by Andrew Pyper
McConnell’s money came from fixing cars. Three service stations now bore his name, dotted along the main north-south highway through the county. McConnell’s Auto Stops had managed to corner what was left of the market just by sticking around, moving in whenever one of the remaining big name franchises went under and could be picked up for a song. And as he leads the way to the back of the house and bids me to take a seat in an overstuffed recliner next to a fire too large for its hearth, one can see the former mechanic in his scuffling walk, bearish shoulders, the loose shiftings of his ass. He gives the impression of being a man who, having ascended to the pinnacle of employer from the trench of employee, didn’t take with him any special sympathies for those who now toil in the grease below him.
“I don’t want to take up any more of your time than necessary,” I begin, pulling a notepad from my case and smoothing it over my knee. “My questions, I assure you, are of a general nature only.”
“Yeah? Well, I got some questions too.”
He’s standing with his back to me, looking out over the backyard carpeted with fallen leaves. His voice isn’t angry—not yet angry—but there’s a tightness in it, an effort to control its tone so that he can make the points he’s listed in his head. How could I have thought that his voice over the phone suggested something else, like shyness?
“What sort of questions?”
“How about ‘Why are you trying to keep the man who killed my little girl out of jail?’”
He turns now and looks at me directly for the first time. If it weren’t for his standing silhouetted so hugely against the window and the heat of the blaze next to me made worse by the thick insulation of my overcoat, I could handle this better. As it is I’m suddenly woozy, an ominous tingling at the tip of my nose. My stomach barks.
“With all due respect, Mr. McConnell, my client’s guilt hasn’t yet been determined.”
“Oh yes it has. By me it has. By my wife and family it sure has. By God Almighty, that man’s guilt has been determined alright.”
Something, either a long-distance drop of spit from McConnell’s mouth or perspiration falling from my brow lands on the bridge of my nose and trickles down to where it is no longer felt. My eyes stray to the side, to the snapping yellow of the fire that blasts a nugget of wood against the wire screen every couple of seconds. On the mantel above, a half-dozen trophies with figures of athletes stuck to their tops—a female tennis player tossing up a serve, a golfer paused at the crest of his follow-through, a hockey player with his stick on the ice, ready for a pass. Photos of women’s softball teams on the wall, McConnell’s Auto Stops stenciled over their chests and McConnell himself standing behind the back row, his hands on the tallest players’ shoulders and a gaseous smile on his lips. And all around these, portraits of his children in professional soft focus that I can’t look at directly. A glimpse of tortoise-shell frames. Braces, white blonde braids.
“Maybe this wasn’t right,” I say, turning back to McConnell with considerable effort.
“No, no. It was right. I’m glad you’re here.” He takes a step toward the chair nearest him and rests a hand on its back but makes no further motion to sit. “Now you said you had some questions. Ask away, Mr. Crane.”
“Well, maybe now isn’t—there’s no need really.”
“No need? Wrong!” He makes a game show buzzer sound in his throat. “I think there is a need.”
Standing there above me in the deathly heat of the living room of what would have once been described by bell-bottomed real estate agents as an “executive home,” fixed by the size of his bones and his rage, it strikes me how married McConnell looks. Neither happily nor unhappily, henpecked nor contented. Simply married in the sense of a man who could not possibly be anything else, one who assumed the obligations and privileges of matrimony as they came to him without imagining how anything could be otherwise. Though there may well be none of what would generally qualify as love in his heart, he would undoubtedly be considered a good husband by all.
“Alright, O.K.” I struggle, seeing as he is prepared to wait forever for me to speak. “For example, I was wondering how well you knew your daughter’s friend, Ashley Flynn. I mean, were you aware of the kind of friendship they had, the things they did?”
“They were girls. Kids who hung out with each other. Now if you’re asking me if I ever sat down with Krystal and Ashley and had a long heart-to-heart with them about the nature of the universe, no. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe I should’ve told them to watch out for perverted teachers who want to take them for drives. But I never did. Why did I need to? This was a good town. They were good kids.” He pauses, bends a little at the knees allowing more light to fall across me where I sit. “Are you saying they weren’t good kids?”
“Of course not. I’m not saying anything. I guess all I’m asking is if you were aware of any reason they had which might—if you knew of any problems either of them may have had.”
“Problems?”
His face, which must normally have appeared as a generous platter of ruddy skin and heavy-lidded eyes, has gone from red to the same dusty gray as the clouds outside the window behind him.
“Just the usual things,” I say. “Did they have any difficulties at school? Any attempts at running away from home? You know what I mean?”
“No I don’t, frankly. What would they have to run away from? I can’t speak for the Flynn girl—for Ashley—but my Krystal had a good home right here. A home her daddy worked hard for every day of that girl’s life.”
He pauses now, and in the same moment a robin thuds into the sliding glass door behind him, falls to the patio and makes its way under the gas barbecue where it flips its wings uselessly against a garden gnome. But McConnell doesn’t turn, appears not to have heard a thing.
“Let me tell you something about my daughter, Mr. Crane,” he continues, voice lowered. “My wife and I were blessed with four children, Krystal was our youngest. We raised her in this house. She watched TV in this room, talked to her friends on the phone sitting in the chair you’re sitting in right now. If we ever had a question, we prayed to God for guidance and He provided it.”
He rises now and casts a shadow over me once more.
“Problems? The only problem she ever had was Thom Tripp. And the only person I can blame is myself. Because I knew there was something wrong about the way the three of them got together every week, a grown man and two girls. What did he call it? The Literary Club. No way, I never liked the sound of that, and I told Krystal so. Told her I didn’t like her spending so much time with that weirdo, coming around to the garage sometimes in that Swede car of his for a wash or a fill-up, looking out through the windshield with a dead man’s face. But oh no, she told me it was fine, nothing to worry about. It’s creative. So I let her go, and that was my mistake. But I’m not a man who makes the same mistake twice, Mr. Crane.”
I’m surprised by the sudden force of a single, choking cough, and have to lean forward to swallow back the resulting acidic lump gathered in my throat. Definitely time to go. But my legs are tingling stumps and I’ve sunk too low in the chair to lift myself out. My mouth is still working though, throwing out things before I can recognize what they are.
“What are you saying, Mr. McConnell? It sounds like—”
“A threat? Well, that’s for lawyers like you to decide, isn’t it?”
His body stiffens now, a towering statue that swells with his next clenched words.
“But let me tell you exactly what I am saying. No matter what you do in that courtroom, your client is going to hell. God knows he’s taken my little girl from me, taken her away from her place in our house. No sir, I promise you that man is damned to hell.”
He takes in a shuddering breath, though not from fighting back tears, but from the discipline required in restraining himself from taking two steps across the deep pile of the room’s carpet and pounding a fist into my face.
“I’m sorry, Mr. McConnell,” I find myself
saying, “but I think I should leave now.”
I lift the notepad from my lap and try to stick it back into my case but everything is spiraling away and I end up dropping both notepad and pen on the floor.
“No, no, no. Don’t go just yet,” McConnell says. “You came here to ask your questions, and I want you to ask them. We have nothing to hide in this house. Unlike yours.”
“Is Mrs. McConnell available?”
I don’t know why I ask this. Maybe to have him go summon her so I can make a dash for the door.
“Available? No, I’m afraid she’s on medication from her doctor that doesn’t allow her to answer questions from sick lawyers. See, Mr. Crane—” he takes a step forward and then back again, as though without the aid of the chair he clings to he would lose his balance entirely “—this house has been visited by evil. And while I don’t know why, I do know who the deliveryman is.”
He licks his lips clear of bubbled spit, lifts his free hand and waggles a thick index finger at my face.
“So let me tell you this, and you can bring charges against me for saying it or do whatever little tricks you want. But I give you my solemn word. If you manage to get Tripp off, I’ll kill him myself.”
He releases his grip on the chair so that he can now hold both hands out before him, two fists clenched a perfect, bloodless white. But what he says next is a whisper through the airless heat.
“Hear me now? I’ll snap his neck, cut him wide open and stick his dirty heart down his throat. Understand?”
From over his shoulder the robin flaps into the air and throws itself over the neighbor’s fence.
“I understand,” I say and manage to rise, gulping hard to keep down the hot churnings of my stomach. I also manage to stick the pad and paper in my bag and take a step toward the front hallway without passing out. Moving fast, but McConnell easily catches up behind me and speaks at what sounds like inches from my ear.
“That’s a sin, I know, to kill. But I’m only human. And God would forgive a man for bringing an end to evil, don’t you think?”
I make it down the impossible length of the tiled front hallway to the door and pull it open. But before I’m out he puts his hand on my shoulder and the strength of his grip causes the muscles there to seize in startled pain. Around us the house uttering a thousand crunches and squeaks, shifting to accommodate McConnell’s movement.
“You want to know something?” he says. “You must be a very sick man yourself, to do what you’re doing.”
Something in his lowered voice and desperate grip makes me certain that his wife is listening. Has been listening all along. Sitting at the top of the stairs in her housecoat, the tranquilizers deadening her ears just enough to prevent them from catching her husband’s whisper.
“You don’t know me,” I say, releasing myself and stepping unsteadily out onto the straw welcome mat.
“No, I don’t. But Christ does,” he says before gently closing the door. “Christ knows you very well, Mr. Crane.”
SIXTEEN
The papers on my desk are reproducing. The case law briefs mating with the witness statements, the cross-examination binder having it off with the Post-It notes. Every time I return from the bathroom or a sandwich run there’s a new litter of bewildered 81/2 X 11s blinking up at me. Nothing I can do about it but turn my eyes from their hungry faces, venture out into daylight once more for another interview. Today’s visit offers about as much promise as the one with McConnell: my own client, Thom Tripp.
Outside, the morning’s rain has picked up from a despondent drizzle to a straight and windless assault, heavy drops of cold gathering speed over miles of sky and exploding on my shoulders, pant legs, the crown of my head. I make a mental addition to my shopping list to go along with the thermal undies: heavy-duty umbrella. Too late for this morning though, and by the time I splash up the front steps to the Murdoch Prison for Men I’m totally soaked, the rain finding its way into places where rain is usually forbidden such as the inside of my shirt, my shoes and the crack of my ass. As I approach the reception desk and see the same mischievous guard as before grinning at me I’m uncomfortably aware of my buttocks squishing and slipping against each other like mating seals.
“Good morn’, Mr. Crane. A wet one, isn’t it?”
“Wet? You could say wet.”
“Here to see Mr. Tripp?”
“Would there be another reason?”
“No, no.” He pretends to consider, bringing a thoughtful finger to his razor-burned chin. “I suppose there wouldn’t be, no.”
I’m taken again to Interview Room No. 1, and again the leprechaun tells me to make myself comfortable. It isn’t easy, given that I’m once more forced to wait for what I suspect is an intentionally long time, shivering in a drenched suit better designed for striking a nicely cut shape before judges or ordering drinks at mahogany bars than keeping moisture away from the skin. By the time Tripp is produced the room’s institutional coolness has buried itself deep in the bones and I have to swivel my jaw loose before speaking.
“I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you sooner, Mr. Tripp—Thomas—but I’ve really been diving into things and I just haven’t had a second.”
He doesn’t respond, but sits down in the chair across the table from me without having to be coaxed.
“How have you been? Are you being treated satisfactorily?” I ask, testing to see if his verbal skills are on-line.
“I’m fed. I walk around an empty gymnasium forty-five minutes a day. I have two-year-old magazines brought to where I sleep. I’d say I’m treated very well.”
“Well, that’s good. Do you have any other concerns then, anything at all, before we continue?”
He says nothing, but pushes his breath through a slight opening in his lips that whistles out in either resignation or boredom. His eyelids lower a notch at the same time, and I decide to plunge ahead before I lose him altogether.
“I wanted to go through some things with you now, Thomas, some fairly specific things relating to the Crown’s evidence. I should tell you right off that so far it all looks quite encouraging. They’ve got no eyewitnesses, aside from some teachers who saw you and the girls walking to your car after school sometimes, and we’re not denying that anyway, are we? But there are still some circumstantial bits and pieces that I’d like to be able to explain away when they get raised at trial. For instance, the muddy pants in your laundry hamper and the mud on your shoes. Is there any way that could have happened aside from walking through the woods at Lake St. Christopher?”
Tripp drops his elbows on the table and slides them forward as though to form a pillow on which to settle for a nap. But he doesn’t go that far, and instead his head hangs unsteadily in the air, wobbling over his outstretched arms.
“They were dirty so I put them in the laundry,” he says.
“Of course. But can you think of a way they might have gotten dirty?”
“I took them off to get into bed, saw they were covered in mud, and threw them in the hamper. That’s the first time I noticed.”
“Fine, fine. You don’t remember how the mud got there. The next thing I need to ask you about though are the pictures you kept in your bedroom.”
“Pictures?”
“The catalog pages of female models. Teenagers. On your wall. Remember?”
“Uh-hmm.”
“Could you explain them for me?”
“I liked them there.”
“Why’s that?”
Tripp’s nose wrinkles itself up nearly half an inch as though in preparation for a sneeze or in a show of repugnance for having picked up a sudden bad smell. But I can’t smell anything except the sourness of my wet wool suit, and in the end Tripp doesn’t sneeze either, his nostrils descending once more to pull in a long, shaking breath.
“They just stayed there.”
“Stayed for you to look at?”
“They couldn’t go anywhere, could they?”
His head moves another inch cl
oser to the table.
“Mr. Tripp, please. What I’m asking for here are specific responses to pieces of evidence that the Crown intends to advance. Understand? So if they say you had pictures of girls modeling underwear on your bedroom wall for bad reasons, we want to say they were there for normal, or at least, not so bad reasons. Now, may I make a suggestion here? Maybe you had those pictures because you lost your daughter in a custody fight with your ex-wife a few years ago, and you missed Melissa so much you put images of other little girls up there to ease your pain. How about that?”
“Melissa?”
“Your daughter. Were you thinking of her when you ripped those pages out of the catalog?”
“No. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking. Just that if I put them there, they would stay. Because where could they go?”
Take a deep breath, plow on.
“One more question we need to cover, and this is probably the most important. It’s about the bloodstains in the backseat of your car. The police found a few spots on the upholstery, and they’ve sent traces of them off to the lab along with some blonde and dark hair found there as well to see if any of them match. Now, even if they do, all that it shows is that one or both of them were in the back of your car, and that they lost some blood there at some point. It’s not conclusive, but you can see how that wouldn’t be so good. So let me ask you: do you remember how those bloodstains got there?”
His head is turned away to where it drifted in the middle of my explanation, less from distraction than real puzzlement. The normally tight crease of his mouth is opened up and he chews at his lips with yellowed canines. I give him time. Perhaps these are signs of a struggle toward considered thought, and I’d be a fool to interrupt.
“You didn’t mention the shirt,” he says finally, keeping his head turned away.
“What shirt?”
“Didn’t they find it?”
“Find what? The shirt? I’m not aware of any shirt.”
“It’s just funny they didn’t…they had a search warrant…”
