Sometimes I long for the Tessie in me, who would have just spit out the unvarnished, angry truth: You’re a jerk. You knew I was coming. You knew I hadn’t looked at these since I dug them out of a wall.
“Thanks for driving all the way down here.” He slides into a chair beside me and slaps a new yellow legal pad on the table. He is wearing jeans, Nikes, and a slightly pilled green pullover sweater that is too short for his frame, the curse of a broad-shouldered man. “Are you still in the mood to do this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Tessie, retorting. Still in there, after all.
“We don’t have to talk here. In this room.” He gazes at me intently. “This is our war room. Generally off limits to clients.”
My eyes linger over the walls. Beside the chalkboard, enlarged snapshots of five men. Current cases, I assume. Four of the men are African-American. A young Terrell Darcy Goodwin stars in the center photograph. His arm is tossed around a guy in a red-and-gray high school baseball uniform, a little brother, maybe. Same good looks, wide-spaced eyes, chiseled cheekbones, café latte skin.
On the opposite walclass="underline" Crime scenes. Gaping mouths. Blank eyes. Confused limbs. I don’t linger.
I flick my head around to a giant erase board that is scribbled with some sort of timeline.
I see my name. Merry’s.
I open my mouth to speak and find his eyes glued to my crossed legs and the patch of bare white thigh above my black boots. I keep meaning to let out the hem of this skirt. I scoot my legs under the table. He resumes a professional mask.
“I’m not a client.” I swallow a sip of bitter liquid, read the words on the side of the mug. Lawyers Get You Off.
William follows my eyes. Rolls his. “Most of our cups are dirty. Could use a good washing out.” Joking. Letting the other moment, the curiosity about what’s under my skirt, pass.
“I’m fine in here, William.”
“Bill,” he reminds me. “Only people over seventy get to call me William.”
“Did the exhumation Tuesday go as planned?” I ask. “They kept it quiet. It didn’t even make the papers.”
“You should know the answer to that.”
“You saw me by the tree.”
“That hair of yours is hard to miss, even in the dark.”
So he’s a liar, too. My hair is down today, long, curling loosely past my shoulders. Still the same burnt color as the sixteen-year-old me. Two nights ago, at the cemetery, it was tucked up tight in my daughter Charlie’s black baseball cap.
“You tricked me,” I say. “Nice.”
I shift uncomfortably in the chair. I’m talking to a lawyer, one I haven’t paid a cent to keep my confidences. Sure, he could be the boy next door with those doe-y brown eyes and clean-cut hair and ears that stick out a little and enormous hands that could cover a grapefruit. The funny best friend of the guy you really want, until you realize… oh, shit.
He grins. “You look like my little sister does right before she slaps me. In answer to your question, a forensic anthropologist is getting a look at the bones first. Then Jo and her people step in. She would like both of us to watch her techs work the Black-Eyed Susan case next week. Asked me to invite you personally. Kind of as a peace offering since she ordered you not to be present at the exhumation. She really did feel bad about it.”
I shiver slightly. There’s no vent, no visible source of heat in here. My father used to say that February in Texas is a cold, bitter lady. March is when she loses her virginity.
“Bones are processed every Monday morning,” he continues. “Jo had to pull some strings to push the Susans to the head of the line. I can pick you up, if you like. The lab’s about twenty minutes from your place.”
“No worry this time about contamination?” This had been Joanna’s concern about me officially attending the exhuming of the bodies. She didn’t want even the slightest hint of broken protocol.
“We’ll be watching the process through a glass window. The new lab is set up as a teaching facility. State-of-the-art. Bones are flown in from all over the world. So are students and scientists who want to see Jo’s techniques firsthand.” He smiles tightly and picks up his pen. “Want to get started? I’ve got to be somewhere by two. For my job that pays the bills.” A corporate mediator, whatever the hell that is, according to his law firm’s website. I wonder where he is hiding his suit.
“Yep. Go ahead.” Spoken much more casually than I felt.
“Your testimony in ’95. Has anything changed? Have you remembered anything else in the last seventeen years about the attack or your attacker?”
“No.” I say it firmly. I am willing to help, I remind myself, but only to a point. I have two teen-agers to protect, the one I was and the one who sleeps in that purple room.
“Just to be sure, I’m going to ask a few specifics anyway, OK?”
I nod.
“Can you describe the face of your attacker?”
“No.”
“Do you remember where you met up with him?”
“No.”
“Do you have any memory of being dumped in that field?”
“No.”
“Do you ever remember seeing our client-Terrell Goodwin-before the day you testified?”
“No. Not to my knowledge.”
“No is a nice simple answer,” he says. “If that’s the truth.”
“It is. The truth.”
“Do you remember a single thing that happened in those hours you were missing?”
“No.”
“The last thing you remember is buying… tampons… at Walgreens?”
“And a Snickers bar. Yes.” The wrapper was found in the grave.
“You’ve heard your 911 call that night but do not recall making it?”
“Right. Yes.”
“Tessa, I have to ask again. Is there any way you will change your mind and undergo light hypnosis? See if there’s anything you can remember from those lost hours? Or examine the drawings you gave me with an expert? If we jog something, anything, loose it might help us get a new hearing in front of the judge.”
“Absolutely no to hypnosis.” I say it quietly. “I’ve read enough about it to know that I can be directed to false memories. But examining my drawings from therapy? Yes. I think so. I have no idea whether it will help.”
“Great. Great. I have someone in mind. Someone who has worked with me in the past. I think you’ll like her.” I almost laugh. If he only knew how many times I’d heard that.
He lays his pen at a perfect 90-degree angle. Twirls it. Stops it. Twirls it. William knows how to use a big, fat pause. I’m beginning to see that he might be a very clever boy in court.
“There’s a reason you’re sitting here, Tessa. Something you aren’t saying. I really need to know what it is. Because based on those answers, you might still think Terrell Darcy Goodwin is guilty as hell.”
I couldn’t sleep last night wondering exactly how I’d answer this question. “I feel like I hurt… Terrell… on the stand.” Slow, I tell myself. “That I was manipulated by a lot of people. For years. Angie eventually satisfied me that there is no convincing physical evidence against him. And I showed you the black-eyed Susans. Under my window.” Still keeping tabs.
“Yes.” His lips have stretched into a tight line. “But a judge will write off those flowers to your imagination, or just a random lunatic. He might infer that you did it yourself. Are you prepared for that?”
“Is that what you think? That I’m making it up?”
His gaze is direct, unbothered. Irritating as hell. Maybe William doesn’t deserve to know all of it. He certainly isn’t asking the right question.
I’m beginning to think he planned for me to stumble into this room all along. Slam me back into the past. Poke something sharp into my uncooperative brain.