She wants to call him back. She wants him to dispel her fears, she wants to pick his lawyer brain until she knows for certain whether she’s a murderer or not. She wants to lay her head across his lap and close her eyes and sleep there with the rain tapping on the skylight. But Peter has become a mystery, a man with Tarts and neighbors’ phone numbers hidden in the call log of his cell, a man who scared Celia into saying, Peter looked at me like he’d slit my throat if he had the chance, her face so close that Dana could see the tiny veins beside her nose.
There is so little, now, to hold on to. She closes her eyes and listens to the bubbling water, to the sounds of Peter closing the bathroom door. She thinks of Jack Moss, solid as a rock behind his mammoth desk, this man with gentle, sensual eyes, who may well end her marriage in the morning, poking around about the stupid photo of Peter with his Tart.
CHAPTER 12
Jack ducks in for coffee at a little dive on Market Street on his way in to the office. He’ll take a minute, try to center himself, as Ann would say, collect his thoughts that splinter off in different directions, not at all his MO. Moss likes to have a plan; he likes to be sure, and usually he does, usually he is, but variables keep shifting. And to top things off, there’s the overzealous first assistant prosecutor on the steps of City Hall, news cameras flashing, her airbrushed-looking face on the news. I’m working hand in hand with Detective Moss. We’re very close to making an arrest.
Except they’re not.
“Jack?” As if his thoughts have pulled her there, Lenora stands beside him, bending over the creamers and plastic spoons. She smiles. Her eyes are large and gray. Soft.
“Hey,” he says. “Got a minute?”
“Just,” she says, glancing at her watch. “I have a meeting.”
“Okay. This won’t take long.” He pulls out her chair, sets their coffees and bagels on a two-topper with vines etched into the metal of the table, the matching chairs. “Saw you talking about the Steinhauser case on TV last week. I meant to bring it up the other day in the office, but then Rob came in and—”
“I mentioned you.” She looks at him sideways from behind her cardboard cup. Steam wisps around her face.
“Right. Noticed that.”
“‘Hand in hand with Detective Moss.’” She smiles.
“So where’s Frank in all this? Shouldn’t he be the one updating the media? Usually it’s the prosecutor who—”
“He was detained,” she says. “He was at the capital for the day, so I filled in for him like anyone else would.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Jack says. He frowns. She was grandstanding in that interview, playing to the cameras. She’ll climb her way to the top if she has to impale us all on her million-dollar heels to do it, Frank had told him a few months back.
She takes a dainty bite of her bagel. “I know that Frank is your friend.”
“I don’t know if I’d say we were friends, exactly. I think he’s been a great prosecutor. I like the guy. I respect the hell out of him.”
Lenora nods. “I know you do. I like him on a personal level, too. He’s got a great sense of humor. Smart, but not so tough on crime. If you look at the stats, crime’s been going up in Passaic County for years, largely due to Frank’s—I don’t know—laid-back attitude. We’re losing face. We look bad. If he ever leaves—if he should step down—I’d really like to . . . have the opportunity to turn things around.”
Jack takes a bite of his bagel, stares out the window at a crowd of kids on the sidewalk, pants low on their hips. He thinks of Kyle. “You said we’re closing the Steinhauser case.”
She shrugs. “We are at some point.”
“Right.” Jack folds his paper napkin into fourths, unfolds it again. “But we’ve got quite a ways to go before this is a wrap.”
Lenora leans back slightly from the table, peers at him over her coffee cup. “You don’t like me much, do you, Jack?”
“Not true,” he says. He looks at a painting on the wall over her left shoulder. “Not true at all.”
Lenora fiddles with her cup, picks at her bagel. Knocks a few crumbs onto the plate. “My father was a judge,” she says after a couple of seconds—says it out of the blue, as if she and Jack are friends, as if they’re in the habit of shooting the breeze over coffee. “Little backwater county in south Alabama. People respected him. Everyone loved him—everyone—and he earned it. He was a fair man. Kind. A—what?—man of the soil? He knew farming like the back of his hand, but he became a lawyer instead and then eventually a judge.”
“Huh.”
“I worshipped him. Wanted to be just like him. I’d stand at the window every night. Summer, winter, bright sun or pitch dark—I’d stand there waiting, watching for his car to pull up in the driveway. ‘It’s Daddy!’ I’d call to my mother. ‘Daddy’s home!’ and I’d run out the front door. He used to let me carry his briefcase, and I thought that was such a big deal, such an honor or something, carrying this beat-up old leather—” She stops. She takes a few sips of her coffee, finishes it.
“He happy you followed in his footsteps?”
Lenora crumples the cup in her hands, looks up at the door; her shoulders slump. “I’d better head back,” she says. “It’s getting really . . .” She stands up, pushes the metal chair under the table, and leans there for a minute. “He died,” she says. “Massive heart attack when I was twenty. I’d dropped out of college to marry some loser I ended up divorcing a year later, but I always thought . . . I mean, not completely—my father had health problems for a while, for years, so it wasn’t totally because of . . . Still. It didn’t help, what I’d done, disappointing him like that. It didn’t help.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says. He starts to get up, but Lenora motions for him not to.
“No,” she says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . gotten so carried away. Dredging up all this crap from the—”
“It’s fine. Really.”
She grabs her bag off the table, forces a little fake smile. “Stay on the case,” she says. “We’ll talk soon,” and she darts out the door onto the sidewalk. In the bright sunlight, her hair is streaked with gold.
Jack takes his time leaving. He slides his chair out of the way, drops a few bills on the table—the fake iron, the glass top—and for a minute he sees something in Lenora he hadn’t seen before. He smiles, shakes his head. Odd, these things she’s told him, these small pictures she’s flung across the table, these glimpses of the Alabama girl she used to be, falling for the wrong guy, breaking her father’s heart. Is that what pushes her, drives her? Guilt? Remorse? Atonement? Ambition? All of the above? Could Frank be stepping down? He’d alluded to it not two weeks before. Thinking of throwing in the towel, he’d said, but Jack had only laughed. Told him he’d believe that when he saw it. Of course Lenora’d want to take his place.
CHAPTER 13
Jack is ready for the neighbor’s husband when he comes down to the station. He’s heard the man’s name. In fact, they might even have met at some point, some state event or dealing with a legal issue. Jack thinks most lawyers are a little sleazy, a little compromised, but he knows he’s prejudiced, that his late and hard-won education has made him look askance at people who had it easier. By the time he started college, he had two kids and a failed marriage, a job paying next to nothing down by the docks. He’d barely squeaked through high school, married young, had a son, got a welding job, had another son. “My life is a Bruce Springsteen song,” he used to joke, but it all started falling apart by the time Kyle was two, with Margie getting weird and vague on him, drinking every night while he was at work, dabbling in drugs, he found out years later, after the damage to their sons was pretty much done. She kicked him out when Kyle was still small, and even though he went back once or twice to try to make it work for the boys’ sake, in the end he’d packed the ragtag remnants of his things and walked away.
He’s lived in Paterson a long time. He sees strangers sometimes on the street, and they’
ll walk over to shake his hand. “You helped my boy,” they’ll say. “You gave him a break when he needed one,” and he’ll smile, but in his heart he knows he failed his own sons, that he’s got one dead and one he’s dead to.
He spots Peter Catrell coming in the door, and even though the office is empty, Jack takes him to the interrogation room. With this guy he’ll do everything by the book. “Follow me,” he says when they’ve finished the formalities, when they’ve sized each other up. The lawyer sniffs, trots along behind him down the hall.
He takes his time opening the door, arranging chairs. He looks at the man across the table and tries to figure out why he’s so familiar. He puts him in different settings—cocktail parties and courtrooms—but nothing fits. It was somewhere recent, somewhere in the last few weeks.
“Have a seat,” he says, and Peter sits, setting his briefcase on the chair next to his and reaching over to touch it, like it’s a pair of ruby slippers that can take him back to his world, where he’s somebody, and out of Jack’s world, where he’s not. “You’re probably wondering why I called you down here.”
Peter shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll let me know, Detective Moss.”
A smart-ass. “Where were you on the afternoon your neighbor died?” he says, and Peter doesn’t flinch.
“At work.”
“Anybody see you there? Say, between five and eight?”
“Yes,” Peter says. “Several people.”
“Names?” Jack takes out his pen and plays with the button. The point clicks in and out in the silent room.
“Actually . . .” Peter leans forward slightly. “I spent part of that time with the first assistant in the prosecutor’s office.”
“Lenora White?” Jack clicks the pen a few more times. He hooks his fingers inside his collar, loosens it. In light of what she’s just told him—the vulnerability she’s just shown—the thought of this guy working with Lenora on anything really bothers him.
“Yes.”
“Fine.” He writes down her name. “I know her,” he says. “Anyone for the rest of the time?”
“Am I a person of interest?”
“Everyone’s a person of interest,” Jack says, “until they’re not.”
“Guilty until proven innocent?”
“Not at all.” Jack leans back and tilts the chair onto two legs.
“Gail Lawson,” Peter says. “Phil Brewer. John Hillman. And Frank Gillan? The prosecutor? He was with the other one, the first assistant. Lenora White.”
“Okay,” Jack says. He’s scribbled down the names. “Thanks.”
Peter touches his briefcase again, runs his finger along the seam of it.
“Tell me about the picture,” Jack says.
“What picture?”
“The one in the phone.” He’s gambling, but sometimes gambles pay off. He watches Peter, the way his eyes move back and forth in their sockets, looking around the room, unconsciously seeking out the door. Bingo.
“What phone?”
But Jack has seen in his eyes that he knows. “Celia Steinhauser’s.”
“What kind of picture?”
“Of you,” Jack says, and he stops playing with his pen to look Peter directly in the eyes. “You and your secretary.”
“Sorry?” Peter’s eyebrows knot together. “Picture? Cell phone?”
“Mrs. Steinhauser had a picture of you in her cell phone,” Jack says, although he knows he’s over his head.
Peter shrugs. “If she did, she never showed it to me.”
“How well did you know her? The deceased?”
“I didn’t know her at all,” Peter says. “My wife knew her.” He leans back in the chair, quits touching his briefcase.
“Were they friends?”
“They were—yes. I think they were fairly close.”
“Really? ’Cause your wife—Dana, right? Dana didn’t seem to think they were all that close. ‘We went to yard sales together,’ she said.” Jack looks up from his notes.
“Women,” Peter says. “Who knows how their minds work?” And Jack remembers Dana’s nervousness, her foot tapping in the air, the fear in her eyes, like she was a wild animal, cornered, looking for an escape. Still, he’ll take her word over her husband’s any day. This guy has probably said five true things since he sat down, and one of those was his name.
As with Ronald, there’s something off, but he can’t quite pin down what it is. Moss is on a fishing expedition, and Catrell’s been a lawyer long enough to sense this. He’s beginning to relax a little, slouching in his seat, observing Jack, studying his shoes, pricing his bad haircut, glancing down at his own manicured hands. “You got me there,” Jack says, and he smiles. “Been married long?”
“Over twenty years,” he says, and Jack thinks, Okay, so six true things. He thumbs through his notes. “I’ve seen you somewhere,” he says. “Court, maybe?”
Peter smiles. “Could be. I seem to live there lately.”
“Or maybe a cocktail party, somebody’s wife’s gallery opening? Could be just about anywhere.”
“Same circles,” Peter says.
“Not so much. Overlapping circles, maybe.” Jack plays with his pen. He has this weird feeling again, a memory right there at the edge of his mind. Names he’s not so good with, but otherwise he has a phenomenal memory, and he never forgets a face. “Listen,” he says. He stands up. “Appreciate you coming down.”
“Sure thing.” The other man stands up, too, and they shake hands, a tense, quick handshake.
Jack sits back down, listens to the muffled sounds of the lawyer’s shoes along the worn linoleum in the hall, the shushing sound of the door opening into the outer office, the squeak of it closing. He shuts his eyes, and they are everywhere, these images of his sons, of Margie, of his first marriage, and he doesn’t understand why—why now—but he knows they’re leading him somewhere. He just has to let it play out, all of it—the night Margie went into labor with Joey, the childbirth-class lingo, the “Breathe! Breathe! Pant!” rolling off his tongue, the way she looked at him, like she could kill him, as in a way she did. It just took her a while to do it. He’s never forgiven himself for not fighting for his kids, for not getting them away from Margie, probably never will. He opens his eyes, stares at the wall, and there they are again, standing at the funeral, the rain coming down, Margie a mess and Kyle a stranger. He’s grown up now. Taller than Jack and tough. Jack could see it in the set of his jaw that day, the squint of his eyes, the way he took the folded flag when his mother couldn’t.
After the funeral Jack pulled out all the stops trying to reach him, but Kyle never answered his phone, never called him back. Jack still tries; he’ll try until he’s dead and gone. He tried a couple months ago—tracked him down at his night class and hung around outside the GED room like a fucking psycho, lurking there in the dark of the hallway, but he didn’t care. He has no pride when it comes to Kyle.
He sits up straighter in the hard-backed chair. His eyes close. He brings back that evening, that last time he saw his son, the last time he was rebuffed, and there’s another figure lurking there—another father, he’d thought at the time—a few yards down the hall, leaning up against the institutional gray of the high-school wall. In his memory the figure turns, takes a phone out of his pocket, and strolls, talking, back and forth in front of the closed door of the GED room, and Jack knows it was there he first saw Peter, there in the poorly lit high-school hall the night Jack waited, slouched against the bitter walls, his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded over his chest, over his badge, over his heart.
So Catrell was involved with Celia. Jack will leave no stone unturned to find out how. More concerning is the wife. Jack shakes his head. He sticks his notebook into his briefcase and fastens it. He liked Dana; there was something different about her, something mysterious. “You’re a sucker for lost souls,” Ann always told him, and it’s true. Dana was funny, too. Jack likes that in a woman, a sense of humor. Still, hell hath no fury. If
her husband was involved with Celia, there’s no telling what she might have done. Dana was inside the house that night, he knows it. He knew it the minute he asked her. The question now is why she went back and why she lied about it.
He calls Kyle’s number, and he can almost see his son’s phone ringing into a rented room. Rosie’s. He knows the place well, with its ancient moldy air conditioners cutting on and off every few minutes, spitting out stale air. Between going there on calls and living there himself once upon a time, he knows that the rooms are tainted with the kind of dirt that can’t be cleaned, that can’t be swept away or dusted off the tops of things, a glaze of petty thievery and gloom, of dankness and weed and cheap wine oozing in the fabrics of things, lumpy mattresses sprawled on unwaxed floors.
“It’s me,” Jack says into the voice mail. “It’s your dad, Kyle. Call me back as soon as you get this. It’s a police matter. I need to ask you a couple things about your GED teacher. Call me on my cell,” he says.” He repeats his cell-phone number three times, and then he hangs up.
He wonders if there really is a baby coming, if Margie was telling him the truth—if they decided to go through with the pregnancy. If, if, if. He wonders how much Kyle remembers about him, this father who left when he wasn’t much older than Kyle is now—if he remembers Margie stumbling over chair legs with her paper skin, her eyes without pupils, grabbing up all Jack’s shirts and jeans and underwear when he went to work, tossing it outside into the yard, the mounds of clothes strewn through the grass—his secrets, his family, his life, reduced to ripped T-shirts and graying boxers fading in the sun.
His cell rings, and the screen lights up with KYLE, even though Kyle’s never given him his number. Jack saved it after Margie wrote it down for him at the funeral and stuck it in his pocket as they were leaving the cemetery, Kyle several yards ahead of them, grief-struck and stooped like an old man. “He might need you,” she’d said.
The Pocket Wife Page 9
