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Innocent or Guilty?
A. M. Taylor
A gripping psychological thriller full of twists and turns! Is the right person behind bars? One morning ten years ago, the town of Twin Rivers changed forever when the body of Tyler Washington was found in the woods. Son of the mayor, star of the high school basketball team – his death struck right at the heart of this tight-knit community. For Olivia Hall, Tyler’s death heralded the start of her own personal nightmare – her twin brother, Ethan, was arrested for Tyler’s murder. Ten years later, Ethan is still in jail. Olivia is convinced he is innocent, and now, a true crime podcast has taken up his case. As the podcast digs deeper, secrets, lies and shocking revelations are all uncovered. For the first time, Olivia dares to hope that Ethan may be set free. But if he didn’t kill Tyler, who did? And how far will they go to keep their secrets safe? Perfect for fans of podcasts Serial, Happy Face and The Teacher’s Pet, and TV shows Making a Murderer, Staircase and Dirty John �A. M. Taylor hits her stride with this fast-paced flashback mystery where legal thriller meets true crime podcast’ Rachel Sargeant, author of The Perfect Neighbours �You think you know who's innocent or guilty in this book and then a disturbing new truth is revealed and you're wrong footed yet again’ June Taylor, author of Keep Your Friends Close
Innocent or Guilty?
A. M. TAYLOR
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One More Chapter
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright В© Annie Taylor 2019
Cover design В© HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover photographs В© Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)
Annie Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition В© July 2019 ISBN: 9780008312930
Version: 2019-08-23
For my parents
Table of Contents
Cover (#u1e2095dc-ea96-5ee1-a359-d132e610b281)
Title Page (#ueb52e89f-dfd9-5b35-a393-7af1020bdb2b)
Copyright (#u91528b1d-6788-53b4-bdb2-0dba0f3f4e2b)
Dedication (#uf1284a9d-2cfd-59b2-8879-53fbbcc69aae)
Chapter 1. Then
Chapter 2. Now
Chapter 3. Then
Chapter 4. Now
Chapter 5. Then
Chapter 6. Now
Chapter 7. Then
Chapter 8. Now
Chapter 9. Then
Chapter 10. Now
Chapter 11. Then
Chapter 12. Now
Chapter 13. Then
Chapter 14. Now
Chapter 15. Then
Chapter 16. Now
Chapter 17. Then
Chapter 18. Now
Chapter 19. Then
Chapter 20. Now
Chapter 21. Then
Chapter 22. Now
Chapter 23. Then
Chapter 24. Now
Chapter 25. Then
Chapter 26. Now
Chapter 27. Then
Chapter 28. Now
Chapter 29. Then
Chapter 30. Now
Chapter 31. Then
Chapter 32. Now
Chapter 33. Then
Chapter 34. Now
Chapter 35. Then
Chapter 36. Now
Chapter 37. Then
Chapter 38. Now
Chapter 39. Then
Chapter 40. Now
Chapter 41. Then
Chapter 42. Now
Chapter 43. Then
Chapter 44. Now
Chapter 45. Then
Chapter 46. Now
Chapter 47. Then
Chapter 48. Now
Chapter 49. Six Weeks Later
Chapter 50. That Night
Chapter 51. Now
Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
Also by A. M. Taylor
About the Author
About the Publisher
1. (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
THEN (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
They find the body on a Sunday.
He didn’t return home the night before, which isn’t unheard of, but when he doesn’t make it back in time for church and he still isn’t home by the time they return, the family begins to worry. His mother rings the police and they tell her to sit tight, while his father calls his brother and gathers up a few of the boy’s friends to set up a search party.
He’s lying in the woods.
He has been all night.
He’s face down in the mud. There’s blood on the side and the back of his head, matting down his hair, pressing it to his skull. It’s a friend who finds him, calling out for the boy’s dad when he does so, the father running wildly towards him, pushing him out of the way, slipping in the mud.
He makes the mistake of moving him. Grabbing him by the shoulders to shake him awake in desperation. When he pulls his hands away they’re covered in blood and as the stories soon will go, the father screams, grief curdling at his throat. The police are called again and this time they come, sirens wailing on the damp air, a parent’s desperate call. Friends and family are pushed to the side lines, forced to watch as the routines of a crime scene establish themselves and the detectives take statements, waiting for the medical examiner to arrive.
The boy’s uncle is sent back to the house with a female police officer in tow to break the news to the mother. Neighbors will go on to tell other neighbors about how she answers the door, arm outstretched, finger pointing at her brother-in-law’s broken face as she shouts “No, no, no, no, no,” over and over and over again, until the female police officer wraps her arms around the older woman’s shaking shoulders and draws her inside her own home.
Word spreads, text messages sent, phone calls answered, whispers met by gasps, grimaces of shock followed by the promise of tears.
Tyler Washington is dead they’re saying.
Murdered.
Found in the woods with his skull bashed in.
Less than a week later my twin brother is arrested.
My brother was born eleven minutes and 37 seconds after me. It was an easy delivery for twins apparently, or so our mom always told us. We were her second pregnancy, and we practically slipped right out; she and Dad barely making it to the hospital before I made my appearance. I came screaming into the world, face red and pink and white, covered in blood and placenta, all of it quickly wiped away to make me clean. Ethan slipped out silently though; maybe I was taking up all the oxygen in the room. In the womb. But Mom says the nurse just gave him a little slap on his small round bottom and he joined me in my new-to-the-world screams.
Twins.
Mom says she was terrified to begin with. Not just of how much more work and effort was involved but with how different we were from our sister Georgia. We took up twice the space, twice the time, twice the breast milk, twice the effort, but we were also strangely self-sufficient she’d tell us. She felt superfluous, she said. Our older sister Georgia had needed her, wanted her, all the time. We needed her occasionally, and wanted only each other. But that was a long time ago and by the time Ethan is arrested we barely speak to one another. Sometimes, I like to tell myself that it’s because we don’t need to; we already know what the other is thinking. But it’s not like that. We shared a womb, shared a life and then suddenly, we split. Into two different people and the difference was what we needed to make us two different people. Otherwise we’d have just spent the rest of our lives as �the twins’.
But instead what happened was that Ethan became my twin. I was Olivia, and Ethan was �Olivia’s twin’.
Until the Sunday when Tyler’s body is found.
Until the Friday, just under a week later when Ethan is arrested for Tyler Washington’s murder, and I become, forever, irrevocably, impossibly �Ethan Hall’s twin sister’.
2. (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
NOW (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
“There’s no way she did it,” Matt said, “no fucking way.”
“Why?” I asked, “Because she’s a cute girl you wanna screw?”
Matt’s pale face pinkened ever so slightly, those promising rosy spots deepening on the apple of his cheeks. He avoided my gaze when he said, “No, man. She’s just so … small. And quiet. She’s not the type.”
“It’s never the type in these situations though, is it?” Daniel said, voice creamy and languorous, sliding his eyes towards me, glowing in the artificially lit room. It was dark outside already, the blank slate of a grey Oregon afternoon overcrowding the room, so we’d had to turn the ugly strip lights on even though it wasn’t yet four in the afternoon. We’d been in the same room for hours, lunch detritus littering the table, the air pungent with uneaten sandwiches and cold coffee. Tempers and nerves were starting to fray, impatience climbing the walls. I loved this part though; when it felt like anything could happen, like there was no way we could ever lose, like justice wasn’t a pendulum that could sway either way but a judge’s righteous gavel just waiting to be knocked on wood, the sound echoing around the room. We were doing background research on the firm’s newest client Reid Murphy, and the man she’d been accused of almost killing, James Asher, who was currently in a coma on an intensive care ward on the other side of the city. Murphy was 22 and looked even younger, so young you’d ask if her parents were home if she answered her own front door. And Matt was right; she was small and quiet, scared to death in my opinion, not that my opinion really mattered here. All of it would help though; the jury bench packed full of people like my colleagues who thought a girl like Reid Murphy couldn’t ever possibly hurt a man so badly she put him in a coma. But I’d seen something in the un-seeing stare of her eyes, the unwavering gaze, and I wasn’t so sure. Anyone’s capable of anything in my opinion. Again, not that it mattered, not that my opinion counted for anything; we were here to prove she was innocent whether she was or not.
We’d reached the ropiest part of the day, when we’d all been there too long: lunch had been eaten and we’d all start thinking about dinner soon, but for now it was the lull and the dip of late afternoon. Distraction roaring in, heads up, eyes darting between me and Matt, opinions readied to be lobbed across the conference room table. I looked across to Daniel, and could see that his eyes were dancing, like always, ready to tease and tickle, the facetious little quirk to his eyebrows getting more and more pronounced.
Daniel caught my eye and widened his, about to say something, mouth opening to a cartoonish �o’ when his phone began to vibrate and his forehead creased. He made the sign for �one moment’ at me, holding his finger in the air, and the groans began before he was even out the door. “You better be coming straight back, Koh!” Matt called after him, the glass door closing noiselessly on Daniel’s retreating back. “That better have been some medical results,” Matt continued to grumble, and I thought, not for the first time, about how quickly we’d all become exactly who and what the firm’s partners wanted us to become. Snipping and sniping and picking each other off, one by one. It was all happy and good natured until someone looked as though they weren’t pulling their weight, and suddenly the jabs had real force behind them and judgment started to crash the party. The best of friends, right up until we weren’t.
Daniel’s departure dampened the mood and a weight settled over the room. Instead of punchy and worked up, we fell into resigned lethargy, bending our heads down again, hard at work. Daniel was gone a while though, and my eyes had started to swim, desperate for more caffeine when he eventually came back. No one said anything to him when he did, but he was waiting for me when we finally left the conference room several hours later. He had been sat closest to the door and I furthest from it, so everyone filed out ahead of me, Daniel leaning against the hallway wall, waiting. “What’s going on?” I asked, shouldering my bag, adjusting my jacket. He had a look on his face I couldn’t quite decipher, maybe it was anticipation.
“That phone call was from my friend Ray, you know, the one who works on that podcast?”
“The true crime podcast? Why, was he asking for your help?” We might have only been first year associates, but we were working for one of the biggest criminal defense law firms in Portland, so a true crime podcast producer coming to Daniel for his expertise or opinion wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibilities.
“No, he’s here in Portland, with the host, Kat.”
“Are they working on a Portland case?” I asked, interest creeping into my voice despite myself.
“Maybe, yeah. I told them about you. And Ethan. They’re thinking about doing his case.”
I couldn’t say anything for a second, my mouth suddenly dry. When I eventually managed to speak it came out as a croak, “What?”
“Yeah, I emailed him about it ages ago, but they were just wrapping up the last season and wanted to do a little research, look around a little before deciding on their next topic.” He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his face lively, animated; eyebrows up by his hairline, mouth grinning and winning.
“Why did you email him in the first place, though? I didn’t ask you to do that,” I said, my mouth still dry, desperate for a drink.
“No, I know. Do I need your permission for everything?”
“When it comes to my fucking family, yeah you do.”
Daniel’s body stopped moving, his never-ending energy finally brought to a standstill. “Liv, come on, what’s the problem here? This is a good thing. It could be really good; the first case they worked on the sentence got overturned, and the guy from the second season? He’s just filed for a retrial, and finally got his request granted after years of trying.”
My hands went up to the strap of my bag, fiddling with it, the weight suddenly uncomfortable on my shoulder. I didn’t meet Daniel’s eye when I said, “It’s just not your place. What were you thinking? How could you do this and not tell me?”
“I’m telling you now,” he said, the words expelled on a massive exhale of breath. “Plus, it’s not as if it’s all set in stone yet. Kat wants to meet you and Ethan, get to know you and the case a little better.”
“What?” I said again, this time in a snap, “Me and Ethan?”
“Yeah, they like to work on cases where they can have the involvement of the family and a close relationship with the subject. You’ve listened to the podcast, you know that.”
I shook my head, but once again I couldn’t say anything, my mind a blank trap. Daniel reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, it was warm and heavy like it always was, a tiny reverberation thrumming through me as he said in a low voice, “Look, I’ve said we’ll meet them for a drink at Blue Plate, and that’s all it has to be if you want. A no-strings after work drink with an old friend of mine. That’s it.”
I knew that wouldn’t be it, but I finally looked him in the eye, and even though I knew exactly what he was doing, the calm, convincing tone, the comforting touch, I nodded my head and agreed to something that made the pit of my stomach scramble and lurch.
Blue Plate was busy and I couldn’t see my roommate Samira anywhere. Probably she was back in the kitchen, prepping the desserts that helped make the restaurant so popular. The maȋtre d’ greeted me and Daniel with familiarity and gave us a corner seat in one of their coveted forest green leather booths. Being roommates with the pastry chef had its perks. Ray and Kat hadn’t arrived yet, and this bothered me. I hadn’t wanted to come after all, hadn’t even known it was happening until roughly twenty minutes ago, and now here I was waiting on a couple of strangers. The restaurant was moodily lit, glittering candles, spherical sconces emitting a gas like low glow. The couple at the table right in front of us were on a first or second date, and to the left a large party had gathered to celebrate a birthday. The birthday girl had balloons tied to the back of her chair and the party’s laughter spilled out over the whole restaurant, people turning to look. I fiddled with my cutlery, the table all laid up for us to eat although we hadn’t ordered any food yet – just wine. I jiggled my legs up and down under the table, Daniel eventually moving his hand to my left knee to still it.
“What is wrong with you?” he said while pouring me a glass of wine. There wasn’t any accusation in his voice; he was practically laughing and he gave me a sidelong look that seemed to say �who are you?’
“I’m nervous,” I answered.
“I guess I’ve never seen you nervous.”
“I guess not.”
“You don’t have to worry, Liv. They’re not banking on this for their next season, I’m pretty sure they’ve got other options, so if you don’t want to do it, you don’t want to do it.”
“You think I should though,” I said, taking a large gulp of wine, wishing there was bread on the table for me to bite down on.
Daniel shrugged, “I just think … what have you got to lose?”
I looked at him, wondering. I guess he would think that.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, breaking eye contact with me, and moving to stand up although the table stopped him from doing so properly, so he was kind of crouching, hovering over the table, waving an arm in the air, “there they are! Ray! Over here, man.” He was waving them towards us, ushering with his long, outstretched arm, and I watched as two people walked towards us, weaving their way around tables and chairs.
Ray was shorter than I’d expected, but then everyone is normally shorter than I expected. Kat, meanwhile – for I had to assume this was Kat – was over six feet tall, wearing a mustard yellow shearling biker jacket that matched the wrap she had on her head hiding her hair. Underneath the jacket, she was wearing a black and dark green leopard print jumpsuit, and her shoes were stacked high, not that she needed the extra height, chunky soled Chelsea boots protecting her feet from the rain outside. She smiled amiably at us both as introductions were made. I reached my hand across the table to shake hers, and her smile grew wider, “Hi, Olivia. It’s really nice to meet you.” Her voice was low and throaty, a little scratched, and immediately familiar after hours of listening to her on the podcast.
I nodded in response, and felt my throat constrict. Daniel had to nudge me a little to remind me to speak and I was relieved my voice came out sounding normal when I said, “Yeah, you too. Both of you,” I added, taking in Ray as well. “I’m a big fan of the podcast.”
“Oh, you listen? I wasn’t sure after speaking to Danny about it,” Ray said.
I raised my eyebrows at the �Danny’, but nodded again, “No, I listen. I just didn’t ever expect to be the subject of it.”
Kat and Ray shared a small look and Kat said, “Well, we haven’t decided on the topic for our third season yet, to be honest. And it would really be Ethan rather than you that was the subject …” she finished with a grin, stretching her hand out to take the glass of wine Daniel had just poured for her.
“Oh, I know it wouldn’t be me,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I just meant … this was hard for my whole family, you know? It’s not just Ethan, although obviously it’s his story. He is the one in prison, after all.”
Kat raised both her eyebrows at me and nodded slowly. “Do you think you’d be able to get your family to talk with us? If we moved forward with Ethan’s story?”
I licked my lips, trying to stop myself from biting at them. “Maybe, I don’t know. Probably Georgia, my sister, but even then I’m not completely sure.”
“But, they do believe he’s innocent, right? Like you do?” Kat asked.
And there it was; Ethan’s innocence, dropping into the room like a rock through water.
“Yes,” I said eventually, but it was so long since I’d talked to my family about Ethan and his innocence, I wasn’t completely sure whether I’d just told a lie or not.
3. (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
THEN (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
The room changes the moment the judge says the word, �guilty’. I watch Ethan’s shoulders stiffen, his entire body braced. We were told to expect this, and yet still, somehow, I didn’t. Didn’t think the system could get it this wrong. Ethan’s long, slim body is completely still; he hasn’t moved, but his lawyer is next to him, arm slung around his shoulders, and I wish I could hear what he’s saying but I can’t. Ethan still doesn’t move. Doesn’t make to reply to his lawyer, doesn’t look as though he’s ever going to move again, until suddenly he does. He’s forced to; the bailiff is attaching his handcuffs again, taking him away.
He turns then, finally, and even though Mom calls out his name, her voice cracking the room in two, he looks straight at me, our identical eyes catching. We’re the same height. He’s not all that tall for a guy, but for a girl I am, and so we’re eye to eye. Mom reaches up to him, pulling him into a hug before they take him away, and Dad has to pull her from him, letting my older sister, Georgia in for a hug too, and then clapping Ethan’s shoulder. Dad says something I don’t hear, and Ethan is swaying slightly in the push and pull, arms and hands outstretched towards him, taking, taking, taking. And still he hasn’t taken his eyes off mine. Finally we hug, for the first time in years it feels like, and of course it’s only one sided because he’s already in chains, but before he’s pulled away again I say, “I’ll make this right, okay? I promise.”
He nods at me, as if it’s all understood, a done deal, as if he knows that, somehow, someday, I’ll get him out of this, out of prison, even though I have no idea how, and wish that he’d tell me. Mom and Georgia are crying, albeit quietly, as Ethan is led away, and when I turn to look at Dad, he’s dumbfounded, his face a mask of stupefied tragedy like I’ve never seen it before. I want to reach out to all of them, to be pulled back into their orbit, but I feel detached from them now, a satellite circling them, no longer a part of the home planet. Mom and Georgia look so similar huddled together, the same size and shape, small and compact, shoulder to shoulder. Ethan and I always took after Dad more, and when I look at him now I wonder if I’m seeing my twin in thirty years’ time, face crumpled and destroyed by sudden loss, transfixed by a horror no one ever saw coming. And then I make a decision, putting my arms around them all, pulling them towards me, pulling them into my own tilted orbit; the strange, circling satellite, and like that we walk out of the courtroom together.
4. (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
NOW (#u54a62d7a-049e-58e1-a2f9-496321f8f628)
“Did you ever doubt him?” Kat asked, swirling the wine in her glass around so it shone in the candlelight. “Did you ever think he might have done it?”
“No,” I said.
“Really?” She said, her head pulled back in surprise, her voice going up. “Not even once?”
“We shared a womb. It breeds a certain amount of trust.”
“So, you guys are like, really close?”
I took a sip of wine, licking my lips after, “We weren’t when it all happened … when Tyler died, we hadn’t been close for years, not since we were nine, ten.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, trying to think back that far. It had all seemed so important then. “We were just really different. We still are.”
“But you’re close now?” Kat was leaning forward, her arms resting on the table. It felt casual, but it wasn’t and I wondered for a second if she was recording the whole thing.
“It’s a little difficult to be close when there’s an entire prison system between you, but yeah, I guess you’d say we were close.”
“I’d really like to meet him. To go and see him, but I don’t think he’ll see me without you there.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, my palms beginning to itch.
“Because that’s what he told me.”
“You’ve spoken to him already?” I asked with a sideways glance at Daniel. He was drinking from his glass of wine and didn’t seem to notice.
“Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t be here unless I had done. Look, Olivia,” she said, rearranging herself in her seat, settling in for something, “you can’t take this lightly. We go all in on a subject and a case when we research it. We want the truth and we want some kind of resolution, and it can be really painful and uncomfortable for a lot of people, even the innocent and the victims. If we do this, we’re going to be dredging up your whole family’s past. Yours, Ethan’s, pretty much everyone who was involved in the investigation. So, you have to know what you’re getting yourself into. And Ethan really has to know, because it’s going to affect him the most. I need to see it in his eyes that he understands everything that we’re going to do in the process of making this podcast, otherwise it’s not going to happen. I need that from you too.”
The birthday party was still roaring with delight at the table next to us, and the couple on the date had descended into distractingly awkward and prolonged silences. Waiters and waitresses were passing our table constantly, eyeing up our rapidly depleting carafe of wine with professional interest, stopping to drop by some dinner menus. But it was as if the four of us, hell the two of us – Kat and I – were all alone in that din. She was staring at me with such intensity, my natural inclination was to look away, but I couldn’t. She demanded attention. I reached for the stem of my wine glass, needing something to touch, something to do, and finally I shrugged, feigning a kind of natural indifference I felt a million miles from, and said, “Of course.”
“Okay,” Kat said, suffusing that one word with a sense of boundless relief and animation, and leaning back in her seat with a wide grin before reaching over to pick up one of the menus that had been left for us, “So, what’s good here?”
I sank back in my own seat, mirroring her and said nonchalantly, “Here? It’s all good.” But it was a nonchalance I didn’t feel – does anyone ever feel truly nonchalant? – and when I picked up the menu to see what was on offer tonight, I felt like I’d set something in motion that I’d never be able to stop. I wasn’t used to feeling so out of control. Ever since Ethan had been arrested, I’d done everything I could to maximize the sense of control I had over my life, and that of my twin brother’s. It was the whole reason I’d gone to law school, the reason I’d stayed in Oregon, so close to a home that had so thoroughly rejected me and my family; I was going to clear his name. But I’d never imagined doing it this way, with microphones and journalists, and a whole audience watching. Or listening, at least. So, why did I? Maybe it was Daniel’s luminous eyes staring so expectantly at me, as bright as a child’s; or maybe it was Kat’s, hard, dark and defiant, the face of true tenacity. Or maybe it was the thought of Ethan’s, so similar to mine – identical in fact – staring at me in horror and disbelief, an unasked, pleading question hidden within them on the day he was pronounced guilty. I knew that he’d given up thinking that anyone, least of all me, would be able to get him out of there by now. I’d gone to college for him, surprised everyone and got into law school for him, and yet I still hadn’t been able to do the thing that really mattered, and have him exonerated. Or maybe I said yes to the podcast, because I’d finally figured out that control was an illusion; a net the size of the world trying to catch just one single butterfly. And that chaos always managed to creep in, flap its wings, and change everything forever.
So, we ordered dinner, a bright pink beetroot risotto with bright white beads of goat cheese melting into it for Kat who turned out to be vegetarian, a shared beef bourguignon for Daniel and Ray who most certainly were not, and a cedar plank salmon for me. By the time we were ready for dessert, the restaurant had quieted to a lull, the birthday party having moved on to a bar, the flaccid date disbanded in near-silence, and my roommate Samira came out to join us, bringing more desserts than we’d ordered with her.
“You have to try the apple, cheddar and caramel pie,” she declared, skootching in next to me on the bench, “all anyone’s ordered tonight is the chocolate freakin’ torte.”
“Well, if you didn’t make it so freakin’ delicious maybe they wouldn’t order it so much,” I said.
“I’m not going to argue with you there, all I’m saying is it’s a crying shame that only four people so far have tasted this sensational delight. It’s served with rosemary ice cream for Christ’s sake,” Samira said.
I took one of the servings of pie from her and introduced her to Kat and Ray. “Shadow of a Doubt?” she said, her eyes widening, “Man, this is an honor. I do my best pastry making listening to you guys.”
It was Samira who had got me listening to Shadow of a Doubt in the first place. She’d told me about it before Daniel had even realized he’d gone to college with the often referred to, but rarely heard producer, �Ray’. Shadow of a Doubt had been my introduction to true crime podcasts, and now I listened to them constantly, voraciously, omnivorously. Funny ones, sentimental ones, sincere ones, straight down the line ones. At first I’d thought I’d be too close to it to enjoy any of them. Both as a lawyer and as my brother’s sister. But it turns out the opposite was true; I loved them just as much as anyone did. And boy, did everyone seem to; our collective blood lust undimmed since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets and sold out newspapers, and the Victorians realized just how much murder sells.
“Are you sure about this?” Samira asked as she looped her arm through mine and we walked home together. Daniel had left with Kat and Ray, his face silly and drunk, eyes alight when Ray had mentioned something about their hotel bar. It was a Friday night, but the neighborhood was crisp and quiet as we walked. All it took was a sudden left turn, and the lights and sounds of restaurants, bars and coffee shops transformed into rows of quiet houses, buttoned up against the early fall evening.
“Why are you asking? I thought you loved Shadow of a Doubt.”
“I do, and don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled to have just met the great Kat Thomas, and mysterious Ray Mackenzie in person, believe me. But come on, it’s going to be a whole different thing, actually being on the podcast.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I mean, you did change your last name just to stop people knowing you were Ethan Hall’s sister. This is kind of going to blow that little charade right over.”
I laughed, the sound getting lost on the wind; Samira was always coming up with sayings and aphorisms that weren’t quite right, that she’d plucked straight from the air in front of her. “I know that.”
“Yeah, I guess you do.”
“Anyway, it’s all a moot point until Ethan agrees to it.”
We walked along in silence for a while, our house coming into view, the streetlight that stood sentry outside it turning the red of the cherry tree’s leaves almost neon in the night. “Do you think he will?” Samira asked.
“I think he’ll think he doesn’t have a choice,” I said, although as we ascended the steps to the front porch, I had no idea if that was true or not.
“And what about your family? Kat said she’d want them to be involved right? You really think they’d be cool with that?”
I sighed, thinking about my parents and sister, all three of whom, as much as they loved Ethan, preferred to pretend that none of the nasty business of ten years ago had ever happened. “I don’t know,” I said, sliding my key into the lock, “I’m seeing them for dinner on Sunday though, so I guess I’ll find out then.”
* * *
“Keys, wallets, all personal effects in the trays to your left, and then step through, please ma’am.”
It was just like being at the airport, except instead of boundless freedom and flight on the other side of security, there was the complete opposite. I went through the motions without comment, Kat right behind me, free of her recording equipment and her producer, Ray, as only two of us were allowed during visiting hours at a time. This part of any visit was always the strangest. When Ethan was right in front of me, and I could see his face, hear his voice, I could almost forget where we were, and when I wasn’t there, the reality of it was dimmed, but this in-between part reinforced that reality all too clearly. I’d expected to have to talk Kat through the rigors and rigmarole of prison visitations, but realized that she must have done plenty of prison visits in the past for the first two seasons of Shadow of a Doubt. Her face was blank and mild, although her eyes retained their alert liveliness, and she was unfailingly polite to everyone we came into contact with.
Ethan was already in place when we walked into the visitor’s room. Gone were the days when I had to talk to him through bullet proof plastic and a telephone handset. Good behavior had seen his privileges expand, and now we could sit around a round, concrete table, curved benches fucking up our backs. The windows were high in there, taller than any human and the room had the same artificial lighting of any institution; harsh and unforgiving. Ethan watched us walk across the room towards him, his eyes trained on Kat. He didn’t look at me at all until after I’d introduced them and they’d awkwardly shaken hands. He looked tired and thin, but then he always looked tired and thin, so I tried to look for ways in which he looked different to normal, certain that something was off. It took me a little while to realize, but finally I got it; his eyes. They were alight and alive in a way I hadn’t seen in years. That was why it had taken me so long to figure out; because it had been so long since I’d seen him like this. He looked excited. He looked awake.
Kat had got out her notebook and pencil she’d been allowed to bring in with her and was making note of the date, time and place in grey lead.
“What’s your show called again?” Ethan asked.
“Shadow of a Doubt,” Kat said.
“And it’s an online only thing? Like YouTube?”
“It’s a podcast. It’s audio only. Most people listen from their phones. Obviously, we have a website though, where we post updates, and sometimes transcripts or other artefacts that listeners can read for a deeper understanding and experience.”
Ethan’s brow furrowed, the light leaving his eyes a little. “But people really listen?”
“Yeah, they really listen,” Kat said.
“They average about 250,000 downloads per episode,” I added, Kat turning to me in surprise. “I looked it up last night,” I said, shrugging.
“And that’s a lot?” Ethan asked.
“That’s a whole lot,” I assured him. They had a TV in the rec room, and there was internet access from some ancient computers, but sometimes it was hard to truly fathom just how far the prison, and therefore the prisoners, lagged behind the rest of the world. Ethan lived in a time warp where the word �Netflix’ meant DVDs arriving by mail, and Instagram nothing at all. It always brought me up short in conversations with him; he hadn’t even joined Facebook before being imprisoned, that’s how long ten years was in the 21
century. To someone raised on the viewing figures of Friends or CSI, 250,000 people must have sounded inconsequential.
“Okay,” Ethan said slowly, turning his attention back to Kat, “so, what’s the point of your show? Are you going to prove I’m innocent, somehow?”
Kat took a deep breath and shifted in her seat so she was sitting up a little straighter. She was wearing the same yellow head wrap she’d been wearing the night before, a deep yellow color, almost gold, but the rest of her outfit was grey and black, in contrast to the colorful get-up I’d seen her in at the restaurant. “We never set out to prove if someone is innocent or guilty,” she said, “that would mean we were starting from a hypothesis and that’s definitively what we do not do. In both the cases we’ve worked on before there was strong indication that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and I think we’ve been able to help shed light on that, and maybe even bring about some real change. But really this is about figuring out what happened and why there’s still doubt hovering over any one case.”
She spoke like she did on the show, in full, thoughtful sentences that sounded as if they might have been written beforehand, but in this case clearly weren’t. Maybe it was the way she always sounded – it was certainly how she’d come across last night, but I found myself wondering what she’d sounded like before she started podcasting, or when she was two bottles of wine in and sloppy and drunk.
“And is this going to be on the podcast?” Ethan asked, motioning between the two of them to indicate he meant their current interaction.
“No. They wouldn’t let me bring my cellphone or any recording equipment in, so I’m not recording this. I’ll take notes though, and if we decide to go ahead with the show – all of us – then what I’ll probably do is describe this initial interview to the audience. Does that all sound okay to you?”
“Okay. So, how will you actually interview me, then?” Ethan asked, looking puzzled.
“Probably over the phone. If you give your consent, that is. We wouldn’t be able to keep coming back and forth from here anyway,” Kat said.
“Right, okay,” Ethan said, although I thought I could detect a tremor of uncertainty as he glanced over at me.
“Okay, so. Tell me about Tyler,” Kat said and my stomach rolled over. I hadn’t expected her to ask about him, although why not, I’m not sure.
“Tyler?” Ethan asked, his eyes locked on mine.
“Yeah. You must have known him, right?”
“We both did,” Ethan replied, his gaze returning to Kat.
5. (#ulink_ddd12e0c-3f15-5884-a774-1483653f32c0)
THEN (#ulink_ddd12e0c-3f15-5884-a774-1483653f32c0)
The judge calls for closing arguments and I turn instinctively to the jury. I’ve been studying them, searching their faces for weeks now, scouring for anything, any little thing, that gives their sympathies away, and I’m still none the wiser. Any time one of them shifts in their seat, sighs from bodily discontent, or shrugs a shoulder, my eyes swivel to them like the search beam of a lighthouse. But they all sit up a little straighter now, their attention trained on the prosecutor; they like him, I realize, or maybe they’re just relieved to see light at the end of this tunnel, a way home and a way out. At least for them.
“Tyler Washington was eighteen when he died, his whole life ahead of him,” the prosecutor begins and I think, despite myself, here we go. It’s not that I don’t feel bad for him, or for his family, but this is the way every statement about Tyler Washington, from the very first news article, to his obituary, to the opening statements of the trial, have begun. At first they stopped me short; dead at eighteen, a life cut so very, very short, but it’s been almost a year now and hearing the same sentences over and over has worn me down. The jury is listening though, alert, not quite jaded. Only one juror is sitting slightly slumped in her seat. She’s young, the youngest on the jury by quite some margin, and as I stare at her, her eyes flick from the prosecutor, straight to me. As if she could feel me watching her. She has sullen, hooded eyes and the look of someone who doesn’t spend much time outdoors, which is unusual around here. I wonder if she went to the same high school as Tyler, as all of us, maybe a few years ahead, and then I realize that the prosecutor is still talking and I’m missing the whole thing.
“It wasn’t just that Tyler was class president and captain of the basketball team, or even that his mother is mayor of this city. It’s that his teachers described him as �charming’ and �cheeky’, his friends would call on him to help move furniture, to drive them out to a new climbing spot, to lend them money even, and he’d invariably say yes. His peers knew him as friendly and affable, even caring and kind and his family relied on him for cheer and quick wit, even in trying times. �He always seemed to have a smile on his face’, his former vice principal said. In comparison, people have very little to say about the defendant. Ethan Hall doesn’t stir up happy memories, or a long list of complimentary adjectives. At school he was a loner, and if he hadn’t killed Tyler Washington, his peers say they barely would have remembered he even attended Twin Rivers High with them.”
Ethan’s shoulders have stiffened; I’m watching them. This is the same shit Ethan’s lived with most of his life, and for most of that time I was part of it, I helped fuel it. I wonder if we weren’t twins it would have happened differently. If Ethan would have blended in to the background more if it wasn’t for me, constantly calling attention to myself. But we’re so different it was constantly remarked upon; the cheerleader and the loner who somehow once shared a womb. So far, this is nothing compared to what’s been written in newspapers and discussed on TV screens, or even what was shouted at him in the hallways of our high school, way back before any of this happened, but the prosecutor’s just laying the ground work. There’s more to come.
“When Tyler Washington left his friend’s house that night, do you think there could have been any way he thought he might not make it home? No. Of course not. That’s not a thought that ever crosses an eighteen-year-old’s mind. At eighteen, you are invulnerable, indestructible, immortal. But Tyler wasn’t any of those things. All he was doing was trying to save time, to cut a couple corners and get home through the woods a little quicker. But Ethan Hall had other ideas. We may never know if Ethan followed Tyler into those woods with the intention of killing his former classmate, but let’s focus on the things we do know. Ethan had been hanging out that night at his friend Kevin Lawrence’s house, just a twenty-five-minute bike ride away from where Tyler was at Jessica Heng’s house. So, when he left Kevin’s house he would have entered the woods at almost exactly the time Tyler Washington is believed to have died. Remember that the medical examiner estimated and testified to the fact that Tyler most likely died between 1:45 and 2:45 on the morning of Sunday August 24, and that Kevin Lawrence has stated that Hall had left his home somewhere between two and two thirty a.m.. Did Ethan watch Tyler enter the woods and seize on an opportunity, or did he happen upon him and the two get into a fight, as the defendant admitted to in a confession he has since recanted?
“Ethan Hall is not to be trusted. His refusal to stand by his initial confession and plead guilty to this crime proves that. Don’t be confused by his quiet demeanor and slight frame. Ethan may not be the strapping basketball player Tyler was, but he trained as a fencer for much of his young life, and as we heard in witness testimony from a fencing expert, this kind of training could easily give him the advantage, even in a fight against a larger man.”
I knew it wouldn’t take long before the fencing came up. It’s been over four years since Ethan did any seriously and yet here we are, talking about how it’s possible he might have killed someone based on the fact he used to be able to point an unusually thin sword in the right direction. The prosecutor has been standing in front of the jury bench the whole time, attention focused on them, impassioned words underlined by hand movements and gesticulations, but now he turns to Ethan and his demeanor changes. Ethan’s does too. His shoulders fold in on themselves, he shifts lower in his chair, shrinking. It makes me want to grab him and pull him up, force him to sit straight, to look ahead, to face these accusations with both eyes wide open. But there’s nothing I can do, and I can see in the way most of the jury members look at him, that they think this shrinking, this shirking, makes him look guilty.
“And what then, of motive?” the prosecutor asks, the words puncturing the room. He’s still looking at Ethan, as if he’ll get out of his seat and answer the question directly, but then, smooth as butter, his attention shifts back to the jury and he leaves Ethan alone.
“Tyler was the golden boy, liked – loved even – by all, as I’ve already mentioned. Who could possibly want to hurt – to kill – him in this savage, unprovoked way?”
6. (#ulink_baab38d3-4961-5714-a56d-add149bfc3d0)
NOW (#ulink_baab38d3-4961-5714-a56d-add149bfc3d0)
“Tyler was …” Ethan, trailed off, leaving the air blank.
“Tyler was kind of a dick,” I finished for him, “especially to Ethan.”
“And that’s what they focused on, right? In the trial? That you had cause to kill him because he’d been bullying you for so long?”
Ethan swallowed, not looking at either of us, not making eye contact. “Yeah, �bullying’ makes it sound kind of … I dunno, after school special. Ha,” he interjected himself suddenly, “I guess it all was.”
“Tyler was that kid, the guy. Every school has one, right? The person everyone looks up to and emulates and yet also basically hates?” I said.
“Sure, I know the guy you’re talking about,” Kat said, “I know the girl too. Safe to say none of us here were that person.”
“Well, actually, Olivia kind of was,” Ethan said.
“I wasn’t – not really. I mean, I was no Tyler Washington, that’s for sure.”
Ethan raised both his eyebrows at me and then turned to Kat, “Olivia was popular. Like, pop-u-lar,” he reiterated, sounding out every syllable. There was something in his voice that sounded teasing, light, and yet I detected the edge of it too. I always could.
“Oh, so you and Tyler were actually friends then?” Kat asked. “You were close?”
I swallowed, pushing something down, away. “We were friends, sure, but we weren’t close. We were in the same group.”
Kat nodded, scribbling something down in her notebook and I resisted the urge to lean forward and read over her shoulder. “So, if we go ahead with all this, how would you feel about the fact that I’ll be talking to people who were close to Tyler too? Who might have a slightly different opinion of him than you do?” she asked Ethan.
Ethan didn’t answer for a while and I watched a cloud pass over his eyes before he said, “You really think they’ll be willing to talk to you?”
“I hope so. Otherwise this might not happen at all.”
“I don’t know. What do you think, Liv?” Ethan asked, turning his gaze on me.
I shrugged, leaning against the table, looking between him and Kat, “There’s two sides to every story, right?”
Except I didn’t really believe that. There weren’t two sides to every story; there was more like eight, and most of the time all eight sides existed inside just one person.
“Do you mind if I talk to my sister in private?” Ethan asked after a while. Visiting hours were coming to a close and there was new movement in the room. Family members were saying goodbye to one another once again, the guards paying even closer attention when anyone got up, especially if there was physical contact involved.
“Sure,” Kat said, “I’ll meet you outside,” she directed at me.
“What’s up?” I asked once she was out of ear shot.
“I just wanted to make sure you were really okay with this.”
“Me? Why? I’m the one who brought her here.”
“I just – I’m trusting you on this. I haven’t listened to the show, I don’t even really get what it is, what their angle is, if they have one, who their audience is. It’s all Greek to me.”
“I think it’s a good idea,” I said, nodding emphatically.
“Have you spoken to Mom and Dad about it yet?”
“No … that’s on tomorrow’s to-do list.”
“They might not be so sure.”
“I know.”
There was a pause, not long, but loaded, as Ethan looked straight at me. “If you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it,” he said very slowly.
“This can’t be my decision,” I said, shaking my head. “All of this will affect you more than anyone.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, leaning across the table, trying to read the furrowed lines of his forehead.
“Just that we live in different worlds. I don’t know that a podcast will change anything in here.”
I leaned back, watching him still. “You don’t think this will work. You don’t think anything will change.”
“It’s hard to imagine change from inside here. Nothing ever changes. The faces do maybe, but then eventually, we all start to look the same anyway.”
I stared around the room, looking at the faces of Ethan’s fellow inmates, realizing how remarkably true his words were. We were running out of time though. The guards were hustling prisoners back towards their cells, and there were fewer and fewer visitors in the room. The room was losing its warmth; what little there was of it in the first place, and suddenly I felt a desperate urgency.
“You know I’ve done everything I can on my own, right?” I asked, leaning towards Ethan once more, “I’ve written to the Oregon Innocence Project every year since you were arrested.”
Ethan nodded, his eyes boring into mine, holding fast. “I know that, Olivia. What I don’t know is how some radio show is going to change my situation.”
“Podcast,” I said, reflexively.
“Podcast, sorry. But you know what I’m saying, don’t you? You were there, you remember what it was like. The closing of the ranks in town, the accusations. I can’t imagine it going any other way, even now, ten years later. Kat said they were after the truth, and I respect that. I’m just … not sure anyone will ever know the truth about Tyler Washington. Except for the people who were there.”
* * *
“Mom? Dad?” I called, opening the door to my parents’ house with the key they still insisted on me having. I’d tried knocking already but to no avail. I walked through the hallway and down towards the kitchen, where I could normally find one or the other of them, but the house was still and quiet. The rain had let up that morning, peeling back a faded blue sky of a Sunday and I wasn’t surprised at all when I spotted them both outside in the yard, the back door open a little, pushing back and forth in the light September wind as they enjoyed the thin rays of the sun. “Mom!” I called again, and this time her head shot up from the flower bed she was working on and she called back, “Georgia?”
I walked out onto the back porch and waved at Dad sitting in his favorite lawn chair, before realizing his eyes were closed and he was deep in a nap. “Oh, Liv,” Mom said, standing up, a little unsteady on her feet and brushing her hands on the fabric of her pants as she walked towards me. “I wasn’t expecting you yet, sweetheart,” she said as she pulled me into a hug.
“I messaged you last night, you didn’t get it?” Mom let go of me and shook her head, squinting at me, even though the sun was hardly bright out here. “You lose your glasses again?”
“I can’t find them anywhere, sweetie, they’ve disappeared forever this time, I’m afraid.”
“And that’s why you haven’t read my message?”
“My little detective,” Mom said, squeezing my shoulder and walking with me back towards the house. “Anyway, it’s nice to see you. I thought you might be little too busy for dinner tonight. You have a big new case to work on, don’t you?”
“I do, but I have something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Uh oh.”
Even though neither Georgia nor I lived at home anymore, Sunday night suppers remained a fairly regular tradition in our family. When we were growing up it was often the only time all five of us would sit down to eat together in the week, and after Ethan went to prison and we all moved away from Twin Rivers, they continued on as a familial touchstone. We all loved to cook, but my mom and Georgia were by far and away the best chefs in the family. So, it wasn’t unusual for us all to gather together like this, it wasn’t even that unusual for me to turn up unexpectedly on a Sunday night with the expectation of being fed; I’d spent plenty of weekends in law school, working my brain into disarray, just trying to keep up and catch up, and sometimes the only way to maintain a semblance of sanity was to keep Sunday nights sacred and to have a member of my family cook for me. I never failed to think of Ethan and the endless numbers of meals he must have eaten in prison; barely distinguishable ingredients swallowed down at speed, while trying to avoid whatever prison politics were being played out in the canteen that day or week or month. There were times during this whole ordeal when I was so, so sure that Ethan’s arrest and prosecution were going to pull our family apart, leave us looking nothing like the family we were before. But over time the four of us managed to stitch ourselves back together, and sometimes I found myself wondering what we would all look like if Ethan was sat at the table too, and I scared myself by thinking that we might all have become closer without him.
We didn’t sit down until much later, not until Georgia had arrived, her arms full of the fresh vegetables she’d been harvesting at her community garden all day. Mom was a landscape gardener and all the green fingers and thumbs had been inherited by Georgia, completely bypassing me. Ethan had them too, although I doubted they got much use in prison.
“So, you guys know what a podcast is, right?” I asked, Georgia shooting me a look that said duh, as well as where are you going with this, while Mom put down her fork to grab a glass of wine before saying,
“Yes, we have managed to figure out what they are, thank you darling.”
“Cool, have you listened to Shadow of a Doubt at all?”
“Which one’s that?” Dad asked.
“It’s true crime,” Georgia said, “right, Liv?”
Dad groaned and rolled his eyes towards me, “Not all that true crime nonsense again, I thought you’d got that out of your system years ago. Hasn’t your brother’s troubles taught you anything?” I’d been something of a true crime junkie growing up; inhaling episodes of Forensic Files the way most people watched Friends. I even used to fall asleep to them.
“This is different. It’s not just going over what happened, they actually investigate and they’ve even led to retrials, and sentences being overturned.” I realized that I was taking on the role Daniel had played on Friday night, convincing my parents of the podcast’s validity, persuading them towards my view.
“Okay, so what? You want us to listen to this podcast?” Mom asked, looking a little bemused. “Or are you going to start working for them instead of Coleridge and White?”
“No, I’m not leaving my job. But they’re interested in covering Ethan’s case for their new season. And I think it’s a good idea. And so does Ethan.”
I watched as my parents shared a look. A zipped up, private communique that I’d witnessed a thousand times before, and yet still didn’t really know how to decipher. “You’ve spoken to Ethan about this already?” Georgia asked.
“Yeah, I went to visit him yesterday with the host, Kat.”
Both my parents put down their cutlery at the same time, their gazes now firmly locked on me, “That’s not – he thinks it’s a good idea?” Mom asked, a tremor of worry lining her voice.
“Yeah, well I’m still not sure he quite gets what a big deal the podcast actually is, but yeah, he’s on board.”
“I’m surprised at you, Olivia,” Dad said, his voice firm and low, “you know what this kind of attention can cause. We can’t go through all that again.”
“I know, and I thought about that, believe me. But this could really change things, Dad. It’s not just about attention, it could potentially change the outcome. Look,” I said, picking up my phone and googling the name of the first case Shadow of a Doubt had covered, Warren Kincaid, “this guy had filed for appeal three times before the podcast started investigating his case. Now he’s been acquitted.”
Dad took the phone from me, squinting down at the screen. He didn’t say anything for a while, taking his time reading through the article before removing his reading glasses and passing a hand across his face. His shoulders were slumped, exhausted. “I just don’t know, Liv. I’m surprised you even think this is a good idea. You’re the one who changed her name, after all.”
“I know, I know. I just … I’ve done everything I can think of to help him. I’ve filed for retrials, I’ve contacted the Innocence Project every year for almost ten years, I even went to law school for Christ’s sake, but he’s still in there, and I genuinely think this could change that.”
“It’s certainly impressive, this Warren Kincaid story,” Dad said, picking up the phone again and waving it around. “Very different case, though.”
“They’re all different cases, Dad,” I said.
“Would we have to be involved?” Mom asked, her eyes on me as they had been this whole time.
“Not if you didn’t want to,” I said with a small sigh, “Kat wants as many participants involved as possible, and obviously as Ethan’s family we’d help with perspective and giving the show legitimacy, but I spoke to her about it earlier, and she says she’s okay with it just being me and Ethan. It’s not ideal obviously – really what they’d want is to interview all three of you, as well as me, but I think they’d still be interested in going forward with Ethan’s case, even if you didn’t agree to interviews. I don’t think Ethan will give the go-ahead until you gave it your blessing though. What do you think Georgia? You’ve been pretty quiet.”
Georgia was listlessly twisting her fork through some spaghetti squash and didn’t look up when she said, “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
I let the discussion turn to less controversial topics and waited until both of us were getting ready to leave before questioning my older sister. “So, you hate it right? The podcast?” I asked, while pulling on my coat.
Georgia rolled her eyes, “I don’t hate it. I actually like the podcast – I’ve listened to it before. I just think maybe you’ve forgotten what it was like ten years ago. I don’t want to go through all that again, I really don’t want Mom and Dad to go through it all again, and I don’t think you do really either. Do you?”
“No of course not, but we’d be more in control this time. Plus we’d know what to expect, how to prepare for it.”
“We wouldn’t be more in control,” Georgia said, shaking her head, “you think that now, but all it takes is a few Reddit threads, an article in BuzzFeed and the whole thing has run away from us. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t ever want to wake up with pig’s blood on my porch again.”
7. (#ulink_7bf2c14f-8d99-5311-abf4-d07bcc791508)
THEN (#ulink_7bf2c14f-8d99-5311-abf4-d07bcc791508)
We’re three weeks into the trial, and despite everything, the end seems to be in sight. It has felt interminable, these twenty days, each one longer than the last, an entire lifetime rolled up into three weeks. But this is the last day of witness testimonies, and then there will be closing arguments, and then the jury will be told to deliberate on whether or not they think my twin brother is guilty of murder. My chest tightens as I think of it, and I force myself to get out of bed. Every time I wake up now, I think of where Ethan is waking up, and the sheer force of the guilt that he is there, and I am here, propels me out of bed.
The day is bright, clear, crisp. Morning sunshine streaming through my window as I draw the curtains open. It’s the kind of day you want to drink in, to bathe in, sunlight warming skin, cool air burnishing the edges. There are sounds of activity coming from downstairs, my parents already up and about. Mom has stopped sleeping, spending nights holed up in the den, reading over documents, poring over anything and everything that might help out Ethan’s case. Her eyes have become bloodshot, and her skin pale. She hasn’t been in the garden in months. Weeds grow in her vegetable patch, choking the life out of formerly lovingly cared for plants and flowers. Heading downstairs I almost slip on the hardwood floor as a strangled scream comes from the hallway, setting me off running. A loud “FUCK!” follows the scream, followed by a sob of frustration and a slam of the front door.
“Do you know what they’ve done?” Georgia screams at me as I get downstairs, her face an abstract painting of red and white blotches, her eyes wide and wild with anger. “There’s blood on the fucking porch, Olivia, BLOOD. How can people be so fucking disgusting.” She rushes through the hallway, back to the kitchen where Mom is waiting, pulling her into a hug and I watch as my normally calm, quiet older sister shakes with rage in our mother’s arms. Walking away from them I open the front door, always needing to see something to believe it. The whole front porch is covered in a thin slick of bright red blood. In some places, it has run so thin it looks pink against the white of the wooden boards. The sun bounces off it, this glittering red pool of accusation and for a reason I can’t quite fathom, I crouch down to stick my finger in it. The blood on my finger glows up at me malevolently, practically neon, and I stand up too quickly, suddenly feeling lightheaded.
I wash my hands in the downstairs bathroom before heading back into the kitchen to silently grab the mop and bucket. I push blood away from me, watching it spill over the edge of the porch, fertilizing the green, green grass below, and then I wash it all away with water. Every so often I feel eyes on me and look up to stare back at whoever is staring at me. Across the street ten-year-old Billy Strong, who I have spent half his life babysitting, watches me the longest, but he’s not the only one. I wonder which of our neighbors did this, which of my friends potentially. The nausea that rippled through me when I first saw the blood disappears as I clean it all away. The firm feeling of the mop handle gripped in my hands reassures me, and as the blood tumbles to the ground beneath the porch I watch it disappear into the earth with satisfaction. In certain light, a slight pink tinge stains the white porch, but I have made this mess disappear, I have solved a problem, however small, and I decide I like how that feels.
I make coffee and breakfast for my family, preparing us all for the day ahead. We drive over to the courthouse in silence, unable to listen to the radio in case they report on my brother’s trial, and too distracted to pick and choose between music. As we pull into the car park, I yell at Dad to stop but I’m too late and the bucket of blood sloshes its way all across the windshield, with a sickening sound. I strain out of my seatbelt to see who it is, and my stomach rolls over when I recognize the face of Hunter Farley, one of Tyler’s best friends and someone I’ve spent countless hours with at lunch tables and movie theatres and parties.
“MURDERER!” someone shouts as I get out of the car, my heart shuddering to a near stop in terror, before pulling myself together, putting my mask back on and grabbing Georgia’s hand so that we can walk up the courthouse steps together. On the other side of those doors to the courthouse is the Mayor and her family, waiting for us to arrive as they have done every day since the trial began. Every day they have stared us down as we walk past them and into the court room. Burning their own version of justice into our skin and the back of our heads as they follow our every move.
But what I’m really bracing myself for on the other side of those doors is Ethan. Because every day that we walk through those doors holds the potential to be the last that we see him as he really is, as Ethan Hall, twin, brother, son, rather than Ethan Hall, convicted murderer. I take a deep breath and hear and feel Georgia do the same as we push the heavy wooden doors open at the same time and confront those waiting eyes.
8. (#ulink_8d1f8d3b-3bcd-5428-ae75-dc6ba3f86d6d)
NOW (#ulink_8d1f8d3b-3bcd-5428-ae75-dc6ba3f86d6d)
The following week dragged, long days and longer nights at work stopping me from seeing much of either my family or Kat and Ray to talk about the podcast. In stolen minutes I managed to arrange with Kat to meet them in Twin Rivers on Saturday. They were already there, setting up shop and making a camp for themselves in the small city where my brother had been convicted of murder. I hadn’t been back to Twin Rivers in years. Not since my parents sold up and moved, as soon as they possibly could, to the outskirts of Portland. And now that I was facing down the reality of having to physically go back and confront my family’s past and my brother’s present, Friday had come around all too quickly.
I let out a sigh of exhaustion, and Karen Powers, the second chair on Reid Murphy’s case, and my boss, shot me a caustic look. Karen Powers didn’t sigh or yawn. She didn’t ever give the sense that she was as physically fallible as that. “We keeping you from your bed, Kitson?” she asked archly and I felt burning red begin to creep up from underneath my shirt collar. Kitson was the name I’d taken when I applied for law school. �Hall’ was a common enough surname, but when combined with my first name, not to mention my face and its uncanny similarity to my twin brother’s, it was a name I no longer wanted to be burdened with. Sometimes it felt like a betrayal. Of Ethan, of myself, of my family in general. Other times it just felt like what I had to do to get through the day.
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Good, well why don’t you run along and get us all some coffees just to stave off that evident exhaustion you’re feeling.”
With a nod I left the room, catching Daniel’s eye who smiled back at me sympathetically, as I did so. By the time I returned to the conference room, jobs that would take all evening and probably all night had been delegated and I was left with the least interesting; babysitting the defendant, Reid Murphy. Reid had been released on bail, and the whole week had been dedicated to preparing her for taking the witness stand. It’s fairly unusual for defendants to take the stand, but Karen liked to lean into controversial situations and had made what I thought was the fairly shrewd observation that Reid was likely to elicit sympathy from the jury more than anything else. There was a reason everyone on the team but me seemed to think she was innocent. Small and slight, with wide watery blue eyes, and mousey brown hair, she didn’t look like she could hurt a fly, let alone almost kill a man. Quiet dropped over the room once everybody else had left, taking the coffees I’d retrieved with them. Reid stared down at the table, or possibly at her thumbs, the skin around her nails bitten and ripped to ribbons, while I sat in the corner by a large window that was slowly being plastered with rain. I scrolled through my phone, switching between email, Twitter and Instagram while drinking my coffee, and was largely ignoring Reid when suddenly she spoke, her voice quiet at first but getting stronger.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
I looked up from my phone slowly, eyes meeting hers almost involuntarily. “I don’t have to believe you, Reid. I’m your lawyer not your mother confessor.”
Her face pinched together a little, skin losing color. “I just thought you of all people would get it. Would believe me.”
“What do you mean, �me of all people’?” I demanded, back straightening in my chair, legs uncrossing, both feet planted on the ground.
“You’re Olivia Hall, right? Ethan Hall’s sister? I just figured you’d get it, what with everything you and your family went through?”
I could feel my muscles tightening, clenching, almost against my will, and I forced myself to relax, lean back again, and maintain eye contact. “Why would you say that?” I asked.
“Well, you are Olivia Hall, aren’t you? I thought I recognized you, but then everyone kept calling you Kitson.”
“I changed my name,” I said, finally answering her question.
“I knew it,” she said, this time quietly again. “You look exactly the same.”
“Well, not exactly the same,” I said, mildly affronted. “Ethan’s jaw is much stronger.”
“No, not as Ethan. As you did in high school.”
Something pulled at my stomach, something hard, sudden and strong; the same thing that always warned me when I was about to walk into something I should probably walk away from. “High school? You’re from Twin Rivers?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re too young for us to have been in high school at the same time,” I said. Reid was just 22, making her six years younger than me.
She nodded, agreeing with me, “Yeah, but my sister was the grade below you. Spencer. You came by our house a few times, and I always had to go watch the basketball games because she was a cheerleader. Like you.”
I remembered Spencer. She’d been keen, a little clingy even, desperate to be part of the squad, always making sure she was at every single party. I hadn’t been her biggest fan, but she was nice enough I supposed. “You’re Spencer’s little sister? Wow, that’s so weird. Where is she now?”
“Twin Rivers still. She’s a teacher there,” she said quickly, clearly not here for me to reminisce vicariously about her older sister. “You know he totally deserved it, right?” She said this in a rush, her words picking up speed as if she’d been revving up to this all along and suddenly taken her foot off the gas.
“My brother?” I asked, a slight cold sweat pricking at my back.
“No, not your brother. I don’t care if your brother did it or not. Tyler Washington. He totally had it coming.”
I looked at her carefully, trying to work out what she was saying. Sympathy for Tyler Washington was practically universal; I’d never heard anyone say anything like what Reid had just said. “What do you mean by that?” I asked finally.
“He was an asshole.”
I sank back into my chair, disappointed. “Not all assholes deserve to be killed, Reid.”
“No, but he did.” She took a deep breath and swallowed, her gaze holding mine right where it was.
“What on earth would make you say that?” I asked sharply.
I felt pinned by her eyes as she said forcefully, “I just don’t think he was a good person.”
“And what could you possibly have known about that?” I asked, “You didn’t know him, did you? You couldn’t have known what kind of a person Tyler was.”
“I didn’t, but my sister did, and she said he was just … awful. She said your whole group was full of kind of shitty people.”
“Oh really?” I said, taken aback, “Because that’s not how I remember it at all. From what I remember Spencer was desperate to be our friend.”
I watched as Reid’s expression changed, as her posture grew more rigid, as she seemed to tighten up within herself. Shutting down and zipping herself up.
“Was James Asher an awful person too?” I asked lightly, looking down at my phone again in the hopes that she’d think I wasn’t too bothered about how she answered.
“Yes,” she said, her voice so firm and strong, so direct, that I was forced to look back up at her. Something in her eyes shifted and a little light crept in. She smiled, however small, and nodded at me. “Yes. He was a terrible person.”
* * *
When I’d left Portland, the morning had been low and grey, the sky practically within reach as it hovered over the earth, but the sun had cracked the sky wide open, just as the car rolled into the city of Twin Rivers, and Daniel had claimed it as a good omen. I hadn’t intended to let Daniel join me on this trip, but he’d dropped by early that morning, and had teamed up with my roommate, Samira to convince me I needed the support.
Checking into the B&B I’d booked earlier in the week, Daniel proceeded to amuse himself by pretending we were there for a romantic getaway, while I messaged Kat to find out where she and Ray had got to by then. They were staying in a motel closer to the edge of town to save a bit on money, so we arranged to meet at one of the many breweries that dotted the town.
“This is nice,” Daniel said. He’d been waiting for me out on the porch while I visited our en-suite bathroom.
“You did choose it,” I said drily. I’d been about to book in at the same motel as Kat and Ray when Daniel intervened on my behalf, pointing out that I had a bit more money to spare than a couple of investigative podcasters, and I was beginning to wonder if he’d been intending to join me all along. What I hadn’t told him when I booked it was how close the B&B was to my old neighborhood. We were a few streets over from my childhood home, but really, Tyler had died mere minutes from here, and standing on that front porch set something on edge. The B&B could have been my house, the street it was on could have been my street; luckily it couldn’t have been ten years ago. Far too much had changed.
We walked to the brewery in milky sunlight, Daniel excitedly pointing out landmarks of my former life to me. At one point we crossed over the top of my old street, and I hesitated, looking up at the street sign, exactly as it once was: there was no evidence of previous heartache, no indication that this was somewhere I and my entire family had run from. As I walked next to Daniel, it simply became a pleasant Oregon town, currently basking in some surprising autumnal sunshine.
Kat and Ray were already there when we got to the brewery. Huddled together at the end of a long table they looked a little conspicuous, heads bent towards each other, talking intensely, a private world for two. But Ray jumped up immediately when he spotted us, speed walking over to clap Daniel on the back and join us at the bar.
“Is day drinking really the best way to kick off an investigative podcast?” I asked as we joined Kat, orders in hand.
Ray laughed, a round little chuckle, “Well, not normally no, but during some of our research this week, we found out that one of the witnesses at the trial works here now, so we thought we’d scope it out.”
My hand stopped in mid-air as I raised my beer to my lips. “Who?” I asked.
“Cole Sampson,” Kat said. “You knew him, right? He’s the general manager and head brewer here now.”
“Cole?” I said, shifting in my seat, looking around me at the large, semi-industrial room, sure that he must have suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. “Yeah, I knew him. We used to date.” �Date’ didn’t really cover what Cole and I were together, and �I knew him’ was a pretty poor way of describing what he once meant to me, but I wasn’t about to get into that in the middle of a busy brewery he apparently worked in. I’d experienced most of the significant �firsts’ in a teenager’s life with Cole, and that included my first major betrayal.
“Wow, that’s great,” Kat was saying, blissfully unaware of the cord tightening inside me. “Do you think you could reach out to him, see if he’d be willing to do an interview? We’ve been coming up against a little resistance when it comes to people talking.”
“Yeah, I’m not surprised. My brother is hardly this town’s favorite topic, unless it involves dragging his name through the mud.”
“But Cole would be up for it right? If he testified for your brother?” Kat asked.
“Cole? No. He was a witness for the prosecution,” I said slowly.
“Wait, what?” Kat looked stricken, embarrassed by her error and she opened up her laptop with practiced ease, swiping through various documents before coming to the right one. “Oh, right. He testified the same day as Jessica Heng and Nick Green. I guess I got confused when you said you guys dated.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Well, it was a pretty big part of why we broke up.”
9. (#ulink_b2dae1e4-8251-513a-accb-1546a418c09c)
THEN (#ulink_b2dae1e4-8251-513a-accb-1546a418c09c)
“Mr Sampson,” the prosecutor says, Cole’s eyes snapping to his, locking in, “you were in attendance at the party Tyler Washington was at on the night he died, is that correct?”
“That’s correct, sir,” Cole says, keeping his eyes on the prosecutor, his face serious, earnest.
“And you saw Mr Washington leave the party?”
“Yes, I saw him as he was leaving.”
“And could you state for the record when this was?”
“It was around two o’clock, I think. I can’t remember exactly, but it was definitely around then. Could’ve been a bit before, could’ve been a bit after, but definitely around two.”
“On the morning of Sunday August 24?”
“That’s right.”
“Was he alone at that point?”
“Yeah, he was alone. I didn’t see anyone leave with him.”
“And where were you exactly when you saw Mr Washington leaving? Were you still in the house yourself?”
“No, I was out on the porch. The front porch.”
“And from here you could watch Mr Washington leave and walk down the street towards the entrance to the woods?”
“Yeah. There’s a little shortcut down there by the high school that everyone uses, and you can still see it pretty easily from Jessica’s porch.”
“And you saw him walk into the woods from your vantage point?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“And was anyone else with him at that point, when he entered the woods?”
“No, but a little while later I looked back around and saw someone on a bike go into the woods right in the same place Tyler had.”
“And you recognized that person as being Ethan Hall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How could you be sure?”
“Well, I was pretty sure I recognized him anyway, as it really wasn’t that far, but he also rides a bike that has black and bright orange striping that’s pretty distinctive. I don’t know anyone else with that kind of bike.”
“And how much time had passed since you witnessed Mr Washington leaving the party and entering the woods?”
“I can’t be sure because it’s not like I checked the time or anything, but probably between ten and fifteen minutes.”
“So, that would make it about two ten, two fifteen a.m.?”
“I’d say so, yes, sir,” Cole says with a sharp nod of his head, and I wonder where all this sudden deference has come from.
“And do you think the two parties involved could have arranged to meet in the woods?” Curtis asks.
“Objection,” Ethan’s attorney calls, jumping to attention, “calls for speculation on the witness’s part.”
“Sustained,” the judge intones, eyes on the prosecutor, “please keep to the facts, Mr Curtis.”
“Yes, Your Honor. My apologies.” He places his hand over his heart as he says this, false sincerity leeching from him, before turning back to Cole.
“Did you see either Mr Hall or Mr Washington come back out of the woods at all, Mr Sampson?”
“No, but I went back inside to the party not too long after that. Also, they were both heading in the same direction, towards Winward Road, so there’s no reason why either of them would’ve come back to Hillier Street.”
“And you yourself didn’t then enter the woods later that night? Or morning rather?”
“No, I live in the other direction, so I just walked back along my usual route.”
“Thank you, Mr Sampson. I have no further questions.”
I hold my breath as the judge asks Ethan’s defense attorney if he’d like to question the witness, but he declines, and I can’t help but release a sigh of relief as he does so. Just watching Cole up there, taking the stand against my brother sets my teeth on edge.
I hear the voice in my ear, sweet and slow like honey, feel hands against my skin, hot and frantic, the not-so-artful addition of pressure, a knee between my thighs, pushing them apart. I shut my eyes against the court room scene, trying to push the memory away and out, shame cascading through me as I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands forcing a new feeling. It’s just a memory I tell myself, it can’t hurt me here. It’s not Cole who’s on trial; it’s not even me. It’s Ethan. I open my eyes again, and Cole is gone from the witness box. He’s back in his spot across the aisle on the other side of the courtroom; like I’m here for the groom and he’s here for the bride. He’s safe back there though, and so am I. As long as he’s out of my eyeline I don’t have to see him and don’t have to think about him. I train my eyes again on the back of Ethan’s head, reminding myself why I’m here, and whose life, exactly, is on the line.
10. (#ulink_610d553f-c0df-5f9a-a187-2294b6401b60)
NOW (#ulink_610d553f-c0df-5f9a-a187-2294b6401b60)
“Olivia?” someone said. And even with the doubt and surprise lacing their voice, there was still something unmistakable, something achingly familiar about it.
Cole Sampson.
I turned around in my seat to see him standing there in coveralls, dark brown eyes full of confusion, arms full of empty crates.
“Hey, Cole,” I said, slipping on an old voice I barely recognized; bright, breezy, barely aware of herself.
Cole was having trouble keeping hold of his stack of crates while processing my presence in his brewery tap room, and Daniel jumped up just as the stack was about to fall, taking a few out of Cole’s arms, relieving his load. Cole’s gaze swerved to him quickly and he gave a nod of thanks just as Daniel said chirpily, “Let me help you out here, man.”
“Uh, thanks … thank you,” Cole said, clearly still wrapping his head around what was going on. “Olivia, what the hell are you doing here?”
Easy lies, little white ones used to lubricate awkward social situations, slid through my mind, a whole pantheon of them, but in the end I decided the truth was probably the easiest of all. “This is Kat Thomas, and Ray Mackenzie,” I said gesturing to them behind me, “they’re doing a podcast on my brother’s case.”
“Your brother’s case?” Cole said, eyes suddenly twice their normal size, “you mean Tyler’s murder, right? You couldn’t possibly be here to try and exonerate your brother.”
“Ethan didn’t kill Tyler, Cole. He’s serving a sentence he doesn’t deserve.”
Cole shook his head, his eyes not leaving mine. “Unbelievable. This is unbelievable. You’re unbelievable. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken people to get over his death, and now you’re coming back here to drag it all back up again. Morgan still gets nightmares, did you know that? She hasn’t been back in those woods since.”
“Morgan?” I said, summoning up a picture of Tyler’s pretty older sister.
“Yeah, we’re … we, uh –” Cole trailed off, his gaze finally pulling away from mine as he shifted from foot to foot.
“Oh. You’re together now. You and Morgan. Wow.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Daniel asked, and I was surprised to find him still there, standing next to me, his arms almost as full as Cole’s with empty crates. The tap room had dwindled down to me and Cole for a minute as I crashed my way through long lost memories, but Daniel’s voice brought me back to the present. Cole gave him a look that said he wasn’t going to bother answering his question and proceeded to clumsily retrieve the crates Daniel had previously taken from him. I only sat down again once Cole had left – without saying another word to any of us – and proceeded to tell the others who Morgan was.
“She older or younger?” Kat asked.
“Older. Just by a year. She took it hard,” I said.
“Well, her brother did die, Liv,” Daniel said in a low voice, as if he had to remind me.
“I’d like to talk to her,” Kat continued, “but I guess you’re not the best person to put me in touch with her.”
I shook my head, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin with Morgan. The same goes for pretty much everyone else in this town.”
Kat and Ray shared a look that was worth an entire sentence. “Yeah, I’m starting to pick up on that,” Kat said, “having you around might be more of a hindrance than a help.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” I asked, and Kat gave me a quizzical look. “I mean, will it affect your decision on whether or not you do Ethan’s story for the next season?”
“Oh,” Kat said, taking a sip of her beer and then placing it carefully back on the table between us again. “We’re definitely doing Ethan’s case, don’t worry about that. I was just hoping you might be able to help grease the wheels a little bit, but it looks as though we’ll have to go with a different tactic. We’re obviously not about to record anything with Cole, so how about we go somewhere a bit quieter and get some intro stuff with you on tape, and then we can take it from there? We might find that it’s easier getting on with things with you back in Portland, but we may as well get an interview with you while you’re here, right?”
In some ways, this was exactly what I wanted to hear. I didn’t want to be here, not really. I felt safest, and most myself in Portland, but I also didn’t want to just leave Kat and Ray here on their own, here where the story could be told any way they wanted, any way the town wanted it to be told. If they stayed here without me, I felt sure something would go wrong and the story would get mangled, led astray again, and Ethan would stay stuck in prison.
“Okay,” I said, nodding slowly, and taking a long pull on my beer so that when I put it back down, it was practically drained. “Can I just ask … what made you decide to definitely do Ethan’s story? You didn’t seem so sure back in Portland.”
Kat raised both her eyebrows at me, and then I watched as her whole face tightened into a strange grimace. “It’s hard to explain what draws us to a story and what doesn’t … it’s just a feeling, I guess? That something’s wrong? We can’t be sure what we’re going to find here, but the fact that we filed a request for the police files over a week ago, and we still haven’t got them … Well, that tells us there’s probably something in those files they don’t want us to see.”
I nodded, able to follow Kat’s logic. But really, all my attention was on the thought of those old police files. Of what was in them, of what they revealed, of what long held secrets they might hide inside.
Back at the B&B I watched as Ray set up the equipment, and Kat looked over her notes. I was starting to regret the beer: my brain felt on the verge of fuzzy, my blood a little too warm, and my heart was beating a little too loud, a little too fast. I swallowed, thinking of all the interview requests my family and I had refused ten years ago. What was I doing, agreeing to this? I licked my lips, so sure they were beginning to crack open, they felt so dry, and Kat silently handed me a large glass of water. I swallowed it down, almost desperately, and when I looked over to thank her, she smiled.
“It’s normal to be nervous, Olivia. Just take a few deep breaths and try to forget about the microphones.”
I looked pointedly at the microphone Ray was at that moment setting up in front of me, and Kat laughed. “Well, I did say try to forget.”
* * *
Extract from transcript of Season 3 Episode 1 of Shadow of a Doubt:
Ethan Hall: If I’d taken the plea, and pled guilty to manslaughter, I’d be getting out right about now. I think about that all the time.
But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t admit to killing someone when I hadn’t done it, not even accidentally.
It’s weird – how many people do you think have perjured themselves just to take a plea? To be sure of a lighter sentence? Our justice system is … it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. And I’m testament to that.
Kat Thomas [voiceover]: And it’s this system that put Ethan Hall behind bars for a crime he claims he didn’t commit that we’re about to investigate.
I’m Kat Thomas, you’re listening to Switchblade Media, and this is the third season of Shadow of a Doubt.
Musical interlude with snippets of dialogue overlaid between Kat Thomas, Ethan Hall, Kevin Lawrence, Morgan Washington and Olivia Hall as well as news caster announcements.
KT [continued]: Ten years ago, on August 24, in the city of Twin Rivers in Oregon, 18-year-old Tyler Washington was found dead in the woods that surround the town. Son of the mayor, captain of the basketball team, and set to start college in Southern California in just a few short weeks, Tyler’s death shocked not just his many friends, and his loving family, but the town itself, and even the entire state. His death didn’t remain a mystery for long however, as less than a week later, Ethan Hall, a classmate of the dead teen was arrested for Tyler’s murder. Prior to arrest, Hall had been interviewed without an attorney present for almost seven hours and during this time confessed to his classmate’s murder, only to recant and plead not-guilty.
If there’s anyone who knows the ins and outs of Ethan Hall’s case, it’s his twin sister Olivia. Olivia now works under a different name at a law firm in Portland, a career she says she felt called to after her twin was – she believes – wrongly imprisoned.
Olivia Hall: I just think the system failed him at every turn. I remember thinking, the whole time during his trial and even before that – the trial didn’t actually take place until almost a year after Tyler was killed – something has to happen. Something has to happen, something new has to come to light, because surely he’s not going to be convicted of this.
KT: But nothing ever did.
OH: No. And it’s not like he didn’t have the resources and support, you know? His defense attorney was a friend of our father, we were there for him the entire time, but it just shows how easy it can be for appearances to dictate beliefs.
KT: What do you mean by that?
OH: Just that Ethan was something of an easy mark. He was different from everyone else in town, he didn’t have many friends.
KT: You weren’t particularly close at the time of his arrest, were you?
OH: No. We spent most of high school not talking to each other.
KT: Do you regret that now?
OH: I don’t know. It’s hard to say … we’re much closer now. Closer in some ways than we’ve ever been, but I like to think that would have happened as we got older anyway. As a teenager you’re stuck in this weird dichotomy where you’re constantly trying to figure out who exactly you are, while simultaneously trying to figure out how to fit in. You want to be different, and special, and to stand out, but you also want to be part of the crowd. Ethan never had any of that, to be fair. I’m talking about me more than anything. Ethan was always just so distinctly … Ethan, and teenagers don’t always respond all that well to people who are actually being themselves, you know? I do think as we got older we would’ve figured out a way to be friends again, though. Even without all this.
KT: But it’s fair to say your brother’s arrest and conviction threw you back together? Made you closer?
OH: Yeah, I guess it’s kind of ironic, right? We’ve become closer even though, physically, we’re separated.
KT: So, Tyler’s death, Ethan’s arrest – it really did change your life, didn’t it?
[pause]
OH: Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. It definitely did.
KT: Do you think you would’ve become a lawyer if it hadn’t been for your brother’s case?
OH [laughs]: Definitely not. It wasn’t even on my radar. I didn’t even have a major picked out at that point, I don’t think, but pre-law definitely wouldn’t have been on the shortlist.
KT: And at the same time that your brother was arrested, you were also dealing with the death of a friend. Because, and this is kind of a weird twist of fate – you were good friends with Tyler weren’t you?
OH: We were friends, yes. I … I don’t know if I’d describe us as �good friends’. He was best friends with my boyfriend at the time, and we hung out a lot, but kind of just in that way you do as a big group of friends and acquaintances when you’re a teenager, you know? I never spent any time with him, just him and me. It never would’ve even occurred to me. We weren’t calling each other up to go to the movies together, or anything, let’s say.
KT: And it was your boyfriend Cole, who found Tyler’s body that morning, right?
OH: I actually think it was their friend, Nick. Nick Green. The three of them – Tyler, Cole, and Nick – were all very close, and from what I can remember, Tyler’s parents called both Cole and Nick up that morning to see if he was with either of them – they used to end up spending the night at each other’s houses all the time. But he wasn’t, and they all got a little worried, so they went out to look for him. Nick, and Cole, and Tyler’s dad and uncle. But it was Nick who actually … actually spotted him first, and told the others. I’m pretty sure.
KT: It sounds like you remember that morning pretty well, Olivia.
OH: I do. It’s impossible not to. You’re not likely to ever forget the moment your best friend calls you up to tell you your friend has been found dead, and that he’s probably been murdered.
KT: And was it around this time that your friends started distancing themselves from you?
OH: Yes. Well … no, not immediately, I guess. It was a very strange, strained time, that whole week. It already had this surreal quality to it, because we were all getting ready to leave for college. And then, suddenly Tyler was dead, and my brother was arrested, and all of that … all of that just disappeared. And because I stuck by my brother, and refused to believe he could’ve killed Tyler, I ended up losing all my friends too.
KT: That must’ve been difficult.
OH [quietly]: Yeah. It was tough. I don’t like to talk about it much – except to my therapist – because so many people have had it so much worse. Tyler’s family lost him, and my brother is in jail for something he didn’t do, so falling out with your high school friends and breaking up with your boyfriend kind of pales in comparison, but it was definitely a hard time. For a lot of reasons.
KT: And what about media attention? Did the case generate much?
OH: It did, yeah, although it was mostly local, and a few state-wide news stories. But it was enough. More than enough. Tyler was the mayor’s son, so within Twin Rivers at least, he and his family were pretty high profile, which impacted the media coverage, as well as the … attitude and atmosphere. Towards Ethan. And us. His family.
KT: In a case like this, with quite a lot of media coverage – some would say biased media coverage – as well as the inherent bias within the city against the defendant, I would expect the court to decide to bring in jurors from outside. Did they do that at all?
OH: I think at one point they were going to, but in the end, they decided not to.
KT: Do you know why?
OH: I honestly couldn’t tell you. Knowing what I know now, I think it was a pretty extraordinary decision.
KT: And you’ve never wavered in your belief in your twin?
OH: Never. He’s innocent, I know it.
KT: If he is innocent, then that means whoever did kill Tyler Washington is still out in the open, living their life, possibly still in Twin Rivers, while your brother sits behind bars. Do you ever think about that, about who did actually kill Tyler?
OH: I think about it all the time. I go to bed thinking about it, I wake up thinking about it, I have nightmares about it. But, and this is going to sound so incredibly selfish: My main concern is with getting Ethan out of prison. Getting him a retrial, having him exonerated, clearing his name. I can’t tell you who killed him, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of it’s that Ethan Hall did not kill Tyler Washington.
11. (#ulink_deffecc0-5017-57ce-a208-08814fbe3ce9)
THEN (#ulink_deffecc0-5017-57ce-a208-08814fbe3ce9)
Ethan’s lawyer is done questioning Kevin, and the judge asks the prosecutor if he’d like to cross-examine the witness.
Unsurprisingly, he does and as he stands up from his chair, buttoning up his suit jacket as he does so, he says to Kevin, “What exactly is your relationship to the defendant, Mr Lawrence?”
“We’re friends?” Kevin says, giving the prosecutor a quizzical look.
“You don’t sound completely sure of your answer, Mr Lawrence.”
“No, I mean we are friends. I just … we’re not related or anything.”
“No, but you have known one another for quite some time have you not?”
“Since kindergarten, yeah.”
“And would you describe yourself as Mr Hall’s best friend?”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
“You suppose?”
“I’ve never really thought about it, if I’m honest,” Kevin says shrugging, “I guess he’s my best friend. He’s kind of my only friend.”
“And vice versa?”
“Yeah.”
“And as established in your conversation with my esteemed colleague just now, you were with him on the night of the incident in question, August 23 and the early morning of August 24?”
“Yeah, he was at my place.”
“Your parents’ house?”
“Yeah, sorry, my parents’ house.”
“And what were you doing there?”
Kevin shrugs again, his signature move. If Kevin has ever been bothered by anything in his life, he has never let anyone know it. The phrase �water off a duck’s back’ was invented for him. I once overheard our moms talking about how little both their sons had cried growing up, and whereas Mom had worried constantly about Ethan’s lack of lungpower, Kevin’s mom had said he didn’t seem to ever cry because he was too busy laughing. At the time, this had sounded a little creepy to me, but now watching him on the witness stand I can easily see how his good-natured languorousness could put you at ease. “We weren’t really doing anything,” he says, “we were just chilling, you know? Hanging out?”
“And was it just the two of you?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you didn’t attend Jessica Heng’s party that night at all?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we weren’t invited.”
There’s a ripple of movement, a shifting reaction from the other side of the courtroom when he says this. Jessica Heng and her friends bristling at this mild accusation, despite the fact that Kevin doesn’t look or sound bothered by it at all. I’ve spent my life carving a space for myself at the very center of things, but Ethan’s never been bothered by any of it, and Kevin even less so. His tone is even, indifferent, and he leans back in his chair, looking more relaxed than anyone else who has taken the stand up to this point. I look over at the jury to try and gauge their reaction to Kevin, but their faces are a wash of boredom. They have already been here so long.
“Now, Mr Lawrence, as we’ve just heard from your testimony, you claim Mr Hall left your parents’ house at between two fifteen and two thirty in the morning, but in your initial statement to the police you told them Mr Hall had left your house by two a.m.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t completely sure. I said it was around two, two thirty.”
“Oh, so now you’re saying you can’t be sure?”
“I think it was just before two thirty, but I know I said it was more like two a.m. at first, so I’m just saying I can’t be one hundred percent sure.”
“If you weren’t sure then, and you aren’t sure now about what time Mr Hall left, where did the two or two thirty am time frame come from?”
“I figure he was gone by two thirty because I know I went online for a while, and when I logged off it was about three a.m.”
“And how long do you think you were online for, before you logged off?”
“It was like twenty to thirty mins max, which is why I think maybe Ethan left a little later, more like two thirty.”
“What was it exactly you were doing? Online, I mean.”
“I was just on AIM.”
“And by AIM you mean AOL instant messenger?”
“Yes.”
“So, you were messaging with someone?”
“Yeah,” Kevin says, and for the first time he looks a little unsure of himself, a little worried.
“Who was it you were messaging with?”
“Just a friend,” Kevin says, shuffling in his seat, shifting his eyes suddenly to the jury bench and back again.
“A friend? I thought you said you didn’t have many – or any – friends, apart from Mr Hall?”
“At school, yeah, but this was someone I know outside of school.”
“Is this person your boyfriend, Mr Lawrence?”
“What?”
“Is this – Caleb Donovan – who you were messaging on that night, your boyfriend?”
“No – I – I’m not … with anyone,” Kevin says, stricken, almost speechless.
“Because we have a record of those messages and not only do they indicate that you and Mr Donovan know one another intimately, but they’re also time stamped.”
“Objection!” Ethan’s lawyer finally calls, getting to his feet. “The witness’s sexuality and relationship status has nothing to do with the trial, and these messages haven’t been entered into evidence.”
“I have them right here, Your Honor,” the prosecutor continues smoothly, unruffled. He picks up a file from where it’s been waiting this whole time, and walks it over to the judge’s bench. “And they clearly show that Mr Lawrence had finished … messaging with Mr Donovan, and logged off by 2:47 in the morning, indicating that if he had been online for around thirty minutes as he claims, then Mr Hall would have left the Lawrence home before two fifteen in the morning, leaving him plenty of time to meet the victim in the woods and kill him before getting home just before three in the morning.”
Kevin starts speaking rapidly, filling up the silence that has fallen over the courtroom, “I might not have been online for as long as thirty minutes though, like I said, it might’ve only been twenty minutes, maybe even less time, I’m not sure. We’d been smoking and I might have –”
The judge holds up his hand, interrupting Kevin’s hurried speech, indicating he should stop talking. Taking the file from the prosecutor, the judge peers down at both the prosecutor and the defense attorney with bored equilibrium, while flipping the file open, paging through the thin document, before finally looking up. “Your objection is overruled, Mr Castle,” he says to Ethan’s lawyer. “While I agree that the witness’s sexuality and relationship history has little to do with the proceedings here, these records clearly show that his online interaction with this Caleb Donovan had ended by 2:47am.”
“The defense hasn’t had the opportunity to examine this evidence, Your Honor, and we demand a recess in which to do so. Why didn’t the prosecution enter this into evidence before the trial?”
“It’s only just come to light, Your Honor,” the prosecutor says.
“That’s all well and good,” Castle interjects, “but if you have the conclusion of the message stream between Mr Donovan and Mr Lawrence, surely you also have proof of when the AIM conversation started between the two of them, and we can put this all to rest.”
“The defense raises a fair point, Mr Curtis,” the judge says, “I don’t see any indication here of when this conversation started or what time it was initiated. Do you have the start the of these messages?”
“I don’t believe we do,” Curtis says, staring up at the judge.
“Well, either you enter the AOL Instant Messenger conversation in its entirety into evidence, with time stamps for both the beginning and the end of the conversation between Mr Lawrence and Mr Donovan, or you do not enter it into evidence at all,” the judge says.
I watch Curtis shuffle in front of the judge and say something to him that no one watching can here.
“In that case,” the judge says, voice ricocheting around the courtroom, “I have to ask the jury to disregard this evidence, and to ask them not take it into consideration during any future deliberations.”
I turn to the jury, trying to decipher what they make of this, but it’s impossible. Just as it will almost certainly be impossible for them to �disregard’ anything they hear in court throughout this trial, whether the judge asks them to or not.
12. (#ulink_0e889c4f-c198-525e-abdf-d1aca121cb2b)
NOW (#ulink_0e889c4f-c198-525e-abdf-d1aca121cb2b)
“That was great, Olivia,” Kat said, when the interview was over, and she’d finally turned the �record’ button off.
“Does that mean you’ll let me hang around for a little bit longer?” I asked, making my tone as light as possible. The interview had been draining: I hadn’t spoken about Ethan’s case, or the night of Tyler’s murder so much in such a long time, and the experience was enervating. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for several hours, but I wasn’t about to let Kat and Ray know that.
Kat gave me a small smile and glanced over at Ray. “You can hang around as long as you want, Olivia, I just think maybe you should give us a list of the people in town who won’t be so happy to see you,” she said, with an arch in her voice that let me know she was only half-joking.
“To be honest, it might be simpler and faster if I gave you a list with the people who would be happy to see me,” I shot back.
Lying over on the bed, Daniel gave a shout of laughter that made me jump. I’d practically forgotten he was there. “Typical Liv,” he said, smiling at me.
“You make enemies wherever you go, or something, Olivia?” Ray asked.
“It does sometimes feel like that, yeah,” I said. “But I can think of at least one person who might be happy to see me. Or if not happy, then at least, not outright hostile.”
“Who?” Ray asked, looking as skeptical as he sounded.
“Kevin Lawrence. He was my brother’s best friend. Still is.”
I’d been a little surprised to find Kevin still living in Twin Rivers, but there he was, languorous smile still in place as he slowly recognized me as I walked towards him in the outdoor equipment shop he was now working at. I knew he was still in contact with Ethan – that they wrote to each other, and that Kevin had visited him – but I hadn’t seen him since I left town.
“Man, this is wild,” he said as I approached him behind the counter, “I’d forgotten how similar you both look. It’s like looking at Ethan.”
“Thanks, Kevin. I always love it when people say I look like a man.”
“You know what I mean. You must get it all the time,” he said, laughing while rolling his eyes.
“Too much.”
“I’ll bet. So, how are you Olivia Hall?”
“Never better.”
He lifted one skeptical eyebrow and let out a puff of air, “Sure. Haven’t seen you back here in about nine years, but you’ve never been better. Are you here about the podcast?”
“Yeah, did Ethan tell you already?”
“Yeah, he asked if I’d get involved and I said yes. Thought the host would be getting in touch first though, not you.”
I explained that Kat and Ray were busy elsewhere, but that they’d left me to approach Kevin about consenting to an interview. Kevin nodded his head energetically, “Definitely. Anything to help Ethan out.”
“Can I ask you something?” I asked, lowering my voice and glancing around the shop as I did so. It was hardly busy, but there were a few customers in there, browsing the racks of climbing and camping gear, the rows of outdoor clothing.
“Sure.”
“Why did you stay? How did you stay? Everyone here believes my brother is guilty, how do you just live with that?”
Kevin shrugged, “It doesn’t come up as much as you probably think it does. It’s been a long time, Olivia. And this is my home. Why should I leave?”
I wasn’t sure it had been all that long, although I was willing to bet it had felt twice as long for Ethan. Being back in Twin Rivers was beginning to make time fold in on itself; all of a sudden ten years felt like nothing, felt like it could’ve been yesterday, but seeing familiar faces aged by the years made them seem even longer. “So, you’re not universally hated and vilified?” I asked.
“Not exactly, no. Going on this podcast is hardly going to help though, is it.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, as if he already knew the damage he was going to be doing to himself, and was willing to accept it.
“How have you always been so sure?” I asked, my fingers worrying at the packet of a Clif Bar that was part of a display to tempt hungry shoppers paying for their chosen purchases.
“Because I know he didn’t do it. There’s no way Ethan could kill someone. Why? Haven’t you always been sure he was innocent?”
“Well, yeah, but I shared a womb with the guy. You didn’t have to believe he was innocent. I did.”
“You might have shared a womb with him, Olivia, but I’m the one who actually knew him. He was always so surprised you believed him.”
“He was?” I asked.
“Yeah, he thought maybe it was guilt.”
“Guilt?” I said, unable to stop the stretch and strain of my voice.
“Because you were such good friends with Tyler and that crowd. I think Ethan just assumed you’d stick with them, when it came down to it.”
“Well, not when it came to murder,” I said, and Kevin raised both his eyebrows.
“I guess not. Blood really is thicker than water, huh?”
I thought suddenly of that pig’s blood on our porch, the bucket of blood thrown over the windshield of my father’s car; thick, viscous and vicious dripping to the ground in malevolent accusation. Shaking off the lightheadedness that shivered through me, I nodded at Kevin before making arrangements with him to record an interview once his shift was over that afternoon.
* * *
Extract from transcript of Season 3 Episode 1 of Shadow of a Doubt [continued]:
Kat Thomas [voiceover]: It’s not hard finding people willing to talk about Ethan Hall in Twin Rivers. What is hard is finding someone willing to talk about him, not only on the record, but in positive terms. Kevin Lawrence was, and probably still is, Ethan’s best friend. They grew up together and even now, Kevin is one of the few people who visits Ethan in prison who isn’t related to him. He was also a defense witness during the trial for Tyler’s murder, but his conflicting testimony ended up hindering, rather than helping his friend’s case.
So, have the intervening ten years changed Kevin’s mind about the case, or does he still believe the wrong person was locked up for Tyler Washington’s murder?
Kevin Lawrence: Absolutely. I absolutely believe Ethan is innocent.
KT: What is it that convinced you?
KL: I didn’t really ever need to be convinced. Anyone who knows Ethan, knows he’s incapable of killing someone. Of murder. The problem was that no one here really knew him.
KT: So, you think the police and the prosecution were able to take advantage of the fact that Ethan didn’t have many friends or allies in town?
KL: Definitely. And not just that. He was up against a town institution, you know? It wasn’t just that Tyler was this super popular guy, his mom was the mayor. She still is. Talk about power and influence.
KT: The longer we’ve spent in Twin Rivers, the more it’s become apparent just how influential his family was and is. We’ve filed request after request for the investigation files, but so far they’ve all been blocked, and I’m beginning to think that’s all coming from the mayor’s office.
KL: I wouldn’t be surprised by that at all. And that’s how it all felt at the time too, you know? There was so much pressure on the police to wrap up the murder investigation that they just pinned it on the first guy they found. I always felt like Ethan was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
KT: Can we talk about that for a second, because during the trial you were brought as a witness for the defense because you could place him at your parents’ house until around 2:30am. This timing was really important because Tyler’s time of death was given as between 1:45 and 2:45am, so if he was still with you at 2:30, then he wouldn’t have been able to kill him.
KL: Yeah, that’s right.
KT: But that all fell apart when the prosecution revealed evidence that contradicted your timeline of events.
KL: Yeah.
KT: Your initial statement to the police also stated that you thought Ethan had left your house by 2am, which would have meant he didn’t have an alibi right in the middle of the time of death window.
KL: Yea-ah.
KT: So, did you lie at any point during the investigation and trial, Kevin?
KL: No. My statement to the police was actually that I thought Ethan had left between 2 and 2:30 in the morning. I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t been paying really close attention, but that’s the time I gave, and apparently they just put it down as 2am.
KT: What was it that made you change it from �between 2 and 2:30’ to 2:30am?
KL: Well, it wasn’t precisely 2:30am. I think it was probably a bit before that, but not much. Basically, I remembered going to bed at like, 3, but I knew that was only about a half hour after Ethan left.
KT: So, what about the record of the messages between you and Caleb Donovan the prosecution produced at the trial?
KL [sighs]: Man, all that stuff was just … you know they only had the end of the message thread?
[pause]
But they didn’t have the beginning of the message thread from that night, which if they had would have been at about 2:20am, around when Ethan left. That whole conversation on AIM lasted about ten or fifteen minutes.
KT: In court, you said you the AIM conversation lasted thirty minutes.
KL: I did? Well, maybe I’m remembering wrong, or maybe I was wrong back then. Honestly, you try remembering a conversation you had online with someone ten years ago, and see how easy it is to remember how long it lasted. Maybe at the trial I was referring to how long I’d been online, rather than how long Caleb and I had been chatting? I don’t know. I can’t remember exactly.
KT: So, you didn’t lie and change your statement about when he left your house, in order to provide him with a better alibi?
KL: No. I know that’s what people said and what a lot of people still believe, but genuinely I didn’t. People don’t understand what it’s like when you’re being questioned by police. Especially in a murder investigation when someone’s dead, and another person’s whole life hangs in the balance. Plus they brought me in for questioning a few days after Tyler was actually killed, so it was all a little bit hazy by then anyway. You’re always working with an approximation of what happened, because you’re only human, and you’re under pressure and your memory is fallible, but then the police term it as �evidence’ or whatever, and suddenly you may as well have carved that statement into a tablet of stone. So, then when you re-think something, or come to a realization, or just have a little more time to think about something, you’re branded at best as unreliable and at worst a liar, and suddenly your witness testimony is worthless.
* * *
“Thanks Kevin, that was great,” Kat said, removing her headphones and indicating Kevin could do the same.
“When will all this be released?” Kevin asked, and I thought I could hear a slight strain of concern in his voice. As if his conversation with Kat had finally made what he was doing sink in.
Kat exchanged a look with Ray, another of their private, impenetrable moments I couldn’t hope to decipher, and said, “We’re going to start releasing episodes from next week. We like to get as much research done as possible in the weeks leading up to recording, but then we prefer to record week by week. So the story can change and develop as we go along.”
Kevin swallowed deeply, nodding his head and his gaze flicked over to me, meeting my eyes. “And do you think you’ll use this interview in the first episode?”
“Probably, yes. We’ve already recorded a little introductory interview with Olivia today, and we’ll have one with Ethan in there too, of course.”
We were recording in Kevin’s kitchen, countertops gleaming white, the window above the sink revealing a small but well-tended yard, the walls painted a deep, rich blue. Kevin and Kat were talking still, comparing notes of visiting Ethan in prison, and I stood up suddenly, my chair almost toppling over behind me as I did so. Ray reached out a hand to stop it from falling and he gave me a quizzical look as I marched over to the sink, staring out of the pretty window as I washed my hands in bone chilling water. “You okay, Liv?” Kevin asked as I leaned down to splash my face and I made an indecipherable noise, before turning off the tap and turning around to face the others.
“Yeah, fine, just suddenly a bit hot,” I said, red warmth creeping up my neck.
Kat wasn’t paying too much attention, looking around at the kitchen instead. “This isn’t your parents’ place, is it Kevin?” she said.
“No. They still live on their farm, just outside of town.”
Kat nodded, her face scrunched in concentration, cogs whirring inside. “Could you take us to see it? And maybe walk us through the route Ethan would have taken that night?”
Kevin shrugged, his eyes meeting mine for a second before flicking back to Kat, “Sure, why not?”
Kevin’s parents’ farm backed up right to the woods that surrounded the south-eastern corner of the city. Sitting on three acres of land, the Lawrence family had apple orchards I’d spent my childhood running through. Our mothers had been friends for years, bonding over green fingers and the desire to watch things grow, and up until the age of ten or eleven, I’d spent almost as much time here as Ethan. The farmhouse was weathered now, peeling yellow paint and lopsided porch railings, when all those years ago they’d looked sunshiny and new. I hadn’t been there in almost two decades and it forced the same sense of disjointed familiarity that being back in Twin Rivers did. An almost-there, but not-quite feeling; one I didn’t want to get too comfortable with.
“So, this is it,” Kevin said, eyes squinting in the thin sunshine.
“It’s a long way from the road,” Ray pointed out.
“Yeah, the driveway’s about a quarter mile long alone.”
“So, how long would it have taken Ethan to cycle back home from here?” Kat asked.
Kevin tilted his head to the side, “Well, he didn’t take the road. He never did. See, if you cycled back through the woods using the footpaths, it cut the journey time way down. I did it everyday to school too, and Ethan – and Olivia’s – house was just on the other side of the school.”
Kat looked to me and I nodded in confirmation. “Going on the roads, it would probably take at least 40 minutes, but the woods meant it only took about 20, 25 minutes,” Kevin clarified.
“Even in bad weather?” Ray asked, “with mud or whatever?”
Kevin just shrugged, “Yeah.”
Kat turned towards Ray and said in a low voice, “It would be great if we could get hold of a bike, do the trip ourselves …”
Ray nodded thoughtfully while Kevin let out a shot of laughter, “You want a bike, we’ve got about 20. Come on,” he said, striding off towards one of the farm’s outbuildings, beckoning us with a wave to follow him.
The red doors creaked open, stiff and in need of some WD40, letting out a puff of dusty air as they did so. Inside was dimly lit by daylight creeping in at the wooden slats and through the now-open doorway, dust motes newly lit by the afternoon sun swirling in our pathway. It was a treasure trove of broken down, barely used machinery. Not just push bikes but quad bikes, about five different types of lawn mower, several tractors, and somewhere right at the back, I knew there was an ancient decommissioned fire truck. Kevin didn’t have any siblings to share this bounty with, but his dad had inherited the farm years ago, and with it this barn full of semi-useful objects.
“Take your pick,” Kevin said expansively, extending his arms out beside him to take in the entirety of the barn.
Ray let out a low whistle and Kat said, “Well, someone could be on an episode of hoarders.”
Kevin laughed, pulling one of the bikes towards him as he did so.
There wasn’t an official path leading into the woods from the Lawrence farm, but one had been formed there over the years, well-worn and walked over, tire tracks marking the way. The day darkened as soon as we were under the cover of the trees, light filtering through in patches and golden-hued columns. It took just two minutes to reach the public foot and cycle path that Ethan would have turned left on that night, and many nights before.
“He seriously rode this way at night?” Ray called a little breathlessly to Kevin who was leading the way.
“Yeah. He did it all the time.”
“It would be pitch black, though right?” Ray asked.
“He had good lights on his bike, and a headlamp,” Kevin clarified. “Plus, he knew it like the back of his hand. Could’ve done it in his sleep.”
“What about Tyler?” Kat asked, “Would this path lead to his house, too?”
There was a short pause that was filled with the heavy sound of our breathing, the crunch of the path under our bike tires, and thick rustle of leaves in the wind, animals in the undergrowth, birds in the trees. “He lived on the other side of town,” I said, explaining how 10
street bisected the town, with Tyler’s house on one side, and my family’s and Kevin’s on the other.
“So, there’s no reason he would’ve been in the woods?” Kat asked.
“Not really,” Kevin said.
“In the trial, they said he was taking a shortcut home though,” Kat said, breath catching, “like Ethan.”
“Yeah, but that never really made sense to me,” Kevin explained. “I’ve never been able to figure out why Tyler would’ve been in those parts of the woods that night, to be honest.”
There was silence again as we approached the road, and Kevin pulled up to a stop. “So, this is the short cut Ethan probably took. You leave the woods here, and cycle straight up Hillier Street, past Jessica Heng’s house, where the party was, and then into the woods again, right by the high school,” he said, pointing ahead of him. “If you stay in the woods for this bit it takes twice as long navigating the trails, so he always cut through here.”
“And so, this is where Cole Sampson would have witnessed Tyler going into the woods, shortly followed by Ethan?” Kat asked.
“At the other end, yeah,” Kevin said, getting ready to take off on his bike again. We followed the route right past Jessica’s old house, where I spent that last night before Tyler died. Someone else lived there now, different cars in the driveway, the outside painted a different color. I stared up at the windows of the first floor while we rode by, as if the ghost of my teenage past might be there, but all I saw was the fluttering of pale pink drapes. Jessica had lived just a few blocks from the high school, and it took us mere minutes to get there, Kevin up ahead, flying past the entrance and going right to the back where the street trailed off into the woods. This had been my route to and from school every day, walking past stoners and slackers, loners and young lovers who sought out the coverage and seclusion the woods easily provided.
“Will you show us where Tyler was found?” Kat called, her voice echoing in the chamber of cedar trees.
It didn’t take too long before Kevin slowed to a stop once again, scanning the area with a searching look on his face. “He was found somewhere round here, I think,” he said by way of explanation. “I couldn’t tell you for sure.”
“Olivia?” Kat said, “Do you know?”
There were trees as far as the eye could see, trunks thick, leaves an everlasting green. It was hard to believe we were just a few minutes from busy streets, a bustling high school. If you listened hard enough you could hear the gentle rush of Cedar Creek, and then, further away, the growing roar of Hood River. It seemed darker than it should have been, a temporary twilight falling over the footpath, and I looked up; through the canopy of leaves the sky had started to turn grey, and with my face upturned I felt a drop of rain land on my cheek. “Olivia?” Kat said again, bringing me back.
I looked around us, and shook my head, “I don’t know the exact spot, either. But it was probably around here. We’re still a few minutes from my old house.”
By the time we reached the house, the 20 or 25-minute bike ride Kevin had predicted had taken much longer due to all our stopping, and Kat and Ray were saying they wanted to try it again with no stops this time. Maybe even under the cover of darkness, just to be sure. “And we need to go back to Jessica Heng’s old house,” Kat said, “I want to see if you could actually identify anyone going into the woods from that far away. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to –” Ray started to say something and Kat held up her hand, as if she knew exactly what was coming, “With my glasses on I mean.”
But my attention had been caught by something just a few houses down the street. I narrowed my eyes, not sure I could really believe them, because standing out on a porch, just three houses away from where I’d grown up, were Cole Sampson and Morgan Washington.
And they were watching us.
13. (#ulink_a4ad0a3b-bcb2-54d7-9eec-efe005beb4f0)
THEN (#ulink_a4ad0a3b-bcb2-54d7-9eec-efe005beb4f0)
It’s the first day of Ethan’s trial, the air heavy and slow with heat, summer wafting in through my open window as I dress. My legs and arms shake as I worry over what to wear. Is a dress too much? Is a suit too formal? Eventually I settle on a dark blue jersey maxi dress I would normally wear to the beach, but with a brown leather belt cinching it at the waist, it somehow looks okay. My hands tremble as I do up the belt, fingers sticky and stiff. I have no idea what I’m doing.
But no one does. That’s what I soon realize. I can’t rely on my older sister, or even my parents to lead the way now. Neither of my parents could ever have imagined finding themselves in a situation like this. My dad is a city planner, my mom a landscape gardener. They see life through a series of plans and blueprints, one stage leading to the next, leading to the next. You prepare the soil, you plant at the right time, you water the ground, and whatever you put in there, you grow. But they could never have planned for any of this. Nothing about their lives up until this point, up until the morning the police knocked heavily on our front door, could have left them with even a hint that their only son was going to be arrested for murder. They did everything right, prepared us all perfectly for the world that was waiting for us, but they failed to take into account the blurred or broken line on a blueprint that eventually led to ruin and chaos; the weeds running rampant in the garden; the woodworm condemning the house to rot. So, when we get to the steps of the courthouse, the sidewalk and street packed with journalists, photographers, reporters and cameramen, I lead the way. It’s as if I can feel my parents’ inability to believe any of this is happening, and instead of scaring me, it bolsters me somehow. Because someone has to go in there and show Ethan they believe him, and that everything’s going to be okay.
But I’m not prepared for the other side of the courthouse door. I thought this would be the worst of it – the reporters and the onlookers, the rubberneckers and the muckrakers, but I couldn’t be more wrong, because on the other side of the door is Mayor Washington and her family. Her husband stands by her side, arm clamped around her shoulders, and in front of them is their daughter Morgan, my former friend and cheer captain, just one year older than both me and Tyler. I don’t expect anyone to say anything; I don’t know what I would say, what any of my family would say, so I can’t imagine what any member of Tyler’s family would say either.
But apparently my imagination isn’t quite up to scratch, because before I realize what’s happening, Mom is edging away from our family huddle, and taking a few steps towards the Washingtons, her mouth open to speak. But the sound that comes out is strangled and all wrong, and the Mayor just gives her a withering, disgusted look, her mouth drawn into a hard, straight line while Morgan says, “Don’t you dare come a single step closer, you murderous bitch.”
But her voice is thin and tinny, when I know from hours of cheerleading practice with her, that it’s normally hard and strong, as cheerful and confident as it is forceful. And for some reason, it makes my mind go clear, a glorious blank sheet of water roaring through it, and even though I have no idea what I’m doing or why, I walk over to Morgan and pull her into a hug, whispering into her ear as I do so, “I’m so, so sorry,” and that’s when I finally let myself cry, and that’s when her body collapses and the shudder of her sobs join mine.
14. (#ulink_7e1f35c9-05d5-562e-8ae9-f5774b2cdc4d)
NOW (#ulink_7e1f35c9-05d5-562e-8ae9-f5774b2cdc4d)
Kat was unable to resist striding over there, Ray a few steps behind her, muttering something about not having their recording equipment. I watched as Kat introduced herself to Morgan, but Morgan just stood there, arms crossed against her chest as she listened to Kat, while every few seconds her gaze flicked directly to mine. Despite having seen and talked to me just hours earlier, Cole’s eyes didn’t land on me once.
He was sat on a wooden bench, one leg crossed over the other, a bottle of beer in hand as he watched the interaction between Kat and Morgan. Clouds had scudded over the sky, but it was late in the day now, evening strolling in, and the combination of sunset and clouds turned the world yellow, meaning Cole was squinting as he watched his girlfriend talk to Kat. Morgan was gesticulating, her face twisting and turning, and I wished I could hear what they were saying, but I felt rooted to the ground, stuck in place. Morgan kept bringing one hand to her stomach, every couple of seconds or so, and my eyes instantly flicked to Cole, trying to read his face, figure out if what I was thinking could possibly be true.
“Is she pregnant?” I asked, turning to Kevin all of a sudden.
Kevin looked from me over to where Morgan stood on her porch, staring down at Kat and Ray who were talking full force at her now, giving her the pitch. “Don’t know. Why?”
“She just keeps … touching her stomach, I thought maybe …” but I couldn’t finish the sentence, and Kevin just shrugged and said lightly,
“Maybe she just had a really big burrito.”
“Thank you, Kevin. You don’t think maybe you could take this a tiny bit more seriously?”
Kevin made a face at me and sighed, “What would it matter anyway, Liv? If Morgan is pregnant, so what. What’s it to you? Or Ethan? Or the podcast?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing to me,” I said stoutly, turning away from him, “I was just curious.” And then after a beat I couldn’t help asking, “They’re not married though, right? Just dating?”
Kevin laughed, the sound running down the road and catching up to Kat, Ray, Cole and Morgan who all turned to look at us at the same time. “You worried about them having a baby out of wedlock, Liv?” He asked, still laughing. But when I didn’t immediately answer, he said, “No, they’re not married. They do live together though. So, a bit more serious than �dating’.”
Ray was strolling back towards us now, telling us that Morgan had miraculously agreed to an interview so he was going to go back and get their recording equipment from Kevin’s if that was okay? Kevin agreed and the two of them hopped on their bikes again, about to speed off when I said, “Can I stay? For the interview?”
Ray turned back to me, looking over his shoulder, eyes catching the eerie, watery yellow sunlight as they shifted over towards Cole and Morgan’s house, where Kat was following the two of them inside. “Um, I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“Why? Did Morgan say something?”
“No, it’s not that. I just don’t think Kat would be cool with it. It might influence the interview, stop Morgan from saying certain things. You get that, right?”
I looked over towards the house. All three of them had disappeared inside now, and my gaze was drawn instead, inexorably, towards my old house. It had been repainted, and was now a cornflower blue with a bright white trim, whereas my mom had always insisted on keeping it all white when we lived there. When wisteria draped itself over the porch railings and trim, roses grew up the side, and alliums lined the pathway. I looked up to the second floor window I’d spent so much of my life looking out of, but just like with Jessica Heng’s house, it wasn’t ghostly figures I saw there, but the faint outlines of a desk pushed up to the window and a chair no one was sitting in. I said goodbye to Kevin and Ray and got back on my bike, pedaling back towards the B&B where Daniel was waiting for me.
“One or both of us is going to have to head back to work tomorrow,” Daniel said as soon as I opened the door to our room. The floor and coffee table were littered with papers Daniel had brought with him, but it was the phone in his hand that my eyes were drawn to.
“Why?” I said, “it’s Sunday tomorrow.” It wasn’t unusual for us to work weekends, of course, especially not during a big case, but it was still fairly early days with Reid Murphy’s case, and the all-nighters and long weekends didn’t usually begin until we were a lot closer to the trial.
“Reid’s just been charged with murder. James Asher died late last night.”
“Holy shit,” I said, the breath drawn right out of me.
“Yeah. That was Colin I just spoke to, Karen’s demanding all hands on deck from tomorrow.”
I looked behind me, towards the doorway I’d just walked through, as if, if I hadn’t come through that door, this wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t have had to deal with the push-pull that was currently tugging away inside me. But that was wishful thinking, because Daniel would’ve called me regardless, telling me this news, and potentially cutting short this trip to Twin Rivers.
“You can stay,” he said now. “Stay until tomorrow evening at least, I’ll cover for you tomorrow.”
“You drove me out here, remember?” I said, frustration finding its way through my words. If he hadn’t insisted on coming with me, I’d have my own car here, and I wouldn’t be obliged to travel back to Portland so soon. I could’ve just pretended I’d never heard this news, and stayed here until Monday. But Reid’s charge being upped from attempted murder to murder really did change things, and I couldn’t help thinking about the conversation we’d had just the day before, and how much her life had now changed in the intervening 24-hours.
“How did you leave things with Kat and Ray?” Daniel asked, ignoring my petulance.
“They’re interviewing Morgan, Tyler’s older sister, literally as we speak.”
“You didn’t want to hang around for that?” Daniel asked, confusion creasing his forehead.
“They wouldn’t let me,” I said.
But they did let me listen to the recording later that evening, when both Kat and Ray came over for a drink.
* * *
Extract from transcript of Season 3 Episode 2 of Shadow of a Doubt:
Kat Thomas [voiceover]: If you listen carefully, the names Ethan Hall and Tyler Washington are still everywhere in Twin Rivers. Tyler may have died, and Ethan been convicted nine years ago, but the wounds are still so fresh they have barely begun to heal. It’s years later and while Ethan serves his sentence in the state penitentiary hundreds of miles away, Twin Rivers is still peopled by the players who were most severely affected by Tyler’s murder.
The Hall family may have long since stopped walking its streets, but Tyler’s classmates now teach in the very same high school they all attended, work in the bars and breweries they used to try to sneak into without being carded, manage the sporting goods stores they all bought their climbing gear from. His mother, Maria, is still mayor of Twin Rivers. She took a leave of absence for a while after her son died, but just a couple of years after Ethan was convicted of the murder of Tyler Washington, Maria was standing for election again. And she won.
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