"Can you take the samples to Sacramento Wednesday?" said Nina. "I’ve got a sample or two of my own to add."
He nodded, picked up his tennis bag, and said, "Interested in a game before dinner?"
"No," said Nina. "I can’t."
"You need to do something physical or you’ll seize up like an old car engine out of oil."
"After the trial," Nina said, meaning it, hoping he understood.
"One more thing," Paul said. "I ran by the sheriffs office on my way in and looked at the physical evidence again. Virginia Slims. The wrapper had been in his robe pocket. Sharon Otis was there."
Janine Clarke came to the office on Wednesday, looking like she’d won at keno, acting like she knew Nina well. Evidently her husband hadn’t mentioned that he had been subpoenaed. "Tom asked me to stop by, believe it or not. Things have been going so great with us lately...."
"Glad to hear it," Nina said. "What can I do for you today?"
"He wants to get a written copy of the DNA results. Guess he doesn’t want Misty changing her mind later about who’s responsible for her little bastard."
"I don’t have them here," Nina replied, wincing for the sake of Michelle’s child and her own illegitimate son. "And the lab is taking a second look at those tests. Once those results are in, I’ll send out a copy to your husband."
"Just what the hell is going on here?"
"There’s just some doubt that needs to be cleared up on the results," Nina said firmly. "And that’s all I can say about that."
"I don’t believe this. You’re saying there is still some possibility that Tom is the father, and that’s just a damned lie. The test came back negative. This is some kind of sick frame-up. Misty ... oh, hell, this is all her fault."
"Mrs. Clarke, I—"
"Why did he get involved with that witch? He’s broken my heart...." The woman had begun to weep uncontrollably. "This has all been such torture. He was so cruel, coming to the hospital to tell me his ugly suspicions.... We used to be so happy, and now we look at each other and wonder ... He did the right thing, I guess, the only thing a man can do...."
"Who?" Nina was almost shouting to be heard over the wails. "Who do you mean?"
Janine Clarke looked up from her hands and frowned. "He’d throw it all away, just to sleep with that face...."
Nina tried to sort out the referents and failed. Janine Clarke gave her one more tear-streaked, bitter look and ran out of the office.
She pitied her. Tom Clarke she did not pity.
Sandy came in at twelve. "You have to go out today. No more sandwiches on call."
The floor was stacked with law books, files, and papers. Nina searched furiously for a case opinion.
"Three Cal. 3d 82," she said. "Sandy, help me."
"I am helping you," Sandy said. She hung Nina’s purse off her shoulder and walked her out.
In the oven of the Bronco’s interior, Nina started up and drove down Highway 50. She would go for a walk by the lake, fix a salad at Safeway, and get back to the office in half an hour.
Her replacement Bronco proved as rebellious as the old Bronco had been. It drove itself to Caesar’s, parked itself in the parking lot, then ejected her. She walked in, digging into her purse for a couple of twenties.
On her way to the slots she had to pass the blackjack tables. She pulled out a chair at a table and passed over her twenties to the dealer.
A ten and an ace for her first hand, not bad, thought Nina, ignoring the catcalls from her stomach. A white-haired lady close by stacked a tower of chips. Her suffocating perfume warred with the cloud of smoke on Nina’s left. The lady won a hundred bucks while the smoker went down. Nina watched her hands fly, flashing a tight cocktail ring. A very good player, the woman continued to stockpile chips. Nina started betting with her, putting out ten dollars whenever the lady put out a hundred. In a short time, Nina was up three hundred dollars. She tipped the dealer ten dollars as another dealer came in, a young man with a distant expression. All the players felt the change of atmosphere, and the table emptied.
As she wandered toward the slots, her blazer pocket heavy with chips, the lady came up beside her and said, "Nice going, Counselor," in a Southern-inflected bass voice.
"I like what you’ve done with your ring, Al," Nina said. "Doesn’t fit as well as on your pinky, of course. Diamond surround?"
Al Otis smiled under his makeup. "Cubic zirconia. Still brings me luck. The dealers haven’t caught on yet. I’m cleanin’ up. Can’t talk long, though, because they’re gonna know who you are, and they might be watchin’ you out of curiosity."
"Why would they care about me?"
"They keep track," Al said. "Well, got to get back while the lunch crowd is still in. I get too conspicuous after one-thirty." He was turning to go, his skirt brushing against her, when she said, "Al ..."
"Hmmm?" he said in a ridiculous falsetto.
"Did Sharon tell you she was at Anthony’s the night he died?"
"Sharon didn’t have to tell me squat. She was the best thing that ever happened to me," he went on, his eyes inscrutable. "The sharpest babe that ever wore trick leather underwear. And the cops don’t care who offed her, any more than Misty cared about Anthony. So long, Counselor."
On her way back to the office, Nina tried to sort out what Al had really said. Translated: Even if he did know something, he wasn’t going to talk about it, because Misty didn’t deserve it? Was that it?
It hardly mattered. Whatever he had heard was hearsay, and inadmissible as evidence.
When Paul dropped by for last-minute instructions on his way to Sacramento, he found her on the floor, 3 Cal. 3d 82 heavy in her lap.
Driving with both eyes glued to the rearview mirror, Paul breezed down the mountain, making good time until he hit road work after Folsom.
When he got into Sacramento, he lost himself getting off on the Sixty-fifth Street exit, fumed in the early rush-hour traffic, circled around a green park with an inviting swimming pool, and was pleased to finally find himself on the right side street. He slid into a parking space just that moment left empty by an aging red Camaro. Leaping from his seat, he collected the paper bag, ran for the entryway, and got there just in time to hear someone bolting the door from the inside.
"Hello? Hello!" he called. The door opened and a young, dark-haired woman looked out.
"We close the doors at five," she said.
"I have to drop this off." He handed the bag over. The girl took it.
"What is this?"
"Oh, they’re expecting it. They know what to do with it."
"Tahoe paternity case?" The girl’s head came out farther and she looked inside the bag. She had red, Kewpie doll-shaped lips and curly black hair tied back with a shoelace. Noting the hands, and their chewed-off fingernails, and looking more closely at her face, Paul could see that she was in her late thirties at least. "More hair samples?" asked the woman.
"Yeah."
"Every baby’s got a father," the woman said.
"Till they figure out some new way," Paul said.
"Personally, I think in vitro’s as far as they’re taking it." She started to close the door. "Most scientists are still men and they aren’t going to make themselves obsolete." She opened it again, looking at Paul. "You drove all the way from Tahoe just now? In a real hurry."
"I’m the investigator for the attorney for the woman... involved in this. My name’s Paul van Wagoner." They shook hands.
"I’m Emilia Carlos. Listen. I’m going to break for dinner. Why don’t you join me? Afterward, maybe I can show you the lab."
She took him past an empty reception area. They ate microwaved dinners in a lunchroom in the basement, burritos smothered with ketchup. Fluorescent light bounced brightly off cinder-block walls and acoustic ceilings. "Timelessness," Dr. Carlos said when she noticed Paul blinking in the glare. Men and women in lab coats, jeans, and athletic shoes bustled through the halls, passing the door to the room they sat in, greeting the docto
r, spilling coffee from a badly adjusted vending machine. "I like days. Swing shift people have the weirdest hours to adjust to, if you want to talk a normal life, I mean."
"Worse than graveyard?"
"Yeah, for some reason the body can adapt to 180-degree switches better."
"It’s a much bigger operation than I expected."
"I founded Cytograph with my husband about five years ago. When he died, I took over. This is our only child. I’ve been up plenty of nights with it."
Still admiring the Betty Boop lips, Paul couldn’t help thinking she might be squandering her native gifts. He would never get over these women, her, Nina, all these women wanting to be more than they already were. Wasn’t goddess enough? Why were they so anxious to sink to being lawyers and scientists?
Thoughts of Nina going about her business today, somehow planning to win this trial with horrible odds against her, assailed him suddenly. He wished he could protect her from the blows to come, not that she didn’t deserve them. Was there a nasty desire in there, a wish that she would be taken down a peg or two in all this? A wish that she would fall into his arms at the end and be his love toy?
He stifled a laugh that would have bounced around the hard room.
Painted Sheetrock walls surrounded the shining lab equipment, which on closer inspection yielded the marks of hard use. Tubes, rubber hoses, metal gadgets, wires twisting from multiple outlets; there were shelves full of equipment whose purpose would forever remain murky to Paul. The room rumbled with machinery, down to its vinyl floor.
Two techies, one wearing a woolly beard and white coat and one decked out in what must be the uniform, jeans and a dress shirt, filtered unknown substances through a fine sieve. The bearded one set down a porcelain cylinder.
Dr. Carlos showed Paul the original results on the first set of DNA tests that had been made, raising her voice above the man-made din, pointing to what looked like photographic prints with variegated strips of gray, white, and black on them. "Electrophoresis," she said. Paul wished that Mrs. Garrigues had done a better job teaching him chemistry. Or was this biology? "This is the fingerprint."
She pulled up some charts on a computer. "We use just a fragment, and count repetitions. Or rather, have the computer do the count and comparison." Paul double-checked that his recorder was on, and adopted an intelligent expression. The doctor went on. "First we extract the DNA from the sample by adding a series of chemicals and doing a series of extractions. Then we add primers: nucleotides; enzyme buffer. Then we take the tube and carry out PCR, by heating and cooling the sample."
"PCR?" asked Paul, contemplating his intellectual blind spots.
"Polymerase chain reaction." The doctor, who had covered her hands with gloves, pulled a hair from one of the sample bags with tweezers, moving it slowly to a glass tube. "Then we load what came out of the PCR into the well of the electrophoresis gel. We apply high-voltage electric current to the gel and make an autoradiograph. That’s what you’re looking at. Nothing to it, really. Of course, you’ve brought us five samples this time. The pool is expanding, I see."
Paul rustled the paper. "Sounds like a long process."
"Not always. It depends. We’re ordering a beta scanner next month. Then we’ll be able to have answers in about half an hour."
"We need the second set of results as quickly as possible," he said.
"Three weeks would be the earliest. We’ll fax the results."
Michelle arrived at Nina’s office promptly at ten o’clock the next day. She wore shorts, a sleeveless overblouse, a sun visor, and a deep tan to set off a blinding smile.
Nina had never seen her so happy before. It must be the baby.
"I brought you a present," she said, handing Nina a basket wrapped in pink cellophane. Inside, fruits and vegetables from the San Joaquin valley nested: dates, walnuts, figs, grapes, asparagus, a head of garlic, and deep-green broccoli. "For your family."
"Thanks." Nina picked up a walnut.
"See, you hold two of them in your hand like this and squeeze." A crack and Michelle opened her hand, handing Nina a chunk of the walnut meat. "It was so hot coming up the valley," Michelle said. "I’m going to go swimming when we’re done."
"How are you feeling?" Nina said.
"Healthy. I’m seven months now. See how big?" She lifted her shirt, the same way she had that day in the office to show Nina her bruises. "Being at home helps. The folks keep to a routine. Boring but peaceful. I’m still off the booze."
"Good. Good."
"Tell me how it’s going."
"We’ll be ready, but we had bad news on the writ." Nina explained about how the confession would come in, and how they were going to have to get into Michelle’s problems. "Has your mother told you about the phone call I made to her earlier this week?"
"About me coming up?"
"About something else, as well."
"She’s been awfully busy. She’s been out of the house a lot." Michelle finally seemed to catch Nina’s mood. "What’s up?"
"We have a lot to talk about, Michelle. Some of it’s going to be hard for both of us. There’s plenty of time. Let’s go over your testimony first."
Nina took Michelle through her rehearsal. She had a transcription of her first interview with Michelle, and she had drafted her questions from it. There was a lot to cover, Michelle’s background, her amnesia, her marriage to Anthony, her depression, her affairs, her drinking, her decision to go to Dr. Greenspan, her job, the night of April twenty-sixth, the morning of the twenty-seventh. They broke for lunch at twelve and started again at twelve-thirty. By four Nina was satisfied that Michelle would know how to answer her questions.
Michelle was tired when they finished. She was planning to drive back to Fresno, and it would be a long three hours with what Nina had to say now.
Nina started with the DNA. She was tired too. "We got the results from the lab."
"Oh. I’m not sure I want to know."
"I’m going to tell you anyway. Michelle, we tested for a match with Anthony, Tom, and Steve. None of them matched. Now, who did you forget to mention?"
Michelle put her hand on her stomach and started rubbing it. "How weird. They made a mistake. There’s nobody else."
"You know, it hurt me, Michelle," Nina said, "to think you were lying to me. And if you were lying about this, you could be lying about everything." The Vesuvius inside her shot up clouds of smoke and superheated ash.
"Nina—"
Nina erupted. "Let me get this out," she said, standing up and walking around the littered office. "I should have known better. I’ve been in this business long enough to know better. I trusted you, even though my common sense said you sounded like a liar. Maybe I should have been harder on you, confronted you, laughed at you until the truth came pouring out. Maybe the simple truth is, Michelle, that you had a fight, and you won; that you took Anthony out on the boat and dropped him off the side, figuring his body wouldn’t be found. Maybe we could even have made a self-defense argument. Well, it’s too late now. You’ve outsmarted yourself, thinking I could win you an acquittal."
Michelle was shaking her head, her eyes filling with tears.
"How about you let me in on it at this late date? I’m thinking maybe you need a new lawyer. Riesner. A guy as slick as—"
"Nina, don’t talk that way. We’re friends."
"You’re making a fool out of me, Michelle. I’m new in this town, and I’m trying to establish a practice, and you’re going to hurt me just like you seem to hurt everyone else."
When Nina finished her tirade, Michelle said, "Nina, sit down and listen to me."
Nina sat. Her angry energy had evaporated. She had said what she had to say, not very gracefully, as always.
"I didn’t lie to you, Nina. I swear."
"Yeah, right," Nina said.
"The lab made a mistake."
"We’re double-checking that now."
"They’ll catch it this time. Can’t you give me the benefit of th
e doubt, just a little while longer?"
Nina shook her head and turned her eyes to the desk.
"We almost died together. I trust you, Nina. You can trust me."
Nina didn’t look up for a long time. She scratched out a picture of a Bronco falling down a hill, two figures inside, their mouths stretched wide in a Munchian O.
"We’re giving the test one more try. Then we’ll see."
"Thank you," the girl said gravely. "And now, what about my mother?"
Michelle finally came home to Fresno at midnight. Her mother was waiting up for her, sitting in her recliner with the red afghan over her legs, reading Ladies’ Home Journal, the lamp on the table beside her shedding the only glow in the living room. She looked up and smiled, but Michelle wasn’t fooled.
"Where’s Dad?"
"Gone to bed."
"Get him up," Michelle said. When her mother wouldn’t budge, Michelle went into the bedroom and woke him up herself.
When they were both sitting there, faces riddled with guilt, Michelle said to Carl Tengstedt, "You’re not my father."
"Oh, yes, I am," he said. "A good father."
"A liar," Michelle said. "Don’t lie to me anymore."
"We never lied, Michelle," her mother interjected. "A long time ago, it seemed like you forgot. And we were grateful to God."
"I want to remember now. Tell me about my real father. Tell me!"
"Don’t shout," her mother said. She moved close to Carl Tengstedt on the couch, adjusting first her pink curlers and then her glasses, still holding the afghan around her knees. He wore the threadbare plaid robe Michelle had bought for him out of her allowance, for his birthday, when she was fifteen. His unshaven cheeks looked sunken into the square, military face. He was looking back at her, with that same shamefaced, defiant look she recognized from her own face.
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