Close Case

by Alafair Burke

  The massaging stopped. I wriggled my shoulders to ask for more. Nothing.

  “Yeah, I did see what happened. And if you need someone to back Mike up, call me to the stand. We’ll get the confession in.”

  I turned in my chair to look at him. “Are you suggesting that you and Mike are going to say something other than what we all know actually occurred in the interrogation room?”

  He shook his head. “Jesus, Sam. You make it sound like Mike hit the guy across the head with a phone book or something. And, no, I don’t testi-lie, as your attorney buds call it.”

  “So what were you talking about when you said I should call you to the stand?”

  “Just how things always work. You put two cops up there. We tell it like it is: why each step was called for, cut and dry. It looks a lot better if Mike’s not on his own, is all. Just to be safe, since you’re having doubts.”

  “I’m having doubts, Chuck, because I think your partner screwed up. That crap with the lights? I can’t withhold that from the defense. Not that I could, in any event, since I’m pretty sure Corbett recognized me today at arraignment. Lisa’s going to have a heyday with that in court.”

  “Oh, so what? So she’ll whine a little bit, and maybe the judge will say something to you off the record about reining Mike in. But you’ll get to keep the confession. What elected judge wants to be on the front page for suppressing a confession in the Percy Crenshaw case?”

  He did have a point. I had noticed that the rules of constitutional criminal procedure seemed to have changed since my promotion from the drug unit into MCU. Judges who routinely suppressed confessions and overruled searches without batting an eye were suddenly siding with the government when a murder trial was at stake.

  Still, the possibility that I might squeak past Lisa’s motion by drawing a judge who cared more about his low-paying local judicial position than the Constitution he’d been sworn to uphold didn’t feel like cause for celebration.

  “You really don’t have a problem with what Mike did in there with Corbett?”

  He paused before answering. “No, Sam. I don’t. Look, you’ll get used to it. You’re still at the point where you feel sorry for these guys. It’s because you’re looking at him like some kid who—what did you say about him?—he looked like he’d work at the Quickie Mart. Fuck, the guy killed someone. He took a bat to Percy Crenshaw so he and his loser friend could joyride in a Benz for a couple of hours. Mike’s the good guy here.”

  “He won’t be looking good by the time Lisa gets done with him. We have to fight tomorrow over Mike’s IA file. Is she going to find anything in there if she gets it?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Mike’s not exactly a light touch. Is there ammunition for the defense in his file? You should know.”

  “No, Sam. You should know that all cops have files that someone like Lisa Lopez can turn into ammunition. Big surprise—bad guys make up shit about the police. That’s why the bureau requires your office to contest any request to see IA jackets.”

  “But sometimes judges order us to produce them. And this is an aggravated murder trial where Mike’s conduct is critical. He confronted Corbett with evidence we didn’t have. He pulled out the threat of the death penalty.”

  “So what should he have done instead? You said yourself, without the confession, they both walk.”

  “When the calls started coming in to the news, and he knew who Corbett was, he could have held up on the arrest until we got an ID from the victim’s super. Then he would have had something legitimate to confront Corbett with in the box.”

  “What’s the difference?” Chuck asked. “We got the ID in the morning. Corbett’s still guilty.”

  “It matters, Chuck, because it makes the interrogation look really bad.”

  “You’ve got to get over this, Sam. I’ve been trying to stay out of it, but both of you keep putting me in the middle. Mike’s my partner. He needs to trust me, and you treating him like the bad guy is making it hard between us.”

  “I know he’s your partner. Why do you think I didn’t stop him in there? I knew he was going too far, and I knew I should have cut it off, but I didn’t. I let you talk me out of it.”

  Chuck exhaled loudly. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got regrets about how you played things last night, and you blame me for it.”

  “I don’t blame you, Chuck.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Oh, boy. These straight-from-the-playground verbal exchanges had been one of the many reasons I’d kept my Chuck contacts strictly platonic for so long. He has a way of making me absolutely crazy. And not always in a good way.

  “You wanted to cut Mike off earlier, and I convinced you not to. You just said so.”

  “I stated the facts. That doesn’t mean I blame you.”

  “Fine, don’t call it blame then, but I know you.”

  “We both wanted the confession, Chuck. We wanted to avoid a trial where Matt York is defense exhibit A.”

  “Yeah, but you’re thinking to yourself that you wouldn’t be in this jam with Lisa and her stupid motion if you weren’t involved with me. And I’m thinking I wouldn’t be avoiding eye contact with my own partner all day if I weren’t involved with you.”

  “I didn’t mean to make this about us. I’m just worried about the case.”

  I started walking upstairs. He, of course, did the entirely wrong thing and followed me. When I hit the bedroom, I was struck for the first time by the mess of unpacked boxes of summer clothes, sporting gear, and who knew what else. My usually tidy sleigh bed was completely disheveled, the top sheet and comforter entangled with each other in a knot at the foot of the mattress. My reading chair by the window was draped not only with my moss-colored chenille throw, but a couple days’ worth of Chuck clothes. And I nearly tripped over two thirty-pound barbells that had been plopped onto the middle of my cute little raglan floor rug.

  “Are you ever going to find a place to keep all this stuff?” I asked, rolling the weights near a stack of unopened boxes in the corner.

  “So that’s what we’re talking about now? Whether I’ve unpacked fast enough?”

  “No, I guess it’s not.” I opened the second drawer of my dresser, grabbed a sports bra and a pair of running shorts, and started to change.

  Chuck sat on the bed. “I take it that you’re not getting undressed for any fun stuff.”

  “I just want to go for a quick run. Clear my head. Maybe if I’m not here, you can get some of this stuff put away.”

  “So we’re back to that subject.”

  “Chuck, look at this room. And it’s not just this room; it’s the whole house. Do you know how much crap I got rid of to clear out half the closet space and half the drawers in this place? And you don’t use any of it. All of your stuff is still hanging out wherever you happened to use it last.”

  “Whoa,” he said. “I had no idea any of this was bothering you.”

  Neither did I. Until now. “Leave your stuff wherever you want it,” I said, stepping into my running shorts. “I just need to get out for a while.”

  “You mean you need to get away from me.”

  I pulled my sports bra over my head. “Look, just let me run a few miles and think about some things. You probably think I’m being a big bitch right now anyway.”

  “Well, you are, Sam.”

  I stared at him and shook my head.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I cannot believe you just said that. You called me the b-word.”

  “You’re the one who said it. I was just agreeing with you.”

  Crazy. He makes me crazy. And, of course, he followed me down the stairs and continued to argue with me as I put my shoes on.

  “Don’t you see what you’re doing?” he asked. “You always do this. Whenever there’s the slightest conflict, you pull aw
ay from me. I thought that was over.”

  “I’m just going for a run, Chuck. You’re being ridiculous.”

  “You know I’m right. Jesus, Sam, you shouldn’t have said you were ready to live together if your instinct is still always to leave.”

  “You know what? Maybe you are right.” As I walked out the door, I let it slam behind me.

  I’ve never known what exactly it is about running that cures my blues—the outside air, the elevated pulse, the rhythm of my stride, the feel of my feet hitting the pavement. Whatever it is, it works. By the end of a third mile, I can send any problem that was eating at me back into the bigger picture. I can visualize solutions. I can realize that even the worst-case scenario isn’t so bad. Sometimes, when the endorphins are pumping extra well, I can even find an upside.

  But my magical therapy wasn’t working for me today. I was twenty-five minutes in, with probably three miles logged, and I still felt like shit. I was worried about the case and even more worried about the exchange between Chuck and me.

  I was so inside my own thoughts that I didn’t realize I had strayed from the well-worn route I use for my short runs. I was in front of the house I had grown up in. The house where my father now lived alone.

  My subconscious must have been telling me something. I climbed the stairs and tried the door, but it was locked. Good, I thought, my father’s finally listening to me. I had left the house without my keys, so I knocked.

  “Hey! Sammy!” Despite at least weekly visits, my dad always seems excited to see me. “Where’s the rest of the family?” He peeked behind me, obviously expecting a boyfriend and dog in tow.

  “Just me, Dad.” I stepped inside and found Al Fontana, Dad’s ninety-year-old neighbor, at the dining room table. He was concentrating hard on the checkerboard in front of him.

  “Hi, Mr. Fontana. Sorry to interrupt.”

  He swatted at an imaginary fly between us. “Aayh, you’re not interrupting nothing. I was getting ready to hand your father here his backside again. Wasn’t I, Martin?”

  “The man cheats,” Dad said, pointing an accusing finger in Al’s direction. “I walk into the kitchen for some more pretzels. I come back—he’s got a handful of my checkers and I owe him a crown.”

  “Aayh.” Again with the hand wave. “So what brings my favorite girl from the block here? Did you finally find me a nice girlfriend?”

  Lucky for me, I’ve known Al Fontana since I was three. As a result, I was one of the few women over the age of twenty who wasn’t a target of his affections. Yep, Dad’s checker partner is an unabashedly dirty old man.

  “Not yet, Mr. Fontana. I’ll work on it, though.”

  “Aayh.” This time there was only a small wave. “You work on yourself first. When’s that detective going to make an honest woman of you? I knew he was trouble when he was lurking around the first time.”

  I assumed he meant my high school years, when Chuck was a pretty regular fixture. Apparently, when you’re ninety years old, a fifteen-year gap is like a momentary time-out.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, realizing my voice sounded off. “We’re still happy where things are for now.” I heard a distinct crack. I hoped they’d chalk it up to cooling down from the run.

  No such luck. “You OK, kid?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Dad raised his brows at Al.

  Al’s response? “Hmph.”

  Great. How did I find all these men who could read me like a roadside billboard? Al used his cane to prop himself up. I had learned long ago not to offer a helping hand. He had swatted it away, then popped off the bronze hand piece on his cane to reveal a flask of whiskey. “That’s the only reason I lug this thing around,” he had explained.

  “Martin, I suggest we call it a night and agree that another win on my part was imminent.”

  “Agreed.”

  I tried to convince them to continue playing, but my protests went ignored. We said our goodbyes to Al at the door, and then Dad told me to come clean.

  “As much as I’d like you to, you never drop by here when you’re out running. I don’t think you’d stop for George Clooney while you’re running.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d throw myself in front of a bus to make him stop.” I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from a filtered pitcher in the refrigerator. I took the seat Al had vacated and started completing the moves that would have won him the game.

  “All right, smarty,” he said, picking up the game’s storage box from the nearby buffet. I grinned at Dad over the lip of the glass. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked.

  After some initial hemming and hawing, I eventually broke down. Dad was patient and let me ramble until I had it all out of my system. It wasn’t lost on either of us that my blatherings zigged and zagged interchangeably between the fight with Chuck and my concerns about Corbett’s confession.

  “You might need to accept that there are going to be things that you and Chuck don’t see eye to eye on.”

  “Maybe it’s stupid, but I feel almost like Chuck’s ganging up on me with his friends. Why doesn’t he see my side on this?”

  “He’s probably trying, Sammy, but cops are their own kind of animal. You said yourself he was already worried about his friend with the marriage problem. Now you’re talking about his partner.” My dad spoke from experience. Before he became a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, he had been a trooper with the Oregon State Police. “And I don’t think you’re mad at Chuck because he doesn’t agree with you. I think you’re mad at yourself because you let it affect you.”

  “It affects me because when I go home and tell the person I live with that I’m worried about work, I want him to have some empathy. I don’t want an argument.”

  “Maybe,” Dad said, “but maybe this isn’t about what happened when you got home today. It sounds to me like you’re upset because you think you might be in a different position on your case if you had followed your own instincts last night instead of Chuck’s.”

  He was right. By the time he said it, I was ready to accept the very notion that had set off the mess at home—Chuck’s accusation that part of me blamed him. That was what it boiled down to. Yes, I was worried about losing the motion. And I wondered whether I had done the right thing at the precinct last night. But at the core of my reaction—picking at Chuck’s housekeeping skills, walking out on him, stopping here at Dad’s—lay that same old concern. Could I really share my life with Chuck and still be good at my job? Could I be with him and still be me?

  I thanked my father for the visit and began a slow jog back to the house, ready to lick my wounds and come clean with my roommate. I found the door unlocked and a note on the table next to my key chain, a plastic parrot that flashed a purple light when you pinched its beak. It had seemed funny when Grace bought it for me at a cheesy gift shop in Maui.

  Sorry about the door, but you left without your pinching parrot. I’m staying at Mike’s tonight to give you some space. I’ll be home tomorrow night. Chuck.

  11

  It was nearly 7 P.M., and even the hardest working members of the administrative staff were leaving. If Heidi was going to make her request tonight, she needed to do it soon.

  She rode the elevator to the fourth floor, silently rehearsing her speech for Lon Hubbard. She found him at his desk, busy as always. As far as Heidi could tell, Lon was the single most valuable employee at the paper. His title was something like Facilities Manager, but he essentially ran the nuts and bolts of the operation. He figured out how to house all the bodies required to keep the paper afloat in this tiny building. He made sure your phone extension followed you when you transferred departments. He could get you one of those cool keyboard pads that were supposed to prevent carpel tunnel syndrome. And he was the one who had opened Percy’s office for Heidi when she’d met with the District Attorney and the detective.

  “Hey there, Lon. You working late?”


  “Yeah, looks like it,” he said, shaking his head. “I keep saying I’m going to start leaving here right at five o’clock, six at the latest. But it seems like there’s always something.”

  “Like I say, ‘All roads lead to Lon.’”

  He smiled. Heidi had come up with that her third week at the paper. Every time she had one of those new-employee questions—where do I find pencils; can I get a key to the back entrance, how do I change my e-mail password?—she’d start somewhere sensible on the long list of phone extensions. Eventually, and inevitably, someone would tell her, “Oh, that’s Lon Hubbard.” Ever since, she’d been telling Lon that all roads led to him, and he absolutely loved hearing it.

  “What are you working on tonight?” he asked.

  “Same old boring stuff. Tom’s got me fact-checking a background piece Dan Manning wrote about one of the lawyers reportedly on the president’s short list for a vacant judicial spot. Given what Dan turned up, I think Tom wants to make sure we don’t get sued. Dan gets the byline; I get to spend the night poring over old law-review articles.”

  “Makes my life sound fun.”

  “Exactly. Anyway, I was taking a break from it, and I realized that Percy’s family would probably like to have his personal belongings from his office. Since they live in California, I thought I’d offer to pack them up if it hasn’t been done yet.”

  Heidi had expected Lon to allow her to be helpful, but she did not expect his elated response. “You, my dear, are a gift from the heavens. A friend of Percy’s called earlier asking about that. I guess the parents are up here for the week. Anyway, she thought it would be a little too much for them to pack up the stuff themselves, so I told her I’d do it and call her when it was ready. But if you’re willing to take care of it, that’s one less thing on my list.”

  Lon handed Heidi a scrap of paper with the name Selma Gooding and a phone number written on it. “No problem,” Heidi chirped. “Just give me a key to his office, and I’ll bring it right back up with the boxes when I’m done.”