by Marcia Clark
But Tiegan seemed determined to thwart that effort. The day the DNA results came in, and against Fred’s strenuous advice, she’d insisted on talking to the police.
And over Rusty Templeton’s vociferous objection, I’d insisted on being there to watch. Emmons knew how to repay a favor; he’d overruled Rusty.
I sat in the darkened observation room with Dale and looked through the one-way mirror. Fred was already in the room, a legal pad and pen in front of him on the table. He twirled the pen around and around on the pad, his expression miserable. Even though Tiegan had let Cassie take the fall, I couldn’t help but sympathize. Having a client who insisted on putting her head in the noose was every lawyer’s nightmare. A few minutes later, a patrol officer brought Tiegan in and sat her down at the table. The orange jumpsuit gave her skin a sallow glow, and the circles under her eyes were so dark she looked as if she’d been in a bar fight. Her blonde hair, always so smoothly styled before, hung in bedraggled, oily clumps. The guard secured her ankle chains to a bolt in the floor and asked her which hand she wrote with. When she held up her right hand, he chained her left hand to the table.
Fred spoke to her gently. “Is there any way I can talk you out of doing this, Tiegan?”
She shook her head. Though her sunken chest and hunched shoulders made her look beaten, I saw defiance in her expression. “I want everyone to know the truth.”
Fred opened his mouth to say something, but in that moment, Emmons and Templeton walked in. Emmons greeted Fred, then stated the date and time, listed the parties present, and read Tiegan her rights in a soft voice. Tiegan waived them, looking like someone who was about to step off a cliff.
Emmons sat back. “Since you were the one who asked to talk to us, why don’t you go ahead and tell us in your own words what happened that night?”
A smart move, that. It made a record of the fact that Tiegan had been the one to reach out to them and set a laid-back, nonconfrontational tone. I knew Fred wanted to bang his head on the table; there was no way he’d get this statement thrown out.
I sat forward, my face just inches from the window. The cops knew nothing about her affair with Cassie. That meant Tiegan had no way of knowing Cassie had told me about it. Would Tiegan admit it? And what would she say about the blood in the trunk of her car?
Tiegan inhaled deeply through her nose, then closed her eyes as she exhaled. After a moment, she began to talk, her eyes focused on the wall between Emmons and Templeton.
Her voice floated through the speakers, soft but clear. “I didn’t kill anyone. Cassie called me that night in a panic. I’d never heard her sound that way. She said something terrible had happened, that I needed to come over right away. I asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t answer. She was breathing hard, like she’d been running.”
Emmons broke in. “Was she calling you on her house phone or her cell?”
Tiegan paused for a moment, then said, “It wasn’t her cell phone. I didn’t recognize the number.”
I remembered that Cassie had made the call on Abel’s phone. Emmons nodded for her to continue. She took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. “I was scared; I thought . . . a thousand things. Maybe a burglar had broken in or her father had a heart attack. I told her to call the police. She said that would only make things worse. She started to cry, then the line went dead. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to call the police after hearing that, but I was worried out of my mind. I had to find out what was going on. So I went to her house.”
Rusty broke in. “’Scuse me, Tiegan. Just to clarify, you’d never been to her house before, right?” Tiegan shook her head. “How’d you know where to go?”
“I have all my students’ contact information on my computer.”
He nodded.
A much smoother move than I’d have expected from Rusty. He’d just gotten Tiegan to admit that her prints could only have been left that night. And it was interesting, the way the detectives behaved toward Tiegan. They treated her like a doll made of spun sugar, and their tone was almost apologetic. I’d never seen anything like it before. Even when my clients were cooperating, in fact even when they were helping to clear open cases, I’d never seen detectives be that deferential.
Tiegan was silent for so long, Emmons prompted her. “You went to Cassie’s house. How did you get in?”
“I knocked on the front door, but no one answered, and it was locked. I got really freaked. I thought something must’ve happened to Cassie. I ran around the house, looking for an open door or window. I found one window partly open.”
Rusty broke in again. “Was it Cassie’s bedroom window?”
The distraction seemed to throw her off. Her eyes darted to him, then away again. “I—I don’t know. But it was the kind you push up, and it didn’t have a screen.” Tiegan started to breathe through her mouth as she relived the events of that night. “I climbed in and called out to her. I heard her say . . . something, I don’t remember what. I followed the sound and . . .” Tiegan stopped and shook her head. When she spoke again, her voice was low and ragged. “It was horrible. There was blood everywhere. Cassie was just standing there. Abel . . . Paula . . .” Tiegan dropped her head to her chest and began to cry.
As her weeping filled the room, Fred looked at her with concern. But the detectives seemed poised between skepticism and confusion.
When the sobs began to subside, Emmons spoke. “So it was all over when you got there?” Tiegan wiped her face with her free hand and nodded. “Did Cassie say anything? Tell you why she did it?”
Tiegan looked at him through swollen eyes. “She just said she couldn’t take it anymore. But I didn’t know what she was talking about.”
Rusty asked, “Then she never told you about the molestation?”
She stared down at the table. “No.”
“And you would’ve expected her to?” Emmons leaned back and studied Tiegan.
Tiegan nodded, her expression perplexed. “We talked about everything—every argument she had with Abel, even the little dustups with her mother.”
Emmons continued to study her for a moment, then he asked in a voice so soft I could barely hear it, “What happened next?”
“I—I know I should’ve called the police. But all I could think of was that I had to protect Cassie. I told her I’d get rid of the knife. I told her to give me ten minutes and then call the police.” Tiegan bit her lip and looked at Emmons. “I know I shouldn’t have done that. But you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t kill anyone!”
Emmons nodded, but I could see it wasn’t necessarily because he bought her story. He was just placating her. “What did you do with the knife?”
Tiegan exhaled and sank back in her chair. “I put it in the trunk of my car and then threw it down a sewer drain.”
“Do you remember where?” Emmons asked, more out of habit, I was sure, than with any real hope of finding it.
Tiegan looked spent. She shook her head. “It was all a blur after I saw the . . . the bodies.”
The room fell silent for a long moment. Emmons and Templeton exchanged a look. Templeton said, “Give us just a minute. We’ll be right back.”
I knew they were going to talk over what she’d said and figure out whether they’d covered everything. I knew they hadn’t. I stood up.
Dale looked at me. “Bathroom break?”
“No, I need them to ask her about one more thing.”
I hurried out. Dale caught up with me and nodded to the hallway on our right. “This way. I know where they are.”
I followed Dale and found the detectives standing together at the end of the hall. “You need to ask her why it was so important to protect Cassie.”
Rusty put his hands on his hips and glared at me, then shot a look at Emmons. “I thought you said she’d stay out of our way.”
Emmons started to speak, but I moved in closer. “Come on. You’ve got to be wondering why she didn’t just call the cops—”
“No shit, Co
unselor.” Rusty was red in the face. “A blind rhino could see there’s something wrong with that story. But if you want to tell us why she covered for the girl, I’m all ears.”
I couldn’t tell him. All the information about Cassie’s involvement with Tiegan was privileged, and there was no way around it this time. I had to back off. “Sorry. Can’t help you there.”
Rusty gave me a look of disgust. “Then stay out of my way.” He turned on his heel and headed back to the interview.
We got back to the observation room just in time to watch the detectives settle in at the table. Rusty sat at an angle, twisted slightly to the left. He led off. “I have a bit of a problem with your story, Tiegan. I don’t get why you’d go to all that trouble to protect a girl who’d just killed her whole family.” He frowned at her. “It doesn’t make sense. Not for a smart lady like you. Not for a good citizen like you. You’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket.”
I heard a faint clinking sound. At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I realized—it was Tiegan’s chains. She was shaking like a telephone wire in a windstorm. “I . . . uh, you know she was adopted, right?” Tiegan looked from Emmons to Templeton, then ran a tongue over her lips. “She’s had a hard life, and I . . . just couldn’t stand the idea of her spending the rest of her life in prison.” Tiegan raked her free hand through her hair. “Look, I know I did the wrong thing. I’m admitting that. I should’ve called the police.” She looked from Emmons to Rusty, her expression desperate.
Rusty shifted in his chair to face her squarely. “You want us to believe you, but you’re trying to sell us a BS story about why you covered for a girl who just sliced up her whole family. So you need to come clean right now. This is your last chance. Why’d you cover for her?”
Tiegan stared at the wall, looking numb. When she spoke, her voice was thin, as though it were being squeezed through a straw. “Cassie and I . . .” She stopped and swallowed. “We were . . . involved.” No one moved. All three men were frozen, as though time had stopped. A faint crackle of static came through the speakers in the observation room.
After a moment, she continued. “I was afraid if she got arrested, she’d tell about our, ah, relationship, and I’d lose my job.” Tiegan bent over, as though a lead weight were on her shoulders.
Emmons finally cleared his throat. When he spoke, I detected a darker note in his voice. “How did that . . . come about?”
Tiegan didn’t respond at first. Finally, she lifted her head. She stared at the wall between the detectives as she spoke, her voice soft. “Cassie used to stay after class a lot. That was before I became her counselor. At first, we’d just talk about assignments. She always seemed to need me to explain things more than the other students. She’d ask me to repeat my instructions three or four times before she felt like she knew what I wanted.”
A sign of insecurity and neediness in my book. But Tiegan made it sound like it was Cassie’s way of showing romantic interest. It was a typical pedophile mind-set. I knew the syndrome well. Tiegan continued. “After a month or so, Cassie started to tell me about her life. How she’d been tossed from one foster home to another before the Sonnenbergs adopted her. How she’d always felt like a misfit in the family, how her mother said that she was lucky to have them.” Tiegan gave a heavy sigh. “Anyway, a couple of months into the school year, Cassie’s counselor went out on leave, and the school asked me to take on some of her students.”
Rusty asked, “So that’s how you became Cassie’s counselor?”
Tiegan finally looked straight at him, and there was a smug note in her voice. “No. Cassie asked me to be her counselor.” Her eyes slid back to the space between the detectives. “She started coming to my office every day after school to talk about . . . everything.”
Which was why she’d been surprised that Cassie hadn’t told her about being molested. I was not so surprised by that. I’d been afraid to tell anyone after my own mother refused to believe me. And I’d completely given up after the police dusted off the housekeeper’s report and apologized to Sebastian.
Emmons prompted, “How did that lead to a physical relationship?”
Tiegan tilted her head, and her voice grew so soft I had to strain to hear her. “She was upset at the way her mother always seemed to take Abel’s side. I can’t remember what the exact issue was that day. I just remember that she was more depressed than usual. We stayed until almost five o’clock, and when I moved toward the door, Cassie reached out to hug me. I—I hugged her back, but then she started to kiss me, and . . .”
After a long pause, Emmons asked, “Was that the first time you’d ever had physical contact?”
Tiegan dropped her gaze to the table. “We—we’d hugged, but nothing like that had ever happened before.”
I sat forward, hoping Emmons would ask the questions that lined up like dominoes in my head. The questions that would expose Tiegan for what she was. Surprisingly, it was Rusty Templeton who zeroed in.
He’d shifted back to his diagonal position. It might have been partly for comfort. His bulk didn’t fit easily under that metal table. But it might also have been a psychological ploy, a way to seem more relaxed and put Tiegan at ease. Now his tone was light, casual. “Before that day, how’d you help Cassie when she was feeling low? She sounds like a girl with a lot of problems.”
Tiegan nodded and gave Rusty a grateful look. “She was. What did I do?” She paused for a moment. “I’d buy her little things to cheer her up. A Betsey Johnson charm bracelet with little skulls on it—she told me she liked Betsey Johnson stuff. A red Swatch. Nothing big. I took her to the movies once, a sci-fi film she wanted to see. Little stuff like that, nothing special.”
Actually, it was classic grooming behavior, the way pedophiles inch their way into the victim’s life, ingratiating themselves by doing little things like that, taking them places—the park, a restaurant, the movies—and buying them presents. And Tiegan’s attitude, implicitly putting the blame on Cassie, making her out to be the aggressor who initiated the whole thing, was classic, too.
As Tiegan talked about her relationship with Cassie, I could feel Dale throwing me sideways glances. I figured he was worried about how I was reacting to Tiegan’s story.
But her situation with Cassie was different. Sebastian’s behavior had been far more brutal, almost sadistic actually, and it had none of the pretense of being a mutual relationship. And yet, as I thought about it, I had to admit that at base, there was a similarity. An adult in power and a vulnerable child with nowhere to turn—in Cassie’s case, because Tiegan was her lifeline.
When they ended the interview, I reached for my purse and noticed that my hands felt slick. I hooked my purse over my shoulder and looked at my palms.
I’d dug my nails into them so hard, I’d drawn blood.
FIFTY-ONE
Tiegan’s arrest blasted on every news channel. The media liaison for the police had issued a statement saying that they were “refocusing the investigation” to explore “new leads” that indicated Tiegan may have been “the actual perpetrator” of the murders.
From the very beginning, although Cassie had found champions in some of the child victims support groups, she’d also attracted some vocal antagonists. And lately the opposition had been gaining ground. One spokesperson for the opposition had even called her a “blight on the cause” of child abuse prevention.
Now the Cassie supporters were claiming victory. Their “I told you so” campaign struck me as odd, since they’d backed Cassie as a child who’d cracked under the strain of long-standing abuse and committed homicide because it was her only means of escape. Their logic seemed to be that Cassie’s actual innocence—far from proven yet, but I was okay with that particular rush to judgment—was just further proof of her victimhood.
Whatever. If the pretzel logic of those vocal campaigners helped to push up our stock with the jury pool, I wasn’t about to quibble.
Right now, the cops were holding her as a
n accessory after the fact, a crime she’d freely admitted. The substance of Tiegan’s statement hadn’t come out yet. But if they decided to charge her with the murders, Fred would probably leak as much of her denial as he could without tipping the part about her relationship with Cassie—I knew I sure would if she were my client. Tiegan’s story was believable. And Cassie had a pretty strong motive to kill.
Until I could shore up my case, find something that more definitively pointed to Tiegan as the killer, I was glad to keep things quiet.
And I had enough problems with Cassie right now without the pressure of even more public exposure. She’d been enraged when I told her Tiegan had been arrested.
At first she’d stared at me, frozen. Then she’d screamed, “No! What happened?”
I had to bite the bullet. No one but me had any reason to look into Tiegan’s possible involvement. “I never told anyone what you said to me. But I told them to check the crime-scene prints against Tiegan’s. I had to, Cassie.”
Cassie jumped up and screamed. “You promised you wouldn’t tell! You promised! And you lied!”
“I’m sorry, Cassie,” I said, though I really wasn’t. “But I have to do what’s best for you.”
She started to cry, big, choking sobs. “I hate you!” She slapped the window. “I trusted you! How could you lie to me?”
I saw the guard on my side give a signal. “Cassie, you need to calm down right now—”
She wouldn’t listen. “You bitch! You lying bitch!” Her body shook as she stared down at me.
A guard had hurried in and taken the phone out of her hand. He muscled her out of the room.