Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  “Hi, Ms., um,” he attempts as I open the door. “I have your boxes.” He gestures toward a silver minivan idling in the driveway.

  The willow in our front yard, in full tender leaf, rustles in a puff of breeze. The sprinklers had come on mid-morning, the last of the droplets now glistening on the grass and on that bush with the feathery leaves in sweetly fragrant bloom. What a pretty yard, passersby used to tell us. And it was. Pretty, like our home and our family, exactly what everyone wants. Too bad we don’t fully appreciate our joy until it’s too late.

  “Ms. Hennessey?” Theo is saying. “Hope I’m not bothering. There are three boxes, and…”

  He stops. Maybe reading my expression.

  “That was fast,” I say. Will must have had the boxes ready to go. “I must admit I wasn’t expecting anyone. So soon.”

  “I’ll bring them in for you?”

  Theo’s no threat, just doing his job.

  “I’ll help,” I say. Faster the better. Get this over with. Will. What a liar.

  Theo hefts a brown carton from the back of the van, hands it to me. It’s flapped closed with one strip of tape, not too heavy. I take a deep breath, cardboard pressed against my chest, maybe searching for a scent of Dex. But it only smells like box. Theo stacks the other two, slams the van’s door with a shiny loafer. Lugging both boxes, he lets me go first through the front door.

  I’m relieved Theo won’t think—if guys think about this stuff—that I’ve turned into a slob. Dining room, as we walk by it to the hall, abandoned, a bare oval table set only with pristine white candles in Dex’s heirloom silver candlesticks. They’ve stood there, off duty, for four hundred and fifty days. It’s easy to keep a house in order if it’s only you.

  At least my desk looks as if someone works there.

  “Watching the trial?” Theo asks, cocking his head toward the muted feed monitor.

  “Isn’t everyone?” Theo doesn’t need to know what I’m doing. No one in my world, other than Katherine and the publisher, is aware of this project. Oh, except for Spofford and McMorran. And the judge. And probably Voice and the video guys. So it’s really not that secret.

  “Poor thing.” Theo lifts a knee, hoisting the box he’s carrying. “Poor little Tasha Nicole.”

  We stash the containers in the guest bedroom. As if I’ll ever have guests. Three boxes, law firm logo on each side, corrugated cardboard, lightly taped so they can be opened easily. They’re numbered one of three, two of three, three of three.

  “Need help opening them?” Theo dusts his hands on the back of his khakis.

  I blanch at the thought. But he’s only trying to be nice.

  “No, thanks.” I close the guest room door and lead him away. As he backs out of the driveway, I’m thinking: I’m never going in that room again. Never opening those flaps, never ripping off the tape, never looking into those boxes. Never ever.

  And now I’ve missed my morning’s writing.

  In real life, the trial’s in recess, set to reconvene after lunch. I’ll rewind my video; see what I missed. Because of those boxes. A shadow crosses my heart, the darkness calling to me, pulling at me. Dex’s stuff. Sealed up. Like he is.

  “Dexter Liam Hennessey.” I say his name out loud. He wouldn’t want me to “schmull,” as he used to say. He’d want me to get the hell on with it.

  Getting the hell on with it, I defrost a container of condolence soup someone left for me. The label has peeled off, so it’s also surprise soup. Chicken, I smell, as the microwave does its thing. I remember that fragrance.

  “Soup!” Sophie would crow from her Piglet booster chair, holding up her special bunny spoon in delight. “Super duper!”

  The bunny spoon is in the basement now. In a box.

  I shake it off, the darkness, best I can. The darkness will not conquer me. I bring my soup into the study for a working lunch, prop my tablet against the still-black monitor, and fast-forward to video of this morning’s proceedings. Medical examiner first. The tablet has a smaller screen than the monitor, but this is about the words, so it doesn’t matter. I hit Play, guessing on the timing.

  “… explain the process?” A miniature Spofford is asking an equally small medical examiner. “After you received the body, what did you do first?”

  Still holding my spoon, I fast-forward again. I need to hear the pivotal “cause of death” testimony before the trial starts live. Guessing on the timing again, I hit Play.

  “… drowning?” Spofford is asking.

  “The lungs were not sufficiently intact to allow such a judgment,” Dr. Zimbel answers.

  “Were there any specific indicia of trauma? Broken bones?”

  “No.”

  “Internal injuries?”

  “Because of the victim’s condition, I—no. Not that I could tell.”

  “Bruises?”

  “Again. Because of the victim’s condition, no.”

  “Were there signs of choking or suffocation? Petachiae in the eyes?”

  “There were no eyes,” the ME says.

  My soup spoon clatters on the hardwood floor. I leave it. I’ll never eat again. My tablet’s speaker is feeble, but I hear the audience react, and then the gavel banging to silence the horrified murmurs.

  “I see.” Spofford shuffles his pieces of paper. Clears his throat. “After you completed the autopsy, ah, in your opinion, then, what was the cause of death?”

  The courtroom goes silent. I move my disgusting soup out of the way, and lean in toward the tiny screen, as if getting closer could allow me to hear what Dr. Zimbel is thinking. She knew, when she conducted that autopsy in the dank, steely basement of 94 Albany Street, masked and gloved, smelling the morgue’s disinfectant and decomposition, with the tiny body of whoever it was—a little girl, a little dead girl—on a sleek slab of aluminum, that she’d be called on to do her job. To understand the death. Describe it. Possibly convict the person who erased an innocent human being from existence.

  “Homicide,” Zimbel says.

  “Not an accident?” Spofford asks. “Why?”

  “Attention stations,” Voice interrupts. Real life is starting again. “Court will resume in one minute.”

  And now I’ve missed Zimbel’s answer. I push Rewind. Accident. I hate that word. But I have to focus on this, not on my Sophie, not on Dex, not on my own life, not on the terrifying uncertainty of random disaster that steals our loved ones from us. I could kill Ashlyn Bryant. It’s heart-twisting enough when it’s an accident, when everyone says it couldn’t have been prevented, but how does the mind grasp the reality when a monster, a real actual monster like her—

  I fumble with the tablet, my fingers not obeying. I need to hear this.

  “Thirty seconds, stations,” Voice says.

  “Dr. Zimbel,” I hear again. “Not an accident? Why?”

  The ME puts on her glasses, takes them off.

  “Mr. Spofford?” she says. “She had been put in a trash bag.”

  I hear a choked-back sob from someone—and realize it’s me.

  “No further questions,” Spofford says.

  “You may roll tape in ten seconds,” Voice says.

  Next will be Quinn McMorran’s cross-examination. After that, the sketch artist.

  But I am crying too hard to listen.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  If I let my emotions derail my assignment, it’ll prove I can never be me again. That’s—well, I was going to tell myself that’s pathetic. On the other hand, it’s true. I never will be that me again. That’s what I have to get used to.

  I’d lost it again after the medical examiner’s testimony. Buried myself in bed, a blanket over my head. Now I have to come back to life. Because I, at least, can.

  So now, even though my eyes are puffy and all I want to do is keep sleeping—maybe forever—I convince myself to get out of bed. I make coffee. Pour wine. Open a pack of saltines with my teeth, and force myself, at ten thirty at night, to listen to today’s trial recording. And
work on my book.

  Are the jurors asleep now? I think about those fourteen souls as I flip on the study light, and click open my manuscript, brushing salty crumbs from my lap. The jurors are at home, not sequestered. They’re forbidden to talk about the trial, read about it, or watch it on TV. Right. The whole jury system is based on impossibles.

  To avoid the incessant press coverage, Quinn McMorran had argued to move the trial out of town. But change of venue motion got denied—without explanation—in about two seconds. I’d agreed with Judge Green’s unspoken reasoning. What good would moving the trial have done? Everyone everywhere knows about Tasha Nicole Bryant. And Ashlyn.

  The judge finally asked each juror: “Can you put aside any preconceived ideas about the defendant, listen to the evidence, and render a verdict based on that evidence alone?”

  All of the seated jurors said yes. How many lied?

  I open my tablet to watch the recording. I push Play. I’m ready.

  Nothing happens.

  “What?” I ask it. I try again. “Come on.”

  One frame of video is clearly there—I can see Barbara Zimbel, the medical examiner, ready for her all-important cross by McMorran. If they had time, sketch artist Al Cook would come next. But although I push Play, nothing happens. After that one frame, my recording ends.

  “What?” Did I do something wrong? I fiddle with the tablet, do a sound test.

  “James James Morrison Morrison, Wetherby George Dupree,” I recite the snippet of poetry toward the embedded mic. What I used to read with Sophie at bedtime. Though she was only three. I rewind. Push Play. “James, James…” I hear my own voice.

  It works perfectly. I apparently don’t.

  “Shoot.” This is bad. I take one sip of cabernet, then another. Then coffee.

  Wait. I reassure myself. It’s fine.

  I can find Zimbel’s testimony online. And I don’t really need to hear Al Cook. A slew of blustering interviews and blistering articles revealed how his drawing of Baby Boston went so disastrously wrong. When I saw it, I assumed, like everyone did, the poor child was Hispanic.

  The mess it caused should be the next chapter. I mentally sketch it out.

  First, the DO YOU KNOW ME posters went up, illustrated with Cook’s full-color drawing. The city buzzed, nonstop, about the girl’s poignant wide-eyed expression, her dark curls, her purple butterfly barrettes. I obsessed about the ominously disturbing family drama implicit behind it.

  No one knew her name, but Boston adopted her. Mourners made pilgrimages to Castle Island Beach, bringing candles and teddy bears. When TV cameras arrived, the crowds increased. The hashtag #WhoIsShe? trended nationally. Was the poor girl Amanda Sue Rogers, who vanished from the Gloucester cliffs while her family picnicked twenty feet away? But Amanda was not Hispanic. Was she Liliana Paradol, who’d been abducted from that playground in Everett? But Liliana was seven. Was she the accidentally drowned child of undocumented immigrants, her parents terrified to identify her for fear they’d be deported?

  It wasn’t only Boston PD on the hunt. The Foundation for Missing Children. The Portuguese Friends of the Harbor. The Sons of Barcelona. One newspaper story reported that suspicious residents were paying attention to their Hispanic neighbors for the first time, trying to remember—had they ever seen a child like that? Maybe they should have been more vigilant. Maybe everyone should have been more vigilant.

  What I didn’t know then—Boston Police Detective Koletta Hilliard had sent hair and tissue samples, and a snippet of the victims clothing, to a state-of-the-art forensics lab in Utah. At Hilliard’s insistence, they expedited the tests.

  It took two weeks. According to a police report Katherine gave me, after scientists measured the hair for “carbon and oxygen isotope ratios,” they theorized she wasn’t a New England native, and had been in that area fewer than three months. Their forensic pollen expert—who knew?—tested her leggings, and discovered traces of pollen that occurred only in the Midwest. Specifically, the Ohio Buckeye tree. “Pollen, under the right preservation conditions,” his report read, “is virtually indestructible.”

  Koletta Hilliard then decided to call every PD in Ohio. Asking about missing little girls.

  On call number 17 of 131 she got Wadleigh Rogowicz.

  “Amazing,” I say out loud. I can’t help but punch a fist in the air as I reread that report. Then, even though I’m alone and no one witnessed my moment of personal satisfaction over a tragedy, I lower my fist, embarrassed. Katherine is right, writers are scum.

  Still, a good story is a good story. I type my chapter heading.

  WERE THOSE HER REAL BARRETTES?

  Sometimes my brain goes so fast my fingers can’t keep up. It takes about fifteen minutes to write the whole thing. The sketch artist had screwed up, big time. He’d drawn the hair and the chubby cheeks correctly, but his possibly Hispanic, approximately five-year-old Baby Boston looked nothing like the pale, blue-eyed, almost-three-year-old Tasha Nicole Bryant.

  But that’s who she was. The inaccurate Baby Boston sketch, drawn from misconception and assumption, was such a career-ending error that Al Cook instantly retired.

  The barrettes, though, Cook had copied from reality. And Wadleigh Rogowicz recognized them.

  This book is going to work.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “This book is not going to work!” I plaster a pillow over my face to silence my own whiny outburst to the bedroom ceiling, and flat on my back, breathe into the pillow’s dark softness. The evidence is coming in too fast, information overload. Why I thought I could write an intelligent and compelling true-crime book about the life and the murder trial of a now-internationally notorious mother and the beloved daughter she killed and do it successfully in a single month—even six weeks—is beyond my comprehension.

  I cross my arms over the pillow, keeping the world out. I know it’s only 6 A.M. I cannot sleep. I can’t even try.

  My decision-making capabilities were skewed when I said yes to this book, of course. My whole damn world is skewed. I’d decided I could reclaim my life. Find forgiveness. Well, that particular moment is most assuredly gone. But my responsibility isn’t. Now I’ve agreed to a job that might be impossible. Now I have no choice.

  Fine. I’m up.

  T-shirt on. Sweatpants tied. Flip-flops. Advil. Water. Onward.

  Today is 451. I acknowledge this as I draw the numbers, as always, onto my medicine cabinet mirror, which obediently steams up when I shower. For a moment, flip-flopping down the hallway toward the kitchen and coffee, I wonder about my counting-the-days thing. Is it healthy? Am I simply reminding myself to be unhappy?

  But we need rituals. Rely on them for sanity. And I see it as tribute, an acknowledgment that Dex and Sophie existed. Exist. And are not forgotten.

  Anyway. In the trial, it’s Day Five. I twist the gas on under the teakettle, self-diagnosing. Maybe all the coffee is making me jittery. Or maybe it’s that my mental focus is on a missing little girl, a dead little girl, at exactly the time I am trying not to think about that, not every single minute of every single day. Now it’s my job to think about it.

  I feel a flare of anger, a darkness, my brain twisting words into italics. Anger at Katherine, for offering what she knew would be a painful assignment. Anger at myself, for taking it. Anger at Ashlyn, for destroying the one beautiful thing in her life that could never be replaced.

  Setting the tea on my study desk, I’m careful not to clatter the fragile china cup and saucer. A gift, heirloom Havilland, from Dex’s mother. The rest of the set is in the basement. It calms me, now, to see the painted lavender flowers and pale-green tendrils. Reminds me how life itself is fragile. How we must embrace love. And beauty. Try to find meaning. Leave legacies. I sit, gingerly, hands propping up my chin. Okay. I forgive Katherine. She’s only doing her job. But I will never forgive Ashlyn. And I don’t need to.

  I toast heavenward with my teacup. “For you, darling ones.”

  Granting m
yself a change of venue to look online for Quinn’s cross of the medical examiner, I take my tablet and laptop into the kitchen. As Dex insisted, we’d painted the room all white. Which, after Sophie, I’d soon regretted. Now I regret every time I’d been annoyed by her grubby fingerprints on the bottom cabinet doors. Wish I’d never cleaned them off. I kept the childproof door latches, though, after. Couldn’t bring myself to remove them, despite knowing I was embracing the pain every time I had to deal with them. Black stove top, chic black oven, Swedish dishwasher. Oh, we were textbook. Until we weren’t.

  My cell phone rings. The caller ID says Quinn McMorran.

  “Hello?”

  “Is it too early?” It’s odd to hear Quinn’s voice directly, not through the speakers of my monitor or on tape. Maybe she couldn’t sleep last night, either.

  “Of course not,” I say. “Thanks for calling.”

  I look at the clock. 6:42 A.M. She’d told me she’d give me ten minutes.

  “How are you, Mercer?” Her voice is softer than the one she uses in court. “I was … surprised you’d taken this assignment. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” I shake my head. No matter who it is, they ask the same thing.

  “I’m sorry I missed the funeral.” She says another of the usual post-Dex phrases.

  “I understand,” I recite back my line. I wonder if this is coming out of my ten minutes. “Anyway, Quinn, thank you for calling. I know you’re so busy, but I wanted to ask you about—”

  “About Ashlyn. About your book exposing the ‘unthinkable crime.’” There’s a darkening in her voice, but I wait. “I assume you’re portraying her as guilty.”

  I wish I could see Quinn, maybe already dressed for court. Maybe in her office in the super-gentrified South End, bars on the brownstone windows, gorgeous high ceilings, original fireplaces. She’s appointed to this case, I know, but she’s had some big-bucks winners. Or maybe she’s in her kitchen at home in suburbia, like I am, in sweats and a T-shirt.

  “Not at all,” I lie.

  “It’s a good case, Mercer.” Then silence.