The Best Man on the Planet, page 24
Casey handed the doctor his phone, wondering why Mr. Foster couldn’t have chosen alien abduction if he was going to invent a history for himself.
“I have a question, if no one minds,” Mr. Foster said, seeming alert in a way he hadn’t so far. “Will I start thinking I’m the Pope? Napoleon?”
“Those are grandiose delusions,” said the doctor, “sometimes associated with paranoid schizophrenia. You show no signs of that.”
Dr. Putterman looked intensely at Mr. Foster, pointing at him with his pen. “The question is, will you add other crime stories to your narrative? Since it’s been almost three years and they’ve been the same ones, unlikely. Your memory deficits have been filled and the brain is satisfied. It’s my professional opinion, Samuel, you confabulated a sensationally dark history to deal with your real past—the past you wanted to punish yourself over.” He leaned forward. “Believe it or not, your false persona of being a serial killer was helping you heal. The foundation was a methodical way for you to reinvent yourself. You said yesterday you’d asked Casey to make the victims’ reports as detailed as possible. I believe that was so you could teach yourself empathy by trying to understand what they’d gone through.”
Casey took a peek at Mr. Foster to see if he was absorbing all of this, but he only looked dazed and sad.
Dr. Putterman stretched into his black wingback chair, as if getting ready to wrap up his diagnosis. “I don’t think you would have committed suicide once the foundation had served its purpose and given you a new future. I suspect the only reason you tried is because Casey also came to believe your false memories, which was unendurable for you.”
Casey squirmed at the suggestion that Mr. Foster had only tried to kill himself because of her. The four of them were silent for what seemed minutes. Casey felt out-argued and out-reasoned.
“If evidence comes to light, it will need to be dealt with and it’s our moral imperative to do so,” said the doctor, looking at Mr. Foster. “You want to do the right thing, which is why you confessed. But it’s also your moral imperative not to cause more anguish to those families.”
“Think of the families, Sam!” Sharon cried.
“They’re all I think about,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m in prison or out of prison.” He pointed at his head. “This is prison.”
Though his face was in his hands, Casey could tell by the shuddering motion of his shoulders that he was softly crying. Sharon sprang from her chair and was at his side. She clutched him and murmured in his ear.
Casey was glad Sharon had done what she couldn’t bring herself to do.
41
In the parking garage, Casey walked with Sharon and Mr. Foster. Sharon had said, “I’ll take you home now,” in the elevator and Casey had simply gone with them.
There were two reasons for it. She got ahead of them and looked inside of the SUV’s passenger window. There was the first reason: the white hospital folder on the floor. She wanted to get her discharge papers, didn’t want to risk he would find out she was pregnant. Who knows what maneuvers these two might try if he knew that. Casey had no doubt Sharon would tell him about it when the two of them were alone, but by then Casey could be on her way out of the city.
The second reason was mounted high up on nearby column. As the pair closed in on the SUV, Casey called, “Hey, you two,” and pointed. Their heads swiveled up. “Smile,” she said, brightly. “You both have such pretty smiles.”
Oh, how she’d enjoyed that, even when they looked at her blankly, like they had no idea what had just happened. But Casey knew they did, and now it was safe to get into the SUV, wait until Mr. Foster got out at the mansion, and retrieve her discharge papers. With both of their mugs on surveillance camera walking with her, and them knowing about it, she felt nothing would “happen” to her.
At the mansion, Sharon eased the SUV into a space in front of a fire hydrant, where she could idle without blocking traffic. Casey and Mr. Foster had kept silent throughout the ride back to Brooklyn. Sharon had occasionally chirped something innocuous about the traffic, the weather, or the sale of the mansion. The developer who’d bought it was indeed going to turn it into condos, but would keep the façade and much of the mansion’s interior intact, a condition of the sale.
Sharon looked from Casey to Mr. Foster, who was in the back.
“You kids listen to me,” she said. “Go in there and kiss and make up. Auntie Sharon has bailed your asses out big time, but I won’t do it again. Sam, the next time you come out with this nonsense might be the last time you do it outside of a six-by-eight cell.” She shook her blonde hair in incredulity. “Help the world if that’s what you want. You think you can do anyone any good from prison? A real prison? You’re not only going to hurt yourself and Casey, but those families. I don’t want to hear any of this ridiculousness again. And I’ll see you in Geneva.”
Adrenaline had been scorching through Casey at the doctor’s office, but it had drained out of her during the long ride, with the rhythmic stop and start of traffic, and the lulling hum of the air conditioner. The painful exhaustion she’d been wrestling with all morning had her in a headlock.
And there was another problem. During the ride, she’d cracked the white hospital folder open with her foot to make sure the papers were still inside of it. They weren’t there. The bitch had taken them. Now she’d have to make sure Sharon didn’t go into the mansion and show him the papers, which Sharon may have hidden on her. Casey needed an excuse to separate the two of them.
“Sharon,” she said, her mouth almost unworkable. “Samuel needs to get my wallet inside. Then you need to bring me to Penn Station.” She didn’t think she would have the energy to buy a ticket and get on a train, but she would sleep on the floor there until she could.
“Casey, didn’t you hear anything we said? Sam is harmless! If he’d wanted to hurt you, wouldn’t he have done it before, instead of trying to kill himself?”
“Stop it, Sharon,” he ordered and leaned forward. “I’ll find your bag, bring it here, and call my driver for you. Is your wallet in your bag?”
“Noooo.” Casey rested her head on the seat for a second, only a second, that’s all she needed. “I want Sharon… to take me,” she said, or thought she said. She was no longer sure if she was speaking out loud.
When she awoke, it was at least a minute before reality charged up on her, like a ranting person who wouldn’t stop following her down the street.
In the dimness she recognized the spare bedroom and the diaphanous canopy curtains around the bed where she lay. A rush of panic pierced her chest and she sat upright.
“I’ll stay over here. I want you to feel safe.”
Mr. Foster was sitting in the corner on the room’s only chair, his face muted in the shadows of the room, the bulk of him deflated slightly.
“I’m anemic. I guess that’s why I keep fainting.” The pronouncement sounded utterly absurd.
“I don’t think you fainted, you went to sleep. You were snoring a little.” The familiar tease was in his voice, as if everything were normal. “It’s been about half an hour.”
“Where’s Sharon?”
“I carried you inside and she left.”
“Did she speak to you about me?”
“About you? Well, she said you must be worn out given the morning we had. She wanted to come in, but I wouldn’t let her. I’ve been listening to her voice for two days straight, and I’m sick of it.”
Casey could tell he knew nothing about her pregnancy. When Sharon couldn’t get inside, she must have decided not tell him in the SUV and risk being overheard. “She does have an annoying voice,” Casey said, and couldn’t help but give him a half-smile.
She dropped back onto her elbows, black pinpoints floating in her vision. A mossy sensation grew up her throat and behind her eyes. “I don’t understand any of this. None of it seems real.”
She was hovering in a twilight world, like the time she’d awoken from a dream and spent several moments still feeling she could fly.
“I understand, Casey, and I want to tell you something. I believe what the doctor said is true. It explains everything.” His eagerness drifted through the serene slate of the room. “Those things I thought I did, the memories were so scattered and cloudy—far more than my average memory loss. I couldn’t imagine why I was having these thoughts unless I’d done it, even if they were only snippets of thoughts. Two years ago, when Sharon brought that doctor to the rehab center, he gave me his spiel about false memories, but he was rushed and didn’t go into the detail he went into today. I told them I believed their theory, and maybe I did. But over the next few months, more memories came. It was the most… there are no words to describe having memories like that. I began creating a past persona; someone I despised, yet someone who could explain why I was thinking such sickening things.”
“What about your father?”
He sighed, and rubbed at his forehead.
“I believe that’s real. The memories are too clear. I didn’t feel guilty about it when it happened, was mostly glad I’d inherit everything. But when I woke up in the hospital, there was the agony of the realization of what I’d done. Enormous guilt came over me, the first time I’d ever felt guilt.”
“Samuel, open the curtains and show me your hand.”
“My hand?”
“Yes.”
He got up cautiously and opened the curtains, bathing the room in warm late afternoon light. Casey squinted, the pinpoints in her vision briefly floating up again.
“Can I approach you?” he asked.
“Yes. Put out your hand. The top of it.”
He came forward slowly, his right arm outstretched.
“The other one too. The left.”
Not touching him, she examined the tops of both hands and saw nothing unusual. Natalie’s attack was two and half years ago, if one had been there, it could have faded by now.
“You’re looking for a scar, a bite mark, aren’t you?” he asked. “Natalie bit him. It was in your article you sent me.”
So now it was “bit him” not “bit me.”
He went back to the chair and sat. What she’d asked him to do seemed grotesque, and she felt almost guilty, as if he’d once said something mildly offensive and she couldn’t stop badgering him about it.
“I could believe all of this except for the belt buckle. How could you have that?”
“I think I had one already,” he said lowly, kneading his thumbs together. “There’s one thing I keep remembering. Years ago, I went to a Halloween party. I dressed as a cowboy. The belt buckle, with the buffalo, would have been the perfect accessory. While I was in Albuquerque, I must have seen the story about the murders on the news, as Sharon said, and the buckle was shown. After the aneurysm, those things fused in my mind in the craziest way. I looked for the costume while you were sleeping, but don’t see it here. It was probably at my old apartment in the city, and I got rid of so many things.
As for the wedding rings, they could have been anyone’s. My mother inherited lots of jewelry over the years, and they were lying around. When I saw them, I remember thinking, ‘Here are the couple’s rings too,’ the ones I knew from the news were missing.” He laughed and grabbed the hair on his forehead. “It’s incredible when you think about it. I should be in a textbook.”
Casey decided her wisest course of action was to go along with what he was saying. To keep voicing doubts as she slumped bone-weary on the bed was not a risk worth taking. Asking to see his hands had been a big slip-up. What if there had been a scar? He would have had to reverse everything he’d just told her—or get rid of her.
How would he have gotten rid of her? Strangling, Casey guessed. She would put up one hell of a fight, like Natalie had. But she didn’t have Natalie’s self-defense training and it wouldn’t take long for him to overcome her. He wouldn’t even realize he was killing his own child too.
What the hell was she thinking? She was going insane. No, he wouldn’t hurt her. He’d had enough chances to do it already.
“Is this what you really feel happened?” she asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“If these are memories you’ve been living with, I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you. But I need to get away and think.”
“Of course you do.”
He rubbed the arms of the chairs, pushed his head back, and groaned heavily, the weight of the world in his throat. Casey wondered when she would regain enough energy to make it to Penn Station.
“If I’m going to have the next radiosurgery, then I need to leave for Geneva soon. I think… well, I feel…”
She stopped him. “You should go, Samuel. You should try to live.”
42
Fourteen Months Later
Casey waited in the visitors’ room of Montkill Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The room was dotted with dark blue tables and red and green plastic chairs. The prison was a former mental hospital and the room, with its low ceiling with squares of fluorescent lights and gray-tiled, water-damage cracked walls, was oppressively institutional, devoid of even a hint of warmth.
Clad in her drab olive green prisoner’s uniform, Maude Jones was ushered in by a guard. Casey recognized her right away—a solidly-built woman with cropped, curly brown hair, in her mid-fifties.
Casey had read that staff often turned away female visitors if they didn’t like your dress, so she had on conservative brown slacks, a brown blazer, and a navy blouse buttoned up to her neck, all of which was making her sweat in the crowded, un-air-conditioned confines of the visitors’ room.
“Hello, Ms. Jones,” she said, shaking the woman’s hand. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
“I enjoy visitors,” Maude said in a soft, girlish voice at odds with her sturdy appearance. “How can I help you?”
“Actually, I came here to help you.”
Casey hadn’t wanted to get into the details of why she wanted to see Maude over the telephone, as prison calls were recorded. But she did confirm Maude would be willing to have her visit.
Maude was serving a life sentence without parole for the first-degree murder of her thirteen-year-old daughter, Seeley, in a fire that consumed their home in Rockland County fifteen years ago.
Maude had been accused of pouring gasoline outside Seeley’s bedroom as she slept, lighting a fire, and then leaving to go shopping. Maude was thirty miles away with a friend at the time the fire was reported. No traces of gasoline were found in her car or on her clothes, and experts had testified the gasoline had been poured inside of the teen’s room, where a gas can and many matches had been found.
But it didn’t matter, because Maude had confessed to killing her daughter.
After almost twenty-four hours of interrogation without a lawyer, and by a trusted detective whom she’d known for years, Maude began to believe she had gone “insane” and lit her daughter’s room on fire after an argument.
The detective told Maude that gasoline had been found on the hem of her pants and shoes, which was not true. He’d also repeatedly suggested Maude had blocked out the crime. After hours of interrogation, at a point when she began to believe the detective must be right, she failed a polygraph.
Eventually, she conceded she must have done it and didn’t remember, as all evidence pointed to her. Maude was unaware that police are legally able to make up evidence during interrogations.
Soon after her videotaped confession, she recanted, but was convicted anyway. Twelve years later, Casey had seen Maude’s case profiled on a popular news program.
Last year, a county district attorney agreed to re-review Maude’s case, but it was dragging on as her life vaporized behind bars. She was lacking the resources for crack lawyers who could budge the rusty, slothful jaws of the penal system.
This was about to change. Hopefully.
“Ms. Jones, I read about your case. I have a law firm that can help you.”
Maude nodded politely, as if she’d heard that kind of thing before.
“Would you agree to let the firm represent you in front of your re-review? They’re one of the best in New York.”
Maude continued nodding slowly, dreamily, and Casey wasn’t sure if she was saying yes, or considering, or if she didn’t quite know what was happening. Maude drew her finger along her mouth and poised it on her lower lip, then spoke evenly. “Why do you want to do this for me?”
“Because I believe you’re innocent. And this is wrong.”
“And why do you believe I’m innocent?” Maude asked, unexpectedly.
Casey looked around for a moment at the gray, dirty walls, then back into Maude’s large eyes framed by puffy pink flesh. “Are you?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve been telling everyone for years that I am. I know I would never hurt Seeley. But I said I did.” She paused. “Can you imagine what it is to have your brain, your mouth, your words, betray you like that?”
“I think I can imagine,” Casey said, her voice nearly drowned in the clamoring chatter of the visitors around her.
43
A few hours later, Casey entered her hotel room, shook off her coat, and sprawled flat on the bed. Her mind was thrumming with excitement about seeing Maude Jones, after thinking about her ever since she’d caught her story online months ago.
Her stomach clamored and she wanted to grab something to eat downstairs, but first things first. She opened her laptop, pulled up Skype, and dialed Samuel’s number. He answered on the second ring.
“Hi, baby,” she said, resting her chin on her hands and tilting her face closer.
