Jack Newlin had no choice but to frame himself for murder. Once he had set his course, his only fear was that he wouldn't get away with it. That he wasn't a good enough liar, even for a lawyer.
The detectives led Jack in handcuffs into a small, window-less room at the Roundhouse, Philadelphia 's police administration building. Bolted to the floor at the centre of the room was a straight-backed steel chair, which reminded Jack of the electric chair. He looked away.
The walls of the room were a dingy grey and marred by scuff marks as high as wainscoting. A typewriter table topped with a black Smith-Corona stood against the side wall, and in front of the table sat two old wooden chairs. One of the chairs groaned when the heavyset detective, who had introduced himself, as Stan Kovich, seated himself and planted his feet wide. 'Sid-down, Mr Newlin,' Detective Kovich said, gesturing to a wooden chair across from him.
'Thank you.' Jack took a seat, noting that the detective had bypassed the steel chair, evidently reserved for murderers who weren't wealthy. Special treatment never suited Jack. A book-keeper's son, he had worked his way through school to become an estates lawyer who earned seven figures, but even his large partnership draw remained a pittance in comparison to his wife's family money. He had always wished the Buxton money away, but now he was glad of it. Money was always a credible motive for murder.
'You want a soda? A Coke or somethin'?' Kovich asked. The detective wore a short-sleeved white shirt, light for winter-time, and his bullish neck spread his collar open. His shoulders hunched, powerful but gone to fat, and khaki-coloured Sansabelts strained to cover his thighs. A bumpy, working-class nose dominated his face and he had cheekbones so fleshy they pressed against the rims of his glasses, large gold-rimmed aviators. Their bifocal windows magnified his eyes, which were earth brown and addressed Jack without apparent judgment.
'No, thanks. Nothing to drink.' Jack made deliberate eye contact with Detective Kovich, who was closer and seemed friendlier than the other detective. Propped against the wall on a thin Italian loafer, he was black and hadn't said anything except to introduce himself. Hovering over six feet tall, rangy and slim, the detective had a face as narrow as his body, a small, thin mouth, and a nose a shade too long in proportion to high cheekbones. Dark, almost-onyx eyes sat high on his face, like judges atop a dais.
'Let's start by you telling me something about yourself, Mr Newlin.' Kovich smiled, showing teeth stained by coffee. 'By the way, just for the record, this interview is being videotaped.' He waved vaguely behind the smudgy mirror on the wall, but Jack didn't look, steeling himself to be convincing in his false confession.
'Well, I'm forty-three. I'm a partner at Tribe amp; Wright, heading the estates and trusts department. I attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Yale, and Girard before that.'
Kovich nodded. 'Wow. Impressive.'
'Thank you,' Jack said. He was proudest of Girard, a boarding high school established by the trust of Stephen Girard for fatherless boys. Girard was a Philadelphia institution. He never could have made it to Yale or any other university otherwise.
'Where you from?'
'North Philly. Torresdale.'
'Your people still up there?'
'No. My father died a long time ago and my mother passed away last year, from lung cancer.'
'I know how that goes. I lost my mother two years ago. It's no picnic.'
'I'm sorry,' Jack said. No picnic. It was such a rich understatement, his mouth felt bitter. His mother, gone. His father, so long ago. Now Honor. He cleared his throat. 'Maybe we should move on.'
'Sure, sure.' Kovich nodded quickly. 'So, you're a lawyer at the Tribe law firm. Pretty big outfit, right? I read somethin' about them in the paper, how much they bring in a year. They're printin' money.'
'Don't believe everything you read. Reporters have to sell newspapers.'
'Tell me about it.' Kovich laughed, a harsh guttural noise that burst from his throat. He turned to the other detective, still standing against the wall. 'Right, Mick?' he asked.
The detective, who had introduced himself as Reginald Brinkley, not Mick, only nodded in response, and the pursing of his lips told Jack he didn't welcome the attention. Brinkley, also middle-aged, wore a well-tailored brown sport coat with a maroon silk tie, still tight despite the late hour and affixed to his white shirt with a gold-toned tie bar. His gaze chilled the room and the uptilt to his chin was distinctly resentful. Jack didn't know what he had done to provoke the detective and only hoped it worked against him.
'So, Mr Newlin,' Kovich was saying, 'hey, can I call you Jack?'
'Of course.'
'You got any other family, Jack? Kids?'
'One.'
'Oh yeah?' Kovich's tone brightened. 'What flavor?'
'A girl. A daughter.'
'How old?'
'Sixteen.'
'I got a sixteen-year-old!' Kovich grinned, showing his bad teeth. 'It's a trip, ain't it? Teenagers. You got just the one?'
'Yes.'
'Me, I got a thirteen-year-old, too. Also a girl. Houseful of blow dryers. My wife says when they're not in the bathroom, they're in the chat rooms. Yours like that, on the computer?'
Jack cleared his throat again. 'I don't mean to be impolite, but is there a reason for this small talk?' He didn't want to go there and it seemed like something a murderer would say.
'Well, uh, next-of-kin notification is our job. Standard procedure, Jack.'
He tensed up. He should have thought of that. The police would be the ones to tell Paige. 'My daughter lives on her own. I'd hate for her to hear this kind of news from the police. Can't I tell her myself?'
'Sixteen, she's on her own already?'
'She's legally emancipated, with a promising career.'
'Legally emancipated, what's 'at?'
'My wife and I filed papers, I drafted them myself, essentially saving that she's legally an adult. She lives on her own and earns her own money. She's a model, and, in any event, I really would prefer to be the one to tell her about… her mother.' He paused. ‘I could call her after we talk. I mean, I do want to make a full confession, right now.'
Kovich's lips parted slightly, and behind him, Brinkley's eyes narrowed.
Jack's mouth went dry at their reaction. Maybe he'd gone too fast. 'I mean, I feel awful, just awful. A horrible thing happened tonight. I can't believe what I've done. I want to get it off my chest.'
Kovich nodded encouragingly. 'You mean you want to make a statement?'
'Yes. A statement, that's right.' Jack's voice sounded authentically shaky, even to him.
'Okay. Good. Bear with me.' Kovich turned toward the table, his chair creaking, and picked up a form, thick with old-fashioned carbons. He crammed it behind the typewriter roll, fighting a buckle in the paper. The detective wasn't overly dexterous, his hands more suited to wrestling fullbacks than forms. 'Jack, I have to inform you of your Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent, you -'
'I know my rights.'
'Still, I gotta tell you. It's the law.' Kovich finished a quick recitation of the Miranda warnings as he smoothed out the uncooperative form, rolled it into the machine, and lined up the title, INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW RECORD, HOMICIDE DIVISION. 'You understand your rights?'
'Yes. I don't need a lawyer. I wish to make a statement.'
'You mean you're waiving your right to counsel?' Kovich nodded again.
'Yes, I'm waiving my right to counsel.'
'Are you under the influence of drugs or alcohol at this time?'
'No. I mean, I had some Scotch earlier. Before.'
Kovich frowned behind his big aviators. 'You're not intoxicated at the present time, are you?'
'No. I only had two and that was a while ago. I'm perfectly sober.'
Kovich picked up another form, two pages. 'Fine. You gotta sign this, for your waiver. Sign the first page and then you have to write on the second, too.' He slid the sheets across the table, and Jack signed the top page, wrote 'yes' after each question on the second page, and slid both back. 'We'll start with your Q and A, question and answer.' Kovich turned and started to type numbers in the box on the right, CASE NUMBER. 'It's procedure. Bear with me, okay?'
'Sure.' Jack watched Kovich typing and had the sense that confessing to murder, even falsely, could be as mundane as opening a checking account. A bureaucratic occasion; they typed out a form in triplicate and processed you into prison for life.
'State your name and address, please.'
'My name is Jack Newlin and my address is 382 Galwith's Alley.' Saying it relaxed him. It was going so well, then the black detective cleared his throat.
'Forget the Q and A for a minute, Mr Newlin,' Detective Brinkley said, raising a light palm with long, thin fingers. He straightened and buttoned his jacket at the middle, the simple gesture announcing he was taking charge. Tell us what happened, in your own words.'
Jack swallowed. This would be harder to do. He tried to forget about the hidden video camera and the detective's critical eyes. 'I guess I should tell you, my marriage hadn't been going very well lately. For a year, actually. Honor wasn't very happy with me.'
'Were you seeing another woman?' Detective Brinkley's question came rapid-fire, rattling Jack.
'Of course not. No. Never.'
Kovich, taken suddenly out of the picture, started typing with surprising speed. Capital letters appeared on the black-ruled line: NO. NEVER.
'Was she seeing another man?'
'No, no. Nothing like that. We just had problems, normal problems. Honor drank, for one thing, and it was getting worse.'
'Was she alcoholic?'
'Yes, alcoholic.' For the past year Jack had been telling himself Honor wasn't an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, as if the difference mattered. 'We fought more and more often, then tonight she told me she wanted to divorce me.'
'What did you say?'
'I told her no. I was shocked. I didn't want to. I couldn't imagine it. I love – I loved – her.'
'Why did she ask you for a divorce?'
'Our problem always came down to the same thing, that she thought I wasn't good enough for her. That she had married down, in me.' That much was true. The sore spots in their marriage were as familiar as potholes in a city street and they had been getting harder and harder to steer around.
Brinkley nodded. 'What started the fight tonight?'
'Tonight, we were supposed to have a dinner together, just the two of us. But I was late.' Guilt choked Jack's voice and it wasn't fraudulent. If he had gotten home on time, none of this would have happened, and that was the least of his mistakes. 'She was angry at me for that, furious, and already drunk when I got home. She started shouting as soon as I came in the door.'
'Shouting what?'
That I was late, that I didn't care about anybody but myself, that she hated me. That I'd let her down. I ruined her life.' Jack summoned the words from the myths in their marriage and remembered the details of the crime scene he'd staged. He'd found his wife dead when he came home, but as soon as he realized who had killed her and why, he understood that he'd have to make it look as if he did it. He'd suppressed his horror and arranged every detail to point to him as the killer, including downing two full tumblers of Glenfiddich in case the police tested his blood. 'I poured myself a drink, then another. I was getting so sick of it. I tried for years to make her happy. No matter what I did I couldn't please her. What happened next was awful. Maybe it was the Scotch. I don't often drink. I became enraged.'
'Enraged?' Brinkley cocked his head, his hair cut short and thinning, so that his dark scalp peeked through. 'Fancy word, enraged.'
'Enraged, yes.' Jack willed himself to go with it. 'I mean, it set me off, made me angry. Her screaming at me, her insults. Something snapped inside. I lost control.' He recalled the other details of the faked crime scene; he had hurled a crystal tumbler to the parquet floor, as if he had been in a murderous rage. 'I threw my glass at her but she just laughed. I couldn't stand it, her laughing at me like that. She said she hated me. That she'd file papers first thing in the morning.' Jack wracked his brain for more details but came up empty, so he raised his voice. 'All I could think was, I can't take this anymore. I hate her threats. I hate her. I hate her and want her to shut up. So I picked up the knife.'
'What knife?'
'A butcher knife, Henkels.'
Kovich stopped typing, puzzled. 'What's Henkels?'
'A fancy knife,' Brinkley supplied, but Kovich only frowned.
'How do you spell it?'
Jack spelled the word as Kovich tapped it out, but Brinkley wasn't waiting. 'Mr Newlin, where was the knife?' he asked.
'On the dining room table.'
'Why was a butcher knife in the dining room?'
'It was with the appetizer, a cold filet mignon. She must have used it to slice the filet. She loved filet, it was her favorite. She'd set it out for an appetizer. The knife was right there and I took it from the table.'
'Then what did you do?'
'This is hard to say. I mean, I feel so… horrible.' Jack's face fell, the sadness deep within, and he suddenly felt every jowl and furrow of middle age. He didn't try to hide his grief. It would look like remorse. 'I… I… grabbed the knife and killed her.'
'You stabbed your wife to death.'
'Yes, I stabbed my wife to death,' Jack repeated, amazed he could form the words. In truth, he had picked up the bloody knife, unaccountably left behind, and wrapped his own fingers around it, obliterating any telltale fingerprints with his own.
'How many times?'
'What?'
'How many times did you stab her?'
Jack shuddered. He hadn't thought of that. 'I don't know. Maybe it was the Scotch, I was in kind of a frenzy. Like a trance. I just kept stabbing.' At the typewriter, Kovich tapped out, JUST KEPT STABBING.
'And you got blood on your suit and hands.'
'Yes.' He looked down at the residuum of Honor's blood, spattered on a silk tie of cornflower blue and dry as paper between his fingertips. He had put the blood there himself, kneeling at her side, and the act had sent him to the bathroom, his gorge rising in revulsion.
'Did she scream?'
'She shouted, I think. I don't remember if it was loud,' he added, in case they interviewed the neighbors.
'Did she fight you?'
He tasted bile on his teeth. He imagined Honor fighting for her life, her final moments stricken with terror. Realizing she would die, seeing who would kill her. 'She fought hard, but not well. She was drunk. She couldn't believe it was happening. That I would really do that to her.'
Then what did you do?'
'I went to the phone. I called nine-one-one. I told them I killed my wife.' Jack caught himself. 'Wait, I forgot. I went to the bathroom and tried to wash up, but not all the blood came off. I realized there was no way I could hide what I'd done. I had no plan, I hadn't thought it out. I didn't even have a way to get her body out of the house. I realized I was going to get caught. There was no way out. I vomited into the toilet.'
Brinkley's eyes narrowed. 'Why did you try to wash up?'
'I was trying to wash the blood off. So I wouldn't get caught.'
'In your own bathroom?'
'Well, yes.' Jack paused, momentarily confused, but Brinkley's glare spurred him on. 'It's not like I was thinking clearly, as I said.'
Brinkley leaned back against the wall again. 'Let's switch gears, Mr Newlin. What time was it when you came home?'
'Just before eight. I was supposed to be there at seven but I got held up.'
'What held you up?'
'I stopped to talk with my partner. The firm's managing partner, William Whittier.' Jack had been on his way out when Whittier had stopped him to discuss the Florrman bill. It had taken time to get free, then it was pouring outside and Jack couldn't get a cab. Ironic that the most mundane events, on the wrong night, had ended Honor's life and changed his forever. 'I suppose I should have called to say I was late, but I didn't think it would matter. The maid is off on Monday, and we usually eat a late dinner.'
'How did you get home?'
'I took a cab.'
'What kind?'
'I don't remember.'
'Yellow? Gypsy?'
'No clue. I was distracted. The traffic was a mess.'
Hunched over the desk, Kovich nodded in agreement. That accident on Vine,' he said, but Brinkley stood up and stretched, almost as if he were bored.
'Not every day we get somebody like you in here, Mr Newlin. We get dope dealers, gangbangers, rapists. Even had a serial killer last year. But we don't often see the likes of you.'
'What do you mean, Detective? I'm like anybody else.'
'You? No way. You're what we used to call the man who has everything.' Brinkley rubbed his chest. That's what doesn't make sense, Mr Newlin. About what you're telling me.'
Jack's heart stopped in his chest. Had he blown it? He forced out a single word: 'What?'
'You hated your wife enough to kill her, but you didn't want to give her a divorce. That's psycho time, but you're no psycho. Explain it to me.' Brinkley crossed his slim arms, and fear shot through Jack like an electrical current.
'You're right,' he said, choosing his words carefully. 'It doesn't make sense, if you look at it that way. Logically, I mean.'
'Logically? That's how I look at it, Mr Newlin. That's the only way to look at it.' Brinkley smiled without mirth. 'People sit in that chair all the time and they lie to me. None of them look like you or dress like you, that's for damn sure, but you can lie, too. You can lie better. You got the words for it. Only thing I got to tell me if you're lying is common sense, and what you're tellin' me don't make sense. It's not, as you say, logical.'
'No it isn't.' Jack caught sight of Honor's blood on his hands, and it was so awful, so impossible to contemplate, that it released the emotions he'd been suppressing all night. Grief. Fear. Horror. Tears brimmed in his eyes, but he blinked them away. He remembered his purpose. 'I wasn't thinking logically, I was reacting emotionally. To her shouting, to her insults. To the Scotch. I just did it. I thought I could get away with it, so I tried to clean up, but I couldn't go through with it. I called nine-one-one, I told them the truth. I did it. It was awful, it is awful.'
Brinkley's dark eyes remained dubious, and Jack realized his mistake. The rich didn't behave this way. They didn't confess or blubber. They expected to get away with murder. Jack, who had never thought like a rich man and evidently never would, knew instantly what to do to convince him: 'Detective, this interview is over,' he said abruptly, sitting up straighter. 'I want to call my attorney.'
The reaction was immediate. Brinkley's dark eyes glittered, his mouth formed a grim line, and he fell into his customary silence. Jack couldn't read the detective completely, but sensed that he had acted in character, in a way that comported with Brinkley's world view, and that would ultimately put his doubts to rest.
In contrast, Kovich deflated at the typewriter, his heavy shoulders slumping, his big fingers stilled. 'But, Jack, we can settle this thing right here and now. Make it real easy.'
'I think not,' Jack said, turning haughty. He knew how to give orders from hearing them given. 'I insist on my attorney. I should have called him in the first place.'
'But all you gotta do is sign this statement. Once you do that, we're all done here. It'll be easiest on you and your daughter this way.' Kovich's eyes burned an earnest brown. 'I'm a father, too, Jack, and I know how it is. You gotta think about your kid now.'
'No, I've said much too much already. I want my lawyer and we'll take care of notifying Paige. I will not have you at my daughter's home this late at night. It's harassment. I'll handle the notification through my attorney.'
Detective Brinkley buttoned his jacket with nimble fingers. 'Better get yourself a good mouthpiece, Mr Newlin,' he said, his face a professional mask. He pivoted on a smooth sole, walked out of the interview room, and closed the door behind him.
Once Brinkley had gone, Kovich yanked the sheet from the typewriter roll with a resigned sigh. 'Now you did it. You got him mad, askin' for a lawyer. After judges, there's nothin' Mick hates more than lawyers.'
'But I am a lawyer.'
'Like I said.' Kovich laughed his guttural laugh and turned to Jack as warmly as he had at the beginning. 'You sure you don't wanna talk to me? I'm the nice one. I like lawyers. It's realtors I hate.'
'No thanks,' Jack answered, and managed a snotty smile.
Mary DiNunzio smoothed a strand of dark blond hair into her French twist and slumped in a swivel chair beside a conference table cluttered with manila folders, trial notes, and stamped exhibits. It was after business hours, but Mary was still at the law offices of Rosato amp; Associates, watching her friend Judy Carrier work and feeling sorry for herself. The Hemex trial was finally over and its aftertaste had left Mary hating her job again. Being a lawyer was even worse than people thought it was, if that were possible. 'You sure I can't be a pastry chef?' she wondered aloud. 'I like cake better than law.'
Judy tucked a manila folder into an accordion file. 'Are you going to help or are you going to whine?'
'What do you think? Besides, right now I'm busy supervising. That folder doesn't go where you put it. That's a notes folder, so it goes in the notes accordion.' Mary pointed at the accordion standing at the far end of the table. There. Number eleven.'
'Oh, really?' Judy picked up another folder and dropped it into the same accordion. Her lemony hair, cut like a soup bowl when she stood upright, hung down when she lowered her head, reminding Mary of a dinner plate. It didn't help that Judy wore silver earrings made of spoon handles. Mary was getting hungry until she noticed her friend slide another folder into the wrong accordion.
That's wrong, too. That's Gunther deposition exhibits, so it goes in number ten. And aren't you going to fix the other one?'
'No. See? This is a folder of draft contracts, so it belongs in the second accordion.' Judy dropped another folder into the accordion. 'I put it in the fifteenth. Ask me if I care.'
'Don't you?'
'Not in the least.' Judy looked up and smiled. Her bright blue eyes smiled, too, emphasized by the cobalt of a large corduroy smock that billowed around her tall, sturdy form. Judy climbed rocks and engaged in other activities Mary found self-destructive, but she was still shapely to Mary's eye, though she dressed to hide it. And Judy's fashion sense wasn't the only thing about her that mystified Mary.
'Why are you messing up the files, girl?'
'Because it doesn't matter. That's the great secret in law firms, even one as cool as ours. Once you send the file to the records room, it doesn't matter if it's out of order. Nothing ever happens.'
That's wrong. People look at the file again.'
'For what?'
Mary had to think. To prepare the bill, for one thing.'
'Nah, they just make that up. You know it and I know it.' Judy crammed the next folder into the thickening accordion. 'See? I file at random. I put the folder wherever there's room. I always do it this way after trial. Nobody ever came after me. The world didn't end.'
'You mean all this time we've been packing up after trial, you haven't done it right?'
'Never.' Judy grinned. 'Didn't you ever wonder why I always finished ahead of you?'
Mary's mouth dropped open. 'I thought it was because you're smarter.'
'I am, and this is an example of it. It's dopey to put them away right.'
'But you're supposed to.'
'Oh, you're supposed to.' Judy misfiled another folder. 'It's like permanent records.'
'I don't want to hear anything bad about permanent records. My permanent record was spotless.'
'Well, mine wasn't and we ended up in the same place, which proves my point. Permanent records and mattress tags. Nothing ever happens. They're just lies they tell you to keep you in line.'
'Like heaven.'
'I knew you would say that. For a lapsed Catholic, you're not that lapsed.'
'Mea culpa.' Mary crossed her legs and fiddled idly with cultured pearls that peeked from an ivory blouse she wore with a fitted grey suit. She was on the short side, but had a neat, compact figure and avoided lots of great ravioli to keep it that way. 'Maybe we should go get dinner. Have a nice salad.'
'Girl food.' Judy reached for an empty accordion. 'Let me finish disorganizing the file, then we can celebrate our victory in the most boring case of all time.'
'Don't jinx it. You don't know that we won.'
'Yes I do. We were less boring than they were. Bennie couldn't be boring if she tried.'
'Bennie Rosato, our boss? Are you kidding? Ever hear her talk about rowing?' Mary gestured at the walls of the conference room. One wall was glass, facing the elevator bank, but the end walls, of eggshell white, were decorated with Eakins prints of rowers on the Schuylkill River. Beside them hung photographs of Penn crews rowing past Boathouse Row, the bank of colorful boathouses lining the river. 'She's boring as hell when she talks about rowing. Also golden retrievers. I'm sick of golden retrievers because of Bennie. If she could put a golden retriever in a boat and row it around, she'd have it made.'
Judy stopped misfiring. 'If you actually got off your butt and did a sport, you'd understand why Bennie likes to talk about hers. As for the dog stuff, I see that too. Bear's a good dog. I've been baby-sitting him for a week and he's fun.'
'Good. Have a great time, just don't tell me about it. Or show me dog pictures.'
'You like dogs.'
'No, I like ravioli, and I'm still pissed that you screwed up our files.'
Judy ignored it. 'My family had Labs and Goldens growing up and they were great. I'm thinking about getting a puppy.'
'Wonderful. See it between trials. Pat it on the head.' The phone rang on the oak credenza, and Mary looked over. 'Do I have to get that?'
'Of course.' Judy gathered a stack of folders and dumped them into an empty accordion. 'I'm busy wreaking havoc, and you're closer.'
'But it's after hours.'
The phone rang again, and Judy scowled. 'Get it, Mare.'
'No. I'm beat. The voice-mail's on.'
Rrring! 'Get it!' Judy said. 'You'll feel guilty if you don't. Don't you feel guilty already?'
'Shame on you, guilt-tripping a Catholic. How low will you go?' Mary grabbed the receiver. 'Rosato amp; Associates… I'm sorry, Bennie's out of the country for the entire month. Yes, there are associates of hers here.' She slipped a small, manicured hand over the phone and caught Judy's eye. 'Man needs a criminal defense lawyer. Should I tell him wrong number?'
'Very funny. Ask him what the charge is.' So Mary asked, and Judy read the hue of her friend's face. Tell him we'll take it,' she said quickly, but Mary's brown eyes flared in alarm.
'A murder case? You and me? By ourselves? We can't do that! We don't have permission, we don't have authority, we don't have expertise, we don't have any of the stuff you're supposed to -'
'We'll apologize later. Tell him yes.'
'But we don't know what we're doing.' Mary's hand stiffened over the receiver. 'We've only done two murder cases and in one we almost got murdered.'
'I thought you grew up last case.'
'Two steps forward, one step back.'
'You told me you weren't afraid anymore.'
'I lied. I was born afraid.'
'Tell him we'll take it, dufus!' Judy dropped the file and crossed to the credenza. 'Gimme that phone.'
'No!' Mary clutched the receiver to her chest. 'We can't do it! We're not smart enough!'
'Speak for yourself,' Judy said, and snatched the phone away.
Ten minutes later, they were in a cab jostling down Market Street toward the Roundhouse. The rain had stopped, but the streets were wet and the gutters full of cold, rushing water. Leftover Christmas garlands wreathing the streetlights blew in the wind, and the lights from the Marriott, The Gallery mall, and the shops lining the Market reflected on the slick asphalt in colored orbs, like Christmas lights. To Mary, the city seemed shut down, with everybody recovering from the winter holidays. Even the cab driver was unusually quiet, but Mary and Judy more than made up for him. They had yammered since they left the office. Only God knew how many trial strategies, settlement conferences, and oral arguments had been discussed in the backseats of the city's cabs. By now cabbies could have law degrees, set up practice, and improve the entire profession.
Mary slumped in her trench coat. 'I've never tried a murder case, first-chair.'
'So what? We were second-chair to Bennie.'
'He called Bennie,' Mary said.
'No, he didn't. He called the firm. You and me have more criminal experience than anybody at the firm except her.'
Two criminal trials? Please. This is bait-and-switch, with lawyers instead of air conditioners.'
'So tell him.' Judy shrugged, the gesture buried in a white down coat that encircled her like a sugar-frosted doughnut. 'Let the man make his choice. He wants another lawyer, he can get one.'
'I will tell him,' Mary said, as if Judy had disagreed. She looked out the window and watched the city sleep. 'How did we get into this?'
'We like to have fun.'
'I hate fun. I hate rowing and goldens and fun of all sorts.'
'Buck up, Mare. We can handle it. Just use your common sense. Now, who'd Newlin kill? Allegedly?'
Mary blushed, suddenly glad it was dark in the cab. 'Uh, I don't know. I didn't ask.'
'Smooth move.' Judy laughed, but Mary didn't.
'You could've asked him.'
'I thought you knew already.'
Mary closed her eyes, briefly. 'I'm not competent to do this. I'm screwing up before I meet the client. Is that even possible?'
'It's a land speed record,' Judy answered, without rancor. 'You and me, we get it done, don't we?'
Mary couldn't smile. Malpractice wasn't funny, and murder even less so. She looked out the window as the cab pulled up at the Roundhouse. The rain began to fall again, a freezing down-pour, and somehow Mary wasn't completely surprised.
Paige Newlin had finally stopped crying and snuggled against the chest of her boyfriend, Trevor, in the folds of his grey Abercrombie sweater. It was scratchier than her own cashmere sweater set, but she needed the comfort. Paige was still tweaking, trying to come down from the drugs. It was the first time she had tried crystal and she never thought it would make her so crazy. It felt like she'd been electrocuted, supercharged. She had hoped it would get her through dinner with her parents. She had been wrong. Her head was still a mess. MTV was on the flat TV across the living room, but Paige could barely focus on the screen.
She shivered though the elegant apartment was warm and the white couch cushy with goose feathers. She had a body that could only have belonged to a young model-rope-slim in a black sweater set and black stretch jeans that made her long legs look like licorice sticks. She had impossibly narrow hips and high, small breasts. Her crying jag had left her azure-blue eyes glistening with tears, tinged her upturned nose pink at its tip, and caused her soft, overlarge mouth to tilt downward.
'You're still shivering a little,' Trevor said, holding her on the sofa. Trevor Olanski was a tall, strapping young man with thick, wavy black hair, round greenish eyes, and now, a troubled frown. His jeans were sliced lengthwise down the thigh and he wore brown Doc Martens. 'You want me to turn up the heat, or get you a blanket?'
'It's taking too long to come down, Trev.' Paige fingered her long ponytail, a deep red color and straight as a line. The ponytail was her trademark, the signature look that her mother thought would put her over the top. Her mother. What had happened? Paige's head was pounding. 'I don't need a blanket, I need more Special K.'
'No, you've taken too much already. Get hugged instead.' Trevor held her closer, which she liked, though she kept eyeing his black Jansport book bag on the coffee table in front of them. Out of the unzipped partition had slid his algebra book, a graphing calculator, and a clear vial of Special K. Ketamine, a veterinary tranquilizer that was supposed to mellow her out from the crystal.
'More K would help, Trev. With the hug. Like a side order.'
'Be patient, honey. You were so high, it takes time. That's how crystal is.'
'You should've told me that.'
'I did. You insisted, remember?'
'Oh, yes, maybe you did. I don't remember.' Paige's thoughts jumbled together like colored glass in a kaleidoscope, and her muscles relaxed with the K. 'I still can't deal with what happened. With my mother.'
'Don't think about that now. You've been through too much tonight, way too much.' Trevor cuddled her in his arms. 'You want something to drink? Some water or something?'
'No.'
'How about I turn the TV off? Or make it louder? You like Pop-Up Video.' Trevor gestured at the TV, but Paige still wasn't able to focus. It looked like Smashmouth doing 'Dancing on the Sun,' but it could have been any white guys jumping around in knit caps.
'Nah, it's okay.'
'You're not hungry or anything? I can make grilled cheese.'
'Too fattening.' Paige shook her head and felt the K finally cooling her out. The fight with her mother had been the worst one since she'd moved out. She had been so angry, she had screamed at her mother. Then she'd reached for the knife, on the table. No. She couldn't get the pictures out of her head. She felt chilled to the bone. 'Trev, can't I please have another bump?'
'I really don't think that's a good idea, babe.'
'I do. I think I need two.'
'Can you just relax and nod off? I can bring you something to drink.'
'Come on.' Paige rolled her eyes. 'Just one more? Don't be so stingy.'
Trevor sighed and gentled her back to the sofa. 'All right, but one is enough. I don't want you to overdo it.' He leaned over the coffee table, picked up the vial, and screwed off the black lid. He rummaged through his pencil case to find a Bic pen and used it to scoop powder from the vial. 'Just one more. That's it.'
Paige nodded, but couldn't think clearly. It was all too terrible. She had known the dinner meeting was going to be bad, but it had gone way too far. Her mother dead. The bloody knife hot and slippery in Paige's hand. She had dropped it and started crying.
'Here we go,' Trevor said, handing her the pen cap with the K, and she raised it to her nose and snorted, one nostril then the other, and inhaled deeply. Her brain clouded instantly and she dropped the pen cap. She wanted to ask; she didn't want to ask:
'Trev, did I… did I… really do it?'
'Honey, why are you asking me?' His green eyes looked confused. 'Don't you know?'
'No, I guess, I don't remember. The crystal. I remember some of it, but not all.' Paige felt sick inside. It couldn't be true, but it was. She hated her mother. She had dreamed her dead a thousand times. 'I remember the knife, and her screaming.'
'Let's not talk right now. I'm worried you're gonna get a migraine.'
'No, I want to know.'
'Okay.' Trevor sighed and rubbed her shoulder. 'Well, she started in on you about not gaining weight, something about retaining water, whatever that is.' He sighed heavily. 'And you started yelling at her and when you told her, she hit you and kicked you. You remember that, don't you?'
'Yes.' Paige tried to remember the scene. She saw herself on the floor of the dining room, rolling away from her mother's foot. 'She kicked me, okay, and yelled. She wouldn't stop.'
'I tried to pull her off you but I couldn't. Then, well, it was like you just went crazy. You went after her.' Trevor's voice grew hushed. 'I never saw you like that. You've never been like that. You were completely out of control. You were raging. It was like it got to you all at once or something, and you picked up the knife. Remember the knife, from the table?'
'Yes.' Paige shut her eyes to the memory. The knife. It was the knife they always used for filet. How could she have done this? Killed her mother? Was she crazy? Was she a horrible person? How could she do such a thing? She shouldn't have done the crystal. She burst into new tears, and Trevor held her close again as she sobbed. 'Oh my God, I can't believe it. My own mother. I… killed her.'
'Don't think about it, now. Just relax.' His arms encircled her shoulders, wrapping her in a warm, woolly cocoon. 'It's not your fault. She's been so miserable to you. You couldn't help it.'
Paige listened to his quiet words as the K finally came on. Her breathing slowed. The craziness of the crystal disappeared. Calm crept through her body. Her emotions grew remote, as if they didn't belong to her, but her eyes still stung from crying and she couldn't breathe through her nose. She imagined she looked like hell. She'd studied her face like other kids study French. Trevor massaged her shoulders, loosening the muscles, easing the pressure on her head. Once he had prevented a migraine, just by giving her a massage. He took better care of her than her mother ever had.
'That's it, that's my girl,' he said, kneading her shoulder.
Paige heard him but her attention was focused on the pictures in her mind, filtering through her consciousness. Not a kaleidoscope anymore, but a book of photographs, one after the other, as if she were thumbing through her own portfolio. Her face in soft light. In backlight. With too little sleep or too many drugs. She was floating now.
'You all right?' Trevor's hands moved to her nape, slipping under her hair. 'You better?'
'Definitely,' Paige heard herself whisper. The photos in her mind portfolio morphed into her mother. Her mother in Mikimoto pearls. In DKNY sunglasses. With Estee Lauder eye cream. Her mother was a collection of brand names. Paige smiled inside, drifting. She looked like her mother, everyone said so. Her mother's eye cream evaporated and her blue eyes became Paige's blue eyes. Then her mother's face got younger and younger and turned black.
'Babe, you there? Anybody home?'
Paige nodded, smoothing her cheeks to relax them, like her mother had taught her. Her mother was never a model; she was a deb. Her mother had made her into a model. When she was little, she was in diaper ads, then newspaper layouts and catalog work. This year, her mother was trying to get them a shot in YM magazine. A sudden fear disturbed Paige's floating. 'What if the police are on their way? I mean, they'll be looking for me.'
'No, they won't. Don't worry.' Trevor held her closer. 'They don't know you exist. You don't even live there anymore. How would they even find you?'
'You're right, they can't.' Paige squeezed his arm and it felt like an oak tree. What would she do without him? She got that giddy feeling, kind of horny, that she sometimes got with K. 'I love you, Trev.'
'I love you, too. We're gonna get through this together.'
Paige looked up at him with gratitude. She remembered that he had made her wash up after, at a gas station on the way home. He had told her to get the knife but she'd forgotten it, and he hadn't even yelled. 'I'm worried about the knife, Trev. Can they get fingerprints from it, like on TV?'
'No, I don't think so. They have to match them to fingerprints they have on file, I think. They don't have your fingerprints at the police station. You've never been arrested or anything.'
'What do we do if the cops come?' she asked, but the question sounded like it came from someone else. Someone inside was asking; whoever kept you breathing in and out. She had learned it from her science tutor before winter break; the automatic nervous system? 'I mean, what do I say? I was supposed to have dinner at my parents'.'
The cops don't know that, and if they do, just say you were supposed to go over but you didn't. Maybe you can say you had a migraine.'
'But what if somebody saw me leave?' Paige closed her eyes and leaned her head back in the soft chair, the drug overwhelming her fear. That pimply guy at the desk or one of my neighbors?'
'It was the old guy at the desk and he was dozin' again. I didn't sign in, and nobody was out in this weather. Besides, this place has three hundred apartments. Nobody notices what you and I do.'
'What if they arrest me?' Paige said the words, but it didn't seem like it could really happen. Not to her. Nothing could happen to her. She was above the clouds. 'What if… they put me in jail?'
'Why would they even suspect you? As far as the cops know, you haven't seen your mother all day. The last time you saw her was yesterday at the Bonner shoot. She'd been drinking again, you said.'
'Like tonight.' Her mother had been wasted when Paige got home. Then screaming, fighting. When Paige had picked up the knife, her mother had dropped her glass. Scotch had flown from the tumbler in a golden rope, like a noose. Then Paige realized something. 'Wait. What about my father?'
'Your father?'
'Sure. He must have come home and found her. He was supposed to be at dinner.' Paige had almost forgotten about him because he hadn't been in her life much until this past year. Her mother had managed her, and her father had his work. He used to spend all his time handling the family's legal matters, until Paige had finally told him she'd had enough of her mother and wanted to move out. It was like it woke him up. 'I called him today at work, and he said he'd be there. He even said to leave you home, to come alone to dinner. I told him I would. He said he would see me at seven.'
'So your father comes home and sees your mother on the floor. What will he do?'
'I don't know, how am I supposed to know?' Paige heard her voice get high as a little kid's. It kept her out of commercials and her voice coach hadn't been able to get her to lower her register. It drove her mother crazy.
'Will he think you did it?'
'Maybe,' she said slowly, and Trevor looked worried for her.
'Will he turn you in?'
Paige didn't know her father very well, but she knew the answer. 'Never,' she said.
The interview room in the basement of the Roundhouse was rectangular and airless, a dingy bank of cubicles where attorneys met with clients. Grimy wood paneling covered the walls, which were plastered with curling notices in English and Spanish. The NO SMOKING sign bore a cigarette burn, the ceiling sagged around the brown water stain in the corner, and the blue-grey paint on the interview cubicles was covered with pen marks. Phone numbers tattooed its surface and the largest scrawling read GLORIA LOVES SMOKEY, TLF.
There were no other lawyers there except Mary and Judy, and they sat on one side of a smudgy sheet of bulletproof plastic while Jack Newlin was brought in on the other. He was so attractive that Mary felt herself straighten involuntarily when she saw him. Newlin was tall, broad-shouldered, and well built; comfortable with himself in an attractive way and handsome but for the anxiety straining his features. A furrowed brow hooded light blue eyes and crow's-feet wrinkled their corners, tugging his expression down into a frown. His full mouth was a flat line, and a shadow the color of driftwood marred his strong jaw. But Jack Newlin was a man who wore even stubble well. He reminded Mary of Kevin Costner, only smart.
'Thanks for coming, ladies,' Newlin said, sitting down. Handcuffs linked his wrists in front of him against a white paper jumpsuit. 'But you both really didn't have to bother. I only need one lawyer. Which of you answered the telephone?'
'We both talked to you,' Mary answered. She introduced herself, then Judy to her right. 'For a murder case, we work as a team.'
'I appreciate that, but I won't be needing a team. Who did I talk to first on the phone? Was that you, Mary?'
'Uh, yes.' Mary looked at Judy, who gave her a go-ahead nod. Still Mary didn't want to go ahead. 'But I can't handle this case alone, Mr Newlin. I don't have much experience with homicide cases, not as much as Bennie Rosato or lots of other lawyers in town.'
Newlin smiled easily. 'First, please call me Jack. Secondly, you answered my questions honestly on the phone, as you are now, and I don't need a lawyer with decades of experience. I want you to be my lawyer.'
Mary felt her neck flush at the praise. That it came from a total hunk gave her a charge she couldn't quite ignore. 'Mr Newlin, Jack -'
This will be a simple case. I won't need much firepower. I intend to plead guilty. The truth is, I killed my wife. I did it.'
Mary fell momentarily speechless. Had she heard him right? His words hung between them in the air. 'You did it?' she repeated, in shock.
'Yes. The police questioned me and I told them everything. I confessed.'
Mary met his gaze, and though she had never looked into the eyes of a murderer, she didn't expect them to be so gorgeous. Of course, Ted Bundy had gorgeous eyes, too. Maybe gorgeous eyes should be on the killer profile. 'Slow up a minute,' she said, trying to get her bearings. 'You spoke to the police? Why?'
'I was wrong, I guess. Disoriented. Thought I could answer a few questions and be done with it. I know it was stupid. I called them from the scene. Maybe it was the Scotch.'
'Scotch?' Mary would never have pegged him for a drinker.
'Maybe it's best if I tell you what happened, from the beginning?'
'Hold on, are you drunk now?'
'No. Hardly.'
'Were you drunk when you spoke to the police?'
'Not at all. I had only a few drinks.'
'How many?'
Two, I think. I feel fine. Does it matter, legally?'
Mary had no idea. 'Yes, it does. That's why I asked. Now, go on, tell us what you told them.' She fumbled for her briefcase and dug around for a ballpoint and a fresh legal pad. 'Let me just get it down,' she said, uncapping her pen as he started to talk. She recorded everything he said while Judy listened silently. When he was finished, Mary asked, 'Did you tell all of this to the police?'
'Yes, I told them everything.'
'Did they read you your Miranda warnings?'
'Yes. They gave me a waiver sheet, too. Two sheets, which I signed and answered.'
Mary glanced at Judy, who shook her head. Trouble. 'I think that means it's a valid confession. Did they take down what you said?'
'Yes, and they videotaped me.'
'What else did they do?' She knew only the TV basics of police procedure. The law according to Steven Bochco.
'Fingerprinted me. Took a hair and skin sample. They took pictures of me, in my suit, and of my hands. There's a cut on my hand from the knife. They took twelve pictures of it, I think. They took my clothes, because they had blood on them. They scraped samples of my wife's blood off my hands and clothes.'
Mary was appalled, but hid it. Even a short legal career had perfected her false face. 'You had your wife's blood on you?'
'Yes.' He glanced away, and Mary noticed that when he looked up, he didn't meet her eye. 'Also they wrote up a statement, but I didn't sign it.'
Mary's pen paused over the paper. 'I don't understand. You confessed, but you didn't sign the statement?'
'Yes, and I asked to call a lawyer.'
'Why confess, then call a lawyer?'
'I changed my mind. All of a sudden, I wasn't sure I should confess. I realized maybe I couldn't represent myself. I had thought I could handle it, being a lawyer myself, at Tribe.'
'You're a lawyer at Tribe?' she asked, shocked. Tribe amp; Wright was law-firm royalty, almost as pretentious as Stalling amp; Webb, where she and Judy used to work. Jack Newlin had to be very smart, so why had he acted so stupidly? And violently? It didn't square.
'Yes, I head the estates department. After I told the police what had happened, they started asking me questions and I realized I was out of my depth. I wanted to talk to a criminal lawyer before I signed the confession. I figured I could plead guilty, and with a criminal lawyer, I could get the best deal.'
'Why did you talk to the police at all? As a lawyer, you had to know not to.'
'I was emotional, I was all over the place, but I'm not expecting miracles from you. I don't expect you to get me off. As I said, I'm fully prepared to plead guilty.' His tone remained calm and even commanding, but his eyes seemed uneasy to Mary. His jaw clenched and unclenched, suggesting buried emotion.
'Mr Newlin, Jack, I see why you want to plea bargain. They'll have a ton of evidence against you. But it's kind of premature to talk about pleading anything now.'
'Why?'
Mary didn't know. It seemed like common sense. 'It's common sense. I'm not sure what kind of deal we can get you at this point. First, you confessed, and they have the videotape, so your bargaining power is already low. Secondly, you have a preliminary hearing coming up, which is where they have to prove they have enough evidence to hold you.' She was remembering from her bar review course. Had the Constitution been amended when she wasn't looking? 'Why should we try to bargain before then? In the meantime, we can do our own investigation.'
'Your investigation?'
'We always do our own investigation for the defense.' At least they had on Steere and Connolly, Mary's universe of experience with murder cases.
'But I told you what happened.'
'We have to learn about the evidence against you.' For verification, Mary glanced at Judy, who smiled yes. 'We have to understand the prosecution's case against you with regard to degree and possible penalties. We need a colorable defense to threaten them with. We can't bargain from weakness.'
'Hear me, Mary. I want this over with now.' Jack's mouth set in a firm line, and Mary frowned in confusion.
'But it's not usually the defendant who benefits from a rush to judgment, it's the Commonwealth. Rushing hasn't helped you so far. If you had called us before you talked to the police, you wouldn't be in this predicament, We're talking about a possible death penalty, do you realize that?'
He seemed to gloss over the statement. 'I want it over with because I want my family affected as little as possible. I have a daughter, Paige, a sixteen-year-old who's a model. She's still got a career if this blows over quickly and quietly. She doesn't even know that her mother is dead. In fact, I'd like you to go to Paige's apartment and tell her. I don't want her to hear it from TV or the police.'
'Her apartment? She doesn't live at home?'
'No. Paige has her own place. Her condo is right in Society Hill, it's not far.' Jack rattled off an address that Mary jotted down. 'Please go after we're finished here. Can you imagine hearing the news from the police?'
Mary met his gaze again, and his eyes focused intently, suddenly lucid with concern. Could someone who had killed his wife worry this much about their daughter? It
was confounding. 'You want me to tell your daughter? I'm not sure what to say.'
'Tell her everything. Tell her the truth. Tell her what I told you tonight.'
'I can't do that. What you told us is privileged.'
'Not as against her. I waive the privilege as against her.'
'You can't.' Mary double-checked with Judy, who was already shaking her head no. 'It wouldn't be in your best interest. What if they called her as a witness at your trial?'
'What trial? I'm going to plead guilty.'
Damn. 'You can't be sure you'll plead guilty and we have to preserve your options. That's why I won't tell your daughter any more than necessary. I'll tell her that her mother is dead and that her father is being held by the police.'
'But I want Paige to know that I'm owning up to what I did. I want her to know that as awful as I am, at least I'm not so cowardly as to avoid responsibility for my crime.' His strong jaw set solidly, but Mary noticed that small muscle near his ear was clenching again. Eyes and jaws, what did it mean? Anything? Nothing?
'Fine, I'll tell her that you're considering a guilty plea, but that's it. The cops will probably leak that much by tomorrow morning. Agreed?'
'Agreed. Also, I have to ask you a personal favor, if I may.' Jack looked plainly uncomfortable, which disarmed Mary. A handsome, wealthy killer who acted like a nice guy. Confusing, to say the least.
'Sure, what?'
'Paige will be very upset about this news. If she is, would you stay with her awhile? She doesn't have many friends.'
'Yes,' Mary answered, though it went without saying. But something didn't jibe. A pretty, rich girl, without friends? What was up with this family? 'What about her classmates? Where does she go to school?'
'Paige is not your typical sixteen-year-old. She looks adult, acts adult, and earns money like an adult. She's privately schooled around her work schedule. She left most of her peer group behind a long time ago, and her boyfriend, at least this latest one, isn't much help. Just stay with her until she feels better and see if she wants to come see me. I'd love to see her tonight and try to explain this to her.'
'I'll tell her that, too.' Mary couldn't imagine the daughter wanting to see her father in these circumstances. She stood up and packed her pad and pen away. 'I think we're finished here, for now. The next step for you is an arraignment, which is when they charge you formally and make a bail determination. I would guess they'll do that in the morning, but there's a chance that it could happen tonight.' She glanced at Judy, who nodded. 'Judy will stay at the Roundhouse until I get back, in case they do. Do you have any questions?' Mary stood up with her packed briefcase, and Jack smiled, which had the effect of making her feel like a grade school kid, her briefcase transformed into a school bag.
'No questions at all. You did pretty well,' he said, and she laughed, flushing, as she led Judy to the door.
'Beginner's luck. See you in the morning.'
Take care of Paige,' he said, and the slight crack in his voice made Mary pause.
'Don't worry,' she heard herself say, without understanding why.
When a homicide as big as Honor Newlin's happens in a city as small as Philadelphia, everybody knows about it right away. Emergency dispatch hears first, then homicide detectives, EMS drivers, reporters tuned to police scanners, the M.E., the crime labs, and the deputy police commissioners. Simultaneously the mayor, the police commissioner, and the district attorney get beeped, and the district attorney assigns the case as soon as the call comes in. The assignment, as crucial as it is, doesn't take much thought, because the result is preordained. In death, as in life, everybody has a pecking order; when a nobody gets killed, the case gets assigned to any one of a number of bright young district attorneys, all smart as hell and fungibly ambitious. But the murder of a woman the status of Honor Newlin, by a lawyer the status of Jack Newlin, could go to only one district attorney.
'Go away,' Dwight Davis said, picking up the phone.
Even though it was late, Davis was at his desk at the D.A.'s office, putting the finishing touches on a brief. His desk was cluttered, the room harshly bright, and a Day-Glo blue jug of Gatorade sat forgotten on his desk. A marathon runner by hobby, Davis seemed hardwired never to tire. A constant current of nervous energy crackled though his body, and if he missed his daily run, he was unbearable. The secretaries had been known to throw his sneakers at him, a heavy hint to take off, since they thought Davis got away from work by running. They didn't know that when he ran, all he thought about, stride after stride, mile after mile, was work. Murder cases, crime scenes, and jury speeches fueled his longest and best workouts.
'You're shittin' me,' Davis said into the phone. 'At Tribe?'
He often woke up with a legal argument on the tip of his tongue. He thought up his best closing arguments on the John. He told the funniest war stories in the D.A.'s office and laughed the hardest at everyone else's. Nothing thrilled, intrigued, or delighted him as much as being a prosecutor. In short, he loved his job.
They got it on video? That, plus the nine-one-one tapes? Oh that's beautiful, that's just beautiful!'
Davis burst into merry laughter. At what? At how the mighty had fallen? No, he wasn't mean. He was just happy. Happy to be alive, now, here, to draw the Newlin case. It was the reason he had turned down being promoted every time they'd offered it to him. The pay was better but he didn't want to process vacation requests, count sick days, hire secretaries, or fire paralegals. Why be a desk jockey when you can try cases? Why walk when you can run? And why try birdshit when you can try Jack Newlin?
They got the knife? They got his prints on the knife? Tell 'em to move their asses down there!'
He couldn't stop smiling, he felt so good. The biggest case in the city, bar none, and Newlin had the bucks to hire the best. Competition thrilled Davis, and he had the best record in the office. Why did he win so much? The question engendered gossip, speculation, and jealousy among the other D.A.s. Some thought he won because he was decent-looking and juries loved him. Not a bad theory. Clear hazel eyes, thick black hair, a well-formed mouth, and a sinewy runner's body. He was just under average height, but even his relative shortness worked in his favor; he managed to appeal to women jurors without threatening male jurors. But his looks weren't why he won.
'Who's on it from Two Squad? Brinkley, Kovich? Excellent!' Davis ran a hand through his hair, cut short for convenience. 'Chief, don't let Diego anywhere near that house, you hear? The man's a loose cannon!'
Other D.A.s thought Davis won because he worked his ass off. It was plausible, considering his hours. He lived the job and was there all the time; in the morning when others straggled in and at night when others staggered home. The life of a typical D.A. was a constant battle for time; it was almost impossible to try cases all day in court and still do the paperwork that had to get done, but Davis managed both. Of course, he had no personal life. His marriage didn't survive the first year and they'd had no children. He kept a small, empty apartment in town. He didn't even have a dog to run with. But his dedication wasn't why he won, either.
'Who's Newlin got for representation? Don't tell me it's a P.D., not with his money. Hey, I heard a good joke, Chief – what do a nun and a public defender have in common? Neither can get you off!'
The reason Davis won was simple: he won because he loved to win. The man was a self-fulfilling prophecy with a briefcase. He won for the same reason that money comes to the rich and fortune to the lucky. Winning was his favorite thing in the world. Winning was what Davis did for fun.
'Who? DiNunzio? What's a DiNunzio?'
He loved to win like a thoroughbred loves to race. As a little boy he'd shoot the moon, playing hearts at the kitchen table, and as a college quarterback he'd try the Hail Mary to the end zone. In court, he did anything he had to do to win, took whatever risks he had to take, and made whatever arguments he had to make. And it was precisely because he took those risks and made those arguments that they became the right risks and the right arguments and he won. Nor was Davis afraid of losing. He knew that losing was proof of being in the game. You couldn't win if you were afraid of losing.
'Oh, oh, only one problem, Chief,' he said suddenly. 'Bad news. I just realized something. I can't take the Newlin case. I can't take this case for you.'
His expression sobered abruptly. His face fell into the
lines of nascent middle age, a wrinkle that bracketed his full mouth and a tiny pitchfork that popped in the middle of his forehead. Something chased the delight from his keen eyes. His mouth drooped at the corners.
'Why, you ask? Why can't I take the Newlin case. Chief? I'll tell you why. Because it's too fuckin' easy!'
He howled with laughter as he hung up and threw his Bic pen at the dartboard hanging across from his desk. He didn't look to see where the pen had landed because it didn't matter. He rose quickly and grabbed a fresh legal pad, for that clean-slate feeling. Davis didn't have time for games.
He was on his way to a murder scene.
Detective Reginald Brinkley stood alone in Two Squad's coffee room, which was shaped like a shoe box on its end. Yellowed panels of fluorescent lighting intensified the grim cast to the room without illuminating it. Sparsely furnished as the rest of the Roundhouse, the coffee room contained a steel-legged table on which rested a Bunn coffee machine and a square brown refrigerator. Everybody used the coffee machine; nobody used the refrigerator. Inside it was an open can of Coke, a white plastic fork, and twenty-odd packets of soy sauce.
To Brinkley the room smelled familiar, like fresh coffee and stale dust, and he felt at home in its institutional grey-green walls, plastered with outdated memos, Polaroid photos from the Squad's softball team, and a black bumper sticker bearing the unofficial motto of the Homicide Division: OUR DAY BEGINS WHEN YOURS ENDS. The slogan also
appeared on black sweatshirts and T-shirts under a picture of a smiling Grim Reaper, but the joke had worn thin to Brinkley and the other detectives. They never wore the shirts. They gave them away as gag gifts.
He shook Cremora into his hot coffee, in a thick Pep Boys mug. It was late at night but he hardly needed the caffeine. He tolerated the rotating tours pretty well; like his father he was partial to night work and he was still jiggered up from his interview with Newlin. It was impossible to tell by looking at him that he was jiggered up, which was what his wife, Sheree, used to complain about. You don't let me in, she used to say, like a daytime soap opera, and she'd even got him to go to a shrink over it. Brinkley had loved her that much.
He flinched inwardly at those memories. The couple had sat on the soft couch side by side for a full year, while Sheree and the lady shrink discussed Brinkley, his personality, his job, and his feelings. He rarely interrupted their conversation; they had him figured out so good he didn't have to come to the damn party. The therapy was bullshit anyway. Sheree was changing, by then was converting to Muslim, which finished them off. She had moved out over a year ago, and still he couldn't bring himself to answer the letters from her lawyer. Fuckin' lawyers.
He watched the tiny mountain of Cremora dissolve in his coffee, like a white island sinking slowly into a black sea. He hastened its demise by stirring the coffee gingerly with his index finger. The brew was too hot for his taste, and he had to wait for Kovich anyway. Brinkley had come to the coffee room to get away from the noise in the squad room. The guys not out on jobs were talking the Super Bowl pool again, and he had to think. He watched the black vortex in his mug while he thought about one lawyer in particular. Jack Newlin.
Brinkley hated lawyers, but for some reason, Newlin didn't strike him as the typical lawyer, much less the typical killer. Brinkley had sat across from psychos, wise guys, and bangers who'd just as soon cap you as sneeze. It always gave him a cold feeling in his gut when he took their confessions, delivered in a monotone but filled with details that made him sick. Last week he had listened to a punk tell him how he had tortured an old lady to death with a box cutter. The kid had looked stone bored when he told how he'd raped her postmortem.
Brinkley stirred up the coffee again, making a new whirlpool with his finger, and blew on it, preoccupied. Newlin didn't fit the abuser profile, either. Brinkley remembered the ones he'd convicted; Sanchez, McGarroty, Wertelli. Losers, the lot of 'em. They were the opposite of the stone-cold psychos; they had emotion to burn, hearts like
speedballs of rage. They usually had a bad employment history, dotted with booze, crack, or coke, and they were repeaters. Newlin didn't fit the bill. He was successful, his emotions tame and controlled, and two Scotches could 'enrage' him. Plus Brinkley had double-checked the file of suspected domestic abuse cases from local hospitals. Newlin's wife wasn't in them.
He kept blowing on his coffee, thinking. Then again, Newlin probably was the doer. The man confessed, and so what if the story wasn't smooth? Newlin might have been disoriented by the whole thing; murder had a way of throwing you for a loop. And Newlin was a lawyer and he'd be used to manipulating the system. He did it for a living, got rich doing it. He would bet he could whack his wife and come out smelling like a rose. That was why he'd called his lawyer at the end. Figured the story was confused enough to maybe get him off. Or maybe Newlin wanted to spill his guts, cut a quick deal, and be out in no time.
Brinkley shook his head. He used to think only rich white folks got away with murder until O.J. proved that rich black folks could buy justice, too. It gave a man hope. He sipped his coffee as Kovich entered the room.
'Cold enough?' Kovich asked, making a beeline for the coffeemaker.
'Not yet.'
'Don't know how you can drink coffee cold, especially with a fresh pot of hot sittin' right here.'
'Where were you? I been waitin' on you.' Brinkley held his mug at a distance from his clean suit, mindful of his partner's clumsiness. 'I want to get to the scene.'
'I know, so do I. ' Kovich reached for a Styrofoam cup and poured himself coffee. 'I was in the little boy's. Shoot me.'
'You were not. You were betting the Super Bowl pool.'
'Not me. Games of chance are illegal in the Commonwealth.' Kovich drank his coffee.
'Hurry up. We should've been to the scene already. It's
ass-backwards, talking to the husband first. I sounded like an asshole askin' him where the knife was. It was like shootin' in the dark.'
'What were we gonna do? We had no choice. The guy calls nine-one-one and confesses. They had to arrest him on the scene and we had to question him right away. The lieutenant didn't want Newlin on ice. We got a full confession and it's admissible. Shit, he woulda signed if-' Kovich stopped short. Both men knew the end of the sentence. If you hadn't fucked up, Mick.
Brinkley let the moment pass. He'd been right to question Newlin, and the lawyer was hardly the first suspect to change his mind about signing a confession. Brinkley didn't want to argue about it. He'd been partners with Kovich for five years and they had fallen into an easy, if distant, relationship. It was the way Brinkley liked it; he would accept Kovich's social invitations when he couldn't get out of it, but had never even asked Kovich why he called Brinkley 'Mick' instead of Reg. Or why he always said, 'Sorry, Cholly.' Or 'I guess, Bill.'
'Lemme have this one cup, then we go to the scene. Pick up what we need.'
'Pick up what we need?' Brinkley asked. 'That means you like him?'
'I don't like him, I love him.' It was code. Detectives talked about which suspects they 'liked.' If they liked someone, they suspected him of murder. If they 'loved' him, he was as guilty as sin. Nobody but Brinkley remarked the irony,
'You know what? I don't think I like him,' Brinkley said, surprising even himself, and Kovich stopped drinking his coffee.
'What?
'I don't like him. At least, not yet.'
'Oh jeez. Say what? You gotta be kiddin' me, Mick.'
'No.'
'What're you talkin' It's a duck!' Slang for an easy case. It waddled in the door.
'You heard me. I'm not sure yet.'
'Aw, hell. Why don't you like him?'
'Don't know.'
'Mick -'
'I'll think of a reason.'
'Mick. Honey. Baby. We got him on tape. The scumbag told you the story, hung together just fine. He had her blood on his friggin' hands. The uniforms were right to place him under. The lab's gonna find his prints on the knife.'
'It's his knife and his house. Of course they're gonna find his prints.'
'In blood?'
'Don't start with me on the knife anyway.' Brinkley had thrown a fit when he heard the techs had already bagged the knife. He had wanted to see it where it lay at the scene, and Polaroids weren't as good as the real thing.
'The lab is workin' on a match. Ten to one they get a full print in blood and it's his.'
'Did you call again? Any results?'
'In an hour. They know it's a box job.' A rush job, reserved for high-profile homicides. Two Squad hadn't seen many murders that were higher profile than Newlin. 'They already called the D.A., Mick. We'll be able to arraign Newlin in the morning.'
'No.' Brinkley had been worrying it would go down this way, the tail wagging the dog. 'It's too soon. I'm the assigned, I'm in charge. I call this shot, not them, for Chrissake.'
'Look, it's a silver platter. Newlin admitted to dispatch he did her. The uniforms told us there's no sign of robbery, nothing out of place. He came clean with us, right off. He wanted to get it off his chest, you heard him, and he was nervous as shit. I never saw anybody look that guilty, did you?' Kovich glanced out the door and lowered his voice. 'Besides, I gotta tell you they want us to clear this case? It's a monster. We arraign Newlin right away, we look sharp by the time it hits the papers. If we don't charge him, we look like we're playing favorites.'
'What favorites?'
'He's white, didn't you notice? Here I thought you was a big-time detective.' Kovich smiled, but it faded quickly. 'I don't get you, buddy. I thought you hated lawyers.'
'I do. That's why I don't like being worked by one.'
'You think he's working us?' Kovich looked concerned. He wasn't dumb, none of the detectives was. You had to be the elite to reach the detective level under the new commissioner. It was like the whole force came collectively to attention at the appointment. 'Setting up his own ass? Why?'
'I don't know that either.' Brinkley considered it. To protect someone.'
'Who?'
'The wife gets killed? Maybe he has a girlfriend.'
'Come on, Newlin didn't look like he was gettin' any on the side.'
'Mick, please.' Kovich glanced out the door again. 'Everybody but you and me is gettin' some on the side.'
'Maybe not a girlfriend, then.' Brinkley set down his full mug. He didn't have time for the coffee to cool. 'Let's get goin'.'
'A boyfriend?' Kovich tossed his cup into the waste-basket, where coffee washed against the sides. 'You never know.'
'Maybe anybody. We don't know enough.'
Kovich scoffed as he tightened his tie. 'You know what your problem is?'
'Yeah. Do you?'
'You gotta make everything hard. The coffee comes out hot, you gotta make it cold. The conviction gets handed to you, you gotta look it in the mouth. You know what I mean?'
Brinkley didn't answer. It was just what Sheree used to say. 'Hurry up. I need a partner, not a shrink.'
Mary stepped out of the elevator onto the tenth floor of Colonial Hill Towers,, a sleek corridor of slate grey with art deco wall sconces in a platinum color. She slid the paper with the number of Paige Newlin's condo from her jacket pocket and glanced at it, narrowly avoiding a tall young man in ripped jeans who was hurrying down the hall. His black backpack hit her as he hustled by. Mary apologized reflexively, but the youth didn't answer, just shoved past her into the elevator cab. 'Didn't your mother teach you manners?' she said sternly, whirling on her heels, but he said nothing as the silver elevator doors closed.
Mary read the apartment number on the paper. Next to it was Paige's phone number. She had called before she came up, a requirement of the security desk in the lobby. She walked down the hall and reached the door at the end, dreading what lay ahead. She was from a close-knit Italian family and though it had its own stresses and strains, it remained a solid source of comfort and love. How could she deliver news like this? Daddy killed Mommy?
Mary knocked reluctantly on the door. If she hated being a lawyer when it was boring, then she hated it even more when it got dramatic. She needed a job with less emotional involvement. Emergency room doctor, perhaps. Or child cancer specialist. Paige Newlin, dressed in a blue chenille bathrobe covered with oversize coffee cups, slumped sobbing in the middle of the large white sofa. Her sleek head of red hair, knotted back in a shiny ponytail, was buried in Mary's arms, and her bony shoulders shuddered as she wept. She was tall but thin and fine-boned; she struck Mary instantly as the kind of girl for whom the delicate cycle was invented. And she had burst into tears as soon as Mary had told her that her mother had been murdered.
'I can't believe it. My mother, dead?' Paige cried, weeping.
Mary held her closer, and the girl collapsed in her embrace, the two of them sinking like a single stone into the downy cushions of the sofa. Mary sensed the deep grief Paige must be feeling; she had already experienced the loss of her husband. She was just now putting herself back together, two years later, functioning in her job and life without thinking of him constantly. She looked around to regain some professional distance.
The apartment was decorated completely in warm white; even the coffee table and a large entertainment center behind the sofa were a pickled white wood. The center was well stocked with C Ds and a stereo system. There were no books in the room other than some glossy coffee-table volumes, and the decor telegraphed resources far surpassing that of most teenagers, if not lawyers. Mary wondered what Paige's singular life must be like and knew instantly she wouldn't want it, no matter the material rewards, as she listened to the girl's crying.
'I was supposed to go over… to dinner,' Paige said, between sobs. 'I didn't. I should have… gone.'
'Don't think that way now. This wasn't your fault. You had nothing to do with this.'
'I just saw her yesterday… at the shoot.'
'"Shoot"?' Mary didn't get the term.
'A photo shoot downtown, for the newspaper. My mom booked me for Bonner's Department Store, and the shoot was there. She was there.'
A photo shoot? Not the stuff of most teenager's lives. At sixteen, Mary had been conjugating Latin verbs and rolling the waistband of her kilt to shorten it. She'd be called to the Mother Superior's office and asked to kneel. Not to pray, but to see if her hem touched the linoleum.
'Who would do that? Who?' Paige's shoulders began to shake, and Mary felt a deep pang.
'It gets worse, Paige. There's something terrible I have to tell you.'
'Huh?' Paige looked up, her ponytail disheveled and her eyes puffy with tears. Mary saw the pain etched on her flawless face and the red blotches sprouting on her neck, above the V-neck of her bathrobe. Mary got the same blotches when she was upset, and from the itching under her silk blouse, knew she had them right now. She couldn't imagine how she'd feel hearing what Paige was about to hear:
'You should know that your father has been arrested for the murder of your mother, and he intends to plead guilty,' Mary said simply.
Paige gasped, her mouth forming a horrified circle. 'What… did you say?'
'He's going to plead guilty, and we will be representing him. That's why he couldn't come here himself, to tell you. He's in custody now, but he loves you and wants you to know that.'
'My father? My father? Her eyes glistening, Paige looked wildly away and back again. 'He confessed? He's in custody! That's not possible.'
'I know. It's a shock/
'He didn't do it. He couldn't do it. He could never.' Paige kept shaking her head, her ponytail swinging back and forth. 'What did he say?'
'He wants to plead guilty, and that's all I'm permitted to tell you.' Wetness came to Mary's eyes at the girl's anguish and she gave up trying to convince anybody she was professional. Italian girls were entitled to their emotions.
'I don't understand.' The girl broke down, and Mary looped an arm around her lithe, trembling form.
'I can't explain it. If you want, I'll take you to visit your father and you can ask him whatever you want to know.'
'My father's really… in jail?'
'At the Roundhouse. He should be arraigned tonight or tomorrow. By morning it will be all over the newspapers, and he was very concerned about that, for your sake.'
'Oh, my God, my father.' Paige's face dropped into her child's hands, and her head buckled on a neck that seemed no stronger than a blade of grass. She cried harder, and Mary vowed, not for the first time, to find another job.
'Mary,' Paige said, her voice chocked. 'Can I have some water?'
'Sure,' Mary answered, grateful for a task to perform. She got up, crossed the room, and found her way into the adjoining kitchen. She flicked on the light, illuminating an ultramodern galley kitchen that looked as outfitted, and as clean, as a sample home. Black granite counters, polished stainless steel sink, and a complete absence of foodstuffs. Mary had never seen a kitchen like it outside of a magazine and hated it instantly. She opened the white cabinet next to the sink, stocked with matching glasses, and filled one with water. Next to the sink sat a small photo in a heart-shaped silver frame, and she picked it up out of curiosity.
It was a tiny picture of Paige in summertime, wearing jean shorts and a T-shirt, grinning at the camera. She was being hugged from behind by a young man whose tan, muscular arms were wrapped around her body. Her neck and long hair obscured his face and he seemed to be kissing Paige's nape. It must have been the boyfriend that Newlin mentioned.
'Mary, my water?' Paige called out weakly, and Mary grabbed the glass and left the kitchen with it and the photo. She handed the water to Paige as her crying slowed to hiccups and then to a stop.
'I saw this photo of your boyfriend. Would you like to give him a call? Maybe it would help to have him here.'
'What? My boyfriend?'
'Isn't this him? Your father told us about him.' Mary turned the picture around to face Paige.
'Yes, it's him.'
'What's his name? He seems like a nice guy.'
Trevor. Trevor Olanski.'
Mary glanced again at the photo. 'That's funny. He reminds me of a kid I just saw in the hall, when I came up tonight.'
'No, it can't be.' Paige sipped her water. 'Trevor wasn't here tonight.'
'He wasn't?' Mary blinked. 'I think he bumped into me at the elevator.'
'Trevor didn't come over tonight,' Paige repeated, and wiped her eyes. 'I think… I'd like to go see my father now.' She brushed a strand of hair into place and stood up, arranging the bathrobe around her slender form. Her face and chest were aflame with blotches, gainsaying her apparent composure. I'll be dressed in a minute.'
'Sure,' Mary said, nodding, and watched as the teenager padded off in her terry slippers. Confused, she sank into a chair as Paige scuffed down the hall and closed a door behind her.
Mary gazed at the heart-shaped photo. She couldn't see the boyfriend's face. Why did she think it was the kid in the hall? She ran her finger over the picture, and her finger pad ended up on the tear down the thigh of the boyfriend's blue jeans, visible beside Paige's slim hip. The jeans were ripped lengthwise.
Mary looked closer. Everybody's jeans were ripped. People paid extra for them that way. Then she remembered. The kid in the hall had an up-and-down slit, too. Odd. All of Mary's jeans ripped the same way eventually; sideways, not up and down. So this pair must have been cut lengthwise, on purpose. How many kids cut their jeans that way? Some, but not many. But the boy in the hall and the boy in the photo did, both of whom were tall and roughly the same body build.
It puzzled her. Was Paige lying about her boyfriend being here tonight? No, of course not. Why would she? Duh.
Okay. Maybe it was personal. Paige lied because she didn't want Mary to know she had boys over. At sixteen, she was way too young for that, and Mary thought instantly of thirty-three nuns who would sign affidavits to that fact. And on this one issue, she would side with her church. Suddenly the door down the hall opened, and Paige reappeared in casual clothes.
Mary set down the photo, but couldn't chase the nuns from her head.
Brinkley got out of the Chrysler and scanned the scene in the drizzle. Squad cars, news vans, and black vehicles from the Medical Examiner's office blocked the narrow colonial street of million-dollar town houses, many bearing iron plaques of historic registration. Cops stood around the squad cars talking, their breath making steamy clouds in the chill. The plastic crime-scene tape stretched under the pressure of the media, which pissed Brinkley off. He knew which photo they wanted: the 'bag shot.' The photo of the dead body in a black plastic bag, being lifted on a stretcher as it was taken from the house to the coroner's van. The bag shot equaled ratings. In the photos, the bag's industrial zipper would be closed tight, its secrecy only encouraging the imagination's dirty work.
Brinkley slammed the car door closed, with Kovich following suit. The detectives exchanged a look over the rain-slick roof, sharing the same thought. If these idiots knew what murder really looked like, they wouldn't anticipate body bags like birthday cakes. They'd react like Brinkley did, with a familiar nausea, every time he smelled the new-car odor that clung to the black vinyl.
He gritted his teeth as he shouldered the spectators aside, flashed his badge needlessly to the uniform at the door, and went inside the Newlin house. Kovich signed them both in at the scene log and he would take his time, since he was writing the scene, in charge of recording everything. As the assigned, Brinkley had an investigation to run. He strode into the entrance hall, where he found himself the dark eye at the center of a crime-detection hurricane. Techs swirled around him, dusting the telephone and furniture for prints, bagging routine items from a coffee table for evidence, and vacuuming the elegant Oriental in the entrance hall for hair and fiber samples. Behind the entrance hall, the strobe lights of the photographers flashed like lightning.
He took out his notebook and followed the strobe into the living room. He had in mind the advice one of the vets had given him. A good cop needs a toilet brain. When you get to the scene, the vet had said, forget your assumptions about what happened. Flush the friggin' toilet. It was crude but vivid, and since then, Brinkley could never cross the threshold of a crime scene without hearing a toilet flush in his head. It made sense, especially in Newlin, with the husband's arrest and confession coming before Brinkley's visit to the scene.
He scanned the dimensions of the room. It was large by city standards and the living room had two fireplaces, both on the opposite wall. The ceiling was filigreed with white crown molding and scrollwork like a museum. He took out his notebook, wrote down what he saw, and then rendered it faithfully. Though the lab techs would do detailed scaled sketches, he always liked to do his own, too.
He sketched the grey sofa and two matching chairs arranged in front a glass coffee table, which was now blackened as barbecue with smudges of fingerprint dust and something else that caught Brinkley's eye. He squinted, then walked over with pencil poised. On the glossy glass of the table lay a tiny sprinkling of black dirt. It was located halfway up the table, hidden in the shadow of a crystal ashtray that contained a single cigarette butt, pink lipstick encircling the filter. The ashtray must be why the crime techs hadn't seen it, or they weren't finished here, but the dirt was too dark to be cigarette ash. Brinkley eyeballed the distance from the back of the couch to the line of dirt.
Notebook still in hand, he sat down on the sofa and stretched out his leg in his loafer. His heel, wet with street silt, hovered two or three inches in front of the dirt on the table. In another minute the silt would fall from his
heel, right on the spot. He was right. Somebody had put his feet up on the coffee table recently; somebody tall, between five-eleven and six-one. Brinkley got up, grabbed a passing tech, and directed him to photograph and bag the dirt sample and vacuum the sofa.
'Must be nice,' Kovich said, catching up with him.
'What?' Brinkley hovered as the tech took Polaroids of the dirt on the coffee table. He wanted no screw-ups on procedure. That was why he hadn't collected the sample himself.
'You know, it's an expression. "Must be nice." To have money, huh?'
'You have money,' Brinkley said. The tech was finishing with the Polaroids.
'I don't have money like this.' Kovich gestured, skinny pad in hand. 'This is paintings, furniture, crystal shit. That's fresh flowers in that vase. Real roses, I smelled 'em. I mean, that's real money.'
'You want real money, you can get real money, too. Their money doesn't take from you. Got no relation to you.'
'All right, Mick.' Kovich frowned and backed off. 'I signed us in. Log shows the D.A. already here.'
'Shit. Who caught it?'
'You gotta ask? Davis.'
'The Golden Boy. And we're last at the party.' Brinkley watched the tech scrape the grit into an evidence Baggie.
'What'cha got in the bag?'
'Dirt from the table.'
'Excellent police work. Place like this, dirt on the table is a crime.' Kovich laughed.
'Fool,' Brinkley said, smiling in spite of himself, then finished his furniture drawing. He drew the coffee table to fill in his feet-on-the-table theory, noticing that its surface glistened where it hadn't been dusted. When had it been polished last? He made a note, then realized something. There were no photos on the table. He looked around. None in the whole room, not a single one. Not even of
the kid, who was a model? 'Kovich, you got kids,' he said, as he sketched.
'Last time I checked.'
'You got pictures of 'em in the living room?'
'Sure. Katie, she puts ' em around. From school.'
'No pictures in this living room.'
'So what?'
'I'm glad you're here, Kovich. Renews my faith in law enforcement.' Brinkley finished his drawing of the table, and Kovich peered over his shoulder.
'That's prettier than mine, Mick. I think I'm in love.'
'Fuck you,' Brinkley said, without rancor, and strode into the dining room. He had heard the body was in there but would have known anyway. The room had already started to smell, not from decomposition, way too soon for that, but from blood. The air carried the distinctive scent; fresh blood had a sweet aroma before it coagulated and grew stale. He ignored it, surveyed the dining room, and started to draw.
Another big room, another craggy fireplace, a costly mahogany table, lengthwise, with eight high-backed chairs. Two place settings at the table: husband and wife. Two tall champagne flutes next to pristine white china. Appetizer on a fancy platter. Otherwise nothing. No books, photos, clutter. No bills piled up, no newspapers. Nothing to tell Brinkley anything. Maybe its absence told him something. There was no life in this house. There hadn't been, even before the dead body.
'Mick, we should move along,' Kovich said, finishing another page of notes. 'The M.E. and Davis are with the stiff.'
'Gimme a minute.' Brinkley ignored the term, which everybody in law enforcement used. He'd been saving the body for last. He made careful drawings of everything; the table oriented east-west and the high ceiling, white and clean. The walls covered with a light pink cloth, shiny in wavy lines. It had a name. Sheree would know what it was called. Brinkley made a mental note to ask her, then remembered she didn't live there anymore.
'Mick? You done yet?' Kovich asked again, and Brinkley nodded. He stepped forward but couldn't see the body because the D.A. and the M.E. blocked the view. Crime techs buzzed around the chalk silhouette of the body, measuring, photographing, and vacuuming the rug. Brinkley got everybody's attention by standing there in tall, dark silence. The techs edged away, the D.A. rose to his feet, and the M.E. closed his bag and stood up.
Davis shook Brinkley's hand over the dead body. 'Reg, we having fun yet?' he asked with a grin.
'You tell me, Dwight.'
The D.A.'s rep tie was loosened and a legal pad rested in the crook of his arm like a newborn baby. 'Heard you did a first-rate job with the hubby.'
Brinkley couldn't tell if it was sarcasm. 'He didn't sign.'
'I'm not jerkin' you, you guys did great work as usual. I don't need a signature. He confessed and we got the video. I don't need a picture of him doing it.' Davis nodded at both detectives. 'You wanna fill me in on what hubby said?'
Brinkley shut up, and Kovich launched into the blow-by-blow of what happened. Davis took notes and nodded the whole time, getting happier and happier, and Brinkley thought he had never seen anybody so goddamn happy to wear a white hat. Kovich finished the story, and Davis flipped his pad closed. 'Sounds good, gentlemen,' he said. 'I got plenty to work with. Thanks.'
'Let's go home then, eh?' It was the M.E., Aaron Hamburg, who turned and squinted through his trifocals. Hamburg was one of the better M.E.s on rotation, a wizened, balding man near retirement. He got along with Brinkley, but right now he looked tired. He wanted to get on with it already. Have Brinkley examine the body so he could tag it, bag it, and slice a bloodless F into its chest.
'Sorry I'm late, Aaron/ Brinkley said, meaning it.
'I understand, I'm just grumpy.' Hamburg was a graying head shorter than Brinkley and wore a rumpled grey suit, dark tie, and a blue yarmulke hanging by a tenacious bobby pin. 'I know you had to talk to the husband first. Strike while the iron is hot, eh?'
Kovich nodded in agreement, and Brinkley gestured to the chalk line around the body. He hated it when some knuckle-head chalked a body. It could contaminate or move trace evidence. 'Who chalked her?'
Hamburg snorted. 'It was Dodgett. It's always Dodgett. Makes him feel like a cop.'
Brinkley couldn't smile. 'When I see that asshole I'll tell him where to stick his chalk. Now, what'd you find, Aaron?'
'You got lucky this job, it's cut-and-dried. I'll tell you what I told Davis. Unofficially, cause of death is multiple stab wounds. I'll clean her up later but it looks to be about five of 'em. The lethal wound bisected the pulmonary artery. From the temp and lividity, time of death is probably between six-thirty and eight-thirty. Easy case.' Hamburg clapped Brinkley on the arm, but given their height difference it fell at the detective's elbow. 'You live right, my friend.'
'Did you see anything unusual?' Brinkley asked, and Davis looked at him with a frown.
'Why you ask, Brinkley? You got a question?' Davis looked concerned. 'Lemme know.'
Brinkley sighed inwardly. He didn't like talking about his doubts. Actually, he didn't like talking to anyone but Kovich and sometimes he didn't even like talking to Kovich. 'I don't know about Newlin, is all.'
'Why not?' Davis cocked his head. Behind him, crime techs completed their tasks. The party was winding down. 'He confessed, right? On the scene, and to you?'
'Confession ain't a home run.'
'Since when? I mean, like they say in the essay tests, "Explain your answer."' Davis grinned, and Kovich laughed.
'I always hated that,' Kovich joined in. '"Explain your answer." "Compare and contrast." I hated that shit.'
Davis was still grinning. '"Show your work." "Elaborate."'
Brinkley ignored the byplay. He could never forget the body on the floor. Even at wakes, he never joked around or made small talk. Respect for life; respect for death. 'It's too soon to tell. His story didn't sit right.'
'How so?'
'I don't believe him, maybe that.' Brinkley hated being on the spot. 'I think Newlin might be lying.'
For real?' Davis folded his arms, hugging the pad to his chest. 'Why would hubby lie?'
'I don't know, it's just a feeling. He seemed like he was lying. Could be he's protecting someone, I don't know who.'
'You got any evidence of that? Anything to support it?'
'None, but it's early.' Brinkley could feel Kovich looking down at his feet. He was too loyal a partner to laugh.
Hamburg was squinting skeptically. 'I'm only the M.E., but I don't see anything out of line here, boys. She's got stab wounds, most of the bleeding internal. Some defensive wounds on the fingers. I'd say she grabbed the knife at some point, but she wouldn't put up much of a fight. She was drunk as a skunk. It's coming through the skin.' Hamburg winced. A religious man, he disapproved. 'I'll know for sure at the post, but I think we lucked out, boys. Sometimes you get the bear.'
'Sometimes the bear gets you,' Brinkley said, but Davis clapped him on the arm with the pad.
'Cheer up, man. You got it covered. I say it's a duck, but I hear you. If you get anything concrete, lemme know. I'll study the videotape to make sure. I'll have somebody pick up a copy tonight.'
Brinkley thought Davis made the videotape sound like film from the big game. Lawyers. I'll work on it.'
'Don't take too long, my friend. Hubby's going down for capital murder in the morning.'
'A capital case? Why?' It bugged Brinkley that the D.A. asked for death in almost every case. It was overcharging, but in this political climate, the public ate it up. It was the cops who didn't like it; there were degrees of guilt in the Crimes Code for a reason. 'From Newlin's story, there's not even premeditation.'
'Savage murder. Lotsa stab wounds. Evidence of torture.'
'He didn't torture her,' Brinkley said.
The number of stab wounds counts, you know that. Newlin shouldn't get a lighter charge than the average joe.'
Brinkley didn't say anything. Everybody knew who the average joe was.
'Why you stickin' up for this scum, Brinkley? He's a coldblooded wife-killer. Took a butcher knife to a defenseless woman, a drunk who couldn't even fight back.'
'I'm not stickin' up for him,' Brinkley said. 'I think he's a liar.'
Hamburg yawned. I'll let you experts fight this out. I'm going home to bed. I'll open her up tomorrow at noon.' He picked up his bag and trundled off, trailing an assistant. Davis said his good-byes and left with him, and Brinkley wasn't unhappy to see him go.
'Move, people,' he said brusquely, and the remaining techs scattered. One tech looked back resentfully, and Kovich caught her cold eye.
'What my partner means is, "Thanks, everybody, you did a great job. Now good night, happy trails, and y'all come back now, ya hear?"'
The tech laughed, which satisfied Kovich, but Brinkley didn't bother to make nice. He lowered himself to one knee beside what used to be Honor Newlin. She lay on her back with her head tilted into the stupid chalk, her refined features lovely even in death. Her dark blond hair made a silky pillow for her head, and her arms had flopped palms up, slashed with defensive wounds. Blood from the gashes had dripped into the lines of her hand, dribbled between the crevices of her fingers, and pooled in her palms, so that in death she cupped her own blood.
He examined the wounds, a cluster of soggy gashes that rent her white silk blouse. Hamburg had said that most of the bleeding was internal, and Brinkley could see that. He slid his pen from his pocket, leaned over, and pressed open the side of a wound, ignoring the smells of blood, cigarettes, and alcohol that wreathed the corpse. He estimated that the cuts looked of average depth, about four to six inches. It told him the doer was strong, but not too strong, and the angle of attack looked slanted, so the doer was taller than Mrs Newlin. Around six feet tall, maybe? He thought of the silt on the coffee table. Would Newlin put his feet up on a coffee table? Maybe after a few drinks? Surely not during the fight scene he'd described, though.
'Jeez, can you believe this guy?' Kovich said, from the other side of the body. 'Nice house, pretty lady, lots of bucks. So he goes and whacks the wife.'
Brinkley ignored him and scanned the body, which showed no other injuries. He judged it to weigh about 125 pounds, at five-six or so. With the blouse she wore black pants of some stretchy material and they outlined the slim shape of her legs, ending above the ankle. Her shins narrowed to a small anklebone, and she had on pink shoes. He looked twice at her shoes. They had no backs, a low heel, and a tiny strap in the front, but the strap of the right shoe was torn and the shoe lay just off the foot. 'Shoe's broke,' he said, making a sketch, and Kovich nodded.
'Probably ripped it when she fell backwards, like when she was being stabbed.'
'You'd think it would just fall off. The shoe has no back. Stupid shoes.'
'Sexy, though. They do it for me. You know what else
so
I like? I go for those big shoes. What do they call them? Platforms. The ones they wear in porno. I like the white ones with the high heel. Or the red. I love the red.'
'You're a highbrow guy, Kovich.'
'Damn straight.' Kovich knelt closer to the floor and braced himself on his hand. With his butt in the air and his broad nose grazing the rug, he looked like a big dog at play. 'You're about to thank me, Mick.'
'Why?'
'Look.' Kovich pointed beyond the body, on Brinkley's side. In the path of the tech's vacuum cleaner glinted something tiny and gold. It was wedged in the thick wool of the patterned rug, which was why Brinkley hadn't seen it from his angle. Kovich waved off the tech with the vacuum and both detectives leaned closer.
'Wacky-lookin' thing,' Brinkley said. A gold twinkle sat embedded in the swirling Persian paisley. It looked like a tiny piece of jewelry. He looked closer but wouldn't move it until it was photographed. 'What is it?'
'An earring back. My kid, Kelley, loses them all the time.'
'What's an earring back?'
'It's for pierced ears. It holds the earring on. Don't Sheree have pierced ears?'
'No.' Brinkley didn't say more. Someday he'd tell Kovich that he and Sheree had separated. Meantime, he looked at Honor Newlin's head at the same time as Kovich. She still had her earrings on; a single, large pearl on each lobe. He leaned over on his hand, peered behind her ear, and squinted. The left earring back was still on. 'This one's fine. You check the other.'
On his side, Kovich tilted his head like a mechanic under a chassis. 'Okay here, too.'
'So they're not hers.'
'Wrong, skinny.' Kovich righted himself. The body lay between them like a broken line. 'They could be hers, just not to these earrings.'
'Fair enough.'
'See? You're not the only dick in the room.'
'Just the biggest.'
Kovich laughed and stood up, as did Brinkley, hoisting his slacks up with a thumb and giving the body one last going-over. It stuck in his craw that the techs had grabbed the knife. Couldn't leave the murder weapon in place. Had to get it tested stat. That was the problem with a goddamn box job. Everybody rushed around like a chicken and things got messed up. In the most important cases, they should be going the slowest, not the fastest. He looked away in frustration.
At the end of the dining room table sat the two place settings, untouched. It was fancy china, white with a slim black border, and in front of each plate stood wine glasses and water goblets of cut crystal. Brinkley hailed one of the crime techs with a print kit. There should be a Scotch glass, two of them,' he said.
There were two, Detective. They're already bagged. Rick there' – she waved toward a red-haired young man – 'he's got the Polaroids.'
Terrific.' Brinkley wanted to scream. He strode to the redhaired tech, got the photos, and examined them one by one. Shots of the body, from every gruesome angle. Where were the glasses?
There. A crystal tumbler lay on its side next to the body, with liquor spilling out like a dark snake. Three separate views. Another Polaroid of a matching tumbler shattered on the parquet floor. Five photos of it. Brinkley glanced automatically at the floor. It had been swept up. 'Goddamn it!' he finally exploded.
'What'sa matter?' Kovich asked, appearing at his side.
They fucking collected the broken glass! I wanted to see where it fell!'
'You got the pictures, and they'll test everything. You know that. We'll get the reports.'
They couldn'ta waited?' Brinkley flipped through the
Polaroids, seething. The focus was fuzzy. He couldn't tell squat from the photos. 'We're gonna miss shit!'
'Nothing to miss, Mick.' Kovich spread his bulky arms, gesturing at the dining room as expansively as if he owned it. 'We got the doer. What's to miss?'
'When does Newlin throw up?'
'Who cares?'
'Me! Bad guys don't throw up after.'
'Calm down, bro. This ain't your typical bad guy, I'll give you that. Okay, I'll give you that. You're right, but listen and stop bitching. This is how I think it went down.' Kovich punched up his aviators at the bridge. 'What we got is a guy, a regular guy, a regular rich guy who lost it. A lawyer who saw a move and took it without thinking. He's not a punk, so he tosses ' em after. Or like he said, when he sees he ain't gonna get away with it. He's not upset he did it, he's upset he's goin' down for it. Like you said, he's a lawyer.'
Brinkley considered it. 'So you don't think he's the type either.'
'Not the normal type doer, I know.' Kovich stood closer. 'But whether he's the type or not, you know that don't mean shit, Mick. Newlin did it, all right. Just 'cause he's sorry later, or it freaks him out, or turns his stomach, or it's the one time in his life he breaks the law, he don't even jaywalk before he knifes the wife, don't mean he's innocent. I like him, Mick. I really do. He's our boy and everything here jives with it.'
Brinkley scanned the crime scene wordlessly. He had to admit Kovich could be right. It was all consistent. The dinner table, set for two. The Scotch glasses. The appetizer platter, untouched. Cold filet mignon, her favorite, Newlin had said. The outside of the meat was seared black and the inside was a spongy, tender pink. It was served cold and sliced, and next to it sat a dollop of speckled mustard and knotted rolls with shiny tops.
Kovich followed his partner's eyes. 'Jeez, I haven't had
a steak like that in a year, not since Billy retired. Remember we took him downtown, to The Palm? Jeez, I love The Palm.'
'No.' Brinkley stared at the platter. Next to the mustard was a large pool of gloppy, smooth goo. A tan color. It didn't look like a dressing for the steak. 'Look at that, Kovich. That's hummus.'
'What?'
'Hummus.' Brinkley knew it because of Sheree. When she turned Muslim, she started eating all sorts of shit. Out went the greens and pork ribs, in came the bean soup and whole wheat bread. 'It's a dip, made with chickpeas and tahini.'
'Tahini? Isn't that an island, like Hawaii?'
'No, it's a paste. From sesame seeds.'
'Looks like baby shit.'
'Tastes like baby shit.'
'You eat that?'
'Only to save my marriage.' They laughed, then Brinkley stopped. 'It ain't the kind of appetizer most people put out.'
'Like cheese balls.'
'Right.' Brinkley didn't know what a cheese ball was, but didn't ask. Kovich ate trash. Ring-Dings and hot dogs. 'Like cheese balls.'
'Okay, so?'
'So why they serving hummus with meat? Wife's got the appetizer out and she's waiting for Newlin to come home to dinner.' Brinkley shoved the Polaroids into his pocket and waved at the platter, thinking aloud. 'Newlin says the wife likes filet. We know she likes Scotch. They Scotch and meat people, dig?'
'I guess, Bill.'
Brinkley let it go. He felt like he was on to something, whether it was something that mattered he didn't know. 'So why they got hummus, too? Meat people don't eat hummus. Hummus is a substitute for meat. You eat either hummus or meat.'
'I understand. One or the other. So, you think Newlin eats hummus?'
'No. No man eats hummus. Not unless he wants to save his marriage.' Brinkley wasn't joking. 'People who eat meat don't eat hummus. Don't work that way.'
'How the hell do you know that, Mick?'
'I just know.' He didn't want to get into it. Sheree's conversion. The white keemar she took to wearing, covering up her fine body. All the time reading the Koran. It was the beginning of the end for them. The hummus is for somebody else. Whoever else was at dinner tonight.'
'What? Kovich pushed up his glasses, leaving red marks on his nose.
'You heard me. Let's check the rest of the house.'
Brinkley and Kovich went through the kitchen, where a large dinner salad sat waiting in pink Saran, and then went through the bathroom, noting the bloodstained towels and the toilet where Newlin had vomited. There was no mistaking the smell, and the detectives took notes, made sketches, and went upstairs. The master bedroom was sterile, the closets neat and well stocked, with a wedding picture on the white vanity, the wife in a flowing white gown that trailed like a cloud. The his-and-her bathrooms were in order, and Brinkley took notes and ordered everything bagged.
Everything looked perfect, even the library, and the wife's home office, which contained a slew of photographs of herself, her husband, horses, and a boat, but only a single photo of the daughter. It was a posed publicity shot, and though the girl looked gorgeous, it wasn't personal in the least. Brinkley tagged the files to be boxed and seized, and listened to the messages on the office answering machine, all routine. Nothing he bagged was remotely as intriguing as the earring back.
He located the daughter's room, which looked like a room for the kid who had everything. Big canopy bed, school desk with books, and three shelves of pretty white
dolls. He scanned the shelves but the dolls stared back at him blankly, and nothing was out of order. He had that earring back on the brain. He went over to the dresser and eyeballed it for a jewelry box. Bottles of perfume, hair things, and a box of burled wood sat against the mirror, and he probed its lid with a pen. It was locked. The key must be somewhere. Brinkley searched the drawers with his pen. Silk undies, T-shirts, sweaters, all folded in a rainbow of colors. No key to the box, no nothing. He'd get it after it was seized.
He left the dressers, searched under the bed, between the mattress, and then moved on to the bathroom. It was well stocked but nothing looked unusual, except he found a pink plastic wheel of birth control pills. Brinkley had never seen them before; Sheree didn't need them. He turned away at the memory and left the room to find Kovich.
'I keep thinking about that earring back,' Brinkley said, as they walked down the grand, carpeted staircase. 'Something that falls off easy, by the body. Makes sense it belonged to the killer. Got knocked off during the struggle.'
'Give it up, Mick. Like I said, that earring coulda been dropped a long time ago.'
True, or maybe it was dropped by whoever Newlin's lying to protect. Whoever eats hummus and puts their feet up.' They reached the bottom of the staircase where the techs were working on their final tasks. A low steel gurney rolled in on wheels that squeaked as they negotiated the thick, costly rugs. One of the coroner's assistants gave Brinkley the high sign, and the detective nodded absently. 'Earrings, a vegetarian, and dirty feet on the table? I'm no expert, but it says teenager to me.'
'You're serious?'
'Dead serious. I want to talk to the daughter.'
'Christ, Mick.' Kovich's eyes widened behind the big window of his glasses. 'She's Kelley's age.'
'Kelley loses her earring backs, too. You just told me that,' Brinkley said, but was suddenly distracted by the shouted one-two-three count of the coroner's assistants, the sound of an industrial zipper being closed, then the squeaking of the gurney's wheels back across the rugs. The gurney rattled past the detectives, bearing the black body bag.
'Film at eleven,' Kovich said, but Brinkley was making Honor Newlin a secret promise.
I'll get your killer, he told her, and he knew that she heard him, in some other place and time.
After Mary had delivered Paige to her father, she went to find Judy in the Roundhouse lobby, busy despite the late hour. Groups of department employees stood chatting in street clothes, oblivious to the activity around them. Two cops hurried to the exit, their gun holsters and waist radios flapping, and three others dragged a vastly overweight drunk between them in handcuffs. The toes of his sneakers squeaked across the polished floor, making the cops at the security desk laugh.
The oval lobby, with its dramatic curved shape, was modern when it was built, but now looked obviously dated, reminding Mary of The Jetsons come to life. Wooden acoustic slats ringed the room, the floor was a funky flecked tile, and the walls were covered with oil portraits of police brass, odd in the space-age setting. An American flag and the blue flag of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania flanked the security desk, the fluorescent lighting glinting dully on their synthetic weave. Mary spotted Judy reading the newspaper across the room and hurried over.
'Yo, come with me,' she said, grabbing Judy's arm. 'We have to talk.' She hustled Judy aside so no one could hear and told her what had happened in Paige's apartment with the photo. 'Don't you think it's odd that she lied about being with her boyfriend on the night her mother was killed?'
'You don't know that she lied. You don't know that the kid in the hall was her boyfriend.'
'I think he was. So why would she lie?'
'Maybe she doesn't want you to know her business, whiz.'
This is the night the murder was committed, and Paige was supposed to go to dinner at her parents' house, she told me. She let it slip.' Mary glanced over her shoulder. A circle of women talked near a display case that contained model squad cars. 'What do you think about that?'
'I don't think it means anything. Not much anyway.'
'What if she really did go to her parents' tonight? What if her boyfriend went, too? That doesn't mean much?'
'That didn't happen, Mare. Newlin confessed. He called nine-one-one from the scene. He's even willing to take responsibility for the crime, which he should.'
"He could be protecting her.'
'Set himself up for murder? Who would do that?'
'A loving father,' Mary answered without hesitation, and Judy looked at her like she was nuts.
'My father would never do anything like that, and he loves me.'
'For real?'
'Of course not. Confess to a murder he didn't commit? He's not like that.'
'My father would do it, in a minute.' Mary summoned an image of her father's deep brown eyes and soft, round face. 'He would do anything for me, make any sacrifice. If he could save us from something terrible, any kind of harm, he would.'
'Doesn't right or wrong matter?'
'Wrong is if something bad happens to me or my sister.'
Judy shook her head. 'Well, it's not a given, and I really doubt that's what happened with Newlin. Don't be distracted by his looks.'
'I'm not.'
'You are, too. You'd have to be. But like you told him, there's a ton of evidence that he did it and there's no evidence that Paige did it.'
'How do you know? We're not looking for any. Nobody is.' The more Mary said it, the more it seemed possible. 'The cops bought his story and they're going with it. We bought
his story and we're going with it. Jack Newlin is about to plead guilty and go to jail for life, right?'
'Right.'
'But what if he's innocent? What if instead of having a client who's telling us he's innocent when he's guilty, we have a client who's telling us he's guilty when he's innocent?'
Jack saw Paige enter the interview area, a reed of a girl wrapped in a chic black leather jacket. Her wet blue eyes took the dirty interview room in with one appalled look and she rushed to the chair in front of him, her expression so anguished it made Jack feel as if she were the one in prison for life. Which now, in a way, she was.
'Dad, I can't let you do this,' Paige said, her voice urgent. Tears spilled from her eyes and her brow was a network of premature worry lines. 'I can't let you. I won't let you.'
'You have to. You have no choice.'
'But it's not right. Your job, your life.' Paige wiped the tears beginning to streak her cheeks. Her hair, slicked back in the ponytail style Jack favored, was damp from the rain outside. 'Dad, they could give you the death-penalty!'
'No, they won't.' Jack tried to keep calm. He had so many questions for her, but above all, he had to convince her to follow his plan. She could ruin her life in one night. 'Listen to me, Paige. If I plead guilty, they won't charge me with the 'death penalty. That's how it works.'
'But Dad, your whole life, in prison? That's terrible.'
'Not at all. They'll send me to Woodville with the other rich guys. It's like a country club. Sammy Cott went there last year. Took ten strokes off his game.' Jack smiled, but couldn't coax one from Paige. 'Come on, honey. I'll be okay.'
'No, you won't.' Paige began to cry. The people… the other prisoners… they'll hurt you.'
'That won't happen, not to me. Lawyers get special status
in prison, didn't you know that? Jailhouse lawyers are very valuable. Nobody hurts them.'
'Yes, they do,' Paige blurted through her tears. 'I saw it on TV. On HBO… there's this show. You should see what they do… to them. There's a lawyer in there and they…'
That's only on TV.' Jack had to cut her off. She could get hysterical and she had to keep her wits about her. 'I'll do fine, honey. I may even like it. I'll finally represent some honest clients, huh?' He smiled again, but Paige was crying too hard to see, her head bent and her lovely face covered by slim hands. Jack felt his heart wrench as he noticed her hands shaking. He loved her so much, this beautiful child. He had just been getting to know her when this happened. 'It's all right. Don't cry, sweetie.'
'It's not… all right.'
'It will be. I'll make it all right, you'll see. You can visit me every week, whenever you want to. The world doesn't end because I go to prison. We'll see more of each other than before. Who knows, our relationship may even improve.' Jack laughed then he saw her shoulders finally relax. Her face came up from her hands, bleary-eyed but smiling, and his heart eased. He felt struck at the power of love, even at the most unexpected times. Especially at the most unexpected times.
'Dad, that's not funny.'
Think of the upside. No more suits and ties, which I hate. And they make all my food for me. You know what a lousy cook I am. Remember when I made the tofu turkey for you? And that hummus you love? It came out like spackle.'
That's not funny either.' Paige giggled, and Jack beamed.
'It's not meant to be funny. Dad jokes are never funny, everybody knows that.'
'You aren't that kind of dad.' Paige sniffled.
'I am, too!' Jack said, in mock offense. I'm no slacker when it comes to bad jokes. Remember the avocado?'
'No. Tell it to me.'
'Okay, what did the avocado say to the celery before they got married?' Jack's heart caught in his throat as his daughter replied:
'Avocado never-ending love for you.'
'Right,' he said, his voice thick. 'That's a pretty bad joke, isn't it?'
'It's a terrible joke.' She wiped her eyes.
'You would say, "it sucks."'
'It sucks bad.' Paige laughed, and the sound touched Jack so deeply that he kept talking, hoping the congestion in his throat would work itself out.
Think of this that way, honey. I'm more responsible than anyone for what happened. It was brewing from the day your mom and I married. You don't know all the reasons for it and you don't have to pay for it. I do.'
'No, you didn't do it.' Paige kneaded her forehead, still creased with worry. 'My head is killing me. I should tell the police what happened. I should be the one confessing.'
'Don't do that! Don't even say that! I won't allow it,' he said sternly, and Paige looked up, startled.
'I could tell them, you know. You couldn't stop me.'
'I'd say you were lying to protect me. They would believe me and not you.'
'Why?' Paige's eyes bored into his, and Jack knew he needed to be convincing now. He could see she was actually considering it. He should have anticipated that. She always had a soft heart.
'There are lots of reasons. Because I told them a story that implicates me, for one. Because they'll have direct evidence against me, for another.'
'How?'
'It's not for you to know.'
'Whatever, it doesn't matter. I could tell them the truth.'
'No, please. Who would you rather send to prison, a pretty young girl or a lawyer? It's a no-brainer.'
'I don't know.' Paige was shaking her head. Her skin was mottled from stress. 'God, my brain's going to… explode.'
'Paige, for once in your life, let me do something for you.'
'You did things for me. You worked, you had a job.'
That's not something I did for you, and what I made was a drop in the bucket compared to your mother and you know it.'
'You were there, Dad.'
True, I was present. I was in attendance.'
'I didn't mean it that way -'
'But I did. / did.' Jack leaned over the counter. 'I was there, but that's it. I let your mother run the show. I was just a guy in the background. I was there, at the birthday parties. I was like an actor playing a role – Father. But I really wasn't a father to you, not the way a father should be.'
'What's a father?' Paige blinked, her eyes glistening. 'A hero?'
'No, not a hero. Just a man,' Jack answered, his words suddenly clarifying his thinking. 'I will do this for you. I already have. But there is one thing you have to do, in return. You have to tell me the truth about what happened to your mother.'
Paige looked down and sighed deeply. 'What happened? It's hard to say. I mean, it's like I don't know.'
'What do you mean, you don't know?' Jack heard anger creep into his tone. 'You were there, weren't you?'
'Yes.'
'Was Trevor there?'
'No, he stayed home, like you said.'
'Is that the truth?'
'Dad.' Paige glared at him, plainly insulted. 'Yes, I told you.'
'Good.' Jack eased forward on his cold seat, watching Paige's hand shake again as she smoothed back her hair. 'I know this is hard for you. I know that whatever happened with you and Mom, it's not easy to talk about.'
'It's worse than that.' She hung her head and her voice sounded so agonized Jack wondered for a moment why he was forcing the issue. He wanted to get the details of his own story straight, in case they questioned him again, but more important, he wanted to make Paige account for it, at least in this small way. He, and she, owed Honor at least that. He pushed his resentment away when Paige started to cry again.
'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' she said, between sobs. 'It's so hard to know… where to start, even.'
'At the beginning.' Jack remembered her telephone call to him that afternoon. He had been at his desk drafting a letter and was so pleased that Paige had called him at work. Then she had said she was coming home to dinner and told him why, and that she was going to tell Honor that night. Paige had said she needed help to tell her mother. She couldn't know how much.
'Oh, no. Dad.' Paige looked down at her hands lying limp in her lap, then she blinked through her tears. 'I think… I'm getting a migraine. A bad one. Dad.'
'Oh, no.' Jack felt stricken. Paige had been plagued with migraines ever since she was young. Paralyzing headaches that hit anytime Paige was stressed and sent her to her bedroom, where she'd draw the curtains and sleep for hours. 'Did you see the aura?' he asked, anxious. He meant the double vision or glittery lights that warned her.
'I… think so. Wait. Hold on.' Paige held up her hand and turned it slowly, gazing at it with eyes strangely out of focus. Jack had seen her do it so many times. If she saw an aura, it meant the migraine was on the way and she had only minutes to hurry to bed. She could take Duadrin at the onset of the migraine, which could head off the symptoms if she took it in time.
'Do you have your meds?'
'No,' Paige said, and it came out like a soft wail. 'When the lawyer told me you were here… I just got dressed and left. I didn't think. I didn't even bring my purse.' Her hand
dropped to her lap. 'Uh-oh. It's… coming. Waiting for it is the worst.'
'Oh God, no meds?' The pain couldn't be prevented, like a freight train racing at his daughter. Jack had seen how fast it could hit; in five to ten minutes Paige would be reduced to incoherence and agony. He couldn't do that to her. 'Honey, go home and lie down right away. The lawyers are right upstairs. Go to them.'
'No, no, I want to talk to you.' Her hand rose to her forehead and she touched it gingerly. 'I want to tell you what happened… with Mom.'
'You should go.' Jack was burning to hear what had happened, but he couldn't torture his own child, twist the vise around her head himself. 'Please, we'll talk another time. Go home. God knows, I'm not going anywhere.'
'No, no… I feel able… to talk.' Paige rubbed her forehead. 'It was just me and Mom… I came home to dinner… I don't know… where to start.'
'You went over to dinner/ Jack supplied, to help her. 'I was supposed to meet you there but I was late. I am so sorry.'
'It's not your fault.' Tears returned to her eyes but she brushed them away with the back of her hand. 'I was early. It wasn't going to go well, I knew. So… I went home and she was there. I was… going to wait for you, to tell her, but… she started in. That I was… gaining weight.' Paige's tears halted and her voice turned bitter. 'I was looking fat. I was… retaining water. Oh, my God, my head.' Paige kneaded her brow. 'Shit.'
'You should go. Please go.'
'No.' Paige waved him off, her hand shaking. 'She started in… on how I couldn't gain weight. How I had to… control myself. How I had to watch what I ate… now that my big chance… was coming up.'
Jack winced. As Paige had grown older. Honor and nagged Paige more about her weight. He had argued that it would drive Paige to anorexia or worse, but neither heeded him. It was always as if he were speaking offstage in a drama played out between mother and daughter. 'So you and your mom started fighting, right from the beginning.'
'Yes. It got me so… upset. It was like… I knew why I was gaining… and she didn't know. And then… I felt like who was she to tell me, I'm emancipated and I am not a child, and now… I was… having a child.'
Jack felt queasy at the words. Paige had told him on the phone, but hearing it said out loud made it undeniable. His child was having a child. Their child was having a child. It was bad news for any parents, but worse for Jack and Honor, given their history. He could only imagine how Honor would have taken the news.
'Oh, no. This is going to be a bad one.' Paige's forehead buckled in pain and her hand covered it futilely. 'Listen… I was thinking… now she can't tell me anything… because I'm going to be a mother. Not just her. Me. All of a sudden… I was happy about it. Really happy… and I wanted to tell her. So it just… came out.'
Jack visualized the scene. Paige happy about delivering news that was Honor's worst nightmare.
'I said, "I'm pregnant, Mom… that's why I'm so hungry. So I have to eat and… there's nothing anybody can do about it. Because I'm going to… have a baby."'Paige stopped suddenly. That's the beginning of the migraine. It's… coming. I'll tell it… fast. I looked at her expression… and I couldn't believe it. Her eyes… they were so big… and angry. She looked like… a witch.'
Jack couldn't even guess at the look.
Then… she hit me.' Fresh tears came to Paige's eyes and her face flushed with emotion. 'She hit me… right on the face. Like a really hard slap… she called me things but she never… hit me before. Ever. She hit me so hard… I fell off the chair. She knocked me right off the chair… onto the floor. I couldn't believe… it.'
But Jack could. Though Honor wasn't a violent woman, this news would move her to it. This news would unhinge her, undo all of them. He wanted to tell Paige the truth right then, had the impulse to explain, but fought it. This wasn't the place or the time. She had only a few minutes before the migraine hit full force. She'd become incapable even of speech.
'I got up from the floor… my face was hurting, and I started to cry. Then she grabbed me and… threw me down again… and started kicking me. Kicking me… Dad… over and over. Like in my stomach.' Paige's sobbing started again, and Jack's gut twisted. 'She had on her mules… with the pointy toes, and she was, like… aiming for my stomach, Dad. Really hard… with the toe. For the… baby. Like she was trying to… kick it out of me.'
No. Jack just kept shaking his head. No. He didn't know if he had even said it aloud.
'She started yelling… "You kill it or I'll kill it!"… "You kill it or I'll kill it!" Dad… my head. I can't… I really can't -' Paige covered her face and doubled over, falling forward on the counter and collapsing into tears. 'I don't know what… happened next. I just don't, Dad… I swear.' Paige was crying full bore, but trying to talk. 'I started to hurt… all over, from my belly… and my chest… I started to hurt, so much… I rolled away from her. I said… I wasn't getting an abortion. But she kept… coming at me… kicking.'
No. He didn't want to hear any more. He didn't want to put Paige through any more.
'I was so scared… and hurt so much… I couldn't even see. I mean, I didn't think she'd kill me, I only know I got so angry, for me, for my baby, it was like… I was angry for so long, my whole life. Then, I think… I got up… and grabbed the knife. I remember… I grabbed the knife.' Paige looked up, tears streaming down a face contorted with pain. 'I can't… think.'
Jack blinked away his own tears. It was his fault. He hadn't been there. Not only tonight, but for all of her childhood. He hadn't known how bad it had been, but
that was no excuse. He should have known; it was his job to know. He had deserted his own daughter and when he had finally realized it, he was too late. Guilt engulfed him, drowning him like a wave.
'I went kind of… crazy. I was yelling and crying… it was like everything came back at me… I mean… I knew I was mad at her… but I guess I just got out of control… and I stabbed her and when I was done, she was… she was' – Paige's expression was a frieze of agony – 'she was lying there… on the floor. I dropped the… knife. It was all… bloody. I didn't mean… I just left her there… and ran out. I just ran… I'm sorry, Dad. I'm so sorry.' Paige's words dissolved into tears, and her shoulders collapsed as easily as a dollhouse.
Jack couldn't help but raise his hands, even handcuffed, to the plastic barrier between them, touching it with his fingertips. It was cold, hard, and lifeless, so unlike the warm, silky hair of his little girl. How often had he touched Paige's head? Not often enough. Now he had to save her. 'Paige,' he said, 'what did you tell the lawyers?'
'I said… I wasn't there.' Paige was sobbing hard. That… I didn't go over.'
'Okay, so you were never there tonight. You never went over. Stick with that story, understand?'
'It's… a lie. God, my head. The… lights.'
'I know it's a lie. I don't care.' Jack lowered his hands and leaned forward urgently. 'Never, Paige. Never breathe a word. If you do, you and your baby are lost.'
'My baby?' Paige looked at him through her tears. Her eyes were red and swollen. Her skin was a mass of hives. 'What about my baby?'
Think about the baby, Paige. We didn't even get to talk about the baby. What are you planning to do?'
'I don't know, for sure.' Paige's weeping stilled. 'Get married. Trevor wants to.'
Jack cringed inwardly. 'What about college? You told me you'd set aside modeling for college.'
'I'll go later, after the baby.'
Jack bit his tongue. 'Okay, let's assume for the moment that's the right decision. If you come forward and tell the police what happened, who will raise the baby? Trevor? Of course not. You have to think of your baby, not me. Please don't interfere with me. If the police question you, say you weren't at the house. Say you were surprised by what I did. Don't go to my arraignment or any other court proceeding. Let me do what I have to do.'
'I can't.'
'Put your hand on your tummy, right now. Do it, Paige.' Jack's tone was so commanding he sounded strange even to himself. Something was happening to him. He felt like he was coming into his own. Maybe even redeeming himself, 'Put your hand on your tummy.'
Paige did as she was told, crying as she rested her slender, pale hand against the slick black leather of her jacket. She was listening to him, Jack could see.
That's your baby, in there. Inside you. That baby is your first obligation now, not me. You're a mother now. You are the mother. Be a mother.'
'Okay, Dad,' Paige said in a whisper, and Jack knew from her eyes that she had yet to think of herself that way. She would do what he said. She owed a responsibility to someone other than herself, as he did. In one horrific, rainy night, she had become a parent.
And so, finally, had Jack.
It was late at night when Mary grabbed the C bus, sitting with her Coach bag and briefcase in the blue plastic seats in the front. The bus was one of the new SEPTA models, white and sharply boxy, with advertisements for TV shows sprayed all over, even the windows. At this hour, the bus was almost completely empty and barreled hollowly down Broad Street. The business day was long over, the in-town shoppers had gone home, and Mary, by any account, should have done the same.
Instead she was going to her parents' house, in South Philly. She told herself it was on the way home, but it really wasn't, and in time she stopped trying to justify her decision. After an evening spent glimpsing the interior of the Newlin family, she yearned to be reminded of what a normal family was like, or at least, her family. Where nobody knifed each other and the only serious fights concerned the Pope. Whoever said you can't go home again didn't grow up near the C.
Mary gazed out the bus window in the dark, watching Broad Street change from the marbled-and-mirrored financial district to the neon funkiness of South Street, surrounded by modern rowhouses filled with lawyers, doctors, and accountants. The gentrified district disappeared in five or six blocks, and businesses began to appear among the less desirable rowhouses; nail and funeral parlors, the omnipresent McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts. She was entering the Italian neighborhood in which she grew up, and though it was only fifteen minutes from the center of Philadelphia, it could have been across the country. Still, the streets of her neighborhood felt more real to her than the law firms downtown.
Mary thought about it as she rode along, and the farther south she went, the better she felt. She remembered that Judy was very attached to her hometown in California, and had told her once about something called land memory. Either you have it or the land does, Mary had never been completely sure, but the bottom line was that you felt best on the land you and your family had grown up on, and in time you made it your own. And no matter what happened to you or to the land, you still felt best there. Standing on it. Being there.
The bus rattled ahead and she watched the land change to dingy rowhouses with city grit blown into each crevice, darkening the mortar. The color of the brick managed to fight its way through, showing the spunk of a weed in a sidewalk crack, and each house had been built with a different color brick; some were the yellow of dark marigolds, some even a pumpkin orange, and the conventional dark red. Each rowhouse had different decorative touches in its facade; in some, the bricks at the top were tilted so the ends stuck out and made a cute line of baby teeth, and in others a layer of narrower brick underlined the flat roofline, an inner-city underscoring. The stoops were the focus of the homes, like the smile of each place; there was marble, concrete, and flagstone, a classy touch.
Mary swayed with the bus, her eyes on the cityscape. The houses were only two stories, so the night sky shimmered above as broad as over any grassy plain, and the luster of the stars wasn't diminished by the telephone wires. She smiled to herself. She was going home. The land didn't have to be the soaring, craggy mountains or cool shady forests that Judy had. described. The land could be concrete, couldn't it? Grimy, gritty, shitty, too-close-together, gum-spattered South Philadelphia. If you had spent your childhood there – playing, laughing, walking to school – even a city block could be your land, and you had as much right to the land memory as anybody else.
The bus approached her street, and Mary grabbed her briefcase and got up to go. She held the stainless steel bar, reading the curved ads running along the top of the bus, the ever-popular yellow PREGNANT? and RESUME SERVICES. The bus lurched to the same sudden stop it had every day since she'd taken it home from high school, guaranteed to hurl Catholic schoolgirls through the windshield.
But Mary wasn't to be outsmarted. She held tight to the pole through the step and then thanked the driver on the way out, which was something else the nuns had taught her. Turn the other cheek, even when people shit on you for no reason. Mary had had to overcome that thinking to be a lawyer; parochial school hadn't prepared her for anything except sainthood.
And the job openings were so few.
The rooms on the first floor of her parents' rowhouse were strung like beads on a rosary: living room, dining room, and kitchen. The tiny kitchen was the only room in which the DiNunzios spent time. It contained a square Formica table with padded chairs and was ringed with refaced white cabinets and a white counter with water cracks in each corner. Mass cards and Easter palm aged behind bumpy black switch plates, though the faded Pope John photo had fallen off the wall last year and cracked its frame on the thin linoleum. Mary's mother had taken it as a bad sign and made a week of novenas. Mary had declined to remind her that Jesus Christ didn't believe in the evil eye.
'Is it too late to stop by, Dad?' Mary asked, her face brushing against the worn plaid cotton of her father's bathrobe. He was giving Mary a hug in the warm kitchen, and when he pulled away, his eyes looked hurt at the question.
'Whadda you mean, baby?' her father said softly. 'Sure, you can always come home, no matter how late. You know I'm up, watchin' TV.'
A short, soft man, Mariano DiNunzio was almost seventy-five, with pudgy cheeks in a barely lined face, and full lips with deep laugh lines. Bifocals with dark frames slipped down a bulbous nose and he wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and pajama pants under his bathrobe. Though he had gained weight, he had the build of the tile setter he had been before his back had given out; his body was shaped like a city fireplug and twice as solid. The DiNunzios specialized in low centers of gravity.
Thanks, Pop,' Mary answered. She knew it was exactly what he'd say, and the sound of it comforted her. She had always been her father's favorite and remained close to him as an adult, when she became aware that their conversations included complete paragraphs of call-and-response, like a priest to his congregation. Et cum spiritu tuo.
I'll make the coffee,' he said. 'You wanna set the table?'
'Sure.' Mary smiled, knowing that the question was part of the same Mass, celebrating the making of late-night coffee. While she went to the cabinets to retrieve cups and saucers, her father shuffled to the sink to fill the stainless steel coffeepot with water. The DiNunzios still used a percolator to make coffee, its bottom dent the only signs of wear in thirty-odd years. Progress was something that came to other households. Thank God.
'You should stop by more often, Mare,' her father said, as water plunked into the coffeepot. He turned off the water, set the pot on the counter, and pried the plastic lid from the can of Maxwell House, releasing only the faintest aroma. He scooped dry grounds into the pot's basket, and the sound reverberated in the quiet kitchen, as familiar to Mary from her childhood as a toy shovel through wet, dark sand down at the Jersey shore. Scoop, scoop, scoop. And though it was only the two of them, her father would make eight cups of coffee. A veritable sandcastle of caffeine.
'Come more often? Dad, I'm here every Sunday, practically, for dinner.' Mary snared two cups by their chipped handles and grabbed two saucers in a fake English pattern they had bought at Wanamaker's a store that didn't exist anymore. They were just perfect, but she couldn't resist teasing. Think we'll ever get mugs, Pop?'
'Mugs?'
'Coffee mugs. They have them now, with sayings on them. It's a new thing.'
'Wise guy,' her father scoffed, blinking behind his bifocals. They were thick, but not as thick as her mother's. Her mother could barely see, from a lifetime of piecework sewing in the basement of the house. Her father had good eyes but could barely hear, the result of living with Mary, her twin, and her mother. Mary had bought him two hearing aids before he consented to wear the one he had now. It sat curled in his ear like a brown snail.
'No, really. I could get you a mug that says World's Greatest Father.'
'Nah. Mugs, they're not so nice. Not as nice as cups and saucers.'
'People use them all the time.'
'I see that. I know things. I get out.' He smiled, and so did Mary. It was a game they were both playing.
'And computers, they use, too.'
'Computers?' Her father cackled. 'I see that, on the TV. All the time, computers. You know, Tony. Tony-from-down-the-block. He got on the Internet.' Her father wagged the blue scoop at her. 'Writes to some lady in Tampa, Florida. How about that?'
There you go. You could have girlfriends in Tampa, too.'
'Nah, I'm more interested in my daughter and why she don't go to church with us on Sunday.'
'Oh, Pop.' Mary went to the silverware drawer for teaspoons. 'You gotta start on me?'
'Your mother would like that, if you went with us on Sunday. She was sayin' that to me just tonight, before she went to bed. "Wouldn't it be nice if Mary came to church with the family?" Angle goes with us now.'
'Angie has to. She was a nun.' Mary's voice sounded more bitter than she intended, and her father's soft shoulders slumped. She felt a twinge at disappointing him, and guilt gathered like a puffy grey cloud over her head, ready to storm on her and only her. 'Okay, you win. Maybe I will go with you, sometime. How about that. Pop?'
'Good.' Her father nodded, one shake of his bald head, with a wispy fringe of matte grey hair. He set the coffeepot on the stove, twisted on the gas, and turned around as it lit with an audible floom. The pilot light on the ancient stove was too high again. This Sunday, you'll come?'
'This Sunday?' Mary plucked two napkins from the plastic holder in the center of the table, where they had slipped to the bottom. 'You drive a hard bargain.'
'I bid construction, remember?'
She laughed. 'Okay, this Sunday.' She eased into her chair at the table. It was the one on the far side. 'If I don't have to work.'
Her father turned to the stove, the better to watch the pot, and Mary noticed his heavy hand touch his lower back. In recent years, back pain kept him up at nights, but he pretended he liked to watch TV until two in the morning, and she had always cooperated in this fiction. To do otherwise seemed cruel, but now she wondered about it. 'Dad, how's your back?' she asked.
'No complaints,' he said, which was what he always said. Et cum spiritu tuo.
'I know you don't want to complain, but tell me. How is your back?'
'It's fine.' Her father opened the bread drawer and pulled out a plastic bag with an Italian roll it. He would have bought it at the corner bakery that morning, coming home every day with exactly three rolls; one for him, one for Mary's mother, and one for extra. The rolls would be buttered and dunked in the coffee, leaving veins of melted butter swirling slick on its surface and enriching its flavor. He took the roll out and set it on the counter, then folded
the plastic bag in two, then four, and returned it to the drawer, to be reused for tomorrow's rolls. It wasn't about recycling.
'Are you taking your pills, for the pain?'
'Nah, they make me too sleepy.' He put the roll on a plate and set it down on the table, near the butter, and Mary knew they would fight over it, each trying to give it to the other.
'Do you do your exercises?'
'I go for the newspaper in the morning, at the corner. In the afternoon, I buy my cigar with Tony-from-down-the-block.'
'But your back hurts. How do you sleep with it?'
'With my eyes closed.' Her father smiled, but Mary didn't.
'You stay downstairs at night and watch TV. It's not because you like TV, it's because you can't sleep. Isn't that right?'
Her father eased into his chair, leaning on one of his hands. His expression didn't change, a sly smile still traced his lips, but he didn't say anything. They sat at the table and regarded each other over the chipped china.
'Your back hurts,' Mary said. Tell me the truth.'
'Why you gotta know that?'
'I don't know. I just want you to tell me.' ' Her father sighed deeply. 'Okay. My back, it hurts.'
'At night?'
'Yes.'
'When else?'
Her father didn't answer except to purse soft lips. The coffee began to perk in the background, a single eruption like a stray burp.
'All the time?'
'Yes.'
'But mostly at night?'
'Only 'cause I got nothing to think about then.' His voice was quiet. The coffee burped again, behind him.
'I'm sorry about that. Is there anything I can do?'
'No.'
'Maybe we should try new doctors. I could take you back to Penn. They have great doctors there.'
'You made me go last year. S'enough already.' Her father waved his hand. 'Is that why you came here? To talk about the pain in my back?'
'In a way, yes.'
'Well, you're givin' me a pain in my ass.' He laughed, and so did Mary. She felt oddly better that he had told her the truth, even though it wasn't good news. She would have to hatch a new plan to get him back to the doctor's.
The coffeepot perked in the background, with better manners now, and she caught the first whiff of fresh brew. It was fun to drink coffee late at night, as settled a DiNunzio tradition as fish on Fridays. When her husband Mike had been alive, he used to join them for night coffee. He'd talk baseball with her father and even choked once on a cigar. He'd fit in so well with her family, better at times than she did, and then he was gone. She felt her neck warm with blood, her grief suddenly fresh. She hadn't felt that way for so long, but the Newlin case was dredging up memories.
'Honey, what'sa matter?' her father said, reaching across the table and covering her hand with his. It felt dry and warm. 'I was only kidding. You're not a pain, baby.'
'I know.' Mary blinked wetness from her eyes. I'm okay.'
'You're about to cry, how can you be okay?' He reached for the napkin holder but there were none left, so he started to get up.
Mary grabbed his hand as it left hers. 'No, sit. I'm fine. I know I'm not a pain in the ass. Actually, I am, but that's not what I'm upset about.' She smiled shakily to convince him. 'I was thinking about Mike. You know.'
His face fell, his eyebrows sloping suddenly. 'Oh. Michael.'
'I'm okay, though.'
'Me, too.'
'Good. How's your back? No complaints?' she asked, and they both laughed. The coffee perked madly in the background, filling the small kitchen with steam and sound. Mary noticed it at the same time as her father did, but beat him to the stove. 'I got it,' she said, with a final sniffle. She lowered the heat but the gas went out, so she had to start over and relight the burner. 'I hate this pilot light, Pop.'
'I told you, they can't fix it.'
'I'll sue them.' She leaned sideways to light the thing, almost singeing her eyelashes with the floom. 'I can't do anything about your back but I can do something about the fucking stove.'
'Your language,' her father said, but she could tell without looking that his heart wasn't in it. She turned around to find him still looking sad. Thanks to her, he was thinking about Mike, and suddenly she regretted coming home. Her father was better off with his TV and his back pain.
Top, let me ask you something. I got this case, at work. It's a tough one, a murder case.'
Her father's round eyes went rounder. 'Mare, you said you wouldn't take no more murder cases.'
'I know but this is different. This guy is a father, and I think he's innocent. So don't start on me like Mom. It's my job, okay?'
'Okay, okay.' Her father put up his hands. 'Don't shoot.'
'Sorry.' She sat down while the kitchen warmed with the aroma of brewing coffee. 'Here's the question. If I committed a murder, would you tell the police that you did it, to protect me?'
'If you did a murder?' His forehead wrinkled with alarm. 'You would never do no murder.'
'I know. But if I did, would you go to jail for me?'
Her father didn't hesitate. 'Sure, I don't want you in jail. If you did a murder, it would be for a good reason.'
Mary thought about it. What could Paige's reason be? 'What's a good reason?'
'If you were gonna die and you had to save yourself.'
'Self-defense.'
'Yeh.' He cocked his head. 'Or like tonight, I saw on the TV, this lady who killed her husband. He used to beat her up, you know, when he got drunk. Night after night. Then one night he came home after he went fishing and he stuck a fish down her throat. A fish, in her throat. Almost choked her with it. What a cavone.' He shuddered. 'And finally she got so sick of him doing things like that that she shot him.'
'So, if somebody did that to me and I shot him, that would be a good reason.'
'If somebody did that to you, / would shoot him.'
Mary smiled. Her father was such a peaceable man she couldn't imagine it, but the way he said it, maybe she could. He'd been a laborer, not an altar boy. 'Now, here's the hard part. What if I told you that the person I killed was my mother?'
'Your mother?' Her father's sparse eyebrows flew up. 'Your mother!'
'Uh-huh.'
'If you killed your own mother?' He ran a dry hand over his smooth head. 'Holy God. Well, then I would say your mother musta been doing bad things to you.'
'Would you go to jail for me, even then?'
'Sure, in a minute.' He buckled his lower lip in thought. 'Especially then.'
'Why?'
'Because if your mother was doing bad things to you, it would be my fault.'
'How so?'
'I woulda let it happen.' He pushed the plate with the roll toward her, as the coffee started to bubble madly. 'Now, eat, baby.'
'I attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Yale, and Girard before that.'
It was just after two o'clock in the morning but Dwight Davis would be working all night. He was arraigning Newlin at nine and he was watching the videotape for the umpteenth time. His care wasn't only because of what Brinkley had said last night; he was always scrupulous in case preparation. He had written down everything Newlin had said on a pad in front of him. The D.A.'s office didn't have the resources to order a same-day transcript, which any civil law firm could have done, although in criminal cases, it was justice, not money, that hung in the balance. Davis would never accept it.
'Don't believe everything you read. Reporters have to sell newspapers.'
He sat alone at one end of the table in the dim light of a small conference room in the D.A.'s offices. Boxes of case files sat stacked against the far wall, a set of trial exhibits on foamcore, and on top rested an open bag of stale Chips Ahoy. Davis didn't mind the mess. He liked having the whole office to himself. He'd had grown up an only child in a happy family and he coveted quiet time to think, plan, and work. As a prosecutor, time without ringing phones became even rarer, and Newlin would demand it. He'd already devoured the lab results, spread out in front of him like a fan.
I don't mean to be impolite, but is there a reason for this small talk?'
The bloody prints on the knife matched Newlin's. The serology was his, too, and fibers of the wife's silk blouse
were found on his jacket, as if from a struggle. The techs had even managed to lift his prints off her blouse and hands. And the photos of Newlin showed a small cut on his right hand, from the knife. The physical evidence was there. But watching Newlin on videotape, Davis 's canny eye told him that something was wrong with Newlin's confession. Something about Newlin had betrayed him. His nervousness, or something Davis couldn't put his finger on. The man was lying.
'I guess I should tell you, my marriage hadn't been going very well lately.'
Davis had to find his lie. Figure out what it was. Instinct and experience told him it was there. But where? He sat at one end of the table and Newlin, on video, sat at the other, squaring off in the dark. Or almost dark. A four-panel window faced Arch Street and the last blind was cinched up unevenly, like an Oriental fan on its side. The blinds would never be repaired; they were as permanent as the leftover Chips Ahoy.
'For a year, actually. Honor wasn 't very happy with me.'
The image on the screen was grayish, the focus poor, and the lighting gloomy. Under Newlin's face was a line of changing white numbers, a time clock that ran into split seconds. The numbers were fuzzy. When the hell would they get decent equipment? The same time the blinds got repaired. Money, money, money. Frustrated, Davis picked up the remote, hit STOP, then replayed the sentence. Where was the lie? What was wrong with this confession?
'Something snapped inside. I lost control. I threw my glass at her but she just laughed. I couldn 't stand it, her laughing at me like that.'
Liar, liar, liar. Then Davis realized Newlin was lying about the way the murder had gone down. It hadn't been a crime of passion, fueled by Scotch or threat of divorce. Newlin wasn't a crime-of-passion kind of guy, all you had to do was look at him to know that. He was an estates
lawyer, the kind of man who planned death. Could it be any more obvious? And what kind of pussy threw a glass in anger? Women threw glasses; men threw punches. No, Davis wasn't buying.
I realized there was no way I could hide what I'd done. I had no plan, I hadn't thought it out. I didn't even have a way to get her body out of the house.'
Classic protesting too much, he had seen it over and over again. Davis had Newlin's number. Everybody knew the family, one of the wealthiest in town, and it always was her money, Buxton money. So, follow the money. Newlin must have killed her because he wanted her money, pure and simple, and made a plan. Either he had decided to kill her himself or hired someone to do it for him, but something had gone wrong. Newlin was trying to cover that up, trying to sell that it was a fight that went too far. What had happened? Davis would have to find out, but with this much dough floating around, it had to be premeditated.
‘I wasn 't thinking logically, I was reacting emotionally. To her shouting, to her insults. To the Scotch. I just did it.'
Davis 's anger momentarily blinded him to the image of Newlin. He kicked himself for not realizing the scam at the crime scene, which had been too perfect to be real. Newlin had come home, stabbed his wife, and staged the scene to look like a fight. Thrown the crystal glass down after she was dead. Drunk Scotch over her body, to congratulate himself on a job well done. Acted real confused when he washed up his hands. Cried crocodile tears when he called nine-one-one.
'Detective, this interview is over. I want to call my attorney.'
Davis couldn't understand Brinkley's problem. Maybe the detective hadn't had the benefit of the lab results, or maybe Brinkley was smelling that Newlin was a liar and mistook what Newlin was lying about. To Davis, Newlin was a selfish, sick, cold-cock murderer. He would have to get to the bottom of Newlin's scam. Learn how he'd planned to get the wife's dough.
'I insist on my attorney.'
Davis hated people like Newlin, who were all about money. It was the ultimate perversion of values, and he had witnessed it firsthand. Crack pimps who knifed their more entrepreneurial girls, drug dealers who capped their light-fingered mules, teenage smoke dealers who executed their rivals with one slug from a nine millimeter. Newlin was no different from them; he just dressed better.
‘I should have called him in the first place.'
Davis stared at the TV without focusing. There was another thing he didn't understand. Why would Newlin say even this much to the detectives? Or botch it so completely? He heard Newlin making demands in a cold, impersonal tone, and he knew the answer immediately. Newlin was a big-time estate lawyer with an ego and a brain to match. He was thumbing his nose at them. He thought he could get away with it. Outsmart the legal system, even if they had a head start.
‘I want my lawyer, and we'll take care of notifying Paige.'
Davis looked at the filmed image of the corporate lawyer on the screen and knew instinctively that he was dealing with evil in its most seductive form. A nice guy. A partner in a respected firm. The caring father. Davis wasn't fooled by the guise, even if Brinkley was.
'I'll handle the notification through my attorney.'
Davis predicted what Newlin's next step would be. He'd ask for a deal. He would have realized he'd said too much and the evidence would incriminate him. He wouldn't want a trial, with the ensuing embarrassment and trauma; he'd want his way greased, as it always had been. Newlin would try to plead down to a voluntary. Figure he'd get twenty and serve eight to ten. Come out a relatively young man with a shitload of his wife's dough. The murder rap would let him out of the insurance, but he'd have tons of bucks already socked away.
'But I am a lawyer.'
Davis scowled. A lawyer, killing for money. It brought shame on all of them. Davis had always been proud of his profession and hated Newlin for his crime. On his own behalf, on Honor Newlin's behalf, and on behalf of the people of the Commonwealth. There was only justice to protect all of us. It sounded corny, but anything worth believing in ultimately sounded corny. Davis believed in justice; Newlin believed in money.
'No thanks,' the videotaped Newlin answered, and Davis saw the snotty smile that crossed Newlin's face.
It fueled Davis 's decision. Suddenly he knew what to do in the case, but he'd need approval for it. It would be an extraordinary request, but this case was extraordinary. In fact, in all his years as a prosecutor, he had asked for such a thing only twice, and the Newlin case was worse than those. This would be the case of Davis 's life and Newlin's. There was only one way to go. On the pad in front of him, he wrote:
NO DEALS.
He underlined it in a strong hand. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would not offer a plea bargain to Jack Newlin. Newlin would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, like the common killer he was, even in his hundred-dollar tie. He would be tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, Davis would see to it.
He switched off the videotape, closed his pad, and stood up. He stretched, flexing every muscle; he'd been up for hours and hadn't run in two days, but he felt suddenly fit and strong. Alert and ready. Psyched. Davis was going to win.
Because he always did.