The Defendant (5 page)

Josie made a few notes on her legal pad and then waited for him to speak again.

“It was dark. I found the flashlight in the spot Dad usually leaves it. I punched in the code and pulled out a gun.”

“What kind of gun?”

“The .22 Browning rifle. Dad bought it for me after I got my license. I take it to the range.”

Josie nodded. It wouldn’t occur to a boy living in the city to apply for his gun license, but for many country kids, especially boys, it was a natural progression in their journey toward adulthood.

“What happened after you took the gun?” she asked quietly.

“I found the case that held the ammunition and unlocked it. Then I loaded the gun. I was hurrying. I was scared I wouldn’t get back in time to help Mom. I was so glad I’d loaded bullets into the magazine enough times that I could do it without even thinking about it.”

“How long did it take?”

Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. Twenty, maybe thirty seconds. I’m used to doing it quickly at the range. The sergeant-at-arms gets cranky if we hold up the shoot.”

Josie raised an eyebrow in surprise. She was a kid born and raised in the country, but she’d never lived on a farm. Her father hadn’t been interested in firearms and living in the city of Grafton, there hadn’t been a need. Not like there was in the bush, where the eradication of wild pigs and kangaroos was often a necessity in order to protect precious crops.

“What did you do after you loaded the gun?”

“I took off back to the house. I had to get back there. I had to help my mom.” His voice trembled. His gaze lowered to his lap where he picked at a loose thread on his pajamas. Josie said a silent prayer that he’d hold it together enough to finish.

“It’s okay, Daniel. Take your time. The next part’s going to be rough. When you’re ready, you can tell me.” She watched while he pulled more determinably at the thread around the waistband of his pants. He bit his lip and frowned and then sucked in a deep breath. He looked up and his gaze skittered over hers and then landed on the floor. Her heart lurched at the pain on his face.

“What happened when you got back to the house, honey? You went back to your mother’s room?”

He gave her a jerky nod, his gaze still fixed on the industrial-strength linoleum that covered the interview room floor.
 

“Then what happened?”

Tears sprang to his eyes and he swiped at them with the back of his hand. He drew in a shuddering breath and let it out on a heavy sigh. Josie stayed quiet, giving him the time he needed. At last, he looked up at her with eyes so haunted, the picture would stay with her until the day she died.

“He was lying on top of my mom. He had his pants down. My mom wasn’t moving. All I could see were her legs, spread wide. He was grunting like a boar on the run from pig dogs. Mom was still crying, but softly, not like before. I lifted the gun and looked through the scope. There was enough light from the lamp on the nightstand for me to take a good aim. I was more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, but I had to stop him. I had to stop him hurting my mom.”

Daniel’s breath came hard and fast and he rocked to and fro on the seat. It was almost like he’d left Josie and was back there, reliving the scene frame by frame. Her heart went out to him. She couldn’t imagine the horror he felt.

“I took aim. I knew what I had to do. A moment later, I pulled the trigger.” He bent over as if in agony and held his head in his hands. A howl of pain escaped him, followed quickly by another and another. He spoke through gasping sobs.

“It all happened in slow motion. His head exploded in front of me. It spattered the walls and the pillows and the headboard. There was blood everywhere. My mom wouldn’t stop screaming…”

Josie drew in a shaky breath, feeling nearly as harried as the boy. A coldness settled deep inside her and she was frightened it would never thaw. Daniel had witnessed a horror too awful to describe and yet, he’d managed to do just that. She couldn’t imagine how he’d pick up the pieces and go on; come to terms with the reality of what had happened—to him and to his mom—and to overcome it enough to move on with his life and live as normally as possible.

How was he going to manage it?
How would he ever feel normal again?
She couldn’t imagine how anyone would even take the first step toward accepting the night’s events and putting them behind them. It would take years of therapy and even with that there was no guarantee. She wanted to help him, but what if she couldn’t?

She’d been a practising psychologist for nearly six years, but she’d spent all of that time in a private practice in one of the wealthier, northern suburbs of Brisbane. Her patients of the past were mostly rich and spoiled teens who were giving their parents a headache. That was far removed from what she’d just experienced in the early hours of the morning in an interview room buried in the bowels of the Watervale Police Station.

In Brisbane, after a few sessions giving a child her undivided attention and listening,
really
listening to their problems, she always followed it with a family session where she bluntly told the parents the truth: Their children needed less of their money and more of their time; their children needed to feel that they mattered.

Most of the time, she was able to fix things and everyone went away happy. Well, maybe not everyone. More often than not, the parents were less than thrilled with her tactics, but no one complained about the results.

After six years where nothing much changed but the names of the children who filed through her office, she’d gotten to the point where she was disillusioned with her chosen profession. She’d started out in her first year of university with stars in her eyes and the world at her feet. There was nothing she couldn’t achieve. She was young and so idealistic and determined that nothing would stand in her way. She was going to make a difference; she was going to save the world—one desperately sad and lonely child at a time.

But it hadn’t turned out that way. It hadn’t meshed with her ideals. Her initial excitement when she’d been offered the job in the exclusive private practice had waned over the years and she’d become more than a little jaded.

When her father suffered a brain hemorrhage last Christmas, she’d finally given voice to her dissatisfaction. Sitting by his hospital bed in the ICU, she’d found the courage to say it aloud, albeit to a man who was in a coma. It was then that she’d realized the truth: She hated her job.

The reality of it was nothing like what she’d imagined; nothing like the career she’d worked hard for and dreamed of. Disappointed and disillusioned, she decided to leave the city and come home. She needed time to regroup and to rethink the direction of her career. It had been a stroke of luck her mother had seen the job advertisement in the local newspaper for the position with Rural and Regional Health.

And here she was, dealing with a child who couldn’t be further from the patients she had worked with in the city. A child who needed her so desperately, she was terrified she might let him down.

What if she didn’t have the experience he needed?
What if she said the wrong thing?
He was broken inside.
What if she couldn’t put him together again? What if he never healed?

She swallowed a moan of despair, not wanting to alarm him. This was about
him:
Daniel. It had nothing to do with her. She had to pull herself together and believe in her abilities. She needed to employ whatever skills she had at her disposal to make him whole. Or as whole as he could be under the circumstances. She vowed with every fiber of her being to make that happen.

* * *

Chase stared at the woman and the child through the two-way glass and steeled himself against the emotion that tightened his chest. Dread weighed down his limbs. He glanced at Riley, who looked as grim as he felt. Chase closed his eyes at the thought of what he had to do.

“We have to charge him,” Riley murmured tiredly.

Chase drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. His shoulders slumped on a sigh. “Yeah, we do. As soon as we get his confession on record.”

“We need to call him a lawyer.”

Chase grimaced. “We both know the public defender will be sleeping off another late-night bender. He won’t even hear his phone. If we wait until we get someone from Grafton, it might be too late. The boy might clam up again. I say we do it now and the let lawyers argue over the rules.”

Riley stared at him for a long moment and then gave a reluctant nod. “Yeah, I guess. Do you want to do it, or shall I?”

Chase scrunched his eyes closed and rubbed at the headache behind them. A moment later, he opened them. His gaze was steady on Riley’s, even as his gut twisted into knots. “I will.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, he knows me from the farmhouse. A formal interview might be better coming from someone who’s a little familiar.”

“I don’t know if anything in this poor kid’s life is ever going to be better again, but we have no choice. He admitted to blowing that son of a bitch’s brains out. We have to let the courts take it from here.”

“It’s too bad.”

“Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do, but that’s the way things are. We believe in a justice system that upholds the rules we all agree to abide by, even if you’re only twelve.”

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Charge him, fingerprint him. Do what you’d normally do.”

“What about his mother? Should we wait for her?”

Riley shrugged. “She might well be admitted to the hospital overnight. She’s probably been sedated. I say let’s get it over with. Josie can stay with him. She seems to have built a rapport with him.”

At the mention of Josie’s name, Chase’s heart stuttered. His gaze flicked back to the glass and renewed pain sheared through him. She’d left her seat and once again had her arms around the boy, comforting him with whispered reassurances that she must have known were false. Oblivious to his dark future, the boy clung to her, crying quietly, his eyes filled with equal parts hope and dread.

Chase cleared his throat of the lump that had lodged there and turned to his boss. “I’ll go and break the news.”

Riley merely nodded, his face grim.

* * *

Chase drew in a deep breath and then shouldered open the door to the interview room. Josie straightened upon his entry, but stayed close by Daniel’s side, guarding him like a mother lion. The pain in Chase’s gut twisted like a knife. He’d hate every second of what he was about to do.

He schooled his face into a carefully bland expression, refusing to let her see how much the next few minutes were going to affect him. She wouldn’t react well and there was no other way he knew how to deal with it. He had a job to do. It was as simple as that.

Doing his best to keep his voice even, he addressed the boy. “Daniel, I need you to come with me.”

“What’s happening? Has his mother arrived?”

He met Josie’s anxious gaze and swallowed another sigh. “No. I’m going to take him through his evidence again, this time for the record and then he’ll be taken to the charge room.”

A frown marred the smooth, golden skin of her forehead. “The charge room?”

“Yes. He’s going to be charged with murder.”

“You asshole
.
”

The word hit him like a ten-pound hammer right between the eyes. He did his best to hide his pain.

Did she think he was enjoying this?
That he wanted to charge the kid? How could she think such a thing? Didn’t she know him at all? Was ten years really that long ago for her to have forgotten every little thing about him?
Surely it wasn’t.

She stared at him like he was a stranger—a distasteful one at that. Shock and anger widened her eyes and flushed her cheeks with color. She shook her head in disbelief, looking like she was beyond words. A moment later, she found them.

“How
could
you? Haven’t you been
listening?
Have you heard even a single word that he said? That animal was ra—” She swallowed the word with difficulty, her gaze skating to the boy. Chase did his best to ignore her and proceeded to carry out his job.

Pulling out a pair of handcuffs, he gently restrained the boy. Ignoring his cry of anguish and the gasp of horror from Josie, he led the child out of the room.

“Handcuffs?
You’re handcuffing him?”

“It’s standard procedure.”

“You have to be fucking kidding?”

“Josie, that’s enough.”

The stern command came from Riley and Chase swallowed a sigh of relief. Her anger reverberated through him, weighing him down with sadness and grief. With quiet determination, he blocked out everything but his job.

As if wading through a pond of molasses, he went through the motions required. Twenty minutes later, it was done. Daniel Logan was charged with murder and remanded into custody. He’d be brought before the judge as soon as the courthouse opened.

CHAPTER SIX

Kelly Logan stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and hated what she saw. It had been more than a week since the attack and yet it replayed in her head continually, as clearly as if it had happened the night before: The smell of unwashed body; the guttural grunts and groans; the weight of the man forcing her into the mattress. And then, the rancid breath; the sharp rasp of stubble; and worst of all, the feel of him violating her.