Miracle Creek: A Novel

by Angie Kim

  Matt felt his cheeks redden again. “No.”

  “And you didn’t happen to have a scalpel, either, I’m guessing?”

  “No.”

  “So again, Henry could’ve died? Is that a possibility, Doctor?”

  “A very small possibility.”

  “And Elizabeth prevented that. Made sure that couldn’t come close to happening, isn’t that right?”

  Matt sighed. “Yes,” he had to say. He waited for the logical next question, If Elizabeth wanted Henry dead, wouldn’t it have been easier to say nothing about the peanut butter? No, he’d say, and point out again that there was no real risk of Henry dying from that, and certainly no guarantee, like when a freaking fireball exploded in your face. But Shannon didn’t ask the question; she looked from the jury to Elizabeth with her gentle-auntie face, waiting for them to arrive at that conclusion on their own, and Matt could see the jurors’ faces softening. He could see them looking at Elizabeth, her still-stoic face, wondering if maybe it wasn’t that she was cold and uncaring, but just tired. Too tired to move a muscle.

  As if to accentuate this theme, Shannon said, “Doctor, you’ve told Elizabeth she’s the most devoted mother you’ve ever met, right?”

  True; he’d said that. But he’d meant it as criticism, telling her to ease up, for God’s sake. To tell her she’d gone beyond helicoptering to direct controlling. Puppeteer-parenting. But what could he say? Yes, I said that, but I was being sarcastic because I hate devoted mothers? “Yes,” he finally said. “I thought she spent a lot of effort acting like she was devoted to Henry.”

  Shannon gazed at him, the corners of her mouth turning upward slowly as if she’d just figured something out. “Doctor, I’m curious. Do you like Elizabeth? I mean, before the accident. Did you ever like her?”

  Matt marveled at that, Shannon’s brilliance at that moment, asking a question with no good answer. Yes, I liked her would continue Elizabeth’s humanization, and No, I never did would make him looked biased. “I didn’t really know her too well,” he finally said.

  Shannon smiled, the forgiving smile of a mother who’s decided to let slide a toddler’s obvious lie. “What about…” She scanned the gallery, the way stand-up comics scan the audience for victims “… Pak Yoo? Do you think he liked Elizabeth?”

  Something about this question made Matt flinch. Maybe it was Shannon’s tone—too casual, deliberately so, as if the question were a throwaway. As if she couldn’t care less about the answer, only that she got to bring up Pak at an unexpected moment, in an unexpected way.

  Matt matched Shannon’s this-doesn’t-matter-too-much tone and said, “I’m not great at reading other people’s minds. You’d have to ask Pak.”

  “Fair enough. Let me rephrase. Did he ever say anything negative about Elizabeth?”

  Matt shook his head. “I’ve never heard him say anything negative about Elizabeth.” And that was true: he’d heard about Pak’s annoyance with her from Mary frequently enough, but never directly from Pak. He blinked and continued. “Pak is professional. He wouldn’t gossip with patients, especially about another patient.”

  “But you weren’t just another patient, right? You’re family friends.”

  They may have been “family friends,” but Pak wasn’t particularly friendly. Matt suspected that, like many Korean men he knew, Pak disapproved of white guys being with Korean women. He said, “No. I was a client. That’s it.”

  “So he never discussed, say, fire insurance with you?”

  “What?” Where the fuck had that come from? “No. Fire insurance? Why would we discuss fire insurance?”

  Shannon ignored his questions. Just stepped toward him, looked straight into his eyes, and said, “Has anyone affiliated with Miracle Submarine, including your family, ever discussed fire insurance with you?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Ever hear anyone discuss or even mention it?”

  “No.” Matt was getting pissed now. And a little scared, though he couldn’t say why.

  “Do you know which company insures Miracle Submarine?”

  “No.”

  “Ever place a call to Miracle Submarine’s insurer?”

  “What? Why would I…?” Matt felt something itch in his missing knuckles. He wanted to punch something. Maybe Shannon’s face. “I just told you, I don’t even know what company it is.”

  “So it’s your sworn testimony that you never called Potomac Mutual Insurance Company the week before the explosion, is that correct?”

  “What? No, of course I didn’t.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  Shannon’s whole face seemed to lift—her eyes, mouth, even ears—and she walked—no, she strutted—to the defense table, picked up a document, strutted back to him, and thrust it at him. “Do you recognize this?”

  A list of phone numbers, dates, and times. His own number at the top. “It’s my phone bill. My cell.”

  “Please read the highlighted item.”

  “August 21, 2008. 8:58 a.m. Four minutes. Outgoing. 800-555-0199. Potomac Mutual Insurance.” Matt looked up. “I don’t understand. You’re saying I made this call?”

  “Not so much me as that document.” Shannon looked amused, almost triumphant.

  Matt read again. 8:58 a.m. Maybe he’d misdialed. But four minutes? “Maybe I heard an ad for an insurance deal and I called for a quote?” He didn’t remember doing that, but it was a year ago. Who knew how many random, boneheaded things he did on a whim on a daily basis that were so insignificant he couldn’t remember them a week later, much less a year?

  “So you did make this call, but in response to an ad?”

  Matt looked to Janine. She had both hands to her mouth. “No. I mean, maybe. I don’t remember this call, and I’m trying to figure out … I mean, I’ve never even heard of this company. Why would I call them?”

  Shannon smiled. “It just so happens that Potomac Mutual logs all incoming calls.” She handed documents to Abe and the judge. “Your Honor, I apologize for the lack of notice, but we found out about this call yesterday and only got the log last night.”

  Matt stared at Abe, willing him to see the What-the-fuck-do-I-do question on his face, rescue him somehow, but Abe kept reading and frowning. “Any objections, Mr. Patterley?” the judge said. Abe mumbled, “No,” still reading.

  Finally, Shannon held out the document to Matt. He wanted to snatch it from her hand, but he waited, managing not to even look at it until she asked him to read it out loud. Under the heading with the date, time, wait length (<1 minute), and total call length (4 minutes), it read:

  NAME:

  Declined to give.

  SUBJECT:

  Fire insurance—Arson

  SUMMARY:

  Caller interested in whether all our fire policies pay out in cases of arson. Caller happy when told that arson coverage included in all policies, with exception only if policyholder involved in planning/committing arson.

  Matt read calmly, with the clinical tone of someone not about to be accused of conspiracy to commit arson, and looked up when done. Shannon said nothing—just looked at him, as if waiting for him to break the silence. I had nothing to do with this, he reminded himself, then said, “I guess it wasn’t for a quote, after all.” No one laughed.

  “Let me ask again, Doctor,” Shannon said. “You made an anonymous call to Miracle Submarine’s insurer the week before the explosion asking if they’ll pay out if someone deliberately burns it down, didn’t you?”

  “Absolutely not,” Matt said.

  “Then how do you explain that document in your hand?”

  A good question, one with no good answer. The air felt dense with anticipation, too dense to breathe in, and he couldn’t think. “Maybe it’s a mistake. They got my number crossed with someone else’s.”

  Shannon moved her head in an exaggerated nod. “Sure, that makes sense. Some random person calls, and by some incredible coincidence, both
the phone and insurance companies get the number wrong, and by another incredible coincidence, you end up being the star witness in a murder trial where, lo and behold, the deaths are caused by arson. Do I have that right?” Some of the jurors tittered.

  Matt sighed. “All I know is I didn’t make that call. Someone must’ve used my phone.”

  Matt expected Shannon to mock him again, but she looked satisfied. Interested. She said, “Let’s explore that. This was last August, on a Thursday morning, at 8:58. Was your phone lost or stolen around then?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone use it? Borrow it because they forgot theirs, that type of thing?”

  “No.”

  “So who had access to your phone around 8:58 a.m.?”

  “I was definitely at HBOT. I never missed a morning dive. The official dive time is 9:00, but we’d start earlier if everyone’s there, and later if someone’s late. It’s been a year, so I don’t remember when we started that particular morning.”

  “So let’s say you started late that day, say at 9:10. Could someone have used your phone without you knowing?”

  Matt shook his head. “I don’t see how. I either left my phone in the car, which is locked, or I kept it with me and put it in the cubby right before the dive started.”

  “And what if it started early—say, 8:55? By 8:58, you’re in the chamber, along with the others, including Elizabeth. Who could’ve used your phone?”

  Matt looked at Shannon, the excitement plain in the way her eyebrows lifted in anticipation, a smile curling her lips, and he realized: this entire line of questioning had been for show. She’d never thought for a moment he’d made that call. She’d just made him think it so he’d become rattled, desperate to think up an alternative suspect to hand to her on a platter. The obvious alternative. The only one, really.

  “For the morning dives, the only person in the barn,” Matt said, “was Pak.” This was hardly a secret. But still, saying it out loud felt like betrayal. He couldn’t look at Pak.

  “So Pak Yoo had access to your phone during your morning dives, which sometimes started before 8:58, the time of the call in question, is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Matt said.

  “Dr. Thompson, is it a fair reading of your testimony that Pak Yoo must’ve called his insurance company anonymously, using your cell phone, to ask whether his fire insurance policy will pay out if someone else sets fire to his business, something which is alleged to have happened a few days after? Is that a fair summary?”

  Put it like that, and Matt wanted desperately to say, No, Pak didn’t do this, Elizabeth did, and now you’re taking some fucking call to say … what, that Pak blew up his own business? Killed his patients for money? It was ridiculous. He saw Pak during the fire, saw his desperation to save his patients, never mind the risk of injuries and even death to himself. But the relief of knowing that Pak was the target, not him—it was overwhelming, the relief. Matt’s respect for Pak, his firm belief in Pak’s innocence, his need to see Elizabeth punished—his relief engulfed all these things, submerged and smothered them away. Besides, answering yes was nothing more than a logical extension of everything else he’d already admitted. He wasn’t saying Pak set the fire. There were four thousand steps between this phone call and the explosion.

  So Matt told himself it was no big deal and said, “Yes.” He heard buzzing, the sound of horseflies feasting on a carcass. Or maybe it was the whispered murmurings of the spectators in the back.

  Pak’s face was red—with shame or anger, Matt couldn’t tell. Shannon said, “Doctor, are you aware that, on the night of the explosion, Elizabeth found a note by the creek, written on paper with the H-Mart logo on it, saying, ‘This needs to end. We need to meet tonight, 8:15’?”

  It was automatic, the reaction. His eyes zoomed to Mary like metal to a magnet. He blinked, hoped no one caught his mistake. He moved his gaze around, like he was scanning the whole Korean clan. “No, I never heard that. I know that paper, though.” Matt turned to the jury. “H-Mart is a Korean supermarket. We shop there sometimes.”

  “Isn’t it true that Pak Yoo always used that notepad?”

  Matt had to force himself not to sigh in relief. Shannon thought the note was from Pak. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that Matt had written it. And Mary—she wasn’t a factor at all. “Yes, Pak used it,” Matt said.

  Shannon slowly turned her gaze to Pak, then back to Matt. “What is your understanding of where he was at 8:15 that night, until the explosion ten minutes later?”

  Something about the way she said “your understanding” unnerved Matt. “Um, Pak was in the barn.” Was there any question about that?

  “How do you know that?”

  He had to think. How did he know, other than just assuming it to be true because that’s what everyone said? All the Yoos were in the barn, they said. When the DVD died, Pak sent Young to their house to find batteries. She took too long, so Mary went to help, but she noticed something behind the barn, walked there, and boom. But if Pak did this … could the Yoos have been lying? Covering for him? Then again, if he’d set the fire, Pak wouldn’t have risked his life in the rescue, and he undoubtedly would’ve made sure Mary was nowhere nearby. No. Matt said, “I know because he supervised the dive. He sealed us in, he talked to me, and after the explosion, he opened the hatch and got us out.”

  “Ah, the hatch opening. You said earlier, it takes as little as one minute to depressurize and open the hatch. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “So if he’d been present, the hatch should’ve opened one minute after the explosion?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doctor, let’s try something. Here’s a stopwatch. I’d like you to close your eyes and go through in your mind everything that happened from the explosion until the hatch opening. Then stop the timer. Could you do that?”

  Matt nodded and took the stopwatch, a digital one that counted in tenths of seconds. He laughed at the ridiculousness, trying to remember a year later whether the incineration of a boy’s head took 48.8 seconds or 48.9 seconds. He clicked START, closed his eyes, and went through it. The face-blink-fire, the thrashing, the flames whooshing from the shirt around his hands. When he reached the screech of the hatch opening, he clicked STOP. 2:36.8. “Two and a half minutes. But this hardly seems reliable,” he said.

  Shannon held up a folded piece of paper. “This is a report from the prosecution’s own accident-reconstruction expert, including an estimate of the time between the explosion and the hatch opening. Would you read it, Doctor?”

  He took the paper and unfolded it. Highlighted in fluorescent yellow, buried in the middle of the report, were five words. “Minimum two, maximum three minutes.”

  “So you and the report agree,” Shannon said. “The hatch opened more than two minutes after the explosion, more than a full minute after it should have if Pak Yoo had been present.”

  “Again,” Matt said. “This doesn’t seem very scientific.”

  Shannon looked at him with amused pity, the way teens look at kids who still believe in the tooth fairy. “Now, the other reason you thought Pak Yoo was in the barn: you talked through the intercom. Yesterday, you testified, quote, ‘It was chaos in the chamber, very noisy, so I couldn’t really hear.’ Do you remember that?”

  Matt swallowed. “Yes.”

  “And since you couldn’t really hear, you assumed it was Pak Yoo, but you can’t know for sure, isn’t that right?”

  “No, I couldn’t hear all the words, but I heard the voice. I know it was Pak,” Matt said, but even saying it, he wondered if that was true. Was he just being stubborn?

  Shannon looked at him like she was sad for him. “Doctor,” she said, her voice softer, “are you aware that Robert Spinum, who lives by the Yoos, has signed an affidavit that he was outside on a call from 8:11 until 8:20 that night, and that for the entirety of that call, he saw Pak Yoo a quarter mile outside the barn?”

  Abe stood immediately, objecting—s
omething about lack of foundation—but Matt focused on the gasp from behind Abe. From Young, with her hands over her mouth. She looked terrified. But not surprised.

  Shannon said, “Your Honor, I was merely asking if the witness happened to be aware of this development, but I’m happy to withdraw my question. Mr. Spinum is standing by, ready to testify, and we will definitely be calling him at our earliest opportunity.” She narrowed her eyes at Matt as she said this last part, as if in a threat, and said, “Doctor, let me ask again. You can’t be sure that the voice you heard over the intercom was Pak Yoo’s voice, isn’t that right?”

  Matt rubbed the stump of his missing index finger. It stung and throbbed, which, strangely, felt nice. “I thought it was, but I guess I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”

  “Given this, plus your testimony regarding the hatch opening, isn’t it possible that Pak Yoo was not inside for at least ten minutes prior to the explosion? That, in fact, no one was supervising the dive?”

  Matt glanced over at Pak and Young, both looking down, their bodies slumped. He licked his lips. He tasted salt. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it’s possible.”

  YOUNG

  IT SURPRISED HER HOW QUIET IT GOT when Shannon finished her questions. No one whispered or coughed. The air conditioners didn’t sputter or hum. As if someone had pressed PAUSE and everyone froze in place, their heads turned to Pak. Frowning at him with revulsion, the way they had at Elizabeth earlier. From hero to murderer in an hour. How had that happened? Like a magic show, but without the zap to mark the moment of mutation.

  There should’ve been a bang, or maybe thunder. Life-changing disasters came with loud noises, didn’t they? Sirens, alarms, something to signal the break in reality: normal one minute, crazy-altered remnant the next. Young wanted to run up to grab the gavel and bang it down—crack open the silence, right in half. All rise. Commonwealth of Virginia versus Young Yoo. For actually believing that her family’s troubles were over. For being that stupid, after seeing again and again how quickly things can fall apart, like a tower of matchsticks.