Secrets So Deep eBook

by Secrets So Deep [Bella] (mobi)

  “Will she go back home once she returns to work?”

  “That depends. The hardest part of her day will be the trip from her front door to the car and back. They’re going to be shoving cameras in her face the whole time. I’ll hire a couple of bodyguards to escort her when she’s out in public, but it’s going to be very stressful.”

  “What will they make of it if they find out she’s staying here with me?”

  “I’m hoping they won’t find out, but if they do, we’ll play it straight. We’ll say you’ve become friends. If that’s going to pose a problem for you, we’ll try to make other arrangements. But please understand we’re not here to cause you trouble. We’re here because Glynn has nowhere else to go.”

  Charlotte had already examined her objections. There were plenty of reasons not to allow Glynn to stay here, most of them in the gray area of the APA’s ethics code, but none was more important than her promise of friendship. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “We appreciate it, Charlotte. I know your neck’s out on this.”

  She nodded uncomfortably.

  “Glynn needs to rest, and then she probably needs to talk. Are you up for that?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’m going to let her have the day off tomorrow, but I’ll be spending Monday and Tuesday here going over information. Is that all right?”

  Charlotte snorted. “Hope you like pizza.”

  The water was still running upstairs, which meant Glynn had been showering for over thirty minutes. That was at least ten minutes longer than Charlotte’s hot water supply.

  “Glynn?” She tapped lightly at the door, and then peeked through a crack and confirmed Glynn was still behind the curtain. She crossed the small room and reached inside the shower. Startled by the icy spray, she turned the water off and gently pushed back the curtain.

  Glynn was sitting in a ball, hugging her knees to her chest and shivering. Charlotte quickly grabbed a bath towel and draped it over her back. Then she took a hand towel and squeezed the moisture from her short hair. “Can you stand up?”

  Glynn placed her palm on the side of the tub and pushed to her feet, the towel falling precariously to one side as she stepped out.

  “You’re freezing,” Charlotte said. She briskly rubbed the towel over the slender body, but dabbed gently at Glynn’s left breast, where a small scar was surrounded by red, swollen skin. Then she squatted to dry her legs. “Can you help me here?”

  Glynn absently lifted a foot and placed it on the toilet, allowing herself to be dried thoroughly.

  “Put this on and sit down.” Charlotte helped her into a robe and retrieved a hair dryer from the cabinet. As she dried Glynn’s hair, she intermittently blew warm air over her cool skin.

  “I’m sorry. I just got sort of . . . overwhelmed.”

  “It’s okay. Are you warming up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Michael said you should rest. Maybe a nap?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I can sleep.”

  “I can fix lunch or call out for pizza.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Charlotte often saw behavior like this in women who had been traumatized. It wasn’t as if Glynn had been raped, but her loss of control and privacy had left her feeling humiliated and victimized. “What is it you need right now, Glynn?”

  “I need to know why Sebby’s doing this. What have I done to make him hate me?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Charlotte, you know it isn’t true.” Glynn looked at her with pleading eyes. “Don’t you?”

  “Glynn . . .”

  “I didn’t kill Bas! I loved him.”

  Though Charlotte hadn’t allowed herself to think Glynn was guilty, she was nonetheless relieved to hear the vehement denial. She put her hand on Glynn’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I believe you.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “We’ll figure it out. Michael seems like a sharp guy.”

  “Let’s hope so. I would have liked him a lot better if he had gotten me out of jail yesterday.” Glynn finally stood, cinching her robe tighter. “I can’t believe I just made such a spectacle of myself.”

  “You’re allowed. It’s just me here. Besides, I’m a doctor.”

  “You probably see meltdowns like that all the time.”

  She chuckled. “It only qualifies as a meltdown if you do it outside.” She turned to leave the room, but Glynn grabbed her elbow and pulled her back.

  “I know I’m not supposed to do this, but . . .” She wrapped both arms around Charlotte’s waist and squeezed.

  Charlotte couldn’t help but respond, folding Glynn into her arms. All of the things that made Glynn vulnerable made Charlotte want to hold her close. But more now than ever, she needed to keep her distance.

  Glynn pushed the covers back and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The only light in the room was a sliver from the cracked door, which meant she had slept most of the day. She was starving.

  She flicked on the bedside lamp, immediately spotting a jar of aloe cream on the nightstand. Apparently, Charlotte had noticed her radiation site when she got out of the shower. The cream felt cool to her skin, a welcome relief from the itching and burning. As she rubbed it in, she acknowledged that Charlotte had probably noticed everything else as well. She had put on quite a show in the bathroom.

  The faint sound of jazz drifted up the stairs. Glynn walked out and leaned over the half-wall to peer into the living room below. “Charlotte?”

  Charlotte grabbed her remote and muted the music. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you with that?” “No. I was just wondering if I could come down in my pajamas, or if I should put on a robe.”

  “Whatever you want. The blinds are all closed down here.”

  Glynn started down the steps.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” She reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around, pleased to see a gas log fireplace.

  “I bet you’re hungry.” Charlotte didn’t wait for her response, jumping up instead to retrieve a large slice of pizza from the kitchen. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks. I promise to be an easy houseguest.”

  Charlotte gestured at her bare feet. “Aren’t your feet cold?”

  “I usually sit on them, but I didn’t know how you’d feel about my feet on your couch.”

  “Mi casa, su casa.”

  Glynn tucked her feet beneath her. “I hate to wear shoes in the house, even when it’s cold.” It was almost surreal to be here in Charlotte’s home chatting casually about her feet.

  “I want you to feel at home while you’re here. Open all the drawers and closets. Go through all the cabinets if you want. The only things I keep locked are some files in my office.”

  She let herself relax in Charlotte’s hospitality, until her stream of consciousness carried her through the dreaded chain of events that lay ahead. “I don’t know how I’m going to stand these next couple of months. Michael says the DA probably won’t let me see Sebby at all.”

  “That’s probably normal for something like this. They don’t want to give you the chance to put pressure on him to change his story.”

  “They don’t seem to have any problem letting Mark put pressure on him to tell lies.”

  Charlotte kicked off her shoes and took a seat beside her on the couch, stretching a woven throw so it covered their feet. “Sebby probably isn’t lying in a deliberate way, Glynn. At least he doesn’t think so. I can’t explain how he got to where he is, but I doubt he’s doing this to purposely hurt you.”

  “So . . . what? He has some kind of false memory?”

  “Like I said, I can’t explain it. And I still have to be very careful, especially when it comes to second-guessing another doctor.”

  “I’m not second-guessing Mark,” Glynn said angrily. “I’m calling him a liar. He called me two days ago to tell me not to come to Rawlings because Sebby was working on some
”—she made quote marks with her fingers—“‘tough issues.’ What he was really doing was testifying in front of a grand jury.”

  Charlotte looked at her blankly, and Glynn sighed with frustration. The one person who could possibly help her understand what was going on was shutting her out—to protect one of her own. No, that wasn’t fair to Charlotte. She was protecting her integrity as a professional.

  “Can you at least tell me about the process? What kind of therapy do you give to someone like Sebby to get him to remember?”

  “You talk about the surrounding circumstances, try to bring back everything that’s familiar. The whole idea is to get them to go back to that event and walk through it scene by scene. Once it’s crystal clear what happened, you try to find the part that’s been hidden and face it down.”

  “But how could Sebby remember something that didn’t happen?”

  “It’s possible he’s mixing up an actual event with an imagined one, or even one he read about or saw on TV. Maybe someone asked him during the investigation if he saw you do it and it got stuck in his head.”

  “But Michael says he told them details,” Glynn said incredulously. “He said he saw me go into the bathroom and push the TV into the tub. He was hiding in our bedroom and said he stayed there until he heard me go back into his room and shut the door.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “If someone said they saw me do that, I’d think I must have been sleepwalking.”

  “Sleepwalking? I thought that was just something from the movies.”

  “No, people really can do all sorts of things while they’re asleep. It happens during what we call slow phase sleep. They get up and eat, they clean the house. Some even drive.”

  “But do they get up and murder people?”

  “Believe it or not, there have been cases like that. One guy stabbed his wife twenty-five times and didn’t remember any of it. Another guy held his wife under water.”

  “Sounds a little too convenient to me.” She wriggled her feet free of the cover and dangled them off the couch.

  “Have you ever experienced any episodes of strange things happening while you were asleep? Like waking up in the morning to find things moved around? Doors left open? Lights on? Dishes on the counter?”

  Glynn managed a faint, wry smile. “Yeah, but I live with a teenager who does all those things.”

  “What about when you were growing up? Do you remember your family talking about things like that?”

  Glynn shook her head. The more she heard, the less she liked the implications. “Are you saying it’s actually possible I killed Bas and don’t remember anything about it? Why would I do something like that?”

  “Glynn, I’m not saying you did.” Charlotte shook her head in emphasis. “I’m just offering it as a possibility. If your time in Eastern Europe was anything like mine, you saw some ugly things. When I came home, I had horrible visions every time I saw a truck like the ones they used to bring the refugees in. I imagined they were full of people—women and children who were bleeding and battered, scared to death of the human race.”

  Some of the children in Bosnia haunted Glynn to this day, but Bas’s death had consumed her waking and sleeping nightmares for several weeks after she returned. It was possible, she guessed, that her experience had taken a heavier toll than she realized. But could she have done something so horrific without even a trace of a memory?

  “Is there any way you can tell when someone has been sleepwalking?”

  “There are sleep specialists who understand it better than I do. You should see if Michael can set up an evaluation.”

  Glynn sighed. “I can’t believe I’m actually thinking about a defense for why I killed my husband. What if it’s all in Sebby’s head? How can we find that out?”

  “If Sebby is the state’s witness, Michael should have a chance to depose him first. He should dig for the details of what Sebby remembers. Any inconsistency is going to be a flag for the jury that the witness is fabricating the story. At least that’s what happens in a rape case, which is what I’m most familiar with.”

  “But you don’t think Sebby’s making this up.”

  “He might be making it up, Glynn, but I can’t imagine why he’d do that.”

  Glynn was growing more and more frustrated with the circular reasoning. “One way or the other, Mark has to be pulling his strings.” She held up a hand to Charlotte’s looming objection. “I know you can’t talk about Mark. I’ll have to discuss this part with Michael, but I need your help to know what to ask.”

  Despite Glynn’s persistent criticism of Mark, Charlotte remained calm and resolute. “Just tell Michael about your concerns. He’ll figure out how to handle Mark’s role in this. But I can’t do it. I’m too close to the case, and I’m too close to you.”

  “I just think it’s reckless that he seized on something so vague and allowed it to tear both me and Sebby apart. Why couldn’t he have brought this to me? I would have helped Sebby get to the bottom of it. Now, no matter what happens—no matter what kind of reasonable explanation there is for any of this—our lives are going to be ruined.”

  Charlotte placed a hand on her shoulder. “Just promise me you won’t forget to take care of yourself. It won’t matter how it all turns out if you don’t get well.”

  “I just hope Sebby remembers that he promised me the same thing.”

  Chapter 14

  Roy held out a hand to help her from the backseat of his Lexus, which had entered the underground parking garage unnoticed by the waiting press. Tina was already waiting by the elevator. “Hold your head up, Glynn. You’re as innocent today as you were a week ago.”

  “Thanks. Let’s hope Michael has that much confidence after Sebby’s deposition. They should be starting right about now.” She had wanted to attend, but Michael had advised against it.

  Roy and Tina had come through for her in the past week, running interference with both the press and her colleagues on the Hill. Randy was managing constituents back in Indiana. Supporters were lining up, albeit slowly, most touting the constitutional presumption of innocence, but a few representatives on the other side of the aisle were using her arrest as a reason to insist on her immediate resignation.

  Saul Harrington had given an unambiguous statement of support, but the press didn’t consider a lobbyist’s take on things much of a story. Nonetheless, she was grateful.

  Party leaders had requested an opportunity to “review the issue,” whatever that meant. “What time is my meeting?”

  “Eleven o’clock,” Tina said. “And just to remind you, Michael insists you refrain from talking about specifics with anyone unless he’s with you.”

  “Got it.” Michael had drilled it into her head over the past four days that every word she uttered was admissible as evidence, so she needed to avoid discussing the case, even in casual conversation with people she trusted.

  The elevator delivered them to the second floor. “You ready?” Roy asked.

  She nodded, taking a deep breath in anticipation of the horde of reporters gathered on the other side of the door.

  To everyone’s dismay, there was no one waiting. Instead, they walked the circular hall undisturbed to her office.

  “Where is everyone?” Tina asked Mary Ann Dixon, her receptionist.

  “All hell just broke loose,” the young woman answered, looking up with a grin. “Welcome back, Glynn.”

  “Thanks. What’s going on?”

  “Check out the news. Someone caught Alvin Baxter being politically incorrect.”

  They filed into Glynn’s office and turned on the television. Baxter’s aide was saying something about it all being a misunderstanding but the reporters on the scene—probably the same crew that had been camped at the Capitol all week waiting for Glynn to return—obviously smelled blood in the water. The studio host interrupted commentary to play a video clip, blurry in spots, but nonetheless identifiable. Baxter was talking with several lobbyists in his cigar club, and referred
to the president’s attorney general, an African-American, as a nigger in a suit.

  “Lovely,” Glynn said, not bothering to hide her disgust.

  “Yeah, but you’ve got to hand it to him. He sure saved us from a nasty day,” Roy said, a satisfied smirk on his face.

  “It’s just a temporary reprieve. They’ll be back when his bones get cold,” Glynn said. “Are we business as usual with the Appropriations meeting?”

  “Are you kidding? The Democrats aren’t going to miss the chance to show Alvin Baxter absent from the meeting,” Tina said. “That’s just another way to keep it in the news.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up anyway,” Glynn said.

  “They’d probably like that even more. Every time his face goes up, people are going to be reminded of that video clip.”

  “Glynn?” Mary Ann appeared in the doorway. “Your eleven o’clock with the party leaders has been canceled. Looks like they have something more urgent to deal with.”

  “Good. I can get some work done.” Glynn put on her glasses and looked at her schedule. “Roy, I need a briefing on the health care bill before two tomorrow.”

  “You got it,” he said with clear enthusiasm.

  “And Tina, would you see if Senator Culbertson has a few minutes to talk about the preschool bill. If he’s handing this off to Preston, I don’t want it to get lost in the shuffle. I’ll ask Madge Heflin to run it through the House if necessary. And get Mary Ann to set up lunch tomorrow with Saul Harrington so I can let him know about the changes. We’ll do it here in my office.”

  “Will do.”

  Glynn checked her watch. Appropriations was meeting in eight minutes. It was good to be back.

  “. . . and I don’t really see why it’s such a big deal. The assholes probably aren’t going to be charged anyway.”

  Charlotte eyed her newest patient, a college freshman named Chelsea. She had been gang raped at a fraternity party when she was too drunk to either give or withhold consent. The university insisted on psychiatric counseling, but Chelsea was far from motivated to cooperate.