by Sydney Bauer
Chelsea held him, as David placed his own forehead against J.T.’s. And then J.T., perhaps sensing that time was running out, swallowed hard before taking a breath and finishing his story.
‘My father took the handkerchief pieces from his ears and pulled me from the room and then he dragged me to the toilet and flushed them. Chelsea could not stop screaming and my father told her to shut up. Then he grabbed the rest of the handkerchief from his pocket and wiped down the gun and his hands, which were clean from being under my T-shirt in any case, before moving back into the hall and calling 911. And then he called Katherine, and made us go back . . . INTO THE KITCHEN.’ He shook his head. ‘And then we saw her, and I shut my eyes again and Chelsea was crying and my father said if we did not follow his lead he would kill us too, and if one talked he would kill the other. And then the police arrived and he CONFESSED and we knew, both of us, that this was part of his plan, and that if we did anything that he would kill the other, and that our mom was gone and that she was the only person who could save us and . . .’ The boy’s head bent down as he fell exhausted against the diner table, and David knew he had finally said his piece.
‘You’re wrong,’ said David. ‘Stephanie was not the only one. Your mom . . .’ He took a breath. ‘She knew, in choosing me, that I would help you. She knew that this was going to happen, which is why she changed her will.’
Chelsea nodded. ‘We were scared of Father – that he might kill us all. And I think somehow we thought if we kept quiet about it like he told us to, that he might change his mind. Mom did not say anything, but I think she must have known about the changes he made to her insurance. I also think she found that receipt, the one for Katherine’s necklace. And that told her that Father was getting ready – to move on.
‘The morning of the day that she died, she asked me if I could borrow a friend’s cell phone at school. Father monitored the home telephone, and Mom knew this call would have to go undetected so . . . She told me to find somewhere quiet at lunchtime and call her lawyer, a man named Harrison. And she told me to pretend I was her and to give him specific instructions about how she wanted to change her will.’
David held tight to Chelsea’s hand.
‘She never thought about herself,’ Chelsea went on. ‘She only thought about us – and how she could protect us from . . . this.’ She lifted her free hand at her surroundings. ‘But Father was too smart. He had an answer for everything. And now that Mom is gone, we are . . . we can’t . . .’
‘No,’ said David, taking the girl’s hand and squeezing it. ‘Your father is a clever man – granted. But in the end, I believe your mother was smarter. She had her own ideas about how to stop him, and I promise you I will see them through.’
Chelsea looked up at him. ‘She liked you,’ she said after a pause. ‘When you won that case last year she told us she was your friend, and that you were the lawyer she would have liked to have been.’
David looked into Chelsea’s eyes and saw her there, his old college friend, with the open heart and the big ideals.
‘You mom wasn’t just a brilliant lawyer, Chelsea,’ he said to her, his own eyes now filling with tears. ‘She was one of the best people I have ever known, and if the situation had been reversed, if you had been my children, I know she would be sitting here, doing the same for me.’
Ten seconds later Amanda Carmichael, an anxious-looking Tony Bishop behind her, was upon them once again – pulling Chelsea and J.T. from the booth and dragging them to their feet.
‘You have two weeks,’ she said, causing David’s mouth to drop open in shock.
‘Two weeks?’ he said, not believing what he was hearing. ‘That’s impossible, Amanda. I have only been back on this case for what . . . fifteen minutes. There is no way I can prepare for trial in a fortnight.’
‘The trial was originally scheduled for mid-August, Cavanaugh, and if you hadn’t fucked up with the kids’ father you would be ready for the showdown now. So if you want me to follow through with helping you reverse that pesky 209A, I suggest you save your arguments for court.’
‘Amanda,’ David hated to beg, but under the circumstances . . . ‘I can’t guarantee these kids fair representation if I don’t have the time to . . .’
‘Time?’ she interrupted as she turned to face him before advancing towards him as he rose from the booth. ‘Is your schedule full, Cavanaugh?’ she asked then. ‘You got somewhere else to be from mid-to-late August?’
The thought raced through his head – of course he had somewhere else to be. He would be with Sara, for the delivery of their baby, and more likely than not, Amanda Carmichael knew it too.
‘No,’ he said, the word alien even to him as Tony Bishop’s eyes met with his from behind the ADA.
‘Two weeks it is then, or considering it is already Tuesday afternoon, thirteen days to be exact,’ she said, the slightest of smiles on her porcelain-skinned face.
And despite himself, David nodded. ‘I’ll be there, Amanda. You have a date.’
51
It was Sinatra. He was singing ‘Come Fly With Me’. Deirdre McCall could hear it but she could not see it – or rather, him. She must be back at one of his shows. She loved Frank’s shows. She remembered one night at The Sands, she had just got her first gig in the chorus line and Frank was performing in front of a wall-to-wall sell-out crowd. He was wearing a fedora, holding a cigarette, his blue eyes bright under the mellow stage lights. He was singing ‘Embraceable You’, he was smiling, at her, at every starry-eyed woman in the room.
But wait – no – that was too long ago. It was back then, before . . . she wasn’t sure? Maybe if she could just open her eyes she might be able to . . .
Deirdre McCall concentrated – a task that seemed even harder than usual. Sinatra’s voice was still there, but now she heard other noises too – the beep of a machine, the distant sounds of footsteps, more voices somewhere beyond. Slowly she prised her eyelids apart, the first slit of light shocking her pupils into contraction. She shut her eyes again and then tried once more, this time preparing herself for the force of the overhead fluorescents.
She was in a hospital – that much she knew. But not like before, when they had her whole body in traction. She lifted her hand to her forehead, dragging the drip with it. She felt the wad of bandages – thick, tight. Something had happened, something new, with her head or whatever was left of it.
And then an image shot across her consciousness, a blinding, powerful vision that wrenched her cruelly from the past. She could see the setting sun, the dust-covered street, Mrs Abercrombie watering her lawn just across the way. She was walking, slowly, wanting the journey home to last those extra few minutes. She lifted her arm to Mrs Abercrombie who smiled and yelled something about the heat and then she saw them – no, she heard them first. Not them. Their car. The screech. And her nose contracted at the smell of burning rubber. A now frowning Mrs Abercrombie moved across her lawn to get a better look. Deirdre turned, and squinted, and lifted her left hand to act as a visor against the sun. And then the car – the big, long, red sedan carrying four, maybe more, dark-haired young men – swerved right, straight towards her and she jumped back, off the pavement and onto a patch of grass. But then the young man in the back seat had his arm out the window – a long, slender arm with a thick silver hand. But it wasn’t his hand. It was a gun. She knew this because she had seen many of them before. And even though it wasn’t him it was. It was Jason. Jason was going to shoot her and follow through on his threats after all these years. She saw the spark. And she smelt the burning. She lowered her hand and saw that it was covered in blood. And then . . . then she heard Sinatra.
Run.
Run. The thought raced through her head like a tornado. It was ridiculous of course; she could barely focus, let alone run.
But, run she had to. This much she knew. She had survived her son’s attempts to kill her twice, but something told her the third time she would not be so lucky.
She yank
ed the cannula from her hand, ignoring the blood that followed, and removed the sticky pads from her chest. She kicked the blanket from her legs and forced herself to a sitting position before waiting for the dizziness to subside. She registered the small cupboard in the corner which held a soft cotton dress she had owned for as long as she could remember.
Tracey has been here, she thought, and smiled. She must have left the Sinatra tape playing in the cassette player by my bed. She brought the dress, just in case I . . .
But the very same thought now made her panic. If her young friend returned, she would surely prevent her from running.
In that moment, just as Ol’ Blue Eyes took a breather before slipping into a smooth and easy version of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’, she knew that running was only part of the solution. If she was going to survive, she had to work out a way to stop her son for good. She would have to do what she should have done all those years ago, when she could have gone to the authorities and had him committed – perhaps even treated – for whatever made him like he was.
And so, as she unwrapped the still bloodied bandages from her now pounding brow, and assessed the damage in the scratched cupboard door mirror before her, she decided, then and there, that she would finally fulfil her maternal obligations, as unspeakable as they may be. It may be too late for ‘treatment’, but it was not too late, she decided, to put an end to her son’s path of carnage, once and for all.
52
‘Sara,’ said David, clasping his cell phone hard against his ear. He was on his way back from Plymouth, a sour-faced Harrison doing ten over the speed limit beside him – obviously determined to get back to Boston and ‘wash’ himself of this whole bloody mess as quickly as was humanly possible.
‘David,’ she said.
He felt comfort in the sound of her voice, and a dire need to tell her what he had learned. ‘I called the office and Nora said you were still at home. Are you okay? What did Doctor Taylor say?’
‘I’m fine,’ she replied, but her voice was flat – and David felt incredibly guilty for not calling earlier. ‘It is just a stomach virus. Doctor Taylor said I am overdoing it – that I need to rest if the baby is to go to term.’
‘Oh God, Sara, I am so sorry. This is my fault. I should have insisted you stop work earlier.’
‘No,’ she said, now with a trace of irritation. ‘I have actually felt really calm the last few months. Work hasn’t been too bad – since we stopped working on the . . .’
She was about to say ‘Logan case’ and David knew it. And now he had thrown them back in. But these were exceptional circumstances, he argued with himself. This was not a case but a responsibility – a life or death commitment to a brave old friend.
‘Where have you been?’ she asked, interrupting his thoughts.
‘In Plymouth,’ he answered.
‘What?’
‘Sara,’ he began, now unable to hold back. He loved her so much and knew that she would be the one person who understood just what an opportunity this was to save these kids, to bring Logan down. ‘You won’t believe what happened. I was picked up – or more to the point abducted – by a guy from Tony’s office.’ He glanced sideways at Harrison, not giving a damn if the pole-up-his-ass lawyer could hear. ‘He took me to Plymouth – to see Tony and J.T. and . . . then Amanda Carmichael turned up.’
‘You spent the day with the ADA?’ bit Sara.
‘Yes . . . I mean, no. She had Chelsea with her. The kids are going to withdraw their statements against us. And Carmichael is going to get the judge to withdraw the APO.’
‘And why the hell would she do that?’
‘Because she wants us back in.’
‘Us?’ asked Sara.
‘Yes. She wants to come up against me.’
‘She wants to come up against you,’ repeated Sara.
‘Yes. In court. It’s what she has wanted from the very beginning, and lucky for us that woman never lets go of what she wants.’
There was silence.
‘Sara?’
‘I’m here,’ she said.
‘The kids told me the truth, Sara – everything from beginning to end. They implicated their father. They told me how it went down. And I know we are short on time, and I know we still don’t have any concrete proof,’ he took a breath, ‘but I also know we can find it. If we look hard enough, if we follow Stephanie’s leads and . . .’
‘How short?’ she asked then.
‘Sorry?’
‘On time – how short are we?’
He hesitated, knowing there was no easy way to tell her. ‘Two weeks,’ he said.
‘The trial starts in two weeks?’ she said.
‘It was Amanda’s condition – on helping us lift the APO.’
Silence.
‘Sara?’
More silence.
‘Sara?’
But Sara said nothing – before hanging up the phone.
53
The following day
Whirrr . . . whirrr . . . whirr . . . It was the only sound in the room – the Mannix family dishwasher playing its own rhythmic, hypnotic tune.
Marie and the four Mannix boys had just left – Joe’s wife running against the clock to get them to their respective summer camps on time. The breakfast table was now spotlessly clean despite having, just moments ago, been covered by a myriad of breakfast cereals and beverages. And the room still smelt of traces of coffee and toast and honey, as David sat anxiously waiting for Mannix to read the two children’s statements which had been faxed to David by Tony Bishop late last night.
‘Jesus,’ said Joe, as he finished Chelsea’s statement and placed it on the scratched red formica table before him.
‘I know,’ said David. ‘They have taken it all back, Joe – they have let me in.’
David told Joe everything – from Logan using Chelsea’s computer to change his wife’s life insurance to his use of the autocue in that telling home video. From his schooling the kids on how the murder would go down, to his constant threats to kill them all if they refused to play by his rules. David relayed J.T.’s version of the events of that night in detail – telling Joe about J.T.’s protests, Logan’s use of the handkerchief and his eventual storming into the kitchen so that he might use his son as a ‘shield’ while he forced his finger onto the trigger. He spoke of the aftermath – of the disposal of the handkerchief, the further threats and the calls to 911 and Katherine de Castro, before telling Joe how he ‘safeguarded’ his own plan by offering the police a confession.
Joe sat silent, taking it all in, not once interrupting until David had finally finished – until he told him of Stephanie’s instructions to her daughter that she borrow a classmate’s cell phone to call her mother’s lawyers and change her will, and how this and other clues suggested that Stephanie had been awaiting her own murder for months.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Joe.
‘I know.’
‘It explains it all – including J.T.’s ear problems but the lack of shoulder pain or bruising.’
David nodded. ‘Logan got himself in and under J.T.’s oversized T-shirt. He bent down and rested the rifle on his own shoulder while he forced his son to be the one to fire.’
‘We should have checked Logan’s shoulder on the night,’ said Joe, blaming himself.
‘He had a quick physical at Suffolk County, Joe,’ countered David. ‘The rifle didn’t burn his shirt because it was under J.T.’s clothing. Logan may have been in pain, but there was no way he was going to rat himself out.’
Joe nodded. ‘So in a way,’ he went on, ‘Logan’s biggest mistake to date was to have both children arrested – because as soon as Chelsea was “safe” behind bars at Brockton, J.T. was no longer afraid to speak.’
‘And vice versa,’ agreed David. ‘But Logan is going for broke, Joe. He wants both of his children sent away for good. And as for the kids, well, despite their new places of residence they are still terrified, Joe. They have lived their enti
re lives watching him manipulate their futures. The man never loses, and even now I can tell they still think he will find a way to destroy them.’
‘Which is understandable, considering he has done a pretty good job to date,’ said Joe.
David nodded.
‘The one thing I can’t get,’ said Joe after a pause, ‘is why the hell Stephanie didn’t run. I mean, if she knew this was going to happen, why didn’t she get those kids out of there. Why didn’t she . . . ?’
‘I don’t know, Joe,’ said David. ‘I guess maybe she was terrified – scared to the bone – of the repercussions of defying him, of him taking her two children’s lives.’
‘So she just sits there, waiting to die?’
Truth be told, David found this one thing difficult to swallow too. The Stephanie he knew was a fighter. But then again, as it had been stressed so often of late, that was the Stephanie he knew – not the one she had been forced to become.
‘She gave her life for her kids, Joe.’
‘And in doing so she left them with that maniac.’
‘What choice did she have?’
‘She should have gone to the police.’
‘And risk her husband shooting her kids?’
‘There had to be another way, David.’
‘Yeah, well maybe under the circumstances we can forgive her for not being able to find it.’
Joe nodded once again, before lifting his eyes from the table. ‘You have a problem,’ he said.
‘You think?’
‘No – what I mean to say is, you have a shitload of problems but one huge one which at least at this point appears kind of insurmountable.’