They said they found my blood and urine at the scene. But that can’t be true. None of it can be true. Please believe me.
“The knife, as well as a wineglass on the nightstand, held her fingerprints,” Walt said, turning his head to look at Avery as they were huddled over the desk. “All of it put her at the scene.”
Avery looked back to the photos. “So, at this point in the crime, when Victoria cuts herself, it was suspected that Cameron Young was already dead?”
“Yes. The theory was that Cameron Young was strangled during some sort of S and M practice. He had whip marks all over his body, so we know whatever was going on that night was quite violent. After he was dead, Victoria Ford attempted to set up the scene to look like a suicide.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?”
“The wounds on Cameron Young’s neck, according to the medical examiner, suggested that he had been strangled with the length of rope initially. Autopsy findings showed that he had suffered what’s called short-drop asphyxiation—congestion in his lungs, petechiae in the eyelids and cheeks, and a host of other findings. We can go over the autopsy results and I can walk you through it. But it was clear that the cause of death was ligature strangulation, possibly the result of erotic asphyxiation. Then, after he was dead, his body was thrown over the balcony. That resulted in what’s called long-drop trauma to his neck—deep ligature gouges and a severed spinal cord. But those wounds were determined to have occurred after he was already dead.”
Avery ran her hands over the photos to organize her thoughts.
“So Victoria kills Cameron Young because he won’t leave his wife.”
“And because he got his wife pregnant after he made Victoria have an abortion.”
Avery slowly nodded. “And how did you learn about the abortion?”
“We subpoenaed her medical records, and then she admitted during an interview that she had had an abortion.”
“And during the abortion there was a complication?”
“Correct,” Walt said. “The procedure left her unable to have children in the future.”
“And this was the DA’s argument for why she killed him?”
“It was.”
“Okay,” Avery said. “So Victoria kills him. Then she comes up with the idea of making it look like a suicide. She ties a second, longer rope around his neck and runs to the closet to secure the rope to the safe, the heaviest thing in the room.”
“Correct.”
“As she is rushing to set the stage of suicide and slice the rope so she can tie it to the safe, she cuts herself with the knife.”
“Correct.”
Avery studied the photo of the bloodied carpeting. “Then she ties the rope and dumps the body over the balcony?”
“Yes, that was the assessment of the crime scene and the prosecution’s argument.”
“Why did she leave the knife?” Avery asked. “If Victoria was setting things up to look like suicide, why would she leave a knife with her fingerprints next to the safe?”
“She panicked,” Walt said with certainty. “Maybe she assumed it would be linked to Cameron. It came from his own kitchen. If we’re arguing that she was thinking logically at this point, we’d also ask why she would leave a wineglass with her fingerprints on the nightstand. Or her urine in the toilet. But we never claimed she did any of this perfectly. Quite the contrary. Victoria Ford was very bad at murder. At least, she was at covering it up.”
Avery continued to shuffle through the photos. She lifted the image of Cameron Young’s bloated body hanging in the backyard.
“Victoria weighed one hundred twenty pounds. The argument was that she dragged a dead man who weighed a hundred pounds more than her across the bedroom, lifted him up, and dropped him over a four-foot balcony. Not an easy task.”
“But not impossible. Especially for someone supercharged with adrenaline.”
Avery watched Walt as he spoke. She thought there was something about his tone, or in his demeanor, that suggested he was less convinced with the case and its conclusions today than perhaps he had been twenty years ago. She doubted that it was her first few questions that caused his skepticism, and Avery wondered if there was something else he knew about the case.
She pointed at the box. “Let’s go through the rest of it.”
CHAPTER 38
Manhattan, NY Saturday, July 3, 2021
IT WAS AFTER 9:00 P.M. WHEN THEY DECIDED TO TAKE A BREAK. AVERY’S eyes were burning and a dull headache had formed at the base of her skull from reading through so many documents, police reports, and interview transcripts. They rode the elevator to the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors into the evening warmth. Neither had eaten lunch so they headed to Public House where they sat at the bar and ordered burgers and beers. Saturday night and the place was empty.
“Have you ever seen the city like this?” Walt asked.
“Never. I’ve heard stories about how empty it gets over the Fourth. Some of my friends used to love to stick around while everyone else flooded out of the city. When I was a kid I spent my summers in Wisconsin.”
“Wisconsin?”
“Yeah. My parents sent me to camp each summer. Eight weeks of sailing camp in northern Wisconsin. So as a kid, I was always gone over the Fourth. When I was older we used to go . . .” Avery caught herself, her two worlds colliding again. “We had a house in the Hamptons. We always spent the Fourth of July there.”
“Your parents?”
Avery nodded.
“Do they still have it?” Walt asked. “I mean, if you have access to a house in the Hamptons it begs the question why you’re spending the weekend with me.”