Stolen in the Night (6 page)

Julie, who was shrugging off her jacket, hesitated for a second and then she nodded.
“Oh yes.” She looked encouragingly at Tess. “It definitely does happen. I mean, they
try to be accurate, but there are mistakes sometimes.”

“Thanks,” said Tess. She knew they were trying to help.

Julie hung her jacket up on a coatrack by the door and walked over to the sofa. “Scoot
over,” she said to her husband, wedging herself between Tess and Jake.

Tess suddenly felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t so much the physical proximity
of the other three in Dawn’s tiny sitting room. It was more their sympathetic gazes
and their well-meant reassurances that suddenly felt crushing. This affected all of
them, but only Tess was truly…responsible. Only she had pointed to Lazarus Abbott
in the courtroom and insisted that he was the guilty one.

Tess jumped up. “I’m going to go out and get some air,” she said.

“See? You’re squashing her,” Jake complained to his wife.

“Nobody’s squashing me,” Tess snapped. “I just need to clear my head.”

“Are you sure, honey?” Dawn asked. “Those reporters will see you. They’re everywhere.”

“I’ll go out through the kitchen,” said Tess. She could hear the note of panic in
her own voice. Before they could think of any more reasons why she shouldn’t go, Tess
fled from her family.

T
ess made her way through the inn’s kitchen to the mudroom door, which led to the back
steps. In the mudroom, she lifted a knit cap off a hook and put it on, tucking her
hair into it. She still had on her wool hacking jacket, but she was shivering all
over. She pulled a parka off one of the hooks and slipped it on over her jacket. Then
she opened the back door and stood for a moment on the step, inhaling the smell of
autumn and wood smoke and looking out at the perimeter of the national park in the
distance. Under gray skies, the brown fields behind the inn were ringed by evergreens
and ancient trees still bejeweled with stubborn, unshed leaves of gold and garnet
at the foot of the mountain. Her gaze, so accustomed to the camera’s lens, automatically
framed the beauty of the scene in front of her, even as her heart welled with the
painful memories summoned by the sight. Her head was aching, but the damp air felt
as soothing as a cool hand on her pounding forehead.

Tess looked warily down the deserted bridle path that wended through the field and
to the mountain, and the campground. Even though she knew rationally that no danger
awaited her there, she never ventured in the direction of the park when she took a
walk. But today she felt it tugging her, insisting that she face up to the past.

For a minute she felt trapped, both compelled and afraid to go, and then she had an
inspiration. She went back into the mudroom, picked up Leo’s leash, and whistled.
The yellow Lab, who was snoozing on his rug near the woodstove in the kitchen, looked
up, tongue hanging out.

“Leo, come on,” said Tess. “Want to go for a walk?”

Panting eagerly, the dog got up and padded out to where Tess was waiting. “Thata boy,”
she murmured as she hooked the leash on Leo and closed the door behind them. She let
Leo pick his way across the back terrace and down to the bridle path where Dawn often
took him for a walk.

Together they started down the path, crunching over ice-covered ruts of horses’ hooves
and brown, broken grass. Leo led Tess along, stopping to sniff every bush and tree
trunk he passed. Normally, Tess would have been impatient with the erratic pace of
Leo’s explorations. But today the constant stopping and starting was good in that
it kept her from following any train of thought too far.

As Leo stopped to mark yet another shrub, Tess pulled the hat off and stuffed it into
her jacket pocket as she shook out her hair. No need for a disguise, she thought,
on this lonely trail. She held the leash lightly and looked ahead at the jagged, granite-colored
horizon. As they approached the entrance to the wooded campground, Tess felt her heart
beating faster with anxiety. Sometimes she wondered how Dawn could even bear to live
so close to the spot where all their lives had been upended forever.

Just before she entered the campground, she turned and looked back in the direction
of the inn. The well-kept, clapboard-sided building looked charming and peaceful with
smoke curling out of the chimney. Somehow, Tess thought, her mother had come to terms
with living here, at the edge of their personal disaster area. It was almost as if
it comforted her to be near the place where she lost Phoebe, as one might move to
a place where a beloved child had disappeared, so as to be there if that child ever
returned. But Phoebe had not disappeared and she would never return.

Drawing in a deep breath, Tess followed the dog into the dark woods. She was amazed
to see that nothing seemed to have changed in those twenty years. She passed by the
latrine, where she never dared to go without Phoebe, and wound through the trails
and up to the campsite, where they had set up their two tents that long-ago summer’s
day. She had thought that perhaps she would not know the exact site if she saw it,
but in fact, she recognized it instantly. It looked remarkably the same. She could
picture their Volvo parked there, the doors and trunk open, their gear spilling out.
She could almost hear their voices, calling to one another. Teasing. Her legs felt
weak and she sat down at the pitted picnic table, Leo’s leash held loosely in her
hand. The dog sniffed eagerly at the campsite’s unfamiliar smells, investigating a
wide circle. Tess looked behind her and could see down the hill to the surface of
the lake glinting through the empty branches of the trees. She gazed at the patch
of dirt with its ring of rocks placed there to encircle a campfire. The ashes in the
center of it were cold. Songs came to her mind, and ghost stories. Her heart was thudding
madly, seeing it all again. Phoebe in the lantern light, and a ripping sound that
woke her, and the man’s face…

Leo’s sharp bark startled Tess and she felt the dog straining at the leash. Tess looked
up in the direction the dog was pulling and saw a man walking toward them from the
direction of the trail. He was wearing a navy blue sweatshirt, sweatpants, and watch
cap. Tess scrambled to her feet, her heart hammering. She thought of the man watching
her from the field this morning, and though she wanted to cry out, fear caught the
words in her throat.

Leo barked again. The man slowed down slightly as he approached. “Take it easy, boy,”
he called out in a friendly voice.

Tess did not try to restrain the dog but let him bark. She glared at the man who raised
his hands in surrender.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was jogging on the bridle path. I rarely run into anybody up
here since it started getting cold.”

“Leo, sit,” Tess commanded. The dog obeyed and became quiet. Tess glanced warily at
the man who’d stopped at the edge of the campsite. “You startled us,” she said accusingly.

“I can see that. I didn’t mean to.” He leaned over and reached out a hand for Leo
to sniff. Leo approached him, pulling the leash taut, and examined the proffered hand
warily. “You’re a good boy,” said the intruder in a gentle voice that thrummed through
Tess, unnerving her. He looked up at Tess, smiling. “He means to protect you.”

“Yes, he does,” Tess agreed in a warning tone. She had a sudden, embarrassing realization
that she recognized this stranger. Now that she was standing close to him, she felt
his physical presence weaken her, and his eyes seemed to uncover her secrets as if
he could see the pulse throbbing beneath her skin.

The man frowned as he straightened up. “It’s Miss DeGraff, isn’t it?” he said.

Tess’s heart sank. There was no use denying it, although she didn’t want to talk to
him, or have to meet his eyes. She had a sudden impulse, which she resisted, to let
go of the leash and command Leo to run him off down the trail. The jogger pulled off
his watch cap, revealing shining silver hair.

The attorney for Edith Abbott had a grave look in his delft-blue eyes. “I thought
I recognized you from this morning,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Tess said abruptly.

“I wouldn’t think you’d want to be up here,” he said. “Too many memories.”

Tess did not reply.

“I’m sure those results came as a shock to you today,” he said.

Tess lifted her chin. “And I’m surprised to see you out jogging. I would have thought
you’d be busy doing interviews.”

“I had to get away from that madness,” he said. “I needed some air.”

“No victory celebration?”

“This
is
how I celebrate,” he said with a hint of a smile. “I run.”

“I prefer champagne myself,” said Tess.

Ben Ramsey shook his head. “This isn’t a champagne occasion,” he said. “An innocent
man was executed.”

“And you think it’s my fault,” she said.

“Your fault?”

“That
is
what you think.”

Ben Ramsey shook his head. “No. Of course not. You were only a child.”

“I told the court exactly what I saw,” Tess said.

“What you thought you saw,” he corrected her. He crossed his arms over his chest and
assumed a comfortable stance. “You know, initially, when Edith Abbott approached me,
I didn’t want to get involved. I had my own problems and I knew it would be a drain
on me. But when I read the transcript and saw that the conviction was largely based
on the eyewitness testimony of a nine-year-old child…well, do you have any idea how
unreliable eyewitness testimony can be? Even with adults? Psychologists have conducted
tests that prove that over fifty percent of all eyewitness testimony is incorrect.
That is a frightening statistic,” he said. “Especially when you’re building a death
penalty case on it.”

Tess stared at him without replying. He spoke as if he were discussing the case with
a colleague, not with the very witness involved. She began to shiver again and her
head hurt.

Mistaking her silence for interest, he said, “I’ll tell you another sobering fact.
Since 1989, a hundred and seventy-five prisoners on death row have been cleared on
the basis of DNA evidence, and in seventy percent of those cases, they had originally
been convicted primarily by eyewitness testimony. Seventy percent. That is mind-boggling.”

Tess looked at him with narrowed eyes wondering how she could have found him attractive.
He was obviously an insensitive jerk. “Why in the world are you telling me this? I
was the eyewitness in this case.”

Her indignation did not faze him. “I just thought you might want to know,” he said,
“that this kind of erroneous identification isn’t some rare mistake. It’s practically
commonplace. Add to that the fact that you were a child under a great deal of pressure…”

“Nobody pressured me,” said Tess. “I told the truth.”

Ben looked at her, his gaze sympathetic. “I’m sure it seems that way. And after all
these years…you know, the more we repeat a story or recount a memory a certain way,
the more we become convinced that our memory is the truth. That’s not just a courtroom
fact. That’s something we do in our own lives.”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Ramsey,” she told him coldly. “I saw Lazarus Abbott take my sister.”

His gaze remained kindly. “You know, denial will give you ulcers.”

“I wasn’t wrong,” Tess said. “And I’m not interested in your opinion anyway.”

Hearing Tess’s angry tone, Leo began to bark again. At the same instant, Tess heard
a voice call out, “Ma!” She turned. Erny was riding his bike straight into the campsite,
bumping up and down with every stone and rut.

“Erny,” she cried. The boy pulled up beside her and stuck out his feet on either side
of the bike to balance himself. “Hey, Leo,” he said and the dog eagerly pressed up
against Erny’s leg and accepted a flurry of pets. Then Erny looked up at Ben Ramsey
guilelessly. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” said the attorney in a friendly tone.

Tess had no intention of making any introductions. She turned her back on Ben Ramsey.
Erny was used to his mother behaving politely to people. He looked quizzically at
her and then at the stranger in the sweat suit. Tess pretended not to notice. “Why
are you up here by yourself?” she demanded.

Erny looked back at her wide-eyed. “I was looking for you.”

“I told you specifically not to come up here.”

“I was just wondering where you were,” he insisted.

Tess looked at him skeptically.

“It’s neat up here,” said Erny.

“Let’s get back,” said Tess. “Dawn will be worried.” Erny shrugged and turned his
bike around on the path. “Bye,” he called out to Ramsey. Leo began straining at the
leash to keep pace with Erny.

“Bye now,” said the attorney, looking after the departing boy and raising a hand in
farewell.

Tess glanced at Ramsey, who had turned to her with unguarded interest, as if he had
a hundred questions he wanted to ask her. His face fell at the sight of her bitter
gaze. With a curt nod but not a word, Tess turned away from him and followed her son
and the dog out of the campground and onto the path back to the inn.

Dawn was at the stove, heating a teakettle, when the three of them came back through
the mudroom door. “You found each other,” she exclaimed. Tess nodded. Leo made straight
for his customary spot on the rug, while Erny picked up a fistful of thumbprint cookies
from a plate on the counter.

“Can I go watch TV?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Dawn.

“Come on, Leo, come with me,” Erny urged the dog. Leo did not have to be asked twice.
He got up and followed Erny out of the kitchen and down the hall.

Dawn looked at Tess with relief. “That’s better. That walk put a little color back
in your cheeks,” she said. “You were so pale. I thought you were going to faint before.”

Tess didn’t mention that it was anger from her upsetting encounter at the campground
that had turned her cheeks pink. “Jake and Julie are gone?”

Dawn nodded. “He left Kelli’s car for you and Erny to use while you’re here.”

“That’s what he said,” said Tess.

Dawn poured a mug of tea for Tess.

Tess took the tea and sat down on the bench in the breakfast nook. She looked out
across the gloomy field and thought about Edith Abbott’s attorney. There was no point
denying that he was handsome or sexually appealing to her. Obviously, he knew it.
It was probably a weapon he used freely to win over female jurors, she thought. But
he was so smug with his analysis. Ben Ramsey had spoken to her as if she ought, obviously,
to be agreeing with him. That was infuriating. Still, she could not deny that his
words made her uneasy. For they had brought back to her an unwelcome memory that was
unrelated to her sister’s death.

Once, at college, during a painful estrangement from a boyfriend, she had come home
from class one day to see him walking out of her dorm. Thinking that he wanted to
make up, she had run after him, calling to him, but he didn’t respond to her calls.
Later, when she brought it up during a brief reconcilation, he told her that he had
not been on the campus at the time she thought she had seen him. He had not even been
in the state. No matter how she argued with him about it, he insisted that he had
been home with his parents at the time. He said that he had no reason to lie about
it, and she knew that it was true. She had not seen him. She had mistaken someone
else for him. But she had been so sure at the time. So completely sure. She would
have bet her life on it.