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“Okay, I guess,” she said. “I’ve never met her. But I know he goes and sees her and talks to her on the phone. I think he’s embarrassed of her, so he’s never brought her around.”
“Did you know about Cami’s relationship with John?” Jack asked.
“Oh yeah,” she said bitterly. “Cami’s from Florida, and not like Palm Beach or anything that John would care about. She worked hard and earned her way to where she did today. Like I did.”
“But not Thea?” I asked.
Toby rolled her eyes. “Thea is a leech. She’ll latch on to whoever can take her the furthest. There’s a reason she’s the only one of us who hasn’t taken the bar yet. She’s not as smart as the rest of us, and the only reason she made it through law school and got the clerkship was because of Kevin. She hasn’t taken the bar yet because she knows she isn’t going to pass. And not passing is not an option when you have a federal judge clerkship.”
“Did Cami ever share how things were going with John?”
“Just enough for me to tell her that if her hopes were marriage then to get out while she could,” Toby said. “I told her about his ten-year plan and the kind of woman his father would approve of, and she kind of laughed it off and said she wasn’t looking for marriage and was just looking for something casual to knock the edge off from time to time.”
“But you didn’t believe her?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Cami was in love with John. It was easy to see. And John is really good at making you feel like you’re the center of his universe, when in reality the center of his universe is him. She’d kind of give this attitude like she could take it or leave it, and her workload helped with that. Judge Stevens is no picnic, but at least she doesn’t have to work directly with John on a daily basis.”
“You and he both work for Judge Mitchell,” Jack said.
“I work. John runs around having drinks and dinner and then shows up to take the credit.”
“Did Cami and John sleeping together make things difficult with the living arrangements? All of you got along well?”
“We’re adults,” she said, shrugging a shoulder. “You do what you have to do to get through. But there was definitely tension.”
“Between John and Cami?” Jack asked.
Toby sighed and seemed to soften a bit, looking down at her hands. “I told you Cami was in love with John. You just can’t hide something like that, even though she was pretending otherwise. And I guess a few weeks ago Cami overheard John talking to his father. He was going to bring Cami to some big company event as his date, and his father had a fit. Called Cami trailer trash and not worthy enough to breathe the same air as John.”
“Sounds like a great guy,” Jack said sarcastically, making Toby laugh.
“He is most definitely not,” she said. “I guess John’s dad told him to bang her if he needed to, but to keep his eye on the prize. I guess John’s father had someone else in mind to be John’s date for the event, and he agreed. Cami didn’t tell John she’d overheard, but something in her changed. I could see it. She didn’t stop sleeping with him or going out when she felt like it, but she kind of got this jaded edge about her. I think John noticed it too because he started sending her gifts and flowers and being more attentive.”
“Did Cami start sleeping with someone else? Maybe out of revenge?” Jack asked.
Toby glanced off to the corner of the room and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cami is dead, Toby,” Jack said. “Why would you protect her killer if you know something?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “Except that I know how the world works. People like John and Kevin and Will—the world is their oyster. They were brought into privilege and they’ll never know anything else. There is no work or scraping yourself up from the bottom. They get and they get and they get, and they’re never told no. Rules don’t apply to them and consequences don’t apply to them. You’ll see. You think you’re smug because Kevin is sitting behind bars? Men like Kevin’s dad are smart and they’re ruthless. He’ll make sure you never win another reelection. He’ll come after your property or your family. You can’t win against men like that, and there’s no point in even trying.”
“All that tells me is you don’t know anything about me,” Jack said, smiling and passing me the file that was on the table, signaling that it was my turn.
I opened the file and started pulling out pictures. Lining them up in front of Toby.
“This is a picture of a knife that came from your kitchen,” I told her. “Murder weapon.” Though I didn’t bother to tell her it wasn’t the actual murder weapon.
“That knife from your kitchen was stabbed into your friend thirteen times,” I said, putting another picture in front of her of Cami’s torso. “You know what kind of rage and anger it takes to do that to another person? Strangers don’t do that to people. Someone who knew her held that knife and stabbed it into her over and over again while looking her in the face and watching the life go out of her. Who do you know who could do something like that?”
Toby made a small squeak but her eyes were glued to the picture of Cami’s body.
“But it doesn’t stop there,” I said, pushing harder. “After she’s stabbed, someone picks her up and throws her over the side of a bridge and into the water, hoping she’ll be carried down fast enough with the rain to end up in the Potomac. That’s smart. Because the Potomac is a different state. It’d be out of our jurisdiction. Someone might have found her washed up, or she never could have been found. That’s what the killer was hoping.
“It turns out all that rage and the knife wounds in her chest isn’t what killed her though,” I said, laying out another photo of Cami on my autopsy table. It had the effect I wanted it to because Toby went dead white. “What do you think Cami was feeling? Just the initial assault. That first cut of the knife. And then for it to happen again and again, knowing you were about to die, but still alive to feel the pain. And then you feel that cold splash from being tossed into the water. You don’t have the strength to swim or keep your head up, but you try because survival instincts are strong. But then eventually you stop trying and the water fills your lungs and you drown.”
“Stop,” she said, shaking her head and closing her eyes.
“One of your roommates did that to her,” Jack said. “Can you really go back and live in that place knowing that? I’d be wondering which of you is next. Because it gets easier every time you do it. And like you said, guys like that believe they’re invincible.”
