“You’ve been reading Insider, I see.” Joe laughs. “Anyway, she first told her mother it was Jeff Prechack, a guy she knew in high school. But bummer for Ashlyn, Georgia knew this Jeff’s mother, and knew Jeff had been in the army, stationed in Kabul for the past six months. Since Ashlyn was four months, that was impossible.”
“Whoa.” I put down the mugs, pull out my chair. Ashlyn’s duplicity is never-ending. And naming a guy as the father? Who isn’t the father? Typical Ashlyn self-centeredness. “That’s harsh. And stupid.”
“She’s a piece-of-work,” Joe says. “Quoting Georgia herself. Says she ‘makes her own reality.’ Anyway, then, with much emotion, Georgia told me, Ashlyn confessed to her that the father is a guy she met at Hot Stuff—you know it?—a guy called Barker Holt. From Dayton. She apparently told Georgia that ‘Bark,’ who she called ‘incredible,’ had been killed. In Dayton. In a car accident. Before Tasha was born.”
“Killed.” This is so beyond. “In a car accident.”
Joe flinches. “Sorry.”
I put up a palm, absolving. “So, before Tasha was born, then?”
“Yup. But I got a copy of the birth certificate—it’s impounded now, in evidence—but there’s no father listed.”
“Was there really a person named that?”
“Who knows?” Joe shrugs. “I can’t find any death notices for a Barker Holt, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“What did she tell you about it?”
“Right.” He toasts me with his mug. “Good try. Now it’s your turn.”
We each take sips. I tell him a sanitized version of the juror story, and he seems satisfied. Anyone seeing us would say we look like two pals, chatting over coffee in a world that doesn’t revolve around baby killers or murder trials. Or lying twenty-somethings who get pregnant and then decide their lives are too complicated with a child.
“Have we lost sight of the little girl on the beach?” I ask him, surprised I said it out loud.
“Probably.” He shakes his head. “Remember all those teddy bears? They were supposed to leave the WE LOVE YOU BABY BOSTON signs and tributes on Castle Island until after the funeral, but at some point, like, overnight, everything got put in plastic bags and disappeared. ‘Bad for tourists,’ one administrator actually told me.”
“Bad? For tourists?” I envision it, the gut-wrenching makeshift altar on the beach. Stuffed bears. Homemade signs. Flowers, wilting and desiccated. Some suit deciding it was bad PR and getting a lackey to broom it away. “Pretty cynical.”
“I know. Anyway, that’s when people started clamoring for ‘closure.’” He rolls his eyes. “Thing is, they couldn’t actually have a full funeral until the trial ended. In case there was some evidence that needed to be retrieved, or a test re-done. So they compromised on that memorial service.”
“So sad. Did you go to it? In Dayton, right? I know Ashlyn didn’t, although I read they’d have let her.”
He nods, stares into his coffee mug, like it’s a mirror. Then looks up. “Yeah,” he says, in a different voice than before. “I did go. Very tough.”
He’s a respected reporter. He was there. No better research method than that. I could have found out about this a million ways. He’ll never know. I’ll write it up after he leaves.
My turn to smile, so sympathetic and understanding. “Tell me about it?”
Three hours later, alone again, my eyes are blurring the letters on the screen. I almost wish Joe hadn’t told me about the memorial service. And in such tragic detail. It’s unfair to make me write this part of the story. How can I not relive Dex and Sophie?
Somehow I planned their funeral. I don’t remember the process. People came, Dex’s parents and his entire law firm, if I remember correctly, which I probably don’t. My colleagues from City, some neighbors. I spent a solid week writing thank-you notes for flowers and cards and casseroles, every note a triumph of euphemism and a sledgehammer of emotion. Thank you so much, I’d write, and wonder, what am I thanking you for? For reminding me my how my family died? That they were wonderful? And now they’re gone forever?
It’s long turned dark outside. I missed dinner, writing this scene. Haven’t budged from this desk.
The funeral. I spent days, weeks, recalling it, replaying it in my head, over and over, trying to remember and trying to forget at the same time. I have to say—and I’ll never repeat this—I understand why Ashlyn might have avoided Tasha’s memorial. Why sit there, surrounded by sad people, all of whom are crying and mourning your loss? They’ll all go home, and be happy they’re not you. You’ll go home and have no other choice but to be you.
I know this from experience.
I close my eyes, think of the beach at ’Sconset. Nantucket was our respite, for as long as we had it, our tiny but gorgeous wood-shingled rental in the island’s most popular village. In the dark of my private self, I hear the gulls, and smell the oceany brine, feel the sun on my shoulders and think of the Perseid meteor shower that regaled us every August. Sophie saw a shooting star, just that once. We’d let her stay up ridiculously late, a special occasion. She jumped up and down, clapping her hands at the bright lights that fell from the sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Whoo hoo for no mistrial, right?” Katherine’s too-cheery voice trills over the phone. “That judge had me going for a while last week. Sorry I’ve been out of touch. We almost got screwed, all I can say. Anyway. You keeping up? It’s going fast, right? How are you, kiddo?”
“Tired,” I say, trying to use as few words as possible. It’s ten at night, Thursday, after Trial Day Twelve. Which I know only because I’m keeping track. Otherwise, the days would all run together as a blur of testimony and note-taking and taping and research and writing. It’s now day 460 on my mirror. Finally sick of soup, I lunch-subsist on coffee and peanut-butter toast. I’ve given up wine. Mostly. Every night I order pizza, and I’m probably getting fat. At least they deliver.
But Joe had been right. The judge ruled no mistrial. Juror Sandra Galanopoulos was excused, and replaced. The trial continued with just one alternate. But I had told the truth as I knew it. That was a good thing, right?
Katherine is still talking. She hadn’t interrupted me for a few days, and that was also a good thing. Now I wish she would chill. “Keeping up” isn’t the half of it. I worked like crazy through five more days of the prosecution’s case. We’re now three days into the defense.
Quinn McMorran got the cops to admit they didn’t know where Ashlyn was every moment in the weeks before Tasha was found. Where Tasha was, either. The TSA admitted Ashlyn might not have been on the plane to Chicago, and they couldn’t be sure about the identity of a lap child, or if one was even on the plane. Al Cook, doddering and probably drunk, admitted he’d created the missing-child poster mostly from his imagination. Ron Chevalier said Ashlyn “seemed to love her daughter” but had told him she was “in Chicago or someplace.” And Ashlyn’s dimwitted pal Sandie DiOrio reiterated how “Ash and Tashie” were inseparable. Until Tasha went “away.”
“Where did she go?” McMorran asked.
“Ashlyn didn’t say.”
“Did Ms. Bryant seem nervous or worried?”
“Not at all.” Sandie went wide-eyed. “She loved her.”
Everyone on TV is gagging over this “good mother” testimony. I am, too. But Quinn has to do her job. For what it’s worth. My favorite part was when Spofford got DiOrio to relate Ashlyn’s “Holy crap, I’m so good at making stuff up” statement.
I’m still waiting to see if the boyfriend, Luke Walsh, shows up. And Valerie, the babysitter.
“I have book scoop,” Katherine is saying. I try to concentrate as she prattles in my ear about proofreaders and page galleys. About cover art and liner copy.
I pepper our “conversation” with greats and terrifics while I multitask, yellow-highlighting the trial notes I’ve printed out. I think about the trial every waking moment. And every sleeping moment.
; Last night I dreamed Barker Holt came to the witness stand, draped with dripping seaweed like something out of Dickens. No one seemed to notice. He told the court he had died with Tasha, but no one had found his body. This is a dream, I told myself in the dream. When I woke up, it took me a second to remember that hadn’t actually happened.
“Can I put you on hold for a sec?” Kath asks. “Can you hang on?”
“Sure.” I don’t try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but Kath is already elsewhere.
To remind myself of trial reality, I now keep a chart of the major witnesses. None of them wore seaweed.
The accountant. Spofford called her to testify that Ashlyn changed the Chicago plane ticket her mother bought for her to a Boston ticket, but hadn’t used the return. That was supposed to convince the jury Ashlyn was in Boston at the time of Tasha’s death, and so could have been responsible for it. That strategy hit a snag during cross-examination.
“Did she use her credit cards in Boston?” Quinn McMorran asked. “Was there any trace of her?”
“No,” the accountant admitted.
“Did you find any financial footprint of her in Boston? Or anywhere near there?”
“No,” the accountant said again.
I know that was designed to convince the jury there was no proof Ashlyn was ever in Boston, so couldn’t be responsible. Spofford had not introduced that Hudson News kiosk surveillance video, which I thought was strange. He’d tried to neutralize the credit card testimony, asking if there was any way to trace cash. “Absolutely not,” the accountant said.
The forensics guy. Spofford called the technician who tested for chloroform in Ashlyn’s car. Was chloroform present? Inconclusive.
Quinn McMorran asked him only one question. “Did you find any trace of chloroform, anywhere, connected to Ashlyn Bryant?” He said no.
A Coast Guard oceanographer testified to tides and drift analysis. Where could a body have been dumped if it washed up on Castle Island in June? “Would it necessarily have come from Boston?” McMorran asked. “No.”
Boston Police Detective Koletta Hilliard. The prosecution’s final witness. I’d transcribed her most devastating testimony word for word.
“What was the bottom line of your investigation?” Spofford had asked her.
“I followed every lead to answer one question: If Ashlyn Bryant didn’t kill Tasha Nicole, then who did?” Hilliard said. “There was no alternative. Ms. Bryant took her daughter to Boston. She later lied to her mother about seeing Tasha alive the morning we knew she was already in a garbage bag on Castle Island beach, and had been dead for some amount of time. Why would she lie? Only Ashlyn could have done it.”
Only Ashlyn. I underline that. The very words Spofford used in his opening.
Kath still has me on hold. What the heck is she doing?
Quinn McMorran—known for her blistering cross-examination skills—barraged Detective Hilliard, nonstop. Asked about Ashlyn’s boyfriends. And babysitters. Not hiding her derision.
“Did you find them? Interview them?”
“No.”
Did you suspect Ron Chevalier, the owner of Hot Stuff? Did you ever suspect Tom Bryant? Georgia Bryant? McMorran asked all of those questions, rapid-fire, with growing incredulity, but Detective Hilliard stolidly testified all investigatory roads led to Ashlyn.
It felt—in my opinion, which doesn’t matter—like grasping at evidentiary straws. What motive would those people have to kill a little girl?
All the news commentators agreed with me. They went nuts over the prosecution’s case. She’s so guilty, they all said. The lies, the deception, the duct tape. And if she’s not guilty, they agreed, she’s got to take the stand. They all echoed Royal Spofford’s opening mantra, which also became a 46-point headline in the Herald. ONLY ASHLYN.
“Gotta call you back,” Katherine’s voice squawks through the speaker.
“Great,” I say. “Lovely talking to—”
But Kath is gone. At least can look at my defense case notes before the morning session. And—radical idea—hope for some dreamless sleep.
The legal net under Quinn McMorran’s tightrope is that she doesn’t have to prove Ashlyn didn’t do it. She doesn’t have to prove where she was or what she was doing, or even who did kill Tasha. She only—only!—has to make the jury see reasonable doubt. That someone else, anyone else, might be the murderer. She doesn’t have to prove who that someone might be.
But I know there is no one else. Only Ashlyn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
My desk phone rings again. It’s 11:45 P.M.
“You still up?” Kath doesn’t break stride. “So like I was saying, they’re now working on the title, and—”
“What do you think happened with the boyfriend and the babysitter?” I interrupt. “Remember the people I told you Quinn told me Ashlyn told her about?” I stop, playing that question back to myself. “Know what I mean? Why doesn’t Ashlyn tell Quinn where those people are? They might totally corroborate her story.”
“Maybe Ashlyn doesn’t know where they are,” Katherine says. “Or maybe Quinn’s avoiding them. A ‘boyfriend’ might be a defense lawyer’s hero, for sure. Especially if he could give our girl an alibi. But—he also might be a villain. And that babysitter—the news articles all have her name, right?—might go either way, too. She might be, I don’t know, the evil nanny. But she could be a big time witness for the prosecution, too. Maybe she knew Ashlyn was unfit? Or neglectful.”
“Right. The Dayton cops were looking for her,” I say. “But Spofford didn’t call a babysitter either.”
“Whatever. Ashlyn’s a big fat liar, and soon to be a permanent resident of the slammer. I was just thinking, Merce. Could Tasha talk yet? Maybe Ashlyn worried about that.”
“Whoa. That’s creepy—you think Ashlyn worried Tasha would spill some secret?” I spin my pencil on my desk. It hits a pad of yellow stickies, knocks it on the floor. How well could Tasha talk? I can hear Sophie’s voice. Trying out her words. “Why? Why, Mama?” She had intent. Imagination. What might Tasha have said?
“You can’t just make people up, though,” I say, retrieving my notes. I write Tasha talk? On my list. “Luke and Valerie are somewhere.”
“Hey. Like Quinn said, the woman has issues. Maybe…” Katherine sounds distracted. “Can you hang on? Sorry. Call waiting.”
Sure, heck, I’ll hang on. What else do I have to do?
McMorran’s opening statement did promise we’d hear Ashlyn has issues. What issues? And when? Drug abuse? Child abuse? Is there some repressed-memory thing? Something about that Hot Stuff nightclub? Family issues?
Hmm. Family issues.
I tap my pencil point against the yellow pad, then flip it to tap the eraser. Point, eraser, point. Maybe with her father?
Speaking of fathers. How about Tasha Nicole’s? Talk about “issues.” How can his identity not matter?
“Merce? Are you there?” Katherine’s back.
Where else would I be at this time of night? My rear is permanently attached to this chair. My fingers glued to the keyboard.
“Yup. I’m here.”
“Will Ashlyn testify tomorrow? You think?” Katherine goes on, picks up a new topic as if she hadn’t parked me on hold.
Another great question. Again, what I think doesn’t matter.
“She’s such a self-absorbed bitch,” I say, then remember what Joe Riss told me. “Her mother says she ‘makes her own reality.’ Maybe she thinks she can outmaneuver Royal Spofford. Wouldn’t you love to see that?”
“He’d rip her to shreds,” Kath says. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if he shows the jury the wet T-shirt photo? There’s gotta be more copies.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think her only play is to shut up. We’ll know tomorrow. Now can I get back to writing? I’m terrific after midnight.”
We hang up, and I go back to the manuscript.
“Five minutes,” Voice says. But that’s got to be a dream. “This i
s a dream,” I mutter, then realize I said it out loud, into my arm. Which is resting on my desk. I’ve slept here—all night? I blink, sitting up in my chair. It’s morning. All the lights are on.
“I was just resting my eyes,” I explain to no one. I’m still not sure I’m awake or asleep.
“Four minutes,” Voice says.
Awake. And late. Heart pounding and head still bleary, I race to the bathroom, touch the mirror for luck. I know it’s 461, but no time to make steam to write in. “Love you!” I say out loud, make it to the kitchen, slam in a coffee pod and race back to the study. I yawn, stretch, struggle to clear my head.
When the feed comes on, Ashlyn-cam shows the defendant sitting, posture perfect, in an ice blue sweater and pearls. The shot changes as Quinn McMorran rises from her chair.
“The defense rests,” she says.
I’d guessed right. Ashlyn is not going to take the stand. I mean—smart girl. What could she possibly say? What reality can she create? Dex would remind me that constitutionally, the jury can’t hold her silence against her, but they’ve got to wonder why she’s not defending herself. This decision was a lose-lose for Miss Ashlyn. Exactly what I hope for her.
I mean, pearls? Puh-leeze.
“And we’re in recess until Tuesday,” Judge Green is saying. “Counsel, we’ll take administrative matters first. Closing arguments will begin at ten on Tuesday. Jurors, as always, you are not to watch any news stories about the case, or discuss it with anyone. That includes fellow jurors.”
The gavel bangs. The audio stops. The video screen goes dark. All that’s left is the verdict.
My world comes to a halt.
I stare at the black screen for a moment, mesmerized by the silence, the gravity, the infinite nothing, thinking of the dark dark water, black as that screen, and a little girl. Of two little girls. When I slide under my white comforter, exhausted and so alone, it doesn’t matter that the morning sun is beaming through my bedroom window. I’m engulfed in the darkness, too.
Trust Me Page 12
