courting you,” he said, avoiding judgment about Dagnolo’s theory. “That whoever attacked you was infatuated, maybe obsessed. ‘The courtship from hell,’ he called it.”

  Teresa watched him. “Looks that way.”

  “But do you buy it?”

  Long pause. “Looks that way.”

  Christensen probed again. “You’re sure David wasn’t trying to make amends after you split.”

  “No.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  She shook her head. “It was over. Besides, that’s not his style. Plus, I asked him. He didn’t send them.”