Head Wounds

FIVE

IT WAS WELL AFTER NORMAL working hours. I was in my shop about to draw out the mantelpiece on a big piece of birch ply when Jackie Swaitkowski pounded on the basement hatch. The booming sound shot Eddie out of his bed in the corner. He glowered at the hatch with a blended look of annoyance and alarm.

“Oh, you’re here,” said Jackie when I let her in.

When Jackie trotted down the hatch stairwell the ambience of the shop took a sharp turn toward the chaotic. The way she moved around left contrails, billowing clouds of Jackie.

“Sorry. What do you got to drink? Not vodka. I can’t stand vodka. Tastes like rubbing alcohol. You gotta have something else. Wine is fine. Red?”

She squatted down to scratch Eddie’s long nose. He’d already forgiven the intrusion. A task light from the workbench along the wall reflected off her huge mane of strawberry-blonde hair and cast a hard light across her face, which looked great. Like a movie star’s.

“Geez, Jackie, you look great,” I said, involuntarily.

She looked up from Eddie, partly defensive, partly pleased.

“Best face money can buy,” she said.

Jackie had been through a lot of reconstructive surgery since losing half her face in an explosion. I was there when the whole thing happened and didn’t think you could put it back together again. I hadn’t seen her since the last surgery. I was wrong.

“I told Hodges you’d come out looking better than ever.” She stood up from petting Eddie and pointed a finger at me.

“Don’t push it.”

“You’ll have to come upstairs for that wine,” I told her. “The shop’s off limits to booze.”

I escorted her to the stairwell.

“That’s a first for you.”

“Hard to maintain a respectable drinking habit without fingers or thumbs.”

When we got upstairs I helped her out of her bright yellow winter jacket. Underneath was a red and black plaid flannel shirt and baggy jeans that crumpled over the tops of furry off-white snow boots. Appropriate gear for the wild and wooded hills above Bridgehampton where she lived.

I dug an expensive pinot noir out of the liquor cabinet.

“Amanda probably wanted you to save this for a special occasion,” she said, rummaging for a corkscrew in the junk drawer. “Though tonight would qualify.”

“The only special occasion with Amanda would be seeing her again. Though special for whom, I don’t know.”

Jackie looked at me with something akin to neutrality.

“Hodges told me you were on the outs. Sorry.”

“More to the point, what’s so special about tonight?”

“Let’s sit,” she said, waving me toward the screened-in porch. “I know just the place.”

I followed her with my vodka-filled aluminum tumbler and my dog. She waited while I stoked the woodstove and got settled in.

“So?” I asked.

“You’re about to be arrested for homicide,” she said, then sat back in her chair as if that was the beginning and end of the conversation.

I took a long, deep breath, loosening my shoulders and slackening my jaw. An old trick I taught myself when I was in R&D, following similar shocks to the system.

“What a load of crap,” I said.

“Oh, it’s a load, all right. Tons and tons of it about to land on your head.”

“How do you know?”

“Ross called me to offer a volunteer surrender. No flashing lights, no cuffs, no perp walk. I just bring you in. Out of courtesy to Sullivan, not to you.”

“Why now?”

“They have all the forensics back from the labs. It’s not good. I am still your lawyer, aren’t I? Even though you’ve only paid me a buck so far and I haven’t done anything to earn it.”

Jackie held the bowl of her wine glass in two hands as if it was a steaming cup of coffee. I slid the grate on the front of the woodstove further open to stoke the flame.

“That buck was a retainer. Now the real money kicks in.”

“I’ve already talked to Burton,” she said. “He wants me to lead and let him work the back channels. And consult, of course.”

“It’s not going to get that far. I didn’t do anything.”

“Where do you want me to start?” she asked, rhetorically. “It was your stapler, with your fingerprints on it and the bar code still intact. Your footprints out on the beach directly facing where they pulled the stapler out of the dune grass. Your fistfight with Milhouser, witnessed by at least three people. Your physical appearance, as described by the witness who saw the jogger heading toward Robbie’s project the night of the homicide. To say nothing of your history of violence, criminal record and antisocial behavior.”

“You’re wrong there. I can be sociable. Ask Hodges.”

“This isn’t funny, Sam. This one’s serious.”

I brought my tumbler over to a spot in front of the big windows where I could stand to look out at the bay. It was too dark to see much of anything. There might have been a moon, but it was overcast. The lights on the other shore were little smudges, diffused by the mists that blew across the water. It was hard to believe that it would ever be warm again. That I’d be able to look out at this time of the evening and see the sun as it set, and watch the wavelets rushing off toward the northeast under the urging of the prevailing summer winds—warm, humid southwesterlies displacing the nasty bite from the north.

“Not according to Ross. Everything I say is funny to him.”

I heard her sigh, but she pressed on.

“There’s good news. In context, at least. Burton’s already agreed to post bail. Could be a million-dollar bond, maybe less if we get lucky with the judge. The prosecutor’s likely to try for remand, which your voluntary surrender will undermine. Which is why I worked it out with Ross, who doesn’t want a little homicide charge to get in the way of common courtesy. So I think I can keep you out of jail while they prepare the indictment.”

I turned toward her.

“I didn’t want Burton to do that.”

“I know. That’s why I worked it out in advance. It’s a fait accompli. My advice, as your lawyer, is to shut up and take it, and take a moment to thank God that one of the few people in the world you haven’t alienated is Burton Lewis.”

I went back to looking at the bay. Jackie kept talking.

“You still have to go in tomorrow to get processed. Early, so there’s time for them to check for priors and get your prints up to Albany and back, and still have the arraignment later in the day. If everyone stays with the plan you’ll never see any jail time and we’ll be able to hunker down on the case.”

“I’ve got stuff to do for Frank.”

“And you’ve got to help me save your damn life. Whether you think it’s worth saving or not.”

“Christ, Jackie. Quit the theatrics.”

She jumped out of her chair and shoved herself into me, her face crammed up next to mine. It was the second time in recent memory that a good-looking woman did that. Jackie didn’t smell as nice as Amanda. She did, however, yell as loudly.

“You think you’ve had trouble in your life, Sam? You don’t know trouble. This is trouble. Trouble that can get you locked away for the rest of your life, good as dead. I knew you were going to make this difficult. Like it’s all up to you to decide every goddamned thing. You’re such a fucking …”

I put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back from my face. Then I kissed her on the forehead.

“I’m glad you’re my lawyer, Jackie,” I said to her. “I knew I’d need you some day. That’s why I gave you that buck. A big investment for me. I’m completely in your hands, and I’ll do anything you want me to do.”

She continued to fume, more out of suspicion than anger. Now that I had her face far enough away to get in focus, I was even more impressed with her plastic surgery. I’d seen that same face seconds after it had been ripped apart, so I felt entitled to savor the outcome. Even when she was yelling at me.

“Okay,” she said, slowly, “first tell me you didn’t do it.”

I heard myself snort.

“Impeach my moral credibility, but don’t insult my intelligence.”

“Why am I doing that?”

I let her go and dropped back into my reading chair next to the woodstove.

“I could care less about Robbie Milhouser. Of all the people I might want to knock off, he wouldn’t even be on the list. And if for some crazy reason that changed, I wouldn’t smash him over the head with one of my own tools. And even if that happened, through some inexplicable circumstance, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to just heave it out onto the beach. Come on, Jackie, you know that.”

“So, you’re proposing the intellectual arrogance defense. Excellent. Juries love that. Even more than judges.”

“The point isn’t arrogance. It’s ridiculousness.”

“For a smart guy, you don’t know much about criminal law. All that matters is the physical evidence, and the witnesses, and whatever past behavior is admissible. And determined cops and prosecutors, which you have aplenty in this case. It’s way not enough to just say, ‘Hell, if I was going to kill that guy I’d have been a lot smarter about how I did it.’”

“Have some more wine. It’s a sin to cork a bottle that good.”

She huffed her way into the kitchen, giving me a moment to think without distractions.

“Let’s back up,” I said, when she came back with a full glass. “Let’s assume they prove with the bar code that the stapler was sold to me. It probably was, since I bought one that looked like it when I was doing my addition. That’s why it has my fingerprints on it. And why I can’t find the one I bought.”

“You looked?”

“The day I saw Sullivan carrying it around in an evidence bag. He asked me if it looked familiar, which it did. It wasn’t in the toolbox in my trunk, or in my shed, or my shop, the only three places it would normally be.”

“All normally locked up?” she asked.

“Normally, but not always. And I don’t keep close track of a tool like that. Hardly ever use it. Could have lost it anytime between now and last fall.”

“Yours were the only prints on it.”

“Really. Interesting.”

“Especially to the DA. That and the footprints.”

“Of course there were footprints. I was over there. Lots of times.”

She made another sound of exasperation, like the deflating of a big balloon. I interrupted whatever she was about to say.

“That big idiot’s job was right on my jogging route. I watched the whole sorry spectacle. Occasionally I’d run up there after the crews were gone to get a closer look. Never once did I bring along a hammer stapler.”

“We’ll mark that down with ‘I’m too smart to get caught.’”

“Too smart to do it in the first place. Important distinction.”

“What else did you tell Ross?” she asked me, suddenly concerned.

“I didn’t tell him anything. He wasn’t exactly interrogating me. I don’t know what he was doing. Some weird version of cat and mouse.”

“Don’t underestimate Ross Semple. That wackadoodle act is at least fifty percent that. An act.”

“I never underestimate English majors. The allusions alone are enough to bring you to your knees.”

She pointed her finger at me, which she’d been doing a lot lately.

“I said this was serious.”

“No, it’s not. It’s kindergarten. It’s reductio ad absurdum. None of it matters,” I said.

“Don’t get all nihilistic on me.”

“That’s not what I mean. What matters isn’t all this ludicrous evidence. It’s that it exists at all. And that everything points right at me. That’s the staggering significance of the whole thing.”

“Why so staggering?”

“Because I didn’t do it.”

She started to point at me again, then thought better of it. “I was an English major, too,” she said. “But I can’t allude for shit.”

“If it live in your memory, begin at this line: let me see, let me see.”

“New rules. No jokes, no poetry.”

After that I avoided the topic at hand so hard I tired her out. The expensive pinot helped. Jackie always was a cheap date. Either way, I got her out of my house without pissing her off or turning her sentimental, always a delicate balance.

She told me it was crucial to get an arraignment in the early afternoon. So I had to be dressed and in a civil mood by six-thirty the next morning so we could go over to Hampton Bays and get me properly entered into the criminal justice system, or in my case, renew an old acquaintance.

So I dressed as promised. In a suit and tie, for good measure. The civility of my mood was the greater question. Especially if you accepted Jackie’s rendition of the subsequent proceedings.