Zachary took another drink. “I hope I’m not boring you,” he said looking at Karp, who shook his head but didn’t say anything.
“You’re very kind,” the young man said. “I think I’d be bored to tears by now. Anyway, about the third time I cut myself-here you can still see where I messed up my body art…” Zachary rolled his tattooed arm over to show where ugly pink scars ran through a blue, black, and white wave that formed a ying-yang symbol. He snorted derisively as he added, “The psychologists say that ‘cutting’ comes from anger and a lack of self-esteem…. My dad paid thousands of dollars for someone to tell him that.”
Zachary turned his arm back over and sighed. “But then some friend of my dad’s suggested I go see this psychologist, Dr. Donald Craig. And for once, my dad did something that actually helped me. The short version is that Dr. Craig hypnotized me and when I came to, all these memories were swimming around in my head like fish in an aquarium. It took some time to sort them out-the stuff that was obviously imaginary from those that Dr. Craig said were ‘repressed memories,’ shit I’d submerged into my subconscious when I was a kid because I didn’t want to deal with it.”
The young man bowed his head. “You okay to go on?” Guma asked. Zachary nodded.
“Yes, I want to finish, then you guys can decide what to do about it,” he said. “If it’s nothing, fine, I understand and I’ll forget about it. Going up against my dad will be tough, even for the district attorney; he’s got a lot of powerful friends. And even if that doesn’t bother you, what have you got here: Emil Stavros, self-made millionaire immigrant, philanthropist, and political heavy-hitter versus his whacked-out, suicidal kid who suddenly remembered his mom’s murder after fourteen years. Believe me, I still have my own doubts.”
“Why don’t you let us be the judge of that,” Guma, said. “Just tell us your story like you told it to me.”
Zachary looked at Guma, then Karp and nodded. “Okay, I’ve come this far…. Here’s the deal: one of those repressed memories is the crystal-clear image of watching my dad with his hands around my mother’s neck. He’s screaming in her face as she tries to tear his hands off her throat. But he chokes her until she falls to the ground and didn’t move. I remember this was at night. They were on the back patio, and I was watching from inside the house-probably supposed to be in bed, but I got up for some reason. I remember seeing my dad stoop over her. I remember her lying there in that blue dress.”
Zachary stopped and looked at Guma as though waiting to be challenged. Carefully selecting his words, Guma said, “First, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. No one in this room is; however, there are some big obstacles to pursuing this case, the biggest is that we’re going to have to prove it with evidence that we can get in front of a jury. For instance, we know for a fact that your mother disappeared fourteen years ago under what were at first considered suspicious circumstances. A concern right now in this room, however, is with the so-called science of forensic hypnotism. If we were to go forward with this case with the idea of pursuing a murder charge, there would be a significant legal hurdle just to get you on the witness stand.”
Zachary took a drink of his water and nodded. “Yes, implanted memories,” he acknowledged. “To be honest, after I was hypnotized the first time, I had a hard time dealing with the whole idea. I mean, I want nothing to do with Emil, but he is my father and the idea that he killed my mom then pretended she’d left me was not something I really wanted to believe. So I looked for all sorts of reasons why this was a bunch of crap. At first I wrote it off as fortune-teller nonsense. But I also read a lot of the literature on repressed memory that’s out there, including some of the case law that’s available on the internet. I know it’s not always accurate and has been rejected by some courts, sometimes with good reason.”
The agitated young man got up and walked over to the window and looked down on the street. “You know what I’d give to be any one of those people out there? Maybe I’d be more miserable. But I’d take a chance that maybe I’d be one of those with a happy life,” he said. “You know, my dad used to tell me that the reason my mother left was that she was selfish and had never really loved either of us. I was just a burden to her, so she ran off so that she could enjoy her life.”
Zachary stopped speaking, his entire body slumping. “When Dr. Craig told me about these repressed memories, I wondered if I wanted them to be true so that I could stop dealing with the idea that she left me. She hadn’t left me at all, she’d been murdered. Maybe, I thought, I wanted it so bad, my subconscious had made it all up. Maybe the doctor accidentally implanted this memory by something he said. But all I can say is, to me, they’re real.”
The young man seemed to have finished, but the attorneys in the room remained quiet to let him compose himself. At last Guma spoke. “If you can, tell us the rest, Zachary.”
Slowly, Zachary turned to look at the ADAs sitting around the table, his pale cheeks wet with tears. “Yes… there are a couple of other things I remember distinctly from that night. The first is that when I was back in my bedroom, too scared to sleep, I heard two ‘pops.’ ”
“Pops?” Guma asked.
“Yeah, I’d say like gunshots, I guess, ‘pow, pow,’ except muffled-one right after the other. And I think…this isn’t quite as clear and who knows, maybe this is my subconscious mind working, but I can’t get it out of my head-”
“What’s that?” Karp asked when the young man hesitated.
“Well, my bedroom was right above the backyard where we used to have these beautiful rose gardens. What I can’t get out of my head, is the sound that night of someone digging.”
Five minutes later, Zachary was gone from the room, but the ADAs were still quiet, lost in thought. “Well, what do you think?” Guma said. “I could wait and keep trying to find a way to search Stavros’s backyard. But that might not happen, and even if he killed her, she might not be buried there. Or I can try to get an indictment, throw the dice, see if I crap out.”
No one else spoke. Then Kipman cleared his throat. Of all the ADAs there, chief of the appeals bureau “Hotspur”-so named because of a surprisingly quick temper-Kipman knew best the hurdles the case would have to overcome. “Even a conviction won’t end this, Ray,” he said. “But I say you roll the dice. If we can get him on the stand, that kid might just do it for you.”
All the ADAs agreed. Several stopped to pat Guma on the back and wish him luck on their way out. Then only Guma, Murrow, and Karp were in the room.
“If we go after Emil Stavros, you know all hell is going to break loose on the political front,” Murrow said miserably. He was running Karp’s campaign for district attorney and looked like someone had just told him that they’d booked the victory party on the
Karp understood where he was coming from. Part of him wanted to put off the move for an indictment until after the election. What are another few months after fourteen years? said the little voice in his head. But another side of him was recalling the image of a young man still grieving for a lost mother. “I know,” he said.
“Want to put it on a back burner until after the election?” Guma asked.
Murrow didn’t bother to look up from where he was doodling the word
“Nah, if what Zachary says is true, Teresa Aiello Stavros has already waited fourteen years too long for justice,” Karp said. “Let’s take it to the grand jury and see what they have to say.”
Guma grinned like a wolf contemplating which little pig to eat first. “That’s my guy,” he said. “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.”
“Yeah, well, I hope we don’t get blown out of the water on this one,” Murrow said.
To which Karp added, “Let’s figure out a way to find her body, Ray. Also, check with forensics and see if they can make a match with her signature or any other handwriting we have that she allegedly signed off on during that period after she disappeared. Let’s hope it works, because right now this case is as thin as it gets.”
6
Samira Azzam’s heart was light as she walked down the breezeway connecting the mansion in Aspen, Colorado, to the “guest cottage” where
