The Suspect

_Fourteen

Kymberly was half-watching the turned-down television from the couch. She glanced at her father, slumped now in one of the room's reading chairs. "Daddy, are you okay?"

Stuart threw her a weak smile. "I think I'm finally running out of gas here, hon." He drew in a shallow breath. "I didn't know you'd talked to Mom over the weekend."

"Yeah, a little." After a hesitation, Kym shrugged. "Is that what the police wanted?"

"He mentioned it, that's all. What did you guys talk about?"

"Not much, really. I got her twice Saturday, but she was running around, so we only actually got to talk one time, on Sunday."

"What was she running around doing on Saturday?"

Another shrug. "You know. It was Mom. Something."

"She didn't say?"

Much as Stuart was striving to keep everything low-key, this question brought the beginning of a rise. Kym brought her eyes all

the way away from the TV and over to her father. "What? Why are you looking at me like that? Do you think I'm trying to hide something from you?"

"No. And I'm not looking at you any way. I thought your mother might have told you something about what she was doing, why she couldn't talk to you, and that might have had something to do with whoever killed her, since it wasn't me."

"Jesus, Dad, are you saying… do you think it was me?"

Here we go, he thought. But said, "No. Don't be silly."

She sat up straight now, eyes growing wider. "You do! You think it could have been me, don't you? God, I don't believe this."

His hand went to his forehead. He'd learned that he could sometimes control the direction of his daughter's outbursts by refusing to continue the confrontation. "Kym," he said evenly, from behind his hand. "Let's not go here. I don't think that, and never could. I know you loved your mother. I'm trying to imagine who could have done what they did. And all I want you to believe is that I didn't have anything to do with it. That's all I want."

Miraculously, it worked. Kym seemed to pull back within herself for a second, then she nodded and got up from the couch, crossing over to him, kneeling down in front of him, her hands on his knees. "Of course I believe that. How could I not believe that?"

"The same way I couldn't believe it about you, sweetie. Never. Ever ever." Stroking her hair, he went on soothingly. "But with all those reporters who were out there… You saw them and you heard what Gina Roake said. They're going to make me the suspect because that's where the story seems to be right now. We should be ready for that. And not get mad. Getting mad isn't going to help anything."

"I know," she whispered into her hands, "I know that."

"I know you do," he said. "And that's why you're not going to be mad at me if I ask if you've taken your pills today."

She raised her face to look at him and nodded solemnly. "I started again this morning. I'm sorry. I felt so good at school I thought… but then I came down here. There was this party I heard about where a bunch of the new kids like me were going down to Santa Cruz…" She stopped. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm trying." He let that go. It was going to have to be good enough.

"You went and saw Bethany? What did she say?" "She said it was your car." "But it couldn't have been. I wasn't here."

"I know. But she thinks it was, Dad. She saw it. It opened the garage door and pulled in. Who else could it have been?"

"Maybe nobody. Maybe she dreamed the whole thing. Did she notice the license plate?" Stuart had a personalized California plate that read ghoti-a little private joke compliments of George Bernard Shaw. The "gh" sound from laugh, the "o" from women, the "ti" from action. So ghoti, if pronounced "correctly," spelled fish.

"She didn't say, specifically."

"Well, if she didn't see that, it wasn't my car."

"I know. But…"

"What I'm saying is that maybe she could try to remember that one little detail. Do you think she'd be willing to talk to me?"

"I don't know. I think maybe now it would scare her a little. I don't think she really got it that she was telling the police that it must have been you who killed Mom. Until I told her, and then she was all 'I didn't mean to say that.' Except she's sure it was your car."

"You know how many dark-colored SUVs there are? Black, green, blue, brown. Come on. And she never saw me, personally, did she? Get out of the car or anything like that?"

"No. But who else could it have been? I mean, who else had an automatic opener to get in the garage? That would mean Mom and… and somebody…"

"I know, hon. I know what it would have to mean."

At about eight thirty they'd finished dinner, and the suspect walked out of Izzy's Steaks & Chops with his daughter on one arm and his sister-in-law, Debra, on the other. Immediately, a swarm of news people closed in around them, cameras flashing, voices raised and demanding.

"Stuart! Give us a comment, huh?"

"Why'd you kill your wife?"

"How much was she worth?"

"How much are you worth now?"

"Who are these women?"

"You got a girlfriend, Stuart?"

Stuart finally stopped at the corner of Lombard and faced them. "I know you people are only trying to do your job," he said, "but I'd like to ask you all politely to leave me and my family to our privacy and our grief. On my left, this is my daughter, Kym, and this is my sister-in-law, my wife's sister, Debra. I did not kill my wife, and I'm going to cooperate in every way I can with the police in helping them to find who did kill her."

A reporter said, "You know that the police consider you the prime suspect. What do you have to say about that?"

"They're welcome to their opinion. You notice I haven't been arrested, though. If they had evidence, I'd be in jail. They don't, and they won't get it because it doesn't exist. I didn't kill my wife. That's all I've got to say. Now if you'll all excuse us."

"You saw the picture, of course?" Gina asked him on the phone.

"Me and Debra? They led the eleven o'clock news with it. Yeah, I saw it."

"Whatever you say, people are going to think she's the other woman, you know that?" "Let them." "It won't help you."

"All this public stuff is stupid, Gina. It won't hurt me if there's no evidence, and I don't see any evidence. Do you?"

"No, but it probably wasn't the smartest move in the world to rub that in Juhle's face on television, either."

"He'll get over it. Maybe it'll teach him not to share his suspicions with the media. He's going to fight me there; I'm going to fight him back. In fact, I'm half inclined to sue him for slander already. You do slander?"

Gina gave a little laugh. "Not this week. I've got a murder case that seems to be heating up. My client keeps talking."

"Freedom of speech. Use it or lose it. And speaking of which…" He told her about this earlier conversation with Juhle, the disputed time he'd left Echo Lake.

"And you told him maybe it hadn't been two?"

"No, I told him it was."

"Have I mentioned that the preferred term of art is just to say 'no comment'?"

"I tried. I tried."

A silence. And finally Gina said, "So how's your daughter?" "She's a wreck. She cried all night. Her mom's gone and it's starting to sink in. That, and all the things left unsaid between them." "That's hard, those unresolved issues."

"When she went off to Oregon to school, I told you about some of it today, they'd just had it out about what she was bringing up-or, more, what she wasn't bringing up. No makeup. One change of clothes. People up there weren't going to be shallow like they are down here, caring about all that external stuff. So, bottom line, she didn't even give Caryn a hug. She didn't come in and say good-bye. She just walked out the door. And the next thing she knows is her mother is dead. She's trying to find a place to put all that."

"Does she have somebody she can talk to? A regular counselor?"

"Are you kidding? A shrink a day, that's our motto. But I'm not sure that's what she needs right now."

"Is she taking her medicine?"

"As of today, maybe, if I believe her."

"Do you?"

"About as much as usual. Say, sixty percent."

Gina asked, "And how about you? How are you doing?" She waited. "Stuart?"

His voice was different. Gruff, unprotected. "It's started to hit me, too, I think. It's…" He sighed heavily. "It's hard. I get the feeling it's going to get harder."

"Missing her?"

It took him a second. "Caryn? Not really. Just this emptiness. Like the spaces around me are all too big or something. I'm all disoriented. I'm not saying it very well."

"You're saying it fine."

"I'm not. You remember how you said you were waiting for me to show some grief?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't know when, or even if, that's ever going to happen." He paused, then went on in a rush. "What I've been hit by is this sense that what Caryn and I really had for the last several years- at least what I was convinced we had-was a commitment more than anything else. Certainly more of a commitment than actual love, whatever that is. We weren't going to cheat, I thought. We weren't going to embarrass each other. We were going to do as good as we could with Kymberly, try not to get in each other's ways, support each other's career choices.

"But somewhere along the way, it stopped being… being anything personal, really. We shared the house and were basically polite to each other. And I thought it would change back someday, maybe when Kym left, maybe later. But now I'm just starting to realize that even if she wasn't dead, that was never going to happen. And that's what I feel this emptiness about. It's like with her gone I'm suddenly allowed to feel what's been there and what I've been denying all along for five, six, maybe ten years. I know I should feel more grief, I feel guilty that I don't, but there it is. In some ways, I feel like I'm starting to wake up. How wrong is that?"

"It's not so wrong, although I wouldn't go out of my way to mention it to the press."

"I'll try to resist."

"And while we're on it, there's something else you might try to avoid around reporters."

"What's that?"

"Debra."

"I told you, there's nothing…"

"I know what you told me, but I'm talking about perception. She's beautiful, and whether or not you like it, her body language is claiming you. Wait up an hour and watch it again on the late news and you'll see what I'm talking about. She isn't there with you now, is she?"

"She didn't even come in, Gina. She left after we had dinner."

"Okay. And Stuart? She may be the nicest woman in the world. That's not my point. My point is the reporters have now seen her. So she's in the story. And if there's any way she could get a bigger part in it, that will happen without either of you doing anything. So, for the last time, there's no bigger part for her in this, is there?"

Nothing.

"Stuart?"

He sighed into the receiver. "What I've told you is true. We've never been involved. We've never had sex. Okay, clear enough?" "Except that I hear a 'but.' "

Another pause. "Three years ago, when she was going through her divorce, Caryn suggested that I take her away from all the madness she was going through. So I took her up to the lake and we hiked around up there a while."

"How long?"

He hesitated. "Five days."

"Five days? You're in a loveless marriage and she's getting divorced. And nothing happened?" "We didn't have sex, if that's…"

"Of course that's what I'm saying. Don't go all Bill Clinton on me." "There's not. She would have… maybe she wanted to. Maybe I was tempted. I thought it was a good idea to cut off the last two days, and we came home early. I was married to her sister, for Christ's sake. We had a deal and I wasn't going to break it. And that's the truth."

"Swell. Who else knows you guys went up there? Who might tell?"

"Well, certainly her ex-husband, maybe some of her friends."

Gina's voice went flat. "So it's going to come out. And it'll be part of your motive."

"Except that nothing happened. And nothing is going to happen, I promise you. People can believe it or not."

"I'm not thinking about people in general, Stuart. I'm thinking about nineteen specific people on the grand jury. Or maybe twelve in a murder trial."

"I'll just tell them the truth."

"Stuart, you just told me the truth, and I'm not too sure it helped."

"Well, I don't know what else I can do. Did you hear what else I told those reporters tonight? Something else that was true?" "What's that?"

"That I'm willing to cooperate with whoever it takes, even the police, to find who killed Caryn. In fact, just between you and me, maybe I'm going to try to find out myself."

"Not a good idea. This is why we have police."

"Except at the moment they think I did it."

"No, they're just saying you're a person-"

"A person of interest. I know, I know. And that means I'm the prime suspect as soon as they find something they can use as evidence. And then I'm in jail. I don't want to go to jail, even for a day."

"No. You're right there. You don't."

"Well, then, what's my option? Sit around and wait until Juhle piles up enough innuendo and hearsay to bring charges against me? Listen, Gina, if he's not looking for somebody else, then he's not looking for whoever did this, because I didn't. Have I mentioned that before?"

"A couple of times, I believe. And that brings us to some good news at last."

"What's that?"

"Your lawyer is starting to believe you."