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“Well, at least you’re honest.” Her gaze drops to the cement floor for a long moment. Finally, she sits and looks at me. “If you’re not doing a piece for the paper, why are you bothering? What do you get out of this?”
I stare at her. Negative energy seeps out of her. She’s beaten and bruised so deeply I can see her wounds if I dig past the hostile veneer. “I can’t, in good conscience, sit back and let an innocent woman pay for a crime she didn’t commit. I get nothing out of this except knowing I tried to help a human being who is alone in this world and who desperately needs someone in her corner. If you really don’t want my help, just say so now and we can go our separate ways. But if you want me to help prove your innocence, you need to lose the attitude and start talking.”
She shows no response; gives no indication that she is ready to do what I’ve requested. That is until she starts talking. “My first memory of my mother is a night when I was about four or five. We were living in this run-down sorry excuse for a home—a one bedroom flat in one of the worst areas in the city that was always littered with garbage and never cleaned. We had one bed between my mother, my sister and me. I was the youngest, so I often got booted to the floor.” She stops for a moment and glances down at the nail she’s picking.
Her eyes are still downcast when she begins again.
“This particular night, she left Glenda and me home alone. When she returned in the middle of the night, she had a man with her and they woke us up and told us to get out of the bed.” She gives me her eyes again. The hard glint I see there takes my breath away. “So they could have sex. I didn’t want to leave the bed. It was winter and cold, and we didn’t have another blanket, just a thin sheet. The guy got angry with me. He picked me up and threw me out of the bedroom.” Her voice doesn’t crack. She doesn’t break down. Instead, she remains steady while she tells her ugly story. The only indication of her emotions is the hard, cold look in her eyes. “My mother laughed. She fucking let that animal throw her child out of the only bed they had and she laughed before she fucked him.” She leans closer to me. “To say I hated my mother doesn’t even cover it. She ruined my life at school. I was bullied because I was one of the ‘Spiers Sisters’. We were often sent to school in dirty clothes, with filthy hair and no food. The assholes there beat us up physically and emotionally. I left school with no friends and tried to build a life in spite of what my mother did. But she ruined my adult years too. Always hounding me for money and shit. Causing problems between my husband and me.” Her nostrils flare and her jaw clenches. “But I didn’t murder her. I was too busy running around trying to make her love me; I didn’t have time to be plotting her death. Because you see, I didn’t know how much I hated my mother until after her de
ath. Before that, I didn’t know what I felt about anyone. I simply existed and tried to get through each day.”
I’m almost stunned into silence. Her recollection is horrific, and I can imagine she would have hundreds of other stories similar in their horror. I take a deep breath before I say, “Will you take me back to the night of the murder and tell me what happened?” I’m not sure I’m ready to hear her tell me a story that will include the man I love. I brace myself for whatever she might say.
“Luke and I had been arguing a lot in the weeks before the murder. I was so tired… all the time. I just needed some time to myself, without Sean. So Luke took the weekend off work and took him away to give me a weekend off. They left on the Friday night after Luke finished work. I went to the movies by myself that night. Saturday I went to the art gallery in town and then that night, I stayed home. I’d just had a long bath when Mum rang. She didn’t sound right; it almost didn’t sound like her, but I knew it was because of caller ID. She begged me to come to the motel…” Her voice drifts off as she gazes past my shoulder.
She frowns before looking back at me. “I remember thinking it was strange she was at a motel, but then I figured she’d probably gone back there with a man. That was the only thing that made sense. Anyway, I got dressed and drove straight there. It was cold that night and I remember having trouble seeing through the windscreen because it kept fogging up. And my damn leg was so sore from the cold; it hurt every time I had to use the clutch. When I arrived, there was so much blood. So much… she was covered in it. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to see if she was still breathing. It was all I could think to do. My mind… well, it kind of just stopped working. I didn’t even think to call the ambulance or the police. All I could think was that I wasn’t ready to lose my mum yet and I had to see if she was breathing.” Her chest pumps as her breaths come hard.
“By the time the police got there, I was covered in blood because I’d been on my hands and knees while I tried to check for her pulse.” She stares at me as she remembers. “Of course, there was no pulse. My mother was dead before I even got there.”
I need to keep her moving. We’re running out of time.
“Did your mother have any enemies you knew of?”
She laughs sarcastically. “That woman made enemies everywhere she went. You couldn’t count on two hands the number of people who hated her.”
Well, that narrows it.
“Do you know how the rope ended up in your car?”
“No.”
“Did anyone have access to your car in the week prior? How often did you look in the boot?”
“The only time I used the boot was when I did my grocery shopping. That was every Monday. So, the last time I looked in the boot was five days before the murder. I didn’t lend my car to anyone that week. The only people who had access to it were me and Luke.” She leans forward. “And he was away with Sean on the night of the murder, so it definitely wasn’t him who did it.”
God, the thought had never entered my mind that it was Luke.
“Okay, so let’s move onto the box of evidence that was found at your house. Any ideas about that?” This box wasn’t even in evidence for the trial, but it’s pretty damning. To prove her innocence, we’re going to have to get to the bottom of it.
She blows out a harsh breath. “Callie, I never saw that box or had anything to do with any of the stuff that was supposedly in it. The first I heard of it was the day Luke arrived here angrier than I’ve ever seen him, demanding I admit to killing my mother.” Her voice wobbles for the first time today and I wonder at that. The marriage Luke has described involves a woman who doesn’t love her husband. And yet, besides the hatred she’s shown towards her mother, the only other emotion I’ve seen is this crack in her tough façade when she talks about her husband.
“Alanis found the box, right?”
An expression crosses her face for a fleeting moment. It was so fast I almost miss it, but I’m certain it was sadness. “Yes. She was looking after Sean one day when she found it.”
“Did anyone establish why the police didn’t find it? I’m presuming they searched your house after the murder.”
“They did. And, no, that was never established.” There’s pain in her voice when she adds, “I never had a chance to talk to Alanis again after that. She refused to visit me.”
“You two were close?” I can’t imagine Jolene close with anyone, but I’ve only met the current Jolene, not the one from before the murder.
“Yeah, we’ve known each other for years. When my marriage became unbearable, Alanis was the one who always got me through.”
“What about your sister? Was she there for you?”
“No. We’ve always had a hard relationship. She never came to see me in prison. Luke said she supported him and Sean through it all, but she never supported me. Strange, because she hated Mum as much as I did.”
“Okay, back to the box. Where did Alanis find it?”
