PREVIOUSLY

Téa was sobbing as Todd whipped around to face her. “He killed her, Téa!” he screamed, clenching and unclenching his fists. “My old man bashed Michelle’s brains in with the baseball bat!”

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Téa poured another glass of water as Todd swiped angrily at his eyes with a tissue. He took the glass and drank deeply, glancing up at her. “Are you going to be OK?” she asked, reaching up to stroke his hair. She tried not to be hurt when he pulled away.

“Sure, Delgado, I’m just great. Today has been one big picnic.” He looked away, shadows under his eyes. Téa tried to take comfort in the fact that Todd was again resorting to sarcasm, but she had to admit that she was having a hard time keeping it together herself, given the horror of the recovered memory he had shared with her. She knelt in front of him, lightly placing her hands on his knees. This time he didn’t pull away from her.

“Todd, I am so grateful to you for trusting me with the truth. It’s the greatest gift you’ve ever given me. Suddenly, so much has become clear,” she said with a sigh.

“Clear as mud, Téa,” he said bitterly. “There are still so many questions. Susannah will be shrinking my head until she’s ready to retire.”

“Yes, there is still a lot to sort out,” said Téa. “If you’re ready, I’d like to bring in Sam, Viki, and Susannah, so we can decide what we’re going to do.”

He shrugged. “What’s to be done? Michelle is dead and nothing I do can fix that.” He glared at her. “Now do you understand, Téa? Really understand about why I didn’t want you to get too close? Everyone who ever tries ends up hurt….or worse.” He closed his eyes tightly.

“Todd, your father killed Michelle. You aren’t to blame. And you owe it to her memory to get your life back—to refuse to let Peter Manning take away your every chance at happiness.” She patted his knee and went to the door. Viki, Sam and Susannah followed her back, obviously relieved to see that Todd was in one piece and still responsive. Téa sat down next to Todd, although she didn’t try to touch him this time. “I wanted you all in here,” she said as they took various seats, “because I want to discuss something important with Todd, and he’ll need your advice and help.” She took a deep breath. “Since his recovered memory involves a murder, I think he should make a full report to the police. It’s the only way he’ll be able to put it behind him.”

“Are you out of your mind, Téa?” exclaimed Sam. “This is exactly why I didn’t want him to tell you! Although Todd has no knowledge of it, we have to assume Peter Manning disposed of the body and murder weapon. What do you think will happen if they turn up? The Chicago police will take one look at Todd’s record and he’ll be the one charged in the murder!” He looked around the room for support.

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I have to agree with Téa,” said Viki quietly. “This girl’s family deserves to know what happened to her so they can finally have peace. You’re a fine attorney, Sam, and I’m sure you’ll be able to convince the police that Todd would have nothing to gain by lying at this point. If he were the murderer, why would he bring it up at all? Why not let the secret remain buried? No, I think it is best for Todd to tell Bo immediately.”

“Well, I’m so glad you all have my life so perfectly planned out, but don’t I get a say in this?” said Todd, looking annoyed.

“Sure, Boomer. Sorry,” said Sam sheepishly.

“I don’t want to have to go through another police investigation,” he said with a catch in his voice. Téa and Viki tried not to look disappointed. He glanced around the room, looking closely at the people surrounding him. “So now what?” he asked.

Sam explained how he had called a police contact in Chicago during the time Téa had been talking to Todd. Michelle Phelps had been reported missing by her mother the morning after Todd’s birthday, but the police had considered it a runaway case. Their thinking was reinforced by a positive ID from a wino and a busdriver that Michelle had been the girl they had seen board a bus for Los Angeles on the night in question. Although her mother never gave up hope, the police had never followed up much, assuming Michelle had disappeared into the huge population of nameless teenage runaways living on the streets of LA.

“How could that be?” asked Téa in surprise.

“My old man was good,” said Todd, a disgusted tone to his voice. “A couple of well-placed $20 bills, and he’d make sure no one suspected him.” He looked at Susannah. “What do you think? Should I tell?”

The psychiatrist tried to look impassive. “I can’t give you legal advice, only what I think is best for your recovery, Todd,” she said. “Our therapy from now on will focus on your acceptance of the fact that you are not to blame for what happened and learning to move on and build a future free of the understandable rage you feel. Holding the secret inside again is bound to interfere with that, Todd.”

Todd got up and began to pace around the room. “He’d like for me to keep his secret. He always knew in that sick, twisted mind of his that I could never get up the nerve to tell anyone about what he did, even you, Coach.” He held his head with his hands. “All I keep seeing now is the way she looked…all that blood. He stole her life from her just to hide what a malignant monster he was.” Coming to a stop, he said, “It must be killing her mom not to know…If it was Shorty…” He turned around and locked eyes with Téa. “Get Bo,” he ordered.

“Think about this, Boomer!” said Sam as Téa quickly got to her feet. “You could be spending an awful lot of time behind bars regretting this moment.”

“I regret I was ever born,” sighed Todd, and everyone remained silent in the face of his pain.

A few minutes later, Bo had joined them. He pushed a button on a tape recorder and spoke into it, giving the date and the names of all present. “This is a statement given with no coercion by convict Todd Manning in the presence of his legal counsel,” said Bo in a business-like tone. Todd glared at him, anger and dislike plain on his face. “I understand you recently recovered a memory which may have involved a crime,” prompted Bo.

“Yeah. My old man killed a fourteen-year-old girl with a baseball bat right in front of my eyes. Next question.” Bo’s eyes widened in shock.

“Todd, this angry attitude isn’t going to help you accomplish your goal of achieving closure,” said Susannah gently, giving Bo a chance to recover.

“Oh, nice psycho-speak, Doc,” taunted Todd. “What else do you want to know?” he asked the commissioner with a snarl.

Bo took a deep breath. “Give me the whole story, right from the beginning.” In a stilted fashion, and liberally spicing the narrative with bitter comments, Todd told the story of his fourteenth birthday. Susannah and Sam broke in frequently, prompting him to clarify a point, or giving Bo an explanation of the hypnosis technique used to recover the memory. As Todd began the description of the physical abuse he was forced to endure as a punishment for the gift of a birthday cake, Bo felt an ache begin in his stomach. Todd told him of the blisters he had on both palms after the torture with the lighter. He described a special belt his father had kept in his desk drawer for the whippings--a heavy, metal studded strap that he had split into three lashes at the end so as to cause more pain. Bo fought down nausea as he listened to Todd recite how he had been beaten with both ends of the belt until his back, legs and buttocks were covered with welts and cuts from the buckle. Through the whole account, Todd’s attitude had been surly, as though challenging the commissioner with his pain. Viki and Téa silently dabbed at their tears with tissues, realizing that Todd feared pity from Bo almost more than any legal consequences. But suddenly, after describing how his father had nearly knocked him unconscious with a paperweight, Todd grew silent. He looked at Bo, and without a word, the commissioner began to suspect what was coming next. Fighting down the urge to vomit, he waited for Todd to continue the tale. As the silence wore on, Susannah finally jumped in to explain to Bo that Todd’s memory of events ended there, until hypnosis had brought out the secret that had remained hidden for fifteen years. Looking around the room at the faces of the people surrounding him, Bo suddenly knew what it was that Todd couldn’t bring himself to tell him, and he looked down at the notebook in his hands to hide the distress he felt in his heart.

“All right, so go on, Manning. When did you witness this murder?” he growled. Todd swallowed hard, looking toward the small window and blinking. Viki looked at Bo gratefully as Todd began to describe the final moments of Michelle’s life. Now he couldn’t hide his emotional turmoil and his voice broke and cracked as he told of the sound of the bat hitting his friend’s skull, her fixed expression, the blood pouring out from her wound to spread across the oak parquet floor. Bo fiddled with his pen, letting the horror of the memory fill him, and realizing that he didn’t doubt that such a trauma could be wiped out of a young boy’s mind to spare him the agony of re-living it until he was strong enough to handle it. He noticed Todd had stopped speaking and was staring at a point in space with a look of misery on his face. Bo cleared his throat. “So…OK…you knelt by Michelle and there was no doubt in your mind that she was dead, right?” Todd looked up at him and nodded with vacant eyes. “Then what?” prompted Bo.

“My dad…he said I did it,” said Todd quietly. “He said to look at what I had done because I was a whining baby that had to have a birthday cake. Then he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me across the room. He tossed me into the closet under the stairs and threw the bolt on the outside.” He looked up at the commissioner with a faraway look in his eyes. “Peter used to punish me a lot by locking me in that closet. It was small and completely pitch black inside. It drove me nuts to be locked in there.” Bo was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the small size and gloominess of the cell downstairs where Manning had been locked up at his orders. “I must have passed out then, because all I can remember after that is my dad opening the closet and me knowing that I had to kill him.”

“That’s when I arrived, Commissioner,” said Sam, sniffing loudly to recover his composure. “I brought Todd his birthday present and I heard a commotion inside the house. I went in and found him choking Peter Manning to death. I stopped him, but now I wish I’d been a couple minutes late.” He looked away, blinking back tears.

“You didn’t see any signs of the murder? Think, Rappaport. Obviously you didn’t know about it then, but thinking back can you remember anything out of the ordinary? A spot of blood on Peter’s clothing? Some furniture out of place?” Sam shook his head sadly.

“No, I was focused on Todd and his uncontrollable anger. I didn’t know what a bastard Peter was, and I would cut off my right hand to be able to go back and take Todd out of that horror that night, instead of yelling at him to respect his father and walking away.” He put his head in his hands. Bo swallowed, uncomfortable in the face of the other man’s pain.

“So, let me get the timeline straight. Manning, you said Michelle arrived around 4:30pm, right?” Todd nodded. “And you got to the house when, Rappaport?”

“I think it was around 7:30, Bo,” he choked out. “I remember Lindsay was bathing the kids and I told her I was running out to take Todd his present.” He looked up at Bo through red-rimmed eyes. “She took it with her usual grace and generosity,” he said sarcastically and Téa, Viki and Susannah rolled their eyes. Bo fidgeted.

“So, if we presume it took around half an hour for Peter to arrive and…and…punish Todd, then the murder must have occurred between 5 and 5:30pm. This was in January, so it was dark at that hour, and this timeline leaves Peter about two hours to dispose of the body.” Bo looked at Todd, who was staring into space again. “Look, Manning, I realize you were a boy and you had just been through a terrible ordeal, but can you think of anything that would give us a clue as to where your old man might have dumped the body?” Todd shook his head.

“Bo, until today I didn’t know there was a body to be dumped. I always thought Michelle just moved away or something, probably because she hated me after my old man called her a slut.” At that, Téa reached out and patted his leg. Todd grabbed her hand tightly.

“I accept that, but you are the only one who knew Peter Manning well enough to know how his mind worked. Did he have a boat he could have used to dump her in the lake?” Todd shook his head. “Did he do any construction on the house shortly after? Any work in the garden?” Todd shook his head, then started. His eyes grew wide.

“Wait,” he said breathlessly. “I think I remember something. The next spring, after the snow melted, my old man had the gardener put in a new flowerbed or something. I remember thinking it was weird because he never went out in the backyard and we never had anyone over for barbecues or anything.”

“Describe it,” said Bo tersely.

“It…it was over against the south fence, next to the Easton’s place. One whole Saturday he was out there, ordering around the gardener and not even coming in the house for a beer. Usually, Pedro just planted what he wanted and my old man didn’t give a damn. But this time he was telling him exactly where to put the plants and everything.”

“Can you remember anything else? How about the size and kind of the plants? Were they annuals or perennials?”

Todd looked at the commissioner with contempt. “I don’t know, you idiot! They were shrubs or something. They got real big over the next couple of years, like so dense you couldn’t get in between them anymore.” He stared into space, trying to recreate the scene in his mind. “I remember they smelled real nice in the spring, and I used to like to sit out there once in a while. It seemed peaceful.”

Viki suddenly sat up in shock, the color draining from her face. “Todd, can you remember if the shrubs had flowers on them?” she said in a strained voice. “Can you remember the color?”

“Yeah, they were kind of pretty, actually, they had these big purple spikes on them…” He sat bolt upright, struggling for breath. “Oh my God,” he whispered. He looked at Susannah as though pleading for help. “Lilacs. Susannah, they were lilacs!” He covered his face with his hands. Around the room, silence reigned as the significance of the memory reverberated through the occupant’s minds. Susannah got up and moved next to Todd. She gently stroked his head, pulling his hair away from his face.

“Bo, he can’t take much more,” she said quietly. “Don’t you have enough information to get started?”

“Uh…yeah….sure Susannah.” He looked at Todd, uncertain how to proceed. “What do you want to do?” he asked, deferring to the psychiatrist.

“Todd, are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” she asked gently. He shook his head.

“No, I’m used to it here,” he said weakly. “The only thing I hate worse than prison is hospitals,” he continued, trying to make a joke. Susannah opened her medical bag, rummaged through and pulled out a pharmaceutical sample packet containing a capsule.

“I want you to take this. It will make you sleep.”

“No! The nightmares…”

“Trust me. This pill will put you into such a deep sleep you won’t be able to dream. I’ll be waiting for you as soon as you wake up tomorrow, and we can begin to deal with the memory and build a new life for you, Todd. It will take a lot of hard work on your part, but I think we can do it.” He looked at Sam, Viki and Téa.

“You’ll all be here tomorrow?” he asked plaintively. They all answered in the affirmative, Téa squeezing his hand. Taking a deep breath, Todd grabbed the glass of water and took the pill. Susannah helped him to his feet as Bo called the guards.

“Take it easy on him,” cautioned Bo as the two policemen came forward to escort the prisoner. “No cuffs,” he said quickly as one of the cops reached behind him. Susannah gave her card to a guard, asking to be paged if Todd so much as mumbled in his sleep. Sam and Viki stepped forward and Todd allowed them to hug him goodbye. Finally, Téa approached and she and Todd stared at each other for a long moment, sharing the connection that had always been between them.

“I’m sorry for putting you through all this, Delgado,” said Todd quietly. “We aren’t married anymore. You shouldn’t have to deal with my messes.”

Téa stepped forward to caress his chin. “I’m not your wife, it’s true. But I still care about you, Todd, and part of me always will. I know you can put this behind you and build a new, good life for yourself and Starr.” Todd reached up and covered her hand with his own. Then taking a deep breath, he pulled away and walked through the office door with his head held high, the guards following behind.

After the others had left, Bo sat in his desk chair, overwhelmed by the day’s revelations. Suddenly, he grabbed the phone and quickly dialed in a number. “Hello, Pa?” he said when Asa picked up. “Oh, nothing,” he said feeling tears prick his eyes. “I just wanted to tell you something I haven’t said in a while.” He swallowed hard. “Thanks for being a great dad when I was a kid.”

TO BE CONTINUED

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