by Susan Cory
“I studied hard at the lycée, then after a degree from McGill, I got accepted to architecture school. By then, I had gathered up enough money to hire a private investigator to track down Esmina's family. I couldn't believe my luck when, not so long ago, the P.I. tracked them down to Cambridge.”
“So Lara is your daughter,” Iris said, having already guessed it.
“Yes. I watched her for many days, then approached her at her father's store six months ago. We became friends but I didn't tell her who I was. The woman I'd given her to, the woman Lara thought of as her mother, had died a few years ago. Her brute of a husband was intending to ship Lara back to Bosnia this summer to marry some crony of his. Lara was terrified.”
“I knew I had to get her to someplace safe and keep her father from finding her. Edvin and his partner said they'd be glad to raise her in Montreal until I graduated from architecture school. I would see her on holidays and we would Skype every day. By then GSD had started fall semester and I'd seen him—the man who'd destroyed my life. I hadn't realized he'd become a famous architect until I saw him here, making his big presentation.”
“Why didn't you try to expose him then? You could have told everyone what he had done to you.”
“Who would have believed me? I'm just a lowly architecture student, invisible. In this world he's a god. Everyone admires him.”
“So you figured out a way to get your revenge. What did you do next?”
Jasna slid off her wire-rimmed glasses, cleaned the lenses with the hem of her sweatshirt, then put them back on. “I sent Lara off with my brother. That's all I know.”
“You're lying. Tell me how you set it all up. Every step or I go to the police.”
Jasna's knuckles were white as she gripped the arms of the chair. Long seconds passed. Finally she continued. “I instructed Lara to go to his office, to ask directions first so someone would see her there. I knew DeWitt was teaching a studio then, so there was no danger he would see her. I also knew she'd be escaping to safety in Montreal soon afterward. I figured if people said Lara had been there to see DeWitt before she disappeared maybe the police would look into his past.”
Jasna stopped speaking and stared out the window.
“Keep going. Tell me everything.”
“I had cut and dyed Lara's hair the night she went missing. That was the evening I told her I was her mother.” Jasna flicked away the tear rolling down her cheek. She collected herself and continued. “Edvin drove down here to pick her up. I'd found some car keys when I broke into DeWitt's house.”
“Wait—you're the one who broke into Xander's house?”
Jasna gave her an impatient look. “The keys were labeled with the neighbor's house number, so we borrowed the van for the drive to Manchester as another link to DeWitt. I knew from his GSD lecture that he'd gone there recently, so that's where we planted the clues—making prints with his boots and leaving my bedspread. Edvin, as a trained paramedic, told me how to collect Lara's blood. That part was hard. I had to collect her blood many times to get enough.”
“We made the trail lead right to DeWitt, figuring the police would look deeper into his background, maybe find out about his dirty little secrets. When I was in his house earlier I'd even downloaded some disgusting porn of young girls to his computer, hoping the police would find it.”
“Was the guy from your apartment in on your plan?”
“Mark?” Jasna shook her head. “No, he didn't have a clue what was going on. He's out there every night with the baby, so Edvin drove the van right by him. Mark's got a photographic memory. I figured he'd get most of the license plate right.”
“Why did you draw me into it? You came to my house asking for help.”
“The police weren't picking up the trail. They suspected the father. I needed to get the police to find the van. Besides, you'd given DeWitt an alibi. I needed you to doubt his innocence.”
“Wait a minute. How did you know I provided an alibi for DeWitt?”
For the first time, Jasna looked sheepish. “I'd followed him on that Friday after the initial presentations. I knew you two were out at dinner so I'd have time to break in. I wanted to see if there were e-mails between you two so I could learn what he was up to. And, sorry to say, you left your laptop right on my desk. It didn't take long to drop in some spyware so I could monitor your mail. You talked to your brother about your alibi for DeWitt.”
“So that's why you bugged my computer. And you continued to spy on my e-mails. You invaded my privacy,” Iris snapped.
“And you invaded mine by opening my laptop,” Jasna snapped right back.
They stared at each other until Iris broke the silence. “I guess invasion of privacy is the least of the issues on the table now. You've created a setup for DeWitt that will probably get him convicted of kidnapping and murder. The Globe is saying he might even get the death penalty.”
“Don't you think he deserves to die?” Jasna asked.
CHAPTER 63
Jasna leaned against the door frame and listened to Iris Reid's steps retreating down the staircase. Iris had given her a twenty-four hour reprieve before she would take any action so she could think carefully about what was fair.
Fair? Was it fair that, after everything she and Edvin had risked, the fate of her daughter might rest in the hands of Iris Reid?
Jasna had pointed out that since Lara's adoptive father was in prison for trying to kill DeWitt, if Iris were to alert the authorities to the fact that Lara was alive, the poor girl would be returned to Massachusetts and placed in a foster home. Wasn't it better for Lara to be able to finish her teenaged years with her biological mother and the uncle who loved her? Jasna had pleaded with Iris to let DeWitt be punished, even if it were for the wrong crime.
Jasna closed the door and sank into the nearest chair. She would need to call Edvin to discuss the possibility of triggering Plan B. She hated the idea that she and Edvin would have to uproot their lives yet again, but she knew that he was as determined as she was to prevent their newly united family from being torn apart.
She was blessed to have a brother like Edvin. He was willing to move to France with her if that would keep them all together. The two siblings had each kept their dual French and Canadian citizenship, the former earned during their slow emigrant crawl to Montreal. They'd been only too happy to shed any allegiance to wretched Bosnia. Edvin had researched the law—France would not allow the extradition of its own citizens back to the U.S. to face bogus charges of kidnapping their own daughter and niece.
Jasna knew that she had to keep looking ahead, not behind. If Iris decided to expose their ruse, Jasna could still enact as much of the plan as possible, if she moved quickly enough. She wouldn't give up the satisfaction of seeing DeWitt piece together the fact that she was the one framing him. She was not helpless this time.
Her skin felt too tight, too tight. Do it. Release the pain. She drifted into her small bedroom and over to the wooden box she kept on the window sill. Jasna took out the X-ACTO knife and studied its razor-sharp point. This would be the last time she would cut herself. Feeling anything, even pain, meant that she was still alive.
Jasna slipped off her jeans and climbed up onto the bed. She looked down at the highway of scars crisscrossing her thighs. She followed a track with her finger as tears spilled down her cheeks. She loved seeing the first spurt of red blood against her white skin.
CHAPTER 64
Xander tasted a trickle of blood oozing out of his split lip as a guard led him toward the visiting room. When he had agreed to put this student on his approved visitor list, he had anticipated the meeting as a welcome distraction from the endless battery of questions the prison pyschiatrist kept asking him. He and his roommate, The Ram, were getting along fine after their initial scuffle. Xander had gotten Nils to make a contribution to The Ram's prison bank account in order to forestall any further sexual advances. Now The Ram was on his payroll as a bodyguard. Some of the cruder inmates referred to Xande
r as “The Ram's bitch,” but at least they left him alone.
Who was this student coming to see him? There was no “Jasna” in his studio group. She had said she was a second year GSD student who had followed his career, but she'd been mysterious about why she wanted to see him. Probably wanted career advice. Even inside a prison he couldn't get away from people desiring him as a mentor. He looked down at his gray sweatsuit. It didn't look bad on his trim physique. Gray had always been a good color for him, far better than neon orange. He just wished the guard would remove his handcuffs. It was hard to look dignified in handcuffs.
They passed through a second sally port, waiting as one set of doors whumped shut, followed by a second set clicking open. After a turn in the corridor, a side wall opened into a glass panel embedded with chicken wire. Through the panel he could see a large room separated into small cubicles, with formica tables separating inmates from visitors.
He was led into one of the cubicles and he regarded the young woman on the other side. Not a flicker of recognition illuminated him. He sat down on a chair bolted to the floor and rested his hands in his lap.
“Hello,” he said, a question in his voice.
“It's been a long time,” she said.
“Have we met?”
“How does it feel to be the one in the cage this time?”
Xander stared at her, struck by her words. “Pardon?”
“I'm disappointed. There's an expression—'you always remember your first,' but I guess it was just my first time, not yours. I know I've changed. It's been a long time since we were 'together' in Bosnia. Do you still have that butterfly tattoo on your shoulder or doesn't it suit your present image?”
There was silence. The student's flaring eyes became transformed in his memory into the huge eyes of an innocent waif. He could picture her lithe body. “Impossible,” he whispered. He leaned forward to see her better. “You're alive?”
The girl's face was white as bone. “Despite your best efforts.”
Her angry words wounded him. “No, no, precious girl. You misunderstood. I tried to protect you. But the war wouldn't let us be together. I had to let you go and it's been the biggest regret of my life. There's never been anyone else like you.”
She leaned close and whispered in his ear. “You're a sick man. I want you to know that it's been me who's spun this web around you. And because of me you'll be in this cage until the day you die.”
CHAPTER 65
Iris rested her cheek against the cool glass of her turreted office window. The light had begun to soften into dusk. A roller suitcase clicked loudly from outside as it was wheeled along the brick sidewalk. She gazed out at pedestrians rushing up the block to the warmth and safety of their homes and felt as though she inhabited a different universe, one in which twelve-year-old girls got dragged off to rape houses and nobody cared.
She returned to her desk and collapsed into the adjustable chair. Her mind had been spinning for hours with Jasna's story, touching down fitfully on each instance of wrongs committed and to whom, weighing each awful offense. How could it ever be put right? How could Iris' abiding need for truth be so at odds with her equally powerful need for fairness?
She couldn't talk this over with Ellie. Luc had walked away. This was her own damn ethical burden to unravel. Hadn't she told Jasna that she, Iris Reid, would decide what the next step in this story would be? But what right did she have to be the judge? At least three people's lives¬—Lara's, Jasna's and Xander's—could be critically affected by whatever action she might choose.
Nonetheless, Iris marveled at how clever the plan was. From Jasna arranging for Lara to visit Xander's office, to breaking into Xander's house, to setting up a fake but gruesome murder scene in that New Hampshire barn. Her student was inspired—Iris had to give her that. The whole intricate setup would punish Xander, with the secondary benefit of getting Lara's father to stop looking for the girl.
But then Iris stopped and remembered that part of this oh-so-ingenious plan involved Jasna's reading Iris' private e-mails, spying on Iris' account for weeks. Jasna had also used Iris to lead the police to the van. Maybe Jasna was still conning her. Maybe she hadn't been raped. No, to Iris that part of the story sounded real. Why else would Jasna go to this much trouble to pursue revenge against Xander? Iris could no longer think of him as the dedicated architect who had taken her out to dinner six weeks before and shown such interest in her work. Now she could only imagine him as a depraved, manipulative pedophile.
Still, he hadn't killed Lara. He'd never even met her. Iris had always felt proud that the American justice system at least attempted to follow strict rules about culpability. Wouldn't that make her a vigilante, or at least an accessory to one, if she let Jasna get away with sending Xander to prison, or worse, to a date with the executioner?
Lara was the only innocent one here. She was now safe from her bully of an adoptive father and was presumably living happily with her uncle. Shouldn't she be left alone? Iris had no illusions about how Lara's life would be as a ward of the state.
Blissfully unaware of her mistress' anxiety, Sheba padded into the office and looked at Iris expectantly, tail wagging.
With a sigh, Iris rose and went through the doorway into the kitchen, flipping on the lights. She poured kibble into Sheba's battered, stainless steel bowl. She retrieved some last pieces of leftover chicken from the fridge, arranged it on top of the kibble and returned the bowl to its spot by the back door. Sheba sauntered over to it, sniffing the air.
Noting the time on the microwave, Iris rummaged in the refrigerator for her own dinner. She ended up eating two bowls of Cheerios. As she ate, she watched the evening news on her laptop. The leading story was about a journalist who'd been captured in Iraq months before. He was shown holding up a recent newspaper, presumably to prove that he was still alive.
Iris chewed distractedly and thought.
CHAPTER 66
Xander had wasted no time in calling his solicitor. Thus, on Wednesday, the morning after Jasna's visit, he sat across from Farrington and the solicitor's younger colleague in a depressing cell that passed for an interview room at Walpole Prison.
“You're saying that the perpetrator of this hoax came to see you and admitted to everything?” Farrington's bright dark eyes were fixed intently on Xander.
“Yes, like I told you on the phone, she showed up here yesterday and said that she was the reason I was in prison. It's a girl I had, let us say, a dalliance with in Bosnia. She is out for revenge because things did not, uh—I wasn't very good with splitting up.”
The younger attorney, Martin-something, paused from taking notes on his iPad, then asked “Was this the woman you said might be Lara's mother?”
DeWitt felt a moment of panic, then shook away the possibility. “No, this is a different one. You need to see the tape of our interview. You can hear what she says. This place records all the visits, don't they?”
Farrington's lips tightened into a slit. “The warden already showed us the tape of your interview with this Jasna Sidron. Her words are not very clear, especially at the end. We checked on her identity when you called yesterday afternoon and she really is a GSD student.”
“You can interview her.” Xander said. “In any case, now we know who is behind all of this. The police can check on her movements. She must have made some mistakes. Lara must be hidden away somewhere.”
“Here's the problem,” Farrington said, frowning. “We can't hear her saying anything incriminating on the tape.”
“But can't technicians do things to make the words easier to hear? I thought there were all kinds of—”
Farrington interrupted him. “Yes, we can try to enhance the sound, but you're missing the inherent problem with telling a jury that she's the one setting you up. They'll want to know why she's so eager for revenge. Her student visa says she is twenty-five years old. You were in Bosnia thirteen, fourteen years ago, yes? This girl would have been eleven or twelve then. Are you telling
us you had sex with a girl of that age?”
“Sex?” Xander looked away. “No, not really sex. It was more of a crush she had on me. I was more of a mentor to her, I guess. Then my commission ended and I left. She must have been angry that I didn't stay in touch.”
“So, if we had this young lady on the witness stand, is that the story she would tell?” Farrington gave Xander a dry look. “Because if, instead, she would say that you forced yourself on her in Bosnia when she was the same age as Lara—the jury is just going to see a pattern of sexual abuse of a minor going back over a dozen years. This could make your case worse.”
“But how can the truth that I'm being set up make my case worse?” Xander asked.
“We were always planning on raising the idea that you had been set up. But to say that the person behind it is another young lady whom you might have harmed when she was the same age as Lara—it's not a good strategy for gaining sympathy.”
“But I have never even met Lara! I didn't hurt her! Are you saying that now that we know who set me up, we can't use that information to get me out of here?”
“We'll enhance the tape to see if there's anything that will benefit your case.” Farrington said.
The solicitors stood up and collected their files.
“Maybe we can find a way to spin this,” Farrington added as he headed toward the door and rapped on the glass.
CHAPTER 67
Jasna chewed on her lower lip as she paced around her apartment, cell phone cradled on her shoulder.
“Holding a copy of The Boston Globe? Where am I supposed to get that in Montreal?” Edvin asked, zeroing in on one of many complicated details of the plan.
“I could overnight one to you,” Jasna replied. “We just need a paper that won't give away where Lara is now and it needs to be somewhat recent to show that Lara is still alive and well.”
