Plain Truth (30 page)

“Let's look at Katie, specifically. Thanks to her brother's experience, she's been living with a very primitive survival script in her head, believing that if Mom and Dad find out her secret, she'll be excommunicated and forced out of the household. So there's this covert idea in her mind that it's somehow okay to get rid of your children. Then she goes into labor. She can't deny the baby's existence anymore—so she does to the baby what she's afraid will happen to her—she throws it out. The dissociative state lasts long enough for the birth and the murder, and then she reverts to using denial as a defense mechanism, so that when she's confronted by the police, she immediately says she didn't have a baby.”

“How can you tell that she dissociated at all?”

“When she speaks about giving birth, she shuts down a little. She doesn't rely on other defense mechanisms—for example, denial, or something more primitive.”

“Wait a second,” Ellie said, stopping. “Katie admitted to giving birth?”

“Yes, I have it on tape.”

Ellie shook her head, feeling oddly betrayed. “She didn't fold when Coop pressed her.”

“It's not unusual for a client to admit something crucial to a forensic psychiatrist that she hasn't admitted to a clinical psychiatrist. After all, I'm not talking to her to make her feel comfortable, but to keep her from going to jail. If she lies to me, she's hurting herself. It's my job to uncover the can of worms; it's the clinical psychiatrist's job to help stuff them back in.”

Ellie glanced up. “She told you about killing the infant too?”

The psychiatrist hesitated. “Actually, no. She says she still can't remember two specific points: the conception of the baby, and the murder.”

“Could she have been in a dissociative state both times?”

“It's entirely possible that she dissociated during the birth of the baby and during the killing. In fact, since her recollections don't match entirely with the forensic records you've given me, the discrepancy flags just that. But as for the sex … well, that's not something these women usually forget.”

“What if it was traumatic for her?” Ellie asked.

“You mean a rape? It's possible, but usually women admit to being raped, unless they're protecting someone. My gut feeling is that there's more to Katie's story on that particular point.”

Ellie nodded. “And the killing?”

“Katie recounted in great detail the night before the delivery, the actual birth, and falling asleep with the infant in her arms. She says the baby was gone when she woke up, along with the scissors she used to cut the umbilicus.”

“Did she look for the baby?”

“No. She went back to her room to sleep, entirely consistent with women who commit neonaticide—the problem's out of sight, out of mind.”

Ellie's head was spinning. “How long was she unconscious in the barn?”

“She said she doesn't know.”

“It couldn't have been long, based on the police reports,” Ellie mused aloud. “What if—”

“Ms. Hathaway, I realize what you're thinking. But remember—up until now, Katie didn't recall the birth of the baby. Tomorrow, who knows? She may recall in excruciating detail how she smothered it. As much as we might want to think she didn't kill that infant, we have to take her recollections with a grain of salt. By the mere definition of dissociation, there are gaps of time and logic missing for Katie. Chances are awfully good that she did indeed kill the baby, even if she's never able to verbally admit to it.”

“So you believe that she's guilty,” Ellie said.

“I believe that she fits the profile of many other women I've interviewed who killed their newborns while in a dissociative state,” the psychiatrist corrected. “I believe that her pattern of behavior is consistent with what we know of the phenomenon of neonaticide.”

Ellie stopped walking along the stream's edge. “Is my client sane, Dr. Polacci?”

The psychiatrist exhaled heavily. “That's a loaded question. Are you talking medically sane, or legally sane? Medical insanity suggests that a person is not in touch with reality—but a person in a dissociative state
is
in touch with reality. She looks and appears normal while in a totally abnormal state. However, legal insanity has nothing to do with reality—it hinges on cognitive tests. And if a woman commits murder while in a dissociative state, she most likely will not understand the nature and quality of the act, or know that what she's doing is wrong.”

“So I can use an insanity defense.”

“You can use whatever you want,” Polacci said flatly. “You're really asking if an insanity defense can get your client off. Frankly, Ms. Hathaway, I don't know. I will tell you that juries usually want to know practical issues: that the woman is safe, and that this won't happen again—both of which are affirmative for most women who commit neonaticide. Best-case scenario? My testimony can give the jury something to hang their hats on—if they want to acquit, they will, as long as there's something they can point to to rationalize their actions.”

“Worst-case scenario?”

Dr. Polacci shrugged. “The jury learns more about neonaticide than they ever wanted to know.”

“And Katie?”

The psychiatrist fixed her gaze on Ellie. “And Katie goes to jail.”

Katie felt like the green twig that she was mangling in her own hands—bent double backward, nearly ready to break. She fought the urge to stand up and start pacing, to look out the hayloft window, to do anything but speak to her attorney right now.

She understood the point of the drill—Ellie was trying to get her ready for what would certainly be an unpleasant grilling by the forensic psychiatrist who'd been hired by the State. Ellie had said Dr. Polacci believed Katie was holding back about how the baby was conceived. “And,” she'd finished, “I'll be damned if you spill the beans to the prosecution's expert.”

So now they were in the hayloft—she and Ellie, who'd somehow become so ruthless and unforgiving that every now and then Katie had to turn and make sure her face was familiar.

“You don't remember having sex,” Ellie said.

“No.”

“I don't believe you. You said you didn't remember the pregnancy or the birth, and lo and behold, three days later, you're a veritable font of information.”

“But it's true!” Katie felt her hands sweating; she wiped them on her apron.

“You had a baby. Explain that.”

“I already did, to Dr.—”

“Explain how it was conceived.” At Katie's prolonged silence, Ellie wearily propped her head in her heads. “Look,” she said. “You're bluffing. The psychiatrist knows it and I know it, and Katie, you know it too. We're all on the same goddamned side, here, but you're making it twice as hard for us to defend you. I know of one Immaculate Conception, and yours wasn't it.”

With resignation Katie's gaze fluttered to her lap. What would it mean, to come clean? To confess, as she had for the bishop and the congregation? “Okay,” Katie said finally, softly. She swallowed hard. “I was visiting my brother, and we went to a graduation party at one of the fraternity houses. I didn't want to go, but Jacob did, and I didn't want him to feel badly for having me there like … what is it you say? Like a fifth wheel. We went to the party, and it was very crowded, very hot. Jacob went to get us something to eat and didn't come back for a while. In the meantime, a boy came up to me. He gave me a glass of punch and said I looked like I needed it. I told him I was waiting for someone, and he laughed, and said, ‘Finders, keepers. ' Then he started to talk to me.”

Katie walked to the rear of the hayloft, fingering the spikes on a rake propped against the far wall. “I must have drunk some of the punch while he was talking, without really thinking about it. And it made me feel just awful—all sick to my stomach, and my head spinning like a top. I stood up to try to see Jacob in the crowd, and the whole room tilted.” She bit her lip. “The next thing, I was lying on a bed I didn't recognize, with my clothes all … and he was …” Katie closed her eyes. “I … I didn't even know his name.”

She bent her head to the wooden wall, feeling the rough plane of the board against her forehead. Her entire body was shaking, and she was afraid to turn and see Ellie's expression.

She didn't have to. Ellie embraced her from behind. “Oh, Katie,” she soothed. “I'm so sorry.”

Katie turned in her arms, this safe place, and burst into tears.

This time, when Katie finished telling the story, she was grasping Ellie's hand for support. If she was aware of the tears streaming over her cheeks, she made no mention of it. Ellie itched to wipe them away, to catch Katie's eye and smile and tell her she'd done a great job.

Dr. Polacci, who'd been called back for the confession, looked from Katie to Ellie, and back again. Then she lifted her hands and began clapping, her expression impassive. “Nice story,” she said. “Try again.”

“She's lying,” Dr. Polacci said. “She knows exactly where and when she conceived that baby, and that charming little date rape story wasn't it.”

Ellie bristled at the thought that Katie was lying; at the thought that Katie had been lying deliberately to her. “We're not talking about an average teenager who fabricates excuses for her parents and spends the night horizontal in the back of her boyfriend's four-by-four.”

“Exactly. This story was just
too
good. Too calculated, too rehearsed. She was telling you what you wanted to hear. If she'd been raped, she would have admitted to it by now in her sessions with the clinical psychiatrist, unless she was protecting the rapist, which her tale didn't support. And then there's the small matter of the graduation party held three months after a June graduation—I'm assuming she conceived in October, based on the medical examiner's report.”

It was that glaring inconsistency that finally broke through Ellie's defenses. “Shit,” she muttered. At a sudden thought, Ellie glanced up. “If she's lying about not remembering having sex, is she lying about not remembering the murder?”

The psychiatrist sighed. “My gut feeling still tells me no. When I pushed her on conception, she got fuzzy on me—said things are just sort of out of reach in her mind. When I pushed her about the murder, I got a flat denial of the crime, and that hard break—she fell asleep holding the infant; she woke up and it was gone. The two amnesic episodes differ—which leads me to believe she's consciously denying one, and subconsciously dissociating about the other.”

Dr. Polacci patted Ellie's shoulder. “I wouldn't take this too hard. Actually, it's sort of a compliment. Katie feels so close to you that she wants to live up to your expectations, even if it means coming up with a false recollection. In some ways, you've become a parent figure.”

“Living up to parental expectations,” Ellie huffed. “Isn't that what got her here in the first place?”

Dr. Polacci chuckled. “In part. That, along with some guy. Some guy who's got a hold on her like I've never seen.”

The night was so warm that Ellie had climbed outside the quilt and was now lying on top of it with her nightgown hiked to her thighs. She stayed perfectly still, trying to listen for Katie's breathing, wondering how long it would take for the two of them to fall asleep.

It made no sense to Ellie, this new obsession she had with the truth. As a defense attorney she usually had to stick her fingers in her ears to keep from hearing an admission she did not legally want to hear. But she would have traded her twelve-volt inverter for ten minutes inside Katie Fisher's head.

Then she heard it, the faintest of sighs. “I'm sorry,” Katie said quietly.

Ellie did not bother to look at her. “What is the apology for, exactly? The baby's murder? Or the more mundane crime of making me look like an idiot in front of my own witness?”

“You know what I'm sorry for.”

There was a long silence. “Why did you do it?” Ellie finally asked.

She could hear Katie rolling onto her side. “Because you needed to hear it so badly.”

“What I need is for you to stop lying to me, Katie. About this, and about what happened after that baby was born.” She passed a hand down her face. “What I need is to turn the clock back, so this time I can refuse your case.”

“I only lied because you and Dr. Polacci were so sure I knew something,” Katie said, her voice thick with tears. “I don't, Ellie. I promise I don't. I'm not crazy, like you think … I just can't remember. About how the baby got made, or how it got killed.”

Ellie didn't say a word. She heard the quiet creak of the bed as Katie curled on her side and cried. She clenched her fists to keep from going to the girl, then crawled beneath her own blanket and counted the minutes it took for Katie to fall asleep.

Samuel wiped the sweat off his brow and yanked another bull calf off its feet. After all these years helping Aaron, he had castration down to a science. He waited until the animal had gotten the urge to kick out of him, then slipped the rubber ring of the elestrator around the scrotum and let it constrict. Within seconds the two-month-old calf was up on its feet, casting an aggrieved, sidelong look at Samuel before heading out to pasture again.

“He's a sturdy one,” a voice said, startling Samuel.

He turned to find Bishop Ephram standing on the other side of the fence. “
Ja
, he'll bring Aaron enough beef.” Smiling at the older man, Samuel let himself out through the gate. “If you're looking for Aaron, I think he's in the barn.”

“Actually, I was looking for you.”

Samuel hesitated, wondering what charge the bishop might want to lay against him this time, then berating himself for even thinking such a thing. He'd had plenty of visits from the bishop in his life, and he'd never associated a single one with shame or wrongdoing. Until everything had gone wrong with Katie.

“Komm,”
Ephram said. “Walk a ways.” Samuel fell into step beside him. “I remember when your father got you your first calf.”