Chapter 6
They brought Katy into the lawyer’s room at the jail thirty minutes before her scheduled arraignment.
A different person than the one I knew walked in.
Katy had been just twenty-two years old when she married my brother twenty years ago.
For the likes of Joe Leary, she’d been a catch.
At least that’s what the people of Delphi thought.
Katy came from an upper-middle-class family.
Her father worked as an account executive for one of the Big Five auto makers earning well into the six figures.
She’d grown up in a big house with seven acres and a private pond.
She’d gone to Clarington, a prestigious private school twenty minutes from town.
She’d been engaged to a med student who later went on to become a highly regarded neurosurgeon at U of M Hospital.
But one day, Katy’s father wanted to renovate the basement of his three-thousand-square-foot home and Joe had been part of the construction crew.
Theirs had been a meet-cute that sounded like a grumpy-sunshine romance book plot.
She broke things off with her fiancé and she and Joe were married within a year.
She’d been by his side during his ugly custody battle with Emma’s biological mother, Josie.
Today, Katy shuffled in wearing leg irons and an orange jumpsuit. Her hair was matted on one side and she stared at me with eyes gone hollow.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” she said in a small voice. “I would have understood if you hadn’t.”
“I need a minute with my client, please,” I said to the deputy at the door. It was almost a throwaway line. Something I’d said hundreds of times while conducting jailhouse interviews like this.
Katy collapsed into the chair in front of me. “Oh, Cass. Do you mean it?”
I waited until the deputy left us alone. There were no recording devices in here or one-way glass. Katy and I could speak freely for the first time since I’d learned of her arrest.
“That depends,” I said. “I’m in an ethical quagmire if I walk into that courtroom with you.”
“I’ll sign whatever you need,” she said. “A waiver or something?”
“That’ll be the least of it,” I said. “You understand that my loyalty runs to Joe. If I find even a whiff of his involvement in this …”
“Did he ask you to help me?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to answer that. I didn’t want to be a liaison between the two of them. I didn’t want Joe talking to her at all. If I found out he had, this would become a very short conversation. I told her that.
“No,” I said. “It wasn’t Joe who talked me into coming. It was Emma.”
Katy burst into tears. “Oh God. That poor kid. I know she hates me now. But she wanted you here anyway?”
“She doesn’t hate you,” I said. “And I’d rather stick to the facts of your situation.
When I saw you Friday, I told you it was too dangerous for you to tell me anything about your case.
If I’m going to act as your lawyer, I need to know everything.
Every detail, no matter how small. Just representing you at today’s hearing will be more than enough to invoke privilege over what you tell me.
Representing you at trial if this gets that far is another decision we’ll have to make.
I haven’t even seen the full police report. ”
“I didn’t do this,” she said. “I didn’t kill Tom.”
“Do you understand the evidence they have against you so far?”
She shook her head. “Jenna thinks I killed him. She’s mistaken. She didn’t see what she thought she saw.”
“Jenna is your housekeeper?”
She nodded. “Jenna Rodney. She’s worked for Tom for a few years. Since before we got married. She’s a sweet kid. She’s not much older than Emma. And I understand why she’s confused. Why she might think the worst of me.”
“She told the police she walked in on you standing over Tom’s dead body holding the murder weapon and covered in his blood.”
“That’s true,” she said. “She absolutely did. But she didn’t see me kill him, because I didn’t.”
“Step by step,” I said. “Take me through it.”
Her eyelids fluttered. She looked like she was going to pass out on me. I took a small water bottle out of my bag and handed it to her. She gulped it down.
“I went to bed,” she said. “That’s the gist of it.
I hadn’t been sleeping very well over the last few nights.
Over the last couple of months, really. I was going on the third night of no more than two hours of sleep total.
I had a couple of glasses of wine around eight, I think.
A little later, I still felt keyed up. Tom had some sleeping pills left over from an old prescription.
He suggested that I try them. He gave me the bottle before he left.
I took two and was in bed by around ten.
They hit me hard. I remember taking them, brushing my teeth, and climbing into bed.
Then that was it until the next morning when I rolled over and … ”
“Hang on,” I said. “Back up. Where was Tom?”
“He was supposed to be at some high school hockey spring league game, I think. Some kid from Grass Lake is supposed to be this up-and-coming talent that major scouts are looking at. Tom was doing a profile on him. Tom asked me to go with him but I just felt like I was dragging so much. I told him to go without me. That’s when he offered me the zolpidem.
I told him to go. Have fun. He said he would and told me he’d be out pretty late because he was going for drinks with some work people.
He didn’t expect me to wait up. So I didn’t. I went to bed. That was it.”
“What was it?”
“I slept like a rock. The drugs must have worked.”
“And you had wine with them?” I asked. Now I really did want to see her toxicology report.
“I know I shouldn’t have. It probably wasn’t a good idea to mix the two.
But it was just a couple of glasses. Anyway, as I was saying, I fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow, finally.
I didn’t wake up until almost six. Five fifty-three, actually.
I saw the time on my phone. I heard the garage door open.
That’s what woke me up. Jenna was coming in.
I was confused because I never heard Tom leave.
Tom usually leaves for work by five thirty.
He gets up at a quarter to five most mornings.
I always get up with him. I’ll get a workout in before I start my day.
Sometimes we sit and have coffee together.
I turned over, thinking Tom had just overslept. That’s when the smell hit me.”
“The blood?”
“It was ghastly. I put my hand on Tom. You know, as I rolled over. He was lying there and it was still a bit dark in the room so I didn’t immediately see what happened.
I tried to shake him to wake him up. He didn’t respond.
I sat up. That’s when I noticed his side of the bed was wet.
It was disorienting. It was like my mind was trying to fill in some logical explanation.
Had I wet the bed? You know … because of the drug?
But I told you. I smelled it. Blood. I honestly don’t remember exactly what happened after that. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I was panicked. Or traumatized. Or both. I don’t remember getting out of bed.
I don’t remember walking over to the other side of the bed.
I certainly don’t remember picking up the knife.
When Jenna walked in and started screaming, that’s when everything started back up again. Like when I had a timeline.”
I sat with what she told me for a moment. She hadn’t woken up during the attack on Tom? How was that possible? And if an assailant had broken into the home to carry out the murder, why would he or she risk keeping Katy alive? I knew these were the same questions a jury would have.
“Tell me about the knife,” I asked.
She shook her head. “That’s another thing. I’d never seen it before. It was this big long blade with a wooden handle. It looked like a hunting knife. I don’t know where it came from.”
“It wasn’t Tom’s?” There would be more details about it in the formal police report. Whether there were any other fingerprints on it besides Katy’s. If there was credible evidence that it had been taken from the home.
“If it was,” she said, “I’d never seen him with it. And I’d never seen it lying around the house. But I told you. I don’t even remember picking it up. I was in shock, I think.”
“That part is understandable,” I said.
“I don’t blame Jenna for this,” she said. “If it had been me in her place, I might have thought the same thing. But I didn’t do this.”
“There was no sign of forced entry into your home,” I said. “We don’t have time now, but I’m going to need you to tell me everyone who had access to your home besides you and Tom and the housekeeper.”
“I can do that right now,” she said. “Nobody.”
“Are you sure about that? Does Jenna have a key?”
“No. She comes in through the garage. I have a key to the house on my keychain. Tom has his.”
“What about repair people? Think, Katy. Did you or Tom ever give anyone else the garage codes or borrow a key?”
“Cass, no. Don’t you think I’ve racked my own brain over this? Tom lived alone until we got married. I don’t know anybody else who would have been able to get in. Believe me, if I did, it would have been the first thing I told that detective. I don’t understand it. How could this happen?”
“I’m going to have to ask you some pretty hard questions, Katy. Personal ones. Starting with Joe. You and Joe. You get how this looks. You were cheating on Tom. Did he know?”
She nodded. “Joe and I broke things off months ago. We haven’t been in contact for a long time. And yes. Tom knew about Joe and me. We went through a rough patch last year. Tom wasn’t innocent.”
“He was cheating on you? With whom?”