Line of Vision

by David Ellis

  “Jerry. No one could’ve seen this coming. I would’ve done the same thing.”

  “Yeah, well . . .”

  “Promise me you won’t talk to him about this again.”

  He runs his finger over the rim of the beer bottle.

  “Even if Silas talks, what can he say? I laughed when you suggested I slept with Rachel. I laughed. I didn’t admit it.”

  “True,” Jerry says, nodding with me. “You laughed because it was so ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous? You saying a guy like me couldn’t get a woman like Rachel?”

  Jerry gives a weak smile, probably more out of appreciation that I’m trying to lighten the mood. “What are you going to do when this thing’s all over?” he asks.

  The question comes out of nowhere, but it is a welcome one, a generous one, making the assumption that I will be acquitted. I tell him the truth: I’d be happy if I could be sitting here again next year, same time, same place, same microbrewed beer.

  37

  THE COURTROOM, AS ALWAYS, IS FULL, EVEN FOR A routine hearing like this one. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon. Actually, it’s 2:42; the Honorable Jonathan R. Mackiewicz is late. I shift in my seat anxiously, not because there’s any suspense, but because I just want to get this over with and get out of here.

  I try to take my attention off the reason I am here by studying my surroundings. The courtroom is all dark wood, like the others I’ve been in since this started. To the left of the judge’s raised bench is a woman busy typing on her computer. Stacks of paper are piled up next to her, and she is going through them one by one, completely oblivious to the rest of us. On one side of the courtroom is a long desk with black plastic trays, filled with more stacks of papers and disordered sheets of black carbon paper. A tired-looking black guy in uniform, receding gray hair, and a considerable paunch sits on the other side of the room in a chair, wiping his eyes while he holds his glasses. On his hip is a .38 revolver in his holster, probably hasn’t been used in years. Ten bucks says that from my chair I could get to that gun before he could.

  The door in the back of the courtroom opens, and another tired-looking person, this time a woman pushing sixty, walks out and holds the door behind her. The cop hurriedly puts on his glasses, stands up, and announces, “All rise.”

  Behind the woman is the Honorable Judge Mack. He slowly, and I mean slow-ly, steps up to his chair.

  The cop continues. “The Circuit Court, Criminal Felony Division, is now in session. The Honorable Jonathan R. Mackiewicz, presiding. All those having business in this court, draw near and you shall be heard.”

  Judge Mack is about halfway up the steps to his chair when the cop has finished his preamble. We wait for him to take his seat, adjust his glasses, lean over, and peer at the documents in front of him.

  Judge Mack is lucky if he has retained ten percent of his hair by now. His face is weathered, his skinny neck rising from narrow, crooked shoulders. His skin hangs from his face like it doesn’t fit anymore.

  But his voice is surprisingly strong. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.” The lawyers respond in kind.

  It is now the lady’s turn sitting next to, and below, Judge Mack. She picks up a piece of computer paper and announces, “People versus Martin Kiernan Kalish, Case Number 95 CR 103067.”

  Judge Mack peers over his glasses at Paul and smiles. “Mr. Riley, nice to see you back in the criminal courts.”

  Paul stands again and tells the judge it is his pleasure.

  His Honor looks down at some document and then at the prosecutor, Roger Ogren. “Before the state proceeds, since this is the first time for all of you before me, let’s set a trial date. Does the defense wish to waive the speedy trial?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Paul says, on his feet once more.

  “All right. I’m going to set a trial date of Monday, March fourteenth.”

  Mandy scribbles this down in her calendar book. Paul thanks the judge.

  “Is there anything else,” Judge Mack says, “before we proceed with the 311 notice?”

  “I don’t believe so, Your Honor,” Paul says.

  “No, Judge,” says Ogren, also on his feet. He is holding a piece of paper in his hands. I feel the adrenaline now, the drumming of my heart audible.

  “Let’s get on with it, then.” The judge waves his hand.

  Ogren walks over to Paul and hands him the paper, carefully avoiding the stare I have trained on him. “Let the record reflect,” Ogren says, now walking toward the judge’s bench, “that the People have handed counsel for the defendant its Rule 311 Notice.” He hands another copy to the judge.

  “The record will so reflect.”

  A Rule 311 Notice, my lawyers have explained, has to be given to the defense within a reasonable time prior to trial. And it has to be done in open court, on the record.

  Ogren is back at his chair now, still on his feet, and he looks down at the document lying on the table. Paul keeps his copy in his hand, away from me.

  Ogren clears his throat and begins.

  “Pursuant to Section 5, Paragraph 311 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, in the case of the People versus Martin Kiernan Kalish, Case Number CR 00103067, the People hereby give notice to the defendant, Martin Kiernan Kalish, that they will be seeking the sentence of death by electrocution. May the record reflect that the defendant has been fully advised thereof in open court.”

  The judge looks at Paul, who stands. “The defense is so advised.”

  38

  THE WEEK OF JANUARY 3 BRINGS THE TYPICAL WINTER trade-off in the county: The temperatures rise, the snow falls. It makes it easier for me to be outside at seven-thirty in the evening, but harder to sit in my little spot, between the two shrubs.

  Highland Woods is a town of rolling hills, and the yard where I sit is on one of the tallest. The yard is bordered by shrubbery, and stacked railroad ties provide the wall between it and the neighbor’s yard five feet below. I’ve had my escape planned from the first time I sat here: If the people who live here see me, I can jump down to the neighbor’s yard and run; their view would be blocked by the shrubs.

  Tonight my seat is damp from the snow. I can only imagine how I look, sitting Indian style on this railroad tie, leaves and sticks poking my face, peering through my binoculars at his house about a hundred yards away, hoping he’ll leave sooner than later so my butt won’t be totally soaked.

  He’s getting ready for a Friday night out. He walks into the bedroom in a towel, grabs a sweater from a drawer, and goes back out of sight, into the bathroom. He comes back out about twenty minutes later, combed and dressed. He grabs his wallet from the dresser and stuffs it in his trousers. He hits the light and it’s dark upstairs. Except for the small green light on the alarm pad.

  In another minute, the green light turns red and blinks. The downstairs goes dark. Good thing, because my legs are cramping up something awful. Indian style is for kids.

  The neighbor’s houses are spread pretty far apart, and I expect I won’t be noticed. At any rate, I don’t plan to be here long enough to get caught.

  The front door opens with surprising ease. If he had bolted it I never could have gotten in. As I had hoped, he left through the garage door and didn’t bother with the deadbolt on the front door. I guess people with alarms don’t worry about that stuff.

  The shrill sound comes an instant later. I flip on the light, look around in a panic but, as expected, find the alarm pad on the wall, identical to the one upstairs. I quickly punch in the digits 3-1-6-1. The shrill sound switches to three quick beeps, and the red blinking light becomes a steady green.

  I am still for a moment, taking in the surroundings of another man’s dwelling. My heart leaps, my body filled with a sensation that is part curiosity, part fear, part voyeuristic. I am inside his house.

  I walk down the hallway to the den. I reach the glass door that leads to the deck. I unlock the screen door, then open it to reach the thick glass. I flip the latch down to the “
unlock” position but do not open the door. I close the screen door again and check it out: When the screen is closed, its frame blocks the view of the lock on the glass door. He won’t know the door’s unlocked. And this time of year, he shouldn’t be using this door much.

  I walk back to the front door and lock it back up. Then I go to the telephone in the kitchen. I dial it and wait.

  “Hello?”

  Hearing the voice brings a rush to my throat, sweat on my forehead. “Yes,” I say in a voice much deeper than my real voice, “may I speak to Jane?”

  “I think you have the wrong number, sir.”

  “Huh! Isn’t this the home of Jane Paulson?”

  “No, it’s not. This is the Reinardt residence.”

  “My mistake, ma’am. So sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  “Bye-bye now.”

  I hang up the phone and return to the front door. I punch in 3-1-6-1 and watch the green light turn to a blinking red. In much less than forty-five seconds, I return to the den, go through the screen and glass doors, and run down the stairs of the back porch.

  I am back at my vantage point less than six minutes after I left it. I jump up on the railroad ties and look through the binoculars. The burglar alarm in his bedroom stares back at me with a solid red light.

  39

  “HEY, TOM. IT’S YOUR FAVORITE UNCLE.”

  I’m sitting in my hotel room, as always, staring at the room service that now rests half eaten on top of my television. The screen is showing a college basketball game, the sound muted.

  “You didn’t call.” The voice of a scorned eight-year-old. Scorned first by a father who’s moved on to another life, then by the uncle who blew him off on the phone a week or so ago and never called back.

  “I know, Tom. I meant to. I just had a lot of things to do. I’m sorry.”

  Silence at the other end.

  “Tommy, I’m really sorry and I want to talk to you. How’s your mom doing?”

  “She’s okay.”

  “You still think she’s sad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you.”

  “Because she cries sometimes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Well, why do you think she cries?”

  “Dad.”

  “Yeah, huh? Well, you know what I think?”

  “What?”

  Well, here I go, way out of my league here, trying to counsel a little boy on the difficulties of growing up in a broken family. But I’ve figured out one thing about Tommy: He will not bring this up with his mother. I have to try.

  “I think your mom loves you and Jeannie a lot. But sometimes it gets kind of hard, y’know? So sometimes, maybe, she gets a little sad. But the thing is, most of the time she’s really happy, because of you and your sister.”

  “He’s an asshole,” he says.

  Was I saying that at age eight? Did I have the level of spite, much less the vocabulary? “Well, it was tough when your dad left. But they did what they thought was best for you and Jeannie.”

  “They always yelled.”

  “I know. That’s why they thought it would be better if they didn’t live together anymore. They wanted you guys to be happy. They didn’t want you and Jeannie to grow up with them shouting at each other all the time.”

  I’ve heard kids blame themselves a lot when parents split. This was Dr. Kalish’s shot at erasing this possibility. Any luck?

  “He doesn’t come around anymore.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s got a new girlfriend.”

  Okay, Dr. K. How to handle that one. “Your dad is busy, Tom. And he lives out of state now. It’s hard for him. I’m sure he visits as often as he can.”

  “He doesn’t give a shit about us,” he says. “Mom said so.”

  I consider my next move. Tommy is sniffling, and his voice has grown harder. I should be an expert on the permanent imprints our early years leave. But not on how to erase them.

  “She said it on the phone,” he continues. “She was talking to Dad. She said he didn’t give a shit about us.”

  “She didn’t mean it, Tom. She was probably just mad. She wants him to come visit more, and it’s hard for him. But she understands. She’d want you to understand, too.”

  “He should be nicer to Mom.” Christ, can this little guy tug at me. The little man of the house. Protecting Mom.

  “You know, Tommy,” I say, “your mom really depends on you. She knows you’re a strong little man, and she needs you a lot.”

  It’s hard to tell whether I’m reaching him, especially the way he keeps on with his revelations as if I’m not talking. Kids aren’t so good with this kind of conversation. And I sure as hell am not. But he seems to be considering what I said. “You think?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I think. You’re the man of the house now. Jeannie looks up to you. You need to set a good example for her.”

  “I got a check-plus in math.” His grades, along with his attitude, have been bad the last year or so. “But I wasn’t so good in science. I hate science.”

  I laugh. “I did, too.” He laughs along; a bond has formed, two men who hate science. This is the first sign from Tommy that I’ve hit a button.

  “But I tried hard anyway, Tommy, because my mom wanted me to. She wanted me to do well so I could get a good education, so I could have a good life when I grew up. And I wanted to make her proud.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That’s what your mom wants, too, you know. For you and Jeannie to do well. To do your best, whatever that is. Just to try hard.” This is going well. I think.

  “Mrs. Evans says I’m getting better at spelling.”

  “Yeah, see, there you go.” I think I’m trying harder to convince myself that I’m helping than to actually help. But Tommy seems to be responding. Maybe he just needs a guy to talk to. I can do that, sure.

  “Are you gonna come visit?”

  Now what, smart guy? Jamie hasn’t told the kids about my arrest, and this is the last thing he needs to hear now. I give him something vague, lot of really important stuff going on, I’ll try to make it as soon as I can.

  I stare into the darkness of my hotel room as we speak, wondering how all of this has come down to making a kid’s life a little harder. How I backed off when Jamie talked to me about moving her family to my town, how I’ve escaped every commitment in my life, as if my only goal was not to have anyone depend on me. Not to be trapped.

  I think of Rachel, the only woman I have ever wanted to commit to. But was that just because I knew she could never commit to me? I wonder what it was I felt for her. “Love” is just a word, empty, void of meaning, an overused term. She gave me something, ever since that first night. She energized me, flicked the “on” button. She gave me a center. I’ve drifted through life, just going along, doing what I’m told, accepting the rules without complaint, like some human automaton. But always thinking, somewhere, somehow, something better would come my way. Waiting for that moment, that glorious moment, when it will all dawn on me, why I’m here and what it is that I want.

  I guess that’s what Rachel gave me. That glorious moment. I wanted her, I wanted to spend my life with her. If I play things right, maybe I still can.

  Tonight Rachel will come to my hotel room. When I open the door I will see a woman, back turned, in the cleaning lady’s uniform, a scanty black piece with a white collar, a very seductive pose. Then she will turn around and move the pink duster that obscures her face. And she will smile that smile.

  Would you like your bed turned down?

  I will say yes.

  40

  NO SNOW TONIGHT, BUT THE RAILROAD TIES ARE slick and cold, and I fear that with one false move I’ll do a freefall onto the frozen yard below. Twenty minutes I spend in this awkward spot, peering through my binoculars at his house, until he leaves.

  My walk is a series of shortcuts through common
areas and backyards. The homes in the upper-crust section of Highland Woods are peaceful on a below-freezing night, patches of snow resting on the rooftops like half-finished jigsaw puzzles, smoke curling from the chimneys. I move at a normal pace, crunching on the hard inch or two of snow, with the attitude that I’m not doing anything but strolling through the neighborhood if someone inquires. That doesn’t stop me from pulling the scarf up over my face, reminiscent of another night not so long ago when I didn’t fully appreciate the advantages of anonymity.

  There is no secret getaway path here, no woods to shelter me. But I should be okay. My plans do not include carrying a dead body around with me again. Worst-case, I’m a burglar, and I’ve been accused of worse. Still, there’s a caution in my stride, my eyes darting about. I’d rather not be seen.

  If a man’s true character can be judged by what he does when no one’s looking, what does that say about me? I like to watch. I’m a grown-up with an adolescent’s thoughts, peeking out from my hiding place, lurking about in shadows, playing let’s-pretend with human dolls. I’m this guy, I’m that guy. I’m you.

  I take the twelve steps up to the deck as gingerly as possible, slowly putting my weight on each one as I climb. I glance over once or twice at the neighbors behind his house. The lights are out in their top floor, and with his long backyard and theirs, they are far away from me, anyway. They’ll never see me. This is a much more private entrance than his front door.

  I reach the deck and walk over to the glass door. What are the odds that he would have opened this door last night, with near-freezing temperatures? And with the screen closed, he wouldn’t notice the lock on the glass door, pushed to the “unlock” position.

  Bingo.

  The door slides open, and the shrill alarm sounds. I pull open the screen and go to the front door, disarming the alarm with four quick punches of my index finger. I walk past the stairs into the kitchen. They have a walk-in pantry with all sorts of dry food on the shelves. On one shelf is a bunch of phone books, with a little dark brown wicker basket that holds a ring of keys. Spare keys, no doubt. I’ll have them copied tonight and returned before they miss them.