The Vanished (12 page)

These horrible recollections weren’t crystal clear, but they felt genuine. 

What about the kidnapper’s phone calls? Had they been hallucinations?

It was certainly possible. Those imaginary phone calls must have been manifestations of his guilt.

What about the cellphone?

He had bought it and sent it himself.

Who had emailed the picture of Annie holding up four fingers? He knew nothing about proxy servers, so it wasn’t him.

Maybe his subconscious mind knew how to use proxy servers.

What had he done after stabbing Annie? Had she died? If she had died, what had he done with her body?

Had he buried it in a forest north of Frisco?

Bullshit. That was all bullshit. He had not killed Annie. His conversations with the kidnapper had been real, and he had not sent that cellphone to himself.

Come on, man, get a grip on yourself! This is not the time to lose your mind.

Chapter
14

1

“I want to make a confession,” David said after Detective Barton asked why he wanted to see him.

“Confession?”

“I want to confess to killing my daughter.”

The detective stared at David for a moment, his expression unchanged, and then said, “Please follow me.”

There was an eagerness about Barton, which indicated to David that his indifference was feigned. In the interview room, the detective told David to take a seat and left. He came back five minutes later with a Hispanic man in his forties in a gray suit.

“This is Detective Fuentes.” Barton pointed at the man.

David shook hands with Fuentes, and then the detectives sat down.

“Can you please state your name?” Barton said.

“My name is David Miller,” David replied.

“Mister Miller, this interview is being videotaped. Before we proceed, let me read your rights.”

After he read David his rights, Barton asked, “Would you like to have your attorney present?”

“No.”

“As I understand, you’d like to make a statement.”

“Yes.” David glanced at his watch. It was 10:06 am. He felt very calm, perhaps because he realized he had no choice but to do what the kidnapper had told him to do. “I killed my daughter, Annie Miller.”

“When and how did you do it?”

“On May sixth I took Annie to a forest north of Frisco, and while we were there, I stabbed her to death with a knife.”

Barton opened the file folder he had brought with him, took out a photo of a knife (it appeared to be the same photo the detective had shown him the day after his hypnosis session with Dr. Weil), and asked, “Is this the knife you used to kill your daughter?”

David pretended to study the picture. “It looks like that knife.”

“What did you do with the knife?”

“I threw it in the bushes behind the restrooms in Ardmore Park. You found it two weeks ago.”

Barton put the picture back in the folder. “What did you do with the body?”

“I buried it in the forest.”

“The forest where you killed her?”

“Yes.”

Barton leaned in to Fuentes and whispered something in his ear. Fuentes nodded, stood up, and left the interview room.

“Why did you kill Annie?” Barton asked, looking fixedly at David.

“I didn’t want to have a child with epilepsy. I knew that Carol wouldn’t let me return Annie to the orphanage, so I decided to kill her.”

“So I was right, huh?”

“Yes, you were right.”

David could see that Barton was proud of himself.

“Would you like some water?”

“No.”

The door swung open, and Detective Fuentes entered the room. In his hand he held a folded map. When Fuentes spread the map on the table, Barton stood beside David and said, “Show us where you buried your daughter’s body.”

David studied the map for a long time and then said, “I don’t remember for sure.”

“Show us the approximate location.”

With his index finger David drew a circle on the map above Frisco. “Somewhere here. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. It’s all a blur to me now.”

“How did you end up in that forest? Did you find it on the map while you were planning the murder?”

“I looked at the map a few days before I killed Annie, but I didn’t use it when I drove to the forest.”

“Did you use the GPS to get to the forest?”

“No.”

“Did you use it to get home?”

“No.”

Now he’ll ask me to undergo hypnosis to refresh my memory, David thought.

Barton folded the map and said, “Why did you decide to confess?”

“Conscience.”

“You did the right thing, David.”

“Can I use my phone? I need to send a message.”

“Okay.”

David pulled his cell from his pocket, opened the email application, and composed a new message, which read: “I made the confession.” Then he typed ‘[email protected]’ into the To field and tapped the Send button.

Would the kidnapper believe that he had made the confession?

He’s not going to take my word for it, that’s for sure.

The kidnapper would want confirmation. Did he have a friend working for the Plano Police Department or the District Attorney’s Office of Collin County?

Maybe he was planning to get the confirmation from the newspapers or the TV news?

“Are you going to hold a press conference to announce that I confessed?” David asked Barton.

“No.”

“When are you going to tell the press that I confessed to Annie’s murder?”

“Soon.”

“Can you do it today?”

“Yes.”

“Please do it today.”

Barton crossed his arms over his chest. “You are one strange fellow, David.”

“I guess I am.”

2

Barton did not arrest him after the interview, but David expected to be behind bars within days: he was sure the prosecution was going to ask the judge to revoke his bail, and he had little doubt the judge would grant this request. When they left the interview room, Barton asked David to try and remember where he had buried Annie’s body.

At ten minutes past noon David walked into Aaron Brady’s office. The cheerful expression on the lawyer’s face gave way to a mixture of shock and bewilderment when David told him about his confession.

“Why did you do it?” Brady asked. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I got tired of lying.”

“David, they had a weak case. No jury in this country would have convicted you.”

“That’s not true.”

“Do you want to go to prison? Do you want to die?”

“No, I don’t want to die.”

Brady sighed. “You should have talked to me before making this confession.”

“You would have tried to talk me out of it.”

“Yes, I would.”

David checked his email inbox to see if there were any messages from the kidnapper. There were none.

“We need to get the prosecution to take the death penalty off the table,” he said.

“How are we going to do it? You’ve already given them your confession.”

“I’ll plead guilty. I want you to contact the prosecutor today.”

“Okay.”

Did the kidnapper think that he would be locked up immediately after he made the confession? Was that why “Ben” hadn’t replied to his email?

“David, I advise you to recant this confession.”

“I’m not recanting it.”

“You’re making a big mistake. A terrible mistake. Are you taking antidepressants? They mess with your head.”

The kidnapper might conclude he had lied about the confession when he found out he was still free.

“No, I’m not taking antidepressants. I confessed because I did it.”

“I don’t care whether you did it or not. You don’t help the prosecution. That’s not how it works, David. You fight them tooth and nail.”

“I want to pay for what I did.”

Brady shook his head in exasperation. “Why did you confess?”

“I already told you.”

“No, I don’t believe you. You didn’t kill Annie. I’m as sure of it as I’ve ever been of anything.”

“I did it, Aaron. I killed her. I failed the lie detector test, remember? And I confessed when I was under hypnosis, didn’t I?”

Tapping his pen on the table, Brady nodded.

“I want you to ask the judge to revoke my bail.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes. Please do it today.”

3

Pretending to be a Plano Police Department employee, David called The Dallas Morning News’s news tip line and informed the newspaper of his confession. When he got home, he told Carol that his bail might be revoked soon.

“Why?” she asked. “Did you do something wrong?”

“I don’t know. But that’s okay. I’ll be fine.”

He asked Carol not to tell Paul Sibert he was in jail.

There was no mention of his confession on the websites of the local TV stations and newspapers when he searched them before going to bed.

His bail was revoked the next morning. He turned himself in to the county jail at one o’clock in the afternoon. Carol cried when they parted in the jail lobby. She promised to visit him every day. As David kissed her one last time, it occurred to him that she might find out he had confessed to killing Annie by the end of the day: the news of his confession had been posted on the websites of The Dallas Morning News and the local ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates this morning.

But I won’t have to deal with that because I’ll be in jail, he thought.

Chapter
15

1

On Monday afternoon, David called Paul Sibert to ask if he had heard from the manufacturer of the phone sent by “Ben.”

“I just left you a message,” Paul said. “This phone was shipped to a store in Dallas called CJ Cellular on April tenth.”

He gave David the address of the store. After talking to Paul, David passed the name and address of the store along to Vincent.

Carol visited him on Tuesday morning. When he saw the intent look in her eyes, David thought: she knows about the confession. 

“Is it true?” Carol asked. “Did you kill Annie?”

“Yes.”

David felt a hard lump rise in his throat.

“But you said she was alive.”

“I lied.”

“You showed me her picture.”

“I sent it myself.” David looked away from Carol. “Go home. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”

He shouldn’t have told Carol Annie was alive. He shouldn’t have shown her the photo. He had given her hope only to crush it later.

“You said you spoke to the kidnapper.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you about it, did you?”

“Why did you do it?”

“I did it because she had epilepsy.”

Carol shook her head. “It can’t be true.”

“You don’t believe I killed her?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Tears sparkled in Carol’s eyes. She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know.”

Because it’s hard to let go of the hope that Annie’s alive.

“I did it, Carol. I killed Annie. Go home.” He stood up and left the visitation room.

When David returned to his cell, he lay down on his bed and clasped his hands under his head. The thought of spending the rest of his life behind bars made his temples throb.

How did the convicts do it? How did they endure prison for years, for decades?

How do you stay sane in prison?

But he wasn’t going to be locked up for decades, was he? He would be released when the kidnapper let go Annie.

If
he lets her go.

After lunch, a guard escorted him to a small room in the administration block, which was furnished with a table and four chairs. There was a man in a brown tweed suit sitting at the table. He appeared to be in his early fifties and had a short well-groomed beard that covered his chin and cheeks. A black leather briefcase lay on the chair next to the man’s.

They shook hands, and the man said, “My name’s Jeff Salto. I’m a psychiatrist. I’ve been engaged by the District Attorney’s Office of Collin County to conduct your psychiatric evaluation. The purpose of this evaluation is to determine whether you’re competent to stand trial and to assess your mental state at the time of the alleged offense. Whatever you say to me during this interview is
not
confidential. Do you understand what it means?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Great.” Salto opened his notepad. “Do you have any questions before we begin?”

“No.”

“Very good.” Salto smiled.

He asked David to state his name and date of birth, and then said, “I’m going to give you three words, and I’d like you to remember them. The words are: glass, zebra, yellow. Can you repeat them?”

“Glass, zebra, yellow.”

“Thank you.” Salto wrote something on his notepad. “Now tell me where we are.”

“We’re in the Collin County Jail.”

“Good. Now I want you to remember the following five digits: seven, three, one, nine, four. Can you recall them in reverse order?”

“Four, nine, one, three, seven.”

“Excellent. Do you have any trouble sleeping?”

“Yes.”

“How long did you sleep last night?”

“Maybe about five hours.”

“Do you currently have any emotional problems?”

“I feel depressed because I killed my daughter.”

“Sometimes people who are depressed have strange experiences. For example, they feel that others are trying to harm them. Has that happened to you?”

“No.”

“Do you believe someone’s trying to frame you for the murder of your daughter?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Have people been harassing you?”

“No.”

“Do you think someone is plotting against you?”

“No.”

“Did you see or hear things other people couldn’t see or hear?”

“No.”

“What recreational drugs do you use?”

“I don’t use any drugs.”

“Have you thought of suicide?”

David shook his head.

“Do you have anxiety or panic attacks?”

“No.”

“Do you regret killing your daughter?”

“Yes, I do. I’m very sorry I did it.”

“Did someone make you kill your daughter?”

“No.”

Salto glanced at his watch and said, “Can you tell me the three words I asked you to remember in the beginning of the interview?”

After a silence, David replied, “Glass, zebra, yellow.”

“Thank you, David. Have you ever felt someone was reading your mind?”

“No. I’m not insane, Jeff. I think it’s obvious.”

“Do my questions irritate you?”

David sighed. “No. Keep going please.”

“Thank you.” The psychiatrist smiled. “Have you ever done something unusual, and then thought someone might have drugged you to make you do it?”

“No, I haven’t.”

Salto picked up a manila folder and opened it. “Can you tell me what you’ve been charged with?”

“I’ve been charged with murdering my daughter, Annie.”

In order to be deemed competent to stand trial, the defendant had to be capable of appreciating the charges made against him or her. Other requirements included the ability to understand the possible penalties and the nature of the legal process, and to consult with his or her lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational comprehension.

“Is it or a major or a minor charge?” the psychiatrist asked.

“It’s a major charge.”

“If you’re found guilty as charged, what are the possible penalties that could be applied to you?”

“Life sentence, death.”

“I was told that you confessed to killing your daughter. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me how you killed her.”

“I stabbed her to death.”

“Why did you do it?”

“She had epilepsy. I didn’t want to have a sick child.”

“Have you ever been on trial before?”

“No.”

“Do you realize that you’ll have to control yourself in the courtroom?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think the court where you’ll be tried has authority over you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what the defense attorney’s job is in the courtroom during a trial?”

“The defense attorney’s job is to vigorously defend his client. And the prosecutor’s job is to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I understand how the process works. I was a prosecutor for nine years. It must be somewhere in your files.”

He shouldn’t be so testy with Salto. The guy was just doing his job.

“That’s great. Do you have confidence in your lawyer?”

“Yes, I do.”

After ascertaining that David understood the roles of the judge, the prosecutor, the defendant, the jury, and witnesses, Salto asked, “What are the chances that you’ll be found not guilty?”

“Zero.”

“Suppose your lawyer succeeds in getting you acquitted. Would you accept that?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m guilty.”

“If you’re found guilty, will you allow your lawyer to appeal the verdict?”

“No.”