In a quiet voice, I asked why the Dunns waited so long to come forward. That had all been explained on previous visits, but I brought it up again as a way to stall, if only for a moment longer, since I sensed what was coming next. In the same gentle way he spoke to me that first night at the hospital, Detective Rummel described once more how neither of the Dunns thought about that evening for a long time afterward. Why would they? But that changed when Mrs. Dunn opened the paper a few weeks before and saw a photo of a man who looked familiar. She kept staring at that photo, finally showing it to her husband who immediately recalled the odd-looking man from the restroom, the same man who went on to save his wife’s dog in the snowstorm.
When Rummel was done telling that story again, the air around us fell quiet. I thought of Cora, who had escorted Rose and me to meetings at the station when she was first assigned as my caseworker. Legally, she was not allowed in the interview room, and though I could request a break to see her at any time, I never did. Some part of me wished to see her now, however, if only for the distraction of her mindless rambling and cheerful assurances. But after Halloween night, Cora stopped coming by. Instead, Norman had been reassigned as my caseworker. The most he offered by way of explanation was that the Child Protective Services Department sometimes changed its mind, and this was one of those times.
“So what does this mean?” I asked now.
“It means we keep going forward just the same until the trial,” Louise told me. “But our case is going to be significantly more challenging. Like you said, though, we have the evidence at the church as well as a clear motive. And the Dunns are elderly and may prove unreliable as we dig deeper. The man working the register that night has an arrest record. Nothing major, marijuana possession years back. But that’s something we can use to discredit him in the jury’s eyes. Most important, we have your eyewitness account. And when a girl who lost her parents gets up on that stand, when she points her finger at Albert Lynch and tells the court exactly what she saw—”
“Or thought she saw.”
For months, those words had been waiting, sealed inside, like those baby birds in the whitewashed houses of my mother’s childhood. Now that I’d set them free, a strange, humming silence followed. In the midst of that silence, only Dereck’s voice could be heard in the hall, his words unclear, though the warm, meandering way he spoke had a way of soothing me before Detective Rummel said, “Excuse me?”
More quietly this time, I said, “Or thought she saw.”
“What do you mean, ‘thought she saw’? We’ve gone over every detail of that night dozens of times, Sylvie. We took your affidavit. We filed it in court. We have a man sitting not twenty miles from here, behind bars for the last nine months, awaiting trial on account of what you told us.”
Beneath my flimsy tank top, my heart beat hard and fast. The shhhh grew louder, muddling even my own shaky voice when I said, “I know what I told you. But it was late. It was dark in that church. I had just woken up. And I was afraid.”
Rummel leaned forward, pressed his hands to the table, the same hands that held mine during those visits at the hospital, the same that filled my plastic cup with water and adjusted my pillows. They seemed like someone else’s now. “So what exactly are you saying, Sylvie?”
“I’m saying that maybe I was wrong,” I told him, tears welling. “Maybe I didn’t see him.”
Louise came closer, her shoulder pads shifting again as she leaned down and spoke up at last. “If that’s the case, this about-face in your testimony is quite serious, seeing as you’ve never so much as hinted at any doubt before.”
“But that’s because you made it seem like it had to be him. I insisted, because I felt pressured to give the right answer, the one that you and everybody else wanted.”
“Are you saying we pressured you?”
Hands shaking, I reached for my journal, opened it and read, “ ‘All we need to make certain a jury puts him away for a long time and that your parents rest in peace is your testimony.’ ” I flipped to another page. “ ‘Your account is the key ingredient to our case. It will bring all the evidence together for your parents’ sake.’ ” Again, I turned. “ ‘We have Mr. Lynch’s prints inside the church. We have the details of his threats toward your mother and father. All evidence points to his guilt. But we need you to seal the deal and bring justice in your parents’ honor. Isn’t that what you want?’ ”
“Maybe we did tell you those things,” Louise said. “But never—not one single time—did we encourage you to lie.”
“I didn’t lie!” I shouted, my voice cracking, tears spilling down my cheeks. “I told you what you wanted to hear! I told you what would help my parents! I gave you the right answer because I didn’t want to be wrong!”
“All right,” Rummel said, pushing back his chair, standing up too. “Let’s everybody calm down. Let’s everybody take a breather.”