Fake Plastic World Read online

  As the footage played, it showed a black-and-white night-vision version of Eva-Kate and me from a high diagonal angle. It showed us standing near the answering machine, presumably talking, then it showed us walking away down the hall. It wasn’t exactly damning evidence of anything. I noted that with my hoodie up, it was hard to fully see my face.

  “Detective Sato, can you describe to me, and the jury, what you see in this video?” Melinda asked.

  “Miss Childs and Miss Kelly are standing by the telephone in the upstairs hallway at 9:10 P.M. Then they walk away down the hall and Miss Childs follows Miss Kelly down the stairs.”

  “And does this line up with what your witness Miss Bishop told you?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “No further questions, your honor.”

  * * *

  “Detective Sato”—Jack strode out before him—“were Justine’s fingerprints the only fingerprints you found on the knife?”

  “No.”

  “Who else’s prints were present?”

  “Rob Donovan’s, Olivia Law’s, and Josie Bishop’s.”

  “Then why weren’t any of them suspects?”

  “There was no witness who saw any of them following Eva-Kate outside with the murder weapon. And none of them were seen on the surveillance footage.”

  “Well, Josie was seen on the surveillance footage, so we know she was there that night.”

  “Objection, he’s testifying.”

  “Sustained. Is there a question, Mr. Willoughby?”

  “Yes. If Josie was seen on the surveillance footage to be present on the night of Eva-Kate’s death, and her fingerprints were found on the weapon, then why was she never considered as a suspect?”

  “Well, because she was our main witness, and because the footage corroborated what she said she saw.”

  “Did it, though? Can we dim the lights and take another look at that footage?”

  The lights dimmed and the footage began rolling.

  “So,” Jack narrated, “here we see Justine and Eva-Kate in the hallway at 9:10 P.M. They seem to be talking. Then they both walk away down the hall.” He hit PAUSE as we disappeared down the steps. In the frame on the screen, it looked as if it were actually Eva-Kate who was following me.

  “What we don’t see is proof of Miss Bishop’s claim that Justine grabbed the athame or that she followed Eva-Kate outside.”

  “Objection, testifying.”

  “Sustained. Mr. Willoughby?”

  “I apologize, your honor. Detective, in the clip that the prosecution has provided, do we see proof that directly corroborates Miss Bishop’s claims?”

  “No.”

  “So, then, considering Josie Bishop was present, isn’t it pretty convenient—for her—that she saw Justine carry the athame and follow Eva-Kate outside?”

  “Objection.” Melinda stood. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Overruled. Mr. Willoughby, get to your point.”

  “Yes, your honor. My point is this. Detective, if Josie was present the night of the murder, and her claims that she saw my client with the murder weapon can’t actually be backed up, isn’t it possible that she killed Eva-Kate?”

  “Objection, your honor! Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  “All right. Let’s talk about the time stamp for a second. At what time does Justine supposedly follow Eva-Kate outside?”

  “According to the video, 9:11 P.M.,” said Detective Sato.

  “And yet other records from the night show Eva-Kate still alive at ten, eleven, and twelve o’clock, correct?”

  “Yes. Correct.”

  “And according to the coroner’s report, she didn’t die until sometime between midnight and four in the morning, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So then, if this video doesn’t show Justine with the weapon, and it doesn’t reflect the point in time when we know Eva-Kate died, isn’t it true that it in fact does not show anything of relevance to this case?”

  “Objection, testifying!”

  “Sustained.”

  “No further questions, your honor.” Jack smiled and sat down. “That’s all.”

  * * *

  “Defense, you may call your witness,” Judge Lucas instructed.

  Jack stood and buttoned his jacket.

  “Your honor, the defense calls Dr. Nancy Childs to the stand.”

  The bailiff let my mom in through a side door, then helped her up onto the witness stand. She wore a linen pantsuit and a pearl necklace I’d never seen before. Her lips were puckered, like she’d just put something sour in her mouth and was considering spitting it out, and her forehead was shiny with sweat that she kept dabbing at with a purple handkerchief.

  Her hand trembled lightly as she held it up and swore to tell the truth. The whole truth. I pressed the bruises on my hands to feel something other than completely sick. Sick with fear, sick with shame, sick with the feeling that all of this could have been prevented somehow if only I’d been paying better attention. If only I hadn’t been so wrapped up in Eva-Kate’s charm, blinded by the lights upon lights upon lights that were her life. I’d forgotten myself entirely. I’d forgotten self-control.

  “Dr. Childs,” he began, “what is the nature of your relationship to the defendant?”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “Is it true that you also knew Miss Kelly?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it come to be that you knew Miss Kelly?”

  “I was her therapist. From the time she was six or seven.”

  An intrigued murmur rippled through the crowd of onlookers.

  My mom’s eyelids flickered. I worried she might faint under the pressure. It wouldn’t have been the first time. She fainted when I broke both my collarbones climbing on the frail branches of a dying lemon tree in our backyard when I was five, and she fainted the day the doctors at Bellflower told her that her only daughter was suffering from stress-induced paranoid psychosis.

  “Okay, first things first, Dr. Childs.” He tapped a pen against the palm of his hand. “Where were you on the night of July sixteenth?”

  “I was in Rome,” she said. “Getting ready to fly back to Los Angeles.”

  Was she really? I thought. Or was she already back by the time she left that voice mail on Eva-Kate’s machine? And if she was already back, why didn’t she come home? Where was she staying?

  I entertained the idea until it almost made sense, twirling it around like a ballerina in my mind, finding that I was enjoying the morbid absurdity of each spin.

  “How long were you in Italy?”

  “Just a few days. I’d been in India before that.”

  “When did you first leave the country?”

  “At the beginning of the summer. June.”

  “Did you tell your patient, Eva-Kate Kelly, that you were going away?”

  “Yes. She knew I was planning the trip for at least a month before I left.”

  “How did she respond?”

  “Hardly at all.” My mom pursed her lips. “She seemed entirely nonplussed. Unaffected.”

  “So then, she didn’t tell you she was planning to buy the house across from yours?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “And yet, she did buy it. Almost as—”

  “Objection, counsel is testifying,” Melinda complained. “Again.”

  “I apologize, your honor. Dr. Childs, did Eva-Kate Kelly buy the house across from yours on Carroll Canal?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is it true that she did so while your daughter, Justine, was spending the summer alone, unsupervised?”

  “Justine was supposed to be staying with her aunt, actually. But I didn’t tell Eva-Kate that, so…”

  “Do you have any idea why Eva-Kate might have done this? And without telling you of her plans?”

  “Eva-Kate had developed a fixation with my family. Specifically with my daughter, Justine. Over the years, she had gro
wn more and more interested, asking more and more questions, always as if trying to get to know Justine. She had this idea in her head that Justine had a normal, grounded life, and that therefore Justine was more real than she herself was. The idea worked its way into an obsession when her longtime boyfriend, Rob Donovan, broke things off with her.”

  “An obsession?” Jack asked rhetorically. “That’s interesting. So, then, would it be safe to say it was an obsession that drove Eva-Kate to buy a house directly across from where your daughter was living?”

  “I believe so, yes. She obviously didn’t tell me about her plan because I would have tried to stop it.”

  “Then is it also safe to say Eva-Kate knew about your daughter long before your daughter knew about her?”

  “Yes. I mean, maybe Justine knew Eva-Kate from TV, but so did most of America.”

  “Right, right. I just think it’s interesting how the prosecution is accusing Justine of having some unhealthy obsession with Eva-Kate, when Eva-Kate was actually the one who spent four point five million dollars to live across from Justine.”

  “Objection, your honor.” Melinda shot up, indignant.

  “Withdrawn.” Jack held up his hands in surrender. “I’ll move on. Dr. Childs, do you know what this is?”

  He held up a glossy photograph for her to see. She put on a pair of acrylic-frame glasses and squinted performatively. Of course she knew, and I knew too. It was the locked file cabinet where she kept her patient notes.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s my file cabinet.”

  Jack rotated the photo slightly so that it faced Judge Lucas, then set it down on the table in front of me.

  “Your honor, I’d like to enter Nancy Child’s file cabinet as Defense Exhibit One.”

  “Noted.” Judge Lucas nodded.

  “And what did you keep in this file cabinet?”

  “Notes that I took during my sessions with patients.”

  “Confidential notes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then is it safe to say this file cabinet has a secure lock system?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “As you can see, it has a keypad on it. You have to type in the code to gain access. It makes a record of every time it’s opened.”

  “So, every time someone unlocks it, a record is made within the device? It keeps track of the times it’s been opened?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Childs, is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your honor, in addition to the file cabinet, I’d like to enter these photocopies of the digital logs tracked by the file cabinet as Defense Exhibit Two. And if it pleases the court, I’d like to review a portion of the transcript.”

  “Objection, your honor.” Melinda stiffened like an arrow. “Relevance?”

  “I’m getting to it,” Jack promised. “And it’s highly relevant.”

  “Overruled,” Judge Lucas proclaimed, leaving Melinda with a resentful pout. “But get there soon, Mr. Willoughby.”

  “Kazuo King Locks and Security,” he resumed, reading off the page. “Login records. Dr. Nancy Childs, PhD. June 2018.”

  He paused, inspired, perhaps, and handed the page to my mom, who looked bewildered and pale as a sheet.

  “Dr. Childs, can you read me the last entry that was documented in June?”

  “Sure.” She squinted again through her glasses. “It says … June twenty-fifth. In, 3:04 P.M., out, 3:45 P.M.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Childs. Can you tell the court what that means to you?”

  “It means I unlocked the files at 3:04, spent about forty minutes writing notes, then locked them back up at 3:45.”

  “Lovely,” he said. “Now can you read me the first entry for July?”

  He walked to her and slid his finger down the page, then pointed at it with a flourish, jamming his finger down so it made an audible pop. I cringed, thinking of the bone crunching up somewhere inside his flesh.

  “Uh…” She scanned for it. “Right. Here, um, July sixteenth. In, 10:00 P.M., out, 4:22 A.M.”

  “Was that you who unlocked the files at 10:00 P.M. on July sixteenth?”

  “No. As I previously testified, I wasn’t back in the country yet.”

  “Then who was it?”

  “It would have to have been Justine. Nobody else has keys to our home.”

  “Not even Mr. Childs?”

  “He moved out. I changed the locks.”

  “So then, according to this Kazuo King lock system, Justine was, in fact, in your home from 10:00 P.M. to 4:22 A.M., the window of time during which Eva-Kate was killed.”

  “Objection.” Melinda held up her hand. “Calls for speculation.”

  “Sustained.”

  “No further questions, your honor.”

  Thanks to that elegant unfolding of information, I experienced a few moments of glorious relief, a light twinkling quietly at the end of the tunnel, a pretty little hope that it all might actually turn out okay. Then Melinda spoke.

  “Dr. Childs, you were Eva-Kate’s therapist, is that correct?”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “A licensed therapist is required to keep patient records confidential, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And does that expectation of confidentiality survive the death of a patient?”

  “Traditionally it does, yes.”

  “And yet you’re willing to testify here today about Miss Kelly’s therapy, potentially breaching confidentiality?”

  “I am.”

  “In spite of the legal and professional consequences that could result for you personally?”

  “Yes.”

  “And by testifying today, you’re breaking patient-doctor confidentiality?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which is against your ethical obligation and may result in the loss of your license to practice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s safe to say you’re willing to do quite a lot to protect your daughter?”

  “As would most mothers, yes.”

  “If you’re willing to lose your license to protect your daughter, then you’d most likely be willing to lie under oath for your daughter, isn’t that correct?”

  “No,” my mom protested. “Of course not. I wouldn’t. I respect the law. And the court.”

  “It’s interesting that your supposed respect for the law and the court doesn’t extend to patient confidentiality.”

  “Objection,” Jack interjected. “Argumentative.”

  “I’ll allow it,” said the judge.

  “How can we know when your unique moral compass urges you to follow the rules or allows you to break them? If you’re willing to break the rule of patient confidentiality to save your daughter, how do we know you aren’t willing to break the ‘whole truth and nothing but the truth’ rule in court?”

  “I … I’m…” My mom was turning red. “There’s no way for us to ever truly know what somebody is capable of. Someone you might think is purely honest with no special interests could sit up here and lie through their teeth, and you might never know the difference. Then there’s me. I may have conflicts of interest, and you might not believe that I’m here to tell the truth, but I am. But no, District Attorney Warren, there’s no way for me to convince you of that.”

  “I see.” Melinda kneaded the side of her neck with two fingers. “Is it true that a lot of your clients are celebrities?”

  “Some are,” she said. “Not all.”

  “Would you say the majority?”

  “I’d say about half.”

  “And Justine has been aware of this throughout her life?”

  “Aside from one patient who consented to meeting Justine many years ago, there’d be no way for Justine to learn the identities of my patients.”

  “This was not Eva-Kate, but another patient?”

  “Yes.”

  “So then Justine has learned the identities of at least two of your patients.”

  “T
here were extenuating circumstances in both cases, but yes.”

  “Though you claim these are the only two celebrity patients Justine was made aware of, did she know that half the people you treat are celebrities?”

  “It’s possible that she was aware, yes.”

  “And are you a dedicated therapist, would you say? Are you good at your job? Do you go the extra mile?”

  “Of course.”

  “So, if you were with your daughter and an incident arose with one of your celebrity patients that required your attention, would you leave your daughter to attend to said situation?”

  “If she were being left in a safe situation such as in the care of her father or babysitter, sure. Yes.”

  “In your professional opinion, what kind of effect do you think that would have on her psyche?”

  “Objection. Relevance?”

  “Your honor, it speaks to Miss Child’s mental state as it pertains to her relationship with Miss Kelly.”

  “Overruled. Dr. Childs, you can answer.”

  “I don’t think I understand the question.”

  “To have her mother paying such close attention to celebrities, instead of to her—what emotional toll would that take on her psyche? Wouldn’t it lead to feelings of inferiority and possibly resentment toward celebrities?”

  “I wouldn’t say I paid more attention to my patients than to my daughter. I’ve been a highly devoted mother.”

  “As she was growing up, did you pick her up from school?”

  “No, normally not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Schools get out around three. That’s the middle of the day. I had to work.”

  “You had to be with patients instead of picking your daughter up from school.”

  “It’s not unusual to be a working parent. Not everyone can just sit around all day twirling their thumbs while they wait for school to let out.”

  “I’m not accusing you of being neglectful, I’m only saying the specifics of your situation are one that could breed feelings of inferiority or an unhealthy relationship to celebrities, don’t you think?”

  “Sure, I guess that’s … possible.”

  “Let’s revisit that fancy file cabinet you have.”