Authors: Sydney Bauer
30
I
t was 9 am and Nashua Street Suffolk County Jail was open for business. The cool air came from the river, a steady breeze whipping up over the surface of the adjacent Charles and pummelling through the jail's glass front doors every time they were opened – which was often.
Sara stopped pacing in front of him. She moved a wisp of chestnut hair that had escaped her low bun away from her face as she fixed her eyes on his.
‘I'm not sure how we should play this, David,’ she said.
‘Only one way to play it, Sara, and that is straight up.’
‘We should have been the ones to tell her.’
‘It was out of our control.’
She pushed the curl back once again. ‘Sometimes our system of justice has a lot to answer for.’
But he had no time to respond to that truism as the deputy signalled them for their security passes and they moved quickly through the partition.
They met her in the interview room. The walls looked whiter than ever, as if they had been repainted in an effort to hide the particles of despair that clung to them like parasites underneath.
She did not look up. She was thinner and smaller and paler. Her shoulder bones protruded from under her too-bright top, her arms hung like stripped branches of oak, dull and lifeless beside her.
Sara moved around the table and crouched low. She took her hand – Sara's mocha skin dark against the skeletal fingers of their client.
‘Sienna, I am so sorry,’ said Sara.
Sienna did not respond.
‘I know this is – beyond horrible,’ Sara went on, ‘and I know I could kneel here arguing that at least you can put your daughter to rest, but if it were me,’ she swallowed, ‘if it were Lauren, it would make no difference, so I am not going to pretend to …’
Sara's voice started to falter so David moved further into the room.
‘I'm sorry,’ he repeated to his client. And everything froze as the Catholic-raised David remembered something a brother at St Stephen's Prep had once told him – that
sorrow looks back, worry looks around and faith looks up.
She looked up at him. ‘Were you there?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
It looked as if she was about to ask him another question, but in all honesty what could she have asked? How her baby looked? Did she suffer?
Joe had been right, all the rules, the decorum, the platitudes, the usual script … it all went out the window at times like this. Her child was stuffed inside an aluminium pipe, and now they must do anything and everything possible to see that the culprit paid.
Ten minutes later, after David had requested water for his client, he knew that it was time to move on. There was a lot to cover and as callous as it may sound, he knew they had to grill Sienna on the new pieces of discovery that acted as evidentiary nails in her coffin. Sienna had never once pointed a finger at the man David suspected was behind these calculated acts of malevolence, but once again, as Joe had stated, the time for tiptoeing was up. If David was right, two Walkers had gone to their graves because of Daniel Hunt – and there was no way on earth he was going to give that son-of-a-bitch the opportunity to make it three.
‘Sienna,’ he began, ‘I am going to tell you what we've learnt in the last twenty-four hours and I need you to listen to me before you respond. None of it is good. In fact most of it is devastating and incredibly damaging to your defence. But you're going to have to hear it, and then you're going to have to respond by explaining it the best you can. We believe in you, Sienna, and that's why you need to be a hundred per cent honest with us, and I'm not just talking about the evidence the prosecution have on you already, I am talking about the hidden truths, what they are yet to discover – the stuff you either know or suspect to be correct, whether you believe it will incriminate you or not.’ David took a breath. ‘You are seriously behind the eight ball here, Sienna, largely because Sara and I and the rest of our small defence team are probably the only people on the planet who believe in your innocence. After yesterday, the rest of them want to see you rot in hell. Or more specifically, in a two-by-four cell at Massachusetts Correctional, which is exactly what will happen unless you tell us the absolute truth.’
He waited for an objection from Sara but he did not get one. In fact, she moved away from their client and joined David on the opposite side the table. And David was grateful, not because he needed to make this an ‘us against her’ scenario, but because he knew Sara was key to supporting Sienna through the lead-up and eventual presentation of their case at trial, and part of that support meant being tough when it was necessary – and never had it been more necessary than it was right now.
Sienna swallowed, her tears now falling onto the collar of her tangerine uniform. Her lips parted in preparation for some sort of response, but then she closed them again and simply nodded for David to go on.
‘The forensic evidence at the crime scene – blood on the carpet close to her cot – indicates Eliza was cradled during and after her throat was cut. The ME believes that she bled out, in the bedroom, and that her killer was holding her as she did. The nightshirt she was wrapped in when they found her body up that gutter pipe most likely belongs to you, and it is covered in blood spatter which we believe will confirm the ME's suppositions – that Eliza was rocked to death.’
David took a breath, his last words hanging tangible and heavy in the air.
‘Further to this, the police Crime Lab Unit have identified a second blood sample at the scene. There was a significant amount of blood belonging to this second person and DNA analysis suggests it belongs to you.’
Still Sienna said nothing.
‘If the blood on that shirt belongs to Eliza – and perhaps also to you – then the DA will use this as conclusive evidence that you were the one who held her as she bled out. And this, along with all the other evidence and the fact that at least at this stage we can offer no theory to the contrary, will almost certainly see you found guilty of the murder of your daughter and imprisoned, without parole, for the rest of your life.’
David watched her closely, needing to gauge her reaction. He expected her to blink, or swallow, or at the very least drop her gaze, not because she knew she was guilty but because she had to know her situation was dire and instinctively feel a desperate need to find a way out. But Sienna Walker did none of the above. On the contrary, her eye contact with him did not waver as she opened her mouth and said, ‘I am sorry, I need to take this slowly.’ She paused and removed her hands from the table to rest them carefully in her lap. She shivered, just a little, as her skin rose into goose bumps, her lips slightly blue from the cold air around them. ‘How did they discover her?’ she asked at last, her eyes clear, her voice now steady.
‘There's a fallen branch in your courtyard,’ said a so-far silent Sara. ‘It has been raining and its leaves were washed down and clogged your drain.’ Sara swallowed. ‘The police noticed the pipe was dripping red and a police sniffer dog confirmed the location of Eliza's remains. They cut the pipe out and found her there, wrapped in the blood-soaked top.’
Sienna gave the slightest of nods. Her chest rose and fell. ‘It has been raining,’ she said.
‘For days now,’ replied Sara.
Sienna looked at David. ‘That branch has leant over my back fence since we bought the place over a year ago, the leaves clog the drain after every downpour. So why did the police only notice the dripping now, a week after my baby was murdered?’
David glanced at Sara. He saw where this was going. ‘You're asking why, if she was put in that pipe on the night of her murder, didn't the pipe drip red sooner?’
Sienna nodded. ‘I gather the police have had a steady presence at my house.’
David knew this was the case. The cop named Atkins said they had been on a regular patrol. ‘Yes,’ he answered.
Sienna nodded once again.
‘You said a sniffer dog confirmed the discovery,’ she offered after a pause.
‘That's right,’ said Sara.
‘But there were dogs at my house on the night that Eliza was taken. Why didn't they find her then?’
David sat forward in his seat. ‘A team of K9s was at your home on the night of the murder?’
‘I was sedated but I heard them. They were barking, the noise made me jump, I … You can confirm this.’
He nodded before turning to Sara.
‘Yes, Sienna,’ said Sara. ‘Yes, we can.’
David considered his client. She was doing what they asked of her – providing legal explanation for the discrepancies. Her ability to do this had impressed David from the outset. Sienna Walker was perhaps one of the smartest clients he had ever represented – her ability to compartmentalise perhaps beyond even his own.
‘I see where you are going with this, Sienna,’ said David, ‘and it's certainly something that can be looked into, but none of this explains why your blood was found in that bedroom. The DA will claim you cut yourself with the same knife you used to kill your daughter – and in all honesty, his argument is iron-clad.’
David had not yet had time to do what Joe had suggested – to check Sienna's medical information from Massachusetts General and Suffolk County Jail on the night of, and a few days after, Eliza's death respectively. And before he did he wanted to see how his client reacted to this question – one that would be key to either their survival or their obliteration in court. He believed that she would answer, expected it even, but what he did not expect was the form of her response, which began with her pushing her seat out from the table.
‘I understand your question,’ she said, as she reversed her chair as far back as the cinder block wall behind her would allow. And then she proceeded to roll up the sleeves of her jumpsuit, before holding up her hands palm outwards for David and Sara to examine.
‘Sienna, this isn't what we …’ Sara began.
But Sienna shook her head in protest, her gesture telling them in no uncertain terms that she was determined to do what she needed to.
She got to her feet. She looked at the door, noting that the deputy's face was now turned away from the small, narrow piece of reinforced perspex which acted as a window to the interview room. And then she stepped to her left so as to be out of the deputy's line of sight. She crossed her arms over her chest before pulling her orange jumpsuit top up and over her head. And she bent to take off the matching trousers, allowing both items of clothing to fall softly on the concrete floor beneath her.
‘Sienna …’ an obviously uncomfortable Sara repeated as their client's skin blushed with patches of purple. But the now near-naked Sienna shook her head, this time with force, as she adjusted the straps on her simple white bra, and lifted the elastic at the sides of her loose-fitting panties.
‘Please, look,’ she said, as she lifted her arms in the air. She turned to David who, now sick with discomfort, had instinctively averted his eyes. ‘Please, stand up and look.’
And so David took a breath before doing as his client requested – getting to his feet and moving until he was two feet in front of her.
‘Where did I cut myself?’ she asked them then. ‘Tell me where that knife sliced my body, from where I lost all that blood.’
They watched as she turned slowly, inch by inch, her ribs visible beneath her skin. Her hip bones protruded over the top of her now slipping underpants, her movements mixing humility with humiliation.
‘Did you read the results of my physical on processing?’ she asked as she turned, her mind still clear and logical despite the mortification of her circumstance. ‘Did it say I had any cuts – any scars that proved I was the one who held that knife and slashed my baby's throat?’ Her voice began to crack.
‘If I murdered my daughter on Saturday night the evidence of such a wound would still be there. But there is
nothing
to see because
I did not kill my daughter.
Someone stole into my house and took the one thing that meant everything in the world to me, and then they took my clothes and planted them, later, to make sure that they “killed” me too. But I am not dead. I wish I was, but I am not – which means they'll keep going until they kill me like they did Eliza or at the very least make sure that I am sent away to prison for a crime I did not commit. And they are out there. They are out there and they are laughing – at the police, at the prosecutors, at me and perhaps most of all at you, David, because they counted on your taking my case from the outset, and they planned on your dumping me and thus confirming my guilt.’ She took a breath. ‘Whether you realise it or not, David, you are the ultimate pawn in their chess game – you leaving me hanging out to dry is the move they predicted you'd make. But if you are brave enough to defy them, if I was right when I suspected that perhaps only you can take them on, then it is time we started asking ourselves when, how, why and, most importantly, who. Who would want to see us dead, David? Who would risk everything to be rid of my daughter and ruin my life?’
He would have pondered on her odd turn of phrase if she had not bent to pick up her jumpsuit to hold it tight to her body as if she needed to find some dignity in the cold, sterile room around her and met his eye once again. ‘You want to know who's responsible for reducing my life to this,’ she said, a statement, not a question.
David nodded.
‘Daniel Hunt,’ she said, as if it hurt to say it. ‘Daniel Hunt.’
PART TWO
31
E
sther Wallace could not feel her feet.
Boston had been cold, but this was not cold, this was torture. The wind whipped up off the moors in lashings. It blew and sucked, it inhaled and exhaled tossing fat, languid puffballs of snow to and fro, in and out, the iciness of each breath catching Esther by surprise until she was just too numb to feel it.
The vegetation on the path was mangled. It was overgrown and twisted like distorted joints and bones. Her legs were tired from lifting them up and over, her skirt dragging all wet and sluggish underneath the bottom of her useless knee-length coat.
Esther had seen a lot in her sixty-five years – seen, heard, tolerated, ignored – but nothing compared to this. Emily Bronte had said it was beset with silvery vapours, and Esther saw them now, the low-lying fogs that danced around the crags so big that they looked like almighty fists punching at the landscape from beneath.
She was not far now, a mile perhaps from her final destination, and she took comfort in the fact that no one would find her here. Esther was used to faring for herself – built a life on it even. This would not have worked if she hadn't, which was why if felt so foreign to know that despite her solo struggle, she was not alone – which on one hand made things all the better, and on another all the worse.