”No Corvette. Or I guess I should say no record of a Corvette.”
”And what about Julie Hayes?”
”Very naughty girl. Three drug possessions, two misdemeanor thefts, three prostitution convictions.
Most of the arrests are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Nobody had anything good to say about her. She’s a mess.”
”You talk to her?”
”I tried. The first time I went out to her place she was so stoned she could barely speak. The second time she told me to fuck off, so I fucked off.”
An hour later, I drove over to meet with the forensic psychiatrist I’d hired to examine Angel. Tom Short was head of the psychiatry department at East Tennessee State University, a short, wiry academic who seemed to spend a lot of time in a world no one else understood. I’d met him at a death penalty seminar in Nashville five years earlier where he taught a class on the role of psychiatric evaluation in mitigation. I’d used him in seven cases since then, and we’d become friends. I’d never placed a lot of faith in psychiatry before I met Tom, but his uncanny ability to diagnose personality disorders and psychotic illnesses made a believer of me. I trusted him completely.
”PTSD,” he said as soon as I walked into his office.
He was sitting behind his desk, chewing on the end of the pipe he kept in his mouth like a pacifier. I’d never seen him without the pipe, and I’d never seen it lit.
”Post-traumatic stress disorder?”
”Chronic and severe. But she’s being evasive about the stressor. I suspect she was raped by her adopted father.”
”Why?”
”Because if the stressor was a car accident or something she witnessed, she’d tell me about it. She became agitated and evasive when I asked her about her father.”
”Is she a candidate for murder?”
”Everybody’s a candidate under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball.”
”I don’t see how she could possibly have killed Tester,” I said. ”For one thing, he was a two-hundred-sixty- pound man. What does she weigh?
One ten? I just don’t see her being able to overpower a guy like that.”
”His blood alcohol level was point two seven, and he was drugged. A ten-year-old could have killed him.”
”I know, but she just doesn’t
”I look at her clinically,” Short said. ”You look at her emotionally. Her beauty and vulnerability cloud your perspective.”
”So you think she killed him?”
”I didn’t say that. I’m just saying it’s possible.
Some PTSD victims go into a dissociative state if the stressor is severe enough, and if it’s repeated. Let’s say her adopted father sexually abused her for years, which I suspect he did. She runs away. Then she finds herself being sexually abused by this Tester man. It’s possible she could have had sort of an out-of-body experience and killed him. It would also explain the extraordinary number of stab wounds and the mutilation.”
”Would she remember it?”
”It’d be like a dream, but she’d remember it.”
”Would she be responsible for her conduct, legally, if that’s what happened?”
”Probably not. I think I’d be able to testify that under those circumstances she would
”The problem is that in order for us to assert that defense, she’d have to admit she killed him.”
”That’s right.”
”She says she didn’t kill him.”
”I know.”
”So where does that leave us?”
”She didn’t tell me she did it, so as far as I’m concerned, she didn’t do it. Everything I’ve told you is purely theoretical.”
”Have you made notes on all of this?”
”Of course.”
”Shred them.”
Since I had Tom’s attention, which was sometimes hard to get, I decided to ask him about Junior Tester.
I described to him in detail everything that had happened between us, including the look of torment and hatred on Junior’s face the night I went to his house.
”Was it a mistake?” I said.
”Actually,” Tom said, ”going down there wasn’t as bad an idea as you might think. You may have showed him there could be serious consequences to his actions. Maybe you shocked him back into reality, at least for a little while. Have you seen him since?”
”No.”
”You must have frightened him.”
”He didn’t look scared. Do you think I’ll see him again?”
”Can’t say for sure.”
”Is it likely?”
”I’d say it depends.”
”On what?”
”On how you portray his father in the courtroom if you go to trial. You might want to give that some serious consideration.”
June 25
4:00 p.m.
After the meetings with Diane and Tom, I was both confused and concerned. I decided it was time to go have a serious conversation with my client. I wanted to discuss some of the more incriminating evidence with her, but more important, I needed to see how well Angel would hold up under cross-examination.
If I could catch her in a lie, so could the district attorney.
She wasn’t shackled or handcuffed when the guards escorted her into the interview room-apparently she was no longer considered a security risk. I’d asked her what she wanted me to call her after I found out her real name. She said she wanted to be called Angel. Mary Ann, she said, was gone.
”How are you holding up?” I said.
”I’m okay. The guards are nice to me.”
Each time I went to visit, I was struck by something different: the smoothness of her skin, the contours of her face, the fullness of her lips. She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, a fact that made what I was about to do even more difficult.
”There are a couple of things I need to ask you about, some things that are bothering me. I want you to tell me the truth.”
A puzzled look came over her face, but she nodded.
”First off, I need to know about your relationship with Julie Hayes.”
”What about it?”
”Do you have any idea why she would tell the police that you and Erlene left the club right after Reverend Tester the night he was killed?”
”What? Julie said that?”
I reached into my briefcase, pulled out a copy of Julie’s statement, and set it down in front of Angel.
”This is a copy of the statement she gave to the TBI. Read it for yourself.”
Angel looked down at the statement for a few minutes and then back at me.
”Why would she say something like that?” she said.
