The Theory of Death (39 page)

FACE-TO-FACE IN THE
interview room, Olivia rubbed her wrists and said, “Thank you for taking off the belt.”

Decker said, “Do you want some water?”

“No, thank you.”

“Anything to eat?”

“Nothing.”

Given her physical appearance, food was probably not a top priority. Decker turned on the tape machine and tested it. When he saw that it was working, he identified himself and Olivia Ferraga, and gave the time, date, and the location. He turned his attention to her.

“Would you like to start from the beginning?”

“Aldo said I should ask for a lawyer, but first I want to hear what you have to say.”

“We have CCTV cameras,” Decker lied. “We know it’s your van parked outside Dr. Belfort’s house. We know where Aldo was at that hour. So we know it was you who drove over there. And we have a witness.”

Olivia looked down. “I don’t know what to do. Should I ask for a lawyer?”

She had an ever-so-slight Italian accent. Decker said, “We know it was an accident, Olivia. There are mitigating circumstances. You’re a good woman and a great mother.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know who’s been running the household while Aldo runs around. It’s obvious.” She was quiet. Decker leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Good people can have accidents—terrible accidents. Just tell me what happened.”

She sighed. “Things happen.”

“Yes, they do.”

“I did not mean to hurt your partner, for instance.”

“I know.”

“He came at me. It was an accident.”

“I realize that.”

“Are you going to charge me?”

“I’d like to talk about Katrina Belfort first.”

She hesitated. “What’s to talk about?”

“Why did you go there in the first place?”

“To see if Aldo was telling me the truth. To see for myself if he was there.”

“Around what time was that?”

She looked down. “I’m a terrible mother.”

“How can you say that? Your son obviously adores you.”

“I left them alone.”

“When you went to Katrina’s house, you mean?”

“Yes.” She looked at him, tears in her eyes. “I left them
alone
!”

“How old’s your son?”

“Fourteen.”

“He’s old enough to babysit. You wouldn’t be charged for anything.”

“Maybe not legally. Morally I was negligent.”

“Olivia, what time did you go to Katrina Belfort’s house?”

“You have CCTV cameras. You should know.”

“I do know. I want to hear it from you.”

She was quiet. Decker waited her out.

“Around eleven-thirty,” she said.

Finally.
Now that she had put herself at the scene, Decker knew the rest would eventually follow. “Go on. What happened next?”

“I didn’t see Aldo’s car. But that means nothing. Sometimes he walks from his office to her house. I know because I’ve followed him. He is so dense, he never even noticed. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care.”

“I understand. So you showed up at Katrina Belfort’s house at eleven-thirty in the evening. What happened next?”

“I knock on her door.”

Her face grew flat, devoid of emotion. She seemed to be replaying the events in her head.

“She opens the door. I ask her if Aldo is there and she says no. I ask her if I can look around and she says yes and she invites me in.”

Recited in present tense. “Good,” Decker said. “You go into the house. And then?”

“I look around. Aldo is not there. I’m going to leave, but she asks me if I want coffee. Like we’re friends having social time together. So casual. At that moment, I hated her even more, which was silly. If it wasn’t her, it would be someone else. Stupid man.”

“But you sat down with her anyway.”

“Yes. It was a mistake.” She rubbed her wrists again. “A big mistake. I should have left. But curiosity got the better of me. Who is this woman and why is she dating a married man? Is she sorry? Does she feel shame? I wanted to know.”

The room was quiet.

“We talked. She was quite charming. I might have liked her in a different situation, but her affable nature made it worse.”

“How did the conversation begin?”

“A little of this and a little of that. Then she looks me in the eye. She apologizes for her bad behavior. There is no sincerity in it.”

“Okay.”

“She tells me it’s over and that it won’t happen ever again. But I don’t believe her. Why should I believe her? I tell her that. I say, ‘Why should I believe you?’”

“I understand.”

“She keeps at it—repeating herself—it’s over, it’s over. Then she says …” Her face grew hard. “Then she says to me that she’s no longer
interested
in Aldo. That he means
nothing
to her. Anything that she has ever felt for him has vanished. Discarding Aldo like he is spoiled milk!”

“That made you mad.”

“Furious! I know she is lying. That she really does love him. Like I love him. So I tell her that. That she is lying. That it is Aldo who doesn’t want her. That she can’t have him.” Tears fell down her cheeks. “She kept saying she doesn’t want him.
She
didn’t want him! I remain faithful to him for eighteen years, loving him all that time, and that whore doesn’t
want
him. I tell her I don’t believe her. Then do you know what happened?”

“Tell me.”

“She got up and said, ‘You can believe whatever you want. Just make sure your goddamn husband stays away from me. Otherwise I’ll take out a restraining order.’ That whore seduces him away from his wife and then has the nerve to threaten him with a
restraining
order?”

“Outrageous.”

“It was mean-spirited and unforgivable. I push her. I said, ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ She pushes me back and says that she would. So I push her again.” She stopped talking.

“Go on, Olivia. I want to hear it all. Tell me exactly what happened.”

“It was an accident.”

“I know it was. But you need to tell me how it occurred.”

Olivia shrugged. “She fell backward. She … hit her head on something, then fell to the floor and hit her head again. I heard her skull crack. I saw the blood pour from her head. I didn’t mean to hurt her. It … it just happened.”

“I believe you. So what did you do after she fell?”

“I was in shock.”

“I’m sure you were. Did you try to help her?”

“No.”

“Did you call 911?”

“No.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“Not right away, no.”

“So think back, Olivia. What did you do immediately after Katrina Belfort hit her head?”

Olivia’s dry eyes focused on Decker’s face. She shrugged again. “I watched her die.”

S
HE CALLED ME
on my office phone,” Ferraga told Decker. He was with a lawyer named John Granger—white-haired man in his early seventies. Greenbury was filled with semiretirees in a variety of professions.

“When was this?” Decker asked.

“It was after I had knocked on Dr. Zhou’s door. So it must have been around one-fifteen or maybe one-thirty.”

“Olivia called you at around one-thirty?”

“Around that time, yes.”

Silence.

“What did she say?”

“She was distraught. She told me that something terrible had happened. I thought it was one of the children. Then she said she was at Katrina Belfort’s house. My heart sank.”

“What did you do?”

“I grabbed my keys and sprinted over to her house. I didn’t have my car.” He shook his head, his eyes far away. “She’s on medication, you know.”

“Who is?”

“Olivia.”

“What kind of medication?”

“Antipsychotics. She doesn’t always take it. She doesn’t like how it makes her feel. She forgets, but sometimes I know it’s deliberate. Her mother was like that. She ended up in a mental institution. I didn’t want to subject Olivia … I tried to look after her. We have a person come in for a couple of hours each day to look in on her. I wish I could afford someone full-time, but I just don’t have the money.”

“What happened when you arrived at Katrina’s house?”

“The door was unlocked. I walked in and saw what had happened.” He looked at his lawyer, who gave him a nod. “Katrina was dead. She appeared as if she had been lying there dead for some time.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Her complexion was gray. There was a pool of blood on the floor. The blood did not appear fresh.”

“Where was Olivia?”

“Sitting on a chair … mute, paralyzed, terror-stricken, blood on her clothes. I …” He took in a deep breath and let it out. “I was about to call the police from Katrina’s home phone. Leave an anonymous message until I could think clearly. But I heard knocking on her front door: someone calling out her name.”

“So what did you do?”

“I panicked. I grabbed Olivia’s arm and we hid in her bedroom. I had locked the door behind us. That’s why I know it was impossible that a witness saw us.”

“Nothing is ever impossible, Dr. Ferraga. Did you know who it was at the time?”

“Not at that time, no. But once I found out you arrested Alistair Dixon, I recognized the voice … in my head.” He pointed to his temple. “But when we were hiding, I was in an altered state. All of my senses had shut down.”

Ferraga closed his eyes and opened them. “It was horrible being in her bedroom. It was doing awful things to Olivia’s mind. She kept looking at the bed. No matter how many times I told her to be still, she kept pacing back and forth.”

The shuffling that Dixon heard.
Decker said, “About how long were you in the bedroom?”

“The alarm clock on her nightstand read one fifty-six when we went inside the bedroom. Around fifteen minutes later, it became quiet. We left the bedroom around two-thirty. Alistair was gone.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I drove Olivia home, gave her a sedative, and put her to sleep.”

“And then what?”

Again Ferraga looked at his attorney. Granger whispered in his ear. “I went back to Katrina’s house. It was almost three.”

“Why didn’t you call the police then?”

“I was not thinking clearly. I had no conception of time or even where I was or what I was doing. I was very confused.”

So that’s going to be his defense—diminished capacity because he was in an altered state of mind.
Decker said, “So, for whatever reason, you didn’t call the police.”

Again, the lawyer whispered in Ferraga’s ear. “I was not thinking clearly.”

“Okay. You weren’t thinking clearly. Do you remember what you did when you went back to Katrina Belfort’s house?”

“Not exactly.”

Inside, Decker was growing impatient. He had to use another approach. “The more you forget about what happened, the more it seems like you’re protecting yourself—or even Olivia. I mean how do I know you took her home, gave her a sedative, and put her to sleep? Maybe she was the one who cleaned up the crime scene.”

“No,” Ferraga said. When Granger tried to talk to him, he shook his head. “No, it was me. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t in my right mind.”

“I believe you. Just tell me what you were thinking even if it was crazy,” Decker said. “I have to know what happened; otherwise it all falls on Olivia.”

Granger said, “You don’t have to tell him any more.”

Ferraga ignored him. “For some reason, I kept on thinking about Elijah Wolf’s suicide. No one knew why he did it. In my scrambled thoughts, I supposed that if I could imply that their deaths were a pact between them—a love affair gone wrong—I could convince everyone that she killed herself like Elijah. As I said, I was confused and deranged.”

“So you decided to shoot her and make it look like suicide.”

Granger said, “He already admitted to accessory after the fact.”

“I need to hear what he has to say, Counselor.” Decker turned to Ferraga. “Where’d you get the gun?”

“It was Katrina’s.”

“Okay. So you decided to make it look like suicide. Why drag her into the mountains?”

“To make it look similar to Elijah Wolf’s suicide, of course.”

“Any other reason?” Decker said. “For instance, you knew that firing a gun in her house would make too much noise? That it might arouse the neighbors?”

“I was only thinking that Elijah had killed himself in the woods. So I figured, she had to kill herself in the woods. How many times do I have to tell you that I wasn’t in my right mind?”

“But you were aware enough to make it look like Elijah Wolf’s suicide.”

“Yes. It was an obsessive thought that was running through my mind.”

“Okay. So when you came back, what exactly did you do? Think about it, Aldo. I want a step-by-step.”

“First, I removed her bloody clothing and placed that in a bag. Then I washed her off with a towel and placed the towel in the same bag as her clothing. Then I grabbed some clean folded clothing from her drawers … to make it look like Elijah Wolf’s suicide. Then I wrapped her body in a sheet and dragged her up the hillside. “I dragged her up until my arms were breaking off and I could go no farther. I took her out of the sheet and … I took the folded clothes and placed them by her body … just like Elijah.”

Silence.

“And then what did you do?” Decker asked.

“I came back to the house.”

“You left out a few things.”

“Yes, I tried to obliterate my footsteps and the drag marks. I admit that.”

“And I suppose you weren’t thinking clearly when you shot her in the back of her head?”

Ferraga said nothing.

“Why don’t you tell me in your own words how you shot her?”

“What’s to tell?” Granger told him. “She was already dead.”

“So if she was already dead, why not just leave her in the woods? Why
shoot
her in the back of her head?”

Ferraga said, “I told you I was trying to make it look like suicide … to tie it to Elijah Wolf’s suicide. So she had to shoot herself.”

Decker said, “Obviously she couldn’t shoot herself.”

“Obviously,” Ferraga admitted. “I put the gun in her hand and pulled the trigger with her finger.”

“Aldo, you didn’t shoot her in the temple. That’s the obvious place to do it. That’s where Elijah shot himself. You, on the other hand, shot her in the
back
of her head. You shot her in a way to obliterate the injury she sustained when she fell on the corner of the end table.”