Джонатан Келлерман - Night Moves

The beginnings of a smirk. Slyly collaborative.

Again, Trisha Bowker caught herself and turned theatrically grave. “It wasn’t even necessary. They didn’t even put the alarm on. Paul told me. He bragged about the whole thing.”

“The Corvins made Paul’s job easier.”

“Sure did.” She shifted in her chair. Working hard not to gloat.

Milo shuffled papers. Without looking up, he said, “Another thing that made Paul’s job easier was your wrapping up the body and helping him load it into the truck.”

Wilde’s mouth opened.

Bowker said, “No, no way, sir. I never did any of those things.”

“What did you do when Paul was wrapping and loading?”

“Nothing, I was just in the house.”

“Which house?”

“The little one.”

“On Marquette.”

Her face had lost color. “He made me stay. I was terrified, went to the bedroom and waited until he was done. It was horrible. I was paralyzed by anxiety.”

“Stockholm syndrome.”

“It’s mental torture,” she said. “I’ve had a severely chronic case for a long, long time. Even before I met Paul, men were abusing me.”

Hollick Wilde looked at me again. “Some people think of it as a particularly severe variant of PTSD.”

Milo said, “How long have you been afflicted, Trisha?”

“Since I was a girl,” she said. “I was abused. A lot more since Paul.”

“Paul scared you.”

“He scared me out of my mind.”

“Because of what he did to Jackie?”

Trisha Bowker blinked and folded her lips inward.

Hollick Wilde said, “Let’s stay away from that, Milo.”

“Can I ask if there were other victims besides Jackie?”

Bowker’s eye shift was the answer. The search would continue.

Wilde said, “Sorry, please no. I’d rather we stick to the case at hand.”

“Fair enough,” said Milo. He shuffled papers. “All these rules, you may need to guide me as I proceed.”

“Happy to.”

Trisha Bowker’s posture relaxed. Everyone getting along so well.

Milo had her go over the details again. She produced a nearly word-for-word version of her first account.

“Got the picture,” he said. “Hmmm... here’s something relevant to the case at hand, Mr. Wilde.”

Smiling at the lawyer. Wilde said, “Relevant’s always good.”

Stupidest thing I’ve heard from the lips of a defense attorney. He gave Bowker a go-ahead nod.

Milo said, “Trish, if I told you we found Mr. Braun’s hands buried in the backyard of the Marquette house, under an oleander bush, what would you say?”

Multiple blinks. Rightward roll of her body, a sailor accommodating a big wave.

“Trish?”

“I’d say that’s good. I’d say I’m glad, now, you see what Paul’s capable of.”

“Scary guy.”

“Terrifying.”

“Stockholm syndrome... okay, now if I told you, Trish, that the skin on top of the hands we found buried in the Marquette backyard had your DNA on it, what would you say?”

She half rose, sank back down. “That’s impossible.”

“I’m afraid it’s more than possible, Trish, it’s actual. The pathologist found your DNA in little half-moon indentations on the top of the hand. Most likely from nails being dug in.”

“No way,” she said. “Paul must’ve put them there.”

“He took the time to put your hand on top of Mr. Braun’s hand and dug you in?”

“No, no, no, I never. He figured out a way...” Her head shook hard enough to inflict whiplash.

Wilde said, “I think we should—”

Bowker shot out of her chair. “He made me! He would’ve killed me!”

“Those nail marks, Trisha, tells me you were angry.”

“No! Terrified. He would’ve cut me up, too!”

Milo said, “Speaking of cutting, we also found your fingerprints on the band saw in the garage.”

“That’s ’cause he made me use it!”

“To cut off Hargis Braun’s hands—”

“It wasn’t — he was already dead—”

Hollick Wilde said, “Sorry, guys, interview terminated.”

Trisha Bowker pretended to cry.

Wilde said, “Hang in.”

“How can I? They don’t understand. ”

“We’ll get them to see the light,” said Wilde. But his face was dark.

By nightfall, Wilde had come up with an offer: In return for revealing where Jacqueline Mearsheim’s body was buried, Bowker would plead to accessory to manslaughter after the fact and a three-year sentence.

John Nguyen laughed.

The following morning, Wilde proposed accessory to second-degree murder before the fact and a ten-year sentence.

John Nguyen proposed twenty-five to life. Wilde tried fifteen.

Nguyen said, “I can go with fifteen to twenty-five but in the end it’ll be up to the judge.”

Wilde said, “Okay.”

To Milo Nguyen confided, “I’ll get Friedman. She’ll get life.”

Even with Trisha Bowker’s hand-drawn map, it took a while.

After two days of searching, Jacqueline Mearsheim’s partial skeleton was found under four feet of rich agricultural soil in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. Private land, the failed vineyard of a music industry honcho who’d long given up on Pinot Noir. Getting his permission had involved calling the Cayman Islands.

Per Bowker’s self-cleansing account, she and Mearsheim had visited a nearby winery during a weekend when Jackie languished in bed with the flu. Spotting the abandoned estate, Paul had made a mental note and returned months later at night with her body in the trunk of his car. Entering the estate by snipping barbed wire, then digging unmolested near a windbreak of blue-gum eucalyptus.

Unable to get Bowker to talk about additional victims, Milo called Sheila Braxton and gave her the basics.

She said, “Time to look at all the missings around here. How’s he doing?”

“Well as can be expected.”

“Give him my best, maybe I’ll come by to see him.”

Milo and I updated Cory Thurber, still hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai four days after his rescue. Rick Silverman had been off duty the night Cory was ambulanced to the E.R. but Milo’s call brought him in. He tended to the boy’s immediate health issues and called in a hand surgeon to see what could be done for Cory’s mangled fingers.

Milo said, “He’s a piano player.”

The surgeon said, “Fuck,” and walked away.

This morning, Cory was able to talk through cracked lips, his hand a bandaged mitt.

Milo introduced me.

“Someone thinks I’m crazy?”

Milo explained. Cory said, “Okay,” but he avoided looking at me.

“So,” said Milo. “Anything you feel like telling us?”

“What I told you yesterday,” said Cory. “She’s the one who did it.”

Milo said, “She hit you with the hammer.”

“She laughed while she was doing it,” said the boy. Amazed; as if reciting a weird factoid. “He taped me up and held me down but she hit me. She was laughing. He was a pussy. That’s why she killed him.”

“Because he was...”

“A total pussy,” said Cory Thurber. “She gave him the shotgun, told him to shoot me. He said, ‘Not again.’ She started yelling at him.”

His eyes shut. “After she hit me like two times, three, I passed out. When I woke I was...” Staring at the mitt.

When brown irises reappeared, I said, “What was she yelling about?”

“He had to shoot me. He was saying if it was so easy, she should do it, the last time made him sick. They must’ve gone into another room because the yelling got softer but it kept on. Then she said, ‘Where the fuck do you think you’re going?’ Then there was this noise.”