For some time, I sat where I was and I watched her.
Sam was right. My wife was a lovely woman. And yes, she was probably also a bit too enamored with the legal accomplishments of the currently famous man who was our new neighbor.
Maybe I did have something to worry about. Tomorrow.
I found sleep quickly. When the alarm jarred me awake the next morning, that fact surprised me.
LAUREN FIXED BREAKFAST. The aroma of wheat toast and cheese and herb-crusted baked eggs in ramekins filled the kitchen. I hadn’t been hungry when I got out of the shower. But the aromas had me famished by the time I made it to the kitchen.
Hot breakfasts weren’t the norm in our house on hectic weekday mornings. Gracie—the one of the four of us least likely to pull her punches—asked, “So, is this like a pretend Sunday?” It earned a chuckle from her almost always taciturn brother.
When the kids rushed to their rooms to get ready for school, I said to Lauren, “Thanks for breakfast. I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, her back turned. “Last night helped. I was at the end of my rope.” She was busying herself with the kids’ lunches. Almost like it was an afterthought, she said, “Our neighbors will be home later today. Thought you’d want to know. Because of his issues with Emily.”
My breath caught, just a little. “Gotcha. You don’t think I should let her run at night?”
“Maybe not until we reach an understanding with them. Once they get to know her, you know, things might change. We have to remember that she can be a scary-looking dog in the dark. Perhaps a little neighborly give-and-take will help? Maybe they’ll come around and appreciate the fact that there’s a tough sheriff in town.”
“Sure, it’s worth a try. They’ve been where? In . . . Napa, or Sonoma? Do I have that right?”
“Napa. They have a second home. Hake is a wine nut. Owns some vineyards. Dabbles.”
When did Lauren start thinking of Mattin as Hake? Huh. I bit my tongue, but I decided it would be weirder not to ask Lauren the next question in my head than to ask it. I said, “How did you hear they’re coming home? Have they been in touch?”
Adrienne and Peter always kept us posted about their out-of-town plans. We had always done the same with them. We had keys to each other’s houses. We picked up packages, collected each other’s mail, watered each other’s gardens. Responded to emergencies. Despite the initial tension with our new neighbors, perhaps they were reaching out a little bit to try to establish a similar routine.
Lauren was wiping the kitchen counter. She smiled at me, as though she was having the same kind of benevolent thoughts I was. “No, not with me, directly. Someone in the office . . . was in touch with Hake. That’s how I heard.”
I thought, She didn’t have to tell me that. Lauren wanted me to know that the DA was still interested in whatever had happened Friday night.
Huh. “Something official?” I asked as I tapped the last of the coarse grounds from the french press into the compost bucket under the sink. The compost was for Adrienne’s garden. Adrienne had been dead for what felt like ages. I continued to dump food scraps into her compost pile and to turn the black soil with a pitchfork. I didn’t know why.
I was thinking that it was possible that a prominent attorney like Mattin Snow might have a benign reason to be in touch with the Boulder County DA’s office while he was at his second home in Northern California. But if the reason for the contact were benign, I didn’t think Lauren would have offered me the tidbit about her office being in touch with him.
“Can’t say,” is how Lauren responded to my question about the nature of the DA’s office’s contact with our neighbor.
Lauren’s “can’t say” didn’t mean that she didn’t know. It meant that she was not at liberty to reveal what she did know. She didn’t, I thought, have to say that, either. She could have left my query unanswered or white-lied me with a “don’t know.”
“Of course,” I said. The dance steps were familiar. Lauren was leading, but we had rehearsed these steps often enough that I knew how to follow without tripping over her feet. By specifying what she couldn’t tell me about work, she was informing me about her work in a completely deniable way.
My conclusion? Someone in the DA’s office had asked Mattin Snow to return to town. Who? At the roulette table in my head, I slid my remaining chips to the spot on the felt marked “DA.” But why did someone in the DA’s office suddenly want Mattin to return to town? For an interview? I thought that was unlikely, even highly unlikely. He would decline the interview request. He was under no obligation to talk with Boulder County investigators. He was certainly under no obligation to cut short his vacation to satisfy the curiosity of the sheriff or the DA. The man was a prominent lawyer. He would know all that.
It had to be one of two other things. First, it could be about developments with forensics. Sam had said something the night before about pending forensics.
I didn’t think the toxicology screen that had been done on Three-Wood Widow would be back so soon. The rape kit? After the few days that had passed, the most that investigators were likely to know would be whether or not viable DNA was present in the samples collected. The DNA results wouldn’t be available.
Was Mattin being summoned back to Boulder to give a DNA sample for a potential match? Would he voluntarily comply? Or had the DA’s office convinced the judge that they had probable cause for a warrant to collect exemplars?
That would be holy shit stuff. I didn’t expect Lauren to tell me if that was true.
The other possible reason that Mattin would voluntarily return to Boulder? If someone was making a veiled threat to end the secrecy that marked this case. Come back, or the accusations become public . . .
I wasn’t sure how much Lauren would tell me. “I wonder,” I said to Lauren, “if Mattin coming back to town could have anything to do with Sam’s visit out here on Saturday morning with the sheriff’s investigator.”
“Always possible,” she said. “Some people are revered for a reason. They earn their reputations, you know? People consider them good guys because they are good guys. He has been a tremendously positive influence on many lives. Many women’s lives.”
Lauren was talking about Mattin. “You respect him?” I said.
“I do. And this . . . mess . . . makes him vulnerable. Not guilty. Vulnerable.”
I found it an interesting choice of words. But her point was true. If Mattin were accused of acquaintance rape, all that he had done with the public to create and polish his image over his professional lifetime would be destroyed in a single news cycle.
I did not want to reveal to Lauren what I knew about the alleged rape or about my own growing doubts about how good a guy our neighbor was, or wasn’t. I tried to sound both neutral and ignorant as I said, “I suppose, in any dispute, there will always be someone in the wrong.”
“Exactly. And it’s not always the one with the finger pointed at him. No one knows that better than a prosecutor. At least, an experienced prosecutor.”
Except, I thought, maybe a defense attorney.
Lauren liked Mattin. She respected Mattin. And even though she hardly knew Mattin, she was telling me that she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
23
Traffic was nuts west of 55th. Some sewer project. I arrived at my office on Walnut minutes before my eight forty-five patient. That session ended at nine thirty. My nine forty-five was a late cancellation, so I found myself with the unexpected luxury of being free until ten thirty.
The late night with Sam was catching up with me. After my early patient left, I hustled down Walnut to Amante, determined to restart my engine with a triple shot. I carried the jet fuel back to my office and nursed it while I let Google educate me about the forensics of acquaintance rape.
Hella had told me that standard rape kit evidence had been collected at Boulder Community Hospital on the morning after the alleged assault. She also indicated that he
r patient had provided samples for a tox screen. I assumed that meant blood, but research broadened my horizons: the samples might also have included urine, saliva, and hair.
A text from Hella interrupted my research. Have time for a quick consult today? Kind of urgent.
I replied, I’m free until ten.
Need to show you something. Be right over.
Five minutes later Hella was sitting in my office. I was beside her on the sofa so that she could show me some photos on her phone.
She had already explained that she didn’t want to forward them to me. She didn’t have to explain why. “I saw my patient this morning at seven thirty. She told me she found this”—she pointed at the first photograph on her phone’s screen—“in her purse last night. It was in a zippered pocket on the inside. She was switching bags, moving her things to a different one. She has this purse . . . thing. She spends way too much money on . . . bags.”
“Value judgment, or pathology?” I asked.
“I’m still deciding,” Hella said with a smile.
I wasn’t too worried about the woman’s purse fetish. I was more troubled that I was having difficulty recognizing what I was seeing on the screen of Hella’s phone.
Hella could tell I was perplexed. “It’s a small rectangle of aluminum foil, about the size of a large postage stamp. That’s the edge of a thumbnail next to it. Gives it some proportion.”
“Okay.”
She moved to the next picture. “This is the other side of it. You can see that it’s folded, carefully. This is the way she found it.” Next photo. “Here it is open, unfolded. Those two things you see are—”
“Pills.” They were round and white. Aspirin size, I guessed.
“Yes. She insists that they are not hers. She doesn’t know what they are. Or how they got there.”
I could guess what they were. And I could guess how they got there.
I reminded myself that I was Hella’s supervisor. My role was circumscribed. Part of that role, however, was keeping an eye on Hella’s countertransference.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me what happened between the two of you this morning.”
“I touched them,” Hella said. “She handed the foil to me, and I touched it. She told me to open it, and I did.” I waited for her to reach the conclusion I had already reached. She wasn’t far behind. “It was so stupid of me, Alan. I really regret that. Touching it.”
“What are you thinking?” I said. “Specifically.”
“Fingerprints,” she said.
“It’s possible you might regret it,” I said. “When your work enters the forensic realm with a patient, you need to make decisions differently in therapy. Lesson learned. What did you and she discuss?”
“She’s no dummy. She wondered if someone had planted this in her purse. Some drugs.”
“Because?” I assumed I knew the answer to my question. But assumptions and therapy are about as good a combination as drinking and driving.
“Of the rape. Her belief that she was drugged.”
“Okay. When?”
She looked puzzled. “During the burglary?”
“Why,” I asked, “not the night of the big party? An ounce of prevention by whoever drugged her? In case there was suspicion later?”
“God, I didn’t think about that.” Hella sighed. “She asked me what she should do. I let her try to figure it out, but she seemed . . . completely unable to problem-solve this. Finally, I told her she needed to show them to her attorney. Right away. He would know what obligations she had . . . about them. What she should do with them.”
“Good call,” I said.
Hella exhaled in obvious relief. “I’m so glad. She’s probably there now.”
“Okay,” I said. “You handled it well, Hella. And you recognize what you could have done . . . more carefully.” I stood up. “Wait, which purse were the pills in? The one she was moving her things from, or the one she was moving her things into? And was it the purse that she was carrying on . . . Friday night?”
“I assumed they were in the one she was carrying, but I don’t really know. I see what you mean. That’s important. Should I ask her?”
I weighed my next words with great care. “Even if you feel confident about her recollections—even if you’re inclined to believe her— other people are making judgments, right now, about the veracity of your patient’s story. Therapeutically, you need to remain aware of that.”
Hella seemed defensive when she replied, “What reason would she have to lie to me, Alan?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes patients lie to me and I never discover the motivation. There’s another question you might ask—”
“Please,” Hella said.
“—yourself.”
“Oh.”
“What reason would your patient have to tell you the truth?”
“You think my patient is lying, don’t you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m trying to keep an open mind about what might have happened that night. I am encouraging you to do the same. Your patient acknowledges big gaps in her memory.”
“She was drugged.”
“And perhaps that is the explanation.”
“You think I’m not . . . sufficiently suspicious?”
“Suspicious? I don’t know, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“She will be feeling great pressure, both internally and externally, to fill in those memory gaps.”
“Jesus, Alan. Why on earth would a woman put herself through this if it weren’t true?”
I almost said, “Duke lacrosse. Hofstra gang rape.” But I didn’t. I suspected that Hella and I would have discussions about those events at some point during the supervision of this case. During a quick curbside consultation about another matter, however, wasn’t the correct time.
I said, “You like her. You liked her before the trauma. Your natural inclination is to care for her. But your responsibility with this patient, Hella, is to be therapeutic, regardless of the facts of last Friday night. As soon as you lock yourself into a specific version of reality—hers, or anyone else’s—you limit the degrees of freedom each of you has in the therapy going forward.”
“I have to think about that. I think there is some value in my support of . . . her.”
“Please do think about it. The drugs she found in her purse? If they are not hers, someone has gone to great lengths to make it appear that they are. If there are fingerprints on them besides yours, they are probably hers.”
Hella said, “He could have put them there that night. You’re right.”
“It’s possible,” I said. “But that would indicate he was concerned with being caught. If most of her story is accurate, I don’t get the sense that her attacker is someone who operates that way.”
Hella said, “She wouldn’t show me the drugs if they were hers, would she?”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Why?” she asked.
“What conclusion did you reach when she showed you the drugs from her purse?”
“That she wouldn’t show them to me if they were hers.”
“There you go,” I said. “She ended up with the result that is most in her interest.”
“She’s not that . . . devious,” Hella said.
“Perhaps not. Or she is.”
“You think she is that devious?”
“I think you’re missing my point.” I paused for effect.
Hella sighed.
“Have any of the forensic results come back?” I asked.
Hella nodded. “That’s why I know she’s at her lawyer’s office right now. He set the appointment to discuss one of the forensic tests.”
TWO MINUTES AFTER HELLA LEFT, my phone beeped with another text. I glanced at it expecting that she was asking me something or telling me something she had forgotten to ask or tell me earlier.
But the text was from Jonas. Jonas texting me from school was an infrequent event.
Forgot guy at house yesterday with survey stuff sticks with flags
Jonas considered punctuation to be a bit of a bother. I didn’t have an ongoing text relationship with any other kids his age, but I thought his aversion to commas and periods might be generational.
Thanks I replied. Good to know. Show me later?
Most of Jonas’s peers wouldn’t have known, or cared, about the implications of a surveyor showing up on the property. Jonas wasn’t most kids his age. His loss issues had left him hypersensitive to any signs of imminent change, especially indications of imminent change that he could reasonably interpret as monumental or out of his control.
Us he asked. In my head, I added the omitted question mark, aware that I was enabling his punctuation pathology.
No, the new neighbors I replied.
What r they doing
Not sure. I’ll tell you what I know when I get home.
What time
About four thirty. I expected to be home by four, but where commitments to Jonas were concerned, my goal was to underpromise and overperform.
My house he asked. Again, I supplied the understood question mark.
In Jonas’s world, “my house” was the one in which he grew up. “Your house” or “the house” was the one in which he currently lived, with us.
I texted That, or Peter’s barn.
Can they
Let’s see what they’re up to first. You cool?
Cool enough fgw
Fgw was Jonas’s text shorthand for one of his mother’s favorite little sayings. Adrienne often added the phrase “for government work” as an appendage onto her pronouncements. Sometimes the context would be clear. More often, not.
I doubted that Jonas really knew what the phrase meant. He employed it because it connected him to his mom. I suspected he would hold on to it as long as he felt the need. Like me and the compost pile.
I had a feeling that when Jonas showed me the surveyor’s stakes, I was going to learn exactly where my half a hectare in paradise began and where it ended.
The Last Lie Page 19
