David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

“Sure.” Roger Ogren smiles. “And where does that sunroom face, sir?”

“The room overlooks the road. Oh, I can see across the street to my neighbors. I can also see to the east, to Sam’s property. It’s a bay window, y’see.”

“Sure. So you could see Mr. Dillon’s property.”

“Can see his driveway, his yard, bit of his house but not much.”

“Were you awake at the hour of one in the morning on Sunday, the eighth of February?”

“Yes.”

“And could you see outside?”

“Well, yes, I could. I’m a bit hard of hearing. I’m not blind.”

“Very good, sir. Can you describe for us what it looked like outside at that time of night?”

“Well, basically it was quiet. But, I’d say a little after one, a truck comes driving down the road and parks outside Sam’s.”

“A truck. A little after one in the morning. Can you describe that truck?”

“One of those sport-utility jobs. The Lexus. The mini-SUV. It was silver.”

The SUV that Allison drives. She has a 2003 model, silver. Roger Ogren has a photograph of Allison’s Lexus and shows it to the witness.

“Yeah, it looked just like that,” he says. “It was silver. Didn’t get a look at the plates, of course.” He shakes his head. “It was moving pretty fast down the street, all right. Couldn’t really see exactly what happened when it stopped. I just know that it parked by Sam’s house. Sam has about an acre of property, so there was some distance. Houses are pretty well set apart out there. That’s the point of a cottage on a lake. Privacy.”

“That’s fine, sir. What do you remember next?”

“I’d say about fifteen minutes passed or so. Say, maybe twenty.”

“So this would be about what time?”

“I’d say about twenty, twenty-five past one.” He wags a finger. “That time of night, it stood out. Don’t see a lot of traffic turning into our subdivision. At least, not in the winter, unless it’s the holidays and the young ones are around.”

“So a car drove to Sam Dillon’s house at just after one in the morning, Sunday morning, and drove away some twenty minutes later?”

“That’s right. Yes. It was about twenty minutes later.”

Long enough, the prosecutor is saying without saying it, for Allison to return to Sam’s house and send an e-mail, at about 1:18 and 42 seconds in the morning.

Acollective pause falls over the courtroom. Opening statements have concluded. The prosecution has called its first witness, the only witness this first afternoon of trial. The media has heard bits and pieces of the anticipated testimony in written filings and at the preliminary hearing, but never in her own words.

It has been a roller coaster, her twenty years. This will be as low as it hits. Allison remembers the moments, all in fleeting flashes, the snapshots that stick. Who knows why certain memories stay with you while others vaporize?

She remembers the nights, when Jessica was a child. Midnight, usually, when Allison would rise from bed and go to her young daughter’s bedroom, shake her awake and take her to the bathroom. Jessica always defiant, swinging her arms and moaning, her eyes sunken in sleep, her wispy hair standing on end, mumbling complaints, as she sat on the toilet and tinkled.

Allison was certainly relieved when Jessica’s bedwetting ceased around her tenth birthday, but she would always concede a sense of loss as well. These were the times when her love was most tested-casual, everyday moments when her daughter was most annoying and unwieldy, when she was most vulnerable, when Allison herself was incredibly tired. Times like these were when she recognized most palpably the concept of love.

Allison accepts that she cannot judge this young woman with any degree of objectivity, but she finds her captivating. She sees tremendous beauty and cannot imagine how anyone could miss it. Her cinnamon hair, a compromise between Mat’s dark brown and Allison’s red. Her thin eyebrows arching over liquid brown eyes. Soft, clear skin that most would describe as Caucasian, though the Latin influence is there, too.

Yes, she is beautiful, and that knowledge has always tugged Allison in opposing directions. A mixed blessing. She knows how men think. She knows Jessica will catch their eye, has already done so. There is such a thing, Allison believes, as being too beautiful, so glamorous that things come too easily. So stunning that men will be drawn to her for only one reason. Mat was the first to comment on that.I was sixteen once, he said, when Jessica was that age, with the wariness of a man who could read the minds of the young men-boys, really-who called on Jessica.

Allison had tried to keep watch over Jessica the way Allison had wanted it when she herself was that age. She tried to give her space, not appear overly inquisitive, create an atmosphere in which Jessica would feel comfortable sharing.

Look whatthat had gotten her. She had thought it was odd that her daughter, at age seventeen, had no boyfriends at school. Looking at this young woman, Allison couldn’t understand how boys could not be interested, and despite Mat’s growing suspicion that perhaps Jessica didn’t like boys at all, Allison knew better. She asked, and her daughter put her off.They’re so immature, she would explain.

When the police called, Allison didn’t understand, at first. It didn’t register. Her daughter and her sophomore geometry teacher, in the parking lot by the school’s baseball field. A patrolman had come upon them, late in the evening on a school night. There was nothing automatically incriminating about it. Jessica was fully clothed and the teacher was, too, though the patrolman explained to Allison that the teacher’s shirt was pulled out and it wasn’t too hard to figure what had been happening before they saw the squad car’s headlights.

Did she want to press charges? Request an investigation? Allison didn’t know what to say, when she picked up her mortified daughter at the station. They drove silently home. Mat was at the capital, so they had the chance to talk woman-to-woman without the hysteria of an irate father. Allison demanded that Jessica explain herself. So it came out, finally. She admitted it. It had been going on for almost a year, since she was a sophomore and in his class.

“I do,” Jessica says, to the court reporter swearing her in.

They didn’t press charges. It would be all over the place if they did. An underage girl’s name would be kept out of the press, but somehow it would get out. Jessica pleaded with her mother and father, and they ultimately agreed to keep it quiet. The teacher agreed to resign his position immediately and to never teach again. And Allison was left trying to figure out how she missed the whole thing for almost a year.

She never looked at her daughter the same way again. She had expected secrets but not like this. She felt betrayed and inadequate. She explained to Jessica that it was the teacher’s fault, that he was the controlling adult, but that Jessica had to take responsibility for her own actions, too. She wanted to teach this responsibility while, at the same time, she wanted to hover over her daughter’s every movement but knew she could not.

Had Jessica known, even then, that her parents’ marriage was in trouble? Did that play a part? Allison had deliberately stayed with Mat until Jessica graduated and moved on to college. For Jessica’s sake. Had her decision had the opposite effect?

And now there are secrets, again, since the divorce. Jessica has taken her father’s side, and Allison’s questions surrounding Jessica’s love life are once more met with derision. She remembers last December, her daughter being not only evasive but openly hostile to Allison’s queries.