by Kate White
While I microwave the chicken piccata, Hugh grabs a barstool at the island and I end up serving the dinner there. “Do you want wine?” I ask, before sliding onto a stool next to him.
“No, I still have work and I’ll need to focus.” He drops his gaze to my half-full wineglass. “You think it’s okay for you?”
“I’ve been having wine here and there, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. . . . Hugh, I know this isn’t the ideal moment, but I have to talk to you. I put it off before because of all the pressure you’re under at work, and I realize I shouldn’t have.”
“Is it about the neurologist?” He levels his gaze at me, his face tensing with concern.
“No, there’s nothing beyond what I told you, unless the MRI turns up something on Friday. But there are a few things I need you to know.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“I wouldn’t use that word. But there’s stuff you should be aware of. First, the investigator I hired called with a couple of updates.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Those tissues that were in my coat pocket? It turns out the blood on them isn’t mine. Mulroney—that’s his name—had an analysis done, and it’s type A positive. I’m O negative.”
“Wow. So whose blood is it?”
“I don’t have a clue, but I keep coming back to something Gabby said—that maybe when I was missing, I tried to help a person who’d been injured.” A stray thought crosses my mind as I’m talking. “Wait, what’s your blood type? You aren’t A positive, are you?”
“Gosh, I’m sure I knew at one point, but I can’t recall at the moment.” He smiles ruefully. “But if you’re thinking you might have taken a swing at me and bloodied my nose, that didn’t happen.”
“Of course not, I’m just trying to put all the pieces together. . . . Mulroney also says that video footage he’s secured shows me hanging around the East Village on Wednesday. That’s where that food place actually was. And I apparently looked pretty disheveled.”
He frowns. “Like you’d been injured?”
“No, I guess the same as on Thursday, as if I hadn’t showered.”
“But why the East Village?”
“I don’t know—I can’t remember the last time I was there. Can you?”
“Not really. I mean, we had dinner downtown a month or so ago, but that was the West Village.” He spears a piece of chicken with a fork and chews it absentmindedly. “That all the guy has so far?”
“For now, yes, but more will come in time.”
“Okay, I guess it’s a start.”
“There’s still something else I need to tell you. Not about Mulroney.”
I let it all spill out: my deception years ago, the way it came back to me the other night while sitting alone in our den, and my interview with the police today. Before my eyes, his expression morphs from perplexed to baffled to shocked. Not at all what I was banking on.
“Please, say something, Hugh,” I insist after I’ve finished and he’s sitting there, mouth agape. “You look horrified.”
“Ally, that’s ridiculous. I’m not horrified at all. But it’s a lot to digest.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. But I’ve been nervous about sharing all this with you. And like I said, I wanted to tell you earlier—but you’ve had so much on your plate.”
“You can’t hold things back from me, no matter how much pressure I’m under. I need to know this stuff.”
“You’re right,” I say, feeling a fresh twinge of guilt. “I’ll do better going forward.”
“It didn’t cross your mind that it might be smart to have a lawyer with you today?”
So he’s doubly annoyed. Not only did I neglect to loop him in, but I didn’t bother asking his legal advice.
“I considered it, but I was afraid doing that would make it look like I had a reason to be worried—and Roger agreed.”
“Roger’s a legal expert now?”
“I’m not saying that, but he has good instincts. And in hindsight, I realize that bringing a lawyer would have definitely rubbed this detective the wrong way.”
“So how did she respond to this new piece of information?”
“She said they would share it with the coroner, but she didn’t let on how significant she thought it might be.”
“Was she critical of you?”
“Uh, she didn’t seem to be. She said kids are often too stressed to divulge everything in a situation like that, and they leave stuff out.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
I start to tell him about the part of the interview that made me so uncomfortable, but I hold back. Despite just having promised to be more forthcoming, I don’t want to dump anything more on Hugh tonight.
“Do . . . do you think my statement is enough, or that I’ll be asked to testify if someone is arrested?”
“You’d definitely be required to testify,” he says bluntly, as if he’s thinking, So now she wants my advice.
He pushes around the last piece of chicken on his plate without bringing it to his mouth. Instinctively I glance at my own plate. I’ve barely touched a morsel, and now the lemon sauce has congealed into an unappetizing, glutinous glob.
“What you told me about finding the kid,” Hugh says. “You only remembered it the other night? Out of the blue?”
“Not out of the blue,” I insist. “It was after I’d come back from coffee with Roger. Something was nagging me, and I finally realized what it was.”
Hugh sets his fork across his plate and swivels until he’s facing me. “Is there any chance you only remembered this detail recently because you might have been in a fugue state back then, after you found the body?”
I shake my head.
“No way. I’m sure Roger would have told me if there’d been anything like that.”
“Okay, I was just wondering . . . in light of everything that’s happened.”
“Trust me, I wasn’t in a fugue state then. I lied—and then I pushed away the memory, but I was all there.” I change the subject abruptly. “Are you finished? I should let you work.”
“Ally, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, turning so he can’t see the disheartened expression on my face. “It’s a relevant question.”
We do a fast cleanup, and afterward I drift into the bedroom with a cup of herbal tea. There, I phone Gabby, realizing she never responded to my message from yesterday. I’d really love to talk to her, but the call once again goes straight to voice mail. It’s so unlike her to be uncommunicative, especially since she’s aware of the mess I’m in. Perhaps she’s caught up in a work-related crisis.
I start to toss the phone on the bed, but instead do something I probably shouldn’t and call my father. There’s a decent chance, I realize, particularly considering how low my mood is, that he’ll pick up on my anxiety, but I still long for the comfort of his voice.
“Hey, Button,” he proclaims after I’ve announced myself. “What a lovely surprise.”
There’s an energy in his tone I haven’t heard since before his heart attack.
“I thought I’d do a quick check-in before bed.”
“All good on this end. I’m feeling stronger every day, and Quinn and the family have been spoiling me rotten.”
“That’s what Roger told me.”
“He says you two have spent some time together lately. Glad to hear it.”
“Yes, it’s been fun. But I miss you, Dad.”
Careful, I warn myself. Don’t go all weepy on him.
“I miss you too, honey. By the way, I listened to your podcast today. Excellent as usual. Your mom would be so proud of you.”
He speaks that phrase often enough, but this time it makes me want to start bawling. I take a breath to guarantee my voice won’t crack.
“Thanks. I like to think she would be.”
After we hang up with a pair of “I love you’s,” I don’t know whether to feel relieved or sadd
ened. My dad clearly didn’t detect any cues of distress from me, and I’m glad I haven’t given him a reason to worry, but deep down a part of me wants him to know, wants him to notice the anguish in my voice so he can assuage my fears, especially after Hugh’s deflating response tonight.
But in the end, how helpful could my dad really be? He’s three thousand miles away. And he can’t tell me where I was those two days—or why I felt an urgent, crazy need to leave myself behind.
I strip off my clothes, don a pair of pajamas, and slip into bed with my iPad. After a feeble attempt to engage with the book I’d been reading, I end up replaying my conversation with Hugh from earlier, hoping that if I can see his comments from another angle, they won’t leave me so disquieted. I was praying for understanding and acceptance, and I came away with neither of those.
Maybe Hugh wasn’t passing judgment. It could be instead that his annoyance over being left in the dark shaded his reaction. He might even be worried that I’ve put myself in legal jeopardy.
Or—and this scares me—maybe what I actually saw with him tonight was fear pooling to the surface. Fear that he married a woman who came unhinged not only last week, but at other times during her past. Where will that fear take him?
What if, as Hugh suggested, I was in a dissociative state years ago? One I don’t even know about? And what if there’s more that I don’t remember from that day in the woods?
Clearly the interview with the cops in Millerstown is still weighing on me, especially the one weird question Corbet asked.
I throw off the covers, climb out of bed, and after plopping down at my desk in the alcove, I open my laptop. Then I google “Techniques detectives use in interviews and in interrogations.”
A host of links pop up—to blog posts, descriptions of courses on the subject, even pages from textbooks. I start with the first link and begin scrolling, my eyes racing over the words. Cops, it turns out, use all sorts of cagey strategies to elicit the truth, sometimes pinning people to a psychological wall. Before long I find a reference to a common strategy that makes my skin crawl: offering a suspect an acceptable excuse for committing the crime. It allows—even encourages—the person to confess without losing face.
I realize, staring at the words, that Corbet had used that technique on me, when she mentioned the idea of someone losing their temper and not really meaning to cause any harm. My heart sinks.
Could she possibly believe I was the one who’d killed Jaycee Long?
21
SESSION WITH DR. ERLING
By the time I reach Dr. Erling’s office the next day, I’m nearly jumping out of my skin.
She greets me warmly and ushers me into her inner sanctum. She’s in slim black pants and a cobalt-blue silk blouse, perfectly polished as usual.
“How are you doing today, Ally?” she asks once I’m seated.
“Not good. I guess I don’t feel as fragile as I did on Monday, but so many things seem to be unraveling at the same time. I haven’t remembered anything else, by the way. Which makes it all worse.”
“Why don’t you start with what’s worrying you the most?”
I tell her about going to see the police in New Jersey yesterday, my realization that the body was in rigor when I found it, and the possible ramifications of my deception.
“I feel really guilty,” I say. “If I’d told the truth, it might have allowed the police to pinpoint the time of death—and figure out who the killer was.”
“How did the police respond to the information you shared with them?”
“Oh, they pretended to understand why I wasn’t forthcoming as a nine-year-old. But later, the lead detective asked these weird questions. It was almost like she was trying to trip me up.”
“Trip you up how?”
“She wanted me to repeat certain details, even though she’d taken notes when I was talking. And then—she said this one thing that was really odd, like a trick question. . . . She wanted to know if I thought someone might have lost their temper with Jaycee and hurt her without really meaning to.”
“Why did that feel like a trick question?”
I look away without meaning to.
“It was so out of the blue, and besides, how would I know? It was like this detective thought I might respond, ‘Yes, that’s exactly what happened. I took Jaycee from her yard to play with her in the woods and when she started to cry, I just wanted to get her to stop, and I ended up smashing her head with a rock.’ I can see why innocent people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. The police lay all these traps for you when you’re already nervous and confused just from being there.”
Erling steeples her hands and taps them lightly against her lips a few times. I’m familiar with most of her gestures, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before. Does it mean something?
“What was your response to her?” she asks.
“That there wasn’t any excuse. And there isn’t, not for hurting a child. It’s been hard to even think about the whole thing again. That little girl being brutally attacked and dying and stuffed under a pile of leaves.”
She leans forward and her expression shifts from neutral to sympathetic.
“It does sounds like the interview was very stressful,” she says. “What if you looked at it another way? That the detective was probably just trying to do her job, covering her bases, and that it doesn’t mean she really thinks you could have been the one who hurt Jaycee?”
“That’s what Roger said. But what if the police want to see me again? And oh, you should have seen Hugh’s reaction when I told him what I’d done back then. For a split second he looked totally wigged-out, like he’d just noticed I had one of those suicide belts strapped around my waist and was going to detonate it any second. Then he asked if I might have been in a fugue state at the time. Not with concern. More like—I don’t know, like he was interrogating me. So much for the idea of Hugh and me talking more.”
“What do you think was really going on in Hugh’s mind when you shared your revelation with him?”
I gnaw on my thumb, considering. To me he came across as unsympathetic, judgmental even, but I know she’s wondering if there was something below the surface.
“I guess part of him was scared,” I say finally, “because what I was telling him didn’t fit with how he views me as a person.”
I realize as the words tumble from my mouth that this is the first time I’ve formed this idea into a thought I can articulate.
“How so?”
“I think part of the reason Hugh was drawn to me—besides the physical attraction—was that he saw me as a together, responsible person, someone who’d been smart about her career and her life. He’s always been pretty buttoned-up himself, and he knew he could count on me, that I was never going to drop the ball with what matters. And now I’ve become this kind of wild card. I came unglued, and he’s wondering if it’s not the first time—or even the last.”
In some ways it’s a relief to spell it out, but at the same time, I have no idea where I go from here.
“So what the hell does this mean for the future?” I ask before she can respond.
“Sometimes it simply takes people a while to process the turmoil a partner is going through and become more accepting. The more time you and Hugh spend talking, the better.”
“But I did make time to talk to him, and look what happened. . . . I’m sure part of why he’s so bothered is the mystery of it all.”
“The mystery?”
“Me showing up at Greenbacks. Being gone for two whole days. Oh, that reminds me of something else I wanted to tell you. The detective told me yesterday that I was apparently roaming around the East Village on at least one of those days I was gone.”
“The detective in Millerstown said that?” Erling’s brow furrows in a rare expression of confusion. “How would she know?”
“Oh, sorry—no, not her. I’m talking about Kurt Mulroney, the private detective I’m using.”
She
still looks confused. “You hadn’t mentioned you were hiring anyone,” she says.
“Sorry, I guess I decided to hire him since I saw you last. It just seemed like the smart thing to do since my memory refuses to budge, and this way, I’ll at least know where I was. He’s obtaining as much video footage as he can, and so far, he’s been able to determine that I was in the East Village on Wednesday.”
“Why that neighborhood, do you think?”
I explain I have no idea, that the last time I spent any real time there was when I took that night class. I find myself telling her how I liked to have dinner after class in the garden of this little restaurant on East Ninth Street. I’d bring a notebook to scribble in and daydream about life, or sometimes just sit and people-watch.
Erling smiles. “It sounds like the time you spent down there was meaningful to you.”
“Yes,” I say, nodding. “But it was so long ago. And the restaurant I used to eat at closed down.”
“Why don’t you give some thought tonight to what it was like to eat there? Think about the experience of sitting at the table, enjoying your food, watching the other diners, and why you liked it so much.”
“Okay.”
“Have you learned anything else from the investigator?” she asks.
I glance at my watch. There are only a few minutes left to the session, but we still have so much ground to cover.
“Yes, there’s something else that might be important. He figured out that the blood on the tissues—the ones that were in my coat pocket—was a different type than mine. So it’s not from one of my nosebleeds or anything.”
This time it’s Erling who looks off, thinking.
“What do you suppose that means?” she asks, returning her gaze.
“I keep coming back to the idea that I might have witnessed something bad on Tuesday. That I saw someone get hurt or attacked, and I tried to help them, and that’s what made me disassociate, not the fight with Hugh. And that would explain why I needed to borrow a phone.”
“Borrow a phone?”
“Oh, gosh, sorry, I never got to that part the last time.” The sessions are shorter than I wish they were and so much seems to be happening in between. “Remember how I told you I’d called the desk manager at WorkSpace, trying to find someone who knew when our appointment was? I apparently told him I was using someone else’s phone. And so I think I lost mine somehow when this bad thing happened.”