Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,19

Your Honor. There’s an eight-minute gap between the time neighbors first called in the report of shots fired, and the police arrived on the scene and also heard shots fired. That’s because there was not one shooting last night but two. The first was the fatal shooting of my client’s beloved husband and father of her unborn child. We can prove, in fact, Your Honor, that my client wasn’t even home at the time of her husband’s death. She arrived minutes later, discovering the dead body. At which point, she did pick up the gun. She fired the weapon.

“She committed the second shooting, Your Honor. Except her victim was a laptop. Which, let’s face it, we’ve all wanted to shoot at one time or another. So, yes, my client handled the murder weapon and, yes, she had GSR on her hands. But she did not kill her husband. We demand the dismissal of all charges as well as my client’s immediate release at this time.”

The judge regarded Delaney, then the ADA, whose face was now set in a grim line, then Delaney again. “Well,” the judge said, “it sounds like we have plenty to discuss at trial. Given there is sufficient evidence worth presenting, charges are not dismissed. However, I will grant bail. Five hundred thousand, cash bond.”

The judge banged her gavel. Evie Carter, who’d never looked left or right, was led from the room. A moment later, every reporter in the place had leapt to his or her feet and was racing to the door.

Phil, D.D., and Flora stood to the side to let the rush pass.

“I’ll be damned,” D.D. murmured. “She’s gonna do it.” She glanced at Phil, who nodded his agreement.

“Do what?” Flora demanded.

“For the second time in her life, Evie Carter’s gonna get away with murder.”

Chapter 6

FLORA

MY FATHER DIED WHEN I was young. Traffic accident. So long ago, I no longer really remember him. The images in my mind are less from real memories than from the photos my mother still has up around the house.

Jacob, on the other hand, the man who kidnapped me, raped me, tortured me … six years later I still dream about him three or four nights a week.

Samuel Keynes, my victim specialist and a trained psychologist, has done his best to explain it to me over the years. Something about the omnipotence of an abductor. It wasn’t just that Jacob snatched me off a beach or locked me in a coffin-sized box for days on end. It was his total control over every facet of my life. I ate when he willed it. I drank when he permitted it. I lived, second by second, day by day, because he decided, for that instant, to allow it.

Stockholm syndrome is when a victim starts to bond with her captor, partially due to the captor’s role of complete power over her life. Did I bond with Jacob? The question isn’t as simple as I’d like it to be. I hated him. I still hate him. I worked hard every day on my own survival. Counting backward and forward in the long hours I was trapped in a box. Wiggling my toes, moving my limbs as the space would allow. Then, when he finally let me out, I observed, I learned, I adapted.

I don’t think I ever truly liked Jacob or saw him as a human being. He was a monster, plain and simple. But he was a monster who held the other end of my leash, so I tried to understand him. Anything to survive another day.

But not all days were awful. Not all moments torturous. After weeks turned into months, Jacob would sometimes show up with little surprises. DVDs of a favorite TV show I’d mentioned. Movies for both of us to watch. There’s a lot of time to pass in a long-haul rig. We’d look for license plates from all fifty states, play the alphabet game.

I never believed Jacob was human. But sometimes, like a lot of predators, he did a decent impression of one.

And to this day, he remains the single-most powerful relationship of my life.

Which is why I do my best to talk about him as little as possible. But if I’m being totally honest with myself, I’m not angry to finally be breaking my onetime, one-tell policy. I’m simply relieved to finally get the monster out of my head.

• • •

SAMUEL AGREES TO meet me after lunch. He’s an incredibly busy victim specialist, working for the FBI’s Office