I See You (13 page)

‘
No
. She did not,’ snapped Hannah.

Wynonna suddenly adopted a more reserved tone. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m truly sorry. It’s innocent till proven guilty. This is America, after all.’

Hannah could see her own hand shaking on the arm of the sofa. ‘That’s right. And I’ll thank you not to say that again.’

Wynonna turned to Pamela apologetically. ‘I’m so sorry. I misspoke.’

‘That’s all right, Wynonna,’ said Pamela. ‘You’re just the messenger.’

For some reason she could not explain, Hannah was simply furious with her mother. She refused to accompany her back to her apartment. She abruptly asked a passing aide to do the honors and slipped out into the night.

All the way home, her heart was pounding. Lisa knew about Troy Petty all along? She knew, and yet she let Sydney spend time alone with him? She couldn’t get her mind around it. It had to be a mistake. But there was no room for that in Wynonna’s account. Hannah knew that she had to tell Adam but she could not bear the thought of his face, the look in his eyes when he heard this.

She went inside, trudging as if on the road to Calvary. When she opened the back door, she found Adam was on the phone.

‘OK. That’s great,’ he said. ‘Give Chet our very best. Tell him we’ll come by and see him soon.’

He hung up the phone and turned to Hannah with a smile. She tried to force a smile onto her own face.

‘That was Rayanne,’ he said. ‘Chet’s out of the woods.’

‘That’s great,’ said Hannah.

Adam frowned at her. ‘What happened?’

‘Where is Sydney?’

‘Already in bed. Tell me. You’re white as a ghost.’

Hannah shook her head and sat down.

‘Do you want something? Tea? Something a bit stiffer?’

‘Whiskey,’ Hannah said. ‘Just pour me a shot.’

Adam frowned but did as she asked. He handed it to her. Hannah took a sip of the searing liquid and grimaced.

‘That’s my girl,’ Adam said, smiling briefly. ‘Now tell me. What did my dear mother-in-law say that got you so upset?’

Hannah shook her head, and then angrily wiped her eyes.

‘Come on. You’re scaring me,’ Adam said.

‘Oh, God, Adam. She knew. Wynonna said that Lisa knew.’

‘Back up. Who is Wynonna? What did Lisa know?’

Hannah took a deep breath and then started to explain. When she was done, Adam sat very still.

‘So, if this woman is to be believed, Lisa knew that Troy was an accused child molester around the time when she started dating him.’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘Wynonna has no reason to lie about this. Adam, Lisa told Tiffany at the daycare that Troy had her permission to pick up Sydney. How is this possible, knowing what he was accused of? Oh, God.’

Adam held up a hand. ‘Now wait. Wait. Let’s not jump to conclusions. First of all, we have to assume that Lisa would never have done that. We have to assume that there’s some explanation. We have to start from that assumption.’

Hannah was about to protest and then she stopped. She looked gratefully at her husband. ‘You’re right. We do have to start from there.’ All their married life, when a problem confounded her, she looked to him for help. He was logical. A clear thinker. He was calm. He never descended into hysterics. She looked to him now, willing him to arrive at some justification for Lisa’s actions that would make it possible for her to breathe again.

Adam frowned, pondering the problem. ‘Look, you know what Lisa’s like. She’s always been an outsider herself. Maybe she felt sorry for him. After all, he was accused but never charged.’

Hannah nodded but was not comforted. ‘Why would she even get involved with him in the first place? Why would she take up with a guy accused of sexual assault on a child?’

‘Oh, honey, I don’t know,’ said Adam wearily. ‘Why does Lisa do half the things she does? All I can think is that he won her over with that underdog argument.’

‘That’s true,’ Hannah admitted.

‘Though it was a dumbass, reckless thing to do,’ he fumed. ‘Which would be just like Lisa.’

Hannah felt queasy. ‘Adam, we have to know for sure.’

‘We can’t call Lisa at this hour,’ he said. ‘They won’t let her talk on the phone. Let me call her attorney. She must know.’

‘Yes, do,’ said Hannah. But even as Adam was dialing the number, and leaving Marjorie an urgent message to call him back, Hannah tried to calm herself down. Of course, Adam was right. Lisa must have researched Troy Petty and found out that no charges were filed against him. ‘She must have felt sorry for him.’

Adam embraced her tightly. ‘Nothing else makes sense,’ he said, as if he were reading her mind.

They both jumped when, suddenly, Adam’s phone rang. Hannah held her breath while he quickly explained his question to Marjorie.

‘I see,’ he said. He listened for a while. ‘OK. Yes. OK. Good.’ He ended the call.

‘What did she say?’ Hannah asked, almost afraid to find out.

Adam looked gravely at his wife. ‘The child who accused Troy Petty passed away from her illness some years ago. But Marjorie located her mother. She asked if the parents had ever thought of pursuing a prosecution, even though the child couldn’t testify. The mother didn’t want to talk about it at first. But finally she admitted that she was reluctant to go forth because she wasn’t sure. At the time it happened, the child wanted so badly to leave the camp and come home. They kept urging her to stay and then, the next thing they knew … they got a frantic phone call to come and get her.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Hannah. ‘Her own parents didn’t believe it?’

‘They … didn’t know what to think. The child said some things that caused them to doubt it.’

‘So Troy was never officially accused, but never officially exonerated either.’

‘That’s what it amounts to.’

‘Is the mother going to testify?’

‘No way. She told Marjorie that she wouldn’t disgrace her daughter’s memory by testifying.’

‘What about Troy’s memory?’ Hannah protested.

‘Well, frankly, I’m not too concerned about Troy’s reputation,’ said Adam brusquely. ‘Are you? After all, Lisa did catch him with Sydney.’

‘So he was a child molester.’

‘Apparently. But he must have kept his secret well hidden.’

They looked at one another gravely. Lisa must have just felt sorry for Troy. Maybe she confronted him and he told her that he was unfairly accused, by a sick child, no less. Worthy of sympathy, and no threat to her daughter – until she found out differently. Hannah didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She settled for resting against her husband’s chest, able, for the moment, to breathe again.

‘Marjorie said that the prosecutor’s office will be working all night trying to track this information down. But even if they find the child’s mother, she will not go to court. She will not testify. Lisa has won the jury’s sympathy. The defense is going to rest tomorrow,’ said Adam. ‘Then the case will go to the jury.’

Hannah’s heart pounded and her mouth was dry. ‘So soon?’ she asked.

‘It would seem.’

‘Is that fair? Not to tell the truth about this child and her accusations?’

‘Fair?’ Adam exclaimed. ‘You’re worried about fair? Obviously this guy was getting ready to assault our granddaughter. Marjorie said their case is flimsy, and these revelations about Troy have given momentum to the defense. Before it dissipates she wants to make her move.’

Hannah closed her eyes and nodded. Tomorrow, Lisa’s fate would be in the hands of those twelve strangers. Her daughter would either walk free or be a prisoner for many years to come. She nestled against her husband and clung to him, as if she would freefall into limitless outer space if ever he were to let her go.

T
he next day the courtroom was virtually buzzing. People seemed to be asking themselves what kind of man Troy Petty had actually been. It was as if a wave of garbage had floated in on the tide of testimony, and stubbornly clung to the image of Troy Petty. Nurse, camp counselor, pervert.

Marjorie called Lisa’s advisor at Vanderbilt, a high-profile doctor, who testified that Lisa had not seemed at all distracted or in any way obsessed in the course of her studies. He had no idea that she was even seeing a nurse at the hospital. Alicia Bledsoe was called to the stand and swore that Lisa was not in love with Troy Petty. It was a fling to pass the time between two people who worked together. Next, Marjorie called Hannah to the stand.

Hannah was ready when her turn came. She had been prepped on her testimony by Marjorie, and warned about subjects she should not raise. She wore a sky-blue silk shirtdress that seemed to radiate serenity. Still, she felt anything but serene as she swore on the Bible and sat down in the chair in the witness stand. She looked out at the spectators, and caught Adam’s eye. He gave her a thumbs up.

‘Mrs Wickes, what is your relationship to my client?’

‘I’m her mother. Lisa and her daughter, my granddaughter, live with me and my husband.’

‘Were you aware that Lisa was dating Troy Petty?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Hannah. Marjorie had instructed her to only answer the questions. Not to volunteer any information.

‘Did your daughter talk to you about this relationship?’

Hannah hesitated. ‘When they first met, she told me that he worked at the hospital.’

‘She never said that she was madly in love with him, or anything to that effect?’

‘No,’ said Hannah. ‘Nothing like that. She seemed to enjoy going out with Troy. But, with her daughter and her studies, she doesn’t have a lot of free time.’

‘Did he come to your home? Did you meet Troy Petty?’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘He came to pick her up once in a while. He seemed …’

‘What, Mrs Wickes?’

Hannah took a deep breath. ‘He seemed like a nice young man.’

‘But Lisa never spoke of him as a potential husband, or father for Sydney?’

Hannah shook her head emphatically. ‘No. Never.’

‘Did you know she was lending him money?’

Hannah hesitated. ‘No,’ she said truthfully. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’

‘Would you have approved, if she had mentioned it?’

‘No,’ said Hannah firmly. ‘Lisa must have known I wouldn’t approve. It was a financial struggle as it was, with expenses for medical school, and caring for Sydney. That’s probably why she never mentioned it.’

‘Are you surprised to learn that she lent him money?’

‘No,’ Hannah admitted. ‘Lisa always had a soft spot for anybody in need. Or in trouble.’ She grimaced inwardly. That wasn’t precisely true. Lisa often chose to associate with people whom Hannah and Adam thought were questionable, and she would get angry if they criticized her choices. It wasn’t the same thing exactly. But it stemmed from the same impulse, she thought loyally.

‘Thank you, Mrs Wickes.’ Marjorie turned Hannah over to D.A. Castor.

The D.A. peered at her, and approached the witness box. ‘So, it’s your testimony that if your daughter had been madly in love with Troy Petty, she would have told you so.’

Hannah hesitated. ‘Probably. Yes. Ever since she was little, when she was enthusiastic about something, she would kind of bubble over with it. At least initially.’

‘What about when she was angry?’ he asked. ‘Would she tell you that?’

Hannah took a deep breath. Marjorie had prepared her for this line of questioning. The D.A. was trying to trap her. She was ready.

‘No. She pretty much kept her anger and her disappointments to herself.’

Hannah could see the irritation in Castor’s eyes. He thought he had cornered her, but she had evaded him. ‘Did Lisa ever mention to you that she caught Mr Petty preparing to assault your granddaughter?’

‘No. Of course not.’

‘Isn’t that the sort of thing you might blurt out to the people you lived with? Your parents? Your child’s grandparents?’

‘I’m sure she was terribly ashamed for having brought him into her daughter’s life. She just went ahead and broke up with him. That’s what I would have expected her to do.’

‘You wouldn’t have recommended that she call the police? Report Mr Petty as a predator?’

‘I might have,’ Hannah admitted. ‘But I didn’t know about it.’

‘Your granddaughter is not the only child out there, Mrs Wickes. If this man was the predator that Lisa made him out to be, he needed to be stopped.’

‘I agree. But I’m sure that Lisa’s first thought was to get her own child away from him. And she did.’

‘So she just let it go. Never reported him.’

‘She may have intended to. We’ll never know. He died before she could.’

‘Maybe that was your daughter’s way of stopping him. Making sure he could never hurt any other child.’

Hannah remained calm. ‘No matter how many reasons you come up with, Mr Castor, the fact remains that my daughter would never have killed Troy Petty. She’s studying to be a doctor. She intends to be a healer. Not a killer.’

Castor pursed his lips. ‘No further questions for this witness.’

‘I think we’ll break for lunch right here,’ said the judge.

Hannah was excused, and she left the courtroom.

‘How did I do?’ she asked when Adam met her outside.

‘You did great,’ he said sincerely.

‘Marjorie warned me he would ask about that.’

‘You were ready for him. Marjorie knows her stuff,’ said Adam, shaking his head admiringly.

After lunch, Marjorie called the parole officer for Troy’s brother, who claimed that Troy was paying off one drug dealer after another because of his brother’s habit. With that, the defense rested.

After another break, D.A. Castor was invited to give his summation to the jury. He stood up wearily, dark circles under his eyes. Then, the young D.A. squared his shoulders and went to work, trying to salvage his decimated case. As Castor outlined it, Lisa had multiple motives to kill Troy Petty. There was the check for $450 which Lisa cashed. D.A. Castor pounded on this fact, saying that the convenience-store tape was positive proof of Lisa’s guilt. But then, as if trying to shore up his argument against the lack of hard evidence in the explosion, and unable to discount the testimony given by Carl Halloran, he insisted vaguely that this was also a crime of passion. According to Castor’s summation, Lisa had arranged for the fishing camp to explode because she believed Troy was trying to assault her daughter. And then, on top of that, Troy Petty had the temerity to try to break up with her. Perhaps she was even jealous, Castor said. She sits before you coolly now but who knows what was really in her heart. He did his best to dismiss the lack of forensic evidence as unimportant. He insisted that it could not have been an accident, and that there was no one else, according to Castor, who would have any reason to want Troy dead. Even to a layman like Hannah, his summation seemed to be without substance and all over the map. But then again, she thought, that was the way she needed to see it.

When Castor was done, Marjorie Fox was allowed to give her summation. Marjorie glanced at Lisa, who was watching her with large, hopeful gray eyes.

Marjorie stood up, smoothed down her skirt and walked purposefully over to the jury box.

‘In a homicide,’ she began, ‘the police are trained to look for three things. Means, motive and opportunity. In the death of Troy Petty, the only means and opportunity which tie Lisa Wickes to this crime are purely circumstantial. She had been at his house but left the premises several hours before his faulty propane heater leaked enough gas to combust with some burned-down candles and blow the place sky high. Troy Petty may have been knocked unconscious before the explosion, or he may have had so much to drink that he didn’t notice the gas build-up, and he was battered in the head, and everywhere else,
by
the explosion.

‘In other words, it may have been simple carelessness, an accident. But the District Attorney insists on blaming Lisa Wickes, because she cashed Troy Petty’s check. We do know that Lisa left with Mr Petty’s paycheck in her possession several hours before the explosion occurred. But did she steal it, or did he owe it to her? What we know from Lisa’s testimony is that Troy Petty had run out of credit with her. She had found him in a situation with her baby daughter which was so reprehensible that she immediately wanted out of the relationship. Was she upset about that? Sure. Was she distraught about losing Troy? I don’t think so. The fact was that all she wanted from Troy Petty was the money which she loaned him. Hence, she left his house with the check.

‘No, when you really look at it, this case boils down to one question – motive. The state would have you believe that my client, Lisa Wickes, a young woman with a near-genius IQ, a young woman doing brilliantly in medical school, decided to attack and murder Troy Petty because she wanted to get her hands on his four hundred and fifty dollars. Or, if you can’t quite buy into that scenario, perhaps it was because he was going to break up with her,’ said Marjorie sarcastically.

‘All right. Take a good look at this woman. We all understand how difficult it is to become a doctor. The years of study and dedication which it requires. Lisa is committed to seeing it through. A career stretches before her – long, lucrative and respected. Why in the world would she toss that all away?

‘A crime of passion, perhaps? Ladies and gentlemen, we have all heard about crimes of passion. They defy logic. A person becomes so obsessed, so consumed by the object of their desire, that they will commit unspeakable crimes in the name of that so-called “love”.

‘Yet you heard Lisa’s supervisor maintain that Lisa was not distracted from her studies or her work. Her best friend, Alicia Bledsoe, testified that Lisa was just not that enamored of Troy Petty. And who would know better than her best friend? Her mother, who lives with her, saw no evidence of obsessive love. Quite the contrary. We have only the most perfunctory of emails between Troy and Lisa, and no testimony that even suggests they were “crazy in love”.

‘Could the passion have been anger? Fury at finding him attempting to assault her child? Well, anyone would be furious about that. Of course. But take a good look at Lisa Wickes. Her recollections are calm, a little sad, and, most of all, disgusted. She seems to regard her relationship with the … deceased from the kind of objective distance which one expects from a doctor. The doctor she is in the process of becoming. Fury, anger, despair – do you see any of that in Lisa Wickes?

‘So, if it wasn’t a crime of passion then – that’s right, she did it for the $450. This is a young woman on track to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly millions over the course of her chosen career. Does it seem likely to you that she would throw it all away for $450?

‘We know for a fact that Lisa had Troy’s check. And that she cashed it. But what seems more likely? That Lisa would steal this check and cash it in plain view of security cameras? Or is it more likely that Troy Petty did, indeed, owe this money to Lisa because he was paying off his brother’s drug debts? He owed it to her. Maybe she had been sympathetic to his plight, but then, when she’d found him trying to assault her child, she’d lost every ounce of sympathy. She’d become disgusted by him and never wanted to see him again. She just wanted her money back.

‘Ladies and gentleman, this case, in the end, comes down to common sense. We all know that there is a balance of power in every relationship. Who had more power in this one? Lisa – young, talented and embarking on her brilliant, respected career? Or Troy Petty, with his shady history of preying on children and the burdensome debts in his family.

‘People don’t kill for vague reasons. In my experience, they kill for very specific reasons, or because they are in the grip of powerful emotions. Killing another human being is a reprehensible act. The polar opposite of the physician’s credo – first, do no harm. Killing another human being is also a really great way to derail your own life. Even the most mild-mannered people can get angry and lash out – I grant you that.

‘But absent a compelling motive, you are left with that all-important issue of reasonable doubt. Ask yourself why would she do it, and you will soon arrive at the decision that I have. Lisa Wickes had no compelling reason to kill Troy Petty. Her life did not revolve around the attentions of this young man. Especially after she caught him interfering with her two-year-old daughter. This relationship was over, way before Troy Petty’s house blew up with him in it. Lisa Wickes had already moved on.

‘I ask you to consider all you have heard about this case, and acquit Lisa Wickes now. Send her back to her studies and her young daughter. Send her back to become a healer, to spend her life productively, doing good. Because Lisa Wickes will do good in a way that most of us can never hope to emulate. Consign this case to the dustbin where it belongs, and send Lisa Wickes back to her purposeful life.’

As Marjorie Fox brought her closing argument to an end, Hannah could feel the sentiment in the courtroom shining like sunlight on Lisa. She looked at Adam, who seemed lost in thought. ‘I think she has convinced them.’

Adam frowned, and nodded. ‘Let’s hope so.’

‘She was worth every penny.’

Adam understood what she was saying. ‘It certainly seems that way. She made the state’s case look … feeble.’

The judge thanked the attorneys for their summations. Then he glanced at the clock. ‘In view of the hour,’ he said, ‘I am going to wait until tomorrow morning to charge the jury. I will ask the jury management team to have our jury assembled in the courtroom tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp at which time they will be charged, after which they will retire to commence their deliberations. Court is dismissed.’

Hannah and Adam filed out of the courtroom with the other spectators, and waded through the clamorous crowd of reporters. They avoided looking left or right as they were pelted with questions. They made their way to their car, and locked themselves inside.