Secrets and Lies Read online

  “Both.”

  “And did you get aroused by hearing about her having sex with these men, or by hearing about her describing the beatings that these other men gave her?”

  “Both.” He studied me for a few minutes. “I know how it sounds, that hearing my wife be humiliated, degraded and beaten aroused me. I would apologize for this, but I don’t see why I should. To each our own, live and let live and all that, right?”

  “Right.” I didn’t really know what to say. I didn’t really understand the mentality of people who get involved in an alternative lifestyle, but it wasn’t for me to judge.

  “So you’re telling me, that you saw a psychiatrist, and you started taking Geodon and Prozac, and that’s got you on a more even keel?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  I nodded my head. “I’m going to find out if you’re lying,” I said. “I hope you know that.”

  “I do.”

  I studied him. I still had a feeling that he was hiding quite a lot, but I was getting somewhere with him and that slightly encouraged me.

  Chapter 5

  That night I went home to talk to my kids. I had found out more about the kid with the gun, through Tom’s investigation, and I found out the kid was disturbed, to say the very least. I knew disturbed. I was disturbed when I was a kid. I knew the feeling of desperately wanting to be heard by somebody, anybody, and knowing that nobody was paying attention to my cries for help. In a way, I could relate to that kid who brought the gun in. I was that kid when I was his age. At the same time, I worried. The school were supposed to install metal detectors and there were also plans to make all the kids start bringing their books and supplies in clear backpacks, but I didn’t think that was enough. I didn’t want the teachers to be armed, nor did I particularly want a security guard to patrol the school - there was just too much possibility for a situation to get out of hand if there were armed personnel on school grounds. I wasn’t quite sure what steps would be the best ones to take to keep my kids, and all the other kids, safe, but I knew that there had to be a better solution for what was happening.

  I needed to talk to Nate and Amelia about the situation further, to really get a gauge on where their heads were at on the situation. Nate was his usual laconic self, not wanting to talk about the student with the gun, or anything else that was on his mind. Amelia didn’t know much about the incident, because it didn’t happen in her school, but I knew that she was scared, too.

  As their father, I was determined to get more out of my kids, especially Nate. God forbid that kid inherit my propensity for violence and mayhem. If he did, he might be the next shooter, for all I knew. I had to make sure that that didn’t happen, so I needed to get him to talk.

  But, when I went home, I found something else that caught my attention. Something I wasn’t necessarily expecting.

  “This came for you,” Nate said to me, handing me an envelope. The envelope belied nothing, and didn’t have a return address on it.

  I took the envelope and hesitated. Nate was still just standing there, looking like he wanted to say something. I didn’t press him, though. If there was one thing I learned from my family counselor, it was that Nate was going to talk to me in his time. I couldn’t force things out of him, as much as I wanted to. As much as I desired to sit him down and not let him stand back up until he talked, I knew that pushing him would just make him get farther away from me. At some point, pushing Nate just might result in something that I didn’t want to deal with. Something that maybe I couldn’t deal with. I didn’t think that he was capable of shooting me while I slept, as I did with my stepfather, but one never knows.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking at him. I waved the envelope around for a few seconds while Nate just stood there, staring at the floor. I realized that I was holding my breath as I waited for him to speak. “Uh, kid…”

  “Well, I’ll be upstairs in my room. Call me when it’s dinnertime.”

  At that, he turned and walked into his room and shut the door.

  I shook my head and sighed. He was close to talking to me, but something was holding him back. I wished that I knew what it was, but maybe I would find out later.

  In the meantime, I had to read this letter. I was genuinely curious on who wrote it.

  Chapter 6

  Dear Mr. Harrington,

  You don’t know me. In fact, I’m not going to tell you who I am. You may never find out. I know, I know, you will do your best to try to find out where this letter originated, but the origin of this letter won’t tell you a thing. This letter was sent from a Kansas City Post Office, so what is that going to tell you? So, don’t even try to find out my identity.

  I’m writing you this letter to tell you that your client is guilty. I know him, and I knew Ava. I knew what kind of relationship they had. I know that he tried to tell you that he only beat her up twice, and that the reason why she had bruises on her arms recently was because she was going out having sex with other men, and they were beating on her. I can definitively tell you that that’s not true.

  Ava and Silas were not involved in the lifestyle. That dungeon that he showed you wasn’t a dungeon at all. It was simply a guest house, where servants were housed before Ava and Silas bought that house, and where guests stayed when they visited. That was it. No dungeon, no kinky sex implements were in there. I know that you couldn’t tell what that building was, because it burned to the ground, so that the only thing that was really left was the brick wall with the handcuffs attached and Ava’s hands. I understand what you probably believe, because that was what Silas told you. However, that’s not what that house was used for. In fact, those handcuffs were just installed recently.

  Silas would want you to believe that the reason why she was chained to that wall was because they were involved in consensual sexual play, but I can tell you that that’s not true. Talk to her parents. You’ll get the story. You’ll find out what their relationship was really like. He’s trying to make himself look good by keeping those prescriptions for bi-polar disorder in his bathroom. However, he is not taking meds for his bipolar disorder. I do believe that he has a mental illness, but he is not seeking treatment for it. He never has.

  You’ll see that Ava had two restraining orders against him, five years ago. She was terrified of your client, terrified that he would kill her if she left him. Ironically, her rational fear for her life was what caused her to stay with him all these years. He threatened her life, told her that he would find her, no matter where she was, and kill her if she left him and if she filed another restraining order against him. He’s a very wealthy and powerful man, so Ava had reason to believe that he would be as good as his word. That’s the real reason why there’s not been any restraining orders within the past five years, and that’s the real reason why Ava stayed married to that monster.

  Talk to her friends. Talk to her parents. You’ll get the full story.

  I can also tell you that Ava was not sick. I know that that’s another thing that he was trying to tell you – that she was sick. That she died before the fire had ever swept in. He told you that he had no idea how she died, but that she just went into cardiac arrest while he was having sex with her, and he couldn’t revive her. To this, I ask you - don’t you think that that fire was a bit convenient? The fire burned her to the point where nobody could look for any kind of poison or any other way that she might’ve died. That was by design. That was the reason why he set that fire. He wanted everybody to believe that the fire just happened. But it didn’t just happen. There were accelerants, as you know. I believe that Ava was burned to death, but, even if she wasn’t, she died at his hand. Maybe he poisoned her, then burned her body to ensure that no medical examiner could possibly discover the poison in Ava’s system. I don’t know, but what I do know, is that Ava died at Silas’ hand.

  Do not be naïve. You are dealing with a very dangerous man. A very dangerous man.

  The letter ended there. No signature, of
course. I put my thumb and forefinger to the top of the nose and stared at the table where the letter was sitting.

  Amelia came over to me. “What’s wrong, dad?” she asked me, putting her little arm around my back.

  “Nothing. I just had to wonder if –” I took a deep breath. “I think I need to get off my new client’s case.”

  I didn’t know what to think. On the one hand, this person seemed to know an awful lot about the nature of Silas and Ava’s relationship, and the circumstance of Ava’s death. The writer also seemed to believe that the dungeon wasn’t actually a dungeon. So what if it wasn’t a dungeon? Seriously?

  The significance of whether or not the building was a dungeon was that if it weren’t, that would possibly call into question Silas’ explanation for why Ava was chained to a wall. If that structure was a dungeon, then Silas chaining Ava to a wall would be easily explained. I never got into BDSM myself, but I was familiar with the lifestyle, and I knew that handcuffing partners to walls was something that was common play. It certainly wasn’t something that was unheard of.

  But if it wasn’t a dungeon, and Silas and Ava weren’t in the lifestyle…that would be cause for concern, to say the very least. If they weren’t in the lifestyle, then I would have to question Silas’ story, all of it. I would have to question why Ava really was chained to that wall. I would also have to question why Ava recently had bruises on her arms. If she wasn’t in the lifestyle, then she wouldn’t be seeking sex partners to beat on her, would she? And she also wouldn’t be consenting to Silas beating her if she wasn’t into submission. If the two weren’t involved in BDSM, I would have to conclude that everything Silas told me was a lie, and I would be back to square one.

  I shook my head. That letter certainly did complicate matters, to say the least.

  Chapter 7

  Later that night, I hired my baby-sitter to watch Nate and Amelia, and I went to meet Nick out at a bar. I was going to have to hire him to help me try to figure out just what was going on in this case.

  I got to our bar, and he was sitting in the back, waving a beer at me. “Buddy,” he said, as I sat down. Nick was doing well, very well, on the outside. He was keeping his nose clean, and he was really loving the investigation work that he was doing with Tom Garrett at his side. Like Tom, he knew many of the key players on the street, for he was one of them, and the street guys knew it. That generally meant that he had an easier time getting them to talk then would somebody who was never on the inside would. “What’s going on?”

  I sat down and ordered a beer. “Nothing,” I said. “But I wanted to show you this letter and ask you what you thought about it.”

  I handed him the letter and he read it. Then he shook his head. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned about this,” he said. “I mean, it could have been written by anybody. The media has been like flies on shit with this case, breathlessly reporting every detail. The person who wrote this might have been a crank with an imagination. It’s not like they’re spouting out top-secret information here. Or, who knows, it might even be the person who was responsible for all this, assuming that your client isn’t.”

  “I know. I know what you’re saying. Obviously, somebody is trying to throw me off the track. But the problem with this letter is that it’s just validating some of the doubts I have about this case. I mean, the letter-writer makes a point – it was convenient that the fire was such a wildfire, to the point where it burned down everything in that dungeon. I mean, I couldn’t really tell if it was actually a dungeon. Silas told me that they had implements in this dungeon that were typical of people who are into the BDSM lifestyle – the St. Andrew’s Cross and whipping posts and things like that. All conveniently made of wood. But everything in that structure was completely burned, so the only thing that was still intact was a single brick wall with the handcuffs and those hands. The whole thing just seems way too convenient. He knew that I was going to want reasons for why she got restraining orders against him, and why her parents saw bruises on her body, so he could just be cooking up this whole story to try to explain these things away. At least, that’s what this letter implies. I don’t know what to believe.”

  Nick shook his head and took a swig of his drink. “All I’m saying is that perhaps you need to just keep an open mind about your client’s claims. Don’t just jump to conclusions. You’re a criminal defense attorney. You know that there are probably people who have it in for your client, and are just going to try to throw you off. Just go along with your investigation, and try not to give this letter too much credence. I mean, if this person was somebody with actual information for you, they should step forward. Not send some kind of anonymous letter. Don’t you think?”

  Nick was right about that. If anything, it made me suspect that there was more to the story, that maybe somebody else actually was behind it all. This letter was the kind of letter I would expect to receive from somebody who was trying to frame my client. I was going to have to take everything with a grain of salt.

  I looked at the letter, thinking that it was something that was impossible to trace – if it was an email, or a text message, then it would be traceable. Even if the person went to lengths to hide their identity, I could still get Anna to find out who sent it. That wasn’t the case with this letter, though. I tried to trace the origin, but all I could tell was that it was sent through a public mailbox in South Kansas City. That, unfortunately, told me nothing. It didn’t even give me a clue on where the person might live, because, if he or she was smart, he or she wouldn’t send the letter from a mailbox in their neighborhood.

  I tucked the letter into my briefcase, and decided to just forget about it. Not that I was going to ignore it, and not follow up on the claims that it made – of course I was going to, I had to – but it was just one more piece of evidence. I was going to have to find out from Ava’s parents what kind of relationship Silas and Ava had. I was also going to have to go through Ava’s medical records, and find out if she was really sick. The letter also stated that Silas wasn’t really seeking treatment for bi-polar disorder, which would imply that he had other mental problems, possibly, which weren’t amenable to medicines. He told me that he was angry and violent when he was younger, but that he essentially eliminated his rage with bi-polar medicine. Was that a lie? Bi-polar disorder would be the perfect cover for a more sinister reason for why he spent time in a mental hospital.

  Perhaps the bi-polar story was just that - a story. Maybe he was trying to manipulate me into thinking that he was getting treatment for his mental illness, and that he was essentially all better. I had no doubt that Silas had some kind of mental illness, but whether or not it was an illness that could be controlled, as with bi-polar, or something that wasn’t so easily controlled, like a personality disorder, remained to be seen.

  “Well, I’m going to take this letter with a grain of salt. I won’t ignore it. I will try to follow up, if only to find out that the letter isn’t true. At the same time, I’m going to come up with my own decisions and judgment about my client, after I speak with Ava’s parents and friends, not to mention when I get Silas’ records about his mental illness.” I took a sip of my beer. “For now, I have to deal with a traumatized kid who won’t speak to me. I’m sure you heard about the kid who brought a gun into Nate’s school?”

  Nick just shook his head. “I did, and thank God that kid seemed to not be serious about that gun. If he was, who knows what would have happened? All I can tell you is that it’s a fucked-up world if there are elementary school kids bringing guns onto campus. Even more of a fucked-up world then the one that you and I grew up in.”

  “I know. I never had to deal with this when I was growing up. I don’t know what gets into these kids. I wish I did. All that I know is that nobody seems to be safe. Not even kids in exclusive public schools. I certainly didn’t think that sending them to private schools meant that they were going to be safe. Nobody is really safe. I know that, but sometimes, I try to pretend that they are.
Then, something like this happens, and, just like that, my bubble is popped. I’m not going to say that I’m freaked out, because I still know that the odds are astronomically against either of my kids being shot in school, but I am a bit concerned.” I shook my head. “Then again, the kids have better odds of dying by being hit by a school bus or something like that, but I don’t worry about that as much. Human psychology, I guess.”

  Nick nodded his head. “I know, it’s weird. People die by the thousands, every day, in accidents, car accidents and otherwise. Very few kids end up getting shot in school. Yet, school violence is so sensationalized in the media, that you start to think that every kid going to school is going to end up being a victim to something like this. I know that you know that that’s not true. I know also that you’re afraid for your kids, but don’t do anything rash. They’re in the right schools.” He took a sip of his beer. “And you can’t keep them on a short leash. The last thing you want to do is become one of those busy-body parents who try to control everything that happens to your kids. Let them live their lives. Odds are great that they’ll end up just fine. Especially Amelia - she kicked cancer, so that girl is tough. Nothing is going to take her out.”

  I laughed as I realized that I was in danger of becoming a helicopter parent if I wasn’t too careful. If I tried to control what happened to my kids, I would end up suffocating them, and that was the last thing that I wanted to do. “I know what you’re saying. The last thing I want to do is become one of those parents who lean on teachers all the time, demanding that they changed my child’s grade for something. Somebody who tries to keep their kids on short leashes, so that their possibilities will be limited when they grow up. I want them both to be sufficient, independent kids and adults. I want them to run the world someday. They could never do that, if I’m going to try to control them, so I just have to let them be.” Another sip of beer. “Turns out The Beatles knew what they were talking about when they said ‘let it be.’ Philosophers, they were.”