The Sleeping Beauty Killer

19

“Laurie, are you following all of this?”

The question was coming from Angela. Laurie found herself looking at Casey, remembering Grace’s “crazy eyes” comment. Laurie had noticed a spark in Casey’s eyes that she attributed to intelligence and humor. But now she could imagine a fire smoldering behind them.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m following. It’s a lot to take in.”

Casey and Angela had arrived at Laurie’s office with printouts of online comments made over the weekend on stories covering Casey’s release from prison. As far as they could tell, the first one had appeared on a gossip website called The Chatter. It was signed, “RIP_Hunter.” “I found four other RIP_Hunter comments posted on other sites,” Casey said. “They all say essentially the same thing: I’m a narcissist who killed Hunter so no one would know that he was going to break up with me.”

Angela placed a protective hand on Casey’s knee. “Nothing good ever comes from reading the comments section on the Internet.”

“How can I not read it?” Casey asked. “Look what they’re saying about me. I feel like it’s fifteen years ago, all over again.”

“Except you’re not on trial,” Angela reminded her. “You’re free. Who cares what some Internet troll thinks of you?”

“I do. I do, Angela.”

Unfortunately, Laurie knew a thing or two about the “trolling” that took place on the Web. A few years after Greg died, she made the mistake of going to a message board where armchair detectives opined about unsolved murders. She couldn’t sleep for a week after reading the comments of strangers who were convinced that she had hired a hit man to execute her husband in front of their three-year-old son. Laurie flipped again through the comments that Casey had printed out for her.

Anyone who knows Casey… We’re all afraid to talk to reporters in case she comes after us, too…

“He-or I guess she-talks as if they know you personally,” Laurie observed.

“Exactly,” Casey agreed. “And this happened back then, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“During my trial, Internet news coverage was still fairly new. Most people still got their information from papers and television. But there were message boards to talk about my case. You can guess the tone of most of it. But here’s the thing: someone kept posting, pretending they knew me, offering supposedly firsthand information that made me seem guilty. And they were all signed ‘RIP_Hunter.’ ”

“Why do you assume it’s a stranger?” Laurie asked.

“Because no one who knew me would say anything like that, because it’s not true.”

“Not even an acquaintance who didn’t like you?”

Casey shrugged at the idea. “I suppose it’s possible. Or it’s someone who was obsessed with Hunter. The comments would go on and on about how wonderful he was, what a good mayor or even president he would have been. That I had stolen not just his future, but all the good things he would have done for the rest of society. I tried to find the old posts online last night, but didn’t get anywhere. If Hunter had a stalker, he or she could easily have purchased a ticket for the gala that night. Maybe that’s who drugged me, then followed us home. Maybe Hunter got the gun in self-defense and something went wrong.”

“Is there a way for us to prove that someone using that same exact user name was trolling you during the trial?” Laurie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Casey said. “I told my lawyer about it. And one of the jurors even saw one of the worst comments. He sent a note to the judge about it.”

This was the first Laurie had heard of any juror note. “What did the note say?”

“The juror said his daughter was reading about the case on the Internet and tried to talk to him about it. He told her he wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone about the trial until it was over, but then his daughter blurted out that someone on the Internet was saying I had confessed to them. The comment said something like, ‘Casey Carter’s guilty. She told me so. That’s why she’s not testifying.’ And of course it was posted by RIP_Hunter.”

Laurie wasn’t a lawyer, but she was fairly certain that exposure to a comment like that would be grounds for getting the juror dismissed. It could even be the basis for a mistrial. “That’s terribly prejudicial,” Laurie said. “Jurors aren’t supposed to read outside information about the case or speculate about the reasons a defendant doesn’t testify. Not to mention that the author claimed you confessed.”

“Which I absolutely didn’t,” Casey exclaimed.

“I didn’t see anything about a juror note in the documents you gave me.” She certainly would have remembered a note like the one Casey was describing. “Did the juror get excused? And did your lawyer ask for a mistrial?”

Angela jumped in, sounding outraged. “You mean that excuse of a lawyer, Janice Marwood? She didn’t do anything. The judge read a blanket statement to the entire jury, reminding them to avoid any outside influences and to focus only on the evidence admitted in the courtroom. And when Casey asked Janice about it, Janice told her she needed to start trusting her more and not second-guess every strategic decision she made. What kind of strategy is that?”

Laurie remembered Alex describing Janice Marwood as a C-minus lawyer. The conversation reminded her that Casey had offered to sign a waiver of attorney-client privilege so Laurie could contact Marwood directly and have access to the case file. She opened the office door momentarily and asked Grace to work with Jerry to draft the relevant paperwork for Casey’s signature while she was here.

Given the circus atmosphere surrounding Casey’s trial, it didn’t surprise her that crackpots would make outlandish allegations under the Internet’s cover of anonymity, but it seemed to Laurie that she was more troubled by the return of whoever was calling himself or herself RIP_Hunter. The continued use of the same pseudonym was likely intended to rattle Casey psychologically. If so, the move appeared to be working.

Laurie closed the door again.

“Casey, do you know if your lawyer looked into the Internet posts?”

“Who knows?” Casey asked wistfully. “I look back on it now and realize I was much too deferential to her. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been better off representing myself.”

Laurie assumed that there had to be a way to track down the original posts that were written during the trial. As they say, the Internet never forgets. She was jotting down a reminder to call the studio’s tech people for help, when she noticed the time.

“I’m sorry to run out on you like this, but I have a meeting with the head of the studio. If you have time to wait, Grace will have some paperwork for you to sign. One’s the waiver of attorney-client privilege that we talked about. And the other one’s our standard participation agreement. There will be one for you, too, Angela, since you saw Hunter and your cousin just hours before the murder.”

An awkward pause fell between Casey and Angela. “I thought-” Angela began.

“Angela,” Casey said, “I need you to support me for this. You asked me to wait a few days, and I have. I’m more certain than ever. Please.”

Angela grabbed Casey’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “Of course. It’s not the decision I would make, but I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“Fantastic,” Laurie said. “I’d also like to get a list of people who knew you and Hunter as a couple, Casey.”

“Well, there’s Angela, of course. And Hunter’s brother, Andrew, but I can only imagine the horrible things he’ll say about me now. There was a time when I felt like I knew anyone and everyone in New York City, but I lost my friends one by one. When you get arrested for murder, you’re pretty much a pariah.” Casey’s eyes suddenly brightened with a new idea. She turned toward Angela. “What about Sean? The four of us used to double-date all the time. Boy, that was awkward at first.”

The giggle told the story of an inside joke that Laurie wasn’t privy to, but she could feel the camaraderie between these two women. Casey might have been in prison for fifteen years, but Casey and Angela were bonded as if they’d never been apart. Casey leaned forward as if she were telling a secret. “Angela and Hunter were an item before I met him.”

Angela laughed. “To call us an ‘item’ is a gross exaggeration. It was a few dates. Not even-more like platonic plus-ones. If I wasn’t going out with anybody but wanted to bring a date to an event, if he was free, he’d come. I used to do the same for him.”

“Really?” Laurie asked. “Were those dates before or after Hunter met Casey?”

“Oh wow, long before. Casey had just moved to the city after graduating from Tufts. Then a couple years later, she told me she was seeing an amazing man she met at Sotheby’s. When she said it was Hunter Raleigh, I probably threw her for a loop when I told her we’d gone out a few times. Anyway, it was no big deal. It became a running joke that Hunter and I would have made the worst couple. But Sean, that one was serious. I thought we might actually get married,” Angela said wistfully. “But I have no idea how to get hold of him now.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Laurie said. “We’re very good at finding people. What’s Sean’s last name?”

“Murray,” Angela replied. “So do all these questions mean that you will consider using Casey in your next Under Suspicion special?”

“I can’t make any promises until I talk to my boss. But, Casey, I am happy to tell you I’m officially pitching your story as our next special.”

“Really?” She leapt from the sofa and nearly knocked Laurie over with a hug. “Thank you. And thank you, Angela, for making this happen. This is the first piece of hope I’ve had in fifteen years.”

As tears formed in them, Casey’s eyes did not look the least bit crazy to Laurie.