The 3rd Victim (8 page)

17

S
ara was looking directly at him as he entered the reception area. Her expression was all soft and caring but tinged with that familiar crinkle of concern.

Within a second David felt like an ass – for being … such a shit! He'd been angry that she disagreed with him, and pissed off that a good-looking rich guy like Hunt wanted to woo her on the dance floor, offer her a job. None of that was her fault. She had a right to her opinion, and considering Sara was as smart as she was and looked the way she did … well, David wasn't stupid. He saw the way men glanced at her and knew most of them would give their right arm to change places with him – dumbass that he was.

‘I'm sorry,’ he said.

She shook her head, already walking toward him, a concerned-looking Arthur and Nora rising from their seats in Arthur's office beyond. ‘Actually,’ she whispered, ‘I kind of like it when you're jealous.’

‘Who said I was jealous?’ He let his fingers trace her hand as the other two entered reception.

Sara glanced behind her. ‘You can make it up to me later,’ she said, just as Arthur met his eye.

‘We heard what happened,’ said Arthur. He gestured for them all to congregate back in his office, which they did, David throwing his briefcase and wet overcoat on the side-wall sofa, prompting Nora to pick up his coat and hang it on the rack by the door.

‘You got snowballed,’ Arthur continued, David having previously told him and Nora about his conversation with Hunt the day before.

‘Avalanched more like it,’ David replied as he started to pace Arthur's thick Persian rug. ‘But it doesn't make any sense. Hunt has no say over the court's docket. He doesn't control Judge Weeks. So how did he make what just happened happen?’

It was a very good question, considering the variables at play. First up, David did not have an arraignment at the Municipal Court every morning, in fact he had not been there in over a week. And even when he was, on a normal day David would have been out of that courtroom in seconds, but the crowd, his being held up by running into Simba – if this morning's events were all part of Hunt's design, then luck was most certainly on his side.

‘David's right,’ said Sara. ‘This must just be a coincidence.’

Arthur rubbed at the top of his nose where his glasses cut a groove. ‘Possibly, but I know men like this Hunt and they rarely rely on chance to reach their objectives.’ He turned to David. ‘Whatever the case, son, you have a situation on your hands. You said Joe believes the evidence points solely at the mother.’

‘He does. And there's no way they would have arrested her unless they had enough for probable cause.’

‘Perhaps Katz persuaded him.’

‘Not on this one. The last time I spoke to Joe he was determined to build the case before he went to the Kat.’

Arthur nodded. ‘You need to speak to him, find out what he's got.’

‘I know that, Arthur, but now he'll be limited in what he can tell me, considering I represent the accused.’

He met Sara's eye once again, and he could see that she was trying to gauge his feelings on what had just occurred.

‘It goes against your gut instinct, doesn't it?’ she asked then. ‘I'm sorry, David, this isn't fair.’

But he didn't reply, and as the silence stretched on, all three turned to look at him, perhaps sensing that what Sara was suggesting might not be one hundred per cent correct.

‘David?’ said Sara. ‘What
is
your gut telling you?’ She moved toward the window, leaning against its ledge.

‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘My gut shouldn't be telling me anything. I barely had a chance to speak to the woman.’

‘Maybe so, but I know you, David, and you have a sixth sense about people the moment you meet them.’

David still didn't answer.

‘When she did speak,’ attempted Arthur, ‘what did she say?’

‘I asked her how she wanted to plead and she said … she said she didn't kill her daughter,’ replied David.

‘That's the way she put it?’ asked Nora.

‘Yes.’

Sara's eyes shot to Arthur and then Nora before turning back to David. ‘Oh my god, David – you believe her.’

David hesitated, offering her the slightest of nods before: ‘I … maybe … but … What else is she going to say, Sara? Every guilty defendant claims their own innocence.’

‘You're right. But you don't believe most of them.’

But David was not ready to trust his instincts so completely, especially when a man like Hunt was so closely tied to the case.

‘There's something else we need to consider,’ said Arthur, and David knew exactly what his boss was about to say.

‘Hunt told me she was guilty,’ said David.

‘Yes. So either he is telling the truth, or incorrectly speculating on her emotional condition, or … or has an objective we are yet to identify.’

‘Isn't that a little harsh?’ asked Sara. ‘I mean, granted the guy is arrogant as all get-up, but perhaps he was just doing what he claims to be doing – trying to help a friend. He knows you're the best at what you do, David.’

It was possible, thought David, but there was something about Hunt's tenaciousness that told him not. ‘Even if that was the case, why would he want to engage someone who is best friends with the lead investigator on the case? He knows I respect Joe's opinion.’

‘Right,’ offered Sara, ‘but maybe Hunt thought your friendship with Joe could work to Sienna Walker's advantage – that you would be privy to certain details of the investigation that other defence attorneys might not.’

‘I don't think so,’ said Arthur. ‘Hunt would know Joe is a professional and that there'd be no way he'd compromise his responsibilities as head of Homicide to swing a few favours for a friend.’

They all knew that Arthur was right.

‘Maybe it was a personal decision,’ suggested Sara, throwing up another alternative. ‘He knows you have a public profile in this city – that you're married with a small child and …’

‘You think he wanted to hire me because we have a baby girl?’

‘It's possible,’ chimed in Arthur. ‘You're a husband, father of a little girl. If someone in your circumstances can stand up in court and say that they know this woman is incapable of such a crime, then perhaps a jury could do the same?’

Arthur made a good argument, but David was still not convinced. There was something more to Hunt's motives, he just couldn't figure out what.

‘Oh for goodness sake,’ said Nora, finally breaking the silence. ‘Are you all so blind?’

The other three turned to look at her.

‘You're trying too hard to solve the problem. Yes, David is good friends with Joe, yes, he is a respected attorney and a wonderful father, but that is not why Mr Hunt wanted to engage him.’ She shook her head. ‘Certainly not. No way in the world.’

‘Then why, Nora?’ asked David, taking a step toward her.

‘Don't you see, lad? For years now the people of this city have watched you stick your neck out, risk your own life even, to prove the innocence of your clients. Your pig-headedness …’ she smiled as she said this, ‘… means you never give up, you fight to the death, and as a result, whether you like it or not, you have earned a reputation as someone who stands up for not just the person you are representing, but the basic principle of innocent until proven guilty.

‘You instil a sense of trust, David, a trust so strong and genuine that a jury has little choice but to sit up and listen to what you have got to say. You do not defend the guilty, lad. Never have and never will. And that is why Mr Hunt needs so desperately to engage your services – not because of what you do, but because of who you are.’

18

The following morning

S
ienna Walker stepped forward, placing her pale, naked body directly under the icy spray that shot from the showerhead like bullets. She was freezing. But her insides boiled with torment and anger and fear.

She closed her eyes, and to her surprise the water became rain – strong, ice-cold rain the likes of which she had felt on her smooth pink face as a child. And despite her knowing she needed to focus on the now, she allowed the memory to continue, picturing herself running inside her substantial Surrey home, tossing off her Paddington Bear coat and shedding her bright blue boots before heading to the library where she curled up in her father's favourite armchair in front of the sweet-smelling eighteenth century fireplace.

Despite it all Sienna felt the gratitude overwhelm her as she understood the debt she owed her late parents for giving her the life she had once taken for granted, a life filled with everything from British literature to comfortable armchairs, to lazy bloodhounds named Sleuth. Her mother and father were at pains to supplement her first-class education with other experiences designed to heighten her senses, whether it be encouraging her to swim the icy lakes, to climb the tallest elms, or to skip barefoot across the endless snow-covered glens.

She wished she could repay them, just as she wished many things when it came to the void that was left by their passing. There was so much they did not get to see – so much they did not know. She wondered what they would think of the fragile shape now cowering under the too-cold shower in Boston's Suffolk County Jail. The Harrington that became a Walker – the girl with so much promise who gave up her life to become …

‘Walker,’ called the female guard. ‘Spa time is over.’

Sienna opened her eyes, taking in the tiny shower recess around her. It was located between what the deputies called the ‘dirty’ and the ‘clean’ rooms. She backed away from the powerful jet which immediately ceased to fire and accepted a grey, threadbare towel from the deputy whose middle was encircled by a too big Sheriff's Department's belt that caused her thin frame to swagger.

‘You can put these on,’ said the deputy, holding out a bundle as Sienna clung to the towel now wrapped tightly around her. ‘And don't bother asking for a smaller size. This isn't Neiman Marcus.’

Sienna held up the red jumpsuit – the waist was so large she knew she would have to wrap the pull cord around her twice – and then she looked up to see a large, round, tanned woman approaching with her latex-gloved hands outstretched.

‘Who is she?’ asked Sienna.

‘She's the nurse. She is going to speak with you and check you over, see if you're fit to enter the general population.’

‘You're worried I will pass on some sort of disease?’ asked Sienna, clearing her throat.

‘We're not worried about the general population, honey, we're worried about you. It's in your interest that we record your state of health on entry.’

Sienna shook her head. ‘I don't understand,’ she said.

‘This isn't a jailhouse version of
The Truman Show
, you know. The women in here read the papers and listen to the news. Lots of them are mothers – they've got kids waiting for them on the outside and … well, let's just say some of them might have a bone to pick.’

Sadly, Sienna understood. ‘This is like the “before” shot,’ she said, ‘in case there is an “after”.’

But the deputy did not answer.

‘I didn't kill my daughter,’ said Sienna then, knowing even as she said it that it really made no difference to this woman one way or another.

‘Not for me to decide,’ said the deputy, before taking a seat at her desk nearby, her hand scanning down a checklist of Sienna's personal details. ‘You didn't list a next of kin,’ she said.

‘I don't have one.’

‘Nobody?’

‘No.’

The deputy lifted her chin, her face softening just a little. ‘Look, I know this is intimidating at first, but things tend to get easier – once you get used to it.’

Sienna nodded, another thought entering her mind. ‘Those mothers you mentioned – do their children come here to visit?’

‘Yes, ma'am, up to three times a week.’

‘They're lucky,’ said Sienna as the nurse gestured for her to remove her towel and stand naked on a set of dented stainless steel scales.

‘Never heard someone describe them as lucky before,’ said the deputy. ‘But you're obviously not a native, Walker, so maybe it's a “lost in translation” thing.’

‘It's not a British thing, it's the mother thing,’ said Sienna as the nurse jammed an icy stethoscope flush against her bare white breast and demanded that she ‘breath in’.

As Sienna felt the sterile air invade her lungs, her mind returned to the precious memory once again. She pictured her current self running across the endless English countryside, her long hair flattened by the incessant storms, her body chill with the bite of winter, her cheeks flush from the unforgiving winds, and – unexpectedly, in this moment of weakness – a small child running beside her, a warm, soft hand entwined trustingly in her own.

19

‘I
did not hear a thing,’ said Sienna Walker, her damp hair combed straight around her narrow, pink-skinned face. ‘I woke on automatic. Eliza was not a sleeper and it was not like her to nap past midnight.’

‘So you got up,’ prompted David, who, from the moment he and Sara had entered the interview room, had found their new client to be patient, helpful, straightforward. ‘And you went to her bedroom?’

‘Yes,’ answered Sienna. ‘I grabbed a small towel from my dresser and draped it over my shoulder. I had a routine of feeding her and then holding her up for burping and …’ she swallowed. ‘I went down the hall and walked into her room.’

‘Did you turn on her light?’ asked David, taking her where he needed her to go.

‘No. If she was asleep I did not want to wake her. I thought she might be finally getting into a routine where she slept for longer than two hours at a time.’ Walker looked up, her face apologetic. ‘It sounds like such a selfish thought now of course, but at the time I hoped for it nevertheless.’

David glanced at Sara, who gave Sienna a nod of understanding. Sara was already becoming attached to her, he knew. He had gotten the feeling from the outset that Sara, whether she realised it or not, was determined to find a way to prove this woman – this mother – innocent.

‘You approached your daughter's cot,’ said David, getting them back on track.

‘Yes,’ replied Walker. ‘I reached for her on instinct – Eliza always slept on her side and I knew where her little head would be.’ Walker took a breath. ‘But she was not where I expected, so my hands searched again, only to come up wet and sticky and for a second I thought her nappy – her diaper – had come loose but …’

Walker's blue eyes drifted up from the stainless steel table to meet David's and then Sara's head on. ‘You two are married,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ answered Sara.

‘And you have a young daughter,’ said Walker, now turning back to David.

David nodded, instinctively uncomfortable at the reference to Lauren considering what they were discussing.

‘Then you would know that there is that second when you fear the worst. I've heard the stories – of children running away from their parents in shopping centres, of them darting behind a bush at the park and their mothers not being able to find them. It is that moment when a parent's heart gets ready to scream, but you tell yourself to hold it back – you trust logic will reign and your fears will be banished and you will realise how silly you were to fret so in the first place. But for me the logic never kicked in. For some reason I knew she was gone. It was like when Daniel came to tell me about Jimmy. He did not have to say it. I already knew.’

Daniel, Jimmy – the issue of Hunt's involvement in the Walker family as a whole would need to be addressed. But David also sensed he would have to pick his time for that discussion. One step at a time.

‘So after I felt for her,’ Walker continued after a series of shallow breaths, ‘I was starting to panic, so I went to turn on the light but it wasn't working and –’

‘You flicked the light switch?’ asked David, both he and Sara knowing this detail was contrary to the evidence that Joe's crime scene guys had collected.

‘Yes. Obviously, at that point, I was desperate to find her. My mind started to run away with me, picturing her somehow getting out of the cot on her own – which was impossible of course, and I knew that, but …’

‘Sienna,’ said David, deciding then and there that there was no point in playing cloak and dagger with the woman he had been told to represent. He needed to see how she would explain it from the outset: ‘The police did not find any blood or fingerprints on the light switch.’

He met her eye and saw her frown. ‘It's an important piece of evidence for them, Sienna. The DA will claim you –’

‘Yes,’ she interrupted him then, a single strand of blonde hair falling gently across her face. ‘I see what you are saying, Mr Cavanaugh, I …’ She moved the errant strand behind her ear. ‘My hands were sticky. I grabbed the towel from my shoulder. I used it to press against the light switch. I heard the flick but … nothing happened.’

‘You used the towel to turn on the light?’ asked Sara.

‘Yes.’ Sienna turned momentarily to Sara before her eyes drifted back to David as if he was the one she had to convince. ‘Do you see?’ It was her way of asking if he believed her.

‘It explains the discrepancy,’ he said, hearing the trace of relief in his own voice.

Sienna Walker nodded in gratitude.

‘Did you notice the window screen had been forced?’ David was anxious to extinguish Joe's evidentiary list against his client as a matter of priority. Like Sara, he found himself
wanting
to believe the woman in front of him, but details were important in initial interviews like this – and even more so when it came to building a case for trial.

‘The window screen?’ Her brow knotted. ‘No, I didn't notice. It was dark.’

‘Did you or your husband attach the screen on your daughter's bedroom window?’

‘Jimmy put it on soon after Eliza was born.’

‘He drilled the screws from inside the bedroom.’

‘Yes, this was the safest option. It stops intruders from removing the screws from the outside.’ She looked from David to Sara and back again. ‘The screen had been forced?’

‘Yes,’ replied David. ‘It was forced inwards to make it look like the intruder entered from the fire escape.’

‘I see,’ she began, the slightest of creases forming between her two pale eyes. ‘The police would have, at least initially, believed the intruder came up the fire escape and entered my daughter's bedroom from the outside, but …’ she closed her eyes, ‘… no. That doesn't make sense. The whole reason for the screws being on the inside is to keep people
out
.’ She opened her eyes to look at David. ‘You're saying the police will conclude that I unscrewed the screen from the inside to make it
look
like there had been an intruder coming in from the outside, but …’

‘What is it?’ asked David.

‘If I did … kill her … it would be a stupid way to cover myself. A forensics expert would pick my theory to pieces in seconds.’

David looked at Sara. Sienna Walker was smart. She thought logically and David knew this would be a huge asset when it came to building a case in her defence.

‘You're saying there is no way an intruder could have come in through the window from the fire escape even if he wanted to?’ asked Sara.

‘Not without forcing the actual window frame,’ replied Sienna. ‘Unless the screen was cut, which I assume …’ She looked at David.

‘It wasn't.’

She nodded.

‘So how did he get in?’ asked Sara.

He.
Sara said
he
. David was not sure if Sara had totally dismissed the possibility that Sienna Walker had taken her own daughter's life – perhaps while suffering from post-partum depression – or if she was simply leading their client to see where she would go. But the look of earnestness in her profile suggested to him that it was the former.

‘I don't know,’ replied Sienna.

Sara turned to David. ‘There's only one explanation. The person responsible must have been inside the house already.’

David said nothing, wondering if they should be pursuing this theory before their client saw a psych.

‘Did anyone have access to your home that day, Sienna?’ Sara asked.

‘The housekeeper – Ilda De Silva – left at four and we did go out once after that to the corner store for some groceries. Perhaps someone could have entered while we were out, but no one else besides Ilda has a key and she is incredibly trustworthy and … I gather the police found no other signs of forced entry?’ Once again she looked at David.

‘None,’ he replied.

So they were back at square one, the room falling into silence as the humming of various locking and unlocking security systems vibrated beneath their feet.

‘I see my problem,’ said Sienna after a time, and David noted she said ‘my’ not ‘our’, as if she was convinced she had not secured David's trust. ‘All of this logic – it simply consolidates the assumptions made by the police. These small things, while not making me appear to be the smartest of criminals, certainly point toward my guilt, and guilt is guilt no matter what your level of intelligence.’

David nodded, knowing there was no point in denying it. ‘They'll claim you tried to manipulate the crime scene to make it look like an intruder entered from the fire escape when, for reasons you have described to us, there is no way that this could have been the case.’

Sienna sighed, her shoulders drooping. ‘It's worse than that,’ she said. ‘These staged details suggest premeditation.’

David nodded, once again mentally noting her aptitude. ‘Which explains why the DA is going for murder one.’

His words hung heavily around them, until Sienna spoke again.

‘How will they explain it?’

‘Explain what?’ queried Sara.

‘Why I did it?’ she asked.

It was a good question.

‘They might argue that at the time you were …’ Sara searched for the right words, ‘… not yourself.’

Sienna Walker swallowed, her head shaking just a little before she lifted her chin once again. ‘Post-natal depression,’ she said. ‘But it does not gel with the premeditation.’

‘Maybe not. But they could argue you acted out of an impulse triggered by your depression – and then regained control enough to consider how to cover your tracks.’

Sienna nodded. ‘I see.’

Sara glanced at David before turning once again to their client. ‘Sienna, were you being treated for any form of depression?’ she asked.

‘No. Did Dick tell you I was?’ It was Sienna's first reference to Hunt's close associate.

‘We haven't spoken to him as yet,’ said David. ‘But we have spoken to your friend Daniel Hunt, and he mentioned that you have been doing it hard since your husband's death.’

David thought he saw Sienna's expression shift from one of confusion to what could have been acceptance or expectation even. But if it was there at all it was only for a second.

‘Daniel said I was depressed?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘And do you think I look depressed – I mean, in a “desperate-enough-to-kill-the-one-person-I-loved-more-than-any-other-on-the-planet” sort of way?’ she asked. It was the first time her voice had risen in the interview so far.

‘No,’ he replied.

‘Then I am pleased,’ she said, her crisp British accent tinged with a trace of resolution.

‘Sienna,’ said Sara then.

David knew what Sara was going to ask – perhaps the most important question they would need to answer if they had any chance of winning this thing in court.

‘If you did not murder your daughter, then who did? And more importantly, why? Why would someone go to that much trouble to take a small child's life – and then set you up as the killer?’

Sienna looked at Sara and tilted her head to the left. Her lank hair slipped over her shoulder, her lips parted as if they were willing to respond to the question but unsure of where to begin.

‘When I was a child my favourite book was
Wuthering Heights
,’ she managed a smile. ‘I know, rather intense for a ten-year-old girl. But my parents encouraged me to read the classics and …’ She stopped there, as if the memory had gotten the better of her. ‘There is a line, in Chapter 30 I believe, where Catherine confronts Heathcliff and basically tells him that she is spent, that she can no longer continue to fight for him. She says something like,
“You have left me so long to struggle with death, alone, that I feel and see only death! I feel like death!
” And that, you see, is the crux of it.’

David glanced at an equally confused Sara before turning back to their client. ‘I'm sorry, Sienna, we don't understand.’

‘When Jim died I was alone. Struggling, but not in the sense that I could not cope with my daughter. On the contrary, she was my lifeblood – Eliza was my hope. But perhaps one was always the halfway mark – or the third-way mark when it really comes down to it – because now I am like Catherine, alive, but I feel like death.’

David looked at Sara again, wondering if she was thinking the same thing he was. ‘Sienna,’ he began, ‘are you saying that your husband – that he was part of all this? That his death was not an accident, that he was the first victim and that your daughter was …’

‘It had to be, don't you think?’ she said, as if the answer was a given. ‘If not, it would be all too much of a coincidence.’

There was that word again, the one that had haunted this case from the get-go.

‘It is not like I have not thought about it,’ she said, her eyes starting to glisten. ‘Believe me when I tell you that, for the past few days I have, of course, thought of nothing else.’

David believed her once again, as he contemplated the hell she must be going through.

‘But why?’ asked Sara then. ‘What is it about your husband and your daughter that would result in their being targets of –’

‘Oh no,’ interrupted Sienna, a blink now releasing a single tear that trailed down her pale cheek. ‘This is not just about them. At least I don't think so.’

‘Then who?’ asked Sara.

‘Why, me of course,’ their client answered. ‘In the end this is all about me.’