Blind Spot (37 page)

Alexa’s indignation was replaced by fear. “Well, ah, a couple of times Devin did ask me if, ah, if I could give an envelope to these seniors for him.…”

Suki was ashamed. Ashamed of Alexa and ashamed of herself. She mentally apologized to Warren. He wasn’t one of McKinna’s henchmen; he had no hidden agenda. He had just wanted to help. She felt no relief from the knowledge that Alexa’s prophecy had been wrong, only an unrelenting shame. “Devin was the dealer?” she asked.

Alexa shook her head. “The dealer is some guy Devin knows. Some straight adult or something. Devin would never tell anyone who it was.”

Suki balled her hands into fists. “So let me get this straight,” Suki said. “Some adult gives Devin the methamphetamine, then Devin sells it at school, and sometimes you helped him—but neither you or Devin are dealing drugs?”

“You don’t understand.” Alexa’s eyes filled with tears. “We were just going to do it ourselves, but then somehow people knew, and everybody wanted some, and well, it, it just got out of hand.”

Brendan had used almost the exact same words as Alexa. There was no doubt, despite all she had lied about, that Alexa was telling the truth now. Suki supposed it was about time, but that was small consolation in the light of Alexa’s revelations. Suki dropped into the couch. “Out of hand,” she repeated.

Alexa reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a small baggie. She threw it on to the coffee table. “Here,” Alexa said. “I never even opened it. You take it. I’m done with it.”

Inside the baggie was a smaller baggie, and inside that was a white powdery substance. Suki stared at the baggie inside the baggie. At the methamphetamine inside the baggie. At the desiccant inside the baggie. How professional it looked. Packed like that, with the desiccant to keep the moisture out, probably weighed to the exact milligram. Someone knew what he was doing. Exactly what he was doing. And Suki hated him for it.

“Take it,” Alexa insisted.

Suki eyed the baggie as if it were a poisonous snake, poised to strike. That’s just what it is, she thought: poison. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

“There’s something else,” Alexa said quietly.

Suki closed her eyes.

“That’s where we were going that night,” Alexa whispered. “And I’m afraid the police are going to find out.”

Suki’s eyes flew open.

“We were dropping Devin off so he could cop the meth.”

Suki winced at Alexa’s street language. “Are you saying Devin was on his way to meet the dealer the night Jonah was shot?”

Alexa hung her head.

“Alexa,” Suki said sharply, and Alexa’s head snapped up. “Do you think the witness, the person who called nine-one-one, could have been the dealer?”

“I guess,” Alexa said slowly. “I suppose it’s possible. Devin never said …” Then her eyes widened in fear as she realized what she had done. “No!” she practically shouted. “It wasn’t. You’re wrong. No. I’m sure it was someone else.” Alexa threw herself to the floor and grabbed Suki’s knees. “You can’t go out and try to find him,” she cried. “You promised. You promised!”

Suki didn’t answer. She untangled herself from Alexa’s grasp, grabbed the baggie and walked from the room.

•  •  •

Suki knew she was going to have to spend the majority of the next three days at her office: she had no laser printer, no fax machine and no Internet access from her house—all things she needed to complete the evaluation. She also knew she probably had only the next three days, four or five at the outside, to find the witness and stop Alexa’s arrest. It was not an attractive prospect, but Suki focused on the end product: a completed job and an exonerated daughter. She had to believe that both were possible.

When she got to the office and explained the situation, Jen was more than happy to turn over the desk for the duration. She didn’t usually come in on Fridays and hadn’t planned to work over the weekend. She offered to help Suki in any way that she could, but Suki turned her down. Jen was a bit too over-the-top to be an effective detective, and child psychologists were not well versed in forensics. Jen hugged Suki tight and cast a worried glance over her shoulder as she left.

After seeing two patients, Suki sat down at the computer to write Mike a fax stating the conclusion of her evaluation on Lindsey Kern, and promising the full report no later than Saturday afternoon. She poised her hands over the keyboard, but her eyes sought the sweeping vista of the meadow outside her window: two weather fronts were warring along the ridge that rolled off to the west. The clouds were odd, narrow fingers stretching from midsky down to the ground. Like a platoon of billowing ghosts, they marched eastward, their progress slowed, but not halted, by the dome of high pressure that had been protecting the area for days. So real, so powerful, yet only water vapor. Nothing but fog.

So hard to know what was real, what was illusion, Suki thought. So hard to know. Were Lindsey’s beliefs so wrong, so deranged, that they qualified her for the label of insanity? Or was Suki just a victim of science protecting its world view? “
It’s either a vision or it’s a plan
,” Lindsey had said. If Lindsey was indeed insane, if the supernatural was untrue, what did that mean for Alexa? Suki watched the clouds, undersides dark with rain, pressing, pushing, asserting themselves, unaware they were only fog.

This wasn’t about Alexa, Suki reminded herself. And it wasn’t about the paranormal. This was about Lindsey and her aberrant MMPI and EEG and MRI. About nightmares and headaches and hallucinations stretching back to Lindsey’s early childhood. Never before had Suki allowed her personal life to leak so disastrously into her professional—and vice versa. It was unprincipled, unconscionable, unprofessional. It was over.

Lightning flashed in the belly of one of the farther clouds. Suki turned from the window and began to type.

I, Suzanne Jacobs, Ph.D., a forensic psychologist certified by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, conclude that, due to a substantial disorder of perception which grossly diminished her capability to recognize reality, Lindsey Kern was significantly impaired in her ability to conform her conduct to the requirements of the law at the time of the death of Richard Stoddard.

I shall so state, under oath, in the forthcoming trial of Lindsey Kern, and shall submit to you, prior to my testimony, the completed forensic evaluation detailing the data and logic chain from which this opinion is derived.

Before she could change her mind, Suki clicked on the Print icon. As soon as the page dropped into the printer tray, she fed it into the fax machine, punched in Mike’s number and watched her words slide under the scanner. Then she left the office and drove to the rec center.

Varsity soccer practice was this afternoon, and Suki planned to corner Brendan and get him to tell her about the drugs and the dealer and what had gone on the night Jonah was killed. Now that she knew Devin was involved, Suki also knew Brendan had lied to her: Devin McKinna would never be able to keep something as juicy, or as image-enhancing, as the name of his drug dealer a secret. And Brendan was his best friend. He had talked to her before; she would make him talk again.

As on the afternoon when she had waited for Parker Alley, Suki stationed herself outside the boys’ locker room. She couldn’t believe that with all she had done since that day, she was still just as far, if not farther, from clearing Alexa. And now, the clock she had heard ticking in the distance was up close, pounding in her ear. It sounded a lot like the clanking of steel doors.

There was a loud clap of thunder and Suki jumped. Thunder, she told herself, not clocks, not prison doors. “
You’ve got to keep fighting
,” Kenneth had said. “
This isn’t over until you give up
.” She would never give up. Never. While it was true Alexa had lied—admittedly, more than just lied—this did not make her a murderer. Suki could acknowledge that her daughter might be much less, or much more, than she had thought, and that she herself might have been blind to Alexa’s faults, yet the other just didn’t fit. Couldn’t fit. Despite the pregnancy. Despite the drugs. Despite Jonah Ward and Charlie Gasperini.

Still, Suki began to lose heart as boy after boy raced from the locker room and Brendan was not among them. Perhaps he was sick, she thought, then remembered: He had been arraigned today. How could she have forgotten? Obviously, Brendan would not be coming to soccer practice.

Suki glanced at her watch. She should go back to the office, but she also needed to check on Alexa, who had been home alone all day. They hadn’t talked about Alexa returning to school; it seemed a hollow discussion. Either Alexa would be arrested next week, and catching up on schoolwork would be the least of her worries, or she would be cleared and would return to classes. A world where Alexa’s major concern was making up term papers and missed quizzes now seemed idyllic fantasy.

Suki turned from her post at the locker room door. She would run home for a minute and then go to the office. She needed to check the Internet for a few legal opinions and organize her notes before she could begin writing. As she headed down the hallway, she literally bumped into Warren Blanchard.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders.

“Hey yourself.” Suki stepped away awkwardly, almost losing her balance. Warren reached out again, but she sidestepped him, righting herself by resting a palm against the wall. “I, ah, I meant to call you,” she said. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry I was so testy yesterday. It was uncalled for—you were only trying to help.” Suki felt the heat rushing to her cheeks and was thankful that he didn’t know the motives she had attributed to him, how she had made him a scapegoat to avoid seeing a truth she couldn’t face.

“No need to apologize,” Warren said. “It’s already forgotten.”

Suki played with the strap of her purse and wondered if Warren was aware of the boys’ arraignment, if he and Darcy were kept up-to-date on the latest details of the case, if he might even know when Alexa would be arrested.

“What are you doing hanging around here?” he asked. “Is Kyle doing another sport?”

“No sport.” Suki shifted from foot to foot. She felt she owed Warren something for misjudging him so. But she didn’t know what exactly it was she owed him. Nor how to repay it. “Just on my way home,” she added. “Going to my office.” She had always been a poor liar.

He raised an eyebrow. “Which is it?”

“Both,” she said. “Neither.” She smiled sheepishly. Maybe what she owed him was honesty. “You were right about Alexa. I was wrong.”

“I’m sorry, Suki,” he said. “I wish it had been the other way around.”

“Me, too.” She pushed off from the wall. “I’ve got to run. On top of everything else, I have a report to finish that’s going to keep me in my office for the next three days straight.”

“Work can be a great escape—take it from me.”

Suki hesitated. How much honesty did she owe him? “Alexa told me some interesting things about the witness,” she said. “My theory may not be as half-baked as we thought.” Then she described her conversation with Alexa.

As Warren listened, his jaw tightened; it was obviously difficult for him to hear details of that night. When Suki finished speaking, he nodded slowly. “So you were waiting to talk to Brendan?”

“He didn’t show up.”

“I wouldn’t have expected him to.”

“Believe it or not,” Suki said. “I forgot about the arraignment.”

“Suki,” Warren said softly, kindly, “you said you’ve got a ton of work to do. Alexa and Kyle need you. Why are you doing this now?”

“There’s nothing more important than keeping Alexa from being arrested.” Suki heard the stubbornness in her tone and, not wanting to repeat her mistake of yesterday, added, “She’s my daughter. I’ve got to protect her.” She thought of the baggie she had hidden under piles of paper in her desk drawer.

“And you really believe searching for this missing witness person is the best way to do that?”

She tried to smile. “Have you got a better suggestion?”

Warren glanced through the gym door and out to the soccer field. His boys were doing push-ups and sit-ups under a rapidly darkening sky. “Let me run out and check on them for a sec,” he said. “Then there’s something I need to tell you.”

Suki didn’t like the set of his mouth. “A better suggestion?” she asked, although she knew it wasn’t.

“I’ll meet you in two in Finlay’s place,” he said as he jogged toward the door.

Suki walked slowly across the gym and into Finlay’s place. She wondered where Finlay was. How Lillian was doing. She didn’t hold a grudge; Finlay had done what he needed to do for someone he loved. She could understand that. Unless it had been something more.

If meth was at the high school, meth was at the rec center. Maybe Finlay was the dealer. He definitely had the access, as well as the nice-guy reputation, and he was definitely in the “adult” age group. His name hadn’t been on Phyllis’s printout, but it would have been easy enough for Alexa to get the car models confused. Suki tried to remember what kind of car had been parked at the fishing cabin, but all she could remember was the rain.

Suki dropped into the only chair in the room and noticed that the place had been cleaned up a bit. There actually was a desk and enough clear floor for a person to stand, maybe even two. One never really knew: the world changed and people did things you would never expect of them. Maybe the drug dealer was Ellery McKinna himself, or Warren, or Kenneth. If it could be Finlay Thompson, it could be anybody.

Warren came in and perched on the edge of the desk. “I wasn’t planning on telling you this—never would have occurred to me, actually—but now that you’re here, and I see what you’re doing, what you’re going through, well, I just think it’s the right thing to do. At least, I hope it is.”

“Shoot,” Suki said, before she realized what she was saying. She looked up at Warren, but he didn’t appear aware of her callousness.

“The DA’s office keeps us pretty well informed about what’s going on,” he began slowly. “Sometimes they tell us things before the Witton cops even know about them.”

Suki’s heart sank.