Night on Fire

by Douglas Corleone

  “You mean right at the scene? Right there at the lagoon?”

  “In front of all those people, yeah. That’s the problem,” I say. “Even if we retrieve the knife at night, someone’s going to see us. If not a set of eyes, then certainly the resort’s video surveillance.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a thirty-second operation either.”

  “The knife will need to be sprayed with this reagent immediately after it surfaces. Then the knife has to be rinsed off with clean water before it begins to dry.”

  “What then?”

  “All that should remain on the knife after rinsing should be the reagent which has adhered to the latent print.”

  “Powder particles.”

  “Right,” I tell him. “Gray prints should appear. We’d have to photograph them, then wait until the knife is dry. Once it’s dry, we can lift the prints from the surface with tape, just as we would if the weapon were never submerged.”

  “Assuming the knife is the same one that the defendant used to cut herself, her prints are going to be on it, son.”

  “Even so, there may be another set of prints on the knife,” I say. “What if Erin didn’t stab Trevor? What if someone else did, and then she set the fire to conceal it?”

  Jake holds a finger to his lips as he thinks about this. “Then the killer’s prints might be on the knife.”

  I nod. “And that might be all we need. Maddox is going to accuse Erin of putting a knife in her husband’s gut. If we can show otherwise, his whole case falls apart. We tell the jury if Maddox is wrong about this, then he’s wrong about the fire. It’s all or nothing. Absent evidence to the contrary, the State can’t have it both ways.”

  Jake half smiles at this revelation. “If someone else’s prints are on that knife…”

  “Then, Jake, we have reasonable doubt.”

  CHAPTER 36

  “But what if the knife doesn’t contain someone else’s prints?” Flan asks as the two of us make our way up Kalakaua Avenue toward the Grand Polynesian resort.

  “Therein lies the dilemma,” I say, absently rubbing the bandage on my arm.

  “So you’ve got a decision to make.”

  “And fast. The longer we wait, Baron tells me, the less likely we are to find a valid print.”

  “And if someone else finds the knife?”

  “Then all prints are likely lost, because no one is going to have the foresight to leave it where it is.” I lift my Panama Jack and sweep my hand through my drenched hair, briefly wishing weatherman Parker Canton suffers a heat stroke today. “But it’s a good ten to twelve feet to the bottom and the area’s well-protected by eels, so chances are, the knife stays there unless we pull it up.”

  We drop in an ABC Store and purchase two ice cold bottles of Fiji water. At the counter Flan says, “So, I caught Casey smoking weed in my apartment the other day.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, some shit called Maui Wowie.”

  “Ah, heavy-duty Valley Isle smokes.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. You were saying?”

  I pay the clerk and we step back into the deadly sunshine, cracking the caps on our bottles of water.

  “So, anyway,” Flan says, “I now know why half my Vicodin are missing. I caught Casey popping two in her mouth before she went to Ala Moana Mall with her new friend, some giant Samoan guy, and my money.”

  “Have any of those on you?” I say.

  “Those what?”

  “Vicodin.”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so you were saying…?”

  Flan allows some of the Fiji to flow down his chin, to soak the neck of his shirt. “Casey constantly eats my food, drinks my beer, tosses her tampons in the bathroom wastebasket—I can’t fucking take it anymore. It’s like being married to Lucifer all over again!”

  “Where’s Lucifer living now, by the way?”

  “Hell.”

  “Jersey?”

  “No, the other one,” he says. “Anyway, Casey stays out all night, then comes home just when I’m waking up, and what does she do? She jumps in the shower. And she doesn’t just take a quickie. No, we’re talking fifty-sixty minutes in there. I can’t even piss!”

  “Oh.”

  “I have to piss into a sponge.”

  “Why not just piss in the kitchen sink?”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Well, where are you pissing into the sponge?”

  “Over the goddamn kitchen sink.”

  “I’ve made my case.”

  Meanwhile, we’ve made it to the lobby entrance of the Grand Polynesian, a sprawling resort resting at the edge of Waikiki. Just stepping inside stirs memories of the Gianforte case and a certain law school professor I counted among the many suspects.

  “Wanna get some drinks at Duke’s tonight?” Flan says.

  “Nah, I can’t. I have to have a nice long talk tonight with Erin Simms.”

  We step past the front desk and take the elevator to the nineteenth floor.

  “So, what are you gonna do, knock on the door and say ‘room service’?” Flan says as we step into the hall.

  “No,” I tell him. “You are.”

  “What? What do I do when they open up?”

  That I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Because the door to room 1909 is open, and there’s a maid standing in it, pulling the sheets off the king-size bed. I poke my head inside and there’s not a shirt, not a hairbrush, not a used Q-tip to be found.

  Flan and I hurry back downstairs and get the attention of a young woman standing behind the front desk.

  “I had an appointment to see Mr. Gabe Guidry this afternoon,” I tell her. “He was staying in room 1909, but now he isn’t there.”

  She taps away at her computer, her eyes set on the monitor. “Oh yes,” she says. “The young couple. They checked out.”

  “When?”

  “Just this morning. They were supposed to be here for a few more days, but they just packed up and left very suddenly.”

  “Suddenly?”

  “Yeah, it was weird. This blond gentleman came by, paid their bill for them, and drove them away.”

  “A blond guy, huh?”

  “Yeah. A cute guy. All dressed up, but he still had this whole surfer-dude look going on.”

  “Anyone say where they were going?”

  “No,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “Just the airport.”

  CHAPTER 37

  “So what seems to be the trouble, Mr. Corvelli?”

  Dr. Damien Opono is a native Hawaiian with a casual demeanor I immediately admire. He’s fairly young as far as psychiatrists go, but I don’t necessarily need advice from a sage these days; I need someone to talk to. And, yes, I need drugs. Something to pull me out of this funk. I feel as though I’m on the brink. It’s the way I felt after Brandon Glenn was murdered at Rikers Island. How I felt nearly every day until I graduated law school and my time became my own.

  “It’s a woman,” I say.

  It wasn’t what I meant to say. But the good psychiatrists, they seem to draw it out of you just by looking at you. I’ve got to be careful around this guy.

  “A girlfriend?” he says.

  “I suppose you can say that.” If Dr. Opono reads the local papers, he already knows who I am, and despite the doctor-patient privilege, I have no intention of letting Opono or anyone else—not even Jake, not even Flan—know that I’m currently sleeping with a client accused of mass murder.

  “And what about her is troubling you?” he says.

  “She’s addictive,” I tell him. “She’s bad for me and I know she’s bad for me, and yet I can’t seem to stay away.”

  “That’s not terribly uncommon.”

  “No, particularly not for me.”

  “Oh? Why do you say that?”

  “Let’s just say I’m beginning to see a pattern.”

  “A pattern in the type of woman you become involved with?”

  N
ikki. Erin. “Yeah, you can say that.”

  Dr. Opono crosses his legs, a gesture that tells me he’s not going to simply write me a prescription and send me on my merry way. “Tell me about the woman you’re currently involved with.”

  “Intense. Unstable. Incredibly manipulative.”

  “Impulsive?”

  “Hard to tell,” I say. “Since I’ve met her she’s stayed home a lot.”

  “A temper?”

  “Like Tony Soprano suffering from ’roid rage.”

  Dr. Opono arches his eyebrows. “Wow. I’m assuming, though, she doesn’t look like James Gandolfini?”

  I smile. “Maybe a slight resemblance.” Leaning forward on the couch, I say, “Thing is, the temper’s not always raging. Sometimes she seems as delicate as a rose petal and all I want to do is save her.”

  “So, you’re suggesting that her mood swings?”

  “Like a pendulum.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And she cuts.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Self-mutilates. She cuts herself. Sometimes even burns her own flesh.”

  “I see,” he says, steepling his fingers. “Sounds like she could be a borderline.”

  “A borderline what?”

  “She may suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s marked by many of the symptoms you’ve just described.”

  “It’s a mental illness,” I say.

  “Very much so. Borderlines typically possess a shaky sense of identity. They’re prone to severe mood shifts and frequent displays of anger, often inappropriate, sometimes violent. Self-destructive tendencies such as self-mutilation are very common. Many of their relationships are just as you described—very intense yet very unstable. They may suffer chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom, and they may make frantic efforts to avoid abandonment, real or imagined.”

  “Interesting. So, when she goes from kissing me to trying to bite my ear off…”

  “She’s likely employing a defense mechanism called ‘splitting.’ Like a child, she sees the world as split into heroes and villains. There are no gray areas. No gray people, so to speak. At any particular moment, an individual is either ‘good’ or ‘evil.’”

  “In other words,” I say, leaning back on the couch, “she can’t reconcile that one person can possess both good and bad traits.”

  “That’s right. Borderlines essentially cannot tolerate human inconsistencies.”

  “So, if someone she saw as all good—such as a lover—suddenly betrayed her…”

  “She would experience that betrayal far more intensely and react far more dramatically than, say, you or I.”

  “It would seem to her as though someone she trusted were sticking a knife in her gut,” I say.

  Dr. Opono frowns, shrugs his left shoulder. “Something like that.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “Please state your name for the record.”

  Ironic, because now that I know it, I’m unlikely to ever forget it.

  “Sherry Beagan. B-E-A-G-A-N.”

  “Thank you, Miss Beagan.” I take a sip of water from the defense table, then spin back around to face the witness. “I’m sorry. It’s Missus, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re married.”

  “Yes.”

  Flan served the subpoena on her two days ago and nearly got his head knocked off by her husband. Fortunately, big ol’ Bruce isn’t in the courtroom today for this, the hearing on Luke Maddox’s motion to have me disqualified as counsel for Erin Simms.

  “Mrs. Beagan, allow me to direct your attention to Tuesday, July thirteenth of this year. Do you recall that day?”

  Sherry’s cheeks turn cherry. She’s not nearly as sweat-free as she was the day she questioned me outside police headquarters. “I do.”

  I hurriedly walk Sherry through the events of that morning, establishing that she was here in Hawaii gathering information for a feature article she was assigned by a medium-size travel magazine called The Modern Globetrotter. Eventually, I place her at Kanaloa’s Bar and Grill at the Kupulupulu Beach Resort in Ko Olina.

  “Do you recall what time you arrived at Kanaloa’s Bar and Grill on that day?”

  “It was in the afternoon. Sometime between three and four o’clock.”

  “Do you recall seeing me at the bar when you arrived?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you recall what I was wearing that afternoon?”

  “A beige linen suit with a red silk tie.”

  “Thank you.” I open an orange folder at the podium and thumb through some unrelated photocopies, as though I’m ready to pounce on her if she begins lying. “Mrs. Beagan, did you consume alcohol at Kanaloa’s on that day?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you recall what you were drinking?”

  “Something called a Tropical Itch.”

  “An alcoholic beverage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And do you remember approximately how many of these alcoholic beverages you consumed at Kanaloa’s?”

  “Several.”

  “More than four?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than six?”

  “Probably.”

  “During that time you were at Kanaloa’s, did you and I engage in any conversation?”

  “Yes, we talked for several hours.”

  “Several hours?” I say as though surprised. “I see. Do you recall whether I was also consuming alcoholic beverages during that time?”

  “You were.”

  “Do you recall what was I drinking?”

  “Mostly mai tais, but I saw you throw back a few shots of Patrón for good measure.”

  “Interesting.” It is interesting, since I have no recollection of doing shots that afternoon, but what the hell; it only helps bolster my argument. “During the first hour or so of our conversation, do you recall what topics we discussed?”

  “You told me you were a lawyer.” She pauses. “Well, actually, the bartender told me, and you took it from there. I told you I was a freelance writer here on assignment for The Modern Globetrotter. I talked about my family, my mother, my father, my brother. You refused to talk about yours.”

  “At any point in that first hour of our conversation, did you tell me your name?”

  “I did.”

  “As the evening progressed, from all outward appearances, how would you describe my state of intoxication?”

  “You went from being slightly inebriated to repulsively drunk.”

  Ouch. “And upon what specifically do you base this determination?”

  “Well, for one, you asked me my name at least a half dozen times over the hours we were together, yet you were never once able to use it. You kept calling me ‘baby,’ despite my requests that you call me Sherry. Toward the end of the evening, you were slurring your words a great deal, but you seemed utterly oblivious to it. Once or twice you said, ‘I’m your huckleberry,’ the meaning of which continues to elude me.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You were also rather unsteady on your feet, though you didn’t seem to realize it at the time.”

  “All right. Did there come a time when you and I left Kanaloa’s together?”

  “Yes, it was around a quarter after eleven P.M.”

  “Did one or both of us pay a bar tab?”

  “You did. You told the bartender within a few minutes of meeting me to put my drinks on your tab.”

  “Your Honor, at this time, I’d like show the witness what has previously been marked as Defendant’s Exhibit A.”

  Judge Maxa motions me forward. I hand Sherry the bar tab and ask whether she recalls seeing it. Once she authenticates the receipt, I ask her to read the date and times, the list of drinks purchased and their prices, the subtotal and total.

  I then enter it into evidence. My alcoholism is now officially part of the court record.

  * * *

  After taking Sherry Beagan through the night, from fornica
tion to the fire, I tender the witness to Luke Maddox, who asks a series of innocuous questions, attempting apparently to prove that I remained alert and coherent throughout the night.

  Finally Judge Maxa releases the witness from the stand.

  “All right,” the judge says. “That was very unusual, to say the least.”

  Maddox stands. “Your Honor, I’d now like to put Mr. Corvelli on the stand to determine whether, in fact, he has personal knowledge and recollection of any material facts in this case.”

  “No, Mr. Maddox,” she replies. “I think we’ve wasted enough of the Court’s time with this matter already.”

  “But, Your Honor…” Maddox isn’t giving up. He’s already around the podium and approaching the bench. “Mr. Corvelli has merely established that he was drinking heavily on the night in question. He has not established that he was, as Mr. Harper states in his papers, ‘blacked out.’ In fact, I think it’s a very clever ruse on Mr. Corvelli’s part that he had his partner Jake Harper sign the supporting affidavit in his response papers. This way, Mr. Corvelli never admits he was blacked out, never denies under oath that he has personal knowledge and recollection relating to the facts in this case. Effectively, this strategy allows Mr. Corvelli to lie to this Court with impunity.”

  Judge Maxa looks at me. “Your response, Mr. Corvelli?”

  I stand in front of the defense table, my body slouched as though I’ve been punched in the gut. “Your Honor, I’m appalled at Mr. Maddox’s accusations. Frankly, the actions taken by Mr. Maddox in this case, coupled with the statements he just now made to Your Honor, cause me to wonder whether Mr. Maddox suffers from some paranoid delusion.”

  Maddox spins, an ugly smirk on his face. “Oh, you son of a—”

  “Mr. Maddox!” the judge shouts. “You’ll address your arguments to me, not to one another. Now, do you have any other witnesses or evidence you’d like to present?”

  “Your Honor,” Maddox says, “included in my papers are copies of notes taken by a fire investigator named Darren Watts at the scene. Those notes expressly show that Mr. Corvelli has a clear memory of the events of that evening—”

  “Had a clear memory of that evening,” I interrupt. “Your Honor, as Mr. Harper notes in his response papers, a potential witness may not testify if he lacks personal knowledge. And ‘personal knowledge,’ for purposes of this rule, means not only that the witness perceived the events about which he is to testify, but that he has a present recollection of that perception.” I sweep my hand like a magician. “Clearly, based on the evidence introduced today, I do not.”