color of slate, and the faint, flashing lights of the ambulance were just beginning to illuminate the scene.
Twenty-four hours later my bail was denied at the Middlesex County Courthouse.
“We’ll try again,” my state-appointed lawyer said. Her name was Stephanie Flynn, and she was about twenty-five years old. She was small-featured and pretty but her fingernails were bitten down to the quick, and she looked like she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in years.
She came back with me to my holding cell. “They’ll grant a bail review, and they won’t be able to hold you. Not with these circumstances.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You did your best. I do realize I stabbed a police officer.”
“A police officer who was harassing and following you,” Stephanie said, staring intently at me through her stylish glasses. “He’s in the clear, now, by the way,” she continued. “Just got moved out of ICU.”
“That’s good,” I said.
My lawyer checked her watch, promised me she’d be back at the same time tomorrow. I could have paid for my own lawyer, or had my parents send one, but I chose to have one appointed for me, and right now, I felt good about that decision.
After she left I laid back on my cot in my dark green jumpsuit. My lunch—a hamburger with a side of mixed vegetables—was delivered by a grim-faced policewoman in uniform. I wasn’t particularly hungry but ate a little of the burger, and drank the plastic cup of apple juice that had come with the meal. I refilled the cup with tepid water from the tap in my cell and drank several glasses, then lay back down on my cot. My parents, whom I’d finally called this morning, collect, from a wall-installed pay phone down the hall, were coming soon, and I was savoring the little bit of quiet before they arrived. The previous day, as I remained still and quiet at the Old Hill Burying Ground, while first one ambulance, then several, then a flotilla of cop cars arrived, I thought about what I’d say when I was questioned later. I considered telling the truth, the whole truth, about the two bodies in the well, and what happened with Eric Washburn in London, and my involvement with Ted and Miranda Severson and Brad Daggett. I imagined what that would feel like—to confess it all—and pictured the cold, fascinated eyes on me as I told the stories, and then I imagined that this fascination would hover around me for the rest of my life. All those years in prison. David Kintner’s infamous daughter. I would become a specimen, a curiosity. People would clamor to write books. I would lose all of my anonymity forever.
So I thought of a different story, a much simpler one. I would tell everyone that I had become terrified of Detective Henry Kimball, who had been following me for over a week. I would tell them I had spotted him several times—that part was true—and that I had begun to fear for my life. If they asked me why I didn’t call the police, I would tell them that he was the police. I’d tell them that I’d taken to traveling with my stun gun and my small knife, and that on the day in question, I’d driven out to my favorite cemetery in Concord. When I’d spotted him there, I’d panicked, attacked him with the knife. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but I wasn’t thinking straight. It was a moment of insanity, brought on by stress.
And that was the story I’d told, first to the arresting officer who questioned me at the Concord Police Station where I was booked for attempted murder, then later that same evening to Detective Roberta James, the woman who had saved Detective Kimball’s life. I tried to glean from the interview whether Kimball and Detective James had both been following me in concert, or whether the female detective had just stumbled upon the scene. I had been so positive that Kimball was following me on his own, and not in a professional capacity. It was clear that he’d become obsessed with me, and it was only a matter of time before he started looking into every facet of my life. I’d already given him Eric Washburn’s name, and no doubt he’d checked records and discovered that we were together when he died. I had started to panic a little, and the thought occurred to me that if he really was following