The Sleeping Beauty Killer Read online

  Laurie suddenly pictured Andrew at the country house, reminiscing about his perfect big brother. He may have had moments of resentment, especially after too much scotch, but she believed he had loved Hunter.

  “Okay, thanks for coming here tonight, Mark. Please call me if you change your mind about going on camera.”

  “That’s not going to happen. Can you please leave me out of this show? I’m just a normal guy trying to live my life.”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  Alex asked Mark to wait in the lobby while he finished up with Laurie. “It shouldn’t have come to this,” he said quietly.

  “You mean it shouldn’t have come to you doing dirty work for General James Raleigh behind closed doors?”

  “I helped a decent man, Laurie. And now he’s going to bed tonight terrified that his world is going to explode all over again, because you wouldn’t take my word for it. If one of us should be judged, it isn’t me.”

  52

  After Alex left with Mark Templeton, Laurie phoned Ryan’s office and asked them to come back. When they came in, she said, “It’s been a long day. Let’s wrap it up.”

  “Not to step out of bounds,” Ryan said, “but shouldn’t we talk about why Mark Templeton was here?”

  Of course they should. But she knew Alex had a point. At this point, there was no longer reason to suspect Mark Templeton of murdering his friend Hunter. It was only because she had threatened to cast him suspiciously that he’d felt the need to violate his nondisclosure agreement with the Raleigh family. Laurie had seen the kind of influence General Raleigh was willing to wield to protect his family’s name. The fewer people who knew Templeton’s secret, the better.

  “I can’t talk about it right now.”

  “What do you mean you can’t talk about it?” Ryan pressed. “Our last day of filming is tomorrow. Once we’re done with Casey and her family, we’re supposed to wrap it up.”

  Jerry held up an impatient hand. “If Laurie says she can’t talk about it, she can’t talk about it. That’s how we do things here. We trust each other.”

  His words felt like a punch in the stomach. Jerry was showing her the kind of faith that she hadn’t had in Alex when he’d asked for it. “Go on home. We can see where things stand in the morning.”

  53

  She may have told Ryan and Jerry to call it a night, but Laurie couldn’t bring herself to leave. An hour later, she was reviewing every document in the boxes she had picked up from Casey’s defense lawyer, Janice Marwood. At this point, she was reading the pages just to stay busy. She knew that once she was home, alone in her room, the full impact of the conversation with Alex would hit her.

  All these months, she’d been trying to make room in her heart for him, hoping he’d still be there for her when she was ready. But now he might really be gone from her life. She might have blown any chance they had at a future together, all because of this case.

  It can’t be for nothing, she told herself, flipping more quickly through the defense lawyer’s files. There has to be something here that will lead me to the truth.

  As Laurie pulled more and more documents from the boxes, she realized that Janice Marwood’s files contained far more than the rec­ords Casey had given her.

  Casey hadn’t been certain whether Marwood had looked into the negative comments posted online, but Marwood’s files indicated she had. In fact, one file folder was clearly labeled “RIP_Hunter.” Laurie flipped it open and found printouts of many of the comments she’d been able to locate in her own search. There were also copies of letters Marwood had sent to various websites, unsuccessfully seeking information about the identity of the author of the posts.

  Another notebook was labeled “Pre-trial Motions.” It was clear from the contents that Marwood had challenged much of the evidence that the prosecution wanted to present against Casey, and sometimes succeeded. In addition to getting Jason Gardner’s “character testimony” about Casey suppressed, Marwood had also kept a supposed friend of Casey from college from testifying that Casey once said the simplest way for a woman to have power was to marry well. She also barred the testimony of a co-worker at Sotheby’s, who claimed that Casey had set her sights on Hunter the moment he walked into the art auction.

  This wasn’t the work of an attorney who threw the trial. More disturbingly, Laurie had to wonder why Casey hadn’t given her more complete information about her own defense.

  Laurie needed a second opinion. To her surprise, her first instinct was to pick up the phone and call Ryan. She was even more surprised when he answered.

  “You’re still here,” she said.

  “Where I come from, you never leave before the boss.”

  Laurie was impressed at the speed with which Ryan was digesting the trial transcripts. It was like watching the law version of a master chef in his kitchen.

  He paused to look up after reviewing the notebook of pre-trial motions. “This does not look like the work of a lawyer trying to take a dive at trial,” he said.

  “I was told she did a C-minus job,” Laurie said.

  “I would have said the same thing three weeks ago. She didn’t put Casey on the stand, even though she had no prior record and could have presented herself well to the jury. Then she shifted gears at closing—suddenly moving from ‘she didn’t do it’ to a manslaughter theory. But now that I see all the work she did behind the scenes, I’d give her a B-plus, maybe even an A-minus.”

  “Then why didn’t she move for a mistrial when one of the jurors reported that he’d seen RIP_Hunter’s comments about Casey online? Is it possible she was trying to help Casey initially, but then somehow General Raleigh got to her?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said, picking up another stack of documents from the files. “General Raleigh pulling strings to get Casey’s ex-boyfriend a book deal is one thing. But bribing a defense lawyer? And it’s hard to imagine any decent lawyer willing to risk her career. I suppose it’s possible, but—”

  He stopped mid-sentence and flipped back to the page he had just finished reading. “Hold on a second, I think we have a problem. One of the motions to suppress has an attachment. Take a look at this.”

  The page he handed her was from the police department’s inventory of evidence logged after the search of Hunter’s country home. It only took Laurie a quick skim to realize the significance of what she was looking at.

  “This inventory log wasn’t in any of the documents Casey gave me,” she said. “Let me make two phone calls to confirm our suspicions.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they had a new understanding of why Janice Marwood had refused to speak to Laurie. Just like Alex, she had a duty of loyalty to her client, fifteen years after Casey was convicted. She didn’t want to answer questions about Casey, because she knew her client was guilty.

  “That’s why she didn’t ask for the mistrial,” Laurie said. “She realized Casey did it. If the state retried her with a new jury, there was a chance they’d find even more evidence against her in the interim. She got so much of the character evidence suppressed that she figured it was better to go to verdict and argue manslaughter.”

  For the first time since she’d met him, Ryan looked excited about the case. “The good news is we now have a plan. I’ll make a copy of this for tomorrow. Casey won’t know what hit her.”

  54

  The following morning, Casey was staring at a copy of that same document. Her grip was so tight at the corners of the page that Laurie could see her knuckles turning white.

  They were filming from a set in the studio. Unsurprisingly, the Raleigh family had refused to let Casey enter the country house. Even Cipriani had been reluctant to open its doors to her. Sotheby’s declined, as had Casey’s graduate school. She was a woman without roots.

  Today, that worked in Laurie’s favor. Laurie didn’t want Casey to be on her own turf. In
fact, Laurie had canceled this morning’s interviews with Angela and Paula, asking Casey to come to the studio alone since her mother and cousin weren’t “fully supportive” of her decision to participate in the show.

  Now that questioning was under way, Casey was trying to keep her cool, but the page was beginning to shake in her hands. She dropped it on the table as if it burned.

  “It looks like some kind of police report,” she said, finally answering Ryan’s question.

  “Have you seen it before? It wasn’t among the many documents you provided to the studio when we agreed to investigate your case.”

  “I’m really not sure. I’m not a lawyer, Mr. Nichols.”

  “No, but you’ve had fifteen years to work on your own defense. You set out to prove that you were wrongfully convicted, and essentially treated that as your full-time job from a prison cell.”

  “I gave you everything I had. Maybe my lawyer didn’t give me all the records. Or I probably narrowed things down over the years so I could focus on the most important parts.”

  Laurie wasn’t buying it. Last night, she and Ryan had compared the defense attorney’s records to the files Casey had given them. It was clear that Casey had selectively edited the file to make it look as if Janice Marwood hadn’t fought on her behalf. She had also pulled this sheet of paper from the police’s evidence inventory.

  Ryan picked up the page and handed it to Casey again. “Can you please read the second entry on that list?”

  “It says ‘outdoor trash can.’ ”

  “And then there are several items listed beneath that heading, correct? Please read the sixth item on the list.”

  Casey opened her mouth to answer, and then caught herself. She pretended to count each item, as if she had no idea which entry was at issue. “You mean this one? It says ‘plastic garbage bag, contents: shards of broken crystal.’ ”

  Exactly what the missing picture frame would have been if shattered to pieces.

  • • •

  Laurie’s first phone call the previous night had been to Hunter’s housekeeper, Elaine Jenson. She asked Elaine whether she remembered picking up any broken glass when she’d cleaned that day at the country house. She did not. On the rare occasions when she broke something while cleaning, she always set aside the pieces in case the homeowner wanted to try to repair or replace the broken item. She was also vigilant about recycling glass. According to Elaine, any trash bag containing broken glass or crystal must have been carried out by either Hunter or Casey.

  Her second call had been to Lieutenant McIntosh of the Connecticut State Police. He chuckled when she asked him about the garbage bag. “Figured that one out, did you?”

  “You knew?” she asked.

  “Not for sure, not until you asked me about that missing photograph. We wondered when we found that bag in the garbage if perhaps something had been thrown during a fight or broken during a struggle. But the prosecution said it was too speculative to argue at trial. Then you come to my office telling me that his favorite crystal picture frame was missing from the house. I’m willing to bet that’s what we found in the garbage. Breaking his favorite memento in some kind of temper tantrum.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this when I asked about the missing frame?”

  “Because once your show aired, I was going to use that to let the air out of Casey’s tires. Can’t help you too much, after all. Like I said, we got the right person. For what it’s worth, I hinted at it. Said it might’ve been broken. That was a professional courtesy to your dad. And now you’ve figured it out.”

  “Do you still have the bag’s contents? Can we prove to a certainty that it was a picture frame?”

  “Nah. We keep the big, bad stuff like DNA nowadays, but a bag of garbage we never used as evidence? That’s long gone. We thought it was a vase or something, but we never tried to piece it all together. Didn’t seem to matter at the time.”

  It mattered now. Laurie remembered Grace’s reaction when she first heard about the missing photograph: She probably threw it at him when they were fighting, cleaned up the shards, and buried the picture in the woods before calling 911. Ryan had reached the same conclusion: For all we know, the frame got broken during an argument and Casey managed to clean it up before calling the police.

  This had to be why Casey had called her two nights ago, trying to convince her not to mention the missing picture frame during the production. Casey was afraid that the police would connect the dots.

  Laurie had looked in Casey’s eyes and believed she was innocent. How could she have been so wrong?

  • • •

  Ryan had predicted that Casey would storm out of the studio the second he confronted her with the evidence log, but she didn’t budge from her seat, even when Ryan continued to tear into her. “Isn’t it true that that bag contained the remnants of the picture frame you broke during a violent fight with Hunter? The picture that meant so very much to him? Or did it break when you chased him into the bedroom, firing shots at him?”

  “No. It wasn’t the picture frame!”

  “In fact, didn’t you even call our producer at her home two nights ago, asking her not to mention that picture frame?”

  “That was for a totally different reason. It was strategy. You’re twisting everything around!”

  Casey was nearly screaming by the end of her response, pounding a fist against the table for emphasis.

  Laurie felt herself flinch, but Ryan remained completely calm. “Then make it simple, Casey. This was your last day with Hunter. You must have replayed it in your head a million times. Just tell us what was broken that day. What were those shards the police found in the trash can behind the house?”

  “It was a vase.”

  “And how did it get broken?”

  “Things break. It happens.”

  “Let me be honest, Casey. If you were my client and gave an answer like that, I wouldn’t put you on the stand, because any jury would see that you’re not being honest. You remember more than you’re saying.”

  “Fine, I broke it. I saw that picture of him with Gabrielle Lawson in the Chatter column. I got so angry that I threw the paper on the counter, knocking over a vase. I was immediately ashamed. I cleaned it up and took the garbage outside, hoping Hunter wouldn’t notice.”

  “Why were you ashamed?”

  “Because as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get my jealousy in check. I can’t believe I ever doubted his devotion to me, even for a fleeting moment.”

  “That wasn’t the only time you felt jealous, was it? We’ve heard from others that you often spoke up publicly if you thought Hunter was being too cozy with other women.”

  “It wasn’t always easy to be with a man who was so beloved. He was a hero. His family was practically royalty. By comparison, I was the tacky little commoner who had wheedled my way into the fold. It didn’t help matters that the one serious girlfriend he had before me was a demure socialite—my exact opposite. When I would see him posing next to those kind of women, it wasn’t just jealousy. It ­really hurt my feelings. But Hunter saw all of it as an expected part of the social scene.”

  “And how did you see it?”

  “As a matter of respect.”

  Laurie felt Jerry and Grace staring at her, urgently wanting to talk about what was happening in front of them. Until today, Casey had presented her relationship with Hunter as a perfect fairy tale. Now they were seeing a different side of the story.

  Laurie shook her head subtly, signaling for them to keep their poker faces.

  “Hunter didn’t respect you?” Ryan asked sympathetically. His cocky, smart-alec demeanor was completely in check. His tone was perfect.

  “He did, but—he didn’t understand. He was born the most important person in the room. No one ever judged him. He didn’t know what it was like to be me. To have all those women asses
sing me, wondering how I was so lucky to be chosen by him.”

  “It sounds like this is a topic that came up repeatedly. Is it fair to say that you argued about it?”

  “Of course. But not in the way my trial depicted. These were arguments like any normal couple would have. He was learning to be less flirtatious. I was getting less jealous as I became more confident in our relationship. And that’s why I was so disappointed in myself for overreacting to that photograph of Gabrielle and him.”

  “So why didn’t you tell us this?” Ryan asked. “Why did you remove this page of the police inventory from the documents you gave us? And why did you make it sound like your defense lawyer had done nothing on your behalf?”

  “I didn’t want you to think I was guilty.”

  The silence that followed spoke volumes. Casey’s eyes desperately searched Ryan’s for a reaction, and then looked past the camera to Laurie. “You still believe me, don’t you?”

  Laurie’s face must have answered her question, because Casey immediately broke down in tears. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”

  • • •

  The elevator doors had barely closed when they all let out a collective sigh of relief. They couldn’t have asked for much more.

  “I knew she did it,” Grace said, holding up a fist in triumph.

  “That is going to be the best scene we have ever aired,” Jerry declared. “It’s just too bad she already served her sentence. It felt like police should swarm in and haul her away.”

  Ryan waited until Jerry and Grace headed back to their offices to deliver his verdict. He leaned in close and said dryly, “If I were a lesser man, I’d be tempted to say ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “Good thing you’re modest,” Laurie said. “And it’s a good thing I’m a confident enough woman to admit a mistake. You were right: Casey’s guilty.”

  • • •