Trust Me

by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  That quote was a slam dunk. And now to nail it.

  “Use your common sense, ladies and gentlemen. Only Ashlyn could have caused this tragedy, with planning and malice aforethought. Only Ashlyn. Stand up for Tasha Nicole.” Spofford paused in the hushed silence. One juror was crying. He had them.

  “Be her voice.”

  We are quiet, quiet as the courtroom, when Spofford sits down.

  “Well, that was a home run.” I sip the last of my coffee, now stone cold. Spofford talked for ninety minutes, the full amount of time the judge allotted. We three remained silent throughout Spofford’s presentation, riveted. I wrote as he talked, as much as I could, knowing I’ll have to leave a lot of it out of the final book. Of course, I couldn’t see Ashlyn’s parents. Or the jurors. So I’ll have to confirm that crying thing later. I’ll make it work. “He got her, don’t you think?”

  “Up to the jury now,” Joe says.

  “Yeah,” Katherine says.

  “I can’t believe you guys,” I say. “How could you possibly think anything but—”

  Katherine stands, dusts off her rear, looks at her watch. “You, my dear, have work to do. I should go.”

  “Me, too,” Joe says, standing. “But now that the jury’s out, hey. You want to have some dinner later?”

  I don’t get Joe, I have to say. Dinner? He’s married, I know that. I looked up his wife online, out of curiosity, but there wasn’t much. Joe’s never talked about anything except the trial. Who knows, though. I’m out of practice at having friends.

  “Tempting,” Katherine says. “Merce?”

  “Gotta work,” I say. If he’s just being friendly—I mean, dinner is dinner—then I may be overreacting. Dex would want me to “be happy,” people try to tell me that. But it’s too soon. Way, way, way, too soon. I’m thinking later will never come.

  They walk to the front, skirting the stupid cardboard boxes from the law firm that still block the door. I kick them aside. Stupid boxes. Then, opening the door, I turn to Katherine. I need to ask whether she thinks an interview with Ashlyn might be possible. But first I need the scoop about Valerie’s death.

  Joe’s back is to us. “Kath? Don’t we have to chat? About—book things?”

  “I’ll call you,” she says to me. And she’s gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Don’t you people have a brain?” I yell at the blank court monitor screen. Day Five of deliberations now, almost over. No questions. Nothing. Not a peep. For five full days, I’ve sat at my desk, writing like crazy and fueled by coffee and saltines and wine. Going nuts.

  What the hell is that jury doing?

  “It means there’s a holdout,” one local cable commentator pontificated this morning.

  “You know nothing,” I answered the television.

  “There was no proven cause of death,” the other suit agreed.

  “So the hell what?” I debated him, too, jabbing at him with a finger. “Dead is dead, and it was no accident. That child was in a trash bag.”

  Moreover, I console myself, eating my salty cracker, it’s definitely possible a guilty verdict is in the making. Jurors don’t want to convict someone—especially for a crime that carries a life sentence—without appearing to meticulously consider all the evidence. But the verdict could come any second.

  Jurors took two days to convict Jodi Arias of killing an ex-boyfriend. Four days to convict the Menendez brothers of killing their parents. Eleven days to convict Scott Peterson of killing his wife Lacey and their unborn child.

  On the other hand. That idiot Florida jury only took about ten hours to acquit Casey Anthony. To acquit O. J. Simpson, less than four hours. Four hours. So a long deliberation has to mean guilty. I deeply relish that Ashlyn must also know that.

  What if she gets off?

  I would die.

  “Hello?” I answer my cell before the ring is over. It’s Kath.

  “Listen, kiddo, I know I told you that Valerie was dead, but thing is. Turned out it was a different Valerie.”

  “Huh? A different?”

  “Yeah. We’d been looking for her, trying to get the scoop for you. Our guy thought he had her. But turns out, nothing to do with Ashlyn. She’s dead, yeah, but no connection. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “Yeah, you did, I’ve gotta say.” If people connected with the trial were getting killed, not good. So, another false alarm. Not for poor dead different-Valerie, though, of course. Whoever she is. Was. “It’s weird, though. Where’s our Valerie?”

  “Who knows. Yeah, weird. So. You’re writing, correct? What do you think about the jury?”

  “I think they better get the damn show on the road,” I say.

  After we hang up, I can almost hear a verdict clock ticking. I bet Ashlyn can, too. I picture her behind bars. Pacing. Fuming. Terrified, every second. Listening for the jailer’s footsteps coming to get her. I can’t wait to write that part. She deserves every bit of the misery.

  At least the indecisive jurors are giving me more writing time. On my computer screen now is the chapter describing Tom Bryant’s part of the story. Why didn’t Ashlyn’s father take the stand? One logical explanation—he must be equally harmful to defense and prosecution. Mutually assured destruction, so neither side calls him. Why?

  Funny that I’m happiest, if that’s a relevant word, when I’m trying to understand Ashlyn’s life instead of my own. How could she do it? Maybe the jury can’t accept that it’s possible a mother would kill her own daughter.

  That would be wrong.

  Because Ashlyn lied. She said she’d seen Tasha the same morning that Detective Rogowicz hid in her family’s front hall closet. But police are sure she knew Tasha was dead. Why would she lie if she didn’t have to? Dex would call it “consciousness of guilt.” Since she acted like she was guilty—it proves she is.

  Should I give myself a treat and skip ahead to the verdict scene? I can certainly write what I predict will happen. But what if it doesn’t?

  “Maybe I’ll burn down the house,” I say out loud.

  THE DEFENDANT WILL RISE

  When the word came, it was almost difficult to believe. Forty-one hours. Five days and one hour. They must have had a knockdown battle in that stuffy conference room. No windows, unreliable air conditioning. A whiteboard mounted on one wall, super-erasable markers so no snoopy eyes could decipher what they’d posted.

  Did jurors make a pro-and-con chart, listing the elements of guilt or innocence?

  Did they make a list of the reasonable doubts?

  Reporters who crammed into the media overflow room speculated, endlessly, as they made their own lists. Journalists can’t write their stories until something happens.

  “No cause of death,” one said, not looking up from her texting. “That’s a big deal.”

  “No real forensics, either.” The crime guy for the Herald punctuated his judgment by tossing a crumpled paper cup into the wastebasket. “Gotta be not guilty.”

  “Gotta be kidding me.” The radio pool reporter untangled his electrical cords, made sure his phone battery was charging. “If Ashlyn didn’t do it, who did? Only Ashlyn could have killed Tasha Nicole.”

  The court clerk’s voice on the video feed interrupted their squabble.

  “We have a verdict,” she said. “The defendant will rise.”

  “Stations, we have a verdict,” Voice says.

  When Voice interrupts, I have an unsettling notion that I inhabit a parallel universe.

  “Forty-one hours,” Voice says. I put my hand to my chest, like some fluttery ingénue in a forties movie, startled and surprised. My manuscript mirrors reality—as well it should—but the concurrence of my imagined scene and the real-life courtroom action is unsettling. This is all I’ve been thinking about, besides Dex and Sophie, for the past thirty-two days—I counted, last night, as I tried to sleep.

  This will be Day One of Ashlyn Bryant’s new life. Every day of it behind bars.

  PART 2

  SO
METIMES I dream of forgotten rooms. Places that seem familiar, so familiar I could describe them down to the pattern of the creamy rug, the four-squared window, the sumptuous wallpaper, the sheen of the oaky wood armoires, and chests of narrow drawers. Thin, like map drawers, but these are lined with velvet, and always filled with pearls and scarves, paisley and silk. Laid out, displayed, organized, beautiful.

  I could describe the broad curving stairway, chocolate brown risers painted with tiny flowers. A living room open and sleek, all leather and welcoming pillows. No curtains on the vast windows, and no houses beyond. The scenery is a still, shining lake, vast, and rising mountains. This is home. Sharply defined as a photograph. But it was never my home. I have no idea where it is.

  What does it mean that I’m comfortable in places I’ve never been? That I yearn for them, call them home? What does it mean that there are beautiful things I recognize, that I know belong to me, even though I know they don’t exist?

  What about the rooms I haven’t seen yet? Some hallway doors are closed, and I always pass them by. Maybe it means there are rooms still to be explored. Doors we have not opened. Secrets we have not faced.

  I keep my eyes closed and pull the thin white summer blanket up to my chin, trying not to forget again, willing myself to hang on to the edges of the dream. Sometimes, in daylight and in real life, I remember the rooms. At those moments, I feel I can almost reach them. If I make just the right turn, choose just the right corner, or open the right door, there it’ll all be, the velvet and the view and the mountains. And my family.

  But then here is just here, and everything is as it is, and there are no mountains.

  Dex is not here. Or Sophie.

  I open my eyes, my real life floods back.

  The verdict.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  When the kitchen TV plays the breaking-news music, I barely comprehend it.

  Not that it’ll matter, but I lift the remote and click the volume. Not that it’ll matter. You can’t change a verdict. Not ever. Just like you can’t change the past. Not ever.

  “… here on her Newburyport home,” a harried-looking twenty-something reporter is saying.

  I recognize the reporter, Rachel Knapp. She’s wearing a red sleeveless dress, her dark hair shifting in the slight breeze. Behind her, the corner of a white two-story Cape. I don’t recognize the house, or the marigold-lined asphalt driveway, or the middle-class-looking neighborhood. Just another phony-sensational story about nothing. Typical. I grab a coffee pod, just out of habit. Not that it matters.

  “No one was hurt, but our sources this morning say the vandals must have spray-painted attorney McMorran’s home late last night,” Rachel is saying. “They also smashed a window at the rear of the home, but were apparently scared off by her alarm system.”

  What? Some idiot tried to break into Quinn McMorran’s house? Tagged it? I stand, coffee pod in hand, staring at the TV. What?

  “We can’t show you what they wrote.” Rachel’s tone and expression signal it’s repulsive. “But as you look at the video we’ve blurred, we can say it’s graphic and obscene, apparently scrawled by someone who did not approve of Ms. McMorran’s defense of Ashlyn Bryant. Or of the trial’s controversial verdict.”

  I take a step closer to the screen, leaning in to see better. I think about that courthouse bomb threat. They decided it was a false alarm. But now this?

  The medium shot of McMorran’s house shows gray splotches across white vinyl. I let it play for twenty seconds, pause the DVR, rewind, and replay it, frame by frame. Under pressure, the blurring guys sometimes miss a tiny bit. If I can get one frame to show–ah. There it is.

  “Baby killer,” it says. Then a scrawl of profanity. “Rot in hell.”

  “Sources tell us Quinn McMorran is now concerned about Ashlyn’s safety,” Rachel is reporting. “Police are investigating…”

  “Yeah, well, life is hard,” I remind the TV. I lower the volume. The book is dead. Whatever happens in those people’s lives doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’m sorry for Quinn, sure, but I don’t care what happens to the disgusting Ashlyn. Or, in fact, almost anyone. Baby killer. Rot in hell. Could have written that myself.

  I shower, because I need the steam. At least it’s still morning, ten thirty-ish is still morning. Three days after the verdict.

  I still hear those words. Still see Ashlyn burst into tears and fall into Quinn’s arms.

  I still see her walk out the courthouse door.

  “I’m so sorry, darling ones,” I whisper, as I write the numbers. Four. Seven. Five. And somehow my hand is heavy, almost too heavy to write. But this is my job now, remembering. My only job.

  Coffee? Water rushes from the kitchen faucet. I flinch. I’ve turned it up too hot again. Too hot. Toast? I almost throw up at the thought of food. Who cares.

  “Toast,” I say. Queen of subtext.

  The monitor in the study stays in black. Its job is over, too. They’ll have to come pick up all that fancy equipment. No need for it here anymore.

  When the phone eventually rings, again, it’ll be Katherine, again. I imagine it as I pop a coffee pod into place. I’m avoiding her. Deleting her messages, unread. I cannot discuss it.

  I’ll finally answer, I suppose, because whatever. She’ll commiserate, and congratulate me on a job well done, blah blah, a job that’s now meaningless. All that research and painstaking writing, all that crafting a story from the facts and from experience, a story that’s true enough to be a nonfiction bestseller. Now it’s nothing.

  “Adios to all that, sister,” I say out loud as I get the milk from the fridge. I smell it, then recoil. The milk is bad.

  “Seriously?” I ask the milk. “Is the entire universe fucking with me now, seriously?”

  I dump it in the sink, the whole smelly curdling mess. Maybe I’ll just go back to bed. Forever. But first I’ll go to the study and super-delete the whole damn book. Into the oblivion of cyberspace.

  Maybe I’ll delete myself into cyberspace.

  But I stand there, at the counter, disgusting sludge sliding down the drain.

  Not guilty.

  The bing-bong of the doorbell probably means I should answer the door. Odd, really, how my brain can conjure no circumstance under which this could be good news.

  Hitching up my sweatpants—yesterday’s, even the day before’s, but “whatever,” as the contemptible–and now-not-guilty! free!—Ashlyn Bryant so eloquently said. Or at least as I wrote she said. I trudge down the hall as the bing-bong sounds again.

  “Whatever,” I say out loud. It’s like every damn thing is haunting me. Sophie loved the sound of the doorbell, and we’d let her press it until it drove us all crazy with laughter. Now I can’t hear it without thinking of her.

  It’s Katherine, I see through the peephole. And—

  It’s possible my jaw drops.

  “Hi, Mercer,” Katherine says, all friendly, navy blazer and combed hair. She gestures to the woman standing beside her. Beautiful, truly, with a wan face and tired eyes, her hair pulled back in a soft ponytail. Some sort of wren-colored T-shirt dress, flats. “This is Ashlyn Bryant. Let us in, okay? Before anyone sees us?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I’m trying to be polite. I’m trying to act normal. But I’m in The Twilight Zone, certainly. Maybe also Through the Looking Glass with Alice. And a dash of Kafka.

  Katherine is talking, sipping from a silver aluminum travel mug she brought. Next to her, holding the glass of fizzy water I served her, is Ashlyn Bryant. We’re about the same size, I’d been surprised to see. The jailhouse weight gain I’d written about turned out to be wrong.

  They’re both sitting at my kitchen table, at 10:43 on this September morning. As if nothing happened, as if this time last week that woman wasn’t in a dingy cell, awaiting a verdict on whether she’d smothered or strangled or drugged her own baby daughter to death, then tossed her into the ocean in a garbage bag.

  No one’s mentioned Quinn’s
house.

  Did you see the graffiti? I want to say. Calling you a baby killer? But I don’t.

  Sitting here, on this otherwise ordinary Friday, she’s now not guilty. And forever so. There’s no way she can be retried, one track of my brain calculates as Katherine talks. I wish Dex were here to tell me the law, but I think it’s legally unlikely that there would be a civil trial for wrongful death, like the one Nicole Brown Simpson’s family brought in the O.J. case. (THE CURSE OF NICOLE, I remember that tabloid headline.) There’d be nobody to bring such a lawsuit, because Tasha Nicole’s “estate” would include only Ashlyn, the accused-but-innocent killer. The only other person with possible legal standing to sue is Tasha’s father, I suppose, whoever and wherever he is. Joe Riss told me Ashlyn said he’s dead.

  Could Ashlyn be completely and totally off the hook, no matter what happens? I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty confident that’s the reality. She’s home free.

  Ashlyn, I realize, could parade up Beacon Street yelling, “I did it, I did it, ha ha I fooled you all!” and nothing would happen to her. Except possibly a citation for disturbing the peace.

  This morning, Ashlyn hasn’t said anything but “hello” and “nice to meet you” and “thank you.” I notice her teeth are nice, very white. She has split ends though, needs a haircut. And her fingernails are chewed. Her black flats look new. Snakeskin.

  “… redemption,” Katherine is saying. I yank myself back, recognizing a negotiating tone in her voice. She gestures at me with her mug. “Isn’t that right, Mercer?”

  There’s no way I can pretend I was paying attention. “Sorry,” I say. “You mean…”

  “Redemption, Merce,” she says.

  I can tell by her widened eyes she’s trying to telegraph that there’s something she knows I’m unaware of, at the same time trying to convey to Ashlyn that it’s a done deal. When Ashlyn sips her water, I attempt a surreptitious what the hell are you talking about? look.