Dead Hunt dffi-5

by Beverly Connor

  She seemed sincere. Ironic, thought Diane. From what they had discovered, that’s all Archer O’Riley wanted when he married Clymene—a little romance and companionship in his life. What he got was murder.

  Chapter 4

  It was a civil visit, Diane thought as she left the interview room. Even Clymene’s side trip into ‘‘I’m just an innocent victim’’ was done with humor. It felt to Diane as though Clymene still saw herself in complete control of her destiny. The thought didn’t exactly worry Diane, but it did give her pause.

  She hadn’t for a moment believed Clymene was innocent. But she could see how other people might be persuaded by her. She knew Clymene had friends and supporters on the outside who believed her. Perhaps they were what the DA was worried about.

  It wasn’t the quality or the conclusiveness of the evidence collected by Diane’s forensic team that was cause for concern in Clymene’s conviction. It was the DA’s inserting information into the trial about the death of Clymene’s previous husband, Robert Carthwright. He’d died of an apparent accident while working on one of his cars. At the time, Clymene hadn’t even been named as a suspect. There was evidence that a local handyman may have been involved, if indeed it was anything but the accident that it had been ruled.

  But DA Riddmann’s strategy was to persuade the jury that the murder of Archer O’Riley was part of a larger pattern and that Clymene was more than just a onetime killer—that she was a serial black-widow killer. So he raised new suspicions about her culpability in the death of Robert Carthwright. He drove hard on the dark motives that lay behind her elaborate measures to hide and fabricate her past. And he coupled all that with extensive evidence of a sociopathic personality.

  The hard evidence connecting Clymene to Archer O’Riley’s murder was more than sufficient for a conviction, and bringing in information about her uncertain past and her previous husband’s death would only present grounds for an appeal. Diane had thought it was a bad move. But the prosecution strategy was the DA’s call.

  Be that as it may, the scrapbook link wasn’t as weak as Clymene liked to claim. Her lawyer had made much of it. If he could convince the jury of its absurdity, then the competence of the prosecution would be put in question and doubt cast on the validity of all the prosecution’s evidence.

  Clymene’s scrapbooks were certainly not the main evidence, but for Diane they provided a powerful insight into Clymene’s modus operandi. Ross Kingsley, the profiler, loved them.

  Diane knew about scrapbooks through classes taught at the museum. Today’s scrapbooks are far more elaborate than scrapbooks of the past. The philosophy behind the design of the pages is to have the viewer experience the content of the photographs at a deeper level than just looking at the pictures. The photographs themselves may be cropped, made into a mosaic, covered with velum, or treated in any number of creative ways to draw attention to them. A picture of kids building a snowman might be showcased amid drawings of snow-covered trees embossed with fine white glitter. A photograph of a beach scene might be shown on a page with tiny shadow boxes filled with sand and sea shells. Personal journaling on the pages can supply context and explanation for photos. But the idea always is to illustrate an underlying truth, because the pages are windows into personal history.

  Clymene’s pages were elaborately artistic and creative, but they were also fake. David, one of Diane’s crime scene crew and an expert in photographic analysis, noticed it first. Clymene had digitally edited herself into photographs, Photoshopping herself into the lives of strangers.

  One photograph alone might simply have been artistic licence, but her scrapbooks were built on dozens of photos in which she had systematically grafted herself into a false past. She had even created a fivegeneration photograph out of whole cloth. It was as if she might have scoured flea markets looking for discarded photographs to build herself a history. Clymene had created a family and experiences that weren’t real, weren’t hers.

  The scrapbooks in and of themselves weren’t conclusive of any wrongdoing. But added to the weight of the other evidence, they were more than suggestive. The fact that investigators were unable to find any family or history for Clymene before her marriage to Carthwright cast the purpose of the scrapbooks in a very grave light.

  Clymene’s scrapbooks were constructed around the interests of each husband. Robert Carthwright was a car buff—he particularly liked cross-country racing. One of the scrapbooks showed her participating as navigator in cross-country rallies throughout Europe— most notably the Acropolis Rally in Greece—complete with sightseeing photographs of ruins and quaint villages. She had used a photo-paint program to graft her face or her whole body into all the pictures.

  Archer O’Riley, the man she was convicted of killing, enjoyed amateur archaeology. One scrapbook showed Clymene on various digs in Europe. Digs that she was never on. David even found that faces in some of the images were the same faces that appeared in another scrapbook showing photos of other places and other times. The digital editing had been good and her pages elaborate enough to actually take the eye away from the individual people and focus it on the context. Clymene was good at creating illusions.

  As Diane was let out of the maximum-security section she suddenly turned to the guard at the door and asked whether the chaplain was in. She followed the guard’s directions and came to an office labeledREV. WILLIAM RIVERS. She knocked on the door. It opened immediately.

  She faced a heavy-set man in dark gray pants, shortsleeved white shirt, and tie who looked at her quizzically over an armful of papers. She imagined that it wasn’t often that people he didn’t recognize knocked on his door.

  ‘‘Reverend Rivers?’’ she asked.

  He looked at her badge. ‘‘Dr. Fallon... ’’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘‘Do we have an appointment?’’

  ‘‘No. I—I’m the director

  Lab and currently working

  of the Rosewood Crime with Ross Kingsley, the FBI profiler. I was wondering if I could speak with you about a prisoner.’’ Diane didn’t want to get into Clymene’s request as the real reason for her visit, and since Ross got her into this, he deserved to have his name dropped.

  Rev. Rivers nodded as he came out and closed his door. ‘‘Can you walk with me to the chapel? I need to put out these handouts. Who did you want to talk about?’’ Rivers breathed hard as he walked briskly down the hall.

  ‘‘Clymene O’Riley,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘Ah, yes. Ross has spoken with me about her before. He’s taken quite a shine to her.’’

  They reached the gate and the guard let them back into the high-security area. Diane didn’t ask any questions until they got to the chapel. Rivers seemed to have a hard time breathing, talking, and walking at the same time.

  ‘‘Here we are,’’ he said.

  Diane opened the door to the chapel for him and he proceeded to place his handouts on each desk. Rather than pews, the chapel had rows of metal and plastic classroom chairs—the kind with a table attached and a wire basket underneath. The chapel itself had the same shiny tile as the rest of the prison and the same graygreen walls. A single wooden cross stood behind a wooden lectern at the front. Vases of silk flowers— mostly roses, irises and lilies—sat atop tables that lined the walls. Rivers caught her looking at the room.

  ‘‘Who would invent paint this color, huh?’’ he said. He shook his head. ‘‘Some of the women arranged the flowers. A local florist taught a flower-arranging class as part of our skills program.’’ He looked at Diane and grinned. ‘‘She had written a nice proposal to the state. Anyway, it was something for them to do. Clymene O’Riley took the course. She did several of the arrangements you see here. What do you want to know about her?’’

  ‘‘Your opinion of her,’’ said Diane.

  Rev. Rivers finished placing his handouts on the desktops and motioned for Diane to sit down. He turned one of the desks around to face her and sat down with a deep breath, as if laying out all the handouts
had tired him. His light brown hair was disheveled and his brown eyes looked red and strained.

  ‘‘She’s an interesting prisoner. When she asked to work in the chapel she wasn’t like the usual prisoner— she didn’t tell me how she’d found the Lord and wanted to help do his work. We sat over there in those chairs.’’ He pointed to two vinyl-upholstered wood chairs at a table by the wall. ‘‘She told me she was scared and wanted a safe place to work and if I let her work here she would listen to what I had to say with an open mind. I found that refreshing. She told the truth and promised me only what she could give. I’ve had women promise me they would become nuns.’’ He laughed. ‘‘I tell them I’m Protestant, but I’ll pass their desires along to Father Henry.’’

  Diane smiled. ‘‘You are also a counselor here? Is that right?’’

  He nodded. ‘‘I’m here all day. We have a rabbi and a priest come to minister to the prisoners too.’’

  Diane glanced down at the handout on the desk in front of her. It was instructions for filling out a job application. Rivers followed her gaze.

  ‘‘With some of them, small skills like filling out forms, going for a job interview, and creating a budget help them get by on the outside. Clymeme has been a big help. She already has those skills. Sometimes we do role playing and the women pretend they are at a job interview. Clymene is good at interviewing and showing them how to improve. She’s fluent in Spanish. I’ll tell you, that’s a big help.’’

  ‘‘And did she listen to you with an open mind?’’ asked Diane.

  Rivers nodded. ‘‘She did. She listens and asks a lot of intelligent questions. She’s a smart woman. She actually understands everything I have to say.’’

  ‘‘Do the other prisoners like her?’’ asked Diane.

  He nodded. ‘‘They do. She writes briefs for them. Pretty good at it too. She’s gotten one woman a new trial and another one visitation for her kid. That’s really a good record.’’

  It certainly was, thought Diane. Now she knew why the DA was so nervous. Apparently there was no end to Clymene’s skills.

  ‘‘And the guards?’’ asked Diane.

  He shrugged. ‘‘They like her as much as they like any of the prisoners, I suppose. Probably more because she doesn’t cause trouble. There are a couple of guards she is friendly with, I think. Guards are like the rest of us. Cynical. We hear and see a lot.’’

  ‘‘You don’t seem cynical,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘I try not to be. Occasionally we actually get prisoners who are really innocent. It happens more than you think. I try to keep an open mind without becoming gullible. And I try not to take it too hard when they disappoint me. It’s not an easy line to walk.’’

  ‘‘I can imagine,’’ said Diane, though he seemed to her like a man who felt disappointments deeply.

  He shifted in his chair and stared a moment at the handout in front of him. After a moment he looked back up at Diane.

  ‘‘I’m not familiar with the evidence against Clymene O’Riley. I get the impression from prison talk that it was weak.’’ He gave a faint laugh that barely made it out of his throat. ‘‘Something about creative scrapbooking?’’

  Diane grinned at him. ‘‘Those illustrated her duplicity and pointed to an underlying scheme.’’ Diane took a breath and explained in detail about the scrapbooks. Rivers bent forward, resting his arms on the desk, and listened.

  ‘‘None were true?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Not that we could discover. Almost all the photographs of her were digitally inserted over a background. Those places we could contact—like the car rally in Greece and the archaeology digs—did not have her in their records and had no one who remembered her, though they could verify that her husbands had been there.’’

  ‘‘I see,’’ said Rivers. But Diane wasn’t sure that he did.

  ‘‘Clymene’s scrapbooks were only secondary to the case,’’ said Diane. ‘‘The key piece of evidence was the cotton ball, and it was a slam dunk.’’

  Chapter 5

  ‘‘The cotton ball?’’ Rev. Rivers sat up straight in the chair. ‘‘I don’t know about that.’’

  ‘‘Do you know how Clymene’s husband died?’’ asked Diane.

  Rev. Rivers frowned and looked at a vase of irises to his right. ‘‘Lockjaw, I think she said.’’ He looked back at Diane. ‘‘Is that right?’’

  ‘‘Yes. Archer O’Riley flew to Micronesia to work on an archaeological dig. Clymene was supposed to be with him but developed a case of the flu at the last minute. She was to join him later. He arrived feeling sick, headachy, feverish, and a little stiff. He thought he was also coming down with the flu. The archaeology team sent him to a hospital in Guam. On the way he had seizures so severe that he broke one of his vertebrae and his arm was so swollen and inflamed the doctors were going to amputate it.’’

  Rivers winced. ‘‘Tetanus is rare, isn’t it? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone dying of it, despite all my mother’s warnings about stepping on rusty nails.’’

  ‘‘Yes, it’s rare. Only about eight people a year die from tetanus in this country, out of a population of three hundred million,’’ said Diane.

  Rivers said nothing for a moment, as if he were searching for the right words. ‘‘She . . . she somehow infected him? You proved it? With a cotton ball?’’ He looked skeptical.

  ‘‘One cotton ball about that big’’—Diane made a circle with her thumb and index finger—‘‘told the entire story. I’ve never had evidence that good before.’’

  Rivers shifted in the small chair. A few of the but

  of pulling tons on his shirt looked to be in danger

  loose. He shifted again.

  ‘‘I don’t know the details of Clymene

  trial,’’ he said. ‘‘All I really know is that she was con

  husband and suspected of victed of killing her last

  killing her first husband.’’ Diane started to say they didn’t know if Robert

  Carthwright was her first husband or second, third, or

  tenth for that matter, but she let that go. The fact was,

  she didn’t know. She did know the evidence supporting the Archer O’Riley murder and she felt it was

  important for Rev. Rivers to know it.

  ‘‘Archer O’Riley died just an hour after they got

  him to the hospital,’’ said Diane.

  ‘‘Why was murder suspected?’’ asked Rivers. ‘‘It wasn’t right away. His body was flown back to

  the United States, where it was examined by his own

  doctor, who was concerned about the arm because the

  site of the infection was where his office had taken a

  blood sample in a routine checkup just days before.’’ ‘‘Naturally, he didn’t want liability,’’ said Rivers. ‘‘Naturally,’’ repeated Diane.

  Clymene had gotten to Rev. Rivers. Diane could see

  it in his face—the way he blushed at leaping to her

  defense. She guessed that he hadn’t realized it himself

  until now—until he felt called upon to defend her. Diane imagined that it had been easy for Clymene O’Riley’s to win Rivers over, even though he was resistant to prisoners trying to pull the wool over his eyes. He was a man with meager resources, dedicated to making a difference among the prisoners. Successes were probably few and far between. Clymene hadn’t told him what he wanted to hear, like so many prisoners do. She told him what he hadn’t expected to hear. Making a promise, small though it was, and keeping it set her apart from the prisoners who made pledges he knew they couldn’t keep. By his account, Clymene listened, asked questions, and participated in a meaningful way in his classes—actions above and beyond her simple pledge to keep an open mind. A small thing, but an important thing to Rivers. Clymene was good at calcu

  lating what was important to people.

  Saying she was afraid and wanted a safe place to

  work was probably true. What w
as it Frank, her whitecollar-crime detective-friend, said? Truth makes the lie

  believable in a con. Clymene was undoubtably good at

  using truth to her advantage—just as good as she was

  at making fiction seem true.

  Diane saw now what Clymene was doing—why she

  hadn’t filed an appeal yet. She was gathering her supporters first. The DA said she had a following on the

  outside consisting of a few friends and people she

  went to church with. Having the prison chaplain on

  her side would be a PR coup for her.

  ‘‘The health department investigated the doctor’s

  office,’’ said Diane. ‘‘They found nothing that would

  account for the infection.’’

  He again shifted uncomfortably in the small chair,