Is Ashlyn truly a psychopath? Or a sociopath? So what if she is? I open the fridge for milk. Quinn McMorran is not arguing insanity. Ashlyn is pleading straight not guilty. I understand that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it. It means only that she’s willing to risk that the Commonwealth can’t prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
I stir my fresh coffee, settling myself in my book’s reality. My questions are intriguing, but I keep forgetting I don’t have to answer them. I only have to listen to the trial and write. During which, I must say, I’m feeling increasingly claustrophobic. I need to ask Katherine about getting into court.
Too bad it won’t be this afternoon. I’d love to see Ashlyn’s mother throw her under the bus.
The maternal betrayal—the second one—is the key to the whole arrest. Ashlyn knows Georgia Bryant was in on it. More than “in on it.” Georgia actively tricked her daughter into incriminating herself.
THE DETECTIVE IN THE CLOSET
Standing in the open front door of Laughtry Drive, Georgia lifted a hand, waving hello. Trying to behave normally. It was harder for her to playact than for Ashlyn, she bet. Which nauseated her.
Tom, as usual, was not home. Georgia hadn’t told him about this. He’d have tried to talk her out of it. Tell her she was unfair. Disloyal. Emotional. That Ashlyn was their own daughter.
Piff. Had she not thought exactly that? Had she not slept a damn wink the night before trying to figure out what the hell to do? She’d deal with her husband when they knew more. All depended on what happened now.
Ashlyn half-waved back. Her hair was that crazy blond again. They wouldn’t let her bleach her hair in jail, that was for sure. If she went to jail.
It was all Georgia could do not to glance at the front hall closet. She’d stashed the first row of coats in the guest room, so the extra space in the closet could be occupied by Detective Rogowicz, the sad-eyed cop who’d returned to their home the day before with that horrible drawing. He’d insisted on the closet. Said he needed to hear what Ashlyn said if she thought she was talking only to her mother.
The other detective, that nice young black woman from Boston, sat out of sight at the kitchen table. Georgia had made her iced tea. If need be, they’d decided, Georgia could say she was a friend.
Her daughter approached, in clothing Georgia didn’t recognize, high-heeled sandals with white jeans. She supposed she should feel sadder about this. But how could a broken heart become more broken? Georgia was already living in hell. Her only salvation was that Ashlyn would soon be there, too.
Whatever happened, it was Ashlyn’s fault. This ruse was the only way Georgia would get to the truth. Find out what happened to the dearest, sweetest, cutest granddaughter who ever lived, who would still be alive if Ashlyn had left the poor child where she was supposed to be, in the care of her loving grandmother. It made Georgia’s blood boil.
“Hi, honey.” Georgia felt like an actor playing a role. Which she was.
“Hey, Mom.” Ashlyn arrived at the front door. Hugged her mother, briefly.
So briefly Georgia had no chance to hug back, which, she guessed, was a blessing.
“Where’s Tashie?” Georgia, acting, peered down the walk as if she expected her dear darling dead granddaughter to skip up the begonia-lined path as she always did. After Ashlyn stepped inside, Georgia closed the door. She was about to throw up. But now she had to be brave.
“Sweetheart? It’s been weeks, honey. How’s my baby girl?”
“She’s fine.” Ashlyn scanned the living room, then sprawled onto the brown wing chair. Her toenails were painted bright blue. “So what’s the deal with Aunt Marie? I thought she was, like, fine.”
“Where’s Tasha Nicole?” Georgia asked.
“Mom.” Only Ashlyn could drag that tiny word into so many syllables. “Do we need to go over this again?”
Georgia waited. Tried to compose her face, look like the old Georgia. The grandmother. The dupe. The person who would never again exist. Ashlyn’s next words might be the answer to everything.
“Geez. You worry too much,” Ashlyn said. “Tasha’s in Chicago, she’s always been in Chicago, she loves Chicago. With Valerie. If you want to do another Skype with her? Fine. I’ll arrange it.”
“Will you tell her I said hello?” Georgia hoped her face didn’t betray how she felt. Drained. Worried. Horrified. She tried to look normal. “And that I love her?”
“Sure,” Ashlyn said. “She said to tell you she loves you, too.”
“Oh. That’s wonderful.” Georgia’s throat was closing. Maybe she’d misunderstood. “She said that today?”
“Yes. Before I left Chicago this morning. Okay?”
“You saw her today?” Georgia talked louder than usual. She hoped the detective could hear this. She hoped she wouldn’t faint.
“Yes, for crap sake, what do you think?” Ashlyn’s face darkened, then the sun came out. “I’m so sorry about poor Aunt Marie,” she said. As if she’d changed into another person altogether, the grieving niece. “So what did they tell you about the will? I can’t believe she left money to me.”
“You’ve been in Chicago, too, all this time? Since you left me at the airport that day?”
Ashlyn stood, wobbled a fraction of a second on those strappy heels. Georgia saw her pinkish underwear through the jeans.
“What’re you getting at?” Ashlyn’s eyes darted around the room—bookcase, front window, hall table, closet door. Landed on Georgia.
“Nothing, honey, just making conversation.” Georgia retreated. Let it go, the detective had instructed her. If you get close to the truth and she balks, don’t push. Let her talk. Talk about the ‘inheritance.’
Georgia started again. “All that money. So lucky you answered my text, hon. I tried to call you before, but it was disconnected.”
“Yeah, I’d lost my phone. In Chicago.” Ashlyn slid a phone out of her back pocket. “I told them to shut it off. Then I found it again. Like, yesterday. And had them turn it back on. Then I needed a new battery. What a pain. But yeah, like you said. Luckily.”
Georgia’s own cell phone rang. She answered it. “Hello?” She knew full well who it was. And what it was. The signal from the detective in the closet.
Is that right out of a movie, or what? Quinn McMorran had tried her best to keep it from the jury, but her motion to suppress the “unconstitutional” use of Georgia as a “de facto police officer” was denied. The jury will hear about how Wadleigh Rogowicz, warrant in his pocket, breathed cedar chips as he eavesdropped through the closet door, his bare forearms scratched by nubby wool winter wear, his body cushioned by slick puffer jackets. How he heard every word Ashlyn said.
They’ll hear how Detective Koletta Hilliard waited in the kitchen, afraid to stir her tea for fear the ice cubes might rattle and alert her prey.
They’ll hear how Georgia Bryant must have tried, repeatedly, to reassure herself—as I must realistically portray her doing—that her once-beloved Ashlyn might plausibly have no idea what happened to Tasha. But then, gradually and inexorably, the truth settled its gruesome self into place. Her daughter might be a murderer.
Ashlyn had told her mother she’d talked to Tasha Nicole “that very morning.” As if she’d just left her in Chicago. Georgia knew that could not be true. So did the detective in the closet.
I remember when they came to tell me about Dex and Sophie. Actually, that’s not true. I don’t really remember. I can still hear that knock on the door, 451 days ago. I remember seeing two police officers. After that, everything is pretty much fog.
Like my life, this story turns on moments. On choices we make, whether we know it or not. What happened to my family. Of course, now I would have made completely different decisions that day. Would Ashlyn?
And if Georgia hadn’t chosen to nag Wadleigh Rogowicz, he would have told Koletta Hilliard there were no missing little girls reported in Dayton. No little girls with barrettes. But Georgia Bryant had decided to take action. In t
his part of the story, she acts again.
Soon, in real life, she’ll swear to tell the truth. Tell her story to the jury that will decide the fate of her own daughter.
There I go with the drama again. Not fate. It’s fault. Ashlyn’s own evil fault.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I’ll have to leave some parts out. “No one wants to read about process,” Kath once imperiously informed me as she spiked my feature on the abuses of the public-records law. She was probably right, if entertainment is the goal.
Now, not only to please Kath but because interstate law enforcement is a morass of red tape, I’m skipping the details about how Koletta Hilliard had to get a warrant, then notify Dayton police, then how Wadleigh Rogowicz had to get a special fugitive warrant before that closet episode could happen.
After it all went down, Ashlyn was held in lockup until a judge could hear the rendition request. Hilliard then applied for a special governor’s warrant in Massachusetts, which also had to be approved by the governor of Ohio. Process.
All that legal wrangling left Ashlyn in the Dayton House of Correction for a few days. I tried to imagine what it must have been like, stewing in that smothering (I guess) eight-by-ten cell (according to the Department of Correction website), eating cheese sandwiches and milk, fuming about how her own mother had set her up with the cops.
Georgia told scrumming reporters she herself had sobbed throughout the entire arrest. “But what could I do?” she’d wailed. “She said Tasha was with Valerie Luciano, some name like that, but I knew that wasn’t true. Was I supposed to let Ashlyn disappear again? What if she could have helped bring the real murderer to justice?”
Exactly. Why hadn’t Ashlyn confessed to being a—well, not a bad mom, but simply an overly trusting one? Why hadn’t she owned up to having left her daughter with fill-in-the-blank turned-out-to-be-bad-person and pinned the murder on him. Or her?
But in lockup, Ashlyn continued to insist she knew nothing about anything, and that as far as she knew, Tasha was fine, and that she had talked to her—okay, by phone, that very morning.
That could only be classified as delusional. More than delusional. Disgusting. Ashlyn had to know her daughter was dead. And exactly how she died. Since she didn’t know the extent of the cops’ investigation, she tried playing her hand the best she could.
But it was game over. Rogowicz read her the Miranda rights and arrested her. She’s replied with one word. “Lawyer.”
She did, however, talk to her mother once on the phone. And those phone calls were recorded. A Dayton weekly newspaper somehow got hold of a certified word-for-word transcript. Unbelievable.
A HUGE WASTE
She had no idea what this was all about. Ashlyn would stick to that story.
She stared at the stupid bars of her stupid ugly pitiful cell. They actually wanted to send her to Massachusetts, to another jail! No freaking way. She had to get out. Fuming, Ashlyn called her mother from the greasy wall phone in the cinderblock common room. Her family had screwed her. Big time.
“You had a cop, a freaking cop, hiding in the freaking front hall closet,” Ashlyn yelled.
Georgia Bryant clutched her cell phone. Looked out her kitchen window at their empty backyard. Walked an impossibly fine line. Yes, the closet part was true. And yes, except for her secret collusion with the Dayton Police Department, her daughter would not be in jail.
“You have to get me out of here!” Ashlyn’s voice grated in her ear.
What was also true: if Georgia hadn’t told Wadleigh Rogowicz her granddaughter was missing in the first place, no one would have connected Baby Boston to Tasha Nicole.
“Don’t yell at me, Ashlyn. It’s not up to me,” Georgia replied. That part, honestly, was a relief. “If you want help, why don’t you just tell me what—”
“Because I don’t know what ‘happened’ to her,” Ashlyn interrupted, her voice rising, taut with scorn.
“Ashlyn, don’t shriek at me,” Georgia said. “Are you blaming me that you’re sitting in jail?”
“Effing right,” Ashlyn retorted.
“Blame yourself,” Georgia snapped. “For telling lies.”
The phone went silent.
“Ashlyn?” This was her daughter, after all, but it was hard to juggle her emotions. After—whatever happened. “You told me you’d seen Tasha that morning. I knew that wasn’t true.”
“You are such a moron,” Ashlyn said. “Just because I tried to make you feel better? That doesn’t mean anything. How do we know that’s Tasha in whatever picture they have? They’re trying to screw with us. And now look where I am. Because of you, Mother. Because of freaking you.”
Silence again.
Georgia could not think of one more thing to say. Her eyes filled with tears, and she could almost see Tasha Nicole’s dear face in front of her, hear her peals of laughter on the swing set, smell her strawberry bubble bath. She’d lugged that silly flop-eared stuffed rabbit everywhere. Rabbie. Now she’d never see Rabbie again.
“Do you have Rabbie?” Georgia said it, out loud, without thinking.
“Are you kidding me?” Ashlyn’s voice peaked again. “Hey. Hang on. Was that whole thing about Aunt Marie not true? You said she was dead, but she isn’t? Oh, that’s just freaking beautiful. So Mother, tell me this. You lied to me too, right? Right? You told me Marie was dead, and she wasn’t. What if they’re lying about Tasha, too? And answer me this. How is it not okay for me to tell you a fib, to get you to calm the hell down, but it is okay for you to lie to me?”
Was Ashlyn right? That composite didn’t look like Tasha, not that much. Could it be? Tasha was alive? And the dead girl was another toddler with barrettes?
No. Ashlyn manipulating her. Again. Lying. Again. Although in a case like this, anyone, even Ashlyn, might be forgiven for being in denial. It was a stage of grief, wasn’t it?
“Honey, I know you’re upset, but…” Georgia began.
Then Georgia stopped, soon as she heard her own words. In truth, Ashlyn wasn’t upset. Not about Tasha Nicole. Ashlyn was concerned about one thing only. Herself.
And she wanted her cell phone. “Get them to give it to you,” Ashlyn whined. “All my numbers are there.”
Georgia didn’t trust herself to answer.
“Can you not hear me?” Ashlyn’s voice was derisive, dismissive. “I have no idea in hell what happened.”
“Whatever’s going on, we’re going to find out, Ashlyn.”
“There’s nothing to find out,” Ashlyn insisted. “Not from me, anyway.”
The perplexing thing about this phone conversation, I think as I read over the transcript, is that it is so subject to interpretation. Reading it one way, it’s exactly what an innocent person—upset and confused and terrified—would say. I don’t know what happened. There’s nothing to find out from me.
But what would a guilty person—frightened and nervous and conniving—say? Exactly the same thing.
On the other hand. And it’s a big hand. Even O. J. Simpson had vowed to find the real killer. Not Ashlyn. She wasn’t concerned about what happened to Tasha Nicole at all. Didn’t ask where she was. Or seem worried.
Did she honestly not believe Tasha was dead back then? Or know she wasn’t? But if her daughter wasn’t dead, that’d be the instant proof this whole thing was a ghastly mistake. If she knew where the little girl was, holy crap, as Ashlyn might say, no better time than this to bring her out.
It was a big rabbit hole—Rabbie, I thought, like Sophie’s Bunno—to think that way.
Writing scenes like this make my brain fry, because I have to juggle what I know now with what was known at the time the “scene” took place. At the time of the jailhouse phone call, Ashlyn’s appointed lawyer, a hotshot Dayton guy named Teige Duffy, was preparing to fight the police department’s request for a court order to take DNA from Ashlyn to confirm the victim was her daughter.
The judge ordered the sample anyway. The DA’s office told reporters they were �
��expediting the hell out of it,” but the DNA results still haven’t been returned. Those could also prove who the father is, but only if his DNA is on file somewhere.
Ashlyn/father DNA? I write on the list.
But to prove it was Tasha, all they needed was a hair from her pink Pooh hairbrush. They compared that to the DNA of Baby Boston. And it matched. I figure only the lawyers, and possibly the jury, care about the DNA results. Tasha was missing. The dead body on the beach wore her clothing. The rabbit. The pollen. The blanket, which I haven’t put in the book yet. It’s Tasha. Was.
I cross DNA off the list.
Did Ashlyn know jail phone taped? I write that instead. What if she was trying to use the calls? To create a framework to argue for her own innocence? Or maybe she wasn’t using them at all. Maybe she was telling the truth.
That’d be a first.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“No peace shall I find,” my song trails off as I open my front door, feel the noontime sun on my face, wave at my across-the-street neighbor Liz Rayburn who’s power-walking her snuffly beige cockapoo. Liz waves back and for a tiny moment, there’s a feeling of nice neighbors, nice neighborhood, normal day. But I smile as I realize what song has been going through my head, and why. Georgia is on my mind. Voice told me she’s scheduled to take the stand in twenty minutes, at 1 P.M. I open a can of tuna, very glam, and pour a glass of iced coffee, and set my lunch provisions on my desk. Soon I’ll hear the most anticipated testimony since the trial began.
I check the mailbox on the front porch, a habit I wish I could break. The only mail we—I—get is depressing. Stabbingly upsetting catalogs for baby clothes and toys. Dex’s law school alumni fundraisers. The bills always remind me I’m alone. Today there’s one from the water company. I’m ashamed to admit that 451 days ago, I would not have known how much our water bill was, or our light bill. Dex took care of that, took care of all the money. I did food and shopping, and my brand of house cleaning. Dex handled car and finances. Every time I wheel the blue plastic trash bins to the curb now, Thursday mornings, I think about how this silly chore was so much a part of his life. He never complained, never missed a Thursday, and I never gave it a second thought. Now I do.
Trust Me Page 8
