by Greg Iles
“What time is it, Ellen? Did you hear the verdict?”
She nods. “That was two hours ago, Penn.”
“Oh. Were you in court?”
“No. I couldn’t watch. I wanted to be with Timmy.” Ellen tries to force a smile, but the effort goes in vain. “It’s very difficult to go out in public now. People just stare and point like I’m some circus animal. They don’t spare Timmy, either. The kids at school…they’re awful.”
“That’s what happens in these trials. I don’t blame you, Ellen. I know Drew missed you being in there for him, though.”
She gives me a mistrustful glance. “Do you really think so?”
“I know it, no matter what’s happened between you. Today could mean the end of Drew’s life. And he’s spent most of that life with you.”
She blinks several times, and then tears begin streaming down her cheeks. “How could they do that to him?” She raises a shaking hand to wipe her face. “He’s given so much to this town, to so many of those people. How could they believe Drew could do that?”
“I thought you believed it, too.”
Ellen seems not to have heard me. “What am I supposed to do now? I have a son, Penn. What do I tell Timmy?”
“Try to explain things, I guess. Tim’s old enough to understand some of it.”
She shakes her head violently. “No. He’s younger than you think. Emotionally, I mean.”
Ellen sits beside my bed, then stands again immediately. I can’t get a handle on her emotional state. Maybe she can’t either. As I study her face, her lips smeared with too much lipstick, it hits me that she might be deep into drug withdrawal, just like me. With Drew in jail and Kate dead, her sources for Lorcet have dried up.
“Did you come just to visit me?” I ask. “Or is there something I can do for you?”
She sucks in her lips and knits her brow. Then she shakes her head several times, as though having a silent conversation with herself.
“Ellen?”
“I want you to know something, Penn. I don’t…don’t know who else to tell.”
“You can tell me. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” Her red eyes burn into mine. “I killed Kate, Penn.”
It takes a moment for the words to register. It’s as though Ellen said, “I just arrived from the planet Tralfamadore.” But she didn’t say that. She said, I killed Kate. And she meant it.
“Tell me what you’re talking about, Ellen. Are you speaking figuratively?”
“I’m afraid not. No, I killed her.” She holds up her hands. “I killed her with these…my own two hands.”
For a moment I wonder if I’m hallucinating. But Dad is giving me sedatives, not LSD. Then it hits me: Ellen is lying. She’s trying to save Drew’s life.
“How did you kill her, Ellen?”
“I choked her.”
“I thought you were with your sister when Kate died.”
She shakes her head again.
“Your sister lied to protect you?”
“Yes. Don’t blame Jackie, though.”
My pulse is returning to normal. Overcome with guilt about her past behavior in the marriage, Ellen is trying to save Drew by sacrificing herself. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? Just sit down in that chair and let it out.”
She looks at the chair with disdain. “I don’t need to sit. It’s simple really. The day it happened, I was supposed to be shopping with Jackie. But before I met her, I stopped by Drew’s office. I wanted to show him some paint samples I’d gotten from Sherwin-Williams, for the living room.”
“Did Drew know you were coming?”
“No. Anyway, when I got to his office, I happened to walk past his car. The Volvo. I saw a piece of paper taped to his window, and something made me stop. Probably because it didn’t look like an advertisement. It looked like a note. Like, ‘I backed into your car by accident, here’s my phone number’—that kind of thing.” Confusion enters Ellen’s face. “But it wasn’t. It was a note from Kate.”
Fresh anxiety wakes in my gut. “What did it say?”
“‘I need to see you. Meet me at the creek.’ ”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Did she sign it?”
“No.”
“How did you know it was from Kate?”
Ellen’s eyes crinkle at the corners. “I didn’t really. Not for sure. But Kate worked for us two summers. I’d seen her handwriting lots of times. So when I saw the note, I think…on some level I recognized it.”
“Keep going. Tell me sequentially.”
“I drove back home and walked down to the creek.”
“Did you leave the note on Drew’s car?”
“No. I took it with me.”
“Why?”
Ellen touches her forefinger to her chin and taps it softly. “I don’t know.”
“Go on.”
“I took the path I used to take when I walked Henry.” Henry was their black Lab, now dead. “There’s only a couple down there anyway. I wasn’t sure I was headed to the right spot, and yet…it was like the handwriting. I had the same instinct. If Kate had written the note, then I was going the right way.”
“I understand.”
“I walked down to this place about halfway between our two neighborhoods.” Ellen’s gaze drops, and she speaks like someone under hypnosis. “She was sitting on a log when I saw her. She looked upset. When I was about thirty feet away, she looked up. She didn’t see me, because I was under the trees. Then I stepped into the sunlight. The look on her face…I can’t describe it.”
My fists are tight under the covers. “Tell me.”
“She was afraid, of course. But there was something else.”
“What?”
“Relief. That the truth was finally out, I guess. She must have been holding in so much for so long.”
Ellen actually sounds sympathetic. But her feelings had to be much different on the day these events transpired. “What happened then?”
“I called out her name. Like a question. ‘Kate?’ She stood up then, as though my words had brought her to life. God, she was a beautiful girl.” Ellen suddenly fixes me with a furious glare. “I hate Drew for what he did. Not to me—though it’s almost destroyed me—but to her. He had no right to alter Kate’s life like that. He disrupted the natural order of things. She had so much to offer, she was so fresh, and he stole that from her. Her whole future.”
“Please go on, Ellen. What happened next?”
“I showed her the note.”
I close my eyes briefly. “And?”
“I asked her to explain it to me. I think at that point I was still hoping for some sort of innocent explanation. I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true. Kate got very upset, but she didn’t even try to lie. She told me she was in love with Drew, and that he loved her back. It was a wife’s worst nightmare, really. I just…I couldn’t process it, you know? But when I finally got what she was trying to tell me, I saw red. I couldn’t believe she’d deceived me that way. I couldn’t believe that this child had made such a fool of me. How stupid I’d been! And she wasn’t talking about sex, oh, no. She was talking about love. She lost her embarrassment very quickly. She was almost crowing, really. Or I felt that she was.”
“What did you do, Ellen?”
“I told Kate she was a fool, that Drew was lost in a midlife crisis, that she was giving up her youth for an affair that would come to nothing. I told her Drew would never leave Tim. And—that’s when it happened.”
“What?”
“Kate got this serene smile on her face. She told me they were running away together.” Ellen is staring at the wall as though she can still see Kate before her. “I told her she was crazy. Nuts. But she just kept smiling. Then she said, ‘I’m pregnant, Ellen. Drew and I are going to have a baby.’ ” Ellen’s mouth hangs slack for a few moments, as though she’s still in shock. “I don’t think I was functioning
normally from that point on.”
“Go on.”
“I screamed at her. I called her a slut and a liar. She just laughed. That made me so furious. I couldn’t stand it! I got right up in her face and slapped her. Hard. She started screaming then. Cruel things…terrible things. She told me I could never make Drew happy, that he was miserable, that I was killing him. Then she told me why. And…she was right about a lot of it.”
“Ellen, you don’t have to go there. Just—”
“Let me finish. I have to tell it all. Kate knew all about my drug problem. That hurt me so badly, that he’d told her about that. She said she’d been getting me my Lorcet to keep Drew from losing his medical license. She acted like I was some kind of pathetic monster. And she was right. But that only made me angrier. I wanted her to shut up, Penn. I had to make her shut up. I slapped her five or six times, yelling, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ But she wouldn’t. She just laughed like a maniac. That’s when I grabbed her. I got my hands around her throat and squeezed as hard as I could. She knew then how angry I was. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head. She tried to push me off, but she didn’t have a chance. Kate could beat me at tennis, but that was touch, not strength.” Ellen shakes her head slowly, remembering. “She went out so quickly, I couldn’t believe it.”
I nod. “It only takes seven seconds without direct blood flow to the brain to cause unconsciousness. Did she fall?”
“Into the water,” Ellen says distantly. “But her head hit something. A rusty wheel rim, half buried in the sand. The sound was awful, like hearing a kid’s ACL pop on the basketball court. The sound did something to me. It snapped me out of whatever trance I was in. I dragged Kate’s head and shoulders onto the bank and started trying to revive her. I couldn’t believe what I’d done. Thirty seconds before, I’d looked at her like a ruthless home wrecker. Now all I could see was the little girl who’d sold me lemonade on the corner when she was six. I was crying, hyperventilating…I was losing it, Penn.”
“Did you have a cell phone?”
“No. It was in my purse, back up at the house.”
Watching Ellen now—telling her story with almost the same stunned detachment that Drew exhibited when describing his discovery of Kate’s body—I realize that she’s telling the truth. Ellen did kill Kate. Only she did it without meaning to. With this realization comes a memory of Ellen lingering behind at Kate’s burial to offer her condolences to Jenny Townsend. My God, the torment she must have been going through. What the hell am I going to do now? I wonder. What will Quentin say about this? And what about Drew?
“What did you do then?” I ask.
“I couldn’t wake her up. There was no respiration. I realized then that she was probably dead.”
“Why didn’t you report it, Ellen?”
Her eyes lock onto mine, silently begging for understanding.
“As terrible as it was, I just can’t imagine you not reporting what happened.”
“I know. I feel exactly the same way. It’s like it wasn’t me, Penn. Kate and Drew had turned me into a different person. But more than that…I just didn’t have time to think.”
“What do you mean?”
“While I was kneeling there, staring at her in disbelief, I heard something. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. But then I heard it for real—someone coming through the woods. And instinct just took over. I couldn’t sit there and wait to be caught. I can’t explain it. It was a primitive reaction—fight or flight.”
“Who was in the woods?”
“Well, Drew, I guess. I mean, I know that now. But in my mind he was still at his office. I’d taken the note off his car, so why would he show up there? Anyway, the louder the noise got, the more I panicked. I just couldn’t wait around to see. I’m not even sure why I was so afraid, except…God, I’ve been wondering if part of me—and I hate to admit this, Penn—if even then part of me was afraid it was Drew. You know? I was afraid that if Drew knew I’d killed Kate, he might kill me in a rage.”
“Has Drew ever been violent to you?”
“Never. Oh, he slapped me once, but I was in withdrawal. I was slugging him like some redneck bitch. He should have hit me with a hammer.”
The pitch of Ellen’s voice is rising, and her words are coming faster. Though she appears to be in control, I sense that she’s headed for some sort of breakdown.
“Where’s the note now? Kate’s note?”
“I burned it.”
Damn. “Listen to me, Ellen. I want you to be very calm, all right?”
“I am calm.”
“Now that you’ve told me all this, what do you want me to do?”
She looks at me as though I’ve asked the world’s stupidest question. “I want you to tell the district attorney,” she says in a brittle voice. “I want you to get Drew out of jail. I mean, you have to tell the D.A., don’t you? Now that I’ve confessed?”
If only it were that simple. “Was there anyone in my room when you walked in?”
“Your mother was reading by the bed. I asked her to leave me alone with you.”
“All right. She’s probably still outside. I’m going to talk to her, and then I want you to wait outside with her. Go to the cafeteria and have some coffee.”
“That’s all right. Jackie’s here with me.”
“Tell Jackie to go home.”
Ellen looks confused again, but then she seems to get it. “All right. I’ll tell her.”
“Don’t tell my mother anything you just told me. Okay?”
“What are you going to do, Penn?”
“Try to get Drew out of jail.”
Relief smooths the lines of Ellen’s face. “Thank you. My God…it’s finally out. I couldn’t go one more minute carrying that around.”
I force a smile and pick up my bedside phone.
Quentin Avery is staring at me like he would an insane person. He has just listened to Ellen Elliot repeat her tale of murder—or manslaughter, in my book—and Ellen has just walked out to rejoin my mother in the hospital cafeteria.
“You believe that story?” Quentin asks.
“Every word.”
He nods slowly. “I do, too. But it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
“What?”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“What?”
Quentin runs both hands through his gray Afro, then looks down at me like a patient law professor. “Drew Elliot was just convicted of capital murder. That woman is his wife. Nobody’s going to see this as anything but a last-ditch effort to save her husband from the death penalty.”
“By risking prison herself?”
“Hell, yes.” Quentin snorts in frustration. “I’ve seen this a half dozen times, at least. Mothers try it all the time. And you can bet Judge Minor has seen it, too.”
“But it’s the truth, Quentin.”
He looks at me with something like pity. “Are you a lawyer or a philosopher? The person you’d have to take this story to is Shad Johnson, who at this moment is celebrating the biggest triumph of his career. Shad thinks this conviction’s going to propel him straight into the mayor’s office. Do you think he’s going to bend over backwards to overturn that conviction? Throw away Drew and capital murder to nail the wife for manslaughter? You think he’s even gonna listen?”
“We’ll go to Judge Minor, then.”
Quentin throws up his hands. “You told me yourself that he’s on Shad’s side, and you were right. Judge Minor so blatantly favored the state that I have no doubt about the outcome of the appeal.” Quentin lays a hand on my shoulder. “Forget this craziness, Penn. Drew’s best bet is the appeals process.”
“He’s innocent, Quentin. And they’re about to enter the death phase of the trial. At the least, Ellen’s story could introduce enough doubt to keep the jury from voting for execution.”
Quentin looks down at a vase of wilted flowers. After about a minute, he looks up, his eyes filled with resolve. “All my ex
perience and instinct tell me that would be a mistake. With this D.A. and judge, it’s the wrong way to play it. We should save the impact of Ellen’s story for the appeal.”
“Fuck the appeal,” I mutter. “I want a new trial.”
Quentin’s eyes darken. “I’m chief counsel, Penn.”
“This isn’t your call. It’s Drew’s.”
The old lawyer sighs angrily. “If you really want to upset him like that, I’ll go down to the jail and put this to him.”
I shake my head. “I’m going with you.”
“You can barely make it to the bathroom.”
I raise myself onto my hands and sit up. “I’m going with you, Quentin.”
He picks up his coat and walks to the door.
“Go back to the hotel,” I tell him. “If I haven’t called you in a half hour, go talk to Drew alone. Fair enough?”
He nods once. I expect him to offer an olive branch—or fire a parting shot—before he goes, but he does neither.
After he’s gone, I pick up the plastic device that connects me to the nurses’ station and punch the Call button.
“Yes, Mr. Cage?”
“Is my father still in the hospital?”
“His light’s on.”
“Would you page him and ask him to come to my room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Ten minutes later, my father walks into my room and closes the door.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“I need to get out of here, Dad. You’ve got to help me.”
“What’s going on? I heard they convicted Drew.”
“Ellen Elliott just confessed to Kate’s murder. Right here in this room.”
Dad’s mouth opens, but no sound emerges. Then he says, “You believe her?”
“I do.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You’ve got to get me out of this bed. I’ve got to see Drew face-to-face, and that means going to the jail. I want to overturn his conviction, but Quentin doesn’t see eye to eye with me on that. I’ve got to make sure Drew has a chance to save himself. If nothing changes between now and the sentencing phase, I’m afraid he’ll be sentenced to death. His son shouldn’t have to go through that, even if the decision is reversed six months from now.”
