Plea of Insanity (13 page)

‘I’ve got to find a home for my dad,’ he said, looking into his coffee. ‘That was my weekend.’

‘Oh,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Alzheimer’s. That’s life, I guess.’ He shrugged.

The guilt slammed her like a silent tsunami. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know,’ she stammered. ‘Did you find one?’

‘Not yet. It’s a long process, one not made easier by my mother, who insists on taking care of him herself. Even if that means strapping her body to the front door to prevent him from going for long, unaccompanied midnight strolls. But never mind that. Listen,’ he said, lowering his voice. A finger found the backof her hand across the table and stroked it softly. ‘I’d like to do dinner again.’ He paused. ‘That was nice. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but, damn, I’ve missed you.’

She felt her face grow hot. She wished she could say something witty and mature. Maybe, ‘You have my number. Use it.’ A line straight out of a Bette Davis movie. A line that wouldn’t show him that she cared and that she’d missed him, too. But, of course, she didn’t. She just nodded and smiled like a dolt. A smile that she knew gave away everything she’d hoped to hide. ‘Any word on who the trial judge is gonna be yet?’ she asked, standing up with her files.

He laughed and shookhis head. He had the best smile, bright white, perfect teeth against deep Mediterranean skin. A toned-down Erik Estrada grin. ‘Oh boy. I thinkyou may need to sit backdown, sweetheart.’

Julia felt her stomach drop and her palms instinctively began to tingle. From the lookon his face, she knew exactly who it was. ‘Please tell me you’re not gonna tell me what I thinkit is you’re gonna tell me,’ she said, sliding backinto her seat. ‘Tell me it’s Henghold. Or Gibbons. Or anyone else you wouldn’t want to get.’

He just kept shaking his head. ‘No can do.’

She sighed and slumped backin her chair, defeated. ‘It’s Farley, isn’t it?’

He simply smiled.

23

‘Lookat me!’ demanded Emma with a high-pitched squeal as she spun around the kitchen in her sparkly blue and white Cinderella gown, the one Jennifer had bought on a family trip to Disney World just a few months before. She’d kept the receipt, tucked into an envelope scribbled with the words
Miscellaneous Credit Card Receipts
and neatly filed away in the top drawer of her desk, where detectives had found it. Emma had worn the costume over her pajamas on the night she was murdered. The detectives theorized that she’d probably snuckit on after her mom had put her to bed. ‘Mommy! Look! Look at me!’ she continued to shout.

‘Oh my, don’t you lookpretty,’ Jennifer purred off-camera. The shot jumped across the cluttered kitchen to the pretty, slight blonde behind the island, a chocolate layer cake before her on a plate, a spatula full of frosting in hand. ‘Don’t get it dirty, Em. We still have the parade at school and Halloween to get through. Oh, please, David,’ she said with an annoyed shake of her head when she spotted the camera. ‘Point that thing at Emma.’

Obligingly, the camera jumped backacross the room.

‘I can make it spin!’ Emma shouted as she twirled about, singing some pop song Julia had heard before but couldn’t place who sang it. Maybe Hilary Duff or Christina Aguilera. The little girl’s long, light-blonde hair was done in a French braid, and it whipped about behind her. Julia could tell she was trying to get it to wrap around her neckand touch her other shoulder. She’d done the very same thing when she was a kid and her hair was down past her waist.

The baby cried a cranky newborn cry in her scoop on the counter. ‘Hush, now, Sophie. I’m getting it ready. Give Mommy a minute,’ said Jennifer, fatigue straining her voice.

A barefoot little boy suddenly streaked across the kitchen in a cherry-stained Superman T-shirt and a droopy-looking Pull-Up. ‘I’m hungggrryyyy.’

‘You just ate supper, young man. Maybe you should have some more carrots, you’re so hungry.’

Danny shookhis head violently. He stood on his tiptoes at the island, straining to see what his mom was doing. ‘Can I lick the bowl?’

‘Danny! I’m dancing! Go away,’ declared Emma with a pout, her hands on her hips.

‘I want cake,’ said Danny, rubbing his nose and pulling on his mother’s pant leg. His tousled, brown hair stuckto his sweaty forehead.

‘It’s coming, it’s coming everybody. The witching hour is here. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, is it here,’ Jennifer mumbled, mainly to herself. ‘Okay. We’re going to sing now. Dave, are you ready? David?’

The camera focused backon Jennifer, and the picture bobbed up and down as the cameraman presumably nodded. The crowd in the kitchen sang
Happy Birthday, Mommy
as Jennifer carried the chocolate frosted cake with the single lit candle over to the kitchen table, navigating her way through a bobbing pool of colorful balloons on the floor. She blew out the candle and everyone clapped. Danny screamed, ‘Yipee! I want some! I want a big piece!’ The baby cried again. Jennifer picked up Sophie and began to feed her a bottle as she tried to eat a slice of cake with her free hand.

Watch me,’ Emma demanded into the camera, twirling and spinning once again, ignoring the slice of cake Jennifer had cut for her. ‘Lookat me, Daddy! Lookat me! Daddy!’

The camera watched Emma dance for maybe thirty seconds more before it suddenly just cut out. Blackand white fuzz filled Julia’s television, like two armies of fighting ants.

Coral Gables PD had seized nineteen home videos from the Marquette residence. Julia had had Investigations make a copy for her of each one, and over the course of the past few days had watched them all from her living-room couch. Watched as the beautiful Marquette babies came home from the hospital, one by one, bundled safely in their proud mother’s arms. Watched as Danny and Emma learned to sit and crawl and walkand swim. Watched Emma learn to read and write and ride a bike. Watched birthday parties and Christmas morning free-for-alls under a tremendous, tinselladen, fake fir. Watched as the dead breathed and giggled and smiled once more. The tapes were her only linkto a family she’d never get to meet. A family she felt a desperate, almost compulsive need to know. A family that reminded her too much of her own …

Like Danny, her big brother, Andrew, had loved cars as a little kid, too. Especially fire trucks. He’d carried a metal Matchbox fire engine around in his pocket wherever he went. In a department store one time, he’d gotten in trouble for something. Playing with a mannequin? Running off? Hiding? Momma had sent him to stand in a corner by the fitting rooms. And there he was, forever embedded deep in her memory, all of seven or eight, red truckin hand, not a tear or so much as a defiant pout on his freckle-smattered, milky-smooth face, a mop of soft black curls spilling past his forehead over his darkeyes. When Momma had finally turned her attention backto the sales girl, he’d waved mischievously over at Julia, turned around to peekhis head into the ladies’ fitting room behind him, and with a hand over his mouth to stifle the giggle, he’d sent the truck careening underneath the row of stalls.

Julia closed her eyes tight, hoping to shut off the memories. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to thinkof Andy. Even though he was five years older than her, when they got along, they’d been the best of friends. Her brother could make her do the goofiest things with just the flash of his lopsided grin and a double dare: walkon the train tracks; ring Mrs Crick’s doorbell on Halloween when everyone knew she was a witch and her creepy house with the caved-in roof was haunted; eat the red squishy berries off the unknown bush by the garage. It was Andy she’d go running to when a thunderstorm would wake her in the middle of the night, and he would let her come into his bed and under the covers, counting off the seconds for her between the thunder and the lightning until he could assure her the storm had moved far away. She could still smell his breath, sweet with mouthwash and the chocolate he’d snuck after he’d brushed his teeth, as he whispered words in the darkto distract her.

‘I hit a home run today at practice, Ju-Ju. Coach said I was good, but I should work harder on my pitching, ’cause that’s what I do best. Says I’m the only one on the team he’s seen that can throw a damn curve ball. No one can hit it. And no one can touch my split finger, neither. He thinks I could even play JV next year. Imagine that – me pitching JV my first year in junior high. That would be so cool …
’

Planning for a future that would never be.

The rain pattered softly against her living-room windows, as it had all night, blurring the streetlights outside into twinkling streaks of soft yellow. Moose, maybe sensing things were not right, jumped up and joined her on the couch, curling himself into a little brown and white ball by her side and immediately falling into a deep sleep. She watched his warm chest rise and fall under her fingers. They’d found each other six years ago, when he was just a pup and she was a first-year law student. He was wandering around in snow that was deeper than his body one night and she was on her way to a boring torts class. He’d had a deep cut on one paw and his short fur was a bit mangy, but he had the most soulful brown eyes. Lost and completely alone in a big, intimidating city, he was a survivor, just like her. At first he was skittish, but she wouldn’t leave and he didn’t run off, and eventually, with a lot of coaxing, he’d let her pet him. When she reached to scoop him up, he’d actually kind of jumped into her arms, snuggling into her scarf. The rest was history – she’d missed her class, brought him home to a chicken dinner and a warm bath and there he’d stayed, never straying further than a stone’s throw away from her ankles ever again if he could help it. She’d given him his name from the Archie comic-bookcharacter. Moose was so completely trusting, so vulnerable, she thought, looking at him now, especially when he was sleeping. Like a child. A shudder ran through her as the tape finally clicked off and the screen went to blue.

She slid Moose gently off her lap and went over to the DVD/VCR player. She hit the eject button and the last video ever shot of the Marquette family slowly popped out. With the backof her hand, she wiped away the tears that streamed down her face, and slipped the video into the sleeve marked
Mommy’s Birthday 4/10/05.
Then she put it backin the cardboard evidence box, along with the others.

Jennifer and her babies had less than one weekleft to live.

24

Three days after David Marquette’s First Appearance, and twelve days after they were murdered, Jennifer and the children were flown up to Cherry Hill, New Jersey and finally buried.

Lat and Brill pulled their rental car past the large crowd that had spilled outside onto the steps of St Mary’s, just as the three tiny, white caskets made their way up rain-slicked steps to follow the full-sized coffin of their mother into the church. Once inside, they listened as grief-stricken family and friends struggled to console one another and a father remembered the little girl he’d given away, on the steps of the very same altar, to the very same man now accused of killing her. Standing awkwardly next to Brill in the back of the church, dressed in his best blacksuit, Lat could not even begin to imagine what the man could be thinking. He didn’t have any kids himself, but he knew that if it were him, they’d have to take his gun away.

Hours later, in the slip-covered living room of Renny and Michael Prowse, the two detectives sat in a couple of tired Queen Anne side chairs, a stackof flower-covered photo albums and two hot cups of coffee in front of them. An antique cuckoo clock loudly ticked the stagnant seconds away. On top of a worn Baldwin piano, a makeshift shrine to Jennifer and the Prowses’ only grandchildren had been created – complete with pictures and burning candles and watched over by the outstretched arms of a crucified ceramic Jesus. Like in the Gables house, family pictures were every-where here. Yearly school pictures, displayed in blackplastic certificate frames, age-progressed the Prowses’ three daughters up the colonial staircase, from nursery school through high school and college graduations.

If asked to give a short history right now on the Prowse family, Lat felt pretty confident he could nail it, just from having sat in the room for five minutes. And not just from looking at the pictures. Hummel figurines crowded glass shelves in a corner curio and the shelves of a wall unit were filled with still-tagged Beanie Babies. On the wood mantel, tiny crystal figures had their own red velvet-lined display case. Obviously the Prowses were a family of collectors. A family that never liked to give anything away. A family that would be especially hard hit by the deaths of their daughter and their grandchildren.

The entire neighborhood must have come and dropped off food; platters and steaming casserole dishes overflowed from the kitchen, and were now stacked on the dining-room table in the next room. The smell of lasagne, garlic, coffee and sausage filled the house and there was apparently more on the way. The doorbell rang constantly.

‘It’s been like this for a week now,’ Renny Prowse said absently, setting down a platter full of butter cookies and slices of apple cake on the coffee table. She was a well-kept woman in her late fifties, dressed in a neat blacksuit, her blonde hair pulled backinto a clip. But Lat noticed the band of long, gray roots that framed her face, the darkcircles that sunkher eyes. She had put on some make-up, but with no real purpose and her round face was puffy and blotched red from days of endless crying. ‘People are so kind. I just can’t get over how kind they are. Some of them we don’t even know, do we, Mike?’

‘No, no,’ said Jennifer’s father, Mike Prowse, who sat on the plastic-covered couch across from them. We don’t even know them.’

Jennifer’s older sister, Joanne, sat next to her dad, her hand on his, while her younger sister, Janna, stood quietly by the door that led to the kitchen. Both women were blonde and blue-eyed, like their sister and mother. Joanne was only in maybe her mid-thirties, but dressed in a matronly tent dress, with no make-up and horn-rimmed glasses, she was already forging full speed ahead for middle age. Janna, on the other hand, must have been the Prowses’ late-in-life surprise. Lat guessed late teens, early twenties, with a fit figure and a coquettish, wholesome, pretty face.

‘Please. Eat something, Detectives. There’s so much,’ Renny said, finally taking a seat on the other side of her husband. She licked her dry lips and clasped her hands together, obviously bracing herself for the conversation ahead.

Lat hated this part of his job. Hated it. He could lookat mangled, mutilated bodies – even nasty decomps – and brutal crime scenes well enough, but it was meeting the family of the victim that always got to him. That, by the end of the interview, always seemed to have gnawed a piece of him away. After enough years and enough interviews, he figured his soul would eventually be picked over and eaten to nothing. That would be the day he retired – probably to a good bottle of Jackand an isolated log cabin somewhere in the mountains of Montana.

As a street cop in Miami, John Latarrino had long ago learned how to distance himself from his job and the people he arrested. All cops did. The bad guys were no longer people, but mopes, skells, perps, subjects, defendants. His ex-wife, Trish, who had minored in psychology for way too long, had once told him that labeling individuals with derogatory slang terms was a mental coping mechanism cops used to separate good from evil, their job from their everyday lives.
Us against them
helped a cop get through the shift, and restore power to what was oftentimes viewed as a powerless situation, she had theorized. When he was assigned to Homicide a few years back, Lat had taken that over-analysis one step further, and had learned how to distance himself from death, so that no matter how bad the scene, the bodies in it were not really people, either, but DBs, or victims, or stiffs. His job as detective was to simply solve the mystery of how they got that way. That’s when Trish had finally stopped analyzing him and just called him cold and unfeeling. The papers were filed six months later.

Right about now he would give anything to be at a scene. Or in a Chiefs’ Meeting. Or at his damn dentist’s having root canal. Anywhere but here, doing anything but this. Maybe it was because the family suddenly made it all real. Maybe because, like now, he couldn’t pretend when he looked into Renny Prowse’s confused, red-rimmed eyes, or leafed through the stacks of photo albums she’d dragged out. Maybe it was because he couldn’t lie to himself anymore that it was just a job he was doing.

‘We know this is a difficult time for you, Mr and Mrs Prowse, Janna, Joanne. But we are just trying to get some background on Jennifer and your son-in-law. What might have caused this,’ Lat began softly.

Renny was already shaking her head. We don’t know, Detective. Oh God, David is – he seemed like such a good man. Such a good father. But …’ She buried her nose in a tissue.

‘But?’ asked Brill between bites of his cookie. Crumbs fluttered to the floor. Lat shot him a look.

‘She’s been gone from us for so long, now, Detective. Down there in Miami. I couldn’t get my hands on her like I could my other two girls. I couldn’t help her when she needed me. I couldn’t be there when …’ her voice trailed off again, but she never finished the thought. ‘I still remember the day she pulled out of my driveway, her car packed with all the teddy bears she’d gotten over the years. That’s when I knew she shouldn’t be leaving home. She wasn’t ready to grow up yet, you see …’

‘Jen met David in the emergency room at Temple seven years ago,’ said Joanne, taking over as her mother buried her face backin a tissue. ‘She fell rollerblading in the park and David was doing his residency in emergency medicine. They dated for a few months and then decided to get married. Everyone liked David. He was a doctor. He was handsome. He was …’ she paused, searching for a word. ‘He was great. Jen was crazy about him.’

‘Crazy,’ murmured her father.

‘They got married at St Mary’s right before his residency was over. My parents invited the whole town and everyone showed,’ Joanne continued.

‘Just like today,’ Renny said, almost proudly.

‘Two weeks later they left for Miami. Last year they bought that house in Coral Gables. It was very expensive.’

‘How often did you see them?’

‘Two or three times a year. Jennifer would always try and come up for Christmas,’ Joanne said. ‘It was difficult for any of us to get down too often. We have to work, you know.’ Lat thought she might have overemphasized the ‘we’.

‘When was the last time they were here?’ asked Brill, reaching for another cookie.

‘Memorial Day. Mom and Dad had a barbecue.’

Were they getting along?’ asked Lat.

‘Oh yes,’ said Joanne, nodding quickly. ‘They always got along.’

Lat already knew that David Marquette had completed his residency in October of 1998. Emma’s birthday was 31 March 1999. It wasn’t hard to do the math. ‘Jennifer was pregnant when they got married.’

Renny looked away, embarrassed, and Michael closed his eyes. ‘Yes, she was,’ Joanne said quickly. ‘But that didn’t matter. They were going to get married anyway. Emma was just a little earlier than they had planned.’

Obviously it was a sore subject. Lat thought of the ceramic Jesus. ‘What about David. What can you tell us about his family?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Mike bitterly. ‘They didn’t come to the wedding. His father was some hotshot doctor in Chicago. He couldn’t come because there was an emergency. So no one came. No one at all.’

‘You didn’t thinkthat was odd?’ asked Brill.

‘My father didn’t talkto his own father for some years, Detective. It’s not so odd,’ said Joanne in a voice that was both calm and patronizing. ‘Families fight. The point is, we all liked David. None of us can believe this has happened. None of us saw it coming, if that’s what you are getting at.’

‘Did he have a temper? Did you ever see or hear them fight? Did Jennifer ever tell you about any fights?’ asked Lat.

‘That’s just it, Detective. I was very close with my sister. They were the perfect couple. They never fought.’

‘Or she never told you,’ cautioned Brill.

‘Or she never told me,’ conceded Joanne with some difficulty. She shot Brill a cold look.

‘When was the last time you spoke with Jennifer, Mrs Prowse?’ asked Lat.

‘Two days before she was …’ Renny’s voice trailed off again and she bit her lip. ‘We talked about two times a week. David was out of town and she was taking Emma and Danny shoe shopping. No one ever heard from her again.’

Joanne shookher head. ‘I talked to her a few days before that. She never mentioned any problems.’

Her dad shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. It was the weekbefore she died. She wanted to know how my foot was feeling.’

‘He twisted it jogging,’ said Joanne.

‘And you?’ asked Brill to Janna.

Janna looked startled. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, crossing her arms across her chest. ‘A couple of weeks before, maybe.’

‘Janna’s still in college, Detective Brill,’ said Joanne sharply. ‘Syracuse. She’s had to come home for this. She’s a very busy girl.’

Lat sighed. This was not very productive. ‘Is there anything, then, that any of you can thinkof that might be important for us to know? Anything at all,’ he prodded.

‘There was one thing,’ began Jennifer’s father, his voice trembling slightly.

‘There was nothing,’ said Renny loudly, shaking her head, reaching for his hand. ‘Stop doing this to yourself, Mike. Please.’ She started to cry again.

‘Anything at all,’ offered Lat.

‘Damnit! I’m going to speak! I’m finally going to speak!’ Michael Prowse said, his voice rising. He waited for a moment. ‘There was something about David,’ he began. His eyes welled up and he looked away, to an unseen memory in the room.

The past weekand a half had probably aged Mike Prowse ten years. Lat knew the next six months would add another ten. The physical transformation of a murder victim’s family from arrest to when a trial was finally had was unbelievably sad.

‘There always was something not right,’ continued Mike. ‘Something that I can’t explain to you. It was like, when David looked at you, he never
stopped
looking. He never turned away, or got lost in something else. When he talked to you, he always listened very carefully. It was like he was studying you. And he always knew the right thing to say. The
perfect
thing.’

‘And?’ Lat prodded.

Mike looked at Lat finally. Silent tears ran down his cheeks, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. ‘That was it. David Marquette was … he was …’ He stumbled to find the right words. ‘It was almost as if he were
too
perfect. And he fooled us all.’