Sail (23 page)
PETER’S EXTRADITION from the Bahamas was one thing, but this trial is definitely another kind of circus. I don’t know how much more of it I can take, and this is only the beginning! The madness has just begun.
It’s not just the trial itself, though. It’s what it represents—what this feels like for the kids and me.
It’s as if we’re taking the trip all over again.
We were finally getting on with our lives and moving forward. I had filed for divorce as soon as I got home, and it would be final in just a few weeks. The incessant media coverage had died down—no more pictures every day in the paper or boldface mentions in the gossip columns. Even my broken leg had healed nicely.
Then,
pow!
the trial throws us right back on
The Family Dunne
and we have to relive everything.
No wonder I’m back on the couch in Mona’s office. Once again, I thank God for her soundproof walls.
“Damn it! Damn it!
Damn it!
” I yell, barely a minute into our session. “This is so unfair to the kids.”
With the trial taking up almost the entire day, Mona agreed to see me late for what she’s calling a “gripe and grub.” Translation: after I vent to her for an hour, we grab dinner together at the restaurant of her choice. My treat—my very expensive treat.
I quickly apologize for the yelling, and as usual Mona tells me it’s more than okay.
“In fact,” she says, “I think it’s good for you.”
“Maybe,” I reply. “What would really be good for me is seeing Peter locked up behind bars. That can’t happen soon enough.”
“At the same time, you need to prepare yourself if —”
I lift my hand, telling her to stop right there. I don’t even want to hear those two horrible words.
Not guilty.
What Peter did—and I’m convinced way beyond a reasonable doubt that he did indeed do it—is hard enough to swallow. The idea that he might not be punished makes me want to throw up.
Others agree with me. Not the least of whom is Agent Ellen Pierce. She risked her job, if not her career, following her gut about Peter Carlyle, Esq.
“What did you think when Agent Pierce first approached you?” I ask Mona.
“I didn’t know what to think. At the time I thought you were dead. That was shocking enough. The idea that Peter might have been responsible . . . Well, the least I could do was carry that tape recorder for her. I just wish it had helped.”
“Isn’t it ironic, though?” I say. “The person who I thought I trusted the most was trying to kill me, and the people who I thought I couldn’t count on—my kids—were the ones who ended up saving my life.”
“That’s definitely the word for it,” says Mona. “To think you were sitting right here in my office before the trip, wanting so desperately to save your family.” She smiled. “It almost killed you, but mission accomplished. You all came out better for it.”
We both fall silent, suddenly realizing that’s not entirely true.
We didn’t
all
come out better.
“I’m sorry,” says Mona. “I didn’t mean to forget Jake. I haven’t. None of us have.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “Sometimes I wish I could, if you know what I mean. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about him.”
“What about the kids? Have they dealt with it?”
“Mark and Carrie have. They’re older. For Ernie it’s taking a little longer. He really looked up to Jake.”
I hear myself say that last sentence and I know exactly what Mona’s thinking. Probably because I’ve been thinking the same thing.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” I ask Mona.
“Yes,” she answers. “I think it is.”
“YOUR WITNESS, Mr. Knowles.”
Gordon Knowles thanked Judge Barnett with a sharp nod as he rose from the defense table. Agent Ellen Pierce was a key witness for the prosecution, and he was champing at the bit to cross-examine her and take her testimony apart.
“Agent Pierce,” he began, his tone as warm and inviting as a bed of nails, “you just testified that you followed my client to Vermont, where you trespassed on private property and secretly photographed him with a woman. Do you think that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was planning to kill his family?”
Ellen answered quickly and confidently. “No, I do not.”
“Earlier today we heard testimony from an explosives expert who said his lab found traces of RDX, a military-grade explosive, on the life jacket salvaged from the Dunne family’s boat. Do you think that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was planning to kill his family?”
Ellen, dressed modestly in a black pantsuit and simple white blouse, glanced over at the jury, as if to express her dissatisfaction with this line of questioning. She was being walked like a dog by Knowles and she didn’t like it. Not one little bit.
It was time to bite back.
“What I
think
is that the jury might start to wonder if all these coincidences, as you’d like to call them, are something more than just a coincidence,” she said.
Judge Barnett didn’t wait to hear Knowles’s objection to intervene. He quickly turned to the jury box. “The jury will disregard the unsolicited speculation by the witness.” He then fixed his disapproving gaze on Ellen. “Ms. Pierce, please just answer the question.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” she said. She wasn’t sorry, of course. In fact, she felt quite content that her point had been made. Somebody needed to make it if justice was to be done here.
“To repeat the question, Agent Pierce —”
She cut him off. “No, I don’t believe that the trace explosive alone proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Carlyle was trying to kill his family.”
Knowles smiled with smug satisfaction. “Agent Pierce, you were suspended by the DEA for your reckless actions in pursuing my client, correct?”
Instinctively Ellen looked over at Ian McIntyre, seated behind the prosecution table. She was somewhat surprised that he had come to lend his support. It almost took the sting out of the three-month “vacation” he had given her.
“I don’t think the word
reckless
—”
It was Knowles’s turn to interrupt. “Were you or were you not suspended from duty?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Indeed, you had been told explicitly by the head of your division
not
to pursue Mr. Carlyle, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Nonetheless you met with Mr. Carlyle under false pretenses and lied to him about Jake Dunne’s being suspected of drug smuggling, didn’t you? In fact, you warned Mr. Carlyle that if he found his family, they were still potentially in danger.”
“What I was trying to do —”
“Yes, that is the question, isn’t it?
What were you trying to do?
Was it some kind of revenge?”
Every ounce of Ellen was now telling her to keep her cool, not do this jerk-off any favors by getting emotional. Still, she had to defend herself. “That’s preposterous,” she said firmly. “There was no revenge. That’s utterly absurd and insulting.”
“Is it, though? The head of your division himself said that your judgment may have been clouded because of a trial a few months back in which Mr. Carlyle successfully defended someone you had vigorously investigated.”
“Trust me, the only clouded judgment was the verdict in that case,” replied Ellen. She knew she should’ve just answered straight, but she couldn’t help herself. Not anymore. “Sometimes justice truly is blind,” she added.
Knowles shook his head.
Tsk-tsk!
“It sounds to me, Agent Pierce, as if you have serious contempt for our legal system.”
“No,” said Ellen, looking him squarely in the eye. “Just for defense attorneys.”
ONLY ONE DAY of school. That’s all I’m allowing the kids to miss for the trial,
I tell myself.
For Carrie, that’s one day too many. She wants nothing to do with Peter, even if it means seeing him locked up for the rest of his miserable life. Hopefully it will.
Anyway, that’s fine with me. Carrie’s exactly where she should be—enjoying her sophomore year at Yale. There’s no more school nutritionist, no more school psychologist. Just school. Her body weight is back up to normal, and something tells me it’s going to stay that way.
Mark, of course, had to miss a day of classes at Deerfield in order to testify. I’m so proud of him, and I think he did a fine job under the circumstances. He, on the other hand, is a little bummed about the way Peter’s buddy-buddy lawyer—“the dickwad”—played hardball with him.
Speaking of bummed . . .
It’s Ernie.
After an early dinner with Nolan Heath to discuss my testimony tomorrow, I return to the apartment and relieve Angelica for the evening. She tells me Ernie’s in his room doing his homework.
In a lot of ways Ernie should be on cloud nine with the rest of us. It was his idea to put the note in the bottle.
He
saved us. And from the moment we flipped that transponder back on in Peter’s plane, his was a hero’s welcome. From the
Today
show to
Larry King
to
On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,
he did more than a dozen TV interviews. In every article written about our ordeal, he always got the most ink.
Except he never really enjoyed any of it, even though it was always his choice whether to make an appearance or not. He smiled for the cameras, saying and doing all the right things like the trouper he is. But I’m his mother. I could tell. And after more than four months, this funk of his hasn’t gotten too much better. I blame myself, of course.
Gently I knock on his half-open door. “Mind if I come in?” I ask.
He’s sitting at his desk in the far corner. “Sure,” he says, his eyes fixed on the glowing rectangle of his iMac. “Hi, Mom.”
“How’s your essay coming?” Five hundred words on the Emancipation Proclamation. Not counting
a
’s and
the
’s. This is what I get for cutting back my hours after returning to the hospital, something I was so sorely missing: the details of my kids’ lives.
“Three hundred and eighty-seven words . . . and counting,” Ernie answers, his fingers tapping away on the wireless keyboard. “I’ll make it.”
“Absolutely.”
I browse around his room for a minute, not wanting to get into it right away. I glance at a poster of Albert Einstein, the one in which he’s famously sticking out his tongue.
Then I stop in front of a framed photograph of Ernie with those two fishermen, Captain Steve and his first mate. Jason? No—it was Jeffrey, I remember. What a couple of characters those guys are. Look how they’re smiling, too! Then again, that shot was snapped right after I gave them their reward. Who wouldn’t be smiling?
I certainly was. Best million dollars anyone could ever spend.
“Are you scared?” asks Ernie out of nowhere, breaking the silence in the room.
“You mean about testifying tomorrow? I guess I’m a little nervous,” I say. “You’ll be there to support me, right?”
He nods. The one day he’s chosen for attending the trial is when I’m scheduled to take the stand. I can’t begin to explain how good that makes me feel.
“Ernie, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” I say.
Maybe it’s the tone of my voice, the notion that we’re not about to discuss the weather or anything else that’s trivial in our lives. He turns away from his computer and stares right at me. “What is it, Mom?” he asks.
I sit down on his bed, taking a deep breath before I begin. I’ve been planning this conversation in my head for years, all along thinking that I could prepare myself properly, not get too emotional.
So much for that.
“Why are you crying, Mom?”
I tell him the truth. “It’s Jake,” I say. “I still miss him a lot.”
“Me too.”
“I know you do, honey. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Ernie asks.
“No. Absolutely not.”
I did. But it’s the best mistake I ever made, something I’d never change.
I stare at Ernie, his eyes and face, and it’s as if I can see him more clearly than ever before, as if I know who he really is.
“Mom?” he asks. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Yes, honey, there is.”
And so I do.
I tell Ernie who his father is.
AFTER A NIGHT of telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Ernie, I promise to do the same in court the next morning.
So far, so good.
As I wrap up my testimony for Nolan Heath and his prosecution, my only complaint is the hardness of the witness chair. Would it kill them to include a cushion on this thing? Seriously, though, I think I’m doing okay. The jury seems to believe me, if not to feel downright sorry for our family. The elderly lady on the end of the first row looks as if she wants to bake us cookies.
That said, I’m not sure how much anything I have to say matters. The most I can prove is that I’m a woman who got duped by one of the best. I thought I was marrying a really great guy. How was I supposed to know that charming Peter Carlyle was a lying, cheating, murderous lout?
That was the point, I guess. I wasn’t supposed to know who Peter was. Sometimes I still find it hard to believe.
My husband tried to murder my entire family.
“Your witness,” Judge Barnett announces. I immediately feel a twinge.
All it takes is Gordon Knowles rising from the defense table for me to realize that “so far, so good” only gets you so far in a murder trial. The real test is about to come.
“Dr. Dunne, this sailing trip with your children was your idea, wasn’t it?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
“Mr. Carlyle had nothing to do with arranging it, am I correct?”
“Yes. Although he did know about it well in advance. Months in advance, actually.”
Knowles grins. “Oh, I see. Because he knew about it in advance, you’re suggesting he had ample time to plot your family’s murder.”
“I’m just saying —”
“Of course, lots of people knew in advance that you were taking this trip—for instance, the people you work with at Lexington Hospital.”
“I’m pretty sure no one there wants to see me dead.”
“What about you, Dr. Dunne?”
I’m taken aback. “I’m not sure I understand the question. Could you rephrase, please?”
“You’ve been under the care of a psychiatrist for some time, haven’t you?” asks Knowles.
“Yes, I see a therapist. Lots of people do.”
“Are you on antidepressants?”
In a flash I can feel my blood, comfortably on a low simmer up until this point, begin to boil. The word
incredulous
doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel. “Are you suggesting I had something to do with all this?” I ask with a shaky voice.
“Your Honor, could you please instruct the witness that I’m the only one permitted to ask questions right now?” says a smug Knowles.
“I think you just did that for me, Counselor. Get on with it,” says Judge Barnett, directing one of his sternest looks at the defense attorney.
“With pleasure,” says Knowles. “In fact, I’m just getting warmed up . . .”