Diane paused and stared up at the ceiling. She loved drama.
”What?” I said. ”C’mon. Out with it.”
”She said her daddy did bad things to Angel.”
”What kind of bad things?”
”Sexual abuse. She said it went on for years, and she thinks Angel finally just had enough. She also said her mother used to beat Angel pretty badly.”
”I wonder why Angel never told anyone.”
”The mother is a religious freak. Their living room looked like a sanctuary. She said she homeschooled the kids and was particular about what they were allowed to watch and read. I got the impression she didn’t even allow them to have friends. Angel probably didn’t have much of an opportunity to tell. Either that or she was just scared. Her sister told me Angel tried to run away a couple of times and the police had to bring her back, so I went down to the Oklahoma City police department and got copies of the reports. In 2001 she only made it ten blocks. She locked herself in the bathroom of a convenience store. The police came and took her straight home.
She took off again in 2003. They found her walking along the highway about seven miles from her house.
The police took her home again. If she told them about the abuse, they didn’t believe her.”
Diane then turned her attention to Erlene Barlowe.
I’d asked her to quietly check into a few things, and I’d paid her out of my own pocket.
”No criminal record. Her husband was the sheriff of McNairy County from 1970 to 1973. He resigned under some pretty suspicious circumstances and went into the strip club business. She was with him every step of the way until he died of a heart attack last year. She doesn’t seem to have any enemies, at least none I could find. I talked to a couple of her employees. They’re flat-out loyal.”
”Corvette?”
”No Corvette. Or I guess I should say no record of a Corvette.”
”And what about Julie Hayes?”
”Very naughty girl. Three drug possessions, two misdemeanor thefts, three prostitution convictions.
Most of the arrests are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Nobody had anything good to say about her. She’s a mess.”
”You talk to her?”
”I tried. The first time I went out to her place she was so stoned she could barely speak. The second time she told me to fuck off, so I fucked off.”
An hour later, I drove over to meet with the forensic psychiatrist I’d hired to examine Angel. Tom Short was head of the psychiatry department at East Tennessee State University, a short, wiry academic who seemed to spend a lot of time in a world no one else understood. I’d met him at a death penalty seminar in Nashville five years earlier where he taught a class on the role of psychiatric evaluation in mitigation. I’d used him in seven cases since then, and we’d become friends. I’d never placed a lot of faith in psychiatry before I met Tom, but his uncanny ability to diagnose personality disorders and psychotic illnesses made a believer of me. I trusted him completely.
”PTSD,” he said as soon as I walked into his office.
He was sitting behind his desk, chewing on the end of the pipe he kept in his mouth like a pacifier. I’d never seen him without the pipe, and I’d never seen it lit.
”Post-traumatic stress disorder?”
”Chronic and severe. But she’s being evasive about the stressor. I suspect she was raped by her adopted father.”
”Why?”
”Because if the stressor was a car accident or something she witnessed, she’d tell me about it. She became agitated and evasive when I asked her about her father.”
”Is she a candidate for murder?”
”Everybody’s a candidate under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball.”
”I don’t see how she could possibly have killed Tester,” I said. ”For one thing, he was a two-hundred-sixty-pound man. What does she weigh?
One ten? I just don’t see her being able to overpower a guy like that.”
”His blood alcohol level was point two seven, and he was drugged. A ten-year-old could have killed him.”
”I know, but she just doesn’t feel like a murderer when I talk to her,” I said.
”I look at her clinically,” Short said. ”You look at her emotionally. Her beauty and vulnerability cloud your perspective.”
”So you think she killed him?”
”I didn’t say that. I’m just saying it’s possible.
Some PTSD victims go into a dissociative state if the stressor is severe enough, and if it’s repeated. Let’s say her adopted father sexually abused her for years, which I suspect he did. She runs away. Then she finds herself being sexually abused by this Tester man. It’s possible she could have had sort of an out-of-body experience and killed him. It would also explain the extraordinary number of stab wounds and the mutilation.”
”Would she remember it?”
”It’d be like a dream, but she’d remember it.”
”Would she be responsible for her conduct, legally, if that’s what happened?”
”Probably not. I think I’d be able to testify that under those circumstances she would not be responsible for her conduct. At that point, she wouldn’t have been able to discern the difference between right and wrong.”
”The problem is that in order for us to assert that defense, she’d have to admit she killed him.”
”That’s right.”
”She says she didn’t kill him.”
”I know.”
”So where does that leave us?”
”She didn’t tell me she did it, so as far as I’m concerned, she didn’t do it. Everything I’ve told you is purely theoretical.”
”Have you made notes on all of this?”
”Of course.”
”Shred them.”
Since I had Tom’s attention, which was sometimes hard to get, I decided to ask him about Junior Tester.
I described to him in detail everything that had happened between us, including the look of torment and hatred on Junior’s face the night I went to his house.
”Was it a mistake?” I said.
”Actually,” Tom said, ”going down there wasn’t as bad an idea as you might think. You may have showed him there could be serious consequences to his actions. Maybe you shocked him back into reality, at least for a little while. Have you seen him since?”
”No.”
”You must have frightened him.”
”He didn’t look scared. Do you think I’ll see him again?”
”Can’t say for sure.”
”Is it likely?”
”I’d say it depends.”
”On what?”
”On how you portray his father in the courtroom if you go to trial. You might want to give that some serious consideration.”
June 25
4:00 p.m.
After the meetings with Diane and Tom, I was both confused and concerned. I decided it was time to go have a serious conversation with my client. I wanted to discuss some of the more incriminating evidence with her, but more important, I needed to see how well Angel would hold up under cross-examination.
If I could catch her in a lie, so could the district attorney.
She wasn’t shackled or handcuffed when the guards escorted her into the interview room-apparently she was no longer considered a security risk. I’d asked her what she wanted me to call her after I found out her real name. She said she wanted to be called Angel. Mary Ann, she said, was gone.
”How are you holding up?” I said.
”I’m okay. The guards are nice to me.”
Each time I went to visit, I was struck by something different: the smoothness of her skin, the contours of her face, the fullness of her lips. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, a fact that made what I was about to do even more difficult.
”There are a couple of things I need to ask you about, some things that are bothering me. I want you to tell me the truth.”