David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

“I went into her bedroom. I offered to make her something to eat. Get her some aspirin.”

“Where was she at this time?”

“She was-still in bed.”

“Did she respond to you?”

“She said-” Jessica clears her throat. “She said that she wanted to tell me something. She said that I might be hearing-”

Allison closes her hands into fists as her daughter breaks down quietly on the witness stand. Her lawyer, Ron McGaffrey, begins to move out of his seat, but Allison takes his hand.

“Let her get it over with,” Allison whispers to her lawyer.

An uncommon quiet falls over the courtroom as Jessica struggles to control herself. She finally raises her head again, her eyes dark and wet, a shade of red coloring her face. She inhales deeply and continues.

“She said that I might be hearing things about her. She told me that she had been having an affair with Sam Dillon. She said she was sorry she had done it and she wanted me to hear it from her first.”

“Your mother said that she had an affair with Sam Dillon?”

“Yes.”

“And how did you respond?”

“I… walked out. I was very mad. I… had always hoped my parents would reconcile, I guess. I… didn’t like hearing about another-” Her eyes fall. “I left the house and went back to campus.”

Roger Ogren asks Jessica questions about what came next, after Sam Dillon’s death. Jessica had read about his death in the papers, like everyone else, she says, the following Monday, one day after Sam was found dead and a day and a half after he was murdered.

“Did you discuss this with your mother, Jessica? The murder of Sam Dillon?”

“I called her. I left a message on her voice mail.”

“This was Tuesday, February the tenth.”

“Yes.”

“Did she call you back?”

“She came to see me,” Jessica says. “At my dorm at the college.”

Allison stood outside her daughter’s dorm room. She had knocked, several times, to no avail. Jessica wasn’t there. She didn’t know how long she would be gone. Allison didn’t know her class schedule, which was unusual. This was the first semester since Jessica had enrolled at Mansbury that Allison couldn’t recite the title, professor, and time of each class. She had been like that with her only daughter, twenty questions all the time, trying to involve herself wherever possible in the life of a child who had slowly grown independent of her mother, trying to keep the bird who had flown from the nest on the radar screen, at least.

But that had changed this year. Jessica had blamed Allison for the breakup of the marriage. She had left no room for doubt on that subject. It was terribly unfair, in Allison’s eyes; Jessica was focusing only on the result, not the cause. Allison had raised the subject, had wanted the divorce, and that was all that mattered to Jess. Her daughter did not know the details of why, and Allison wouldn’t supply them, at least not in a way that placed all the blame on Mat. She didn’t want it that way; she didn’t want Jessica in the middle of a he-said, she-said.We drifted apart,was all she told her daughter, unsure of what, exactly, Mat had told her.

She didn’t know when Jessica would return to her dorm room. She didn’t know Jessica’s classes, the friends she was making, any boys she might be interested in. She couldn’t even be sure she had the right room anymore. She had to ask a young girl who emerged from a neighboring room, who was waking at a little before noon, if this was where Jessica Pagone lived.

She stood in the hallway for more than an hour, watched students return from class, heard them talking on the phones in their rooms. She couldn’t entirely relate; she hadn’t gone to college like other girls her age. Allison had gotten pregnant as a senior in high school and hadn’t started taking classes until Jessica was in grade school. She had desperately wanted Jessica to have this experience, the college life.

Her daughter walked down the hallway just after one o’clock, a backpack slung over her shoulder, her eyes down, frowning. When she saw her mother, she went blank, face turned ghostly white. She became immediately aware of her surroundings, of two other young women walking through the hallway, to whom Jessica offered a perfunctory smile.

She didn’t address her mother in any way, simply unlocked her dorm room and let Allison follow her in.

“This was Tuesday, the tenth of February,” the prosecutor clarifies. “Two days after Sam Dillon was found dead. A little after one in the afternoon.”

“Right.” Jessica breathes out of her mouth.

“Tell us what happened, Jessica. What you said. What your mother said.”

Jessica clears her throat, grimaces. “She told me I shouldn’t call her on the phone.”

“You never know who might be listening,” Allison had told her daughter. “And they can record the fact that you called. They can look at that later.”

“She didn’t explain why,” Jessica continues. “She just said, don’t use the phone.”

“And what else, Jessica?” Ogren places his hands behind his back.

“She told me that she had been sick yesterday and the night before.”

The prosecutor nods along. “She came all the way down to your college campus to emphasize to you that her behavior that weekend could be explained by the fact that she had been feeling ill?”

“Objection,” says Ron McGaffrey. “Argumentative.”

“Sustained.”

“Other than telling you not to call her on the phone, and the fact that she had been ill the previous weekend, what else did your mother say to you, or you to her?”

“It’s-” Jessica brings a hand to her face. “It was a while ago.”

Roger Ogren looks at the judge. He waits a beat to see if Jessica will continue.

“Did you ask your mother if she had murdered Sam Dillon?” he asks.

Allison stood against the window, overlooking the courtyard surrounded on all sides by the dormitories. Jessica sat on her bed, not looking at her mother, hands on each side of her head.

“You can’t say one way or the other whether I killed Sam Dillon,” Allison said.

“You didn’t kill him, Mother. You couldn’t possibly-”

“Jess, they’ll expect you to say that.” Her delivery was gentle. “They’ll expect you to defend your mother. What matters to them are the facts. And the fact is, you couldn’t say one way or the other whether I killed him. Right?”

“She said people might be saying a lot of things. She said I shouldn’t believe them.”

“Saying a lot of things about Sam Dillon’s death?” Ogren’s tone suggests impatience. He knows the answers to his questions, and Jessica isn’t delivering. “Saying things about her involvement in his death?”

“Yes.”

“But did you ask your mother if she had murdered Sam-”

“She said that we shouldn’t talk about that. That it would be a bad idea to discuss it.”

“Okay.” Roger Ogren takes a step. “But I want to ask you whether you asked a specific question. Ms. Pagone”-the prosecutor allows for an intake of air; as much as Jessica has fought him, he has been allowed to repeat this question several times, and her lack of cooperation only helps his cause here-“did you specifically ask your mother whether she killed Sam-”

“Yes.”A flash of anger-frustration, probably, and regret-colors Jessica’s face.

“And how did your mother react to that specific question? Whether or not she had killed Sam Dillon?”

Jessica swallows hard and lifts her chin. Allison holds her breath. This should be it. This should be the end. In a few moments, Jessica will be allowed to put this behind her. She will not let her attorney cross-examine her daughter.

“She didn’t,” Jessica answers. “She wouldn’t answer that question. We never discussed it again.”