Blind Spot (21 page)

“Well,” Suki said, “you’re just going to have to try.”

“Now?” Alexa whined. “I’ve got a science test tomorrow. I need to study.”

“I think this is more important.”

“But I need this A in science,” Alexa argued. “I just heard about a senior who didn’t get into Princeton because her science grades were too low.”

“If we don’t get this mess straightened out,” Suki said softly, “there may be no Princeton.”

Alexa was startled into silence. She looked down at her book and played with her pen. “Sure,” she finally whispered. “I guess I can give it a try.”

Kyle came in and put his hands on Suki’s shoulders. “I’ve got a better idea, Mom.”

Suki raised her eyes to her son.

“It’s the play at school tonight.
Bye Bye Birdie
. Remember?”

Suki remembered as if it had been another lifetime, someone else’s lifetime. Last month she had bought four tickets from Kyle’s friend Gil, who had a small part. The extra ticket was for Brendan.

“The cars, Mom,” Kyle continued. “All the cars in town’ll be there. It’ll be a lot better than driving around all night looking in empty driveways.”

“I’m not going to the play,” Alexa said.

“Not to the play,” he told his sister with exaggerated patience. “The parking lot. We go in the middle, when everyone’s inside, and like, check out all the cars. You can see if you recognize any of them.”

Alexa raised her right hand so that her thumb and forefinger formed an upper case L. Teenage sign language for “loser.”

Suki turned to Kyle. “That’s not a bad idea.”

Alexa scowled at her brother.

“Well, I think we should take Kyle up on his idea.” Suki jumped from her chair. “How about I whip up some pasta and then we go over and scout out the parking lot.” She kissed the top of Alexa’s head. “That’ll give you time to study for your test.”

Alexa shrugged and started scribbling in her notebook. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

The grounds surrounding Witton High School are lush and wild and woodsy, but the building itself is unattractive, made of a nondescript beige brick, layered unimaginatively into a hill, blind on one side. The front door, painted a deep blue, is unimposing and has the appearance of a back door. The entrance is approached by a terrace of narrow steps and opens into a stairwell. Suki always wondered what the architects could have been thinking—or if they had been thinking at all.

As Kyle had predicted, the parking lot was full. Cars were parked on the edge of the bus turnaround and on the grass along both sides of the tennis courts. On first glance, there appeared to be a lot of dark Chevys. Suki had to park around the corner. The three of them climbed from the car as Kyle plotted out their course of action.

“I’ll take the left side and Mom’ll take the right,” he ordered. “When we find one, we’ll yell. Then Alexa can come and look.” He waved down the street toward the school. “When we get to the tennis courts, we’ll, like, do the same thing. Same with the rows in the lot.”

Suki nodded, both impressed and amused by how Kyle was taking control of the situation, by how much he was enjoying it. Just like his father. He loved to be in charge. She put the printout under her arm and pulled out a pen so that she could crosscheck each car by license plate; she had highlighted the Witton cars in yellow. The play had started half an hour ago, and Suki figured it still had about an hour to run. She wanted to make sure they were long gone before the crowd broke.

“Want me to handle the list, Mom?” Kyle offered. “How about we cross off each car that Alexa says no to, and put a check at the ones she thinks are possible? That way, at the end, we’ll know which cars we still have to find.”

Suki handed him the pen and papers, more than glad to share any piece of the burden. Alexa hadn’t said a word. She was lagging behind, leaning against a tree. Suki put her arm around her and gave her a squeeze. Alexa didn’t respond. Suki let go, and they started down the line of cars.

It was quickly apparent their strategy was seriously flawed. Kyle had to devise a new category: the question mark. Almost every Chevy they saw got that designation, for when Alexa looked at each car, she shrugged and mumbled, “I can’t tell.”

When they crossed out Rick Rogers’s and Darcy Ward’s cars, on the assumption the two were completely implausible suspects, Kyle crowed with delight. “Two down!” he cried. Suki didn’t have the heart to tell him that she had already mentally eliminated both Rick and Darcy, but she did wonder what Darcy was doing here.

As they worked their way down the third row of the parking lot, Alexa grew more and more sluggish, if that was possible. “It’s no use,” she finally said. “This is stupid.”

Suki was inclined to agree with her, but Kyle would have none of it. “What if we quit and the car’s in the next row?” he argued. “What if we missed it just because you want to go home?”

“It’s not in the next row,” Alexa said. “And even if it was, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“How about we do two more rows?” Suki cajoled. “Kyle has a good point.”

Alexa reluctantly followed her mother and brother. A dark Chevy was parked near the main entrance. Alexa walked over to it and shrugged. “I can’t tell.”

Suki noticed a police cruiser parked in the no-parking zone at the bottom of the front steps.
CHIEF OF POLICE
was printed under the driver’s window. The car was empty. “Please, Alexa,” she begged. “Please try.”

“I
am
trying. They all look alike.”

Suki had to admit that they did all look alike. She glanced over at Kyle. “I’m with Alexa. Let’s go.”

“One more row,” he pleaded. “You promised we could do one more row.”

Suki knew better than to renege on a promise. “Okay,” she said, “but that’s it.”

They were standing no more than twenty feet from the front entrance, facing it, when the door burst open and a boisterous, laughing group of kids poured down the steps. There were about a dozen of them. Intermission. Suki had completely forgotten about intermission.

At first the kids didn’t notice them, they were too intent on looking cool as they lit their cigarettes and flirted with each other, and Suki thought they could slide away without an incident. But then a voice called out, “Hey, Alexa, what are you doing? Stealing a car?”

“Shut up, Parker,” Alexa yelled back.

Suki was proud of Alexa for standing up for herself, but she felt sick to her stomach. Parker was Becky Alley’s son. Parker and Alexa had gone to day care together. Played in Becky’s backyard pool. She had driven four-year-old Parker and Becky to the hospital the day he shoved a pebble up his nose.

“What’s grand theft auto to you?” Parker taunted. “Can’t go to prison for more than one lifetime.”

Kyle stepped in front of his sister. “Shut up, acne face.”

“Owww,” bellowed a squat, muscular boy standing with Parker, “that was a good one from the big ninth grader.” He covered his face in mock terror. “I’m really scared now.” More kids began to gather behind Parker and his friends. A few tittered, but most just watched in silence.

Suki grabbed Kyle’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said.

But he yanked free of her grasp. “Not until he apologizes.” He glared at Parker. “Apologize.”

“I’m not apologizing for telling the truth,” Parker spat back. “Everyone knows Alexa did it. Everyone knows why.”

Suki leaned close to Kyle’s ear. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she hissed. “We don’t need any more trouble.” She was chilled by Parker’s words.

But, as always, Kyle was his father’s son: not one to take orders. “Apologize, you asshole!” he yelled to Parker. “You don’t know what really happened.”

“We know!” someone behind Parker yelled out.

“Yeah! We know all right!”

“Yeah!”

Suki looked at the grumbling kids. This wasn’t just a group of children, this was a crowd, the kind that could quickly ignite into a mob. The psychological literature was rife with examples of even the most reasonable people surrendering their personal identity to a moment of collective righteousness. And no one had ever accused teenagers of being reasonable. “Go back inside,” Suki ordered as calmly as she could. “Just go back inside.”

“Not till you go!” Parker said.

“Not till you apologize!” Kyle stood firm despite the fact that Suki was once again yanking on his arm.

“Go! Go! Go!” Parker began to chant.

“Go! Go! Go!” The kids picked up the dirge, but they began to close in, their bodies barring the way of their words.

“Get out of my way!” Suki shoved the two boys directly in front of her. “Get out of my face.”

The boys dropped back, unsure how to respond to a grown-up, someone’s mother, pushing them.

Into this moment of hesitancy, a whistle blew. Loud and authoritative. The kids fell silent in surprise. “Break it up!” ordered a voice used to command. “If you were my soccer team I’d have you all down doing a hundred push-ups. Maybe I will anyway.” Warren Blanchard stood on the top step at the front of the school, his hands on his hips.

There was a smattering of uncomfortable laughter and the shifting of feet. Suki felt, rather than saw, the kids retreat, transform from a mob into individual children. They turned toward Warren.

“This is my family’s tragedy,” he said, speaking more softly, but still powerfully. “If we’re not throwing stones, you shouldn’t be either. You don’t have the right.”

The kids murmured and shuffled and began to disperse. They crushed out their cigarettes. Climbed the stairs. Went inside. No one looked back. Suddenly there was space and air and room to breathe.

Suki wrapped her arms around Alexa and Kyle, who were both trembling. Warren was sitting on the top step, his head in his hands. After a long hug, she untangled herself from her children and sat down next to Warren. She took his hand. He didn’t raise his head. They sat without speaking, hand in hand, for a long time.

No one said anything on the ride home. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. As soon as they got in the house, Alexa and Kyle climbed the stairs and went into their bedrooms. They closed their doors.

Suki looked at the blank, expressionless doors of her children’s rooms and then at the lighthearted colors of the poster board filling the kitchen window. She took a bottle of wine from the rack in the living room. When she went into the kitchen for a glass, she noticed that the answering machine was blinking. There was one message. It was Superintendent Rizzo.

“I’m very sorry about this mix-up, Dr. Jacobs,” Rizzo’s stiff voice rose from the speaker. “But I checked my records and Lindsey Kern put you on her PIN in 1995 when the Inmate Interchange law was enacted. It says here that you’re her therapist, and all the appropriate paperwork was signed by Lawrence Willard, who was superintendent at that time. Everything appears to be in order. I’m sorry if this has been an inconvenience for you. Call me tomorrow if you want your number removed from her list.”

Suki stared at the machine as it whirled and clicked and reset itself. In 1995 she was working at the Roxbury Court. She hadn’t yet met Mike Dannow and she had never heard of Lindsey Kern.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

O
ne of the most crucial pieces of a forensic evaluation is the comparison between the official version of the alleged crime and the self-report of the defendant. The degree to which the defendant’s story matches the accounts provided by others goes directly to her state of mind at the time of the crime and to her propensity to manipulate both the truth
and
the psychologist. Suki was particularly concerned with the latter issue in Lindsey’s case.

Yesterday afternoon, before taking her futile cruise around Witton, Suki had managed to squeeze in an hour reviewing police reports from the scene of Richard Stoddard’s death as well as transcripts of the trial. In this type of case, it was often necessary to interview witnesses, but as there had already been a trial, Suki was hopeful the witnesses’ sworn testimony would give her enough data. In the field, it was generally assumed that a psychologist who charged more than thirty hours on a forensic eval, even one as complicated as this one, was pushing the envelope. Suki was not interested in getting that kind of reputation.

Suki hadn’t planned to meet with Lindsey again until she had spent more time reviewing the official version of Stoddard’s death, but the message from Superintendent Rizzo last night had caused her to reconsider. She drove to the prison first thing in the morning without even calling the front control to ensure she would be able to interview Lindsey. Suki knew the shift changed at seven and that breakfast was at eight, so neither of those would be a problem, and, as she had permission to see Lindsey whenever she wanted, she figured it was worth the risk—even if she had to wait in the visitors’ area with the squalling babies and exhausted grandmothers.

She needed to find out how Lindsey had managed to get her home number on the PIN—and convince the authorities it had been on there for five years. Suki wondered if Lindsey had ever done any secretarial work in the superintendent’s office. It wasn’t uncommon for prison administrators to fill their employment gaps with the “better people.”

She didn’t like the idea of leaving Alexa home alone, but couldn’t see any way around it. Alexa hadn’t wanted to go to school, and Suki hadn’t forced the issue. As she closed Alexa’s bedroom door, Alexa had curled away from her into a fetal position, and Suki had wondered about the hourly rate home tutors charged and the tuition at private schools. After what had happened last night, she wasn’t sure she wanted Alexa to go back to Witton High. If she had to dip into Alexa’s college fund, so be it.

The officer allowed her right through, and she was led into an unfamiliar interrogation room containing a beat-up wooden desk, two chairs and a barred window overlooking the concrete exercise yard; it had apparently been someone’s office not very long ago and was hot and stuffy. Suki opened the window then sat down at the desk, pleased with the setup; it gave her a physical position of authority, and she was always more comfortable when there was a desk between herself and an inmate. Suki checked to make sure the police reports and trial transcripts were in her briefcase. She didn’t plan to bring up the PIN list until after Lindsey had given her self-report of the crime. Anything else would be foolish.