Midnight Confessions

by Karen Leabo

  Dennis’s next testimony was a skillful blend of fact and fiction detailing the rigors of Jenn’s attempted recovery, her grief over losing her husband, the periods of depression she went through.

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Ronnie said. “What is the relevance here?”

  “Mr. Simmons?” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, the prosecution is presenting character evidence in an attempt to illustrate the defendant’s frame of mind just prior to the kidnapping, which will establish motive.”

  “Objection overruled,” Hustead said, though he didn’t sound all that happy about it.

  “Jennifer was allowed frequent visitation,” Dennis continued in response to the prosecutor’s questions. “But then she started keeping Cathy longer and longer, rarely returning her at the times agreed upon. Lost track of the time watching soap operas, I imagine—”

  “Objection,” Ronnie said. “The witness is speculating as to the motives behind the defendant’s actions.”

  “Sustained. Dennis—Judge Palmer,” Hustead said, trying to maintain an aura of formality between himself and his fellow judge, “surely I don’t need to instruct you on the rules of admissible testimony.”

  “Sorry, Your Honor,” Dennis said, bowing his head humbly.

  “Oh, brother,” Jenn muttered. Yes, she’d often kept Cathy for longer hours, but only after calling to okay it with her mother or Dennis.

  “Jenn never bathed her,” Dennis said when the prosecutor asked him to describe his stepdaughter’s visits with her daughter. “She fed Cathy junk food and plunked her in front of the TV. After the child came home with bruises all over her back, Esther and I didn’t allow unsupervised visits anymore.”

  Ronnie had to physically restrain Jenn from jumping out of her chair and challenging the malicious falsehoods. “Why aren’t you objecting?” she wanted to know.

  “Because the idiot isn’t establishing motive, he’s doing just the opposite,” Ronnie whispered. “If you couldn’t be bothered with your kid, why would you want her back so bad? Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to refute this evidence,” he whispered over and over.

  Dennis ended by relating Cathy’s disappearance and his subsequent search for mother and daughter, managing to make Jenn sound wickedly crafty in the means she used to evade her stepfather’s net.

  Ronnie did a creditable job of minimizing the damage of Dennis’s lies. During cross-examination, he asked Dennis who besides himself had witnessed Jenn’s fits of temper and other indications of mental illness. For the first time appearing unsure of himself, Dennis could name no one.

  Every few minutes Jenn glanced behind her to see if Joe had arrived yet. Maybe it was something as simple as car trouble. He would be here, she was positive. She needed his reassuring presence. Surely he wouldn’t abandon her during the most stressful hours of her life, hours that would determine her whole future as well as Cathy’s?

  The prosecution called a dizzying array of witnesses to testify as to the seriousness of Jenn’s injury, the grim prognosis, and the difficult recovery. Police officers, doctors, nurses, physical therapists, all testified to witnessing at various times hysteria, depression, drug dependency, and a lack of lucidity. Ronnie was able to clarify that the doctor-prescribed morphine Jenn had taken for pain was directly related to her occasional breaks with reality, and that she’d been completely free of the drug by the time the hospital had released her.

  Jenn’s psychologist testified next. Dr. Josephs verified that Jenn had participated in intense grief therapy for coping with the loss of her husband and her painful debilitation. When the prosecutor asked if, at the time of her release from the hospital, Jenn had been ready to take on the responsibility of caring for an active five-year-old, Dr. Josephs had reluctantly said, “No.”

  Again, Ronnie was able to extract the rest of the story from the psychologist—the fact that Jenn’s psychological problems had been perfectly normal after the enormous trauma she’d suffered, that she had responded favorably to therapy, and that at the time she had asked Dennis and Esther to return Cathy to her, she’d been ready to handle it.

  The court recessed for lunch. “How do you think it’s going?” Jenn asked Ronnie.

  “I never make predictions,” he said blandly, which did nothing to put her mind at ease. In her own opinion, things looked iffy. Mark Simmons had established beyond doubt that Jenn had taken Cathy away from her legal guardian. After the number Dennis had done on her, proving she had good reason wouldn’t be easy.

  She needed Joe, and he was still conspicuously absent.

  At least Jenn’s guard didn’t drag her back to jail for lunch. She was allowed to eat in a vacant office under the guard’s watchful eye. But she could hardly swallow a mouthful of the stale pimento cheese sandwich and mushy apple provided for her. She wished instead for a handful of antacid tablets.

  When the hearing resumed, Cathy was the first witness called. Jenn held her breath as she spotted her daughter being led into the courtroom by a female bailiff. Her beautiful blond curls had been scraped back from her face into an untidy ponytail, and she was wearing a mismatched sweater and pants that were too small for her, the clothes clinging to her and making her appear thin.

  Jenn was appalled. “Someone deliberately made her look bad,” she whispered to Ronnie. “I’ll bet Dennis paid her foster parents—”

  “Don’t go looking for conspiracies,” Ronnie said calmly. “There’s nothing we can do now.”

  At that precise moment Cathy spotted Jenn. “Mama!” she cried, attempting to break away from the bailiff who held her hand.

  Jenn waved and blew a kiss, her heart in her throat, then shook her head sternly at Cathy’s attempts to reach her. After a moment Cathy stopped struggling, seemingly understanding Jenn’s silent reprimand. She was placed on the witness stand, boosted by a couple of telephone books, and the judge extracted a promise from her that she would tell the truth.

  “Hi, my name’s Mark,” the prosecutor said with an engaging smile. “What’s yours?”

  “Mama says I’m not to talk to strangers,” Cathy said primly.

  Jenn smiled inwardly.

  “Well, I think it’d be all right this time.” Simmons turned toward Jenn. “Don’t you, Mrs. Montgomery?”

  “It’s okay, Cathy,” Jenn said.

  “Oh. My name’s Cathy Montgomery.”

  “And you’re how old?”

  “Five.”

  “And where do you live?”

  “With Mr. and Mrs. Alvarez,” she answered promptly, naming her foster parents.

  “And where did you live before that? Do you remember?”

  She nodded. “In a big house by a lake.”

  “And before that?”

  “Mmm, in lots of motels.”

  “Who were you living with then?”

  “With Mama and Mr. ’Dresi.”

  Great, Jenn thought. It sounded like she was shacking up with some guy and living on the road.

  Cathy went on to cheerfully describe the day her mother had packed up their belongings and whooshed them out of town on a bus, how they’d had to hurry so Grandpa couldn’t catch them.

  Next, Cathy waxed eloquent on one of her favorite subjects, camping in the woods and sleeping in the car. Then she mentioned “roach motels” and the mousetrap she and her mama had found in one place they stayed.

  Ronnie objected. “What is the relevance?” he asked again.

  “By establishing the defendant’s activities during the day and weeks following Cathy’s disappearance, the prosecution is attempting to prove that the defendant was willfully eluding the law, knowing full well she was doing wrong.”

  Jenn covered her face.

  “Sustained,” Hustead said wearily.

  “I’ll fix it, don’t worry,” Ronnie assured her. But Jenn wasn’t convinced. Hideous negative images were already etched in the jury’s minds, no doubt.

  The prosecutor questioned Cathy for far longer than was ne
cessary, Jenn thought. Finally he posed his last question. “Cathy, do you want to go live with your grandma and grandpa Palmer?”

  Cathy’s eyes grew round with obvious apprehension. She stared straight at Dennis, but didn’t answer until Simmons repeated his question. “Yes,” she finally answered in a tremulous voice. Then she burst into tears.

  “She’s been coached,” Ronnie whispered.

  “She’s been threatened,” Jenn said, clenching her fists in impotent fury. Cathy would never have answered in the affirmative unless Dennis had threatened dire consequences otherwise.

  After a short recess, Ronnie was allowed to cross examine a fidgety and exhausted Cathy, probably just as Simmons had planned.

  “Cathy, did you always live in hotel rooms?” Ronnie asked.

  “No. Mama and me lived in a ’partment.”

  “Where was that? Do you remember?”

  Cathy shook her head, then, recalling that the judge had asked her to say all of her answers out loud, added a distinct, “No.”

  Ronnie did manage to get Cathy to describe in detail the more stable life they’d lived in their apartment, though Jenn couldn’t see how that would really help. The prosecution had amply demonstrated that she’d been living under a false name while in Seattle.

  “No further questions.” Ronnie hadn’t exactly made Jenn sound like Wonder Mother, but at least she didn’t sound like a lazy, neglectful slattern, either.

  Simmons wanted to redirect, and Cathy burst into tears again and the judge put an end to her ordeal. She cried piteously as the bailiff carried her out of the courtroom, and Jenn couldn’t prevent a few tears from rolling down her face.

  “That was really stupid of Simmons to put her on the stand,” Ronnie gloated. “The jury is blind if they couldn’t see that she’s afraid of Dennis—and that she loves her mama. Here, wipe your face,” he said gleefully, handing her a tissue. “Make sure the jury sees you do it.”

  Lawyers, Jenn thought in disgust, dabbing at her tears. Even her own defense attorney, Joe’s friend, had a sleazy streak.

  Esther Palmer was the next person called to testify. She looked very uncomfortable as she settled into the witness chair. She placed her hand on the Bible and raised the other hand, but she couldn’t seem to say, “I do.” She turned toward Judge Hustead.

  “I can’t do this,” she said in a loud stage whisper.

  The judge’s eyebrows flew up. “Will counsel approach the bench?” he asked. Both lawyers, looking equally perplexed, stood and walked up to the judge. A heated, whispered confrontation took place, but no matter how hard Jenn strained her ears, she couldn’t understand a word. She looked questioningly at her mother, but Esther stared straight ahead, like she was in a trance.

  All at once the back doors of the courtroom flew open. Every head turned to see who was so noisily interrupting the solemn proceedings.

  “It’s Joe,” Jenn announced to no one in particular. He hadn’t abandoned her after all. Her heart soared momentarily, then immediately plummeted. A beautiful, polished-looking blonde was clutching his arm, glued to his side. That’s what had delayed him? An insidious jealousy announced its presence with a knifelike pain in Jenn’s chest...until she realized that the blonde looked very familiar.

  “Oh, my God. Tammy?” Jenn scarcely breathed the name. She’d known, on an intellectual level, that her sister was alive. But it hadn’t seemed real to her until this moment, until she’d seen for herself the woman her thirteen-year-old sister had become.

  Tammy skidded to a stop about ten feet away, her eyes alight with recognition. “Jenn?”

  Jenn nodded vigorously. Then she did something she’d never done before. She fainted.

  Chapter 16

  Joe hadn’t intended to cause a riot when he’d brought Tammy Patternson into the courtroom. He’d been hurrying, afraid they were too late. He’d known that Jenn’s reaction would be emotional when she saw her sister.

  He hadn’t been prepared for her to swoon, though.

  As Jenn collapsed and slid out of her chair onto the floor in a boneless heap, all hell broke loose. Joe abandoned any courtroom dignity he might have possessed and sprinted toward her, doing a pretty good imitation of an Olympic hurdler as he vaulted the gate that separated spectators from the proceedings. Tammy, not quite as agile in her high heels, nevertheless was right behind him.

  “Jenn?” Joe said, gently patting her face. He loosened the collar of her blouse and fanned her with a sheaf of papers he’d picked up from the table under which she’d fallen.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Tammy kept saying. “Here, try this.” She handed Joe a glass of tepid water and a box of tissue, also from the table.

  Joe moistened a tissue and swabbed Jenn’s face. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared, uncomprehending, at the two people hovering over her.

  The courtroom erupted in confused chatter. Joe was vaguely aware of various voices he recognized—Dennis, sputtering indignantly, Esther Palmer, crying hysterically. Mark Simmons, demanding a mistrial for some incomprehensible reason. Reporters pushed forward, trying to see what was going on.

  The judge banged his gavel, calling for order. “Do we need an ambulance?” His voice boomed.

  Jenn, though obviously still dazed, shook her head and started to sit up.

  “No, Your Honor,” Joe said. “I think she’s okay.”

  “And just who the devil are you?”

  Immediately the courtroom quieted as everyone waited for the answer to that question.

  “Joe Andresi. I’m a private investigator, and I’ve recently uncovered some evidence that has significant bearing on this case.”

  “Your Honor,” Ronnie Bloom said, “I’d like to request a recess so that I can investigate this new evidence—”

  “I concur,” Simmons said.

  Judge Hustead put a hand to his forehead, obviously displeased with this new wrinkle in what should have been a pretty straightforward case. “Court is hereby recessed until tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. Gentlemen,” he said, addressing the lawyers, “I’d like to see you both in chambers. You, too, Mr. Andresi. Aw, heck, while I’m at it, Dennis, Esther, y’all come too. And the defendant. And you, whoever you are,” he added, pointing at Tammy as an afterthought. “I intend to get to the bottom of this mess.” He banged his gavel one final time, like an exclamation point.

  Joe helped Jenn into her chair. “You are okay, aren’t you?” he asked, worried that he might have spoken too soon. Jenn was as pale as a winter moon.

  “I think so,” she said in a shaky voice. A bailiff brought her some fresh water to drink. After a few steadying sips, she looked up at Joe, her eyes much clearer. “You finally got through to Tammy?”

  “Not me. Your mother. They talked on the phone early this morning. Somehow or other they convinced each other to help you. I chartered a plane to fly Tammy into Rhymer, but it took a little longer than I expected.”

  “Oh, Joe, I don’t know what to say, I... yes, I do. I love you.”

  Surprised by the oddly timed declaration, but pleased beyond words, Joe would have kissed her. But Ronnie chose that moment to reappear.

  “Get a move on,” he said impatiently. “We don’t want to keep the judge waiting.”

  After the pandemonium of the courtroom, Judge Hustead’s chamber was a cool, quiet haven. The judge, unaccustomed to such a large number of guests, had the bailiff round up some extra chairs. Still unsteady on her feet, Jenn found a seat quickly and sank into it.

  She hadn’t said anything to anyone since she’d followed Ronnie out of the courtroom, her guard hot on her heels with handcuffs ready, like he expected her to make a break for it. She avoided looking at Joe or Tammy, or her mother and stepfather, for that matter. She didn’t voice any of the hundreds of questions buzzing through her mind like drunk bumblebees. She would have time for that later.

  Joe and Ronnie sat on either side of her. Tammy hung back, refusing the chair offered to her and instead choosing to lean
against the wall. Dennis and Simmons, sat as far away from the others as they could get. Esther, still snuffling quietly, sat off by herself, staring at Tammy like she was seeing a ghost. She clutched a tattered and much-taped-up manila envelope to her chest.

  “Harold,” Dennis said, using the judge’s first name as if to illustrate his superiority over the rest of the flotsam in the room, “I guess this thing has gotten a little bigger than any of us really expected.”

  “I’D say,” Hustead declared dryly from his throne behind his massive desk.

  “I think perhaps we’ve all let our emotions carry us away. I, for one, would like to admit that I made a mistake by involving the courts in what is essentially a family dispute. I am prepared to withdraw my complaints against Jennifer if the state will drop the charges against her.”

  Jenn could hardly believe what she was hearing. She looked first to Ronnie, who nodded encouragingly, then to Joe for confirmation.

  “That’s it,” Joe whispered, gripping Jenn’s hand. “We got him.”

  “If that’s what you want, Dennis,” Simmons said. “Although—”

  “No.” The single word, coming from Jenn, sliced through the room like a knife. All eyes were on her. Somehow she’d gotten to her feet and spoken without any conscious effort. “You started this, Dennis, so why don’t you finish it? Could it be that you don’t want the public to hear my defense? That you don’t really want anyone to know why I was forced to kidnap my own child?”

  “Jennifer,” Dennis said as a vein pulsed in his neck, “there’s no need for these histrionics. We can discuss this privately—”

  “Yes, there is a need,” Tammy said. “We’ve been handling this matter privately for far too long. I flew all the way from Birmingham to say my piece, and I’ll say it.”

  “And you are?” Judge Hustead asked, tapping a pencil nervously on his desk.

  “Tammy Patternson. Jenn’s older sister, Dennis’s stepdaughter.”

  “I don’t think so,” the judge said with a weary sigh. “I happen to know that Tammy is deceased. I attended her funeral.”