Straw Men

by Martin J. Smith

  “Were you here looking for me?” Christensen asked.

  Harnett shook his head. His eyes shifted briefly to the corridor behind them. “My wife’s here,” he said. “Regular rehab day.”

  Christensen nodded, but the answer explained nothing. “You usually come along, then?”

  Harnett narrowed his eyes. “Rough goddamn week. Thought I’d better.”

  “Physical rehab wing’s at the other end,” Christensen said. “What brings you down to the testing unit?”

  Harnett said nothing. Not even a nod.

  Christensen tried to fill the silence. “I keep a little research office, just down the hall.” Still nothing. How much had Teresa told him? “Hope the message about the phone call Brenna got didn’t upset Teresa too much.”

  Harnett’s face clouded. Christensen imagined him withering a suspect in an interrogation room with the same hostile glare. After what seemed like a minute, Harnett said, “What message?”

  “The weird phone message? Brenna talked to Captain Milsevic a week ago, right after it happened.”

  Harnett’s face was as unreadable as a shark’s.

  “The weird one, with the song lyric in it?” Christensen prompted.

  “First I’ve heard of it,” Harnett said.

  Christensen felt himself flush. Milsevic hadn’t told the Harnetts. “I’m pretty sure Brenna asked Milsevic to let you know about it. She wanted to make sure you and your wife knew what had happened.”

  “A weird phone message,” Harnett said.

  “Right. Who knows what it might be, but it gave us the creeps and we thought you should know.”

  “So, I’m supposed to thank you?”

  “No. No,” Christensen said. “Look, we were just trying to make sure you knew, and I’m a little concerned you weren’t told. It may be nothing. God knows there’s cranks out there. Everything else aside, we thought you guys should know. Brenna just assumed, with you and Milsevic being so tight, that he’d keep you in the loop. Just in case.”

  “Haven’t talked to him in a few days,” Harnett said.

  “And he didn’t mention we got this call?”

  “Already told you that. What song?”

  Christensen felt for footing. The conversation’s unexpected turn had taken him down a slippery slope. He was scrambling for an appropriate answer when Harnett repeated the question. This time his voice had an edge.

  “The Springsteen lyric,” Christensen said. “ ‘Tunnel of Love.’ Somebody called us and played it from a tape.”

  “That’s it? They say anything?”

  Christensen shook his head. “That’s why it was so, you know … Just the recording, the same verse as in that letter to Teresa. So Brenna called it in and turned the whole thing over to Milsevic. There’s a report on file somewhere.”

  Christensen heard soft footsteps in the hallway behind him. Harnett noticed them, too. They turned and saw Teresa walking toward them, uncertain eyes focused on the startling scene in the vending area. She was moving awkwardly, trying to hurry.

  “She got this call when?” Harnett said.

  Christensen told him the date. Harnett smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. “A day or so after the hearing, is what you’re telling me?”

  Christensen knew where this was going, felt himself sliding into a conversation that should never occur.

  “So let’s get this straight,” Harnett said, his voice rising. “Eight years your little retard’s inside, no problem. No threats. No stalking. Nobody gets hurt.”

  Behind him, Christensen heard the rustle of Teresa’s clothes as she approached. He’d let curiosity lure him down the hall, and now he was trapped. “Whoa—”

  “Then a few days after you people spring him—”

  “I should go, because—”

  “Tell me something, buddy. You a rocket scientist?”

  “—this is something we shouldn’t try to—”

  “Don’t matter. ’Cause you really don’t gotta be a goddamn rocket scientist to figure this one. But I’m gonna connect the dots for you anyway. We’ve got some bitch lawyer who took it in the teeth eight years ago who’ll do anything to win this thing. We got a judge lets her spring her little cretin because of some fucking technicality. We got—”

  “Technicality?” Christensen felt his anger rise. “Since when are we discounting DNA?”

  Teresa was beside them now, refusing to look into Christensen’s eyes. Her husband loomed over them both. Teresa touched David’s arm, but he shook off the gesture.

  “We got a freak with a hard-on for anything with tits, and he worms his way out of prison through some bullshit loophole. And suddenly, go figure, we got a psychostalker who likes Springsteen. Hmm.” Harnett’s eyes bulged as he tapped a finger on the side of his head. “Let me think. Who could have made that phone call?”

  Christensen took a step back, hoping to defuse the situation.

  Harnett stepped forward. “Any guesses?” he said, practically shouting now.

  “David, don’t,” Teresa said. Her voice was sharp as she pushed herself between them. “Just back off, OK?”

  David Harnett’s eyes never left Christensen’s. He moved his wife out of the way with a slow sweep of his arm, his size and strength making the move seem almost gentle. “What is it about this situation you people don’t understand?”

  Christensen took another step back, almost out of the vending area. Harnett clenched and unclenched his fists, which seemed to pump him even larger.

  Christensen looked directly at Teresa, trying to reconnect. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said. “Really.”

  Teresa glared, then stepped between the two men again, facing her husband. In her stance Christensen saw proof of her police training. She barked, “David, back off,” and her voice left no room for discussion. It worked.

  Harnett blinked, then looked his wife in the eyes.

  “Let’s just go,” she said. “It’s not worth it.”

  Christensen took advantage of the moment and stepped into the hall, finally out of the small room. He was halfway to his office door when he heard Teresa’s question echo down the corridor: “What phone call?”

  Chapter 14

  Christensen aimed the remote and hit the Mute button. Myron Levin’s mouth continued to move, but Channel 2’s courthouse reporter went suddenly, blessedly silent. Brenna elbowed him from her side of the bed, hard enough to make him wheeze.

  “Don’t!” she said, grabbing for the control. She’d been brushing her teeth when Levin’s segment came on. She left the sink in midstroke, and her lips were rimmed with Crest.

  “Bren, I can feel you getting tense. Or, more tense. You don’t need the aggravation.”

  Brenna gave Levin back his voice.

  “—trouble finding even a single resident of Teresa Harnett’s Morningside neighborhood who hasn’t taken extra precautions in the wake of the controversial ruling in the DellaVecchio case. They definitely have strong opinions about what should happen at the final hearing and—”

  “Myron’s such an ass,” Brenna said, wiping her mouth on a hand towel. “He’s just hysterical.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “I didn’t say funny. I said hysterical.”

  True enough, Christensen thought. For nearly two weeks now, Levin had been working himself into a righteous froth in a series of grave reports for the evening news. Working every conceivable angle of the story, he’d revisited the crime scene and replayed key testimony from the original trial. He’d interviewed the fearful residents of Lawrenceville about the unleashed monster in their midst, and now was doing the same with people who lived in Morningside, where Teresa Harn
ett was attacked and still lived. Night after night, Levin had treated viewers to a somber parade of legal scholars, judicial analysts, skeptical forensic experts, and carefully orchestrated leaks from the district attorney’s office. Boiled down to its essence, his central message seemed clear: Run for your lives!

  “Hysterical,” Christensen repeated. “Perfect.”

  Brenna’s face suddenly filled the screen. It was a grab shot from an old videotape. Her eyes were half closed, and her mouth was frozen in a sneer.

  “You look like you’re about to spit,” Christensen said.

  “Shh.”

  “Curiously, Brenna Kennedy, Mr. DellaVecchio’s defense attorney, did not return phone calls earlier today,” Levin droned from off screen.

  “Like I’ve got nothing better to do, you pompous son-of-a—”

  “So it’s hard to say how the Scarecrow camp is reacting to the almost vigilante atmosphere building among fearful residents such as these. But as you know, Kennedy makes no apologies for springing the man she claims was unjustly convicted of the brutal attack on the former Pittsburgh police officer. She’s still pushing hard to permanently overturn the conviction.”

  Brenna’s face blinked off and Levin was back, looking like a toupeed bulldog. He was standing in the obscene glow of klieg lights along a darkened street, pumping up for a big finish. The word Morningside was superimposed across the bottom of the screen. The TV blinked again and Levin was suddenly inside a frame, talking to a square-jawed ten o’clock news anchor.

  “Sounds like prison might be the safest place for Mr. DellaVecchio,” the anchor said.

  Levin heaved a synthetic laugh, then arranged his features into his best but-seriously-folks face. “I can tell you this, Buck: I spoke to a longtime resident of this working-class community this afternoon. He asked not to be identified, but he said he remembers watching his neighbor, Teresa Harnett, wheeled into a waiting ambulance eight years ago, her skull shattered, clinging to life. This gentleman said if the Scarecrow ever visits Morningside, he’d be waiting with a group of like-minded citizens. And let me assure you he’s not with the Welcome Wagon.”

  “For Chrissakes,” Brenna said. “This is fucking absurd.”

  Christensen cocked his head toward the kids’ bedrooms down the hall. “Shh. They were still awake fifteen minutes ago.”

  Anchor Buck nodded his head, then turned to face the camera. “Thanks, Myron. The stadium-site traffic controversy is back in the news—”

  This time, Brenna zapped the TV. Anchor Buck disappeared in a flash, silenced, reduced to a bright blue dot at the center of the screen. Christensen watched it fade, dimming the room. The only light came from the open bathroom door, since the streetlight beyond the open miniblind was still broken.

  “Why doesn’t Levin just organize the mob himself?” Brenna said. “Pass out torches with the station’s logo. Be a great promotion.”

  Christensen reached over and tried to massage the tight muscles at the base of her neck. If his hands had been electrified, she couldn’t have recoiled any more violently.

  “They’re getting to you,” he said.

  “Damn right they are.”

  “You never get rattled, Bren. Why now?”

  “The world’s full of creeps, you know that?” She threw back the comforter and stood up. “I just get tired of dealing with them sometimes. I feel like I’m surrounded.”

  “Define creep,” he said.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold in the loose T-shirt she wore to bed. “Idiots like Levin. Dagnolo. Milsevic. David Harnett. Oily bastards, every one of them. Not a person in this whole fucking mess who isn’t a creep.”

  “Thank heavens DellaVecchio’s so lovable,” he said.

  Brenna stomped toward the bathroom to finish brushing her teeth, slamming the door behind her.

  “That was a joke, Bren,” he shouted.

  She opened the door again, leaned against the frame. “I know he’s a shit. God, this case, my life, would be so much easier if he was the least bit sympathetic. It’s like defending Hitler.”

  Christensen shook his head. “Hitler had better PR, and a loyal following. DellaVecchio just has you. But you knew all that from the start, and you took it on anyway.”

  “Because it was right,” she said.

  “Don’t lose sight of that, Bren. I haven’t. It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

  She turned back to the sink. Still agitated.

  “Did something happen today?” he asked.

  Her answer was lost in a rush of water and furious oral hygiene. Christensen snapped on the reading lamp beside his bed. He angled it to keep Brenna’s side of the bed dark. The alarm clock read 10:22, late, because he knew she’d be up earlier than usual as DellaVecchio’s hearing date approached.

  Brenna stepped out. Her silhouette showed through the thin T-shirt, her body’s Nautilized lines defined by the bathroom light. She was forty-seven, but at times she looked fifteen years younger. This was one of those times.

  She snapped off the bathroom light. “Something did happen,” she said, crossing the room and sliding back under the comforter. “Couple things, actually, going back maybe a week or so. You know that phone message we got?”

  Christensen’s face flushed. “You got another one,” he said. Not a question. He knew from the way she avoided his eyes.

  She held up two fingers.

  They were back, suddenly, at the precipice, staring down at an issue that nearly destroyed their blended family once before.

  “When did you plan to tell me?” he said.

  A tiny red dot suddenly wavered across the bed’s headboard. What was that?

  “I just wasn’t sure if it was anything to wor—”

  Feathers leapt from the pillow near Brenna’s left ear. Her mouth was open, the words still hanging between them, but the moment’s soundtrack seemed suddenly, slightly off. There’d been a tiny, distant pop!, and a nearby whuff! At the same time, the headboard shuddered.

  “—ry about,” Brenna said. In an instant, her face transformed, a mixture of confusion and indistinct pain.

  “Bren?”

  She lifted her hand to her left ear. Blood. It was seeping from a three-inch cut that scored the side of her head, just above the ear, matting her hair to her scalp. Brenna pulled her hand away and looked at her red fingertips.

  “I’m—” she said. “Jim?”

  Nothing made sense. They looked at each other, then at the bedroom window. A tiny, crystalline hole had blossomed in one of the panes. “The floor!” was all Christensen could manage as he shoved Brenna off her side of the bed. He rolled off his own side just as the window popped again, saw the headboard’s golden oak splinter where Brenna’s head had been a split second before. Christensen checked the window again before he crawled underneath the bed. A second hole punctuated the pane, right next to the first.

  Brenna was on her knees on the floor, staring down at nothing, reaching again to the left side of her head.

  Christensen belly-crawled under the bed and grabbed her elbow. “Under here!”

  She turned and looked at him. Fear had replaced the confusion on her face. Not panic, but then she couldn’t see what Christensen saw as she turned her head. Her left ear and the left side of her face were cross-hatched with blood, which was coming faster now. It ran down the forearm she was using to prop up her head.

  “It burns,” she said. “What’s happening?”

  Still talking, Christensen thought. A good sign. He pulled hard on her arm and she wriggled under the bed frame. Then, over the sound of their breathing, a fragile voice from the hall.

  “Mom?”

  “Taylor, don’t
open the door!” Christensen shouted. “Stay where you are!”

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Just stay where you are!”

  In the confusion, the portable phone had fallen from the night table on Christensen’s side of the bed. He reached for it and pulled it underneath along with a corner of the down comforter that lay crumpled beside it. Brenna was crying now, saying “It burns” over and over. He wiped her face with the comforter, told her to press it hard against the wound. “You’re OK, Bren,” he said. “Press hard, though.”

  He dialed 911, counting the rings.

  Again, from the hall: “Mom? Jim?”

  Her son’s voice seemed to bring Brenna back from the edge of shock. “Taylor, just wait, OK?” she said. “Don’t move, honey. Don’t open the door.”

  “Pittsburgh Police,” a dispatcher answered. “Is this an emergency?”

  “Shooting,” Christensen said.

  “Mom?”

  “732 Howe. Shadyside.” Christensen heard the dispatcher’s fingers flying over a keyboard.

  “Are you hurt, sir?”

  “No, but—”

  “Anyone else?”

  “One person. She’s hurt. Please hurry.”

  “Mom?”

  “We’re on the way, sir. What’s your name?”

  “Jim Christensen.”

  “House or apartment?”

  “Our house.”

  “Is there still shooting going on?”

  “No. No. I don’t think so. Two shots right together, from outside.”

  “So the gun isn’t in the house?”

  “No.”

  More typing. Then, to her rolling unit, the dispatcher barked, “Negative on the gun. Repeat. No gun in the house.” To Christensen, she said, “How many people in the house? This is important, sir. How many people?”

  “Four. Two adults, two kids. Everybody’s in the upstairs bedrooms.”

  “A two-story house?”

  “Three. We’re on the second floor.”