All Around the Town (16 page)

"I'm four."

DEAR GOD, Sarah thought as she listened to Dr. Donnelly talking to Laurie as though he were speaking to a little child. He is right. Something terrible must have happened to her in those two years she was gone. Poor Mother, always determined to believe that some child-hungry couple took her and loved her. I knew there was a difference when she came home. If she had had help back then, would we be here now? Suppose Laurie has a totally separate personality that wrote those letters and then killed Allan Grant? Should I let him get to it? Suppose she confesses? What was Donnelly asking Laurie now?

"Debbie, you're very tired aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to go to your room and rest? I'll bet you have a pretty bedroom."

"No! No! No!"

"That's all right. You can stay right here. Why don't you nap sitting in that chair, and if Laurie's around will you ask her to come back and talk to me?"

Her breathing became even. A moment later she lifted her head. Her shoulders straightened. Her feet touched the floor and she brushed her hair back. "Of course I'm frightened," Laurie told Justin Donnelly, "but since I had nothing to do with Allan's death, I know I can count on Sarah to find the truth." She turned, smiled at Sarah and then looked directly at the doctor again. "If I were Sarah, I'd wish I'd stayed an only child. But here I am, and she's always been there for me. She's always understood."

"Understood what, Laurie?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"I think you do."

"I really don't."

Justin knew it was time to tell Laurie what Sarah already knew. Something terrible had happened during the two years that she had been missing, something so overwhelming that as a little child she could not handle it alone. Others came to help her, maybe one or two, maybe more, and she had become in effect a multiple personality. When she was returned home, the loving environment had made it unnecessary for the alter personalities to come forward except perhaps very occasionally. The death of her parents had been so painful that the alters were needed again.

Laurie listened quietly. "What kind of treatment are you talking about?"

"Hypnosis. I'd like to videotape you during the sessions."

"Suppose I confess that some part of me... some person, if you will---did kill Allan Grant? What then?"

It was Sarah's turn to answer. "Laurie, I'm very much afraid that as it stands a jury will almost inevitably convict you. Our only hope is to prove extenuating circumstances or that you were incapable of knowing the nature of the crime."

"I see. So it is possible that I killed Allan, that I wrote those letters? Not just possible. Probable. Sarah, have there been other people who claimed multiple personality as a defense against a murder charge?"

"Yes."

"How many of them got off?"

Sarah did not answer.

"How many of them, Sarah?" Laurie persisted. "One? Two? None? That's it, isn't it? Not one of them got off. Oh my God. Well, let's go ahead. We might as well know the truth even though it's very clear the truth won't set me free."

She seemed to be fighting back tears, then her voice became strident, angry. "Just one thing, Doctor. Sarah stays with me. I will not be alone with you in a room with a closed door and I will not lie on that couch. Got it?"

"Laurie, I'll do anything I can to make this easier for you. You're a very nice person who's had a very bad break."

She laughed, a jeering laugh. "What's nice about that stupid wimp? She's never done anything but cause trouble since the day she was born."

"Laurie," Sarah protested.

"I think Laurie's gone away again," Justin said calmly. "Am I right?"

"You're right. I've got my hands full with her."

"What is your name?"

"Kate."

"How old are you, Kate?"

"Thirty-three. Listen, I didn't mean to come out. I just wanted to warn you. Don't think you're going to hypnotize Laurie and get her to talk about those two years. You're wasting your time. See you."

There was a pause. Then Laurie sighed wearily. "Would it be all right if we stopped talking now? I have such a headache."

Chapter
53

ON FRIDAY morning, Betsy Lyons received a firm offer of five hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the Kenyon home from the couple who wanted to move in quickly because the wife was expecting a baby. She called Sarah but could not reach her until the afternoon. To her dismay, Sarah told her the house was off the market. Sarah was sympathetic but firm. "I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Lyons. First of all I wouldn't entertain an offer that low, but anyhow there is no way I can worry about moving at this time. I know how much work you've put into this sale, but you do understand."

Betsy Lyons did understand. On the other hand the real estate business was desperately slow and she was counting on the commission.

"I'm sorry," Sarah repeated, "but I can't see planning to leave this house before fall at the earliest. Now I do have someone here. I'll talk to you another time."

She was in the library with Brendon Moody. "I had decided it would be a good idea if Laurie and I moved to a condominium," she explained to the detective, "but under the circumstances..."

"Absolutely," Brendon agreed. "You're better to take the place off the market. Once this case comes to trial, you'll have reporters posing as potential buyers just to get a look inside."

"I never thought of that," Sarah confessed. Wearily she pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen on her forehead. "Brendon, I can't tell you how glad I am that you want to take on this investigation." She had just finished telling him everything, including what had happened during the session with Laurie at Justin Donnelly's office.

Moody had been taking notes. His high forehead puckered in concentration, his rimless glasses magnifying his snapping brown eyes, his precise bow tie and conservative dark brown suit gave him the air of a meticulous auditor. It was an image that Sarah knew was both accurate and dependable. When he was conducting an investigation, Brendon Moody missed nothing.

She waited while he reread his notes carefully. It was a familiar procedure. That was the way they had worked together in the prosecutor's office. She heard Sophie going up the stairs. Good. She was checking on Laurie again.

Sarah thought back for a moment to the drive home from Dr. Donnelly's office. Laurie had been deeply despondent, saying, "Sarah, I wish I had been in my car when that bus hit it. Mom and Dad would still be alive. You'd be working at the job you love. I'm a pariah, a jinx."

"No, you're not." Sarah had told her. "You were a four-year-old kid who had the hard luck to get kidnapped and be treated God only knows how badly. You're a twenty-one-year-old who's in a hell of a mess through no fault of her own, so stop blaming yourself!"

Then it was Sarah's turn to cry. Blinding tears obscured her vision. Frantically she wiped them away, trying to focus on the heavy Route 17 traffic.

Now she reflected that in a way her outburst might have been a blessing in disguise. A shocked, contrite Laurie had said, "Sarah, I'm so damn selfish. Tell me what you want me to do."

She'd answered, "Do exactly what Dr. Donnelly asks. Keep a journal. That will help him. Stop fighting him. Cooperate with the hypnosis."

"All right, I think I have everything," Moody said briskly, breaking Sarah's reverie. "I have to agree. The physical aspects are pretty cut and dried."

It gave Sarah a lift to hear him accentuate "physical aspects." Clearly he understood where the defense was heading.

"You're going for stress, diminished mental capacity?" he asked.

"Yes." She waited.

"What kind of fellow was this Grant guy? He was married. Why wasn't his wife home that night?"

"She works for a travel agency in New York and apparently stays in the city during the week."

"Don't they have travel agencies in New Jersey?"

"I would think so."

"Any chance that the professor was the kind who compensated for the absence of his wife by leading on his students?"

"We're on the same wavelength." Suddenly the library, with its cheery mahogany bookcases, family pictures, paintings, blue Oriental rug, butter-soft leather couches and chairs, assumed the electric atmosphere of the stuffy cubicle that had been her domain in the prosecutor's office. Her father's antique English desk became the battered, shabby relic she'd worked at for nearly five years. "There's a recent case where a defendant was convicted of raping a twelve-year-old," she told Moody.

"I would hope so," he said.

"The legal issue was that the victim is chronologically twenty-seven years old. She suffers from multiple personality disorder and convinced a jury that she'd been violated when she was in her twelve-year-old persona and not capable of giving informed consent. He was found guilty of statutory rape of a person who was found to be mentally defective. The verdict was overturned on appeal, but the point is, a jury believed the testimony of a woman with multiple personality disorder."

Moody leaned forward with the swiftness of a hound catching its first scent of the prey. "You're talking about turning it around."

"Yes. Allan Grant was particularly solicitous of Laurie. When she fainted in church at the funeral mass, he rushed to be with her. He offered to take her home and stay with her. Looking back, I wonder if that wasn't pretty unusual concern." She sighed. "At least it's a starting point. We don't have much else."

"It's a good starting point," Moody said decisively. "I've got a few things to clear up, then I'll get down to Clinton and start digging."

The phone rang again. "Sophie will get it," Sarah said. "Bless her. She's moved in with us. Says we can't be alone. Now let's settle the terms..."

"Oh, we'll talk about that later."

"No, we won't," she said firmly. "I know you, Brendon Moody."

Sophie tapped on the door, then opened it. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Sarah, but that real estate agent is on the phone again and she says it's very important."

Sarah picked up the receiver, greeted Betsy Lyons, then listened. Finally she said slowly, "I suppose I owe this to you, Mrs. Lyons. But I have to be clear. That woman cannot keep looking at the house. We'll be out on Monday morning and you can bring her in between ten o'clock and one o'clock, but that is it."

When Sarah hung up she explained to Brendon Moody. "There's a prospective buyer who's been hemming and hawing about this place. Apparently she's pretty much decided on it at full price. She wants one more walk through and then indicates she'll be willing to wait to occupy it until it's available. She'll be here on Monday."

Chapter
54

THE FUNERAL SERVICE for Professor Allan Grant was held on Saturday morning at St. Luke's Episcopal Church near the Clinton campus. Faculty members and students crowded together to pay their final respects to the popular teacher. The rector's homily spoke of Allan's intellect, warmth and generosity. "He was an outstanding educator... That smile would brighten the darkest day... He made people feel good about themselves... He could sense when someone was having a tough time. Somehow he found a way to help."

Brendon Moody was at the service in the capacity of observer, not mourner. He was especially interested in studying Allan Grant's widow, who was wearing a deceptively simple black suit with a string of pearls. Somewhat to his surprise, Brendon had developed over the years a reasonably accurate sense of fashion. On a faculty salary, even with her travel agent job thrown in, Karen Grant would find it pretty tough to buy designer clothes. Did either she or Grant have family money? It was raw and windy out and she had not elected to wear a coat into church. That meant she must have left one in the car. The cemetery would be a damn cold place on a day like this.

She was weeping as she followed the casket from the church. Good-looking woman, Brendon thought. He was surprised to see the president of the college and his wife accompany Karen Grant into the first limousine. No family member? No close friend? Brendon decided to continue to pay his respects. He'd go to the burial service.

His question about Karen's coat was answered there. She emerged from the limousine wearing a full-length Blackglama mink.

Chapter
55

THE CHURCH of the Airways had a twelve-member council that met on the first Saturday of the month. Not all of the members approved of the rapid changes the Reverend Bobby Hawkins was instituting on the religious hour. The Well of Miracles particularly was anathema to the senior member of the council.

Viewers were invited to write in explaining their need for a miracle. The letters were placed in the well, and just before the final hymn, Reverend Hawkins extended his hands over it and emotionally prayed that the requests be granted. Sometimes he invited a member of the studio congregation who was in need of a miracle to come up for a special blessing.

"Rutland Garrison must be spinning in his grave," the senior member told Bic at the monthly council meeting.

Bic eyed him coldly. "Have the donations increased substantially?"