Last Lie (18 page)

Was Mattin being summoned back to Boulder to give a DNA sample for a potential match? Would he voluntarily comply? Or had the DA's office convinced the judge that they had probable cause for a warrant to collect exemplars?

That would be
holy shit
stuff. I didn't expect Lauren to tell me if that was true.

The other possible reason that Mattin would voluntarily return to Boulder? If someone was making a veiled threat to end the secrecy that marked this case.
Come back, or the accusations become public . . .

I wasn't sure how much Lauren would tell me. "I wonder," I said to Lauren, "if Mattin coming back to town could have anything to do with Sam's visit out here on Saturday morning with the sheriff's investigator."

"Always possible," she said. "Some people are revered for a reason. They earn their reputations, you know? People consider them good guys because they are good guys. He has been a tremendously positive influence on many lives. Many women's lives."

Lauren was talking about Mattin. "You respect him?" I said.

"I do. And this . . . mess . . . makes him vulnerable. Not guilty. Vulnerable."

I found it an interesting choice of words. But her point was true. If Mattin were accused of acquaintance rape, all that he had done with the public to create and polish his image over his professional lifetime would be destroyed in a single news cycle.

I did not want to reveal to Lauren what I knew about the alleged rape or about my own growing doubts about how good a guy our neighbor was, or wasn't. I tried to sound both neutral and ignorant as I said, "I suppose, in any dispute, there will always be someone in the wrong."

"Exactly. And it's not always the one with the finger pointed at him. No one knows that better than a prosecutor. At least, an experienced prosecutor."

Except,
I thought,
maybe a defense attorney.

Lauren liked Mattin. She respected Mattin. And even though she hardly knew Mattin, she was telling me that she was inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

23

T
raffic was nuts west of 55th. Some sewer project. I arrived at my office on Walnut minutes before my eight forty-five patient. That session ended at nine thirty. My nine forty-five was a late cancellation, so I found myself with the unexpected luxury of being free until ten thirty.

The late night with Sam was catching up with me. After my early patient left, I hustled down Walnut to Amante, determined to restart my engine with a triple shot. I carried the jet fuel back to my office and nursed it while I let Google educate me about the forensics of acquaintance rape.

Hella had told me that standard rape kit evidence had been collected at Boulder Community Hospital on the morning after the alleged assault. She also indicated that her patient had provided samples for a tox screen. I assumed that meant blood, but research broadened my horizons: the samples might also have included urine, saliva, and hair.

A text from Hella interrupted my research.
Have time for a quick consult today? Kind of urgent.

I replied,
I'm free until ten.

Need to show you something. Be right over.

Five minutes later Hella was sitting in my office. I was beside her on the sofa so that she could show me some photos on her phone.

She had already explained that she didn't want to forward them to me. She didn't have to explain why. "I saw my patient this morning at seven thirty. She told me she found this"--she pointed at the first photograph on her phone's screen--"in her purse last night. It was in a zippered pocket on the inside. She was switching bags, moving her things to a different one. She has this purse . . . thing. She spends way too much money on . . . bags."

"Value judgment, or pathology?" I asked.

"I'm still deciding," Hella said with a smile.

I wasn't too worried about the woman's purse fetish. I was more troubled that I was having difficulty recognizing what I was seeing on the screen of Hella's phone.

Hella could tell I was perplexed. "It's a small rectangle of aluminum foil, about the size of a large postage stamp. That's the edge of a thumbnail next to it. Gives it some proportion."

"Okay."

She moved to the next picture. "This is the other side of it. You can see that it's folded, carefully. This is the way she found it." Next photo. "Here it is open, unfolded. Those two things you see are--"

"Pills." They were round and white. Aspirin size, I guessed.

"Yes. She insists that they are not hers. She doesn't know what they are. Or how they got there."

I could guess what they were. And I could guess how they got there.

I reminded myself that I was Hella's supervisor. My role was circumscribed. Part of that role, however, was keeping an eye on Hella's countertransference.

"Okay," I said. "Tell me what happened between the two of you this morning."

"I touched them," Hella said. "She handed the foil to me, and I touched it. She told me to open it, and I did." I waited for her to reach the conclusion I had already reached. She wasn't far behind. "It was so stupid of me, Alan. I really regret that. Touching it."

"What are you thinking?" I said. "Specifically."

"Fingerprints," she said.

"It's possible you might regret it," I said. "When your work enters the forensic realm with a patient, you need to make decisions differently in therapy. Lesson learned. What did you and she discuss?"

"She's no dummy. She wondered if someone had planted this in her purse. Some drugs."

"Because?" I assumed I knew the answer to my question. But assumptions and therapy are about as good a combination as drinking and driving.

"Of the rape. Her belief that she was drugged."

"Okay. When?"

She looked puzzled. "During the burglary?"

"Why," I asked, "not the night of the big party? An ounce of prevention by whoever drugged her? In case there was suspicion later?"

"God, I didn't think about that." Hella sighed. "She asked me what she should do. I let her try to figure it out, but she seemed . . . completely unable to problem-solve this. Finally, I told her she needed to show them to her attorney. Right away. He would know what obligations she had . . . about them. What she should do with them."

"Good call," I said.

Hella exhaled in obvious relief. "I'm so glad. She's probably there now."

"Okay," I said. "You handled it well, Hella. And you recognize what you could have done . . . more carefully." I stood up. "Wait, which purse were the pills in? The one she was moving her things from, or the one she was moving her things into? And was it the purse that she was carrying on . . . Friday night?"

"I assumed they were in the one she was carrying, but I don't really know. I see what you mean. That's important. Should I ask her?"

I weighed my next words with great care. "Even if you feel confident about her recollections--even if you're inclined to believe her-- other people are making judgments, right now, about the veracity of your patient's story. Therapeutically, you need to remain aware of that."

Hella seemed defensive when she replied, "What reason would she have to lie to me, Alan?"

"I don't know," I said. "Sometimes patients lie to me and I never discover the motivation. There's another question you might ask--"

"Please," Hella said.

"--yourself."

"Oh."

"What reason would your patient have to tell you the truth?"

"You think my patient is lying, don't you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. I'm trying to keep an open mind about what might have happened that night. I am encouraging you to do the same. Your patient acknowledges big gaps in her memory."

"She was drugged."

"And perhaps that is the explanation."

"You think I'm not . . . sufficiently suspicious?"

"Suspicious? I don't know, are you?"

"I don't know."

"She will be feeling great pressure, both internally and externally, to fill in those memory gaps."

"Jesus, Alan. Why on earth would a woman put herself through this if it weren't true?"

I almost said, "Duke lacrosse. Hofstra gang rape." But I didn't. I suspected that Hella and I would have discussions about those events at some point during the supervision of this case. During a quick curbside consultation about another matter, however, wasn't the correct time.

I said, "You like her. You liked her before the trauma. Your natural inclination is to care for her. But your
responsibility
with this patient, Hella, is to be therapeutic, regardless of the facts of last Friday night. As soon as you lock yourself into a specific version of reality--hers, or anyone else's--you limit the degrees of freedom each of you has in the therapy going forward."

"I have to think about that. I think there is some value in my support of . . . her."

"Please do think about it. The drugs she found in her purse? If they are not hers, someone has gone to great lengths to make it appear that they are. If there are fingerprints on them besides yours, they are probably hers."

Hella said, "He could have put them there that night. You're right."

"It's possible," I said. "But that would indicate he was concerned with being caught. If most of her story is accurate, I don't get the sense that her attacker is someone who operates that way."

Hella said, "She wouldn't show me the drugs if they were hers, would she?"

"Why not?" I asked.

"Why?" she asked.

"What conclusion did you reach when she showed you the drugs from her purse?"

"That she wouldn't show them to me if they were hers."

"There you go," I said. "She ended up with the result that is most in her interest."

"She's not that . . . devious," Hella said.

"Perhaps not. Or she is."

"You think she is that devious?"

"I think you're missing my point." I paused for effect.

Hella sighed.

"Have any of the forensic results come back?" I asked.

Hella nodded. "That's why I know she's at her lawyer's office right now. He set the appointment to discuss one of the forensic tests."

TWO MINUTES AFTER HELLA LEFT, my phone beeped with another text. I glanced at it expecting that she was asking me something or telling me something she had forgotten to ask or tell me earlier.

But the text was from Jonas. Jonas texting me from school was an infrequent event.
Forgot guy at house yesterday with survey stuff sticks with flags

Jonas considered punctuation to be a bit of a bother. I didn't have an ongoing text relationship with any other kids his age, but I thought his aversion to commas and periods might be generational.

Thanks
I replied.
Good to know. Show me later?

Most of Jonas's peers wouldn't have known, or cared, about the implications of a surveyor showing up on the property. Jonas wasn't most kids his age. His loss issues had left him hypersensitive to any signs of imminent change, especially indications of imminent change that he could reasonably interpret as monumental or out of his control.

Us
he asked. In my head, I added the omitted question mark, aware that I was enabling his punctuation pathology.

No, the new neighbors
I replied.

What r they doing

Not sure. I'll tell you what I know when I get home.

What time

About four thirty.
I expected to be home by four, but where commitments to Jonas were concerned, my goal was to underpromise and overperform.

My house
he asked. Again, I supplied the understood question mark.

In Jonas's world, "my house" was the one in which he grew up. "Your house" or "the house" was the one in which he currently lived, with us.

I texted
That, or Peter's barn.

Can they

Let's see what they're up to first. You cool?

Cool enough fgw

Fgw
was Jonas's text shorthand for one of his mother's favorite little sayings. Adrienne often added the phrase "for government work" as an appendage onto her pronouncements. Sometimes the context would be clear. More often, not.

I doubted that Jonas really knew what the phrase meant. He employed it because it connected him to his mom. I suspected he would hold on to it as long as he felt the need. Like me and the compost pile.

I had a feeling that when Jonas showed me the surveyor's stakes, I was going to learn exactly where my half a hectare in paradise began and where it ended.

24

I
got home before the kids were back from school. A woman was waiting on the front porch. She had short, dark hair and a narrow, sharp chin.

I didn't recognize her. I pulled to a stop beside her black Jetta. The shiny car had temporary plates and looked new. She stood as I got out of the car, tugging iPod buds from her ears.

"I was about to give up," she said. "It's starting to get cold out here. I wasn't really prepared for . . ." She let the sentence drift away.

The day had been mild for November, but the sun was just finishing its final dip behind the Divide, an event that occurred too early in the day in the autumn in those towns, like Boulder, that sit in the near shadows of fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. As a general rule, cold replaces crisp in rapid fashion along Colorado's Front Range shortly after the late-day shadows begin to spread in the valley.

The young woman was wearing well-aged jeans--I was pretty sure she had purchased them that way--a fleece vest from the Prana store on the Mall, and knit half gloves. Her feet were well protected in a pair of Uggs like ones that Lauren was coveting.

They were on her Christmas list.

The presence of a stranger on the porch meant the dogs were going nuts inside the house. Emily's bark, in particular, was full of alarm. When she was on edge, the sharpness in her bark was like someone bringing their hands together in a loud clap right beside your ears.

"Can I help you with something?" I asked the woman while my car was still between us. I was feeling a mite wary. Not too many strangers make it to the end of the lane. Even people who are hopelessly lost in Spanish Hills begin to recognize how badly lost they are before they ever stumble across the poorly marked entrance to our dirt and gravel path. If nothing else deters them, the big official-looking DEAD END and NO OUTLET signs by the mailboxes get drivers to reconsider their route.

"I'm Nicole. I was here the other night. With the caterers? Over at the other house." She gestured across the lane to the big ranch house.

She had told me enough that I knew who she was, but not enough that I would understand why she had come back. I was slightly less wary and a tad more curious.

Nicole stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She opened her eyes wide as she lifted both shoulders. "I was in the van. Were you the man on the lane, the one we almost . . . hit? Walking a dog?"

I was wearing my therapist expression. It's almost reflexive for me when I'm wary. I tend to wear it until I feel the ground beneath my feet stop shifting.

She kept talking. "I'm hoping to find--I actually came out here to talk to that man, the one who was walking the dog that night. The little black and white dog? Was that you?"

"Yes," I said.

"Oh good. Not good that we almost--I mean good that I found you. I guessed you must live here, since there are no other houses out this way. This far out, I mean, so close to . . . where we were working. Listen, I'm so sorry," she said. "That's why I'm here. To apologize. But I wasn't driving the van. That was--"

"Eric," I said.

"Eric," she said as she moved her hands from her jeans into the pockets of her vest. "Yeah. You know his name?"

"I heard you yelling at him."

"He wouldn't stop the stupid van. I wanted him to stop to see if you were okay, if the dog was . . . hurt. I was so scared that he had hit the little dog. I wanted to go back and check, to see if you needed any help. But he wouldn't stop. He just kept on going."

"You were really yelling at him."

"I am so sorry. Are you all right? Please tell me you're all right."

"I'm fine," I said.

She lowered her voice, as though she were afraid to ask the next question. "The little dog?" she said.

"Would you like to come inside to meet her?"

A big smile erupted on Nicole's face. She had great teeth, either from enviable genes or fine orthodonture. I guessed the latter. A new car? Fancy clothes? A top-end set of teeth? Expensive boots? Nicole had access to money. I didn't think catering rich people's dinner parties would earn her enough to cover it.

"I would love that," she said.

"Come on in," I said as I stepped past her. I unlocked the front door. Before I opened it, I tried to prepare her for the onslaught to come. "The big dog is Emily. She can be intimidating at first, but she's a sweetheart. I don't think you saw her the other night. The little one is Fiji, like the island. She was the one on the lane with me. Her goal in life is to eliminate prairie dogs from Boulder County. After that, the world. She dreams big."

The dogs, of course, were right behind the door. Emily barked twice more when she saw us but quickly made an assessment about the degree of present danger. Nicole, she decided, wasn't foe. Fiji kept barking. She wasn't as adept as Emily at making independent assessments of dangers. Or of the true threat posed by prairie dogs.

Nicole was clearly a dog person. She went right to her knees to greet the dogs. Jonas's puppy danced and licked at her chin. "I'm so glad this little dog is okay." Emily shoved the Havanese out of the way to hog Nicole's attention.

"Me, too," I said. I led Nicole toward the family room at the back of the house. As we walked down the short entryway, she grew speechless at the view of the Front Range at dusk framed by the big windows. The end of that day was blessed with one of those clear early-evening skies when the vista stretched all the way from Pikes Peak to Wyoming. Boulder was just beginning to sparkle to night-life in the valley below.

"Oh, wow," she said. "The sky. It's so pretty. It's . . . gorgeous. Oh . . . my . . . God." She pulled off her vest. "The city? No wonder you live up here. The other night was so . . . different. You can hardly see this view from the other house."

I'm accustomed to the reaction. I naturally give people a minute to adjust, to take in the wonder. I took Nicole's vest from her. It smelled like smoke and tobacco. I was pretty sure I felt the outline of a pack in the pocket. As I hung it on the coat rack near the door, I spied the top of a pack of Newports.

"You can see the view from upstairs across the lane," I said. "The view is special from the bedrooms upstairs."

"We didn't go up there."

"Why was Eric in such a rush the other night?"

"Oh, God, five things. Eric is okay, but sometimes he can be such an ass. That's number one. The party ran late--but they always do, especially when a chef is on site."

"There was a chef at the party?" I wanted to keep her talking.

"Yeah. Preston something. We just called him 'Chef.' Anyway, Eric had plans to meet a guy after--oh, what the hell, I don't care, Eric's dealer lives in Lafayette and was heading to Breckenridge and Eric wanted to meet up with the guy before he left for the mountains or he'd be dry all weekend. They were going to try to connect somewhere close by on South Boulder Road. But timing was a problem. He was pissed off at Chef and at his dealer and he was rushing to get back to town in time to score something. He had promised to drop me off on The Hill, which he didn't really want to do, but it's not like I could walk from here, right? He acted like it was a major inconvenience. Right after we got in the van he got angry at me because I refused to go meet his dealer with him--I don't do that kind of thing." She sighed. "That's most of it, right there. Really."

Nicole seemed chatty and lacking in boundaries. I hoped that with some gentle prodding, I could use her predilections to my advantage. I decided to do a little fishing. I said, "Please, have a seat. It was a pretty crazy night, I hear. All around. At the party, I mean."

"Tell me about it," Nicole said. She was dividing her attention between the dogs, a pair that would take as much affection as she would offer, and the evening sky, which from her vantage attracted a person's focus like a magnet finds iron.

I went silent, hoping she would fill in the conversation. She didn't. She was too distracted by everything else. I repeated my earlier prompt. "The crazy night? Is that part of why Eric was driving away like such a wild man? I mean, why didn't he turn on the headlights? What was that about?"

"To be honest, I didn't notice they weren't on either, not for a few seconds. I think that woman did get him going, too. She certainly got me going. She'd been so nice to us all night, and then after dessert was served . . . Really, all we had left to do was finish cleaning up after a buffet service for fifty. That's nothing for us. That's when the woman suddenly came into the kitchen and started hurrying us out the door like the darn house was on fire. Eric . . . uh, he didn't handle the change too great."

Mimi was in a hurry for the caterers to leave?
I found that curious. In as light a voice as I could manage, I joked, "Was there a curfew or something? Why the sudden rush?"

"Your dogs are so terrific. What are they?"

Neither of the dogs are common breeds. I went into a familiar, for me at least, explanation of their lineage. After I exhausted her questions, I coaxed her back to her story about Friday night's hurried exit. "The sudden rush to leave? You ever figure it out?"

"You know, I still don't know what was up. Most of the guests were long gone. A few were still there. After we started packing up the van, she and the couple who hired us moved from the dining room into the big room and started sitting by the stone fireplace--you know where I mean?"

"I do," I said. I'd been there a few hundred times.

"Then a few minutes later, the hostess just seemed to snap. She hurried into the kitchen and decided that she needed us out of her house. She kept saying, 'Go, go, finish, finish,' in this hissing kind of whisper.

"Eric had no patience with her. 'We're going, we're going,' he kept saying. He doesn't like to be ordered around. She slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the kitchen counter at one point. She said she'd add another one if we were gone in ten minutes. 'Not eleven. Ten,' she said. A tip of a hundred bucks each? For that party? I'll rush a little, you know?"

"Did you guys make it out on time?"

"Chef got out before we did. But just by a little. He was a handful, too; God, Eric and I were both so glad when he left--what a jerk. I hope you don't know him. Is he, like, your friend? Tell me he's not."

"I don't know him."

"Well, we made it. At the end we weren't really cleaning, but we just packed our stuff up and left. We didn't get her kitchen that clean. Not as clean as we're supposed to. But she said it was okay like it was, and we rushed out the door."

"With your big tips?"

"With the tips."

"What about the host? Her husband? Was he pushing you out the door, too?" Mattin's role during the evening remained a question to me.

"No, he stayed away from us, mostly. I mean, all night. She was managing the kitchen. He stayed with the guests during the meal. Oh, he took care of the bar and the bartender. The wine. Earlier, he had told us what wine to pour, that kind of thing. Gave us a sheet, so we wouldn't screw up. What glasses to use. What he wanted to breathe. The rest? His wife, or significant other, or . . . whatever she was. She has a humongous diamond, so I guess she's his wife. She's the one who was in charge of the food and the kitchen."

I was getting the impression that Nicole hadn't recognized Mattin Snow. Given her age, and Mattin's likely fan demographic, that fact wasn't completely surprising. His media appeal was targeted more to capture the attention of Nicole's mother than Nicole. "You hadn't worked for them before? As a caterer? This was a first?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Chef said it was his first time there, too. Do you know how much he makes to do a spread like that? Unbelievable. What, some shopping, a few hours in the kitchen? Jesus, I wish I could cook." She laughed.

Keeping Nicole on track was taking some effort. "You had never met them before? The hosts?"

"No. Oh, I forgot, one weird thing--the guy? He was a complete Nazi about smells. Personal smells. When we arrived he asked me about perfume, if I was wearing any. He even leaned in and, like, smelled me. It was so . . . creepy. He asked Eric about cologne or body wash. I didn't tell Eric this, but at one point he was standing behind Eric and he leaned over like he was smelling near Eric's armpit. I mean, how odd is that? Eric would have gone bat-shit if he knew.

"Earlier? While we were still setting up, he caught Eric and me taking a smoke break outside.
Outside
. We weren't even close to the door to the house. He said he didn't want to see us doing it again. He said he did not want his guests to smell any smoke on our clothes while we served. 'Not with this wine. Not with this food. No way.' "

She was trying to imitate Mattin's voice and manner. I thought she did a reasonable job of it. I enjoyed the impersonation, which felt petty of me. I forgave myself. "So you guys couldn't smoke all evening?"

"It's not a big deal for me, I can go a few hours without a problem. Eric? It was making him pretty uncomfortable, I think. He's a couple-packs-a-day guy. Sometimes he even chains it. I think that's part of the reason he was such an ass at the end of the day. Nicotine withdrawal."

"I could smell the smoke in the van," I said. "As you guys drove by me on the lane. It was strong."

"That was Eric. I don't smoke in cars. It stinks up my clothes and hair too much. I opened my window even though it was so cold out. I was going out afterward--meeting friends on The Hill--I did not want to smell like smoke."

I was trying to think of a way to learn more about Mimi's motives for rushing the caterers away from the house. The motive that was jumping naturally to the top of the list was that she was aware of what was about to happen, and she did not want any witnesses present when it occurred. But I was having trouble believing that could be true.

Was she really complicit in what happened later on in the guest room?
I had not even considered the possibility that she knew in advance what would happen to her friend that night. Could a wife really cooperate with her husband in planning a sexual assault on a mutual friend?