A Circle of Wives (31 page)

May God have mercy on her soul.

63
Samantha

THOMAS GIVES HIS STATEMENT THE
day after MJ’s body is discovered. And it’s a doozy.

According to him, MJ had somehow found out that her husband was not in LA as he had told her. She somehow found out that he was at the Westin. How she discovered these facts Thomas couldn’t say. But she’d called Thomas Friday evening, May 10, very agitated. The time was approximately 7
PM
. As per his previous statement, he was already at MJ’s house, waiting for her to return. She told him that she needed his help. She instructed him to go into her closet and get the long blond wig that resembled, at a distance, MJ’s own long graying locks, bought for a Halloween party in which Thomas and MJ had dressed up as each other. MJ gave Thomas explicit instructions that he was to put on her clothes, and—complete with the wig, one of the more conspicuous hats from her wardrobe, and sunglasses—immediately make the rounds of the grocery store and drugstore. And to get himself noticed. He dutifully knocked over the cereal display at Trader Joe’s, bought some toiletries at Walgreens, and then returned to Walgreens via the drive-through window for MJ’s prescription. All as instructed. Then they met back at MJ’s house at 7:45, where Thomas put his own clothes back on and she insisted they dine at a local restaurant. “We must be seen there,” she had said.

Thomas swears that he didn’t know what it was about at the time. MJ had merely ordered a vodka and tonic from the waiter—a very unusual move on her part—and refused to say anything else. It wasn’t until Sunday that Thomas heard about John Taylor’s death.

“It would have been perfect. No one would have known,” Thomas says during his statement. He begins to cry. “MJ didn’t have to kill herself.”

“Her conscience decided,” I say, not unsympathetically. “But why would you agree to do this, if John Taylor was going to be your golden goose? Weren’t you expecting money from him?”

“I didn’t agree!” he says, sitting up straight. “I knew nothing!”

“You didn’t ask why you had to dress as your sister? I have a hard time believing that.”

“Of course I did!” he says. “She simply said she needed to be in two places at the same time. And I trusted MJ. Unconditionally.” Here he began to cry again.

“Do you know why she did it?” I ask. “Why she would want to kill John Taylor?”

Thomas gives a sort of defeated half shrug. “She must have found out about the other wives,” he says. “That’s the sort of thing that would set MJ off.”

“No idea how?”

“No idea.”

And that is pretty much it. MJ Taylor, RIP.

But I’m not satisfied. They take Thomas away. And I return to my desk and begin filling in the paperwork for a new subpoena to examine MJ’s phone and email records for the week before her death.

64
Samantha

SUSAN CALLS ME INTO HER
office.

“What is this?” she asks, waving my request for the subpoena.

I steel myself. “I’m not convinced that MJ was the murderer,” I say. I’m not completely comfortable saying this.

“But Sam,” Susan says. “You were right. You’ve been saying all along that we had to keep putting the pressure on MJ, that she wasn’t telling us everything. You weren’t fooled by Mark Epstein, either. You called this one. Now’s the time to close the case and move on.”

I shake my head.

“No,” I say. “This doesn’t feel right.”

There’s a knock on the door. It’s Grady. “Congratulations,” he says to me. “You kept on it, and followed your instincts. Good work.”

I look from Susan to him. “I’m not done,” I say. “This isn’t closed yet.”

I see a glance pass between them.

“What is it, Sam?” asks Susan. She is trying to be patient, I can tell.

“For starters, how would MJ know about a potassium overdose? And where would she even get it.”

Grady shakes his head. “Sam, as you said yourself, it’s common knowledge that an overdose of potassium can be fatal. I mean, for chrissakes, that’s what a lethal injection is in death row cases.”

I feel stubborn. “Well, where did she get it from, then?”

Grady laughs. He motions to Susan’s computer. “May I?” he asks. She nods. He pulls the keyboard toward him and types in l-i-q-u-i-d p-o-t-a-s-s-i-u-m and hits enter. I can see the list of sites from where I’m standing. “Sam, it’s a common health supplement for both people and pets. Hell, for all we know, Dr. Taylor prescribed it for himself or MJ.”

I shake my head. “We checked their pharmacies. No prescription for potassium chloride had ever been filled.”

“So she called a Canadian pharmacy,” says Grady.

I turn to Susan. “Does this mean you won’t allow my request to see MJ’s phone and email records?” I ask.

She sighs. “Sam . . .”

“I don’t feel we can let this one slide,” I say. “We’ve put too much into the investigation. Just do me this favor, and then I’m done. I promise. I’ll accept that MJ was the perp.”

Susan hesitates, then pulls out a pen and signs the forms. “Okay,” she says. “Go ahead and submit these. But after this, it’s back to the burglary beat, Sam.”

“You mean the barking dog beat,” I say under my breath, but I suspect Susan hears me because she turns her head sharply.

“And one more thing,” I say, meekly.

“What’s that?” Susan asks, visibly annoyed now.

“I’d like permission to interview Deborah Taylor one more time.”

Susan shakes her head. “Absolutely not. City Hall is roasting my butt on that. According to Deborah, you’ve been harassing her. For no good reason. Asking the same questions over and over again. She’s well connected in this town, Sam. I can’t let this continue.”

“Just one more interview,” I say. “To tie up some loose ends.”

65
Excerpt from Transcript

Police interview with Deborah Taylor, September 5, 2013

[Preliminary introductions, explanations of police processes and procedures, notification that the session would be videotaped]

Samantha Adams:
I take it you’ve heard the news.

Deborah Taylor:
Yes. Yes, I have. It was MJ all along. I wouldn’t have thought she could engineer such an elaborate plot. And I wonder how she found out. Or what she found out. Was it just that John had other wives? Or did she find out about Claire, too? That her little idyll was coming to an end?

Samantha Adams:
We’ll never know.

Deborah Taylor:
Why have you asked me here yet again? I understand that the case in closed. Certainly you must have everything you need. I don’t know what I can add, except that I’m glad you have settled this very unsettling situation.

Samantha Adams:
We feel there are some holes.

Deborah Taylor:
Such as?

Samantha Adams:
Such as MJ assuring her brother in the note that he would get the garden, get the money, get “everything.” What did she mean by that?

Deborah Taylor:
I assume she meant that I agreed not to claim any equity in the house in Los Gatos.

Samantha Adams:
Isn’t the equity worth more than two million dollars by now?

Deborah Taylor:
Yes, but as I told you, I have enough to be comfortable. John had the insurance policy, and with our savings I could afford to be generous. It was the least I could do, given the . . . unusual . . . household arrangement I had set up. With Helen, there were no issues, she wanted nothing and asked for nothing. But MJ was anxious about this until we settled it.

Samantha Adams:
When did you have a discussion with MJ about money?

Deborah Taylor:
Oh, not until a month or so after John’s death. I told her she could keep the house, that as John’s sole beneficiary I would sign the deed over to her. She could also keep what was in their joint bank account, a considerable sum. She would have been taken care of financially. And if she decided to pass that along to her brother, I have no reason to object.

Samantha Adams:
And you really believe MJ had it in her?

Deborah Taylor:
Absolutely. She wasn’t the simple hippy child she liked to portray. Clever, really, to have her brother act as her surrogate. They had an interesting relationship, those two. Something I’ve never had, a close sibling. Or, I suppose a close anything once John and I lost our connection. My children have yet to forgive me for this whole thing. Even Charles, my eldest, who I could generally count on to support me, has disappeared. Refuses to return my calls. So MJ was an object of envy to me in that regard, she had a genuine relationship to call her own. You might laugh at me for such an unambitious desire. Most people, I can only assume, have these types of connections. Yet they’ve never come easy to me. John was it. Too bad I didn’t realize it in time.

Samantha Adams:
Realize what?

Deborah Taylor:
How much I still loved him.

66
Helen

MJ
.
POOR THING
.
YOU COULD
almost see her gasping for breath, how foreign the air of this world was to her. I can’t grudge that she found a safe harbor, however temporary, with John. At least she apparently had six years of happiness. John gave her that. Not the greatest deal, but not the worst either. I daily see families torn apart, families that will never recover from loss, people who are scarred for life.

My situation is so different from MJ’s that I should feel some sort of survivor’s guilt. But I don’t. I am merely elated. I know at least part of this high is due to the second trimester hormones beginning to kick in; I feel as though I can conquer the world. I’m showing now, and people are cautiously commenting on it, tactfully trying to determine if I’m happy about the baby or not. My face alone should show how I feel about it. I had envisioned the second half of my life to be a solitary one. Then came John. And now a child.

I’m adjusting to the fact that it’s a boy. Enough not to let it affect my moods. I’m careful to eat all the nutrients I need, I’m careful to take my vitamins, and my OB says that things are looking very well after the last ultrasound.

I had a strange encounter the other day. I ran into an acquaintance, a friend of a friend who I had met at a party, and looking at my belly, she congratulated me openly, without any sense that this pregnancy had dubious origins. “And how is that delightful husband of yours?” she asked. “Is he over the moon?” “John is dead,” I said, and I realized that was the first time I had voiced it out loud. I’d always interacted with people who already knew the facts. The woman had turned pale and took a step back. I only half listened to her fumbled words of condolence, hit once again with the reality that John is dead, and of the weight of my great loss. The world had been a better place because he was in it. But this child wouldn’t have existed if John had been alive. I know that much about myself. I was not in control of my destiny or my body. When I realized I was pregnant I took a sick day from work—unprecedented—and went to the beach at the Pacific Palisades and walked for hours. John or the child? John or the child? I knew that telling John about the pregnancy would seal the child’s fate, that soon it would cease to be a child and become a mass of bloody cells in a medical biohazard waste container. It was the biggest decision I’d ever had to make, and I couldn’t make it, could not for the life of me make it. John’s death decided it absolutely. I didn’t have to choose. My way was clear.

At this stage, a little over four months, the child has fingers and toes, and is covered with downy hair. He floats in the amniotic fluid, and I’m careful to protect him from loud voices, cigarette smoke, angry people, even unpleasant images. I turn my eyes from anything that displeases me. I wish to remain a calm vessel for this child, to let no ugliness penetrate the lining of my womb. My patients’ parents look at my left hand, naked of any ring, and can’t decide whether to congratulate me or not. Some of them are openly envious; as I help usher their children out of this world I am bringing a new life into it. In the midst of terrible suffering, there is joy.

Yesterday I saw a patient, a terminal case, and her heartbroken parents wanted another round of chemo—more suffering and for naught. So I vetoed it. I sent the child to the waiting room in the care of her nanny and was blunt. “If you love your daughter, you will not do this,” I said. “You will allow me to prescribe palliative measures so that the rest of her life is easier.” They were silent at first, the man weeping, the wife more stoic. Then the wife burst out, “Easy for you to say,” looking at my belly. “I remember when I was like you,” she said. “We were so happy to be pregnant. We didn’t know our baby already had this seed in her, that she was broken from the beginning. She seemed so perfect.”