Perfect Match

  Lumen. I repeat this word, and the others that are all that are left of this monster: no evidence of thrombus; the gallbladder serosa is smooth and glistening; the bladder is slightly trabeculated.

  The stomach contains partly digested bacon and a cinnamon roll.

  Powder burns from the gun form a corona around the small hole in the rear of his head, where the bullet entered. There is a zone of necrosis around the bullet tract. Only 816 grams of his brain were left intact. There were contusions of the cerebellar tonsils bilaterally. Cause of death: Gunshot wound to head. Manner of death: Homicide.

  This language is foreign, and I am suddenly, miraculously fluent. I touch my fingers to the autopsy report. Then I remember the twisted face of his mother, at the funeral.

  Attached to this file is another one, with the name of a local physician's office stamped on its side. This must be Father Szyszynksi's medical history. It is a thick file, far more than fifty years of routine checkups, but I don't bother to crack it open. Why should I? I have done what all those ordinary flus and hacking coughs and aches and cramps could not.

  I killed him.

  "This is for you," the paralegal says, handing Quentin a fax. He looks up, takes the pages, and then stares down at them, confused. The lab report has Szyszynski's name on it; but has nothing to do with his case. Then he realizes: It is from the previous case, the closed case--the one involving the defendant's son. He glances at it, shrugging at the results, which are no great surprise. "It's not mine," Quentin says.

  The paralegal blinks at him. "So what am I supposed to do with it?"

  He starts to hand it back to the woman, then puts it on the edge of his desk instead. "I'll take care of it," he answers, and buries himself in his work again until she leaves his office.

  There are a thousand places Caleb would rather be--in a prisoner-of-war's hovel, for example; or standing in an open field during a tornado. But he had to be present today, the subpoena said so. He stands in the courtroom cafeteria in his one jacket and threadbare tie, holding a cup of coffee so hot it is burning his palm, and tries to pretend that his hands aren't shaking with nerves.

  Fisher Carrington is not such a bad guy, he thinks. At least, he's not nearly the demon that Nina has made him out to be. "Relax, Caleb," the attorney says. "This will be over before you know it." They make their way to the exit. Court will convene in five minutes; even now, they might be bringing Nina in.

  "All you have to do is answer the questions we've already gone over, and then Mr. Brown will ask a few of his own. No one's expecting you to do anything but tell the truth. Okay?"

  Caleb nods, tries to take a sip of the fire that is his coffee. He doesn't even like coffee. He wonders what Nathaniel is doing with Monica, downstairs in the playroom. He tries to distract himself by picturing an intricate brick pattern he created for a former insurance CEO's patio. But reality crouches like a tiger in the corner of his mind: In minutes, he is going to be a witness. In minutes, dozens of reporters and curious citizens and a judge will be hanging on the words of a man who much prefers silence. "Fisher," he begins, then takes a deep breath. "They can't ask me anything, you know, that she told me ... can they?"

  "Anything Nina told you?"

  "About ... about what she did."

  Fisher stares at Caleb. "She talked to you about it?"

  "Yeah. Before she--"

  "Caleb," the lawyer interrupts smoothly, "don't tell me, and I'll make sure you don't have to tell anyone else."

  He disappears through a doorway before Caleb can even measure the strength of his relief.

  As Peter takes the stand for Quentin Brown at my bail revocation hearing, he shoots me a look of apology. He can't lie, but he doesn't want to be the one responsible for landing me in jail. To make this easier on him, I try not to catch his eye. I concentrate instead on Patrick, sitting somewhere behind me, so close I can smell the soap he uses. And on Brown, who seems too big to be pacing this tiny courtroom.

  Fisher puts his hand on my leg, which has been jiggling nervously without my even noticing. "Stop," he mouths.

  "Did you see Nina Frost that afternoon?" Quentin asks.

  "No," Peter says. "I didn't see her."

  Quentin raises his brows in absolute disbelief. "Did you walk up to her?"

  "Well, I was coming down the produce aisle, and her cart happened to be placed along the path I was taking. Her son was sitting in it. He's the one I approached."

  "Did Ms. Frost walk up to the cart as well?"

  "Yes, but she was moving closer to her son. Not to me."

  "Just answer the questions as I ask them."

  "Look, she was standing next to me, but she didn't speak to me," Peter says.

  "Did you speak to her, Mr. Eberhardt?"

  "No." Peter turns to the judge. "I was talking to Nathaniel."

  Quentin touches a stack of papers on the prosecutor's table. "You have access to the information in these files?"

  "As you know, Mr. Brown, I'm not working on her case. You are."

  "But I'm working in her former office, the one right next to yours, aren't I?"

  "Yes."

  "And," Quentin says, "there aren't any locks on those doors, are there?"

  "No."

  "So I guess you think she approached you so that she could squeeze the Charmin?"

  Peter narrows his eyes. "She wasn't trying to get into trouble, and neither was I."

  "And now you're trying to help her out of all that trouble, aren't you?"

  Before he can answer, Quentin turns over the witness to the defense. Fisher gets up, buttoning his jacket. I feel a line of sweat break out on my spine. "Who spoke first, Mr. Eberhardt?" he asks.

  "Nathaniel."

  "What did he say?"

  Peter looks at the railing. He knows by now, too, that Nathaniel has gone mute again. "My name."

  "If you didn't want Nina to get into trouble, why didn't you just turn around and walk away?"

  "Because Nathaniel wanted me. And after ... after the abuse, he stopped talking for a while. This was the first time I'd heard him speak since all that happened. I couldn't just do an about-face and walk away."

  "Was it at that exact moment that Mr. Brown rounded the corner and saw you?"

  "Yes."

  Fisher clasps his hands behind his back. "Did you ever speak to Nina about her case?"

  "No."

  "Did you give her any inside information about her case?"

  "No."

  "Did she ask you for any?"

  "No."

  "Are you working on Nina's case at all?"

  Peter shakes his head. "I will always be her friend. But I understand my job, and my duties as an officer of this court. And the last thing I'd want to do is involve myself in this case."

  "Thank you, Mr. Eberhardt."

  Fisher settles into place beside me at the defense table, as Quentin Brown glances up at the judge. "Your Honor, the state rests."

  That makes one of us, I think.

  Caleb's gaze is drawn to her, and he is shocked. His wife, the one who always looks crisp and fresh and coordinated, sits in bright orange scrubs. Her hair is a cloud about her head; her eyes are shadowed with circles. There is a cut on the back of her hand and one of her shoelaces has come untied. Caleb has the unlikely urge to kneel before her, to double-knot it, to bury his head in her lap.

  You can hate someone, he realizes, and be crazy about her at the same time.

  Fisher catches his eye, pulling Caleb back to this responsibility. If he screws up, Nina may not be allowed to come home. Then again, Fisher has told him that even if he is flawless on the stand, she may still be locked up in jail pending trial. He clears his throat and imagines himself in an ocean of language, trying to keep his head above water.

  "When did Nathaniel start speaking again, after you found out about the abuse?"

  "About three weeks ago. The night Detective Ducharme came to talk to him."

  "Had his verbal ability increase
d since that night?"

  "Yes," Caleb answers. "He was pretty much back to normal."

  "How much time was his mother spending with him?"

  "More than usual."

  "How did Nathaniel seem to you?"

  Caleb thinks for a moment. "Happier," he says.

  Fisher moves, so that he is standing behind Nina. "What changed after the incident at the grocery store?"

  "He was hysterical. He was crying so hard he couldn't breathe, and he wouldn't talk at all." Caleb looks into Nina's eyes, hands her this phrase like a gift. "He kept making the sign for Mommy."

  She makes a small sound, like a kitten. It renders him speechless; he has to ask Fisher to repeat his next question. "Has he spoken at all in the past week?"

  "No," Caleb replies.

  "Have you taken Nathaniel to see his mother?"

  "Once. It was very ... hard on him."

  "How do you mean?"

  "He didn't want to leave her," Caleb admits. "I had to physically drag him away when the time was up."

  "How is your son sleeping at night?"

  "He won't, unless I take him into bed with me."

  Fisher nods gravely. "Do you think, Mr. Frost, that he needs his mother back?"

  Quentin Brown stands immediately. "Objection!"

  "This is a bail hearing, I'll allow it," the judge replies. "Mr. Frost?"

  Caleb sees answers swimming in front of him. There are so many, which is the one he should choose? He opens his mouth, then closes it to start over.

  At that moment he notices Nina. Her eyes are bright on his, feverish, and he tries to remember why this seems so familiar. Then it comes to him: this is the way she looked weeks ago when she was trying to convince a mute Nathaniel that all he had to do was speak from the heart; that any word was better than none. "We both need her back," Caleb says, the right thing after all.

  Halfway through Dr. Robichaud's testimony, I realize that this is the trial we would have had to convict the priest, had I not killed him. The information being presented focuses on the molestation of Nathaniel, and the consequences. The psychiatrist walks the court through her introduction to Nathaniel, his sexual abuse evaluation, his therapy sessions, his use of sign language. "Did Nathaniel ever reach a point where he could talk again?" Fisher asks.

  "Yes, after he verbally disclosed the name of his abuser to Detective Ducharme."

  "Since then, as far as you know, has he been talking normally?"

  The psychiatrist nods. "More and more so."

  "Did you see him this past week, Doctor?"

  "Yes. His father called me, very upset, on Friday night. Nathaniel had stopped speaking again. When I saw him on Monday morning, he'd regressed considerably. He's withdrawn and uncommunicative. I couldn't even get him to sign."

  "In your expert opinion, is the separation from his mother causing Nathaniel psychological damage?"

  "No question," Dr. Robichaud says. "In fact, the longer it goes on, the more permanent the damage might be."

  As she gets down from the stand, Brown gets up to do his closing. He starts by pointing at me. "This woman has a blatant disregard for rules, and clearly, this isn't the first time. What she should have done the moment she saw Peter Eberhardt was turn around and walk the other way. But the fact is, she didn't." He turns to the judge. "Your Honor, you were the one who imposed the condition that Nina Frost not have contact with members of the district attorney's office, because you were concerned about treating her differently than other defendants. But if you let her go without sanction, you'll be doing just that."

  Even on edge, as I am, I realize that Quentin's made a tactical mistake. You can make suggestions to a jury ... but you never, ever tell the judge what to do.

  Fisher rises. "Your Honor, what Mr. Brown saw in the produce department was nothing more than sour grapes. The reality of the matter is that no information was exchanged. In fact, there's no evidence that information was even sought."

  He puts his hands on my shoulders. I have seen him do this with other clients; in my office, we used to call it his Grandfather Stance. "This was an unfortunate misunderstanding," Fisher continues, "but that's all it is. Nothing more, nothing less. And if, as a result, you keep Nina Frost from her child, you may wind up sacrificing that child. Certainly after what everyone's been through, that's the last thing this court would like to see happen."

  The judge lifts his head and looks at me. "I'm not going to keep her away from her son," he rules. "However, I'm also not going to give her the opportunity to violate the rules of this court again. I release Ms. Frost on the condition that she be on home confinement. She'll wear an electronic bracelet, and will be subject to all the rules of probation and parole with regards to electronic monitoring. Ms. Frost." He waits for me to nod. "You are not to leave the house, except to meet with your attorney or to come to court. For those times, and only those times, the bracelet will be reprogrammed accordingly. And God help me, if I have to patrol your street myself to make sure you're adhering to these provisions, I will."

  My new wrist cuff works through telephone lines. If I move 150 feet away from my house, the bracelet makes an alarm go off. A probation officer may visit me at any time, demand a sample of my blood or urine to make sure I have not had any drugs or alcohol. I opt to wear my scrubs home, and ask the deputy sheriff to instruct that my old clothes be given, a gift, to Adrienne. They'll be short and tight--in other words, a perfect fit for her.

  "You have nine lives," Fisher murmurs as we walk out of the parole office, where my cuff has been computer-programmed.

  "Seven left," I sigh.

  "Let's hope we don't have to use them all."

  "Fisher." I stop walking as we reach the staircase. "I just wanted to tell you ... I couldn't have done that any better."

  He laughs. "Nina, I think you'd actually choke if you had to say the word thanks."

  We walk side by side upstairs, toward the lobby. Fisher, a gentleman to the last, pushes open the heavy fire door of the stairwell and holds it while I step through.

  The immediate burst of light as the cameras explode renders me blind, and it takes a moment for the world to come back to me. When it does, I realize that in addition to the reporters, Patrick and Caleb and Monica are waiting. And then, emerging from a spot behind his father's big body, I see my son.

  She is wearing funny orange pajamas and her hair looks like a swallow's nest Nathaniel once found behind the soda bottles in the garage, but her face is his mother's and her voice, when it says his name, is his mother's too. Her smile is a hook in him; he can feel the catch in his throat as he swallows it and lets himself be reeled across the space between them. Mommy. Nathaniel's arms rise up from his sides. He stumbles over a wire, and someone's foot, and then he is running.

  She falls to her knees and that only makes the tug stronger. Nathaniel's so close that he can see she is crying, and this isn't even very clear because he is crying too. He feels the hook coming free, drawing out the silence that has swelled in his belly for a week now, and the moment before he reaches her embrace it bursts from his lips in a rusty, trebled joy. "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!" Nathaniel shouts, so loud that it drowns out everything but the drum of his mother's heart beneath his ear.

  He's gotten bigger in a week. I heft Nathaniel into my arms, smiling like a fool, as the cameras capture every move. Fisher has corralled the reporters, is even now preaching to them. I bury my face in Nathaniel's sweet neck, matching my memory with what is real.

  Suddenly Caleb stands beside us. His face is as inscrutable as it was the last time we were alone, on opposite sides of a glass visitation booth at jail. Although his testimony helped free me, I know my husband. He did what was expected, but it was not necessarily something he wanted to do. "Caleb," I begin, flustered. "I ... I don't know what to say."

  To my surprise, he offers an olive branch: a crooked smile. "Well, that's a first. No wonder so many reporters are around." Caleb's grin slides more firmly into place; and at the
same time, he anchors his arm around my shoulders, guides me one step closer to home.

  These are the jokes I know.

  What's in the middle of a jellyfish?

  A jellybutton.

  Why didn't the skeleton cross the road?

  It didn't have the guts.

  Why did the cookie go to the hospital?

  It felt crumby.

  What do lizards put on their kitchen floors?

  Reptiles.

  What do you call a blind dinosaur?

  An I-don't-think-he-saurus.

  There is one more:

  Knock knock.

  Who's there?

  Sadie.

  Sadie who?

  Sadie magic word, Nathaniel, and then you'll be allowed to go.

  When he told it to me, I didn't laugh.

  SIX

  And just like that, I have fallen back into my former life. The three of us sit around the breakfast table, like any other family. With his finger, Nathaniel traces the letters in the headline of the morning paper. "M," he says quietly. "O, M ..." Over my coffee cup, I look at the photograph. There I am, holding Nathaniel, Caleb at my side. Fisher, somehow, has managed to get his face in the picture too. In the distance, a few steps behind, is Patrick; I recognize him only by his shoes. Across the top, in screaming black letters: MOMMY.

  Caleb takes Nathaniel's empty cereal bowl away as he runs off into the playroom, where he has set up two armies of plastic dinosaurs for a Jurassic war. I glance at the paper. "I'm the poster child for bad parenting," I say.

  "Beats being the local Maine murderess." He nods to the table. "What's in the envelope?"

  The manila mailer is the inter-office kind, tied shut with red floss. I found it stuffed between the Local and Sports sections of the paper. I flip it over, but there is no return address, no marking of any kind.

  Inside is a report from the state lab, the kind of chart I have seen before. A table with results in eight columns, each a different location on human DNA. And two rows of numbers that are identical at every single spot.

  Conclusions: The DNA profile detected on the underpants is consistent with the DNA profile of Szyszynski. As a result, he cannot be eliminated as a possible contributor of the genetic material detected in this stain. The chances of randomly selecting an unrelated individual who matches the genetic material found in the underwear are greater than one in six billion, which is approximately the world population.