Chapter 31 Sara Batcher
Sara Batcher
“The only people that win in these kinds of situations are the attorneys. Everyone else either gets locked up or spends their last cent to try and get away with murder. Look at O. J. Got off for it, but was broke as a two-dick dog at the end.”
Sara’s attorney showed up in thin red shorts that clung to his thighs and a baggy white T-shirt with Harvard Law in giant letters across his chest, should someone from across the parking lot not be able to see.
His hair was damp from his pickleball excursion, and Sara was careful with her hug, concerned about sweat.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“Are you kidding me? You’re family. I would have left even if I’d been losing, and if you and my pride ever met over a cocktail, you’d understand what a big sacrifice that would be.
” Ian let out a hearty laugh, then sobered immediately.
“I’m really sorry about David, Sara. I’d always kept out a little hope that he’d run off to Tahiti with some blond dimwit.
Not that I wouldn’t hunt him down and strangle him for that—but dead? No one wants that.”
Well . . . there had been moments in their seventeen-year union where Sara had wished exactly this sort of future for David, but dwelling on a few low moments wouldn’t accomplish anything, and especially wouldn’t help right now, given the circumstances of their situation.
“So, what do we know?” He pulled his seat up closer to the table and withdrew a small legal pad from the gym bag at his feet.
“Not really anything. I guess a dog found a bone somewhere on the course, and so they searched the neighborhood and found the rest of the remains and they identified them as male.”
“Do we know for sure that it’s even David?”
“I don’t know. I mean, when I originally filed the report for him, I provided DNA evidence back then.
And dental records? I’m sure they have those.
” She tried to think back five years, and what she had been asked and provided.
She’d gone out of her way back then to be overly helpful.
Whatever they’d wanted, no matter how personal or time consuming it had been.
Ian had been the one to step in when they had wanted access to financial documents, stating that it was overreach.
At the time, she had thought him to be overcautious.
But now, sitting in this freezing-cold, tiny room, police officers passing in the hall every few minutes, it didn’t feel overcautious. It felt like they were at war.
You weren’t polite during war. You were ruthless and self-serving. Ian had tried to teach her that five years ago, and she hadn’t listened.
She would now.
“Let’s assume that it is him. They’re going to ask you a lot of questions about back then, Sara, and I want you to remember three very important words. Are you ready?”
She nodded.
“I don’t recall.” He stared at her, making sure that the words resonated. “Got that? Repeat it for me.”
“I don’t recall,” she repeated, and of course she had that phrase tattooed in her brain. While it had been years since she’d undergone the training for interrogation, some things were still fresh.
“If they ask something that gives you pause, say that you don’t recall.
It’s natural that you will feel guilty at moments in this questioning.
We all have things about our marriage or life that we aren’t proud of, or that we feel might be misconstrued if put under a microscope.
So if you start getting into the weeds, that’s your lifeline. ‘I don’t recall.’ Okay?”
She nodded.
“And if I tap your leg under the table, stop talking. Whatever the hell you’re saying, just end it, right away.
Or if he asks you a question and I tap your leg, don’t answer it.
Either let me speak up, or say that you don’t remember.
Even if it seems like an innocent thing.
It’s the most innocent things that sink ships. Remember that.”
“Okay.”
He grinned. “You’re a woman of few words, Sara-Bear. You have no idea how happy that makes me. Don’t ramble. Keep it short and succinct. Remember that.”
“I remember it from the last time you drilled it into me,” she said dryly, and he barked out a laugh.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re a steel trap. Remember when you were twelve or thirteen, and we went to the racetrack down in Palo Alto and you memorized the entire stats card on the ride down?”
She didn’t, but it sounded exactly like something she would have done.
Numbers had always been a foreign language that she understood.
Rules for staying out of jail were a different animal, but one that she should be able to handle.
“Ian, I didn’t do this. I don’t know anything about what happened to David or how he ended up on the course. ”
“Let’s worry about all of that later,” he said.
“Right now, what’s about to happen is that we’re going to be in a pickleball match of sorts, except instead of wanting points, each side wants information.
We want information on what they have, and they have things they want to know from you.
We’ll have to give them some things, and they’ll have to give us some things.
As long as we both walk off the court separately, this will have been a success. Got it?”
“Yes.”
As if he’d been waiting in the wings, Detective Ted Palentick swung open the door. “You ready?”
She nodded and he stepped in, followed closely by a second suit whom Sara immediately recognized: Joel. The chief of police.