Jamie smiled ruefully. "Do you think it's as easy as that?"
"Oh, yeah," Graham said, pushing away from the garage and walking toward Jamie with the best image of confidence he could present. "Piece of cake."
Angus looked from Graham to Jamie and back again. "Clot-head," he muttered. He straightened, stared at the whooping dogs, and started back to the house. "Would ye care for a wee dram, Graham?" he called over his shoulder. "No?" he said, not giving Graham a chance to answer. "Well, you'll have to come again sometime when you're no' due back at the office." The screen door slammed behind him, leaving Jamie and Graham alone.
"I'll let you know what I hear," Graham said, moving down the driveway.
Jamie walked into Angus's house and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and sighed. "Blue-deviled, are ye?"
Jamie looked up to see Angus holding a bottle of whiskey and a small tumbler. Angus poured some liquor into the glass and handed it to him. "It's barely eleven in the morning," Jamie said.
Jamie took the bottle from Angus and poured him a drink in his own glass. He passed it wordlessly to his uncle and waited for him to drain it. "It all works out in the end, though, no?" Angus said, pulling himself up on the banister.
"What do you mean?"
Angus held the bottle of whiskey up to the light. Jamie watched his uncle through the amber liquid, which did not distort the old man's face, but made it take on darker and more somber shadows. "It willna matter, after a time, that Maggie and Fee have gone," Angus said softly. "What matters now and for always, Jamie, is that they went the way they wished."
his case," said Audra, pinning all twenty-three jurors with her
gaze, "is about murder. Murder One is legally defined as a murder with malice aforethought. If you find the defendant guilty, he has to be guilty of three separate processes: premeditation, deliberation, and willfulness. Premeditation means he formed a plan
Dee.
"That's as good a reason as any." Angus tipped the bottle up to his mouth and sank down beside Jamie. "Is she with ye much today?"
"Who?" Jamie said warily.
"Maggie." He patted Jamie's arm. "Some days are stronger than others. Fee used to tell me when I got to looking like you do now that I'd best snap out of it and stop digging my own grave, since she fully intended to go before me."
"Fee?"
"Fiona. My wife. Died--just like she said she would--in '75."
Jamie's mouth dropped open. "I didn't know you were married."
"Oh, aye, well." Angus smiled. "She was scared to death of being left behind. I'd wake up from a doze in a chair to find her poking my side, or holding a mirror up under my nose." He laughed. "It got where if she wasn't trying something or other when I woke up, I figured I must be well and truly dead." His eyes stared through the screen of the door, unfocused. "In the end, 'twas I who found Fee, asleep too late in the morning for all to be right." Angus closed his eyes, remembering how, in that moment of stillness, her face had blurred at its edges, until he was left looking at the smile of the girl he'd met barefoot beside the river
to kill. Deliberation means he considered the pluses and minuses of his plan--even if this consideration lasted only a couple of seconds. And willfulness means that he intentionally carried out what he planned to do.
"Now, as you know, Maggie MacDonald is, indeed, dead. We have a witness who heard the defendant confess to killing his wife. We have a statement signed by the defendant which indicates he actually drove all the way to a different town from the one in which he resided to commit the murder. You'll hear from the officer who investigated the crime scene, finding incontrovertible evidence that links the defendant to the scene of the crime. And you'll also hear from the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the deceased." She stood up from her rigid plastic chair, her feet braced apart, her hands clasped behind her back. "I'll bring each witness in, and I'll question him. If there are any issues you need clarified, I'll turn to you afterward."
Audra opened the door and gestured down the hall to Hugo Huntley, who folded his crossword into his pocket and moved toward her reluctantly, as if he were being pulled slowly and inexorably into her web.
The foreman of the grand jury swore Hugo in. His hair was brushed asymmetrically back over his left ear, as if to conceal a bald spot. His hooked, bulbous nose reminded Audra of a pelican. "Would you please state your name and address for the record?"
"Hugo Huntley," he said. "Fourteen-fifty Braemar Way, Wheelock, Massachusetts."
"And Mr. Huntley, what is your profession?"
Hugo licked his lips. "I'm the owner of Huntley's Funeral Parlor in Wheelock. I also serve as the medical examiner for the local police."
Audra nodded. "Could you describe for these people what you saw on the afternoon of September nineteenth?"
"I was working when Zandy Monroe--he's a sergeant with the police station--asked me to come over to retrieve a body. So he brought me across the street, and showed me this woman in the front seat of a pickup truck who had been dead, at first glance, for several hours. We took--" '
"We?" Audra pressed.
"We meaning me, and Zandy, and Allie MacDonald--she's the chiefs wife and she happened to be there at the time with Zandy. We took Maggie's body to the funeral parlor and I started to take care of her like I take care of all the funerals in Wheelock."
"But this wasn't an ordinary funeral," Audra prompted.
Hugo blinked at her. "It was very nice. Flowers and everything."
Audra set her teeth. "I was speaking in terms of the deceased. Can you describe the cause of death?"
"Asphyxiation," he said curtly. "Most likely by smothering, as there were no bruises on the neck that would indicate strangulation or any other kind of struggle." He stopped, removed his glasses, and wiped them on the lapel of his jacket.
''Was there anything else you found?"
Hugo thought for a moment. "Various evidence of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, and the radical mastectomy scar on her right breast."
Audra froze in her tracks, scanning the faces of the jury to sense the slightest confusion or leanings toward sympathy. "I meant anything out of the ordinary."
Hugo stared at her. "I don't know what you want me to say."
"Did you find evidence of the defendant's skin beneath the victim's fingernails?"
Hugo nodded.
"You'll have to speak up," Audra prompted.
"Yes," he said dutifully.
"Which would indicate what, exactly?"
He shrugged. "She scratched him. But that doesn't mean much. I mean, who's to say there was a fight? It could have been a back rub." He blushed. "Now, I certainly didn't know the two of them when the missus was alive, but I saw that man at her funeral. Believe me, I've seen plenty of mourners, but Jamie MacDonald is the only widower I've seen who couldn't stand because of the grief. He was . . . distraught. I guess that's the term."
"Thank you, Mr. Huntley," Audra smoothly interrupted, before he could go any farther to undermine her case. "I have nothing further."
Hugo left, closing the door behind him. Audra turned to the grand jury, smiling warmly. "Now," she said, "are there any questions?"
Cam walked around the small studio apartment, which was overfurnished in a country-kitchen way complete with an oxen yoke over the doorway and braided rag rugs. There was a staggering amount of bovine paraphernalia: Holstein-patterned spoon rests and salt and pepper shakers, a milk pitcher in the shape of a heifer, a black-and-white-spotted armchair, cow quilts and posters framed and tacked on the wall. It was a frowsy, overblown room and he never would have believed it was Mia's if he hadn't seen her bonsai, centered by itself on the kitchen table, a palm tree on an island in a storm.
Bally Beene had called him three weeks and one day after Mia left, to tell him she'd been under his nose the whole time. He had braced himself when he'd taken the call at the station, expecting to be given an address in t
he Texas Panhandle, or maybe Bombay, but Bally had only laughed. "You won't believe this," he said. "She's living over a family's garage in North Adams." For a nominal fee, Bally had been able to get Cam an extra key.
North Adams was fifteen minutes away from Wheelock, if you were driving very fast.
Cam told Allie he had a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education meeting that night; not to expect him for dinner. He had been planning to work the day and then set off for North Adams. But he had gone out on patrol and pulled over a drunk driver, only to find that he couldn't remember the words that made up the Miranda rights--something he could normally recite in his sleep. So after lunch, when he could not sit still behind his desk any longer, he drove to Mia's new address.
He parked his car down the street and just stared at the place where Mia had managed to exist for three weeks without him. He played the scene over and over in his mind, the one where she opened the door and found him standing on the other side. She was wearing a fluffy white robe and a towel over her wet hair; she held her hand to her throat as if she were seeing a ghost. Then she whispered his name and leaned forward, fitting herself to him.
The funny thing was, he did not picture hopping into bed with her. He imagined sitting down on the floor, his back to a corner, with Mia between his legs. He imagined pulling the towel from her head and combing the tangles from her hair. He imagined their voices weaving the house into a delicate net that could hold the night as it fell all around them.
When it became clear she was not there, Cam made himself at home in Mia's apartment. He ran his fingers over the familiar curled edges of the old bonsai tree and let Kafka rub up against his legs. He opened a can of salmon, gave half to the cat, and ate the other half himself. He would have liked a beer, but the only things in the refrigerator were mustard and a large vat of aloe vera juice, so he settled for a tall glass of water.
He was sitting in the dark on the cow armchair, Kafka curled on his shoulder, when he heard Mia coming up the stairs. She opened the door, slung her knapsack onto a small table, and flicked on the lights. When she saw Cam, her hands went up to her mouth, and then fluttered back to her sides. Her eyes narrowed. "Get out of my apartment."
"I will," Cam murmured, coming to his feet. "Soon."
Kafka ran between Mia's legs, meowing. She scooped him up in her arms, weighing him as if he could serve as a weapon. Mia turned her back on Cam, and for the first rime he realized what she was wearing. The short red skirt barely covered her bottom, and her long legs were encased in crimson tights. A striped halter top with puffy sleeves and a hat that looked like a coxcomb completed the uniform. Bally had told him she was working at a Jolly Chicken fast-food place, but he hadn't remembered until now.
"You smell like french fries," he said.
Mia moved toward the kitchen. "Occupational hazard," she answered curtly.
He crossed the room to the counter which separated the kitchenette from the rest of the apartment. "Why'd you go?"
Mia looked up at him over a glass of water. "Why did you find me?"
Cam smiled. She was angry, she was being ridiculously belligerent, she looked like an idiot in the Jolly Chicken suit, but he could not tear his eyes away from her. He could feel every inch of the space he occupied, from the balls of his feet to the edges of his fingertips against the counter, and he thought that it was weeks since he'd been so patently in control of himself. "You answer my question," he bargained, "and then I'll answer yours."
Mia pulled off the floppy red cap and shook out her curls. "I already did. I left you that note." When Cam did not answer, she sighed. "I told you I couldn't stay."
"And I can't let you go. So I guess we're at an impasse."
Mia began to take a can of cat food out of the pantry. "I fed the cat," Cam said. He whispered the sentence again to himself, liking the sound of such mundane information being passed from him to Mia. He thought of being able to ask her where his belt was, how much money was in the checking account, whether he should buy milk on the way home--simple, open, married exchanges that could not belong to the two of them, and this hurt more than any physical constraint of their relationship.
"How did you find me?" Mia asked.
Cam shrugged. "I hired someone. I had to."
"I'm not coming back."
He sat down on the couch. "Is it Allie? I--"
"Don't even say it," Mia whispered. "Just don't." She sank down on the cow chair across from him, leaning forward with her arms braced against her knees. "You have everything," she said slowly, as if she were explaining the order of the world to a small child. "A family, a great job, a lot of people who look up to you. You've got a place to go home to." She smiled a little. "So go."
Cam shook his head. "Not without you."
Mia traced one of the black spots on the upholstery with her finger. "You can't make me come back."
Cam did not say anything for a moment, content to watch the play of her hands over the armchair, the sunset flushing one side of her face and her upper arm a faint seashell pink. He slid from the couch to the rag rug on the floor, kneeling before her like a supplicant. He touched the hand that was drawing circles on the armchair, the first contact he'd had with her in weeks. They stared down at their fingers, Cam unwilling to move and Mia unable, both paralyzed by their individual recollections. "You love me," Cam said.
Mia managed to slide her hand free. "That's why I left."
.Cam reached up with one finger and traced the line of her mouth, stopping at the corners and the little divot of her top lip with a sureness and familiarity, as if it were he who had sculpted her. "Don't do me any favors," he whispered. Then he turned and walked out of her apartment, hearing Kafka's yowl and the stifled, soughing break of Mia's resistance.
C. J. MacDonald, a part-time police officer in Wheelock and part-time package store stockboy, slowly and methodically told the grand jury what he'd found at the scene of the murder of Maggie MacDonald. "There were fibers that matched the defendant's clothing," he said, "and fingerprints all over the room that matched both the defendant and his wife." He stopped for a second, counting on the fingers of one hand as if to see whether he'd left out something he had dutifully memorized. "I think that's it."
"From the disarray," Audra pressed, "could you tell us anything about the way the murder had been committed?"
C.J. frowned. People didn't usually ask his opinions on things like this; they asked the chief. He glanced up at the thin woman in the blue suit who reminded him of the nasty terrier that lived down the street. "There wasn't much disarray. The bed was made and everything, and the suitcases were all packed up like they were getting ready to go."
Audra turned around. "Like they were getting ready to go? As in, run from the scene of the crime?"
C. J. shrugged. "I guess, but I can't be sure of that." "Of course not," Audra said. "Perhaps you can tell us what sort of scenario you did reconstruct, as one of the detectives that examined the crime scene."
Reluctantly--C.J. had nearly failed creative writing in high school--he began to weave the story of a murder. Audra leaned her shoulder against the wall and closed her eyes. She pictured Maggie MacDonalds face frozen a moment before her husband placed the pillow down, the split-second indecision that had made her claw at his wrist and his face. She wondered what, if anything, would have made Jamie MacDonald stop.
Cam stood at the edge of the kitchen counter, shoveling Cheer-ios into his mouth at an astounding rate. He watched Allie bend to remove the silverware, now clean, from the dishwasher. Then she walked to the drawer where it belonged, setting like utensils into their spots with a jangle that grated on his nerves.
"You put too much soap in the dishwasher," he muttered. "It never gets clean that way. We're eating off a film."
Allie nodded and turned back to the dishwasher, now removing the plates. She set them one by one into the cupboard, making a long, scraping sound each time.
Cam slammed his bowl down on the counter. He waited
for Allie to turn around and ask him what the hell his problem was-- not that he planned to mention that it had been four days since he'd seen Mia and she still hadn't returned to Wheelock. He wanted Allie to glare at him and tell him to load the goddamned dishwasher himself. He wanted to get a rise out of her.
He wanted her to provoke him, so he could justify all the anger that was seeping from inside him.
Instead, like always, Allie just smiled. "Sorry," she said. "Got a headache?"
Cam turned away. If he admitted to the throbbing at his temples, she'd probably force him down on the couch and make him drink some crap brewed with dandelions. She wouldn't let him go to work until he was feeling better. Until she'd made everything better.
Cam did not like himself these days. He watched Allie bustle around the kitchen, getting the house "ready," as she called it, before they both disappeared off to work. He could find fault with nearly every move she made, from the way she twisted shut the faucets to the place she put the milk back in the refrigerator. He knew the problem was not Allie herself, or her ordinary routine--a routine he'd grown accustomed to, in which he was the primary beneficiary of her care and her attention to detail. It was simply that Allie was not someone else.
Allie walked up behind him and slipped one arm around his waist, leaning her cheek against his back. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked, her voice steady and low, modulated to soothe. For some reason this only irritated him more.
I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I don't mean to do this to you. But the words wouldn't come, and this made him angry too. He pulled away from her. "Can't you just leave me alone?"
Allie flinched slightly, something he knew he was not supposed to see; and then using what must have been all of her strength, she summoned a wide, forgiving smile. Cam stared hard at her for a long moment before he grabbed his hat and his gun belt and fled out the door.
Cam had been subpoenaed for Jamie's grand jury hearing. It was hardly a surprise, since he'd been the arresting officer, but that didn't make it any easier to publicly speak against his own cousin. He had never been more aware of the phrases he chose to string together for a testimony, of the two distinct definitions of a sentence.
"He came into the center of town," Cam said, in answer to Audra Campbell's question, "and he asked to speak to me. He wanted to tell me he'd killed his wife." "Did the defendant say that he did it?"