The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
CHAPTER 26
At three minutes before seven, my doorbell rang. I looked through the glass panes of the front door and let out a frustrated sigh.
Robert had brought flowers. Again. The last ones hadn’t even died yet. I swung open the door before I had a chance to rethink the action. “More flowers?” I gave the bouquet a questioning look.
He swatted at a mosquito. “I was raised to bring a gift when you visit someone’s home. I bring men scotch and women flowers. Don’t take it personally.”
“How sexist of you.” I smirked. “For the record, I like scotch, also.”
“I’ll remember that.” He pulled the door shut the minute he was inside and flipped the dead bolt. “The bugs are terrible.”
I tried not to stare at the locked door, the hardware new and shiny. He was here to protect me, I reminded myself. A bit of added muscle power in addition to the baseball bat I kept in the coat closet.
He paused in the foyer and sniffed. “It smells delicious in here. I’m sorry you had to cook, but I’m dying for more of your cooking.”
I didn’t respond, still emotionally opposed to this dinner. I had protested, he had countered, and it wasn’t easy to debate an attorney. In part because I couldn’t share the true reasons for my trepidation, which had less to do with my legal reputation and more to do with the vulnerable swell of hope and attraction that appeared whenever our eye contact held.
There had been a lot of eye contact, which was another something I needed to pull the reins on.
“I’m going to put these in water.” He headed for the sink, and I eyed the dining room table, grateful that I had skipped the candles and real china and stuck out some paper plates and disposable silverware. If that didn’t send out enough of an unromantic vibe, the sweatpants and baggy T-shirt I was wearing would complete the facade.
The water started to run, and I cracked my knuckles, a nervous habit I’d never been able to break.
“I’m assuming you haven’t heard anything from the client? The one who has your wallet?” He turned his head so I could hear him more clearly. He was still in his suit, and I pulled at the bottom of my T-shirt. Maybe I had overdone it with the casualness. There was the whole “Doth protest too much” angle to consider.
What had he asked me? About Luke? I cleared my throat. “No.” The police had gone to his house and questioned his housekeeper, but they hadn’t found the pizza heir.
“What’s your opinion on his state of mind?”
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. “I need to talk to him and explain what he saw in my office. That’s the easiest solution to the problem. I’ve tried his cell, but he isn’t answering my calls.”
Luke’s final words, his fury over Randall, hung on my lips. I was dying to share them with Robert, but doing so would violate Luke’s client confidentiality.
He turned off the water, and I moved closer, watching as he combined the new lilies with the tulips he had brought earlier. “So you’ll tell him that you’re working for me?”
“I’ll tell him I’m looking at the deaths and creating a profile.”
He set the flowers on the windowsill above the sink and turned to me. “You mentioned that your profile is done.”
“My first draft, yes. I’m missing the application or nonapplication of it as it relates to the subject.”
“Randall,” he clarified.
“Yes. I’ll be ready to talk to him this week, if you can set that up.”
“Absolutely. Just let me know what day. I’ll make it happen.”
This week, I would sit across from the alleged Bloody Heart Killer.I had tossed out the interview mention as if I didn’t care, but the idea of it was constant. Would he fit my profile? How high was his emotional intelligence? How would he respond to me—and which questions should I ask?
“I’d like to see the profile so far.”
I opened the oven and peeked at the pot roast, which had another four minutes, according to my timer. “I just need to think through a few pieces of it. I can email it over tomorrow.”
He leaned against the counter and loosened the knot of his tie. “Do you still feel like something is off?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But there’s another thing I want to make sure you’re clear on.”
He raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“I’m going to be honest with my assessment. If you put me on the stand, I’ll deliver the truth, including how Randall Thompson might fit the profile.”
He held up his hand, palm facing out. “Whoa. If I expected a jury puppet, I wouldn’t have wasted your time in giving you the files. I would have just told you what I wanted you to say.”
“Okay.” That was valid. “I just wanted to make sure that was clear.”
He dropped his hand. “Why are you certain that Randall fits your profile? Have you been researching him? Because you were the one who told me—”
“I haven’t done any research on Randall,” I snapped. The timer shrieked, and I silenced it, then worked my hands into two thick Garfield oven mitts. “But I know the basics of his arrest. You’ve got a victim’s testimony and evidence.”
“You’re referring to the box of souvenirs.” He rubbed along the side of his jaw, scraping his fingers through the short hair, and I cataloged the movement in case it was a tell.
“Yes. You’re stuck on the innocence of a man who had pieces of the victims in his home and Scott Harden pegging him by name.” I pulled off the oven mitts. “You’re wasting money in hiring me. It doesn’t matter what psychological theories I give on the stand. They’re going to convict him.” Because he’s guilty.
As my first logic and reasoning professor liked to say, if something smelled like shit and tasted like shit, you didn’t have to see it come out of a horse’s butt. I had raised my hand and asked him how we would accurately recognize what shit was supposed to taste like.
Looking at this logically, Randall was guilty. So, why was Robert defending him? To get close to the man who killed his son? To punish him in some other way?
He picked up a hand towel and slowly wiped off his hands. “I can’t tell if you’re intentionally frustrating me or just being obtuse.”
“What?” I sputtered.
He looked at me in silence, like he was waiting for something, like I had hidden a puzzle piece behind my back, and this time, the eye contact didn’t cause my knees to quiver or my heart to race. This time, I felt guilty—and maybe that’s why his win record was so impressive. The sheer force of guilt admission via glare.
The timer went off again, this time for the rice, and I jabbed at the touch screen and pulled the pot off the burner. When I turned back to Robert, his expression had darkened into distrust. I had failed a test.
But what test?
We ate in stony silence, our plastic silverware scraping quietly against the paper plates, and I was reminded why I was single. Men were idiots. Frustrating, unreadable idiots. To think that I was worried about seduction.
He broke the silence as he was sopping up the final bite of beef sauce with his bread. “This is delicious.” He took a sip of wine, which I had opened when it became obvious that neither of us was going to make conversation. “Where’d you learn to cook? Your mom?”
I folded my napkin longways in my lap and chuckled at the sexist assumption. “No, neither of my parents knew how to cook.” Every meal, regardless of the day, date, holiday, or occasion, was spent the same way—staring at a crisp menu as the waiter hovered, pen raised in expectation.
“Private chef or TV dinners?” he asked with a cautious smile.
I made a face. “When I was young, we just ate out.” Back then, the restaurants were always trademarked by white tablecloths and snooty staff. I cleared my throat. “As I grew older and money grew tighter, the restaurant meals were soon out of our budget.” The bone-in filets and wine flights were slowly replaced with grilled chicken breasts and salads, the downward spiral coming to a dramatic low point when my father announced that we were going to have to start eating at home.
It didn’t go over well and was almost immediately followed up by another announcement: my father was going to have to get a job.
My mother had flung herself onto the couch, Scarlett O’Hara–style, and started to sob. After all, she had married a phone-booth king, one with 172 booths in two airports, fourteen bus stations, five malls, and countless gas stations, each earning almost fifty dollars per week. She wasn’t prepared for her new reality, one with mounting credit card debt and 172 booths that didn’t cover their own real estate rent.
Cell phones were the death of our livelihood and, eventually, their marriage.
Our transition to at-home meals was painful. Mom seemed to be punishing him with every meal. Everything was too bland, too spicy, too raw, or burned. I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or she was just that horrifically bad of a cook. After a few weeks, I took over the kitchen and learned as I went. To my surprise and the enormous gratitude of my father, I was a natural and was soon fixing us stuffed peppers with melted cheese, seafood fettuccine, and his personal favorite, fried pork chops.
“Thank goodness I enjoyed it. It was the one positive to come from what eventually led to Mom’s alcoholism and Dad’s emotional withdrawal.” I took my own large sip of wine.
Robert, who had remained quiet during the story, rose and reached for my empty plate. “I wasn’t close with my parents, either.” He moved through the arched doorway into the kitchen and spooned a second helping onto his plate. “But I had two brothers, so I had someone else to bond with.”
“I had an older brother, but he’s seven years older than me, so I was a bit of an only child when things got really bad.” I picked a piece of bread out of the basket and tore it in half. “Being the only child left at home taught me to be more independent. To emotionally take care of myself. It was good for my character.” I glanced at him. “It was probably good for Gabe’s.”
He groaned. “No counseling, please. Gabe is the last thing I want to talk about.”
Grieving parents often spoke constantly about their children, or not at all. It seemed that Robert was the latter. Still, a resistance to conversation wasn’t an indicator that the subject should be avoided. Quite the opposite.
“You know, all the BH victims were sibling-free.”
That caught his attention. “You’re right.” He looked at me, surprised. “Why is that?”
“It could be convenience,” I remarked. “It’s easier to take a teenager who travels back and forth to school alone, for instance.”
He was silent for a moment. “My wife”—he cleared his throat—“wanted another child. I didn’t. Gabe . . .” He sighed. “Gabe was a handful. He’d have temper tantrums over anything. It started when he was two, and I didn’t have the patience for it, much less a second baby. He got better as he got older. Maybe if Natasha had brought it up again, when he was six or seven, I might have said yes, but—” He broke off. “She didn’t. And then it was too late.”
I tucked my foot under my thigh. “Gabe was ten when she died?”
“Yes.”
“Did he push you away or cling closer to you?”
He sectioned off a piece of meat with the edge of his fork. “Both. Each day was different. Initially there was more pushing, then more clinging. I took a year off work, and that was the most he’d ever seen of me. We grew a lot closer during that year.” He smoothed down the back of his hair. “Now I wish I’d never gone back to work.”
I pulled my wineglass closer to me. “There are very few parents who could have taken a year off to spend time with him, or who would have. Focus on the positives of that. And as far as taking off another six years to spend with him . . .” I shook my head. “You both needed a return to normalcy. If I had been your doctor, I would have strongly recommended a return to work, for both of your sakes.”
He finished chewing and swallowed, taking a sip of wine before he spoke. “What does it say that I took a year off when she died but kept working when he did?”
“It says that you haven’t given yourself permission to mourn. And . . . that year off was focused on his healing and not your own.”
“You know, I don’t need a shrink, Gwen. All the questions, the prodding, the exploration of feelings—I’ve done all that before. I hired the best doctors in the country to help Gabe, and I was right there beside him as they made everything better.”
The reaction rolled off me. I was used to anger and resentment from clients. My first four years in the business had been dominated by court-ordered sessions with disgruntled rage machines who didn’t want any help.
“You seem like you have your life together,” I said mildly. “But keep in mind that any grief techniques you learned with Natasha’s death were designed for a spouse or a son. With Gabe, your grief is that of a father. It’s a different scenario and carries its own and unique mountain of pain.”
“One I’m handling,” he said, his voice rasping.
“Well, you’re defending his alleged murderer,” I pointed out. “So you’ve veered down a rather unorthodox path of healing, if that’s what you want to call it.”
“It’s working for me.”
“Okay.” I poured the final amount from the bottle of wine.
“So, the boys were all only children.” He changed the subject. “What other commonalities did they have?”
I rolled with the new topic, eager to talk it through. “There’s the obvious—they all fit a certain mold. Rich, good-looking, popular, seventeen years old, male. Are you familiar with the psychodynamic theory of criminology?”
“Vaguely. It has to do with unconscious personalities, right?”
I nodded. “Specifically, the development of those unconscious personalities by negative experiences. The unconscious personality, which we call the id, is the primitive drive that most of us are unaware of. The drive to eat. Sleep. Protect our loved ones. Have sex.” I colored slightly and continued on. “That id is normally kept in line by your ego and superego, which are the other pieces of your personality that govern your morals and societal expectations. It tells a man that though he wants to screw his wife, he shouldn’t do it in the middle of the grocery store. Or, in a less crude analogy, though you may hate your boss, killing him isn’t the solution that makes the most sense, given the consequences and moral turpitude of the act.”
I had his full attention, his gaze on mine. His breathing slowed, senses fully engaged, food forgotten. It was intoxicating, and I struggled to maintain my momentum.
“Serial killers are often overtaken by their id, due to a weak ego and superego. The psychodynamic theory blames those weak egos on a lack of proper development—typically during adolescence, and often from trauma. In this case . . .” I searched for the right way to explain it. “If the killer was bullied during his formative middle or high school years, it could have stunted his personal development of his ego and superego, which makes him at much higher risk for his id to manifest latent feelings of oppression toward an individual who reminds him of that bully.”
“Wait.” He held up his hand. “So the killer was bullied by someone who fits this mold—rich, good-looking, popular.”
“Maybe bullied. Maybe molested. Maybe manipulated. This is just a theory,” I stressed. “A possibility. But it would explain the resemblances between the boys, and the abuse. He’s not just killing them. He’s toying with them. He’s building a relationship with them. He’s fighting for their attention in every way he can get it. And then, either he loses control and they die, or he grows bored with the boy and he ends it. My profile points to the latter.” I paused and took a sip of wine.
“He grows bored and kills them,” he confirmed flatly.
“Yes.” It was my turn to change the subject. “Can I ask you something about Randall?” At his nod, I continued. “Have any other students come forward and said anything? Male or female?”
He paused. “Not particularly. I mean, in the last twenty years? A few complaints from disgruntled students, but nothing major.”
“Male or female students?” I thought of Luke, his eyes red, face trembling in rage. He couldn’t have been the only one. Surely there had been more.
“All female.” He picked up his fork. “Now, can the inquisition stop long enough for me to enjoy these last few bites of home cooking?”
I smiled. “Sure. Go ahead.”
At the sink, Robert ran hot water as I packaged up the leftovers for him to take home. I glanced at him as I snapped a lid into place. He had abandoned the jacket and lost the tie, his stiff shirtsleeves now rolled up to the elbows, his posture relaxed. The change was nice.
He reached past me for a dish towel, and our sides brushed.
“So, the detective who came by earlier . . .” He picked up a sponge and began to scrub it against a pot. “What was that about?”
I put the rest of the bread in a ziplock bag and sealed it closed. “I think he’s just keeping an eye on me.”
“Why did you ask about John Abbott’s death? They’re investigating it?”
“I think they investigate all deaths, especially when it’s a situation like that where two people are involved.”
“Is it suspicious?”
I hesitated. He’s a defense attorney, I reminded myself. Someone used to picking apart cases and looking at them from all sides. Still, my unease grew. What exactly had he seen in John’s file? I stacked the containers and put them into a bag with the bread. “I don’t think so,” I said carefully. “People have heart attacks all the time. Even though Brooke was fairly young, I think she had a family history of that.” John had said that to me once, hadn’t he? He’d said something about her medicine, something about her mother . . . I would have made a notation if he had, especially because poisoning had always been a common method in the laundry list of ways that John wanted to kill her. As a pharmacist, it had been one of the most logical paths for him to take, but also one of the most risky in terms of drawing suspicion.
It was another reminder that I needed to do a full overview of John’s file. I should have looked already, but I’d been putting it off due to guilt and the newer, more exciting distraction on my time—the BH case.
“Oh, so Brooke’s death is the one they find suspicious?”
Too late, I realized the error in my response. I had replied to him while knowing the most likely true sequence of events: John kills Brooke, kills himself. Outside observers—both he and Detective Saxe—would put the bulk of attention and suspicion on the stabbing death, not the heart attack. It was why Detective Saxe had asked whether Brooke might have killed him, and what Robert had been referring to when he had asked about the case.
So, maybe he hadn’t read John’s file. Maybe he hadn’t seen more than a line or two. Maybe all my paranoia was completely off base.
“No,” I quickly amended. “They don’t find her death suspicious. I was just saying that heart problems ran in her family. And John was very close to her. People handle grief in strange ways.”
“So, you think it’s possible that he killed himself?”
“Yeah.” I turned to meet his eyes. “I do.”
He nodded, returning his attention to the pot, and inside, my unease bloomed.