“Henry, allow me.” Jenkins came around and gestured for Alli to sit back down. When she did, he sat on a chair next to her. “The detectives were anxious to take you into custody. I used a technicality to forestall them. Nevertheless, I had to go before a federal judge this morning and defend you with the district attorney breathing down my neck. This much you know. A horrific crime has been committed and there is a tremendous amount of pressure from all sides to find the murderer and bring him or her to justice.”
“I didn’t kill Billy!” Alli cried. “Why won’t anyone listen?”
“I didn’t say you killed him. Frankly, I believe you’re innocent, but there are two pieces of incriminating evidence that say otherwise”—he held up a hand to stop her protest—“or lead to the conclusion that someone very clever has, for whatever reason, set you up.” He took a breath. “Can you think of anyone who would have cause to implicate you in a capital crime?”
She glanced at her uncle before shaking her head. Her eyes drifted away. “No.”
Jenkins studied Alli for a moment, then turned to Carson. “Henry, please give me a few moments.”
Carson frowned. “Are you sure?”
“Henry, I imagine there is a backlog of calls impatiently awaiting your attention.”
Carson grunted, rose, and, crossing the carpet, went out the door, closing it softly behind him.
Jenkins took a deep breath, then turned to Alli. “Now, my dear, what is it you wish to say?” Seeing her quick glance at the closed door, he added, “Anything you tell me is privileged information … even from your uncle.”
Alli worried her lower lip before she put her elbows on her knees. “Someone is framing me. I mean there’s no way I dosed my roommate or killed Billy. God!”
He nodded sagely.
“You don’t believe me.”
“What makes you say that?”
Alli ran a hand through her hair. “This is a nightmare.” She cleared her throat. “Everyone thinks I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
Jenkins waited a moment. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s your contention that you’re fine.”
“I didn’t poison anyone, I didn’t kill anyone.”
He slid back in his chair and pursed his lips. “I’ll take that into consideration.”
“I’d like to speak to Jack.”
“Would you now?” Jenkins had a way of saying no without actually saying the word. “It is your uncle’s opinion that you have formed a … how shall I put it?… an unnatural attachment to Jack McClure.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed. “And you believe that?”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I work for your uncle.”
She stared out the one window at the snaking gravel driveway. All of a sudden, she took up a poker from the fireplace and slammed it against the window. It bounced off, as if the pane was made of rubber. Alli swung again and again, grunting with each swing, without even a single crack to show for her effort.
She whirled on Jenkins just as the door burst open and a man with the massive sloping shoulders and raw, red face of a weightlifter rushed in.
Jenkins raised a placating hand. “It’s all right, Rudy. No harm done.”
As if to prove his words, he crossed to where Alli stood and took the poker from her. Rudy relieved him of it, and, with a last look at Alli, went out of the study, closing the door behind him.
“The windows are both bulletproof and alarmed,” Jenkins said.
Alli turned to the attorney. “I used to come here when I was a kid. I broke that window once. When did that happen?”
“Five years ago,” Jenkins said. “Maybe six.”
“So I’m a prisoner in my uncle’s house.”
“I’m afraid so.”
His words hung in the room for some time. A phone rang distantly and then stopped. A dog began to bark somewhere outside, its excitement rising.
“You’re both mental as anything.” Her voice was thin and ragged with despair. She felt herself crawl back into the shell she had created for herself when she had been kidnapped.
Jenkins appeared to be aware of this, because he said in his most soothing voice, “The most absurd aspect of the accusation is, of course, the torture. Scientific study tells us that the female of the species, though she can be as cold-blooded and capable of murder as a male, rarely has the stomach for torture. On the other hand, it is the torture of William Warren, so disturbing by its very nature, that is dictating this rush to judgment, at least in my estimation. It’s also the largest question mark. What did his killer or killers want from him? What information did he possess that they needed to go to such extreme lengths to get from him?”
He regarded her steadily. Clearly, he was looking for an answer from her. She shook her head. “I can’t say. I really didn’t know him that well.”
“Come on, Alli, you two were carrying on a love affair for five months.”
“That’s just it,” Alli said, “it wasn’t a love affair.”
“No, what was it then?”
“I was…” Her eyes darted away for a moment. “I was trying to regain a sense of myself, to, I don’t know, feel my body again, to be in control of it again.”
Jenkins sat studying her for a while, or perhaps he was pondering her words. At last, he said, “Did you care about Mr. Warren?”
“Of course I did.” She hesitated, but it was clear she had more to say. “But not … just not in the way you think.”
“What do you think I meant?”
“We weren’t lovers in the classical sense—like Romeo and Juliet.”
“If memory serves, Romeo dies.”
She snorted in derision.
“About the psychopharmacologist,” Jenkins went on. “One of the things he said about you in his report is that, in his opinion, you’re lacking in affect.”
“I think
Jenkins gave her a tight smile. “What his diagnosis means is that, basically, you have difficulty locating your emotions. Sometimes you can’t find them at all. In other words, there are times when you just don’t care about anything … or anyone.”
She looked away again.
“His evaluation will hold a great deal of weight in the course of the investigation. Typically, people who can’t feel—”
“I told you,” she flared. “No fucking drugs!”
“You’re not listening to me,” he continued doggedly. “Your reaction to your boyfriend’s death—or rather your lack of one—was duly noted by everyone at the crime scene, including those sympathetic to you.”
“You can’t possibly understand.”
He spread his hands. “Now is your chance to enlighten me.”
She stared at him, stone-faced.
Jenkins sighed heavily. “In return for you being held in your uncle’s recognizance instead of in a federal holding cell, the judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation.” He took another breath and let it out slowly, as if anticipating the coming storm. “You must comply with the psychopharmacologist’s diagnosis, which, of course, includes your taking whatever psychotropic medications he prescribes.”
Alli leapt up again and retreated behind the chair back, as if he were a lion from which she needed saving. “I can’t! I fucking won’t!”
“I’m sorry.” Jenkins regarded her with what seemed to be genuine pity. “I’m afraid you have no choice.”
DAYLIGHT SEEPED into the grove of trees with the blue-white flicker of a television screen. Jack, exhausted and frightened for Alli, had been scrutinizing the crime scene for hours. The detectives had made their reluctant exit, but Naomi Wilde and Peter McKinsey remained, along with Fearington’s commander, Brice Fellows, who had
