Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Yet it was her voice. A hand to her throat, she sat hunched over the desk with the phone to her ear.
“Okay, Anna, back up a little bit,” Dr. Tolman said. Her usual calm, collected voice sounded a little shaky. “You told me earlier that Russ put you to bed.”
“That’s right, but I woke up after a while,” she said, sounding agitated. “And I couldn’t fall back asleep. So I got up and grabbed the first things I could from my closet—a sweatshirt, my jeans, and a pair of sneakers. I knew it was late, but I didn’t care. I wanted it out in the open about Russ and me.” There was a pause, and then she seemed to have more poise in her voice. “I never would have pegged myself as the type of woman who would get involved with a married man. For a long time, the last thing I wanted was for anyone to get hurt.” Then she groaned as if she’d lost her patience. “But I was mad, and I didn’t care anymore. I was going to have it out with Courtney. I got there and pounded on the door—”
“Did you walk or drive?” Dr. Tolman asked.
“Neither, I took my little boat—right up to the end of her dock.”
Anna remembered how she and Russ had discovered on Friday that the dinghy hadn’t been tied properly. Now it made a weird kind of sense that the rope had been loose. But she still couldn’t believe this was real. How could she have totally blocked it out?
“You said you pounded on the door,” Dr. Tolman said. “Did you forget that Courtney was deaf?”
“I thought Russ was home. Anyway, I rang the bell, which blinks the lights so she knows someone’s at the door. Courtney let me in. She was still up. She’d changed into this floor-length purple robe. I guess she was in the mood for a fight, too . . . She started right in on me, and I don’t know what happened, I just snapped. I reached for the first thing I could. She had this writing award on the bookshelf, a big, heavy glass object.” There was another awkward pause, and then she continued: “I grabbed it. I remember hitting her in the head with that thing. It’s so clear to me now. I can almost hear the crack—and the strange, sickly warble that came out of her mouth. I was splattered with blood . . . It was all down the front of me—on my clothes and my sneakers. I felt the droplets on my face . . . A drop must have gotten in my mouth. It tasted like copper. When I went into the bathroom to get the towels to wrap around her head, I stopped and rinsed out my mouth at the sink. But I could still taste that little bit of blood—like an old penny.”
“Were you surprised at what you’d done?” Dr. Tolman asked.
“Oh God, yes . . . After it happened . . .” There was a pause, like she was drinking water or something. “For a moment, I couldn’t move. My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. But then something clicked, and I suddenly realized I had to clean up all the blood. I grabbed a towel out of the bathroom and wrapped it around her head.”
“What were you thinking about while you were doing this, Anna?” Dr. Tolman asked. “Were you thinking about Russ?”
“God, a million different thoughts went through my mind when I stared down at her, sprawled across the floor with that gash in her head. Her eyes were open. She seemed to gaze back at me, accusing me . . . My first instinct was to get out of there. But then I realized I had to dispose of the body and clean up the blood. Otherwise, everyone would have blamed Russ. That was the last thing I wanted. So I got the idea to pack a suitcase—and make it look like she’d left him . . . So—yeah, I was thinking about Russ.”
“Go on, Anna,” Dr. Tolman said. “You cleaned up the blood with some bath towels . . .”
“Yeah . . . I found some trash bags under the sink in their kitchen. Large Heftys. I put one over her head and used up a couple more to wrap up her body . . . Then I packed some of her stuff in a suitcase with the bloody towels—including her purse, her phone, and some of her jewelry . . .” Anna heard a long sigh on the recording. “I was able to get to my boat from their back deck, so I loaded the suitcase onto the dinghy. Then I went to get her body . . . God, I know what they mean by dead weight. She looked so petite, but dragging that lifeless thing across the floor out to their dock was awkward and exhausting. I had the trash bags wrapped around her, but they started to tear, and blood leaked out . . . Like I said, I’d already loaded the suitcase in the dinghy. When I got her out there to the edge of the dock, I sort of rolled her into the boat. It almost tipped over. The goddamn suitcase fell into the lake. I saw it start to float away, but I couldn’t get to it. By the time I cleaned and locked up the house, then got back into the boat, I couldn’t find the suitcase anywhere on the water.”
Horrified, Anna listened. At times, there were awkward pauses in the middle of sentences—and between sentences. It was as if she was hesitant about admitting what she’d done. But how could it have actually happened? She couldn’t have blacked out that much. Conscious or unconscious, she wasn’t capable of murder.
“All right, Anna, so you have Courtney’s body on your little boat,” Dr. Tolman said, her voice shaky again. “Describe what—what happened then.”
“Well, there’s this remote spot along Lake Union, down from my dock. The pier comes practically right up to the road. I took my dinghy there and went to fetch my car. By then, it was—like one-thirty in the morning, so no one was around . . . I transferred her body from my little boat to the trunk of my car. I drove back to my place and got a shovel and loaded that into the trunk. Then I walked back to where I’d left the dinghy and paddled back to my place.”
“And while all this was happening, no one saw you?”
“Not that I could tell, at least not at the time,” she answered. “I’d done a story from Lake Bosworth, and I remembered the area has all these remote dirt roads and woods. That’s where I buried her. I have to admit I was tired and didn’t dig too deep a grave for her. I figured all the wood creatures would get to her before anyone found the grave. I got back around four-thirty in the morning. I cleaned myself up. Then I stashed my soiled, bloodstained clothes and shoes in the dumpster at the end of my dock.”
“What about the murder weapon, this—this glass thing you used to kill her?” Dr. Tolman asked. “What happened to that?”
“I really wasn’t sure what to do with it,” Anna heard herself admit in the recording. “I didn’t want to bury it with Courtney. So I hid it—on my houseboat. I washed the blood off, of course. There’s a little crack in it now. Anyway, that’s where Courtney’s writing award is—for the time being. I’m pretty sure no one will ever find it.”
“Where on your houseboat did you hide it?”
“I’m . . . not . . . telling,” she replied in a strange singsong tone that reminded Anna of Bud. She shuddered.
“Okay, Anna, maybe you’ll want to tell me later,” Tolman said. “So—you cleaned yourself up, threw your clothes in a dumpster . . .”
“Yeah, and the city comes by to collect the garbage on Friday mornings—just hours later. So no one can connect those clothes to me.”
“And after that, what did you do?”
“I had a little ice cream, and then I went to bed. It was starting to get light out.”
Anna kept shaking her head over and over. She couldn’t have done all of this. Yet she was hearing herself describe everything—often with little or no emotion. She didn’t want to believe it, but she had to.
A part of her wondered if Dr. Tolman had hypnotized her into saying these things. But she could hear Gloria asking the questions and her answering. Besides, how would Dr. Tolman know that she ate ice cream when she couldn’t sleep?
Anna heard a click.
“Anna?” Taylor said. “There’s more, but what I played just now was the part I felt you should hear. Dr. Tolman said she isn’t going to say anything to the police. As your therapist, I’m pretty sure she can’t. I promise, I won’t tell anyone a thing until you decide what to do. But maybe you should talk to a lawyer. I don’t know much about this, but it sounds to me like, if you turned yourself in, you might
plead manslaughter or temporary insanity. It certainly wasn’t premeditated.”
Anna was so flustered and upset. And Taylor kept talking and talking in her slightly impaired speech pattern. It was all Anna could do to keep from screaming. Here the poor, sweet woman was trying to help and protect her. But it was too soon for any discussion about how she intended to plea-bargain on murder charges. She couldn’t have murdered Courtney.
“Taylor?” she said, a tremor in her voice. “I—I’m having a hard time believing any of this is true. I know it’s my voice on the recording, but I don’t remember any of this happening.” She hesitated. “Are you picking up what I’m saying right now?”
There were a few moments of silence on the other end. “Taylor?”
“Yes, I see what you’re saying. I’m reading it. Would you like to come over and pick up the recording?”
“Yes, please,” she said. “I’d like to come over now if I can.”
There was a pause. “All right,” Taylor said. “Could you come to the back door again? Call me when you get here, and I’ll come down to meet you.”
“Taylor? Did you listen to—I mean, did you read the transcription of the entire recording?”
A few seconds passed. “Yes.”
“Do I . . .” Anna’s mouth had gone dry, and she tried to swallow. “Do I ever say on the recording where I hid Courtney’s award?”
She waited.
“No,” Taylor answered.
“I’m coming right over,” she said. “I’m leaving now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Friday, July 24—11:39 A.M.
Giving you another try. I’m still at the back door, waiting, and starting to worry about you. Hope you’re just in the bathroom or something. I’ll give you a few more minutes, then take my chances and try the front door.
Anna sent the text.
Traffic had been a nightmare—or maybe it had just seemed that way because Anna had been so anxious to get here. For the last ten minutes, she’d been waiting at the back door of Taylor’s building. It was by an alley lined with dumpsters and recycle bins.
A narrow sidewalk ran alongside Taylor’s building. Anna started to walk up it toward the front of the building—but then she turned around for the second time and went back to the door. She banged on it—on the off chance an inexplicably phoneless Taylor was waiting there in the back stairwell. Maybe she’d feel the vibration on the door.
No response. Anna wasn’t surprised.
She desperately wanted to listen to that recording in its entirety. Maybe there was some explanation for why she’d given this long, detailed, bizarre “confession.” It couldn’t be true. Different parts of the recording seemed vaguely familiar, like that part when she said, “I never would have pegged myself as the type of woman who would get involved with a married man.” She remembered saying that to Dr. Tolman—or someone else—before. Or maybe the damn thing seemed familiar because she’d actually murdered Courtney, and yesterday, she’d relived it all while under hypnosis.
She needed to talk to Taylor about how well she knew Gloria Tolman. Who had recommended her to Taylor? Anna remembered, after the first session in which Dr. Tolman had so impressed her, she’d watched her talk to Taylor. She’d spoken loudly, overenunciating each word, like she’d never spoken to a deaf person before. Maybe Taylor didn’t know her very well at all.
Anna wanted to kick herself for trusting a complete stranger. It was the story of her life. She’d put her faith in the wrong people: her father, her brother, Russ—and now this therapist. What had been in that pill Tolman had given her yesterday?
Anna banged on the back door again, more out of frustration than anything else. Once more, there was no answer.
Exasperated, she started up the narrow sidewalk. This time, she strode all the way to the front of Taylor’s building. She checked out the lobby through the glass door, but it was empty.
Anna buzzed Taylor’s intercom. She got a recorded greeting: “Hi, this is Taylor. I can’t answer your call right now. Please leave me a text message, and I’ll get back to you. Thank you!”
“How screwed up is this?” Anna muttered to herself.
Turning around, she looked at the cars parked across the street, in front of a playfield by the lake. A man sat in the driver’s seat of a parked Honda Accord. His window was down. It looked like he was on his phone.
Anna marched across the street. As she got closer to the car, she could see the man more clearly: stocky, about fifty-five with a cocoa complexion, a graying goatee, and receding buzz-cut gray hair. He looked more like a private detective or a bodyguard rather than a creepy stalker.
He must have seen her approaching, because he put down his phone.
“Do you know who I am?” Anna asked him.
“Yes. You were here the other day.”
“Did you just tell Sally that I’m back?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re Taylor’s bodyguard, right?”
“Actually, I’m a private investigator. But yes, I happen to be guarding Taylor right now.”
“Good. Have you seen her leave the building in the last hour? She’s expecting me, and she’s not answering my texts.”
A look of concern flashed across his face. Then he quickly got out of the car.
Anna followed him as he hurried across the street. “So—I assume you haven’t seen her leave the building,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Do you have a key?” she asked.
He shook his head again. Reaching the front door, he pushed several intercom buttons. Anna stayed behind him.
“Yeah, who is it?” someone answered over the intercom.
“I have a package for three-oh-two, and there’s no answer,” Sally’s man said. “If you buzz me in, I’ll leave it by their door.”
The front door buzzed. Anna grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. She wondered how he planned to get into Taylor’s apartment. She didn’t ask. She just followed the man up the stairs and down the hallway to Taylor’s apartment. She saw the door and stopped dead.
It was open a few inches.
In front of her, the private investigator didn’t hesitate to step into the unit. Though it was daylight, he reached inside and flicked the light switch on and off several times. Then he stomped his foot on the floor twice.
Anna almost called out to Taylor and realized Sally’s man knew better. With the lights and the stomping, he was announcing his arrival. The phone in his hand, he moved into Taylor’s hallway.
Anna followed him. As soon as she got through the door, she smelled something burning.
The private investigator peeked into the living room. But Anna headed toward the dining room and kitchen. One of the dining room chairs was tipped over. It was the chair closest to the kitchen entrance. “Hey!” Anna called to the man.
She turned around and realized he was right behind her.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said. Brushing past her, he moved around the corner into the kitchen. The sharp, burning smell came from there. Anna was almost afraid to follow him. She thought the worst. She imagined finding Taylor dead on the kitchen floor.
Covering her nose and mouth from the stench, she stepped around the corner. It was a modern kitchen with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and a subway-tile backsplash. After the smoke, the next thing Anna noticed was the dark red puddle on the black-and-white-tiled floor.
The private investigator stepped over to the stove and turned off one of the burners. A saucepan of tomato soup had tipped and spilled over onto the stovetop. It dripped down the oven door onto the floor. The burner was smoldering.
Above the counter, one of the cupboards was open. Below it, on the floor, was a box of saltine crackers and a broken soup bowl. It appeared as if someone had surprised Taylor when she’d been in the middle of making her lunch.
“I’ll go check the bathroom and bedroom,” Anna said.
Sally
’s man put his hand out to stop her. “No, don’t go anywhere, and don’t touch anything. Let me speak to Sally first, and then the police.”
Anna was obedient. A hand still over her nose and mouth, she stood there and waited while the private investigator phoned Taylor’s mother.
All Anna could think was that Bud had found himself another deaf girl.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Friday, July 24—6:06 P.M.
“Right now, I’m talking to the man who calls himself Bud. We all heard you when you phoned into this show on Tuesday night,” Sally said, staring directly at the camera. She seemed to lock eyes with her viewers at home. But the usual, slightly arrogant, intimidating manner was gone.
Anna had never seen this side of Sally: she looked so subdued, maybe even scared. “I hope you’re watching now, Bud,” Sally said. “If you’ve got my daughter—or if you know what’s happened to her, I’m asking that you call into the show again. Our lines are open. If you took my daughter, please, talk to her. She can read lips. You’ll see she’s a kind, giving, and beautiful girl. Taylor hasn’t had an easy life. She was born deaf, and her father died—suddenly and violently—when she was just a child. She’s endured a dozen different major surgeries to correct her hearing—the latest just a few months ago. None of them have been successful. But Taylor is still a cheery, generous, compassionate person. Taylor cares about other people. You’ll see that she cares about you, Bud.”
Anna sat in the greenroom at Sally’s TV studio, Taylor-Made Productions, watching the show on a monitor. With the comfortable leather upholstered sofa, a desk and chair, and the stocked mini-fridge, the windowless waiting room was plusher than the bare-bones, slightly dumpy greenroom at the KIXI-TV News studio. On a side table, they even had a basket full of bottled waters and packaged snacks—both healthy and sugary.
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