Hot house, p.22
Hot House, page 22
“See…what exactly? Was So-Sasha growing something there?”
I turned to watch the exchange, thankful that Derek had remembered the name Sasha in time. The boy stopped moving to observe him. “If you knew her, you’ll know which one is hers.”
The property appeared to be one large rectangle connected to a smaller rectangular area by way of a narrow, shaded footpath. We followed the path and reached a smaller area of gray-tented structures held up by poles. I looked inside each of them as we passed, seeing nothing but tiny sprouts so far. I suggested we split up to cover more ground.
“Orchids over here,” Derek said, “and more orchids.” I stopped and crossed my arms to think about what we were doing. “More over here, wow these are beautiful. But I don’t— Wait.”
I turned. “Do you see something?”
“I didn’t think blue orchids grew naturally. I thought they were injected with dye.”
That’s when I realized we were on the right track.
“What?” he asked when I met him in front of a white-tented dome.
“There’s one,” I corrected, remembering my research, “native to Australia. A natively-grown blue orchid called Blue Lady.” I set my bag down on the dirt and crouched low to see inside the tent. Of course, in homage to her favorite painting, Sasha had planted a single row of twelve blue lady orchids in a bed of what looked like a lot of soil additives.
“She’s got some mulch and corn husk fiber in here,” Derek said, fingering a handful of the topsoil. “That’s good, they need quick drainage.”
“How deep is the soil bed do you think?”
“Eight inches or so, maybe ten.” He fumbled with something on his belt buckle and pulled something out of his back pocket. “This,” he said of a Leatherman-looking tool, “has a retractable metal tape measure, which might fold if the soil’s hard but could help determine whether there’s something other than soil down there.”
I moved my purse out of view and rolled up my sleeves so we looked a little more like legitimate gardeners. Derek dug gently into the soil beneath the first six plants using his hands and the tape measure. Then he laid flat on the ground and shimmied under the planter to see underneath.
“Are you napping down there?” I asked him. “What are you doing?”
“This planter is built on top of a sort of platform. It’s raised up about a foot. I’m trying to see if—hold on, I got something.”
I stood and brushed some loose dirt off the back of my pants and arms. “Something that doesn’t belong in a bed of soil?”
Derek nodded. He had both hands in the soil on each side of the first orchid in the row. “I’m touching the left and right side of what feels like a book,” he whispered. “Do you want me to pull it out?”
I shook my head. Making note of the first orchid in the row, I made sure Derek replaced the soil so it looked exactly as it had before we got there. A light-haired man approached from the other side of the property.
“Put your jacket on, quickly, button it, and cross your arms so he can’t see the dirt on your hands,” I said.
“Who are you talking about?” Derek blurted, but he did as I asked.
“Hey guys, can I help you? You just looking around?” the man’s easy expression failed to mask his suspicion.
“That would be great,” I said. “We’re working in conjunction with the LAPD on the case of Sasha Michaud. Her roommate told me she maintained a garden here.”
The man nodded and stepped back a few paces. “And I see you found her plot, or one of them anyway. She’s got some sunflowers growing in the adjacent area, as well as tomatoes and I think mint. I’ll leave you then, let me know if you need any help.”
“Who’s maintaining her plots now?” Derek asked. “Will someone else take them over eventually?”
“I’ve been looking after her orchids and one of our project leads is taking care of her other plots. We hadn’t quite decided what to do with them, longer term, I mean.”
We’d found what we were looking for. In theory, I didn’t need the second copy of the book because they were supposed to have been duplicates. But now at least I knew where to get it if I needed it. The exact location of this second book, especially since I now had the first one, felt like a spicy little insurance policy, which I might need sometime. Who knows? I remembered the key that Ivan had given me, which would presumably unlock both of the diaries, as well as the note, ‘Page 47, that Elise Turner had written on the cup of her black sesame ice cream.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-ONE
I texted Hannah from the parking lot outside the gardens.
Hey Hannah, I’ve been thinking about you. How are you doing? Have time for a visit? I’d like to see you and make sure you’re okay.
I’m good, in my room, smells like paint in here LOL.
Did you paint over the message?
Yes.
Good. I’ll be there in a few.
Derek and I knocked on Hannah’s already open door a few minutes later. I got a momentary sick feeling in my stomach as my eyes landed on that reddish-brown spot on the carpet.
“It’s open,” Hannah said in a quiet voice.
“Are you sleeping?”
“No, just lying down.” Hannah Moraga sat up when she saw Derek. “Oh, sorry, I thought you were here alone,” she said to me.
“Do you want me to wait outside?” Derek asked.
“No, it’s fine. Watch out for the wet paint.”
“What are you doing inside? It’s such a beautiful day,” I said.
“Is it?”
“Isn’t it? I peered at her and noticing how her eyes looked red and puffy. “Did you just paint this?” I pointed to the wall.
“Yeah. Couldn’t stand it anymore. What are you guys doing down here?”
“Mainly checking on you,” I said.
The girl pinched the bridge of her nose, no doubt to stop herself from crying. “I’m leaving soon.”
“To go out?” I asked.
She wiped her eyes and reached for a tissue from the almost empty box on the floor. “To go back to UCSF. I can’t be here anymore.”
“Wow, that’s a big decision. I admire your courage.”
“Courage,” she snickered.
“We need to ask you some questions, Hannah. Do you feel up to it right now?”
“Sure, why not.”
I looked at Derek and he nodded, giving me tacit support to jump in while we still had the chance. I motioned to him to sit on Sophie’s bed across from Hannah, pointing to the wet wall.
“Who shot the MultiMe video?” I asked.
Hannah recoiled slightly at hearing this. “How did you find out about that?” She glanced from Derek to me and back.
“The file was on Sophie’s old laptop, in the encrypted drive. Remember?”
She sat fully upright now, wriggling her legs onto the floor and maneuvering her feet into a pair of slippers, as if something in our conversation had changed. “Right,” she said. “Adam recorded it.”
“Whose idea was it to make that video?”
She looked at me like I had six heads. “There was a whole series of them. Only the last one was on her laptop. They made the first one to bring visibility to Sophie’s illness and because Adam thought it would be good therapy for her to talk to others about it. To stop her from feeling shamed by her illness and bring support. There’s a whole community of people with DID-type symptoms who share stories and ask questions and make videos to chronicle the progress of their illness and, sometimes, recovery.”
“Were you aware of this illness before you came to school here and met Sophie?”
“No.”
I took a minute to pause and rethink my next question. “Hannah, did you ever think that Adam had a different relationship with Sophie than he had with Sasha?”
An exaggerated, raised brow and the eyes widened. “You could say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Adam was,” she sniffed and grabbed another tissue, “he was in love with Sasha.”
“Not Sophie?”
She stared. “He hated Sophie.”
“How could that be? He’d been treating both of them since she was a little girl.”
Derek turned toward me. “Was Sasha in love with Adam?” he asked Hannah.
“I think she was a little afraid of him, or maybe overwhelmed by him. He thought she liked the attention, but she was uncomfortable with the fact that he was her therapist and that he was so much older than her.”
“Were they sleeping together?” I asked the million-dollar question.
“A few times, yeah.”
“And it was consensual?” Derek interjected.
Hannah nodded. “For the most part. They made a date. I helped her pick out what to wear, we picked out lingerie in case it got to that point, but I think she knew she could say no if she wanted to.”
“Okay, let’s go back to what you said a minute ago. You said Adam hated Sophie. How do you know this?”
“He was mean to her. He yelled at her in their sessions. She said he was disrespectful, argumentative, that he refused to treat her, only wanting to give her higher doses of medication to dope her out so Sophie was less likely to emerge.” Now a flood of tears came, and she was out of tissues. I pulled my emergency stash from my purse and passed it over.
“I’m right here Hannah, no one’s gonna hurt you. Now, can you tell us what happened the night Sophie died? Were you there?” I asked, carefully.
“Yes,” she answered in a different voice now, a deeper, more mature voice.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They shot the last video. By this time there were a series of them, I think eight or ten, thousands of YouTube followers posting comments, questions, and words of encouragement every time they uploaded a new one. Sophie talked about sex, intending to make fun of Adam because of his infatuation with Sasha. She taunted him throughout the whole video. You guys saw it. It was bad. He attacked her, and she said his name on camera. He shot it with Sophie’s phone, Sophie emailed the file to me, and I uploaded it that same night. She asked me to. Adam found out we’d posted it.” Hannah shook her head. “He knew it would be incriminating to him, so he told me he’d kill me if I didn’t pull the file off YouTube. He made me remove all of them that night.”
“He threatened you?” I asked. “Did you tell anyone about this?”
“Only Sophie.”
“How long was that last video up before you removed it?” Derek asked.
“It was filmed in the afternoon on the night she died, so, a while. Five or six hours at least,” Hannah replied. “Sophie was upset when I told her Adam threatened me. She became withdrawn and took a nap, which was usually what happened when she went from one to the other. She woke up as Sasha, and had a date already scheduled with Adam for that night.”
“Did she go?” I asked. “And where was it?”
The eyebrows again. “His place, if you know what I mean. He told her he was cooking dinner for her, but she knew that meant skipping dinner and having sex.”
“How did she feel about seeing him after what had happened earlier in the afternoon?”
“She wanted to talk to him about me and was gonna use their date as an opportunity.”
“Did she tell you what happened?” I asked.
“Some. She said they did eat dinner, but halfway through the meal he got up and started rubbing her shoulders and that led to the next phase of the date. They had sex, and then had an argument.”
“Meaning Adam and Sasha had sex, right?” Derek asked.
No answer.
“Did they argue about you?” I asked.
“No. About Sophie,” Hannah said, her voice now completely composed. “They had sex and when they were finished, Sasha started laughing like Sophie laughed in the video, and Adam sort of snapped. So, Adam thought he had been having sex with Sasha, who he was in love with, but he was really having sex with Sophie, who he hated. She’d tricked him to try to punish him.”
“For what?”
“Sophie was jealous that Adam was in love with Sasha but not with her. He hated Sophie and tried to punish her, and she was so hurt by that. Adam broke Sophie’s heart.”
“What happened next?”
“Sophie confronted him about his feelings for Sasha and for her. It turned into a screaming match, and Sophie laughed at him again.”
I kept my eye glued to Hannah, wondering how she could be so composed.
“He choked her to stop her from laughing. Sophie had slipped a steak knife off the dinner table, and she stabbed it in his side. His hands were still around her throat at this point, and he kept squeezing. He must have known if he took his hands away, she’d stab him again. So, he strangled her and the knife eventually fell to the floor. In his house. That’s where this happened.”
I grabbed Derek’s forearm and dug my fingers into the sleeves of his jacket.
“How do you know all these details if you weren’t in the room with them? Were you there that night, Hannah?” Derek asked.
Hannah got up, pulled another box of tissues from her closet, grabbed her phone off the desk, and started looking for something. “It starts here.” She handed me the phone, to which a video was already cued up, so she must have been watching it before we got here.
“Sophie recorded the whole thing.” Hannah’s voice was ice.
“Did Adam know that?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. You can see when you watch it that she started recording as soon as she picked up the steak knife from the dinner table, almost like she knew this might happen.”
We scrunched close together to watch the video in silence. “How did you get this?” I asked her.
“I didn’t hear from her when I was supposed to, so I went over there. Both of them were gone but the door was unlocked, so I went in. Sophie’s phone was on the floor facedown under the table and covered by the leg of a chair that had tipped over. There was blood all over the carpet. I grabbed the phone and ran out of there and sent myself the video when I got home.”
“You still have her phone?” Derek asked.
Hannah pointed to her closet and nodded. “That spot on the carpet, it’s blood. I think it was on my shoe when I was walking around in his house. I tried to clean it, but it just made it worse. That’s why I can’t stay in this room anymore. Or this school. Or this town. I’m outta here.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO
Derek and I delivered Hannah to Ivan so she could provide an official statement. Considering her breadth of knowledge of Sasha, Sophie, their illness, and their relationship with Adam Bouvet, she would undoubtedly be a significant witness in the trial. We also handed in Sophie’s phone as material evidence against Adam.
Even though her real name was Sasha, I still thought of her as Sophie. Out of homage to her and what she endured in her short life, I went to the Visual Arts building again to see her exhibit. Troy Garrity had returned, explaining away his sudden disappearance as a spontaneous surf trip to the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii. He walked me through all of the new exhibits in the space, ending with Sophie’s The Blue Lady. She transfixed me the same way she had the first time I saw her. Only this time I realized all the different versions and colors cascading down from the ceiling represented the different sides to Sasha Michaud’s fragmented personality. Sasha, Sophie, perhaps there were others only she knew about.
On our recommendation, Ivan picked up Reggie for the second time, holding him at the station in an interrogation room. Two officers stood outside. Ivan was in the room with Reggie, prepared to record the conversation. I entered first, giving Reggie as much of a reassuring smile as I could muster. He nodded back, then his eyes dropped when he saw Derek. We sat on each end of the table with Ivan, and Reggie sitting across from each other. Seating selection, an overlooked social dynamic. Thanks to Derek, I’d never think of it the same way again.
“Hey, Reggie,” I started, nodding to Ivan to start the recording. “You know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“Not really, no.”
“I think you need to tell us why you’ve been sending blackmailing texts to Judge McClaren for the past few months, why you put threatening notes in my mailbox, and in Elise Turner’s, your ex-wife’s, as well.”
Blinking, headshaking, palms raising. “Why would—”
“Cut the crap, Reggie, we know it was you,” I shouted.
“I don’t think—”
“Reggie,” I said in a louder voice now, Ivan staying quiet to watch the drama unfold.
“Dude, you left your fingerprints all over the place. It was very sloppy work,” Derek interjected.
“I-covered-every-track,” Reggie said with clenched teeth, realizing only after that he’d just admitted to a felony. He gave Derek a death stare and kept his eyes fixed on him while his hands clenched into fists. The room was a vacuum, no one breathed.
I sat back and looked at the ceiling. “Reggie, why?”
He relaxed and took a breath, looked around the room, and seemed to realize there was no way out now. “He never paid me any money.”
“You mean Judge McClaren?” I asked for clarification.
Reggie nodded.
“Say it.”
“Yes, Judge McClaren never paid me anything,” Reggie clarified.
“So essentially your blackmail attempts failed,” Derek said.
“Why?” I pressed.
Reggie hung his head. “It was Elise’s idea, as a sort of sting operation.” He looked up now, at each of us one by one. “Elise felt that if I could get the judge to pay me, it would be evidence on his part that he was trying to cover up the crime of murder.”
“Of Sophie Michaud?” I asked, surprised.
“Right. In my text messages, I said I had evidence that he killed Sophie and unless he paid me, I would go to the police and he would lose everything.”
“But you didn’t have evidence, and neither did Elise.” I waited for his response.
He shook his head. “No, and in fact, as Elise continued investigating, she realized the killer was more likely Adam Bouvet, but by then I’d already started down the path, so to speak.”
