12.
Slowly, I turned to look at Jeannie. She stood next to me, her hands now pressed to her face, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
I nodded toward the article, still in the box. ACCUSED MURDERER LISA MACPHERSON ASSUMED DEAD. “What is this?” My voice was a whisper.
She reached for the box and gently worked it free of my grip. “He never wanted you to know,” she said, setting it back on the ledge. “I was hoping to get that box out of here before you stumbled across it. He would have wanted me to do that, but I wasn’t sure where he hid it, and I’ve been so worried that you’d…” She shook her head. “Just close it up and throw it away, Riley. That’s what he would have wanted.”
She was talking quickly, trying to get my mind off what I’d seen. I reached into the box and pulled out the article that called my sister a murderer.
“I don’t understand.” I read the headline again. “I don’t understand at all.”
“I know,” she said. “I know what you were told. That she killed herself because she was depressed and overworked. Your parents never wanted you to know the truth.”
“What truth?” I lifted the box again, carried it to the open rolltop desk, and sat down. I picked up article after article and that word kept jumping out at me from the headlines: Murder, Murder, Murder.
“That’s why they moved here after Lisa’s death.” Jeannie walked to the piano bench and sat down heavily. “They wanted to get you and Danny away from all the accusations and everything. They wanted to get you away from a place where you’d always be known as a murderer’s sister.”
I looked over at her. “She did it? She actually killed someone? Who? Why?”
“It was an accident.” Jeannie pressed her hand to the top of her head in aggravation. “Oh, your father would be so upset with me.”
“Tell me!” I said.
“She was about to go on trial,” Jeannie said, “and she believed she’d end up in prison for the rest of her life. The prosecution was going for first degree murder—‘planned and premeditated’—and that would have meant life in prison if they could prove it. But I think the real reason she killed herself was that she couldn’t live with what she’d done. Accident or not, she’d killed someone. Lisa was only seventeen—a child!—and she couldn’t get past the guilt.”
“My God.” I felt my whole body sag with the weight of the news. “Who was it?” I asked again. “Who did she kill?”
“His name was Steve Davis,” she said. “He was her violin teacher.”
I gasped, remembering the tall, slender conductor in the tapes. Was that who Jeannie was talking about?
“She was angry with him because he’d hurt her chance to get into Juilliard, but she never would have killed him over that,” Jeannie said. “She was such a quiet, gentle girl. She never would have intentionally killed anyone over anything. It was all so unbelievable.”
It was unbelievable, and I had so many questions. I paged through the articles until I found one of them with a picture of Steve Davis. He was definitely the man from the tapes. I pressed my hand to my mouth as I began to read the article to myself, while Jeannie sat quietly on the bench, waiting for me to learn the truth.
Lisa Beth MacPherson, the seventeen-year-old violinist awaiting trial in the murder of her former violin teacher Steven Davis, is missing and presumed dead. Ms. MacPherson’s yellow kayak was found in the frozen waters of the Potomac River near Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria Monday morning, and her white Honda Civic was parked at the side of the road south of the Belle Haven Marina. Her book bag and a wallet containing her driver’s license and more than thirty dollars in cash were in the vehicle. A blue jacket thought to be hers was found tangled in the icy reeds nearby.
Her father, Frank MacPherson, contacted police around eight o’clock Monday morning after finding an apparent suicide note in her bedroom. The contents of the note have not been made public, but a police spokesperson stated that the note indicated MacPherson’s intention to kill herself, and her father identified the handwriting as hers. MacPherson’s mother and younger siblings were out of town Monday morning.
Lisa MacPherson was out on bail in the October murder of Davis, who was forty-two at the time of his death. She was to be tried as an adult, and the trial was to begin this Wednesday. She was expected to testify that the shooting was accidental. MacPherson had planned to apply to the Juilliard School of Music for the fall 1990 semester, and Davis allegedly sent a derogatory letter about her to a colleague at the school, a fact prosecutors were expected to introduce as a possible motive. Davis had instructed MacPherson for most of her career, although at the time of the incident, she was studying with National Symphony violinist Caterina Thoreau.
Acquaintances stated that MacPherson had been extremely depressed in the months since her arrest. Upon hearing of her student’s probable suicide this morning, Caterina Thoreau made this statement to the press: “This is tragic news. Lisa is the most gifted student I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach and her future was bright. I’ve always believed that the shooting was accidental, and given Lisa’s sensitive nature, I can imagine how difficult it was for her to live with what happened. She held (Davis) in high esteem.”
Davis, who lived in McLean with his wife, Sondra Lynn Davis, was teaching at George Mason University at the time of his death. The couple had no children.
The search for MacPherson’s body continues.
I stared at the article, trying to comprehend it. “I always thought she killed herself because she was overwhelmed by how stressful her career had become and because she was worrying about getting into Juilliard, and…” My voice trailed off. I looked across the room at Jeannie, holding up the article I’d just read. “This is for real?”
Jeannie nodded. “I’m afraid so. I knew her quite well, Riley, and she was such a nice girl—studious and always with an eye toward her future. Your mother homeschooled her, as I’m sure you know, but she had friends even though she wasn’t in a regular school. Other violin students, that sort of thing. She had a few rough patches…” She looked into the distance as if remembering some hardship of Lisa’s. “But what kid doesn’t?” she asked.
“Do you think she killed him because of the letter to Juilliard?” I asked.
“No, of course not! I believe that, for whatever reason, she got hold of your father’s gun. Maybe to show him? I don’t know. And she—”
“To show him? That doesn’t make sense. Was it just lying around? It sounds like she was angry and intentionally shot him.” My exalted image of my sister was rapidly deteriorating. I felt as if I was losing her all over again.
“Frank blamed himself,” Jeannie said. “He always has. His service revolver was locked up in the den, but Lisa knew where it was. This was up in your Virginia house. Maybe Lisa just threatened Steve with the gun. Maybe she had lost her mind a little bit over that letter and she was asking him to make it right. That’s what I’ve always pictured. She threatened him and maybe there was a scuffle and it went off. I don’t know. No one will ever know. All I know was that it was heartbreaking. Your mother never really recovered from all she went through.”
“I’m in shock,” I said honestly. “Is this why Daddy retired early from the Marshals Service?”
“Well, he was technically too young to retire, but it’s why he left, yes. He and your mother wanted to move someplace where they could start over completely fresh for you and Danny.”
“But Danny would have been six years old when Lisa died. He would have had some idea of what was going on, wouldn’t he? He would have known why she really killed herself.”
Jeannie looked old all of a sudden, her blue eyes tired. “You’re right,” she said slowly, “and I think they did your brother a huge disservice.” She rubbed her temples. “I hate to criticize them, because I know they were surviving the best they could and they probably weren’t thinking straight at the time. But they made up their minds that you and Danny should grow up not knowing about the murder, and so if Danny asked questions about things he’d heard, or things other kids said, your mother and father would tell him those kids didn’t know what they were talking about. And like I said, they moved down here right away and did a pretty good job of starting fresh. The shooting and Lisa’s suicide were national news, but somehow the kids down here didn’t get the message, and to the best of my knowledge they left Danny alone about it. So he ultimately bought into the whole ‘she killed herself because she was depressed’ idea, same as you.” She pressed her palms together in her lap. “And if he remembered things other children said, your parents would say he must be misremembering. I think that was a little cruel to him. It must have made him feel crazy sometimes. I think that’s what led to him being so … disturbed. He had a lot of problems when they moved here.”
“He was always getting into trouble at school,” I said, remembering what my brother was like by the time he reached his teens. “He’d get into fights and wouldn’t do his homework. And he argued with Mom and Daddy nearly every night.” I remembered the fights. I’d cower in my room while my parents and Danny went at it, shouting and arguing about his grades and his foul language and the kids he hung out with. I’d been eleven years old, and I’d missed the big brother who’d doted on me and had always seemed like my protector. I’d put the pillow over my head to block out the noise.
“His school recommended that he see a counselor,” Jeannie said, “but your parents wouldn’t hear of it. They were afraid he’d say something about … the shooting and that Lisa killed herself, and then it would get out in New Bern and defeat the purpose of moving.”
That really got to me. “How terrible for him,” I said. “He needed help and they kept it from him.” The thought of my brother’s confusion tore me up. No wonder his feelings toward our parents were so bitter. I couldn’t blame him. As far as I knew, they never did get him help. How could they trust him to hold tight to the family lies?
I wasn’t sure who in my family I hurt worse for. The brother I’d adored, being told one thing while knowing another. My father, whose guilt over the gun must have haunted him his entire life. Or my mother, who lost her oldest child. And then there was my sister, the ethereal creature I’d seen on the tapes, struggling to live with the guilt of having taken a life. I dropped my head against the back of the chair and shut my eyes. “I wish I didn’t know any of this,” I said.
But now that I did know it, I had to know it all.