alive.'
I said to Jennie, 'I hope she doesn't talk. Let them shoot the bastard.'
'Sit down, Sean,' Jennie ordered. 'Just… sit down, and shut your mouth.'
I sat.
Margaret Barnes was looking around the room, wide-eyed, and if she had a gun, a noose, and limbs that worked, I had not one doubt she would climb up onto a stool, slip the noose around her neck, and swallow a bullet herself. Actually, after what I'd just done to this poor lady, I felt ashamed enough to join her. Jennie said, 'The human mind is a brittle thing, Margaret. We know Jason struggled to live a decent life… an honorable life. We also know he was fleeing something, some monster.' She added, 'Apparently, he did not run far enough.'
Margaret Barnes looked at her, a little shocked by this insight. A good interrogator has to find common ground with the subject, of course. And the parent of a killer bears a special shame, and the mind of that parent searches for excuses, for solace, even absolution. Jennie said, 'I don't blame you. Nobody should blame you. You shouldn't blame yourself.'
'But you can't… It's not his fault.'
'Whose fault is it, Margaret?'
She did not reply
'Margaret, help us understand.'
Mrs. Barnes sipped from her sherry, and from her expression I wasn't sure she could piece it all together. She said, 'He… his childhood…'
'Being robbed of his mother?'
'Yes. And my husband, he was very… he was quite strong-willed. And headstrong.'
Jennie said, 'I know this is difficult, Margaret. But Calhoun's dead. He can never hurt you again.' She reached forward and she turned off the tape recorder. She said, 'Whatever you tell us stays between us. I promise.'
I knew why she did it, but turning off the recorder was, I thought, a bad move. But also, I realized in that instant that Jennie had picked up something I had missed entirely. Actually, she had picked up a lot I had missed, and I was curious to see what. Mrs. Barnes looked up at her. Jennie said, 'It's going to come out. It can't stay hidden any longer. For your sake… for Jason's sake, tell us.'
After a moment, Mrs. Barnes blubbered, 'You can't imagine.'
'Yes, well… I don't want to imagine. I need you to describe it. You'll feel better by telling us.'
For a long moment, Margaret Barnes stared into Jennie's face, but it was not clear she understood a word. Jennie prompted, 'Start with how he really broke your back.'
With a distressed expression she recoiled back into her seat. 'I don't want to talk about that.'
'Yes… yes, you do. You've always wanted to talk about it. Haven't you?' She added, 'For Jason. You owe him this.'
In the past two minutes Margaret Barnes had learned her son was a homicidal maniac, that the two agents in her home had come to destroy her soul, that she was about to become the most shamed mother in the country, and possibly that she would spend the remainder of her years in prison. Interrogations are a tricky business, and every experienced interrogator will tell you there is a moment, not a crescendo necessarily, but a turning point after which the subject either blurts out everything or the lawyers take over. In fact, she looked at Jennie and asked, 'Shouldn't I call my lawyer?'
Jennie glanced at me. I stood up and said,'Sure, Mrs. Barnes.' To Jennie I said, 'Hand me your cuffs.' To Mrs. Barnes I ordered, 'Put out your hands. After we've booked you, you can call your attorney from the holding cell of the nearest police station.'
Margaret Barnes stared at the cuffs in my hand for a very long time. Basically, a hardened criminal has been through the wringer a few times, and knows better than to talk to coppers under any circumstances. But ordinary people don't appreciate how the odds are stacked against them; they think they can bluff and outsmart cops, they think they can get away with a medley of half-truths and half-lies, and as first-timers, they still believe they have their untainted reputations to protect.
Some combination of all these thoughts went through Margaret Barnes's mind, and eventually she said, 'All right. He… I mean, Calhoun… he beat me… and he threw me down the stairs. He was in a rage that night. He'd been… well, he'd been drinking… but he wasn't…' She stared at me and, as though to underscore the one irrelevant truth she'd told, insisted scornfully, 'He wasn't drunk.'
Jennie said, 'And afterward-together-you fabricated the car accident to conceal the truth.'
Mrs. Barnes nodded.
Jennie said, 'He threatened you, didn't he? He said it would ruin both your lives, and Jason's.'
Again, she nodded. 'I never lost consciousness. He… he hovered over me, and… and I couldn't move my body… and, so we both knew I was badly hurt and…' She tried to stifle a heavy sob. 'He threatened to kill me, Jennifer. And he would- believe me, I had not a doubt he would. He… he could be brutishly violent.'
Jennie allowed a moment to pass. She said, 'I understand your decision, Margaret. I believe he might have killed you, and I'm sure he would've looked for a way to cover that up. But afterward… well, afterward, he controlled you, when you could go out, what you could do, when you could use the toilet, your feeding, your entertainment, and-'
She was nodding furiously. 'I felt like… like an animal.'
'He was a cruel man, wasn't he?'
'Beyond your imagination. He left the house every day, the good family man, the federal judge… you have no idea how normal… how charming he could be outside this house… how admired… how misjudged. But inside…'
'I do understand, Margaret. Calhoun was sick. He was addicted to control. He needed his partner to depend on him. He needed his wife to be subservient, and it may have been an accident, but probably he was satisfied when you ended up crippled and became absolutely dependent on him.' Mrs. Barnes was still nodding as Jennie spoke, and Jennie paused and with exquisite timing suggested, 'And from Jason, from his son, he also demanded absolute obedience, didn't he?'
Tears were now streaming down Margaret's face and she was intermittently sobbing and drawing short breaths. The first dark secret was out, and it was like plucking the cork on a dusty bottle of champagne.
'I… my son and I… we have no relationship. We haven't.. . well, we haven't spoken in years.'
'We'll get to that. Tell me about your family.'
And for the next ten minutes, Margaret related what it had been like to be a wife, to be a mother, and to be a son in the house of Calhoun Barnes, a greater monster than we had even imagined. Margaret Barnes, as Jennie said, did want to get it out, and it came like a torrent, a sobbing collection of endless nightmares for her, and for her son.
As I listened, I was struck that Jennie had also been surprisingly prescient back at Jason's townhouse; Calhoun had been a terrorizing, overbearing bully who whipped and beat his son to a pulp for the tiniest infractions, who demanded and enforced perfection in matters and habits large and small. The things that could trigger Calhoun's volcanic fury ranged from the trivial to the arbitrary. Little Jason once bought a turtle from a school classmate; Calhoun discovered the turtle, thrashed Jason with a belt, crushed the turtle under his foot, then forced Jason to clean up the squashed mess and, afterward, to wash his hands one hundred times. Adolescent Jason got into a schoolyard fight, which was fine, but he lost, which was not, and Calhoun thrashed him so badly he missed three days of school. And so forth, and so on.
Because the mother was equally terrorized, and because she was bedridden, and then handicapped, young Jason was forced to confront his monster alone, unprotected and vulnerable. But I think not even Jennie had anticipated the unremitting ferocity the father unleashed on his son. Margaret eventually commented, 'But you know the oddest thing? Jason actually looked up to his father. He admired him, and he obeyed him, and wanted always to please him. The two of them were.. . unnaturally close. Jason idolized his father.' She took a deep breath. 'I did not lie about that.' She inquired of her confessor, 'Don't you find that peculiar?'
'I find it normal, Margaret. We see it sometimes in hostage situations. There's even a term for it-the Stockholm syndrome. The combination of applied terror and victim helplessness creates mental dependency, and, perversely, even affection and loyalty. For a young boy, trapped in the home of such an abusively dictatorial man, I'd be surprised to hear otherwise.'
'I… yes, I could see how that explains it.' In fact, she might-in her own way she probably had succumbed to
