Plain Truth Read online

  I closed my eyes. Allegedly killed, I reminded myself.

  "Is it that you can't remember?" I asked, deliberately softening my voice.

  Katie's eyes met mine, wide and sea blue. "I went to sleep on Thursday night. I woke up Friday morning and came down to make breakfast. That's all there is to it."

  "You don't remember going into labor. You don't remember walking out to the barn."

  "No."

  "Is there anyone who saw you sleeping all night?" I pressed.

  "I don't know. I wasn't awake to see."

  Sighing, I rapped my hands on the mattress I was sitting on. "What about the person who sleeps here?"

  Katie's face drained of color; she seemed far more upset by that question than by anything else I'd asked her. "No one sleeps there."

  "You don't remember feeling that baby come out of you," I said, my voice growing thick with frustration. "You don't remember holding it close, and wrapping it in that shirt." We both glanced down, where I was cradling an imaginary infant in my arms.

  For a long minute, Katie stared at me. "Have you ever had a baby?"

  "This isn't about me," I said. But one look at her face told me she knew I wasn't telling the truth, either.

  There were pegs on the walls, but no closets. Katie's dresses took up three of them, another three were empty on the opposite wall. My suitcase lay open on the bed, stuffed to the gills with jeans and blouses and sundresses. After a moment's consideration, I pulled out a single dress, hung it on the peg, and then zipped the suitcase shut again.

  A knock came on the door as I was hauling my luggage to the corner of the room, behind a rocking chair. "Come on in."

  Sarah Fisher entered, carrying a stack of towels that nearly obliterated her face. She set them down on a dresser. "You have found everything you need?"

  "Yes, thank you. Katie showed me around."

  Sarah nodded stiffly. "Dinner's at six," she said, and she turned her back on me.

  "Mrs. Fisher," I called out before I could stop myself, "I know this isn't easy for you."

  The woman stopped in the doorway, her hand braced on the frame. "My name is Sarah."

  "Sarah, then." I smiled, a forced smile, but at least one of us was trying. "If there's anything you'd like to ask me about your daughter's case, please feel free."

  "I do have a question." She crossed her arms and stared at me. "Are you secure in your faith?"

  "Am I what?"

  "Are you Episcopalian? Catholic?"

  Speechless, I shook my head. "How does my religion have anything to do with the fact that I'm representing Katie?"

  "We get a lot of people coming through here who think they want to be Plain. As if that's the answer to all the problems in their lives," Sarah scoffed.

  Amazed at her audacity, I said, "I'm not here to become Amish. In fact, I wouldn't be here at all, except for the fact that I'm keeping your daughter out of jail."

  We stared at each other, a standoff. Finally, Sarah turned away, picking up a quilt on the end of one twin bed and refolding it. "If you aren't Episcopalian or Catholic, what do you believe in?"

  I shrugged. "Nothing."

  Sarah hugged the quilt to her chest, surprised by my answer. She didn't say a word, but she didn't have to: she was wondering how on earth I could possibly think that it was Katie who needed help.

  After my confrontation with Sarah, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and then Katie came upstairs for a rest--something, I could tell, that was unprecedented in the household. To give Katie her privacy, I decided to explore the grounds. I stopped in the kitchen, where Sarah was already beginning to cook dinner, to tell her my plans.

  The woman couldn't have heard a word I said. She was staring at my arms and legs as if I were walking around naked. Which to her, I guess, I was. Blushing, she whipped back to face the counter. "Yes," she said. "You go on."

  I walked along the raspberry patch, behind the silo, out toward the fields. I ventured into the barn, meeting the lazy eyes of the cows chained at their milking stalls. I gingerly touched the bright crime-scene tape, scouting for clues. And then I wandered until finding the creek, where I'd been ever since.

  When I used to stay at Leda and Frank's as a young girl, I'd spend hours lying belly-flat on the shores of their creek, watching the stick bugs skitter over the surface of the water, while pairs of dragonflies gossiped to each other. I'd dip my finger in and watch the water carve a path around it, meeting up on the other side. Time would spin out like sugar, so that I'd be thinking about how I'd just arrived, and in the blink of an eye, it was already sunset.

  The Fishers' creek was narrower than the one I'd grown up with. At one end was a tiny waterfall, bogged at the bottom with so many spores and sprigs of hay that I knew it had served as a source of fascination for their children. The other end of the creek widened into a small natural pond, shaded by willow and oak trees.

  I dangled a forked twig over the water as if I could dowse for defense strategies. There was always sleepwalking--Katie admitted to not knowing what had happened between the time she went to bed and the time she awakened. It was a designer defense, certainly, but those had had success in recent years--and in a case as sensational as this one was sure to be, it might be my best shot.

  Other than that, there were two options. Either Katie did it, or she didn't. Although I hadn't seen discovery from the prosecutor yet, I knew they wouldn't have charged her without evidence to the former. Which meant that I needed to determine whether she was in her right mind at the moment she killed the baby. If she wasn't, I'd have to go with an insanity defense--only a handful of which had ever been acquitted in the state of Pennsylvania.

  I sighed. I'd have a better chance proving that the baby had died by itself.

  Dropping my twig, I considered that. For any ME the state could put on the stand to say that the baby had been murdered, I could probably find a dueling expert who'd say it had died of exposure, or prematurity, or whatever medical excuses there were for these sorts of things. It was a tragedy that could be pinned on Katie's inexperience and neglect, rather than her intent. A passive involvement in the newborn's death--well, that was something even I could forgive.

  I patted my shorts, silently cursing my lack of foresight to bring along a scrap of paper and a pen. I'd have to contact a pathologist, first, and see how reliable the ME's report was likely to be. Maybe I could even put a good OB up on the stand-- there was one fellow who'd done wonders for a client of mine during a previous trial. Finally, I'd have to get Katie on the stand, looking suitably distressed about what had accidentally happened.

  Which, of course, would require her to admit that it had happened at all.

  Groaning, I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes against the sun. Then again, maybe I'd just wait for the discovery, and see what I had to go with.

  There was a faint rustling in the distance, and a snippet of song carried on the wind. Frowning, I got to my feet and started walking along the creek. It was coming from the pond, or somewhere near the pond. "Hey," I called out, rounding the bend. "Who's there?"

  There was a flash of black, which disappeared into the cornfield behind the pond before I could see who had vanished. I ran to the edge of the stalks, parting them with my hands, hoping to find the culprit. But all I managed to stir up were field mice, which ran past my sneakers and into the cattails that edged the pond.

  I shrugged. I wasn't looking for company anyway. I started back toward the house, but stopped at the sight of a handful of wildflowers, left at the northernmost edge of the pond. Resting just out of reach of the graceful arms of a willow tree, they were neatly tied into a bouquet. Kneeling, I touched the Queen Anne's lace, the lady's slippers, the black-eyed Susans. Then I glanced at the field of corn, wondering for whom they had been left.

  "While you're here," Sarah said, handing me a bowl of peas, "you'll help out."

  I looked up from the kitchen table and bit back the retort that I was already helping, just b