Grace was being uncharacteristically quiet.
“You look concerned,” Laurie told her.
“Don’t ever let me play poker. I can’t hide my thoughts with a blanket. Fine: I’ll say it. Casey Carter’s a nut. You can see it in her eyes. Even back then, I told my mom, ‘Mommy, that girl’s got crazy eyes.’ ”
Jerry was laughing. “Grace, we were kids when this happened.”
“Maybe so, but I knew how to spot a mean girl, believe me. She had a good thing going. She was going to be Mrs. Hunter Raleigh the Third. She probably had a gown all picked out for his presidential inauguration. And then she was a big sloppy mess at that gala, and he dumped her when they got home. Case closed.”
“And the missing picture frame?” Laurie inquired. “You didn’t find that convincing?”
“She probably threw it at him when they were fighting, cleaned up the shards, and buried the picture in the woods before calling 911, or she took it with her as a souvenir after she wasted him.”
Jerry wasn’t convinced. “Then why wait until now to mention the missing picture? Her lawyer could have used it back then to create reasonable doubt at trial.”
They were interrupted by the sound of Laurie’s desk phone. Grace answered, “Ms. Moran’s office.” As she hung up, she said, “Speak of the devil. Reception says there’s a Katherine Carter and an Angela Hart here to see you.”
19
“Laurie, are you following all of this?”
The question was coming from Angela. Laurie found herself looking at Casey, remembering Grace’s “crazy eyes” comment. Laurie had noticed a spark in Casey’s eyes that she attributed to intelligence and humor. But now she could imagine a fire smoldering behind them.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m following. It’s a lot to take in.”
Casey and Angela had arrived at Laurie’s office with printouts of online comments made over the weekend on stories covering Casey’s release from prison. As far as they could tell, the first one had appeared on a gossip website called The Chatter. It was signed, “RIP_Hunter.” “I found four other RIP_Hunter comments posted on other sites,” Casey said. “They all say essentially the same thing: I’m a narcissist who killed Hunter so no one would know that he was going to break up with me.”
Angela placed a protective hand on Casey’s knee. “Nothing good ever comes from reading the comments section on the Internet.”
“How can I not read it?” Casey asked. “Look what they’re saying about me. I feel like it’s fifteen years ago, all over again.”
“Except you’re not on trial,” Angela reminded her. “You’re free. Who cares what some Internet troll thinks of you?”
“I do. I do, Angela.”
Unfortunately, Laurie knew a thing or two about the “trolling” that took place on the Web. A few years after Greg died, she made the mistake of going to a message board where armchair detectives opined about unsolved murders. She couldn’t sleep for a week after reading the comments of strangers who were convinced that she had hired a hit man to execute her husband in front of their three-year-old son. Laurie flipped again through the comments that Casey had printed out for her.
Anyone who knows Casey… We’re all afraid to talk to reporters in case she comes after us, too…
“He-or I guess she-talks as if they know you personally,” Laurie observed.
“Exactly,” Casey agreed. “And this happened back then, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“During my trial, Internet news coverage was still fairly new. Most people still got their information from papers and television. But there were message boards to talk about my case. You can guess the tone of most of it. But here’s the thing: someone kept posting, pretending they knew me, offering supposedly firsthand information that made me seem guilty. And they were all signed ‘RIP_Hunter.’ ”
“Why do you assume it’s a stranger?” Laurie asked.
“Because no one who knew me would say anything like that, because it’s not true.”
“Not even an acquaintance who didn’t like you?”
Casey shrugged at the idea. “I suppose it’s possible. Or it’s someone who was obsessed with Hunter. The comments would go on and on about how wonderful he was, what a good mayor or even president he would have been. That I had stolen not just his future, but all the good things he would have done for the rest of society. I tried to find the old posts online last night, but didn’t get anywhere. If Hunter had a stalker, he or she could easily have purchased a ticket for the gala that night. Maybe that’s who drugged me, then followed us home. Maybe Hunter got the gun in self-defense and something went wrong.”
“Is there a way for us to prove that someone using that same exact user name was trolling you during the trial?” Laurie asked.
“I’m not sure,” Casey said. “I told my lawyer about it. And one of the jurors even saw one of the worst comments. He sent a note to the judge about it.”
This was the first Laurie had heard of any juror note. “What did the note say?”
“The juror said his daughter was reading about the case on the Internet and tried to talk to him about it. He told her he wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone about the trial until it was over, but then his daughter blurted out that someone on the Internet was saying I had confessed to them. The comment said something like, ‘Casey Carter’s guilty. She told me so. That’s why she’s not testifying.’ And of course it was posted by RIP_Hunter.”
Laurie wasn’t a lawyer, but she was fairly certain that exposure to a comment like that would be grounds for getting the juror dismissed. It could even be the basis for a mistrial. “That’s terribly prejudicial,” Laurie said. “Jurors aren’t supposed to read outside information about the case or speculate about the reasons a defendant doesn’t testify. Not to mention that the author claimed you confessed.”
“Which I absolutely didn’t,” Casey exclaimed.
“I didn’t see anything about a juror note in the documents you gave me.” She certainly would have remembered a note like the one Casey was describing. “Did the juror get excused? And did your lawyer ask for a mistrial?”
Angela jumped in, sounding outraged. “You mean that excuse of a lawyer, Janice Marwood? She didn’t do anything. The judge read a blanket statement to the entire jury, reminding them to avoid any outside influences and to focus only on the evidence admitted in the courtroom. And when Casey asked Janice about it, Janice told her she needed to start trusting her more and not second-guess every strategic decision she made. What kind of strategy is that?”
Laurie remembered Alex describing Janice Marwood as a C-minus lawyer. The conversation reminded her that Casey had offered to sign a waiver of attorney-client privilege so Laurie could contact Marwood directly and have access to the case file. She opened the office door momentarily and asked Grace to work with Jerry to draft the relevant paperwork for Casey’s signature while she was here.
Given the circus atmosphere surrounding Casey’s trial, it didn’t surprise her that crackpots would make outlandish allegations under the Internet’s cover of anonymity, but it seemed to Laurie that she was more troubled by the return of whoever was calling himself or herself RIP_Hunter. The continued use of the same pseudonym was likely intended to rattle Casey psychologically. If so, the move appeared to be working.
Laurie closed the door again.
“Casey, do you know if your lawyer looked into the Internet posts?”
“Who knows?” Casey asked wistfully. “I look back on it now and realize I was much too deferential to her. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off representing myself.”