In the Company of Liars (12 page)

“Deputy, is this a true and accurate copy of a printout of the manuscript that was deleted from the defendant's computer at three a.m. on Sunday, February the eighth of this year?”

“Yes. That's it.”

Ogren moves the document into evidence. “Take you to page forty-eight, Deputy. Is there a new chapter beginning on that page?”

“Yes, there is. Chapter Five.”

“What is the title of Chapter Five?”

“The title is ‘Alibi.' ”

“Okay. ‘Alibi.' Now, if you would, turn to page fifty-one. Are we still on the chapter entitled ‘Alibi,' Deputy?”

“Yes.”

“And could you read, beginning at the second full paragraph?”

She sits at the desk and pulls up his e-mail. She is not entirely sure what to write or to whom she should send it. It could be anything at all and serve her purposes. All that really matters is that an e-mail was sent from his computer at nine o'clock in the evening, while she is believed to be at a party, and long after she visited his home at noon today. An alibi. Proof of life.

This manuscript, Allison is sure, hurts her in more ways than one. Bad enough that it contains the identical alibi she created here. The fact that she deleted it from her hard drive only hours after returning from Sam's house speaks volumes. It also shows the judge that Allison can think in diabolical ways. That is not a trait a criminal defendant wants the court to see.

And it hurts her attorney's theory of a frame-up. They will argue that her fingernail and earring and hair follicle were planted at the crime scene by the “real” killer. But even if they could make that case, how do they explain how the killer copy-catted this exact method of manufacturing an alibi? When Allison was notoriously secretive about her novels in process? When Allison never let anyone read them until they were finished? Who could possibly have known that Allison was writing about this particular alibi-creating method?

“Deputy,” says Roger Ogren. “You weren't an eyewitness to the murder of Sam Dillon.”

“No.”

“You can't say from personal knowledge that the defendant killed him.”

“No.”

“And you can't say from personal knowledge that the defendant went back to Mr. Dillon's home and sent an e-mail, after his death, to provide herself with an alibi.”

“No, I can't.”

These are all leading questions, but Allison's lawyer will not object, because they sound more like questions that would come from her attorney. They are a setup, of course, to what will follow.

“But what
does
this document you found in the ‘trash' bin of the defendant's computer tell us, Deputy?”

The witness nods. “It tells us that whoever committed this crime, and sent this e-mail, followed the exact model of what the protagonist did in Allison Pagone's next novel. A novel that has not yet been published. That hasn't even been finished. A novel that, as far as we know, nobody has ever read with the exception of Allison Pagone. To say nothing of the fact that in the middle of the night following Mr. Dillon's death, she went to the trouble of deleting this document from her laptop.”

Allison's lawyer objects, a long-winded eruption, and the judge will sustain the objection, but it doesn't matter. She knows it. The judge will agree, ultimately, with everything the witness just said. Allison copy-catted an alibi from a novel that no one had read, tried to trash the evidence, and got caught.

I
live next door to Sam Dillon,” says Richard Rothman. He is a scholarly looking man, a former small-business owner in his mid-seventies now, with a long, weathered face and a protruding nose on which his glasses rest.

“Do you recall the evening of Saturday, February the seventh of this year?” asks Roger Ogren. “And if I could direct your attention, sir, to the late hours of the night and the early morning of the following day, Sunday the eighth.”

“I do remember that evening.”

Of course he does. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have no memory whatsoever of a sleepless night. But when later that Sunday morning, squad cars had pulled up all around his neighbor's home, the memory stuck.

“I often have trouble sleeping,” he continues. “Or I should say, my sleep patterns are very irregular. Since my wife died, I just don't sleep like I used to. So, I had slept much of that Saturday evening and by eleven o'clock at night, I was wide awake.”

“What were you doing around that time?”

“I was painting. I do watercolors in my sunroom.” Mr. Rothman laughs, a throaty chuckle. “Not much of a sunroom in the middle of February.”

“Sure.” Roger Ogren smiles. “And where does that sunroom face, sir?”

“The room overlooks the road. Oh, I can see across the street to my neighbors. I can also see to the east, to Sam's property. It's a bay window, y'see.”

“Sure. So you could see Mr. Dillon's property.”

“Can see his driveway, his yard, bit of his house but not much.”

“Were you awake at the hour of one in the morning on Sunday, the eighth of February?”

“Yes.”

“And could you see outside?”

“Well, yes, I could. I'm a bit hard of hearing. I'm not blind.”

“Very good, sir. Can you describe for us what it looked like outside at that time of night?”

“Well, basically it was quiet. But, I'd say a little after one, a truck comes driving down the road and parks outside Sam's.”

“A truck. A little after one in the morning. Can you describe that truck?”

“One of those sport-utility jobs. The Lexus. The mini-SUV. It was silver.”

The SUV that Allison drives. She has a 2003 model, silver. Roger Ogren has a photograph of Allison's Lexus and shows it to the witness.

“Yeah, it looked just like that,” he says. “It was silver. Didn't get a look at the plates, of course.” He shakes his head. “It was moving pretty fast down the street, all right. Couldn't really see exactly what happened when it stopped. I just know that it parked by Sam's house. Sam has about an acre of property, so there was some distance. Houses are pretty well set apart out there. That's the point of a cottage on a lake. Privacy.”

“That's fine, sir. What do you remember next?”

“I'd say about fifteen minutes passed or so. Say, maybe twenty.”

“So this would be about what time?”

“I'd say about twenty, twenty-five past one.” He wags a finger. “That time of night, it stood out. Don't see a lot of traffic turning into our subdivision. At least, not in the winter, unless it's the holidays and the young ones are around.”

“So a car drove to Sam Dillon's house at just after one in the morning, Sunday morning, and drove away some twenty minutes later?”

“That's right. Yes. It was about twenty minutes later.”

Long enough, the prosecutor is saying without saying it, for Allison to return to Sam's house and send an e-mail, at about 1:18 and 42 seconds in the morning.

A
collective pause falls over the courtroom. Opening statements have concluded. The prosecution has called its first witness, the only witness this first afternoon of trial. The media has heard bits and pieces of the anticipated testimony in written filings and at the preliminary hearing, but never in her own words.

It has been a roller coaster, her twenty years. This will be as low as it hits. Allison remembers the moments, all in fleeting flashes, the snapshots that stick. Who knows why certain memories stay with you while others vaporize?

She remembers the nights, when Jessica was a child. Midnight, usually, when Allison would rise from bed and go to her young daughter's bedroom, shake her awake and take her to the bathroom. Jessica always defiant, swinging her arms and moaning, her eyes sunken in sleep, her wispy hair standing on end, mumbling complaints, as she sat on the toilet and tinkled.

Allison was certainly relieved when Jessica's
bedwetting ceased around her tenth birthday, but she would always concede a sense of loss as well. These were the times when her love was most tested—casual, everyday moments when her daughter was most annoying and unwieldy, when she was most vulnerable, when Allison herself was incredibly tired. Times like these were when she recognized most palpably the concept of love.

Allison accepts that she cannot judge this young woman with any degree of objectivity, but she finds her captivating. She sees tremendous beauty and cannot imagine how anyone could miss it. Her cinnamon hair, a compromise between Mat's dark brown and Allison's red. Her thin eyebrows arching over liquid brown eyes. Soft, clear skin that most would describe as Caucasian, though the Latin influence is there, too.

Yes, she is beautiful, and that knowledge has always tugged Allison in opposing directions. A mixed blessing. She knows how men think. She knows Jessica will catch their eye, has already done so. There is such a thing, Allison believes, as being too beautiful, so glamorous that things come too easily. So stunning that men will be drawn to her for only one reason. Mat was the first to comment on that.
I was sixteen once
, he said, when Jessica was that age, with the wariness of a man who could read the minds of the young men—boys, really—who called on Jessica.

Allison had tried to keep watch over Jessica the way Allison had wanted it when she herself was that age. She tried to give her space, not appear overly inquisitive, create an atmosphere in which Jessica would feel comfortable sharing.

Look what
that
had gotten her. She had thought it was odd that her daughter, at age seventeen, had no boyfriends at school. Looking at this young woman, Allison couldn't understand how boys could not be interested, and despite Mat's growing suspicion that perhaps Jessica didn't like
boys at all, Allison knew better. She asked, and her daughter put her off.
They're so immature
, she would explain.

When the police called, Allison didn't understand, at first. It didn't register. Her daughter and her sophomore geometry teacher, in the parking lot by the school's baseball field. A patrolman had come upon them, late in the evening on a school night. There was nothing automatically incriminating about it. Jessica was fully clothed and the teacher was, too, though the patrolman explained to Allison that the teacher's shirt was pulled out and it wasn't too hard to figure what had been happening before they saw the squad car's headlights.

Did she want to press charges? Request an investigation? Allison didn't know what to say, when she picked up her mortified daughter at the station. They drove silently home. Mat was at the capital, so they had the chance to talk woman-to-woman without the hysteria of an irate father. Allison demanded that Jessica explain herself. So it came out, finally. She admitted it. It had been going on for almost a year, since she was a sophomore and in his class.

“I do,” Jessica says, to the court reporter swearing her in.

They didn't press charges. It would be all over the place if they did. An underage girl's name would be kept out of the press, but somehow it would get out. Jessica pleaded with her mother and father, and they ultimately agreed to keep it quiet. The teacher agreed to resign his position immediately and to never teach again. And Allison was left trying to figure out how she missed the whole thing for almost a year.

She never looked at her daughter the same way again. She had expected secrets but not like this. She felt betrayed and inadequate. She explained to Jessica that it was the teacher's fault, that he was the controlling adult, but that Jessica had to take responsibility for her own actions, too. She wanted to teach this responsibility while, at the same
time, she wanted to hover over her daughter's every movement but knew she could not.

Had Jessica known, even then, that her parents' marriage was in trouble? Did that play a part? Allison had deliberately stayed with Mat until Jessica graduated and moved on to college. For Jessica's sake. Had her decision had the opposite effect?

And now there are secrets, again, since the divorce. Jessica has taken her father's side, and Allison's questions surrounding Jessica's love life are once more met with derision. She remembers last December, her daughter being not only evasive but openly hostile to Allison's queries.

There's a guy
, she told Allison over dinner,
but you probably wouldn't approve.

Jessica gives the appearance of being composed. She is acting, Allison thinks. She has always been good at that. Folding her leg, placing her hands in her lap, lifting her chin and looking over the courtroom. She listens carefully to the questions and takes a moment before answering. She has told them that she is a junior at Mansbury College, with a double major in political science and history. She has told them that she worked part-time at Dillon & Becker as a research assistant, that she is considering law school. She has told them that her parents separated more than a year ago and were divorced by last Thanksgiving, about seven months ago.

It's okay to tell them
, Allison has assured her daughter repeatedly, as if Jessica had any choice.

“Tell us about the seventh of February,” Roger Ogren says. “A Saturday evening.”

The day Sam was murdered.

“I had been on campus all day,” Jessica answers. “About eight that night, I went home.”

“ ‘Home' being your mother's home?”

“Yes.” Jessica tucks a hair behind her ear.

“Why did you go to your mother's home, Ms. Pagone?”

“To study. I had a couple of papers due and it's—sometimes it's hard to study at the dorms. So I'll go home and study. I'll do my laundry sometimes, too.”

The judge smiles; he must recall when his children did the same thing, took advantage of their time at home for meals and the washer and dryer. Jessica looks at the judge as if she has been left out of the joke. She couldn't smile right now if someone tickled her feet.

“What time did you arrive at the house? You said ‘around' eight?”

“I think it was about eight-thirty.”

“Was your mother home at eight-thirty on the evening of Saturday, the seventh of February?”

“No.”

“When did you see your mother that night?”

Jessica looks into her lap. “I can't say exactly.”

“An approximate time, Ms. Pagone?”

Allison, her hand resting on a notepad, catches herself crumpling the sheet.

“I had fallen asleep,” Jessica says. “I hadn't been keeping track of time.”

She's being difficult. They already know this information. It will have the opposite effect, Allison realizes. The more Jessica fights with the prosecutor, the more it highlights how hurtful her testimony is, how reluctant she is to part with the information.

“Was it before or after midnight that your mother came home?”

“I—I guess it's hard to say,” she says quietly.

“Your Honor,” says Roger Ogren.

“You can lead, Counsel,” says the judge.

“Ms. Pagone, it was after midnight, wasn't it?”

“I—yes, it was after midnight, I believe.”

“In fact, it was after one in the morning. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Closer to two, in fact.”

“Yes.”

“Where in the house were you when your mother came home?”

Jessica's eyes fill. “On the couch.”

“And your mother came in through the garage door?”

Jessica nods.

“Please answer out loud, Ms. Pag—”

“She came in through the garage. Yes.”

“Describe her appearance.”

“She was probably tired,” Jessica says. “It was late. It was two in the morning. Of
course
she would be tired.”

“Tell us what she was wearing.”

“She was wearing”—Jessica extends a hand—“a jacket. A sweatshirt and jeans.”

“A sweatshirt.” Roger Ogren retrieves the evidence bag holding the maroon sweatshirt, emblazoned with
MANSBURY COLLEGE
, and shows it to her. “This sweatshirt.”

“Yes, that might be the sweatshirt.”

“It
might
be?” Ogren asks. “Jessica, does your mother, to your knowledge, own more than one maroon sweatshirt with the words ‘Mansbury College' on it?”

Jessica shakes her head. “I bought it for her. At the campus store.”

“So, having the chance to consider it,” says Ogren, shaking the evidence bag, “are you confident that this was definitely the—”

“That was the sweatshirt she was wearing.
Okay
?”

“Okay.” Ogren replaces the evidence and turns to Jessica again. “Tell us what you saw on your mother's face,” he requests. He is clearly trying not to cross-examine his own witness, even though the judge has given him permission to do so. “Did you see something on her face?”

“There might have been some dirt on her face.”

Jessica is speaking so quietly that Ogren and the judge lean forward to hear her.

“Dirt on her face.” Roger Ogren corrects the problem by
speaking at a high volume himself. “And what about her hands?”

“Yes.”

“Yes—she had dirt on her hands, too?”

“Yes.”

“She had dirt on her face and on her hands. And what else? Her coloring? Her hair?”

Jessica, with hooded eyes, speaks quickly into the microphone, as if to get the answer over with as quickly as possible. “Her hair was matted down. Like she was sweating. She was pale. She looked sick.”

“And did you talk to her about these things, Ms. Pagone? Did you ask your mother about the dirt on her face and hands? Her matted hair? Her pale coloring?”

“Mother—what did you do?” she had cried. “What happened?”

“I asked her.”

“Tell me, Mother. Tell me what happened.”

“And what did she do or say?”

“She went to the bathroom.” Jessica looks away, as if to avoid the entire thing. That is an impossible task now. She is trapped on the witness stand, surrounded on all sides by people very interested in what she has to say.

“What did—”

“She vomited.”

“Your mother came into the house, went right to the bathroom and vomited?”

Jessica reaches for the water placed on the witness stand for her. She does not answer the question, but Roger Ogren probably doesn't care. He just wanted to repeat the fact that Allison threw up the moment she walked into the house.

Tell me what happened, Mother. Tell me.

“Did you talk to your mother after that, Jessica? Did your mother tell you where she had been, what she had done, why she had dirt on her hands and face at two in the morning?”

“Objection,” Ron McGaffrey says, half out of his chair.

“One question at a time, Counsel,” the judge says.

“She didn't say much,” Jessica says, before a new question is posed. No one seems inclined to stop her, under the circumstances. “She—I asked her what had happened. She said she didn't want to talk about it. She went upstairs and that was that.”

“And what did you do?”

“I—she went to bed. I asked her if she wanted anything. If she was feeling well. She just wanted to go to bed.”

“And you didn't talk to her again that night?”

“No. I finally went to my bedroom and went to sleep.”

“Then let's go to the following morning, Jessica. The day after Sam Dillon's murder.”

Allison's attorney objects. This being the first day of the trial, there has been no testimony fixing the date of Sam's death as Saturday night, February seventh. The judge sustains the objection. Roger Ogren rephrases.

“Sunday morning,” Jessica says. “I woke up about ten. I went to get the paper. I made some eggs and started studying.”