Mitch returned a shrug, but he assumed it was so.
“Who’s your mommy? Do you know her name?” Johnson asked.
“Rachel … Rachel’s my mommy.”
“Do you remember hurting the victim?”
Mitch noted how she didn’t use the word “murder,” and called Rachel either “Mommy” or “victim”—all very intentional, he thought, all designed to trip her up, blow the cover, expose the lie. This is a girl playing games, Johnson was thinking. But Mitch knew better.
Isabella returned a blank stare, not because she was refusing to answer, but because, as Mitch had speculated, “victim” was not a word she’d learned by age four.
Instead, Isabella gave what she thought would be a pleasing response. Children that age want to please figures of authority, attorneys included.
She said, “I wanted Mommy to move away from Daddy because he was always mean to her … he hit her. He hated her. That’s why I set the fire. I thought we’d have to go away, far away, but Mommy said Lynn was home so she got a new place to live close by.”
“Your daddy hit your mommy?”
Navarro snapped to his feet. “Objection! This is a mockery!” he shouted.
“You will lower your voice, sir, and sit down,” Lockhart scolded.
Isabella said, “He did. He hit her. He made her scared.”
“Did he ever hit you?” Attorney Johnson asked.
Isabella’s gaze went back to her lap and she nodded solemnly. “Yes,” she said softly.
“So you know hitting and hurting someone is wrong?”
She was still trying, Mitch had to give her credit for that.
“Yes, I know it’s wrong, you shouldn’t ever hurt someone.”
“But you hurt your mommy?”
Isabella shook her head vigorously. “No, I did not,” she said, sounding on the verge of tears, her lips pressed together in a pout, cheeks sunken in. “I love my mommy. I wouldn’t hurt Mommy.”
“Did your daddy love your mommy?”
She shook her head again. “He said he hated her. He said it all the time.”
“Did your daddy live with you?”
“No. He only came over when Mommy made him come see me, or she wanted money from him. He never wanted to see me.”
“Do you know why your father didn’t like you?” Johnson asked.
“Because I was alive,” Isabella said woefully. “He said he didn’t want me.”
“He didn’t want you to be alive?”
“He didn’t want me to be born. He told Mommy that. That’s why he never gave me a birthday present. Chloe was my sister. He didn’t want her either, but she died in Mommy’s belly and he said he was glad. He said he wished it happened to me, too. That’s why when he came to get me, I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Mommy and Daddy were yelling and fighting about money using loud voices. Daddy came to get me when I was in the tub and he said I was a very bad girl and he wished I was never born.”
“Why did he come to get you?”
“He wanted to take me to Mommy. He let me put on pajamas and he pulled me by my arm and it hurt. He took me to Mommy in the basement. She had blood all over her face. I think he hit her. He told Mommy that she made him do it because she wouldn’t do what he wanted. Then he put her head in a bucket of poison.”
Mitch thought: Ammonia. A common cleaning supply stored in a basement and easily accessible.
“He made me watch. He said he was going to do it to me, too, if Mommy didn’t leave for good. Mommy couldn’t breathe right. So I hit my daddy on his back and told him I hated him and he got really mad and he hit my face. He called me a bad girl again. He tied up my hands with rope and said he’d put my head in the bucket next if Mommy wasn’t gone and gone for good. Then Mommy started to cry.”
Grace looked like she’d had her head put in that bucket as well, and Attorney Johnson appeared out of sorts, her attack failing.
Navarro was back on his feet, incensed. “Objection!” he shouted, his face smeared with rage. With his suit jacket off, Mitch could see the V-shaped sweat mark running down his back. It was hot as Hades in here, but Mitch’s blood felt ice cold.
“This is completely out of control,” Navarro shouted.
To Mitch’s utter surprise, Navarro came out from behind his table to approach the witness in a threatening manner. This got Jessica Johnson’s attention, and Judge Lockhart’s as well. A court officer, wearing a crisp white shirt like those of the Edgewater guards, even took a step towards Navarro. There was a fire in Navarro’s eyes, a simmering rage that seemed out of proportion to his frustration over the proceedings. He should have been pleased, because as hard as Johnson was working to trip up this witness, the jury was getting a firsthand look at someone, a teenage girl talking like a four-year-old, who clearly was meeting the criteria for criminal insanity.