Martin Misunderstood

Wherein We Learn That There is More to Anther Than Meets the Eye, or An Another Thing

An stared at Martin Reed through the observation mirror. He sat alone in the interview room, his pudgy face squeezed into a ball of fear. The wisps of hair covering his round head reminded her of Charlie Brown. He kept clenching his fists on the table in front of him as if Lucy had yet again tricked him into trying to kick the ball. It was the same kind of clenching he'd been doing when they'd walked into his office – or at least what Martin seemed to think was his office. To An's eye, it looked like a break room that had two desks and was stacked almost wall-to-wall with boxed payables and receivables from the last fifteen years. If anyone found it odd that the accounting department was basically an adjunct to the toilets, no one was commenting.

Bruce opened the door and came into the room. 'Nothing in his house.'

An had assumed the search of the Reed home would yield little evidence.

'His mother's terrified, says he's been acting strange lately. Might be hitting the bottle again.'

'Again?'

'She says he doesn't like to talk about it. Must be in recovery.' Bruce shrugged; there were lots of cops in recovery. 'The woman's a potty mouth, by the way. Some of the shit outta her mouth made me blush.'

Coming from a man who used 'cunting' as an adjective, that was saying a lot. Of course, An couldn't talk. She was quite explicit around prisoners, who tended to respond to threats better than pleasantries.

Bruce continued, 'You should see his bedroom. Wall-to-wall books with more in boxes in the garage. We're talking tens of thousands of them. The guy must read all the time.'

An studied Martin. He didn't strike her as the cerebral type. 'What kinds of books?'

'Thrillers mostly. James Patterson, Vince Flynn – that kind of stuff.'

An couldn't say anything. She refused to answer her phone when a Columbo movie was on. Not that it rang much, but she was constantly being surveyed for her opinion on things. Talk to those people once and they never gave up. 'Did the mother give him an alibi for last night?'

'She said he took her on an errand, then they went home, then he went out and she didn't see him until she woke up this morning.'

An nodded, processing the information. Through the mirror, she could see Martin's mouth moving as he mumbled to himself.

'What a tool,' Bruce commented.

An could not disagree, but was this tool a murderer?

Bruce seemed to read her mind. 'We've got Reed's blood mixed in with the victim's on both the front bumper and in the trunk.'

'You saw his hands. What he said about the cuts would explain the blood.'

'If he's innocent, why'd he clean off his briefcase with acid?'

She allowed, 'Maybe he's more dastardly than he looks.'

'He's got a crush on you.'

'Please.' Men didn't get crushes on Anther. She was hardly a sultry siren.

'Listen, you could work that angle. Make him think he's got a chance. Guy like that probably hasn't seen a pussy since he was being born outta one.'

An did not respond to the comment. She had been a cop for almost twenty years now. Early on, she'd made a habit of challenging every sexist remark or disgusting joke uttered by her mostly male colleagues. This had done nothing but garner the reputation that she was a lesbian. When she had insisted that she was not, in fact, homosexual, they chastised her for being ashamed of her sexuality. When she had pointed out that (at the time) she was married, they had sadly shaken their heads, as if to ask to what lengths she would go in her denial of the love that dare not speak its name. An had been so maligned over the years that, in order to protect herself – really, in order to properly perform her job – she had fallen into the habit of fabrication.

Fabrication. That was a pretty word to use for a lie. An was not by nature a liar. Her father had detested lies and taught her early on that the punishment for a lie was much more harsh than the punishment for confession. And yet, here she was, fabricating to her heart's content. And her heart was content, though only when she let herself slip into believing her own stories.

This was how it happened: Charlie, her husband, had just died. This was fifteen years ago. There was no one at home to cook for, no laundry to do, no shirts to iron. A big case had just been solved – a child killer was going to the electric chair. People were in a celebratory mood. An decided that she would go to the local cop bar and have a drink with her fellow brothers in blue.

They all got drunk, but An was better at holding her liquor. Or, maybe she wasn't. Somebody hit on her. Somebody made a comment not to bother. Somebody called her a dyke. Somebody called her frigid. Maybe it was the word 'frigid,' because that was what Charlie called her when, for some crazy reason, she didn't want to have sex with him after he'd beaten her.

No matter how it happened, that was when Jill was born.

Jill was a nurse who worked with children. She was a kind and caring woman. She had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She was the love of An's life. She was dying. They all felt sorry for her. They all shut up.

The next morning, An woke up with a throbbing headache. When she got to work, everyone was quiet, respectful. A few asked how Jill was doing. 'Jill?' she had echoed, and then it had hit her, the half-drunk fabrications from the night before. She'd tucked her head down, mumbled, 'I don't really want to talk about it,' and ran to the women's room where she cleaned out her purse, filed her nails and took a nap, only to emerge to concerned stares and 'chin ups' from her new friends.

Belonging to a group was an alien concept to An. Not that she had never had friends, but as the daughter of Dutch immigrants, she had never quite fitted in. During the summers, when most girls were off at camp, she was visiting relatives in Hindeloopen, walking along the narrow streets and wooden bridges of her seafaring ancestors, still never quite fitting in with her 'y'alls' and 'fixin' tos'. Her parents fared no better. Like many immigrants before them, they had come to America seeking a new life. As with those earlier immigrants, the life they made for themselves was basically the same as the one they had back home, but in a different country. They attended parties for the Dutch-American Society. They drank Heineken and sucked on coins of honingdrop that their relatives back home were kind enough to mail. Most of their friends were childless, Dutch ex-pats, except a few shifty Norwegians who mostly stood in the corner at parties talking among themselves.

Walking into the Albada house, you would never guess that you were still in the American South. An's mother was an art teacher who was passionate about blending substance and style. Every room was colorfully decorated in bright reds, yellows and greens. The dining room was boldly striped in blue. There were cupboards they had brought from home, leafy floral patterns and swirls intricately carved into every inch of wood, then painted in complementary colors. On Halloween, her mother would don her chintz wentke, and – solely as a concession to her ignorant art students – put on a pair of wooden clogs she had bought at a tourist stand in Schiphol Airport.

Her father had been overly educated, as was the Dutch way, and he insisted his daughter be the same. When An was not studying, she was working on extra credit projects or helping her father in the lab (Eduart Albada was a botanist for the State of Georgia). He had a small shed in the back yard – her mother called it the likhus after the small houses in Hindeloopen where the sea captains' families stayed – and An would spend hours with him there over the weekends, watching his steady, square hands as he grafted together different plants in hopes of creating a tulip that was more resistant to the South's unpredictable seasons.

And so it was that An grew up a much-beloved only child with very few friends her own age. She had never been particularly lonely, or at least she thought she'd never been lonely, but what An realized when Jill came into her life was that she had always been alone. Even when she was married to Charlie, there was that sense that she did not quite belong to him, that he did not quite see her when she entered a room or asked a question.

But, not anymore. That all stopped the day An walked out of the women's room and was greeted by her colleagues as an equal. When had it happened? When had Jill crossed over from being a figment of An's imagination into a living, breathing part of An's life? It had never occurred to her as she cleaned out loose pieces of paper and various pieces of fuzz from her purse that Jill was taking on real physical aspects in her mind.

Okay, well, An had to admit that she milked it at first. She took some personal time, claiming she wanted to sit with Jill during her treatments, when really it was because she was having bad cramps and there was a John Wayne marathon on TBS. Then, there was the day she overslept and missed an important meeting. Telling them that Jill was sick from chemo and she'd had to take her to the doctor was only a little white lie. What was the point of those stupid meetings anyway? They were cops. They didn't have to be rounded up into a smelly conference room to be told that they needed to catch the bad guys.

Of course, there was no way to get around the fact that it was a whopper of a falsehood when An had taken a week-long trip to Florida under the guise of flying Jill to the Mayo Clinic to see a world-renowned specialist. A handful of people noted her suntan, which An explained away by telling them she insisted on staying with Jill during radiation treatments. Maybe it wasn't so much of a lie, because by then An felt a real connection to Jill. While the thought of lesbian sex wasn't particularly appealing (or even concrete in her mind, because what, exactly, did two women do together?), An liked the idea of the companionship, the connection with another human being.

In short, she fell in love.

Over the ensuing months, the myth of Jill had slowly evolved into a reality. An had worked on the detective squad for three years, but no one had ever bothered to talk to her before Jill had appeared. Knowing that An had a sick lover had somehow humanized her with these men. She made friendships – lifelong relationships. A couple of them had wives who'd had breast cancer. They gave An literature on survivors. Then, one day, they had all surrounded her desk and handed her a sign-up sheet. Real tears had welled into her eyes when she realized that the entire squad had agreed to participate in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk on behalf of Jill.

It was then that she knew that Jill had to die. Too much water had passed under the bridge. An was telling so many stories that she didn't know how to keep up with them anymore. The worst part was that people wanted to meet Jill. They wanted to know this strong woman who had stared death in the face. Oddly enough, the day An called into work to tell her boss that Jill had passed away (conveniently occurring on the same day that Macy's was having its annual fifty per cent off white sale), she had gotten so choked up that she'd had to hang up the phone.

It hadn't stopped there, really. There were the condolence cards to deal with. The flowers. Of course they'd had an impromptu wake at the same bar where the legend of Jill had been born. They drank to her: the nurse, the friend, the lover. They had sung sad songs and An had told them about the time Jill had saved a homeless man from a burning building and the way she always put toothpaste on An's toothbrush, even at the end when she was so sick she could barely lift her head. She had thought about cheating on Jill once – had she ever told them that? Nothing had happened, but it had been a hard time for them both, and, in the end, An felt like it made them stronger.

The worst part was that An had chosen the name Jill because she enjoyed watching Gillian Anderson on The X-Files. Her thick, red hair, her sharp chin and petite waist were all attributes An would have loved for herself. She knew now that basing Jill on a real person was a big mistake. Sometimes, An would see Anderson, introducing a PBS special or promoting one of her many causes, and would get a lump in her throat, as if she was seeing a ghost from a happier time in her life.

'Hey,' Bruce said. 'You in there?'

An nodded her head. They both stared at Martin, who was mumbling to himself.

'Hard day for you, huh?'

An nodded again. Bruce's mother had died of breast cancer when he was a child. He had brought An flowers this morning, marking the five-year anniversary of Jill's death.

'You had eight good years,' Bruce reminded her. 'That's more than most people get.'

'Yeah.' An fought the sadness that came with the false memories: Jill rubbing her feet; Jill fixing her dinner; Jill running her a bath. (It must be said that many of An's fantasies cast Jill in a decidedly subservient role.)

'I'm here for you, babe.' Bruce patted her shoulder. 'You know that, right?'

His touch was warm, and An flashed back to that crazy night six years ago when she had for some reason let herself fall for the limited charms of Bruce Benedict. They were working hard on a case, and the truth of the matter was that An missed a man's touch. She missed the gruffness, the warmness, the sense of being filled to the brim with a man who knew what he was doing. It had been a horrible, stupid mistake to think that this man would be Bruce (and they had both agreed never to tell Jill; it would've broken her heart).

Bruce dropped his hand. 'I dunno, An, this guy's just creepy. If he didn't do this, he did something.'

She nodded a third time, glad that the focus was back on Martin Reed. The pasty man knew his way around the law. He had refused to talk to them without a lawyer present and insisted that he was not signing any statements unless they were written in his own hand. What kind of game was he playing?

Bruce said, 'You should probably take this. I got no traction with him in the car.'

Possibly because Bruce had noted the fat around Martin's wrists as he'd tightened the handcuffs looked like dough squeezing out of the donut maker at Krispy Kreme.

An chewed her cuticles. She thought about Sandra Burke, the way her broken body had been discarded in a drainage ditch. The car had nearly pulverized the woman. Treadmarks crushed into her brain, squirting gray matter on to the road.

The intercom buzzed behind them. Bruce pressed the button, asking, 'Yeah?'

'Reed's lawyer is here.'

'Be right there.' Bruce opened the door to leave, but An stopped him.

'Give me a couple of minutes with him,' she said, indicating Martin with a tilt of her head.

'Sure.'

'Did you get the crime-scene photos back yet?'

'Should be here any minute.'

'Bring them in with the lawyer. I'm going to see if I can get something out of him.'

Bruce nodded and left, letting the door swing back. One of the downsides of being a pretend lesbian was that men didn't open doors for her anymore.

An pulled back her hair into a loose pony tail as she walked toward the interrogation room. There was a small sliver of glass in the door, and she saw Martin still sitting at the table, still clenching his fists. When she entered the room, he stood up, as if they were in a Jane Austen movie. She expected him to say something like, 'Forsooth', but he just stood there, hands clenched, staring at her with his dark green eyes.

'Please sit down,' she told him, taking the chair opposite. 'Your lawyer is on his way.'

'Does he have any experience?'

An was surprised by the question. 'I don't know,' she admitted.

'Because a lot of times people get courtappointed lawyers who aren't experienced,' Martin told her. 'I've read about it – cases where innocent people get lazy lawyers who are blind, literally blind, as in they can't see. Some of them are even alcoholics or have narcolepsy!'

'Is that so?'

'It's very troubling. There have been many books written about this very thing.'

An had never been a fan of public defenders, but she was a cop, so that was hardly an earthshattering revelation. 'My experience with public defenders is that you get what you pay for.'

'Just as I suspected. I appreciate your honesty.'

'Is there anything you want to say to me, Mr Reed?'

'Not until my lawyer gets here. I hope you don't think I am being rude, but this is a very serious situation. Do you realize I've never even gotten a speeding ticket?' He shook his head. 'Of course you do. You'll have already pulled my record. Are you searching my house? Is that why this is taking so long? You're trying to get a search warrant?'

'What do you think we'll find in your house?'

He mumbled his answer, but she heard him clearly enough: 'A very angry sixty-three-yearold woman.'

An said, 'Your mother seems to think you're an alcoholic.'

His lips sputtered, 'She wishes!'

An looked down at his hands, which were clasped together on the table. Bruce had left on the handcuffs, and An had to admit he was right about the Krispy Kreme machine. 'Give me your hands,' she said, taking out her keys. She tried not to touch him as she took off the cuffs, but there was no way to get around it. His skin was clammy enough to make her flesh crawl.

'Thank you,' he said, rubbing his wrists to get the blood back into them. 'Albada – is that German?'

'Dutch.'

He affected a very bad accent. 'Pardonnemoi.'

'That's French.'

'Oui.'

'French again.'

He blinked several times.

An sighed. 'Do you want to tell me where you were last night?'

'I told you that I took my mother to get her trowel.'

'Are you aware that your mother has a restraining order filed against her by the Peony Club of Lawrenceville?'

His throat moved as he swallowed. 'It was just a misunderstanding.'

'And what about the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary?'

His wet lips parted in shock. 'They filed a complaint, too?'

'Did your mother not tell you that?'

He shook his head, obviously agitated.

'They seem to think she's a violent person.'

'She's not violent. She's just… intimidating.'

An intimidating mother. That was interesting. 'Has she ever hit you?'

'She threw her shoe at me once, but I think that was more because I was listening to the TV with my headphones on. You know, the wireless kind?' An nodded. 'They were interfering with her hearing aid somehow.'

'So, she threw her shoe at you?'

'Only to get my attention.' He spoke as if this was completely logical. 'What does my mother have to do with any of this?'

'I'm a detective, Mr Reed. I put together clues. What I see in front of me is a man who comes from a violent family. I see someone who drives a car with blood on it – blood that belongs to a dead woman.

'Well, okay, that – I'll admit – does not look good.'

'No, it doesn't.'

'I suppose I fit the profile, don't I?' He started nodding, agreeing with himself. 'A loner who lives with his mother. Over-educated, underemployed.'

Well, he'd lost her on those last two.

'I hope you don't think I am a disorganized killer. I am a very tidy man. Ask my colleague, Unique Jones. She's often commented on my retentiveness.'

An would have liked nothing more than to talk to Unique Jones. The woman had a warrant out on her for shoplifting. The home address she had given Southern Toilet Supply was a vacant lot. 'Are you a killer, Mr Reed?'

'No, of course not!' He seemed offended again. 'I told you what happened to my car this morning, how I cut my hands. I am the victim here. Someone is setting me up.'

'Why would someone set you up?'

'Exactly!' he retorted, driving his index finger into the table as if she had made his point for him.

'Where were you last night, Mr Reed?'

He stared at his hands. The red marks from the cuffs were still visible. She saw a strange-looking purple ridge down the side of his thumb. She had noticed it during booking, and he'd mumbled something about an industrial accident.

Martin asked, 'Is "Anther" Dutch, too?'

'It's the part of a flower where pollen is produced.' She sat back, feeling overwhelmingly tired. 'My father was a botanist. He was hoping for a boy.'

Martin blinked, not understanding.

Well, it wasn't her best joke, but she didn't think it was as bad as his reaction implied. Then again, the man was sitting in a police interrogation room being questioned about his involvement in a brutal murder, so perhaps she was expecting too much.

One of the reasons Charlie, her dead husband, had gotten so mad at An was that he didn't quite get her sense of humor. He would admonish her for her smart mouth, accuse her of lording her education over him (as if a bachelor's degree in art history was anything to write home about). He would start off low, like one of those sirens you crank by hand, and the more things would spin out of control, the louder he would get, until he was on top of her, screaming, his fists pounding into her body – but never her face.

It was embarrassing, really, to be a 23-year-old woman who put on a uniform and gun every day to keep the peace, only to have the pulp beaten out of her almost every night. She never fought back, though surely Charlie deserved it. What was it about An's nature that made her seem like a victim? She saw domestic violence so much at work that it seemed almost commonplace. Those early years on the force, half of her calls were because some man had gotten drunk and taken it out on a woman. Her eyes would glaze over at their stories of love, the excuses they made. And then she would go home and Charlie would beat her.

Really, it was luck that he'd slipped in the bathtub and hit his head. When An had found him there, the only question in her mind was whether to leave the water running or not while he slowly bled to death. She was the child of Dutch parents, and knew better than to waste water. She had turned off the shower, then gone in to watch Wheel of Fortune.

This was back when you had to buy merchandise with your winnings. An could still remember the woman who had won that night. The camera panned over all the exotic, expensive items while a second camera showed the winner's excited face as she called out her purchases. 'I'll take the dinette set for fiveninety- nine, and the matching sideboard for three-fifty.' There was always a couple of hundred dollars left over, and invariably the winner would have to choose the white, ceramic greyhounds. An had always wanted one of those greyhounds. She'd yet to find one at a store. It was the kind of thoughtful gift Jill would've found for her if she'd had the strength to get out of bed (not that they had a lot of money; Jill's disability pay from the hospital barely helped with her part of the mortgage).

Bruce knocked on the door as he entered the interrogation room. He held a folder in his hand; the crime-scene photos. He put the folder on the table and slid it toward An as a twelve-year-old boy in a suit walked in behind him.

Well, the public defender couldn't have actually been twelve, but he looked it. When he walked across the room, his shoes squeaked. She noticed that his hair was wet at the crown where he'd combed down a cowlick. The sleeve of his suit still had the manufacturer's label sewn on to the cuff.

'I'm Max Jergens,' he said, and An nearly laughed, thinking the name would be more fitting for a well-endowed porn star. She couldn't help it, her eyes went directly to his crotch. Jergens noticed, of course. His lip curled up in a smile.

An tried to sound professional, and to not look at his crotch, when she told him, 'I'm Detective An Albada. We have some questions for your client in connection with the death of one of his co-workers, Sandra Burke.'

He put his briefcase on the table, opened the locks, took out a legal pad, closed the briefcase, put it on the floor, sat down at the table, took a pen out of his breast pocket, took the cap off the pen and put it on the opposite end, then wrote down the word, 'Anabada.'

Martin said helpfully, 'I made the same mistake myself,' as he took the pen from his lawyer, crossed through the word and wrote in a flourishing script much like a teenage girl's, 'Detective Anther Albada.' He even put a circle instead of a dot over the 'i'.

Bruce chuckled behind An. She didn't have to turn around to know that he had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring down his nose at Martin.

Jergens asked, 'What evidence do you have against my client?'

Martin began, 'It's silly, really-' but An cut him off with a 'Was he talking to you?' look.

She said, 'We found blood on Mr Reed's car, his own mixed with that of the victim. We have conclusive evidence that it was Mr Reed's car that ran over Ms. Burke.'

Martin's face turned a whiter shade of pale. 'I cut my hands,' he explained. 'The bumper was hanging off the front of my car. My hands got cut.' He held up his palms and she saw the criss-cross of razor-thin lines. They had taken photographs of the wounds when they were booking him, and An had thought then as she thought now that had Sandra Burke been felled by a mortal paper cut, this would have been an open and shut case.

Jergens asked, 'Where was her body found?'

'Less than half a mile from Mr Reed's place of employment – the same route he takes home every day.'

Jergens seemed surprised. 'Is that so?'

'We believe he took his mother home, then went in search of the woman who had humiliated him two days before.' An watched Martin as she laid out the scenario. He didn't look like someone who would fester with hatred, but then again, she was a grown woman who had carried on an eight-year relationship with an imaginary friend, so who could tell?

Jergens asked, 'Does he have an alibi?'

'No.'

'Ouch!' Jergens chortled. He looked down at his legal pad where he was tracing An's name with his pen. When he saw her watching, he gave her a wink and turned one of the circles into a heart.

'Are you narcoleptic?' Martin asked his lawyer.

Jergens shook his head sadly. 'Don't I wish.'

An opened the folder Bruce had given her, keeping it tilted so that Martin and his boy lawyer could not see the contents. The pictures were stark, violent. Sandy had not just been hit by a car. Her body showed extensive bruising where she had been beaten repeatedly with a blunt object. On the scene, the coroner had guessed maybe a piece of wood or something with a square end. When An had opened the trunk of Martin's Camry and seen the crushed corner of his briefcase, she had added the case to the list of possible murder weapons.

The coroner easily read the scene: the car had been used to knock down the victim. The subsequent beating was what had killed the woman. Then, the killer had gotten back into his car and ran over her head. Then her torso. Then her head again.

An had to admit, if only to herself, that she was having trouble feeling sympathy for the victim. Sandra Burke had two children who were being raised by the State. She had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. She had been arrested once for intimidating one of her elderly neighbors into giving her ten dollars for cigarettes.

All of this together was nothing spectacularly bad in the scheme of things – this was certainly not the first case An had seen where an alcoholic, bad mother had been brutally murdered – but there was one particular thing about Sandra Burke that really grated An's nerves: she was a hideous housekeeper. She'd left plates in the sink so long that the food had started to growmold. How hard was it to put them in the dishwasher? And would it have killed the woman to occasionally vacuum the rug in the front hall? For the love of God, the vacuum was right there in the hall closet.

'Excuse me?' Martin said.

An realized she had gone silent too long. She cleared her throat, trying to block out the image of the dirty dishes, to think of Sandra Burke as a human being instead of a grossly untidy person. 'Mr Reed, have you ever hit a woman?'

He bristled. 'Of course not. Men are stronger than women. It's an unfair advantage.'

Bruce chuckled. 'Have to be alone with them before you can hit them, right, Marty? Was that what it was all about?' He slammed his hands on the table, raising his voice. 'Tell us what happened, Martin! Tell us the truth!' He leaned closer. 'You came on to Susan and she told you to go fuck yourself! Isn't that right?'

Martin and An exchanged a look. His voice was mild when he corrected, 'It's Sandy, actually.'

Jergens scratched through the word 'Susan' on his pad and wrote 'Sandee'.

An felt a headache working its way up from the back of her neck and into the base of her brain. She asked, 'Mr Reed, where did you go last night after you dropped off your mother?'

'I just drove around,' he mumbled.

'Speak up,' Bruce chided.

'I said I just drove around,' Martin insisted. 'This is really crazy. Honestly, why would I hurt Sandy?'

An kicked Bruce's foot with her own, indicating that he should go back to glowering with his back against the wall. She told Martin, 'Your co-workers claim Sandy taunted you quite a bit.'

'No, she didn't,' Martin countered. 'Well, I mean, not in a disrespectful way. Not to be cruel, I mean. Well, maybe it was a bit cruel, but she didn't mean to hurt-'

'Two days ago, she went on the loudspeaker and called you "teeny weenie" then Super Glued a twelve-inch vibrating rubber dildo to your desk.'

Martin cleared his throat. 'She liked her pranks.'

'Apparently.'

'And Sandy knows that Super Glue can be easily removed with GlooperGone. It's one of Southern's best-selling products.' He shook his head. 'She started out on the Glooper line, for goodness' sakes.'

An tried not to imagine Martin gripping a twelve-inch vibrating dildo as he lubed it with solvent and scraped it from his desk. 'Some of the women we talked to said that you listen to them while they are urinating in the toilet.'

Jergens' lip curled in disgust. 'Seriously, dude?'

Martin explained, 'My office is right outside the toilets. I wasn't listening. I didn't have a choice.'

'Yeah, right.' Jergens went back to his doodling. An could see he had drawn a hangman's gallows with a figure resembling Humpty Dumpty hanging from the noose.

An suggested, 'Mr Reed, you can clear this up if you just tell us where you were last night.'

'I told you I drove around. I was home by eight – there was a television program I wanted to watch.'

Jergens perked up. 'What'd you watch?'

Martin looked down, his face reddening. He mumbled something unintelligible.

An, Bruce and Jergens all asked, 'What?' at the same time.

Martin held his head up high, squared his shoulders. 'Dancing With the Stars.'

Jergens shot Bruce a look, and both men chuckled. 'Did you watch it with your mommy?'

An stared at the lawyer, for some reason feeling protective of the suspect.

Martin answered, 'Yes, I watched it with my mother.' An could tell that he was struggling to hold on to a sliver of his dignity.

She asked, 'Did you watch it all the way through?'

Martin nodded. 'Mother went to bed when Mr T was doing the rumba, and as I am a lifelong A-Team fan, I wanted to see what would happen.' He added, 'There's nothing feminine about wanting to watch people dance. Mr T is very light on his feet. He's an amazing athlete. Lots of athletes take dancing lessons. It makes them more nimble.'

An sighed again, sitting back in the chair. Sandra Burke had been murdered around eightfifteen, which, if An was remembering correctly, was around the same time one of the Dancing With the Stars judges had commented that, in fact, many athletes were nimble dancers.

Martin could not stop defending his masculinity. 'There is nothing wrong with having a wide variety of interests. I am interested in many things. Very many interesting things.'

'Books?'

Martin smiled – a genuine smile. 'I love to read.'

'What subjects are you most interested in?'

'Well, murder mysteries. Science fiction, but more about social issues than space ships.' He stared down as his hands, almost bashful. 'I'm particularly fond of Kathy Reichs. Her main character is very… alluring. She gets to the bottom of things, like, you know… you.'

An felt her face flush. She never missed an episode of Bones. Was he comparing her to Tempe Brennan?

Bruce wasn't buying it. 'Come on, Reed. Dr Brennan is a forensic anthropologist.'

'He's right, man,' Jergens agreed, seeming to forget that Martin was his client. 'Andi is a detective.'

'Anther,' Martin corrected. 'Detective Anther Albada.' He kept his eyes on An as he pressed a doughy finger to the legal pad where he had written her name. 'Anther.'

An had started to chew her cuticle again. She made herself stop. Things had gotten off track, and she could not for the life of her figure out how. She asked Martin, 'Do you read true crime?'

'Definitely. But only Ann Rule – not the trashy stuff. Oh, and I never look at the pictures.'

An opened the folder so Martin could see the photos. 'Pictures like these?' she asked, flipping picture after picture around, showing him Sandra Burke splayed naked, her body creased where again and again the car had backed up and driven over her. 'We found parts of her teeth in your back right tire.'

Martin opened his mouth and vomited all over the table.