Blind Spot (35 page)

A primitive metal sculpture she and Stan had bought in Mexico sat in the middle of the dining room table. They had always assumed it was a depiction of a man wrestling a whale, but had never been sure as the artist had spoken very little English. “You like, you take, me happy,” the tiny woman with copper-colored skin had kept repeating. “You like, you take, me happy.” Her words had become Stan and Suki’s stock response whenever one looked to the other for the okay to buy something he or she really wanted.

The sculpture was incredibly dusty. Suki leaned over the table and used the bottom of her T-shirt as a cloth. She rubbed until the statue was clean and shiny. Power over dust. When she finished with the man and the whale, she looked around for something else to attack with her T-shirt. As she approached the ceramic bowl on the breakfront, she stopped herself. Maybe she was giving up too easily. Maybe she could exert influence over more than she thought. There still might be time before the arraignment. She could find the witness, the gun, get enough proof to make the boys tell the truth and unmask Ellery McKinna as the lying bastard he was. Suki glanced at the clock and pushed her T-shirt into the bowl; a cloud of dust lifted into the air. She sneezed. Maybe she should stick to inanimate objects.

Suki wandered into the living room and straightened the throw pillows on the couch. When she dropped onto the couch, coffee spilled on her T-shirt, but she didn’t bother to blot it up. Instead, she watched the brown stain spreading across the front of her shirt, mesmerized by the strange exotic creature. The coffee seeped through the threads of the shirt, quickly at first, then more slowly, then finally loop by loop, until it stopped. Fascinating.

The phone rang. It was Mike. “You heard about the arraignment?” he asked without preamble. Before she could answer he told her he was sending an associate to Concord, explaining that he was tied up negotiating an arrest arrangement with Frank Maxwell.

“Arrest arrangement?”

“Like I said before—no cuffs, no media, no front door.”

Suki could barely breathe.

“Weekday morning only,” Mike continued. “Get her out on bail that afternoon so there’ll be no night in jail.”

“But … but … what if there’s some new evidence?” Suki stammered. “What if the boys change their minds? Or if the arrest doesn’t happen?”

“I’m sorry, Suki,” Mike said, his voice filled with sympathy. “But I’m afraid we’re dealing with a ‘when’ here, not an ‘if.’”

Suki realized that
this
was her worst fear. “When?”

“Probably sometime early next week.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Suki begged. “Anything we can do?”

“Time’s real short on this side of the arrest,” he said. “But afterwards, there’ll be more than enough.”

“But then it’ll be too—”

“Not at all. Their case is full of holes. You know that. You understand how all this works. They need the arrest to appease the media, but when they try to take this to trial, all hell’s going to blow. The evidence’s all circumstantial—what little there is of it. The boys aren’t exactly credible, there’s no witness, no murder weapon, and Alexa’s as clean as they—”

“I don’t want her arrested,” Suki interrupted, not wanting to think about how “clean” Alexa was—or, more correctly, wasn’t. “I can’t care about what comes later yet, I can only care about now. The arrest is what’s happening now, and we can’t let it. It’s too awful. She’s just a kid. This could destroy her.”

“Suki, listen,” Mike said. “I understand where you’re coming from, and we can talk about this later, but now I’ve got to run. Betty just buzzed. Maxwell’s on the other line.”

“But—”

“Know what? Forget about the Kern eval. I’ll get someone else to finish up. Ask the judge for a few days’ postponement. You’ve got too much to handle right now.”

“No,” Suki said more sharply than she meant to. “I can do it. I promised I would and I will. It’s too late for you to get someone else, and I won’t have you postponing because of my personal life.”

“Your testimony’s scheduled for Monday. Today’s Thursday. At the latest, I’d need your conclusion in writing by tomorrow, and the full evaluation by Saturday to get it to the DA on time. It was going to be tight before all this—I just don’t see how you can do it now.”

Suki willed her voice to be steady. “I appreciate your offer,” she said. “Really, I do. But I made a professional commitment to you, and I will see it through.”

“You’re sure you’re up to it?”

“To tell you the truth, I need to work. If I don’t have something to think about beside Alexa, I’ll be the one to go mad.” Power over forensic evaluations.

“You’re a real trouper,” Mike said and Suki could hear the respect in his voice. “I’ll get back to you after the arraignment.”

Suki showered and dressed and forced herself to sit down at her desk. She had told Mike she needed to work, and she did. It was the only way to make this horror go away—even if it was just for a few mental moments. She pulled the materials from her briefcase and opened up the Kern file on her computer. Although she had almost all the necessary factual data collected and written up, facts were only about a third of a forensic evaluation. The other two-thirds were concerned with opinions and the logic linking the facts to those opinions. As she hadn’t formulated her opinion yet, two-thirds of the evaluation was still unwritten.

Suki leaned back in her chair and glanced at the clock on her desk. After talking with Lindsey for what could have been no longer than an hour, Alexa had been sleeping for almost fifteen. What should she say to her when she woke? Suki wondered. Should she confront her about her visit to Lindsey, a visit in direct opposition to explicit instructions? About Marcus Bouchard’s accusations? They
had
to discuss the drugs; Suki needed to find out exactly what was going on, how heavily involved Alexa was. But maybe, at this point, it was just best to try to prepare her for what was to come.

Suki forced her eyes back to the computer screen and her thoughts back to her report. What did she think about Lindsey’s state of mind at the time of Richard Stoddard’s death? Was Lindsey criminally responsible? Suki opened the computer file that held forensic definitions, and read what she already knew by heart: the 1967
Commonwealth v McHoul
decision. Wrongfulness and conformity.

Had Lindsey known killing Richard was wrong? Yes, she just claimed she hadn’t done it. So wrongfulness was not an issue. But the law considered either wrongfulness
or
conformity to be sufficient. Was Lindsey capable of stopping herself from killing Richard? This was not so clear-cut. Nor was the definition of “mental disease or defect,” a state that was legally necessary if a defendant was to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Suki read the definition for mental disease or defect: “A substantial disorder of thought, mood, perception, orientation or memory which grossly impairs judgment, behavior, capacity to recognize reality, or ability to meet the ordinary demands of life.…” Was Lindsey’s judgment impaired? Seemingly so. Was her behavior? Possibly. What about her capacity to recognize reality? If Lindsey honestly believed Isabel Davenport was on the landing with them, and that it was Isabel, a woman dead one hundred years, who had pushed Richard down the stairs, then Lindsey’s capacity to recognize reality did seem acutely diminished.

As for Lindsey’s ability to meet the demands of ordinary life, wasn’t Richard taking her to his apartment because he believed she was incapable of living alone? Hadn’t a friend testified that Lindsey had been delusional and at times hysterical the week prior to Richard’s death? Suki checked the trial transcripts for other reports of Lindsey’s behavior that week. There were statements attesting to atypical absences from work, Lindsey’s claims of murdered dogs and attacking snakes, not to mention her paranoid contention she was being stalked. It was amazing Mike had managed to
keep
Lindsey’s precarious mental state from becoming at issue at the first trial.

Suki rolled her mouse around the mouse pad and watched the cursor zip across the screen. Did this mean she believed Lindsey was not criminally responsible that afternoon? That Lindsey had suffered from a mental impairment that affected her ability to recognize reality? If Suki objectively considered her responses, she had to conclude that she did. Unless, of course, the ghost of Isabel Davenport
had
been on the stairs.…

Suki had the itchy feeling she was being watched and whirled around in her chair. Alexa was standing in the doorway. Her eyes were swollen from sleep, and the pillowcase had etched creases in her cheeks. She looked like a frightened animal, ready to bolt.

“Hi,” Suki said tentatively, carefully. “How are you feeling?”

Alexa eyes lurched around the study, as if looking for something she wanted, but knew she wouldn’t find. She didn’t say anything.

“I guess after fifteen hours of sleep you must be feeling better.” Suki tried to put an upbeat lilt in her voice, but she could hear how false it sounded. She cleared her throat. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked in a more normal tone.

Alexa nodded, but her expression was confused. As if she wasn’t quite sure what coffee was.

Suki stood and put her hand lightly on Alexa’s shoulder, turning her toward the stairs. Beneath Suki’s fingers, Alexa felt so tiny and defenseless, and Suki knew there was no way she was going to confront Alexa about her duplicity or drug use. Alexa allowed Suki to lead her up the stairs and into the kitchen. She sat in her chair and watched Suki pour two cups of coffee as if Suki were performing an alien tribal ritual she had never witnessed before.

“How about a bagel?” Suki asked, placing a mug of black coffee in front of Alexa. “An English muffin?”

Alexa ran her fingers through her matted curls. She blinked at the mug, but didn’t reach for it.

“English muffin it is then,” Suki said as she forked the muffin into two pieces and slipped them in the toaster oven.

“I didn’t dream anything last night,” Alexa whispered.

Suki turned and leaned against the counter. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

Alexa played with the ring on her thumb. “I guess.”

“Did you want to?”

Alexa shrugged.

“Did Lindsey tell you to dream?”

“Lindsey didn’t tell me to do anything,” Alexa said without the attitude she had been displaying since the day she met Lindsey at the doctor’s office. Her voice sounded as if she didn’t care what Lindsey had told her.

Suki took the raspberry preserves from the cabinet and made a show of twisting the top loose and searching for a knife. Could Alexa’s visit to Lindsey have had a very different result than Suki had thought? “What did she tell you?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Things.” Alexa spread her hands out on the table and inspected every ring she had on. There were seven. “Some very confusing things.”

Suki opened the toaster oven. “Not ready,” she muttered as if she really cared. “Trouble with English muffins.” She closed the oven door, pressed the On button and turned to Alexa. “Confusing?”

“She didn’t tell me to dream, but she said I would.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No,” Alexa said. “I mean yes. I didn’t dream. Yes.” She looked as bewildered as her words sounded.

Suki longed to take the girl in her arms, to hug her, to console her, but she had been a psychologist long enough to know when to act and when to sit tight. Right now, Alexa needed to talk, to work through her feelings, more than she needed a comforting cry on her mother’s shoulder. The bell on the toaster oven rang and Suki busied herself spreading jam on the muffins.

“I don’t know what to think.…” Alexa said.

Suki put the muffins on the table.

“Some of what she said made me feel better, like that maybe I wasn’t so crazy and maybe some of it wasn’t my fault.…” She looked up at Suki and her eyes filled with tears. “Then she started babbling about flying around without her body and how someone she knew once turned into fire.”

“I can see why you’re confused,” Suki said, sitting down.

“But she believed me—she knew all about it. She understood.”

Suki took a sip of her coffee.

Alexa dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, then got up and threw the napkin into the trash. When she sat again, she seemed a bit calmer. “Do you think she knows what she’s talking about, Mom?”

Suki stood and poured another dollop of half-and-half into her mug. She didn’t want the coffee any lighter; she just needed to buy some time. It actually sounded as if Alexa wanted to hear her answer; for the first time in a long time, Alexa seemed to care about her opinion. Suki sat back down at the table.

“Do you?” Alexa pressed.

“Sometimes Lindsey says things that make a lot of sense,” Suki began slowly. “Like one day, she was telling me how science puts blinders on our thinking. She explained how science likes a closed system in which everything fits according to its rules. And that that’s why, when something comes along that doesn’t fit, science has to say that it’s wrong, that it’s not true—but that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true. At one time, science believed the earth was the center of the universe.”

“That all sounds just great, something I can use in a philosophy paper some day.” Alexa sniffled and turned the plate which held her untouched muffin. “It’s just that if you follow it through to its logical conclusion …”

Suki broke off a piece of muffin and handed it to her.

Alexa took the muffin reflexively, and just as reflexively, dropped it back to the plate. “I mean, how far does it go? Like, does that mean the universe isn’t expanding? That evolution didn’t happen? That the sun isn’t going to burn out in x million years?”

“Oh, honey, don’t you know it’s all gray?” Suki said, reaching across the table and taking Alexa’s hands. “This whole line we give ourselves about true and false, good and evil, that isn’t how the world is. It’s a continuum. What’s true changes. What’s evil changes. It’s hardly ever absolute.”

Alexa squeezed Suki’s hand, but she retained the stunned expression of an accident victim.

“It’s like Lindsey,” Suki tried again. “She’s not always right or always wrong. Sometimes she makes a hell of a lot of sense, and other times she’s mighty confused.”