Indefensible (26 page)

Thursday, 7:12 p.m.

D
r. Jamie Gainsford slid open the file drawer on the side of his desk. He flipped through the folder tabs until he reached the very last one.

Unmarked, the slim, plain folder could be mistaken by a casual observer as being empty.

But it held, for Jamie, one of his most treasured possessions. He opened the cover. A small, blurry Polaroid lay crookedly inside, lost in the folder's depths. Rather like his old self, blurred and lost in the depths of what he'd become.

He picked up the photo. For the first time in his life, the sorrow at his loss was replaced by a different emotion. It was, he realized, a sense of calm. Completion.

He studied the smiling girl with the light blond ponytail. Beth. His cousin. The child he had spent summer vacations with on his family's citrus farm in South Africa.

The girl he had ached for when he was fourteen years old.

His desire for her twelve-year-old body had both disgusted and aroused him, his disgust feeding his excitement at the illicit nature of what he wanted to do to her. Her body consumed his thoughts, his heart, his soul. Finally, he couldn't take it any longer. He cornered her in the shed and pulled off her panties, managing to push his hand between her legs before she ran away.

He never saw his cousin again. He was sent to boarding school. He'd been ashamed but unrepentant. His need, at that age, had been underlined with defiance.

Eight months later, Beth fell off the back of a pickup truck at her family farm. She struck her head and died of massive internal hemorrhaging.

His grief was intense. He often wondered what would have happened if he'd been able to consummate the act with her. Would it have doused his unnatural lust? Could he have gone on to a normal life?

Or would one taste of her prepubescent body have sent him over the edge at the tender age of fourteen? So blinded was he by lust, he'd most likely have ended up in prison.

He attempted to understand his compulsion by studying psychology. Initially, he'd harbored the naive hope that he could eradicate his compulsion. It didn't take him long to realize that it was something that would never leave him. So he taught himself methods of controlling it.

His victims were few, and he was proud of that fact. He could have let the beast overwhelm him years ago—he could have taken advantage of many more clients than he had.

But he hadn't.

But exercising control came at a cost. Every time the compulsion stirred, it was stronger, more powerful, forcing him to do things he had never thought possible—had never thought he'd take pleasure in—when he was a fourteen-year-old boy lusting after Beth.

And every time he allowed the compulsion to take over, it was so much harder to return to his normal life. After the Becky episode, he fled to Toronto, partly to cover his tracks, partly to regain control of whatever was left of him.

He'd managed pretty well for three years, even beginning a relationship with Elise. He toyed with the idea he might be in love with her.

And then Elise brought a vacation photo to one of their sessions.

When he saw the photo of Lucy, legs akimbo on a beach in Florida, her hair streaked by the sun, holding out a seashell, he'd fought to hide his reaction from her mother. Shock, desire, longing, lust, hurt, love—a flash flood that burst through the defenses he'd erected. Leaving him exposed and vulnerable to the beast. And unable to control his compulsion any longer. It refused to be exiled; it refused to be released on demand the way it had with Becky Murphy. It was tired of being held captive to his will; it consumed him, breathing when he breathed, but never sleeping.

It had just been waiting. Waiting for a girl like Beth to return to his life and allow him to complete a journey that had begun three decades before.

It was a one-way trip.

For both him and Lucy.

 

He dialed Lucy's cell phone.

She answered, her voice muted.

“Hi, Lucy,” Jamie said softly. “Is this an okay time to talk? Just you and me?”

“Yes. I'm up in my room.”

He settled back in his chair. Her face, caught in a moment of intense grief, stared at him from his laptop screen. “What's been going on the past few days?” He held his breath. What had the police done with his notes?

“My dad's been arrested.” Lucy's voice trembled.

Jamie closed his eyes. It had worked. His plan had worked.

“They think he killed my mother.”

“What do you think?” he asked, forcing himself not to smile because he knew Lucy would hear the excitement in his voice if he did.

“I don't think he did it.” Then she whispered, “I don't know.”

His heart pounded. Her state of mind was what he'd hoped for.

“If he's guilty,” she said finally, “what happens to him?”

“He'll be sent to prison, Lucy.”

“For the rest of his life?”

“For a long time.”

He heard a sob. “What will happen to me, Dr. Gainsford?”

He hoped she could feel his comfort over the phone. “Don't worry, my dear. You'll be taken care of.”

After a few minutes, Jamie ended the conversation.
He needed to put into action the next phase of his plan. The cat would be locked outside. He knew his neighbors often fed it. Eventually, when Jamie failed to return, he was sure Herbert would migrate over to their house. Cats were adaptable. It was all about survival.

He took out the garbage, drew the curtains and fluffed the pillows. When the police eventually broke into the house, he wanted it to reflect his state of mind: calm, controlled, at ease with the world.

He made a fresh pot of coffee and warmed his thermos for the overnight drive back to Nova Scotia. He would leave Toronto in a few hours, when it was dark. Once he was in Nova Scotia, he'd hide in his cabin and wait until the moment presented itself to snatch Lucy.

From then on, it would be simple. The plan that had begun with the plotting of Elise's death was now at its fruition. He'd managed to kill his lover, fool the police and leave Lucy emotionally vulnerable and unprotected. He couldn't quite believe it had fallen into place as neatly as it had.

All he needed to do was get her back to his cabin. He'd be finished with her in less than an hour. He knew that he wouldn't be able to avoid police scrutiny a second time around—and he didn't care.

This wasn't about trying to get away with a crime.

This was about committing it.

After that, whatever happened, happened.

Lucy would be worth it.

Thursday, 7:09 p.m.

T
he cab pulled up outside Kate's house. Eddie Bent was nine minutes late. She stood by the door, watching him heave himself out and toss a cigarette butt onto the sidewalk.
Nice
.

He walked at a surprisingly brisk pace for a man his size, Kate thought. She upgraded her impression of him from sloth to rhinoceros.

“Come in.” She ushered Randall's last hope into her living room. Alaska followed. “Please forgive the mess. I'm in the middle of painting my house.”

Eddie Bent plopped himself into an armchair and let Alaska sniff him. “Have you ever done an arraignment before, Kate?”

She placed two mugs of tea on the table next to some shortbread cookies that Enid had baked. “No.”

He added three spoons of sugar to his tea and sipped it, his face relaxing with appreciation. “McGrath Barrett doesn't like to muddy its hands, does it?”

She thought of Dr. Mercer, Great Life's expert
witness. He had shown there were more subtle ways to get dirty. She smiled wanly. “My specialty is civil litigation.”

He put his mug on the coffee table. “I've spoken to Randall. He's being held at the police station for twenty-four hours. His arraignment is tomorrow morning at Provincial Court. All you have to do is listen to the Crown's charges against him, and then ask the court to provide a date to appear in the Supreme Court ASAP. Then when you appear in Supreme Court, you ask for a date for the bail hearing.”

The way Eddie spoke about it all, it sounded like a walk in the park. It would be for a pro like him. Nerves flared in Kate's stomach. She'd only appeared once in Provincial Court, in front of now Supreme Court justice Hope Carson. “Then what happens?”

“We ask the judge to set a date for a bail hearing. Because it's a murder charge, the onus will be on us to prove Randall is not a threat to the public.”

Kate's heart sank. “So he has to stay in prison until the bail hearing?”

“Yes. And if we can't get bail, he'll be held in custody until his trial.” He bit into one of Enid's cookies. “Which would be months away.”

Kate couldn't imagine Randall sitting in a jail cell for months. It was like cooping up a tiger. All that restless energy concentrated in one small square.

The enormity of her task hit her. Randall could be jailed for years if she did not succeed in her defense of him. How the hell could she do this?

“When will your license be reinstated?”

Eddie brushed the crumbs off his fingers onto her rug. “Thirty days after I pay them.”

“When was that?”

“I haven't paid them yet. Randall didn't have the money.”

Two bombshells in two seconds. “I thought you were going to pay them.”

“I don't have the funds, Kate.” He slipped his hand in his shirt pocket, reaching for his cigarettes, then realized where he was. His hand fell back to his lap. “My wife moved to Montreal with my daughter. She sold the house and took what equity we had to start over. I'm living in an apartment.”

“That doesn't seem fair.”

He shook his head. “I put them through hell, Kate. They deserved to start over.” He sipped his tea. “Just like you did.”

Kate had just bitten into a cookie. She threw him a startled look and mumbled, “What do you mean?”

“I knew your father, Kate,” Eddie said. “I defended him at his fraud trial.”

“Jesus.” The shortbread stuck in her throat. She gulped some tea. “How could you ask me to work with you, when you defended that bastard?”

Eddie settled back into his chair.

“You tricked me into working with you.”

“That's not true,” he said mildly.

“You defended my father, Eddie! You defended someone who defrauded thousands of dollars and bankrupted his family. He humiliated us. And left us without a single goddamn thing—” She stopped, afraid she would start to cry in front of the lawyer who'd tried to get the man
who ruined her life off the hook. If her father hadn't destroyed their family life, then her sister might not have resorted to drugs, and Kate might not have made that fatal mistake fifteen years ago…

Her fingers clenched so tightly around the mug that the heat seared her skin.

“Look, Kate,” Eddie said quietly. “I don't judge whether someone is guilty or innocent. That's the role of the courts. My job is to defend the rights of an accused. We have to presume they are innocent until the courts decide. That's the role of a defense lawyer.”

“But how can you defend things like that?”

“I'm not defending their crimes. Just the person.” He sipped his tea, then added, “I don't make moral judgments.”

“My father was found guilty.” Her legally trained mind acknowledged the rationality of Eddie's argument, but it did nothing to eradicate her anger. She still felt betrayed.

“The courts found his actions unlawful,” Eddie agreed. “He repaid his debt to society by going to jail, Kate. That's the way the system works.”

But what about the debt he owed me?
she wanted to argue. It wasn't a monetary debt; it was an emotional one. To deprive her of the protection and care she needed in her childhood; to expose her to humiliation; to drive her sister toward addiction; to force her mother to hold down two jobs and eventually die of overwork and grief.

She cupped her mug and looked away. She did not want Eddie Bent to see the tears pricking her eyes. His hazel gaze had remained unravaged by his alcoholism.
He surveyed her with a keenness she perversely wished had been dulled by his addiction.

“I know your father felt remorseful about what he did to your family, Kate,” Eddie said.

“Don't speak to me about him. I don't want to know.” Her mother had shielded her from her father's incarceration. She hadn't let her daughters, on the verge of adolescence, visit the penitentiary housing her father. Ten years later, after her father had started a new life out west, Kate did not inform him of her mother's funeral. He had been excised from their lives like a tumor. Or so she had thought. In reality, the initial sickness was gone, but the seeds had been left behind to spread their toxicity.

Eddie stood. “I've got to go. I've got a meeting at 8:00 p.m. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call me tonight. I don't need much sleep.”

His words crashed her thoughts back to their current dilemma. “Did you say that Randall was going to pay for your fees but he didn't have the money?”

Eddie stopped at her front door. “Apparently, Nina Woods has put a stop payment on his income stream.”

Man, oh, man.
Kate's insides shriveled at Nina Woods' machinations. She hadn't realized the degree to which Nina was set against Randall.

Randall's arraignment would be all over the news tomorrow; so would the name of the junior lawyer in his firm who was representing him. Nina would be hauling Kate into her office by the afternoon, she guessed.

And the media would be drooling to see the killer of the Body Butcher defending the managing partner of
the scandal-riddled McGrath Barrett on the charge of murdering his wife.

When she thought about it like that, she couldn't believe she'd said yes. But it wasn't the circus that surrounded the case that bothered her. She could handle that. She'd become quite good at deflecting the media.

No, it was the case itself. When the facts of Elise's death had come trickling in, she had been convinced Nick Barrett was the culprit.

But Nick's accusation, coupled with the knowledge that Randall had impregnated his ex-wife and then had a bitter argument just hours before she was killed, were difficult pieces of evidence to dismiss.

Why would he want Elise dead, though?

Why do most men kill their spouses? It was a control issue. And for Elise to have an abortion without Randall's knowledge, and then throw it in his face, might have been enough to tip him over the edge when his son had refused to take a vacation with him, and his law firm was rebelling against him.

But Randall wasn't like that. She closed her eyes. He'd stroked her hair off her forehead when she was lying injured in the hospital, reassuring her when she'd whimpered in fear that John Lyons was in her hospital room.

He'd also stolen her notes out of her file to protect Hope Carson. A misplaced act of chivalry, perhaps. But a breach of ethics. He had put her in a difficult position, a humiliating position with her ex-fiancé.

Was Randall putting her in another one? Was he relying on her celebrity status as vanquisher of corporate
wrongdoing and slayer of serial killers to gild his own actions?

Had he killed his ex-wife?

It was awfully convenient for him to have suffered a blackout that night.

And yet, the fact that he couldn't remember his actions seemed to torment him.

She watched Eddie stop outside her house and fish in his pocket for a cigarette.

I'm not defending their crimes,
Eddie had said.
Just the person.

Her underdog instincts rose to the surface. She had agreed to act as Randall's defense lawyer. It was her job to put forth the best defense possible, to lay out the facts, repudiate unsubstantiated allegations and leave it to the judge to make a decision.

That was all she could do.

She could no longer allow her emotions to guide her judgment. She'd made a promise, and it was one she intended to keep.

After this case was complete, she and Randall would have their own judgment day.

But for now, her role would be his legal counsel. And nothing else.

Tomorrow would be hellish. If she was dreading it, she could imagine how her client felt. At least she could sleep in her own bed tonight.

Outside on the sidewalk, Eddie took several deep drags on his cigarette. Fueled with tobacco, he hurried away.

A whiff of smoke drifted by Kate, acrid and bitter.