Plain Truth (9 page)

“I'm sure that—”

She turned on me. “You're sure of nothing,” she challenged.

Suddenly I realized that if I stayed in this room, sleeping beside Katie, I wouldn't be the only one incapable of keeping secrets. “I was going to say that I'm sure the police searched your room. They must have found something to make them feel confident enough to charge you.” Katie sat down on her own bed, her shoulders slumped. “Look. Why don't we start by having you tell me what happened yesterday morning?”

“I didn't kill any baby. I didn't even have a baby.”

“So you've said.” I sighed. “Okay. You may not like me being here, and I certainly could find a thousand other things I'd rather be doing, but thanks to Judge Gorman, you and I are going to be stuck with each other for some time. I have a deal with my clients: I won't ask you if you committed the crime, not ever. And in return, you tell me the truth whenever I ask you anything else.” Leaning forward, I caught her gaze. “You want to tell me you didn't kill that baby? Go right ahead. I couldn't care less if you did or didn't, because I'll still stand up for you in court no matter what and not make a personal judgment. But lying about
having
the baby—something that's been proven a fact—well, Katie, that just makes me angry.”

“I'm not lying.”

“I can count at least three medical experts who've already gone on record saying that your body shows signs of recent delivery. I can wave a blood test in your face that proves the same thing. So how can you sit here and tell me you didn't have the baby?”

As a defense attorney, I already knew the answer—she could sit there and tell me because she believed it, one hundred percent. But before I even contemplated running with an insanity defense, I needed to make sure Katie Fisher wasn't taking me for a ride. Katie didn't act crazy, and she functioned normally. If this kid was insane, then I was Marcia Clark.

“How can you sit there,” Katie said, “and tell me you're not judging me?”

Her words slapped me with surprise. I, the suave defense attorney, the one with a winning record and a list of credentials as long as my arm, had made the cardinal mistake of mentally convicting a client before the right to a fair trial. A fair trial in which I was supposed to represent her. She had lied about having the baby, and I couldn't push that aside without wondering what else she might be lying about—a mindset that placed me more in line with a prosecutor than a defense attorney.

I had coolly defended the rights of rapists, murderers, and pedophiles. But because this girl had killed her own newborn, an act I simply could not get my head around, I wanted her to be locked away.

I closed my eyes.
Allegedly
killed, I reminded myself.

“Is it that you can't remember?” I asked, deliberately softening my voice.

Katie's eyes met mine, wide and sea blue. “I went to sleep on Thursday night. I woke up Friday morning and came down to make breakfast. That's all there is to it.”

“You don't remember going into labor. You don't remember walking out to the barn.”

“No.”

“Is there anyone who saw you sleeping all night?” I pressed.

“I don't know. I wasn't awake to see.”

Sighing, I rapped my hands on the mattress I was sitting on. “What about the person who sleeps here?”

Katie's face drained of color; she seemed far more upset by that question than by anything else I'd asked her. “No one sleeps there.”

“You don't remember feeling that baby come out of you,” I said, my voice growing thick with frustration. “You don't remember holding it close, and wrapping it in that shirt.” We both glanced down, where I was cradling an imaginary infant in my arms.

For a long minute, Katie stared at me. “Have you ever had a baby?”

“This isn't about me,” I said. But one look at her face told me she knew I wasn't telling the truth, either.

There were pegs on the walls, but no closets. Katie's dresses took up three of them, another three were empty on the opposite wall. My suitcase lay open on the bed, stuffed to the gills with jeans and blouses and sundresses. After a moment's consideration, I pulled out a single dress, hung it on the peg, and then zipped the suitcase shut again.

A knock came on the door as I was hauling my luggage to the corner of the room, behind a rocking chair. “Come on in.”

Sarah Fisher entered, carrying a stack of towels that nearly obliterated her face. She set them down on a dresser. “You have found everything you need?”

“Yes, thank you. Katie showed me around.”

Sarah nodded stiffly. “Dinner's at six,” she said, and she turned her back on me.

“Mrs. Fisher,” I called out before I could stop myself, “I know this isn't easy for you.”

The woman stopped in the doorway, her hand braced on the frame. “My name is Sarah.”

“Sarah, then.” I smiled, a forced smile, but at least one of us was trying. “If there's anything you'd like to ask me about your daughter's case, please feel free.”

“I do have a question.” She crossed her arms and stared at me. “Are you secure in your faith?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you Episcopalian? Catholic?”

Speechless, I shook my head. “How does my religion have anything to do with the fact that I'm representing Katie?”

“We get a lot of people coming through here who think they want to be Plain. As if that's the answer to all the problems in their lives,” Sarah scoffed.

Amazed at her audacity, I said, “I'm not here to become Amish. In fact, I wouldn't be here at all, except for the fact that I'm keeping your daughter out of jail.”

We stared at each other, a standoff. Finally, Sarah turned away, picking up a quilt on the end of one twin bed and refolding it. “If you aren't Episcopalian or Catholic, what do you believe in?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

Sarah hugged the quilt to her chest, surprised by my answer. She didn't say a word, but she didn't have to: she was wondering how on earth I could possibly think that it was Katie who needed help.

After my confrontation with Sarah, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and then Katie came upstairs for a rest—something, I could tell, that was unprecedented in the household. To give Katie her privacy, I decided to explore the grounds. I stopped in the kitchen, where Sarah was already beginning to cook dinner, to tell her my plans.

The woman couldn't have heard a word I said. She was staring at my arms and legs as if I were walking around naked. Which to her, I guess, I was. Blushing, she whipped back to face the counter. “Yes,” she said. “You go on.”

I walked along the raspberry patch, behind the silo, out toward the fields. I ventured into the barn, meeting the lazy eyes of the cows chained at their milking stalls. I gingerly touched the bright crime-scene tape, scouting for clues. And then I wandered until finding the creek, where I'd been ever since.

When I used to stay at Leda and Frank's as a young girl, I'd spend hours lying belly-flat on the shores of their creek, watching the stick bugs skitter over the surface of the water, while pairs of dragonflies gossiped to each other. I'd dip my finger in and watch the water carve a path around it, meeting up on the other side. Time would spin out like sugar, so that I'd be thinking about how I'd just arrived, and in the blink of an eye, it was already sunset.

The Fishers' creek was narrower than the one I'd grown up with. At one end was a tiny waterfall, bogged at the bottom with so many spores and sprigs of hay that I knew it had served as a source of fascination for their children. The other end of the creek widened into a small natural pond, shaded by willow and oak trees.

I dangled a forked twig over the water as if I could dowse for defense strategies. There was always sleepwalking—Katie admitted to not knowing what had happened between the time she went to bed and the time she awakened. It was a designer defense, certainly, but those had had success in recent years—and in a case as sensational as this one was sure to be, it might be my best shot.

Other than that, there were two options. Either Katie did it, or she didn't. Although I hadn't seen discovery from the prosecutor yet, I knew they wouldn't have charged her without evidence to the former. Which meant that I needed to determine whether she was in her right mind at the moment she killed the baby. If she wasn't, I'd have to go with an insanity defense—only a handful of which had ever been acquitted in the state of Pennsylvania.

I sighed. I'd have a better chance proving that the baby had died by itself.

Dropping my twig, I considered that. For any ME the state could put on the stand to say that the baby had been murdered, I could probably find a dueling expert who'd say it had died of exposure, or prematurity, or whatever medical excuses there were for these sorts of things. It was a tragedy that could be pinned on Katie's inexperience and neglect, rather than her intent. A passive involvement in the newborn's death—well, that was something even I could forgive.

I patted my shorts, silently cursing my lack of foresight to bring along a scrap of paper and a pen. I'd have to contact a pathologist, first, and see how reliable the ME's report was likely to be. Maybe I could even put a good OB up on the stand— there was one fellow who'd done wonders for a client of mine during a previous trial. Finally, I'd have to get Katie on the stand, looking suitably distressed about what had accidentally happened.

Which, of course, would require her to admit that it had happened at all.

Groaning, I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes against the sun. Then again, maybe I'd just wait for the discovery, and see what I had to go with.

There was a faint rustling in the distance, and a snippet of song carried on the wind. Frowning, I got to my feet and started walking along the creek. It was coming from the pond, or somewhere near the pond. “Hey,” I called out, rounding the bend. “Who's there?”

There was a flash of black, which disappeared into the cornfield behind the pond before I could see who had vanished. I ran to the edge of the stalks, parting them with my hands, hoping to find the culprit. But all I managed to stir up were field mice, which ran past my sneakers and into the cattails that edged the pond.

I shrugged. I wasn't looking for company anyway. I started back toward the house, but stopped at the sight of a handful of wildflowers, left at the northernmost edge of the pond. Resting just out of reach of the graceful arms of a willow tree, they were neatly tied into a bouquet. Kneeling, I touched the Queen Anne's lace, the lady's slippers, the black-eyed Susans. Then I glanced at the field of corn, wondering for whom they had been left.

“While you're here,” Sarah said, handing me a bowl of peas, “you'll help out.”

I looked up from the kitchen table and bit back the retort that I was already helping, just by being here. Thanks to my sacrifice, Katie was here with her own bowl of peas, which she was shelling with remarkable industry. I watched her for a moment, then slid my thumbnail into the pod, watching it crack open as neat as a nut, just as it had for her.

“Neh … Englische Lett … Lus mich gay!”

Aaron's voice, quiet but firm, snaked through the open kitchen window. Wiping her hands on her apron, Sarah glanced out. Drawing in her breath, she hurried toward the door.

Then I heard English being spoken.

Immediately, I turned to Katie. “You stay here,” I ordered, and walked out. Aaron and Sarah were holding their hands over their faces, cringing away from the small crowd of cameramen and reporters who'd descended on the farm. One news van had the audacity to park right beside the Fisher buggy. There were dozens of questions being shouted out, ranging from queries about Katie's pregnancy to the sex of the dead baby.

Lulled by the quiet and peace of a bucolic farm, I'd forgotten how quickly the media would pick up on the court record of an Amish girl being charged with murder in the first degree.

Suddenly I remembered the summer I fancied myself a photographer, and how I'd pointed my Kodak at an unsuspecting Amishman in a buggy. Leda had covered the camera lens, explaining that the Amish believed the Bible prohibited a graven image, and didn't like to have their pictures taken. “I could do it anyway,” I had said, stung, and to my surprise Leda nodded—so sadly that I'd put my camera back in its case.

Aaron had given up trying to ask the reporters to go away. It wasn't in his nature to cause a scene, and he'd wisely assumed that if he offered himself as a target, it would keep Katie safe from their prying eyes. Clearing my throat, I marched to the front of the fray. “Excuse me, you're on private property.”

One of the reporters took in my shorts and top, in direct contrast to Aaron and Sarah's clothes. “Who are you?”

“Their press secretary,” I said dryly. “I believe you all are in direct violation of criminal trespassing, which, as a misdemeanor of the third degree, could result in up to a year in jail and a twenty-five-hundred-dollar fine.”

A woman in a tailored pink suit frowned, trying to place me. “You're the lawyer! The one from Philly!” I glanced at the call letters on her microphone; sure enough, she was from a city-based network affiliate.

“At this time, neither my client nor my client's parents have any comment,” I said. “As for the incendiary nature of the charge, well”—I smirked, gesturing to the barn, the farmhouse, the quiet lay of the land—”all I'm going to say is that an Amish farm is no Philadelphia crack house, and that an Amish girl is no hard-core criminal. The rest, I'm afraid, you'll have to hear on the steps of the courthouse at some later date.” I cast a measured look out over the crowd. “Now—a little free legal advice. I'm strongly recommending that you all leave.”

Reluctantly, they shuffled off in a pack, like the wolves I always pictured them to be. I walked to the end of the driveway, keeping watch until the last of their cars pulled away. Then I started back up the gravel incline, to find Aaron and Sarah standing side by side, waiting for me.