Vince woke early on Sunday morning.
He was seated on the front step outside his house, the canopy of the porch overhang shielding him from a light, cool rain.
Rain was in some ways Vince’s best friend. The bond had formed on his first rainy day without sight, just moments after he’d stepped out the front door and stood on the top step. His mind was gearing up for the usual mental exercise, the memorized flower beds, shrubbery, and footpaths that defined his morning walk. But the rain changed all that. It was the sound of falling rain that brought the outdoors and all of its shapes, textures, and contours back into his world. Where there was once only blackness, suddenly there was water sloshing down a drainpipe. The patter of raindrops on the broad, thick leaves of the almond tree. The hiss of automobiles on wet streets. Even the grass emitted its own peculiar expression of gratitude as it drank up the morning shower. A sighted person would have heard nothing more than rainfall in its most generic sense, a white noise of sorts. To Vince, it was a symphony, and he reveled in his newly discovered power to appreciate the beautiful nuances of each and every instrument. Nature and his old neighborhood were working together, calling out to him, telling him that everything was still there for his enjoyment. He heard the drumlike beating on his mailbox, the gentle splashing on concrete sidewalks, and even the ping of dripping water on an iron fence that separated his yard from his neighbor’s. Rain, wonderful rain. It made him smile to have such a friend. Friends were not always so loyal and dependable.
Especially the ones named Swyteck.
“Did you finally get to sleep, honey?” asked Alicia. She was standing in the foyer behind him, speaking through the screen door.
“Not really,” he said.
Swyteck’s cross-examination on Friday had been nothing short of torture, and it had left him tossing and turning for the past two nights. Once upon a time, Officer Vincent Paulo had been a criminal defense lawyer’s worst nightmare on the witness stand. He’d anticipate their every move and thwart their clever tactics. His first experience under oath and without sight had left him doubting his ability to do real police work.
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Alicia.
“Tell that to the state attorney. McCue gave me an earful after the hearing.”
“Tell him to go to hell.”
“He had a point,” said Vince. “I blew it when I called my answering machine to record McKenna’s words. Calls to nine-one-one are recorded as a matter of course and are admissible as evidence in court. If I had simply stayed on the line with the nine-one-one operator and let McKenna talk into the phone, we wouldn’t have to worry about this hearsay objection.”
He could hear her sigh. “Vince, you loved McKenna, and she was literally bleeding to death in your arms. How on earth is anyone supposed to be thinking clearly about the legal admissibility of a recording under those circumstances?”
The rain continued to fall. Vince heard a car pass on the wet pavement. The screen door squeaked as it opened; even that sounded different in the rain. Alicia knelt behind him, and her arms slipped around his shoulders, the silk sleeve of her robe caressing his chin. Things had been a little rocky between them after she’d challenged him-albeit gently-as to his whereabouts on that Saturday night. In anger he had phoned Chuck Mays so that he could tell her directly that they were hanging out by his pool until nine o’clock, nowhere near the Lincoln Road Mall. After Friday’s hearing, Alicia did a 180, seeming to appreciate how sickening it was for Vince to have to provide an alibi to his wife while Jamal Wakefield walked free.
“I’ve been thinking about that recording,” said Alicia.
She was still kneeling behind him, her arms around him and the side of her face resting between his shoulder blades.
“What about it?” asked Vince.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of… weird? McKenna’s response, I mean.”
“In what way?”
She hesitated, obviously sensitive to how painful this subject was for Vince. “You said, ‘McKenna, tell me who did this to you.’ And she said, ‘Jamal.’ ”
“What’s weird about that?”
“Nothing. But then you asked, ‘Your boyfriend?’ And the natural response to that would have been a simple ‘yes.’ But she said, ‘My first.’ ”
“So?”
“Why would she say that?”
Vince considered it. “I don’t know. She was confused, dying. Maybe it was part of her shock and disbelief that her first love killed her.”
Alicia was silent. She stayed just as she was, and the warmth of her body and the rhythm of her breathing felt good on his back.
“I suppose,” she said.
The rain started to fall harder-so hard that it was no longer possible to discern the sound of water falling on leaves from the patter on pavement. It all sounded the same-like too much information, the details completely drowned out. It was no longer a friend.
“What are you thinking?” asked Alicia.
He could barely hear her over the roar of the downpour. They were protected by the overhang, but huge drops splashed up from the steps and onto his slippers.
“Nothing,” he said, but that was a huge lie. Vince was thinking about the final text message that McKenna had sent to Jamal and that Vince had intercepted: FMLTWIA. With his help, it had remained secret. Only over his dead body would it someday land in the newspapers.
Vince would always be McKenna’s friend.
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
He rose and took her hand. Together they retreated indoors, the screen door slapping shut on the falling rain.