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You wait.
“First, the prosecutor wanted to avoid any suggestion of victim blaming. Juries hate that, particularly when the victim is an attractive young woman. Better to let them feel we’re on the side of the deceased—the good wife, the saintly mother. Then they become angry on her behalf.”
“And the second reason?”
“The second reason was that Abbie’s sex life didn’t provide a motive to kill her.”
“Why not? If she was using those websites…” Then you realize what he must mean. “Tim knew? They had an open marriage?”
Tanner’s expression doesn’t change. “So his defense team claimed. She’d been in a polyamorous relationship before they met, apparently, and the two of them agreed she could continue that lifestyle after the marriage, if she chose to.”
“I don’t believe it,” you say immediately. You’re quite certain Tim would have hated Abbie to have taken other lovers. Tim never shares anything. Besides, there was nothing about it in the prenup. It seemed unlikely that a document detailed enough to determine what the penalty was for putting on three pounds in weight wouldn’t cover something as unusual as polyamory.
“Me neither,” Tanner says. “But it was enough to muddy the waters and make the prosecution wary of using it. And while plenty of women came forward after his arrest to allege he’d tried it on with them over the years, we were never able to find a single man she’d actually hooked up with.” Tanner pauses. “There was something else they didn’t bring before the jury. Something that in my view was much more likely to be relevant.”
It takes a moment for what Tanner’s just told you about the other women to sink in. So Sian wasn’t the first. But of course, she wouldn’t be, not if Tim was conforming to the pattern described in that book. Where such men love, they cannot desire, and where they desire, they cannot love. If all the women who weren’t Madonnas were whores, that still left an awful lot of whores.
And you—is that the real reason Tim didn’t give you genitals? Not because it was too difficult, or because of what people might say, but out of some almost primeval, patriarchal obsession with female modesty? Are you simply the modern-day equivalent of all those untold millions of women throughout history, mutilated to disable their threatening sexuality? To shame them, control their desires, stop them from being fully human?
Tanner’s looking at you expectantly. You drag your attention back to him. “What?”
“I said, Abbie’s drug counselor had reported a child protection issue.”
“What kind of issue?”
The detective grimaces. “That was the frustrating thing. State law requires drug counselors to report any issue affecting the safety of a child. But it doesn’t mandate that they have to be specific about it, or give any follow-up information. So the way many of them balance the law with client confidentiality is to make an initial report, then clam up. Abbie’s counselor was no exception.”
You make a decision. “Does this counselor have a name?”
“Piers Boyd. Works out of his home near Half Moon Bay. I guess that’s why she chose him—he was close to their beach house.” Tanner shoots you a look. “You thinking of speaking to him?”
“It can’t hurt.”
“Well, if he says anything, be sure to share it with me. You bring me something about Abbie, I might be able to talk to Lisa Cullen. Get her to reconsider those proceedings.”
“I don’t need your protection,” you say loftily. “I’ve got Tim and his lawyer.”
But despite your defiant words, you know it isn’t true. As far as Tim’s concerned, you’re just an algorithm to find his wife. To his lawyer, you’re a bargaining chip in the settlement deal he’s probably hammering out right now. Having Detective Tanner on your side might turn out to be a lifesaver.
61
Piers Boyd’s address is on his website, an amateur-looking affair that reveals he’s a life coach and qualified Reiki healer as well as a licensed drug counselor. But not, it seems, a particularly busy one. You call ahead to make an appointment, and there doesn’t seem to be any difficulty fixing a time to see him today.
“What name?” he wants to know.
“Gail,” you say, after the briefest pause.
“How nice.” His voice is obscured briefly as he pulls the top off a pen with his teeth. “Short for Abigail, presumably?”
“Kind of.” That’s to say, Abbie is already taken, so you get the only bit of Abigail left over. Story of your life, you think ruefully.
Boyd lives on Balboa Boulevard, just across the street from the ocean. A wind chime tinkles gently by the gate, and down the side of the house you glimpse a couple of surfboards and a wet suit, still dripping onto the concrete. The man who opens the door is in his late forties, his hair tied up in a man-bun. His feet are bare and he’s wearing baggy Indian trousers—dhoti pants, an inner voice identifies.
“Gail?” he says, and then, “Oh. It’s you.” He seems both startled and a little uneasy, which is exactly what you intended.
“Yes. The cobot of the woman you counseled. Can I come in?”
“I guess.” He opens the door a little reluctantly.
“I read about you,” he says when you’re both seated in a small consultation room that was clearly once a garage. “I never thought I’d see you in my house, though.”
“That makes two of us.”
He regards you curiously. “Tell me…Do you think you have a soul?”
Now it’s your turn to be surprised. “Do you know, you’re the first person who’s asked me that.” You consider. “Yes, I think I probably do. At least, for now. Because after all, the whole point about a soul is that it’s something separate from the body. So not having a flesh-and-blood body can’t be a reason for not having one.”
“Why for now?”
“A court may order me destroyed.”
You explain about the legal proceedings, careful to frame them not as something Lisa requested to spare her family pain, but rather as the machinations of a big corporation eager to control and monetize Tim’s breakthrough.
“So that’s why I’m here,” you conclude. “If I can understand what prompted you to file that child protection report, I may be able to use it to stop myself getting wiped.”
Boyd fiddles nervously with his necklace. “I guess the question is, are you Abbie? If you’re not, I can’t tell you. But if you are, confidentiality isn’t an issue.”
“The lawyers would say I’m not,” you admit. “But then, the lawyers would say I don’t have a soul.”
“Yes.” He’s clearly torn. “It’s a tricky one.”
“I feel like I’m Abbie, though,” you lie. “I have Abbie’s thoughts, Abbie’s consciousness, Abbie’s memories. What is identity, if not that?”
He hesitates. “Why don’t you tell me what you need to know? And then I’ll tell you whether I can share it.”
* * *
—
Within ten minutes, you’ve got him talking. Boyd would never have felt comfortable speaking to the police—he’s way too alternative for that—but you’re a different matter.
“I’d been her counselor for a long time,” he explains. “It was a condition of her prenup that she have one. But gradually, we stopped talking about her so-called addiction and focused more on her other issues.”
“Why so-called?”
“Abbie was only ever a recreational abuser. Of course, there are plenty of people who do graduate from recreational use to full-blown addiction. So you can believe either that Tim did her a favor by nipping it in the bud…or that he massively overreacted in the first place.”
Interesting. “And what were these other issues you discussed?”
“Danny,” he answers quietly. “We talked about Danny a lot. Abbie was…Well, I’d say she was traumatized by what had happened to him. The outside world saw the beautiful, positive woman who just got on with it. The amazing mother who took everything in her stride. In this room, I saw a woman struggling to come to terms with heartbreak.”
“You helped her with that.”
“I tried.” Boyd looks troubled. “That is, I listened. She was so used to not being listened to that at first it was hard for her. But little by little she opened up. I doubt anyone else had seen that side of her. Certainly not her husband.”
Piers Boyd had been a little bit in love with Abbie, you realize. Did she use her beauty and her vulnerability to manipulate him? Or are you being too cynical about that?
“And what was the specific issue that made you file a child protection report?” you ask. “Was it to do with drugs? Drinking?”
Boyd shakes his head. “Nothing like that. She was planning to abduct Danny.”
You sit back, reeling. “Abduct him? How?”
“He’d been put in a special-ed school, one chosen by Tim. He’d showed Abbie all these studies proving it was the most effective placement, bullied her into going along with it…It was only after Danny started there that she realized just how bad it was.”
