Miracle Creek(36)

All through the recitation of these facts she’d known, lived through, Teresa looked down, smoothing the wrinkles on her hands, and thought about Elizabeth shouting “He’s dead!” Her guffaw in that moment—that was what told her Elizabeth didn’t kill Henry, or if she did, it wasn’t on purpose, wasn’t murder. When she was eight, Teresa had fallen through ice, on a pond. The water had been so cold, it felt boiling hot. Elizabeth’s laugh had felt like that, like she’d been in so much pain that she’d bypassed crying, straight past it to something beyond: a grief-stricken cackle that transmitted more pain than any sob or scream. But how could she put that into words, explain that Elizabeth’s laugh had not been a laugh? Her drinking and smoking—unmotherly things—were bad enough. Laughing when told of her son’s death would make her seem at best crazy, and at worst psychopathic. So she’d never told anyone.

Abe was putting something on the easel. A blowup of notepad paper, phrases scrawled everywhere. Mostly to-do lists: phone numbers, URLs, grocery items. Five phrases, scattered around the page, were highlighted in yellow: I can’t do this anymore; I need my life back; It needs to end TODAY!!; Henry = victim? How?; and NO MORE HBOT, this last phrase circled a dozen times in one stroke, like a child’s drawing of a tornado. Uneven lines crisscrossed the paper; it had been torn and put back together like a puzzle.

Abe said, “Detective Pierson, tell us what this is.”

“It’s an enlarged and highlighted copy of a note found in the defendant’s kitchen. It had been torn into nine pieces and discarded in the trash can. Handwriting analysis confirmed the writing as the defendant’s.”

“So the defendant wrote, tore, and threw this away. Why’s it significant?”

“It seems to be a planning document of sorts. The defendant had enough of caring for her special-needs child. She planned to ‘end’ it all that night.” He drew air quotes. “‘No more HBOT,’ she wrote. By matching the URLs and numbers here with the defendant’s Internet history and phone records, we determined that she wrote this on the day of the explosion. So hours after she writes this, the HBOT blows up, killing her son. And as that’s happening, she’s celebrating by drinking wine and smoking, which one might view as the ultimate symbol of freedom from parental responsibilities.” Pierson frowned at Elizabeth as if he’d bitten down on spoiled food, and Teresa wondered if he’d give her the same look if he’d seen her last night, hiding out in her car for a few more minutes of freedom from her disabled child.

“Perhaps the defendant was writing about being tired and planning to quit HBOT. Isn’t that possible, Detective?”

Pierson shook his head. “She sent e-mails that very day canceling Henry’s therapy—speech, OT, physical, social—all except HBOT. Why not quit HBOT, too, if ‘No more HBOT’ meant she wanted to quit, unless of course there’s no need because she knew it’d be destroyed?”

“Hmmm, very peculiar.” Abe put on his I-can’t-figure-this-out look.

“Yes, quite a coincidence, the defendant deciding to quit HBOT on the very day that it happens to explode and everything she wrote down comes true, and conveniently, Henry no longer needs the services she just canceled.”

“But coincidences do happen,” Abe said, voice animated, clearly putting on a good cop, bad cop show for the jurors.

“True, but if she decided to quit, why go to the next dive? Why make the long drive then lie that she’s sick? Why do that after spending the afternoon researching HBOT fires, as confirmed by our forensic analysis of her computer?”

Abe said, “Detective Pierson, as an expert in arson investigations, what conclusion did you draw from the defendant’s computer searches and notes?”

“Her searches focused on the mechanics of HBOT fires—where they start, how they spread—which indicate a person planning arson, figuring out how best to set fire to ensure the death of people inside an HBOT chamber. Her note, ‘Henry = victim? How?’ demonstrates her focus on how to ensure that Henry is, in fact, the victim, the one who’s killed. Her later orchestrating Henry’s seating to ensure his placement in the most dangerous spot confirms that.”

“Objection.” Elizabeth’s lawyer asked for a sidebar. While the lawyers conferred with the judge, Teresa looked at the poster. Every scrawl was something Teresa herself might have written. How many times had she thought, I can’t do this anymore. I need my life back? Hell, it was part of her nightly prayers: “Dear God, please help Rosa, please bring us a new cure or drug or something, God, because I need my life back. Carlos needs his life back. Rosa, most of all, needs her life back. Please, God.” And last summer, making the long drive twice a day, hadn’t she counted down the days, said to Rosa, “Nine more days, my girl, then NO MORE HBOT!”?

And the Henry = victim? How? note. Pierson’s explanation made sense logically, intellectually, but something about that phrase triggered something. Henry equals victim, how. Henry is a victim, Henry as a victim? How? she repeated, losing herself in the rhythm that felt so familiar, like a long-ago lullaby.

It came to her suddenly. The protesters that morning. “You’re harming them,” the silver-bob-haired woman had said. “You’ve turned them into victims of your warped desire to have textbook-perfect children.” This had gotten to Elizabeth—her face had blanched even though it had been sauna-hot—and Teresa had said, “Come on, Henry a victim? That’s ridiculous. You buy Henry organic underwear, for God’s sake.” But later, she’d thought, Is Rosa a victim of my inability to accept her? But I just want her healthy. How is that wrong? If she’d had paper, she might have doodled Rosa = victim? How?