Miracle Creek: A Novel

by Angie Kim

  The lawyers returned to their tables and Abe put up another poster.

  “Detective,” Abe said. “Tell us what this is.”

  “It’s an illustration from the last website the defendant saw before the explosion. She searched for ‘HBOT fire start outside chamber,’ presumably to find the case listed on the protesters’ flyer, and found this: a chamber similar to Miracle Submarine, where the fire started outside. The fire cracked the oxygen tubing, allowing oxygen to escape and to come in contact with flames. Tank One exploded and killed the two patients connected to it.”

  “So the defendant saw this image a few hours before putting her son in the third spot, marked Deceased. Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “Exactly. Now remember”—Pierson looked at the jury—“Miracle Submarine exploded in the exact same way. The fire started in the same spot, under the U-shaped drop of oxygen tubing. The fatalities were also the same, in the two rear positions where she insisted her son be seated.”

  Teresa looked at the left box marked No injuries where Rosa had sat. In every other dive, she’d sat in the red box marked Deceased. If Elizabeth hadn’t insisted on changing things, Rosa’s head would’ve been the one engulfed in flames, charred to the bones. Teresa shivered and shook her head to expel the thought, fling it away. She felt relief so intense that her knees buckled, then a rush of shame that she was, let’s face it, thanking God for someone else’s child dying an excruciating death. It occurred to Teresa then—was it possible that she was rooting for Elizabeth not because she thought her innocent, but out of gratitude to Elizabeth, for planning the explosion in a way that left Rosa safe? Was her selfishness coloring her interpretation of Elizabeth’s laugh, her notes?

  Abe said, “Did you discuss the fire’s point of origin with the defendant?”

  “Yes, right after the defendant identified her son’s body. I told her we’d find whoever was responsible and how this happened. She said, ‘It was the protesters. They set the fire outside, under the oxygen tubing.’ Remember, at this point, we didn’t know where or how the fire started. Later, when our analysis confirmed that very spot as the fire’s point of origin, we were surprised, to say the least.”

  “Could she have known because of what she claimed—the protesters set the fire and their flyer made it clear how they did it?” Abe said, sounding like an innocent schoolboy asking if the Easter bunny was real.

  “No.” Pierson shook his head. “We investigated them thoroughly and ruled them out for several reasons. First, all six protesters were released from questioning at 8:00 p.m. They said they all drove back to D.C. immediately without stopping anywhere, and cell tower pings corroborate that. Second, all six have impeccable backgrounds as peaceful, law-abiding citizens, with the primary goal of protecting children from harm.”

  Teresa shook her head at this, hard, wishing that she could tell the jury not to be fooled by their supposed “peacefulness.” They hadn’t seen those women that morning, jaws clenched, contempt in their eyes. They’d looked ready to do anything necessary to stop HBOT, like those fanatics who gun down abortion doctors in the name of saving lives.

  Teresa took deep breaths to calm herself. On the stand, Pierson was saying, “Even if you believe they’d do something as drastic as commit arson to scare people into stopping HBOT, it makes no sense that they’d do it when the oxygen was on full blast and children were inside.”

  When the oxygen was on full blast. This phrase triggered a thought that sent chills through her body: What if they didn’t know the oxygen was on? That morning, as she was rushing past them after the first dive, the silver-bobbed woman had yelled, “We’re not going anywhere. See you tonight at 6:45.” She hadn’t thought much of it, she’d just been annoyed, but now, Teresa realized: the protesters had known their exact schedule. Which meant they’d expected the oxygen to be off by 8:05. According to Pierson, whoever started the fire had lit the cigarette between 8:10 and 8:15. That was the perfect timing: the protesters expected the dive to be ending but the oxygen turned off, which meant the fire would burn slowly, allowing the patients to see it on their way out, at which point they’d be terrified, quit, and report Pak. No more HBOT. It made perfect sense.

  Abe said, “I can see why you ruled out the protesters as suspects. But if they weren’t involved, how could the defendant know the fire’s exact origin?” Again, that tone of confused curiosity, as if he genuinely had no clue.

  “Two possibilities,” Pierson said. “One, she set the fire herself at that spot to implicate the protesters. Frame someone else for murder: a classic plan. A clever one, which might’ve worked if not for the strong evidence we found against her.”

  “And the second possibility?”

  “An unbelievably lucky guess.”

  Several jurors chuckled, and Teresa felt pressure squeezing her lungs. Elizabeth hated the protesters; that had been obvious. Had that hatred been enough for her to risk setting fire to the barn? Not to kill anyone, but to get the protesters in trouble? That last dive, TJ’s ears had hurt, so Pak took twice as long as usual to pressurize and start the oxygen. Not knowing that, Elizabeth would’ve expected the oxygen to be off by 8:15. She could’ve set the fire then, expecting everyone to be out shortly and discover the fire before it grew. That would explain why she’d clearly been devastated but not surprised when told about the fire and Henry’s death. The realization that she’d caused her own son’s death—the irony, the unbearable knowledge that he’d paid for her hubris, her hatred, her sin—would no doubt cause her breakdown, that cackle of agony Teresa couldn’t forget.

  Abe said, “Detective, how exactly did the fire start?”

  Pierson nodded. “Our forensic arson team determined that a burning cigarette and matchbook placed in the middle of a pile of sticks under an oxygen tube started the fire. The tubing cracked, putting the oxygen in contact with the fire. And even though oxygen itself isn’t flammable, it mixing with the contaminants in and around the equipment resulted in an explosion, and the force of that blast blew away the cigarette and matchbook before they were completely incinerated. We recovered several pieces of each item intact, and conducted lab testing on the chemical contents and color patterns. We identified the brand of the cigarette as Camel, and the matchbook as one that 7-Eleven stores in this area distribute.”

  Abe’s lips wiggled, like he was trying to suppress a smirk. “What brands were the cigarettes and matches found at the defendant’s picnic area?” he said, making picnic sound like a dirty word.

  “Camel cigarettes, and a 7-Eleven matchbook.”

  The whole courtroom seemed to rise and vibrate, everyone sitting taller in their chairs, leaning forward and sideways to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth’s reaction.

  Abe waited for the whispers and creaks of chairs to quiet. “Detective, did the defendant ever try to explain away this correlation?”

  “Yes. After her arrest, the defendant said she found an open pack of cigarettes and matches that night in the woods.” Pierson’s voice took on a singsong quality, the tone of a babysitter reading fairy tales to kids. “She said it looked discarded, so she took it and smoked it. She said there was also a note with an H-Mart logo on it saying, ‘This needs to end. We need to meet tonight, 8:15.’ She said she didn’t realize it at the time, but those must’ve been discarded by the arsonists.”

  “How did you respond to this explanation?”

  “I didn’t find it credible. Teenagers smoking discarded cigarettes, I buy. But a forty-year-old upper-class woman? But be that as it may, we took her ‘explanation’ seriously.” He drew air quotes. “We dusted the cigarette pack and matchbook for fingerprints.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Curiously, we found only the defendant’s fingerprints, no one else’s. She explained that by saying she used”—Pierson’s face twitched, as if trying not to laugh—“antibacterial wipes to clean them before she used them. Because, you know, they’d been on the ground.”

  Soft giggl
es swept the room. Someone laughed out loud. Abe frowned, deliberately crinkling his face. “I’m sorry, did you say antibacterial wipes?” The jurors smiled, seemingly amused, but Teresa found herself hating the transparent theatrics, his pretense at surprise. “So she was willing to smoke these random cigarettes belonging to God knows who, as long as she used her antibacterial wipes?” Abe’s repetition of “antibacterial wipes” seemed juvenile, a form of bullying, and Teresa wanted to shout at him to shut up, that Elizabeth really did have a habit of wiping everything with those wipes she carried everywhere, and so fricking what?

  “Yes,” Pierson said, “and in the process, conveniently ‘wiped away’ any evidence that could have corroborated or contradicted her story.” Teresa wanted to jump up and smack this man’s fat, bunny-drawing fingers.

  “What about fingerprints on the H-Mart note? Surely, the defendant didn’t use antibacterial wipes on paper.”

  “We didn’t find any note.”

  “Could it have gotten overlooked?”

  “The night of the explosion, we set up a wide perimeter around the picnic site and combed through it the next morning. There was no H-Mart note in that vicinity.”

  A tingle jolted Teresa’s scalp and spread down her shoulders, warm and thick, like a shawl. There had been a note that night. Close her eyes, and she could see it—a crumpled ball of paper on the blanket. She couldn’t make out the words, but she could see bright red and black splashes, the way H-Mart’s logo might look scrunched up.

  Teresa imagined telling Abe. Would he believe her? He’d ask why she didn’t tell him before. The truth was, to avoid talking about Elizabeth laughing when told of Henry’s death, she’d said she couldn’t remember much about that conversation, including what items she saw nearby. “I was so focused on telling her Henry was dead, I guess I blocked everything out,” she’d said. She could say Pierson’s testimony triggered her memory, but Abe wouldn’t buy it; he’d peck at it like a vulture until her story fell apart. Which meant she might be forced to come clean, explain about Elizabeth laughing. And that might hurt Elizabeth far more than Teresa saying she saw something that vaguely maybe could be an H-Mart note.

  So going to Abe in private was a no-go. But staying quiet was not an option, either; the jury had to know that Elizabeth wasn’t lying about the note.

  When Teresa opened her eyes, Pierson was saying there was nothing to corroborate Elizabeth’s version of events. Teresa stood up. She cleared her throat. She said, “That’s not true. I saw it. I saw the H-Mart note.”

  The judge banged the gavel and called for order and Abe said to sit back down, but Teresa remained standing and looked to Elizabeth. Shannon was saying something to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth looked past her and met Teresa’s gaze. Elizabeth’s bottom lip quivered and stretched into a half smile. Elizabeth blinked, and the tears pooling in her eyes rolled down her cheeks. Fast, like they’d burst from a dam.

  ELIZABETH

  THE WEEK BEFORE THE TRIAL STARTED, Shannon told Elizabeth they needed as many people as possible to sit behind her in court. Hand her tissues, glare at Abe’s witnesses, that type of thing. Family was out—Elizabeth was an only child and her parents died in the 1989 San Francisco earthquake—so that left friends. The problem: she had none. “We’re not talking womb-to-tomb bosom buddies here. Just anyone willing to sit by you. Sit—that’s it. Hairdresser, dental hygienist, the Whole Foods checkout girl. Anyone,” Shannon said. Elizabeth said, “Why don’t we hire some actors?”

  It wasn’t that she’d never had friends. True, she’d always been on the shy side, but she’d had close friends in college and at the accounting firm; she’d had three bridesmaids and been one twice. But since Henry’s autism diagnosis six years ago, she’d been too busy for anything not Henry-centric. During the day, she drove Henry to seven types of therapy—speech, occupational, physical, auditory processing (Tomatis), social skills (RDI), vision processing, neurofeedback—and, between those, roamed holistic/organic stores for peanut/gluten/casein/dairy/fish/egg-free foods. At night, she prepared Henry’s food and supplements and went on autism-treatment boards such as HBOTKids and AutismDoctorMoms. After a few years of no contact, her friends stopped reaching out. What could she do now? Call and say, Hi! Long time no talk! I was wondering if you’d be interested in coming to my murder trial, hang out a bit before I get executed. Oh, by the way, sorry for not returning your calls for six years, but I was busy with my son—you know, the one I was indicted for murdering?

  So yes, Elizabeth knew no one would be coming to support her (other than Shannon, who didn’t count, since she had to pay her $600 per hour). But when she walked in yesterday and saw the empty row behind her—the only empty seats in the entire courtroom—she felt a punching gut pain, as if an invisible boxer were pummeling her. For two days, the row behind Elizabeth remained empty, broadcasting to the world the total lack of support for her, flaunting her aloneness.

  When Teresa blurted out that she saw the H-Mart note, the judge tried to undo it. He banged the gavel and told Teresa she couldn’t shout stuff out and instructed the jury to disregard it. Teresa apologized, but when he told her to sit—this was the part Elizabeth would replay again and again, lying in bed—Teresa stepped over the Yoos, crossed the aisle, walked into the empty row, and sat directly behind Elizabeth. Some in the jury gasped. They seemed to regard Elizabeth like a leper—not contagious, maybe, but something you stay away from all the same.

  Elizabeth turned to look at Teresa. Having someone stand up for her, declare herself on her side, sit by her without shame—those were things she’d written off, things she’d told herself she didn’t care about now that nothing seemed worth living for. But it had hurt, the double divers she’d spent hours with every day, not bothering to come see her or ask for themselves if she did it. The automatic assumption of her guilt.

  But now, here was one of them, willing to be a friend. Gratefulness expanded inside her like water in a balloon, threatening to burst and gush out in torrents of thank-yous she couldn’t voice. She gazed at Teresa, tried to convey her gratitude with her eyes.

  Just then, she glimpsed a shock of silver in the crowd. The leader of the protesters, the woman with the sanctimonious username ProudAutismMom. She’d expected Shannon to expose that woman’s so-called alibi as a sham at trial and bring her down, but the arson call changed Shannon’s focus to Pak, enabling that woman to sit comfortably, spectating the trial as if she were an innocent bystander. Elizabeth felt bile worm up her throat, the familiar punch of fury and hatred and blame. If it weren’t for that woman, her son would be alive right now. He’d be nine, about to start fourth grade. Ruth Weiss, with her menacing threats and attempts to destroy Elizabeth’s life, all of which she discovered during that fateful call with Kitt she wished to God she’d never had. That call had sent Elizabeth reeling, stripping away her rationality and leading her to the moment she’d regret for as long as she lived. The series of idiotic, incomprehensible acts that had come to define her life—and Henry’s, too, as it turned out.

  Elizabeth turned back to Teresa and thought of her trapped in the horror of the fire while she was drinking wine, toasting the end of HBOT, and marveling at the cigarette between her fingers. She wondered what Teresa would think if she knew everything about that day, if she knew that Elizabeth—her hatred for Ruth Weiss—was to blame for Henry’s death.

  * * *

  SHANNON HATED DETECTIVE PIERSON. “What a condescending, smug son of a bitch,” she’d said after their first meeting and again after his direct testimony. “I can’t stand that squeaky voice of his. I literally have hives.”

  Elizabeth thought it’d be painful to see him—the man who’d led her to Henry’s corpse, her son as an inanimate object. But she didn’t remember him. Not his face, not even his hideously incongruous voice. She didn’t remember any of the things he was saying, and instead of pinpointing inaccuracies like Shannon wanted, she took it in like a passive TV viewer.

  When the judge t
old Shannon to begin her cross-examination, Shannon said to Elizabeth, “You sit back and enjoy; I’m going to rip him apart.” But when she stood up, Shannon looked at Pierson out of the corners of her eyes (could it be? Was Shannon pretending to be seductive?) and smiled, both dimples showing. She said, “Good afternoon, Detective,” in an artificially low voice (trying to be sexy or to accentuate his high voice, she couldn’t tell), and walked to him in small steps, her hips moving back and forth in what she guessed was supposed to be a sashay.

  “Detective,” Shannon continued in the guttural voice that made Elizabeth want to clear her throat, “let’s talk about you a bit. As we heard, you’re an expert in criminal investigation, with twenty years of experience, and the lead investigator here. In fact, I heard a rumor that you teach a seminar on evidence gathering.” She turned to the jurors and said, like a proud mother bragging about her son, “A required class for all incoming detectives, apparently.” She turned to him. “Is that right?”

  “Um, yes.” This was clearly not what he’d expected.

  “Is it true the seminar’s called Criminal Investigation for Dummies?” Shannon said and—could it be true?—giggled. Shannon, the serious, professional, slightly overweight lawyer who wore unfitted plaid suits and opaque pantyhose, giggling like a four-year-old.

  “That’s not the official name, but yes, that’s what some call it.”

  “And I hear you created such a good chart, that’s all you use to teach the class. Just one page, is that right?”

  Pierson looked bewildered. He looked over to Abe like a schoolboy asking a friend for the answer. Abe shrugged slightly. “Yes, I have a one-page chart to teach the seminar.”