She stared at Noah, didn’t ask how he knew that, and tried to push her anger from the forefront of her thoughts and focus on the cases.
“So what’s your theory?” Noah asked her.
“I agree with you. There’s a connection. I just don’t know what it is.”
Noah answered his phone and responded with tense, one word answers as much as possible for the next two minutes until he hung up again. “Well, that was the boss. He says the media’s going crazy over the news about Forbes. And he says we better figure out what the hell’s going on before any more kids die.”
“Great,” Hunter said as she turned around and surveyed the area. Her breath caught in her throat for a second when she saw someone coming up the hill, and then she started down the path. “Evelyn. I heard you’d gone home. How are you feeling?”
The girl looked up and jumped, as though she wasn’t expecting to see anyone. Her pale face managed to lose even more color.
“What are you doing here?” Hunter asked.
“I don’t need permission.” Vinny’s words were filled with an edge that Hunter was unaccustomed to with the young girl. It wasn’t hard to dismiss the incident between Evelyn and Tom that one day, years before, because of how Tom had handled it. For Hunter, it was easy to think back to the first time she’d met Evelyn, and remember the little girl she’d been.
She hadn’t seen Evelyn much since the divorce. Not until Adam’s body had been found.
Hunter smiled. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just surprised you’re out walking. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
Vinny stared at her, then looked past her. A quick glance over Hunter’s shoulder told her that the girl had seen Noah.
“What are you doing here, Evelyn?”
“I-I just wanted to get away.”
“This is a crime scene.”
Vinny looked away, at the ground, silent. It was her only reaction.
“Did you know that?” Hunter asked.
“There’s,” Vinny waved her hands for a moment, as though the gesture could help her remember what she wanted to say, “no tape.”
Hunter moved closer to her, right in front of her. “But did you know?”
There was tension in Vinny now. “H-how would I?”
“Why did you come here?”
The girl sniffed. “We come here all the time. To hang out.”
“And do drugs?”
Vinny wrapped her arms around her body, as though she was trying to hold herself together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know they took your blood when you were in the hospital. The tox screen will tell us what you took.”
The girl’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t take anything.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
“You can’t talk to me. I’m a minor. You don’t have consent.”
“I can call your dad.”
“Oh, I bet you can.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
There was a fire in Vinny that didn’t seem possible. The pale figure had somehow become energized.
“I know,” Vinny said.
“I don’t know what you think-”
“I know. About you and my dad. You ruined my life.” Vinny turned and stumbled back down the path.
Hunter followed. “I don’t know what you think-”
Vinny spun around. “Are you fucking him too?” She spat the words with a nod toward Noah, then turned on her heel and ran away.
***
When Solomon was finished questioning Hunter, Grainger looked up at her and smiled.
“Your witness, Mr. Grainger,” Judge Ackerley said.
“Ms. McKenna,” Grainger said, “is it easy to be a single parent?”
Hunter didn’t allow a glance at her attorney to see if he’d object. “No. It isn’t easy to be a parent, period, whether you’re single or not.”
Nods from a few members of the jury. Sympathetic smiles.
“But you seem to have a lot of negative things to say about Rose Chadwick and how she parented her daughter.”
“In my opinion, Rose Chadwick did not have a strong relationship with her daughter and her authoritative approach contributed to the emotional manipulation of Evelyn Douglas.”
“And where did you get your degree in psychology, Ms. McKenna?”
“As a detective sergeant with the Ontario Provincial Police, I am trained and experienced in evaluating behavior, relationships and their impact on others.”
Grainger smiled. “Fair point. So how would you characterize how your actions impacted Evelyn Shepherd?”
It was quieter than a windless night at two a.m. on a dead-end street. Row after row, every person in the courtroom was still.
“You had an affair with her father, which led to the divorce of her parents. Would it be fair to say that had some impact on Evelyn Douglas?”
Hunter took a breath. “Yes. But it’s hard to say exactly where my responsibility begins and ends. Tom and Rose had been having problems for years, and most of their issues centered on Evelyn.”
“So you say.”
“That’s what Tom told me and-”
“And undoubtedly what you deduced based off your observations.” Grainger leaned back in his chair. “Or is that how you can excuse your actions? Is it possible your role and your responsibility have clouded your judgment?”
“What I can tell you for certain is that Tom and Rose were having problems that pre-dated my relationship with Tom.”
“Would that be your professional relationship, or your personal one?”
“Both. When we were first assigned to be partners-”
“Undoubtedly he opened up and shared everything about his marriage with you.”
“No. He was guarded, and very careful about what he said.”
“Considering he was partnering with a younger, attractive female, that seems sensible. In fact, it seems to me like the actions of a man who was interested in preserving his marriage, who didn’t want to get too close to a single woman who might have other ideas.”
Hunter felt the flush in her cheeks. “Tom and I were partners for over two years before we became involved.”
“How noble of you. Or was it an experiment, to see how long it would take to get a married man to succumb to your attempts to seduce him?”
“Objection, Your Honor.” Solomon was on his feet but he never got the chance to get another word out.
“Sustained. Mr. Grainger, stop testifying.”
Hunter took the opportunity to drink some water.
“You say it was two years before you became personally involved with Thomas Shepherd. Do you deny that your affair with Thomas Shepherd was a key factor in his divorce?”
“No. But it was just the excuse they were both looking for.”
“And that’s how you justified your relationship with him?”
“It wasn’t criminal. It wasn’t ideal,” Hunter paused, “but it happened.”
“So you’re not perfect.”
“Who is?”
“Then how can you be so critical of Rose Chadwick’s relationship with her daughter?”
Hunter’s eyes widened. That wasn’t where she’d thought Grainger was going with his questioning. “I’ve given you my opinion, based on what I observed and what I heard from Tom.”
“But you never lived in that house yourself. You never spent time socially with Rose Chadwick, did you? Isn’t it possible that your impressions were filtered through the eyes of a man who himself was critical of his wife, and that your assessment of her was biased by his own marital issues?”
Hunter paused. Grainger was going straight to the heart of her defense. “I’m certain what Tom told me was, at least in part, colored by his own issues with his ex-wife, but,” she paused again, hoping to stress the point she was trying to make, “everything he said to me was filtered through what I observed myself.”
“Mrs. Chadwick has already
admitted to the court that it often seemed like Tom had an easier relationship with Evelyn, but that she desperately wanted that kind of relationship with her daughter herself, and that they were actually close. Do you expect us to take your word alone as evidence that she was lying? That Evelyn’s own mother didn’t love her and care for her and try to make her happy?”
“Those are your words, Mr. Grainger. And I don’t expect you to take my word alone as proof that Evelyn and Rose had a strained relationship. All you need to do is consider Evelyn’s writings.” Hunter didn’t let Grainger have a chance to interrupt her. “Even the fact that she refers to Rose as ‘Mother’ suggests a formality and distance, while she affectionately called Tom, ‘Daddy’. And Evelyn repeatedly writes about Rose wanting her to play with girly toys and dress in a girly fashion, and that doing those things didn’t make Evelyn happy.”
“But,” Grainger appeared caught off-guard, as though he was scrambling to spin her points, “couldn’t that also suggest that Tom was encouraging his daughter to be a, pardon the expression, tomboy, and that caused an internal conflict in Evelyn as she struggled to please two parents who had different expectations of her?”
“Either way, it suggests Evelyn was under pressure from her parents long before my personal involvement with her father, and that interpretation supports what I’ve said, about conflict between Tom and Rose from before Tom and I worked as partners.”
Grainger blinked. Hunter snuck a glance at her attorney, who had let a small smile crack through his normally impassive expression.
THIS IS HOW YOU REMIND ME
- Nickelback -
“Were you aware that Evelyn Douglas had started to regain consciousness while you were speaking to her father in the hospital?” Grainger didn’t leave enough time for her to answer. “That she heard you set up a time to meet him?”
Hunter swallowed to keep the lump from rising in her throat, and nearly choked on the, “No,” she managed to push out.
“This poor girl was lying in a hospital room, and as you yourself testified in your account, had almost died, and as she was regaining consciousness what she heard was the voice of the woman who had an affair with her father. Instead of focusing on Evelyn, at that moment, when she needed her father most, Thomas Shepherd was busy making plans to meet with you, wasn’t he?”
“We needed,” she struggled to find the right words, “to work some things out.”
“And by ‘some things’ what you mean is, you had decided to let Thomas Shepherd meet your daughter, Audra.” Grainger stood up and walked toward her. “But she wasn’t just your daughter, was she? That day, when Evelyn spied on you, that’s when she learned that her father had another child, isn’t it?”
Hunter fought back against the sting of the tears in her eyes. “Yes.”
“And yet you think silly childhood disagreements with her mother over Barbie dolls and frilly dresses did more emotional damage to Evelyn Shepherd than discovering that her father had replaced her with another child?”
Grainger paused, almost as though he expected Solomon to object. When Solomon remained silent, Grainger walked back to his chair. “I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor,” he said as he sat down.
WICKED GAME
-Chris Isaak -
The Defense Redirects Questioning To Hunter McKenna
Solomon opted to question Hunter further after Grainger was finished, and began by asking Hunter about the day she interviewed Rose Chadwick.
***
“For the record, it should be noted that my client has come in voluntarily to answer questions pertaining to this police investigation. As her legal counsel, I will act as her advisor. This interview is being recorded with Mrs. Chadwick’s consent.”
Hunter looked at Lawrence Isles and hoped that she managed to disguise her disgust behind a suitably polite nod. She knew Isles to be a tedious man who probably spent more money on tanning beds, facials and blond hair dye than all the women in the police department combined.
Rose Chadwick sat beside the high-priced lawyer, and for now, that was all that was important.
“Mrs. Chadwick, do you remember when you first learned of the death of Adam Fields?”
Rose glanced at her lawyer, who allowed the creases of a frown to wrinkle his smooth, bronzed skin for a split second before he nodded. “Yes,” Rose said.
“Can you recall where you were?”
Another glance, another nod. “Yes. I was at home.”
“And how did you hear about it?”
“How?”
“Yes, how. Was it on the radio, through the TV, the newspaper, the internet…”
“Oh, yes, I see. I received a phone call from the school.”
“Which school would that be?”
“Sagamo High.”
“The school called to notify you of the death of one of Evelyn’s classmates?”
Rose smoothed her hair in a move that looked subconscious. It was hard not to watch Rose and see the actress beneath the surface. Polished and poised, sitting next to a high-priced lawyer and blending in, with her dress suit and pearls.
She didn’t look as though she’d lost a moment’s sleep over the death of her ex-husband.
“No. They called to notify me that Evelyn had collapsed and been taken to the nurse’s office. They suspected the news of Adam’s death had given her a shock. I gave them permission to medicate Evelyn, arranged care for Lily and went to the school to bring Evelyn home.”
“Did you see anyone at the school, or speak to anyone?”
“I signed in at the office and I spoke to the school nurse.” She appeared to be thinking. “I also signed the forms consenting to the medication Evelyn received.”
“Anyone else?”
Hunter held Rose’s gaze as the woman stared back at her, a thin smile on her lips.
“Of course. I spoke to you and your partner.” Rose glanced at Noah, her first acknowledgement of him since being seated in the interrogation room at the police station.
“You didn’t speak to anyone else?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Not that you recall?”
“You must understand that I am not accustomed to dealing with death on a daily basis. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d been in shock myself. Adam was a lovely young man. It’s a tragic loss.”
Hunter coughed to cover her sneer. When she’d recovered she asked, “Did your daughter say anything to you about Adam Fields?”
“No.”
“No?”
Rose smiled. “You can ask a hundred times and the answer will remain the same, sergeant.”
“Detective Sergeant,” Hunter said. As soon as she’d corrected Rose Chadwick she wished she hadn’t. She’d let Rose rattle her. “Ms. Chadwick, did you-”
“Mrs. Chadwick.” Rose’s eyes were hard and cold.
“Mrs. Chadwick, did you have any reason to suspect that your daughter had been involved in the death of Adam Fields?”
Rose’s mouth dropped open but Isles placed his hand on her arm. “Don’t answer that, Rose,” he said as he looked at her. Then he turned and glared at Hunter. “We came in voluntarily to answer questions pertaining to the shooting incident last night, Detective Sergeant. If you don’t have any questions about what happened yesterday, we’re leaving.”
“Is that really in your client’s best interests? You wouldn’t want it to look like she has something to hide.”
“I have nothing to hide.” Rose practically spat the words. “Of course I had no reason to suspect Evelyn was involved. She wasn’t. She was grounded and at home on the evening of the shooting.”
“So you say.”
Rose tossed her head. “Ask Ivy Dorn if you don’t believe me. Ivy had begged me to let Evelyn off from being grounded, but I refused, so Ivy spent the night.”
“You’re absolutely certain that your daughter, Evelyn Shepherd, and her friend Ivy Dorn were in your place of residence on the night in question?
”
“Positive.”
“The entire night.”
“Evelyn was. Ivy came around seven, if I recall correctly.”
“Not eight, not six? Seven?”
Rose nodded. “I didn’t look at the clock but I don't think it was later than 7:30.”
Hunter considered that. “Why was Evelyn grounded?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.”
“What about the allegations that Evelyn had been raped by Jonah Tyson?”
“Don’t answer that Rose.” Isles scowled at Hunter.
She ignored him. “Were you aware that your ex-husband, Thomas Shepherd, was mentoring Jonah Tyson?”
“Why would I be?” Cold indifference saturated every syllable of Rose’s words.
“They met every week. Normally after dinner, so that Jonah could do chores and look after his family.” Hunter leaned forward and stared at Rose. “The night Jonah allegedly raped Evelyn he was with your ex-husband. There were witnesses.”
Rose’s eyes widened.
Hunter smiled. “Young man could have quite a civil suit. False accusations, defamation of character…”
“All I did was tell the police what Evelyn told her friend and I left it to them to sort out. I never accused him of anything.”
Isles was on his feet with his briefcase in one hand and his other on Rose’s elbow before she’d finished speaking. He ushered Rose out the door and then looked back at Hunter. “You’re out of line, officer.”
Hunter tossed her pen on the table and leaned back in her chair. Beside her, she sensed Noah’s smirk, even before she glanced at him and saw the wry look he was giving her.
“Well, that was helpful,” he said.
“Actually, it was.”
Noah frowned. “Did I miss something?”
Hunter thought about Rose’s reactions, about the poise, the control, the careful looks and measured responses.
Then she thought about the look in Rose’s eyes and what she’d said about the accusations against Jonah. Hunter smiled.
“Yes,” she said as she jumped to her feet and walked toward the door. “Yes, you did.”
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