She was too busy lugging a tub of lilies out of the car to see Mia and Cam exchange a look. "An accident," Mia said, and then she slammed the car door as if it could truly keep Cam in.
The trial of the State of Massachusetts versus James MacDonald was set for January 16, which meant that Graham MacPhee had little more than two months to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He had been sleeping with a notepad beside his bed and scribbling down whatever entered his mind for Jamie's defense. He was still planning to use insanity, but he was going to throw a few wrenches into the prosecution's machine as well. For example, Allie had found some friend of Maggie's who could confirm that she had asked Jamie to kill her; that would take some of the deliberation out of the act. And Graham also planned to drum up sympathy by subtly playing a euthanasia card. He pictured himself in a grand courtroom, his voice echoing as he saved Jamie's pound of flesh, having rewritten his own speech on mercy.
Graham had been filing pretrial motions for a couple of weeks now--ordinary motions that would help delay the case a little. He had Audra Campbell served with a motion that she'd be expecting-- one that said they'd be using an insanity defense, so she could come up with some state shrink to evaluate Jamie for twenty minutes and pass judgment. Then, just to piss her off, he filed a motion to review the prosecution's evidence. It wasn't that Jamie thought she had any aces up her sleeve, but it would take a while to get a copy of the confession, the lab results, et cetera, and he liked the idea of Audra Campbell using up valuable time she could have spent preparing a strategy for prosecution.
Today, though, he had come all the way back to Pittsfield in front of Judge Roarke, fighting a motion that Audra had handed down to him, which requested that the words "mercy killing" not be used in the trial at all. Jamie would be referred to as the defendant, or as Mr. MacDonald; the soft edges of the deed he had performed would be rendered in the prosecution's colors of black and white. Audra was smart enough, damn her, to know what aspects of the case Graham could use to his advantage. The first time he'd read the motion, Graham had doubled over in his chair, staggered by the image of a courtroom that was stripped of mercy. Judge Roarke, a big black bear of a man, upheld Audra's motion. "But Your Honor," Graham said, "we're not talking about cold-blooded killing here. We're talking about something that was done to spare someone else pain. What kind of defense wouldn't claim mercy?"
The judge leveled his gaze at Graham. "I imagine, Mr. MacPhee," he said, "that this is your problem, not mine." Out of the corner of his eye, Graham could see Audra's smile, white against the flushed blur of her face. "You will be aware that during the trial, you will not use the words 'mercy' or 'mercy killing' or . . . well, you get my drift. Not in your questioning, not in you cross-examination, not in your opening and closing arguments. And you will instruct your witnesses not to bring the term up, or I will consider you personally accountable and hold you in contempt. Do I make myself clear, Mr. MacPhee?"
"Crystal," Graham muttered, stuffing his folders into his briefcase and leaving the courtroom before Audra had a chance to gloat.
He got into his car and headed toward Wheelock. It was dark; in mid-November, nights came much earlier. He didn't know whether to drive to Angus's and meet with Jamie right away, or spare him a sleepless night and just wait till the morning.
Graham took the left-hand pass into Wheelock, the one that skirted the center of town and continued straight toward Angus's place. The road happened to pass the graveyard, too, which Graham never really noticed as he was driving by--except in the winter, when it was covered in snow, and Graham would wonder if that made death any colder or more claustrophobic, a train of thought that fairly convinced him he wanted to be cremated. As Graham drove by now, he noticed a thin green beam bobbing up and down somewhere in the rear of the cemetery.
It was past Halloween, so he didn't think any kids were playing pranks, but you never did know; and after all, Graham's own grandparents were buried somewhere in the northwest corner. He parked the car and cut the ignition. Then, following the single slice of light, he made his way between the worn headstones.
Pulling the lapels of his coat up to his ears, Graham wondered briefly what the hell the police force of Wheelock did to earn a living, if he was prowling a graveyard looking for trouble.
He turned at a huge Japanese maple, naked and bent like an old woman against the silver profile of the moon. Sitting on a folding deck chair in front of a grave was Jamie MacDonald.
His hurricane lamp was balanced precariously on Maggie's headstone, which was so new that Graham could see from this far away the deep crevices on the granite which spelled out her name.
Jamie was nodding to a voice Graham did not hear. "I know it. Angus tries to get me out; I just don't have much of a desire to go." Jamie stood up and paced the edge of the grave, careful not to step on the long run of matted earth where the coffin had been interred. "I've been thinking of you," he said softly. "I try to get one picture of you in my head and keep it all day long. Today I kept seeing you at the surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. I ruined it, remember?--I came home from work early because I wanted to call you and take you out to dinner, and there you were letting in my old college roommate at the front door. Christ, that was amazing. You actually convinced people to come from California, and Florida--guys I hadn't seen in years. But what got me the most about that party was sometime in the middle of it, when I came into the kitchen for another beer. You were stirring this big log of chop meat into a huge pot--I think you were making chili--and smiling up at me with the steam curling your hair all around your face. You were a vegetarian, but here you were grinning over this block of raw meat like it was the greatest thing in the world. And that's when I understood how much you loved me."
Jamie sank down into the deck chair again, which was just close enough to the stone for him to be able to touch it with his fingertips. Graham took a step backward, watching his client's hands caress the cold, smooth marker as if it were as vivid and resilient as a woman's skin.
She wouldn't see him. Cam had sent notes to the Wheelock Inn, had left messages at the front desk when Mia would not pick up the phone, had once even banged on her door when he was on the midnight to eight a.m. shift and he knew she was there, but she hadn't answered. He began to wonder why he had ever asked her to come back. Having her in the same town and noticeably distant was twice as hard as having her far away.
He began to drop into Allie's shop twice a day, just in the hopes of seeing Mia.
Most of the time, she was in the back arranging something. Cam watched her while trying to carry on a conversation with Allie. He noticed that she favored strange shapes and textures, using these for patterns instead of color. He also noticed that she had either a sixth sense or a canny knack of hearing--she always looked up when Allie rook a step toward him, no matter how silent; twice he had seen her answer the phone before he or Allie heard it ring.
One day when he walked in Allie was pulling on her coat. "Bad timing," she said. "I'm on my way to Graham's office." She threw Mia a glance. "Think about it. You can bring your aunt."
"Bring her where?"
"Thanksgiving." Allie reached up on her toes to kiss Cam's cheek as he held the door open for her and followed her to the parking lot. "I want Mia to come, but she says she's got plans with her aunr."
"The sick one?"
"Well," Allie said, swinging into her car, "now she's better."
Cam bent down and smiled at her. "Put on your seat belt." He waited until she had fastened it, then he adjusted the strap so it lay flat over her shoulder and between her breasts, disappearing in the folds of her coat. "Have a good time."
He crossed to his black-and-white and sat down, fiddling with the radio for a minute until he knew that Allie had driven out of sight. Then he got out of the car and walked back into the flower shop.
Mia was waiting for him, perched on the overstuffed arm of one of the couches. "You're working on Thanksgiving."
"I always d
o," Cam answered. "You don't have an aunt."
Mia stood up and walked to the cooler, plucking out sprigs of Saint-John's-wort and tickseed. "I have an aunt," she said belligerently. "She lives in Seattle." She glanced up. "The Wheelock police must have remarkably little to do."
Cam hooked his thumbs in his pockets. "Why are you avoiding me?"
Mia turned away. "I'm not avoiding you."
Cam came up behind her, his hand gently clasping her shoulder. "I'm glad to hear that." He turned her around and pulled her to the front of the shop, where he locked the door.
"What are you doing?" Mia said, reaching past him toward the dead bolt. When Cam blocked it with his body, she crossed her arms over her chest.
Cam's eyes widened. "Mia." He grinned. "What kind of man do you think I am?" He reached for her hand again, and rubbed it until he could feel the resistance rush out of her body. "I want you to take a walk with me."
Mia narrowed her eyes. "A walk?"
"Just walking. One foot, then the other. I'll bet you're an expert by now."
"Ten minutes," she said, and she followed Cam out the back door.
He led her up the incline behind the shop that ran right into the Berkshire Mountains. As they climbed, Mia's feet tangled on roots and brush and her shoes slipped on fallen, wet leaves. Her breath came in faster spurts, and she was not sure if this was because of the exertion or because of Cam's steady motions ahead of her.
Finally he stopped and pulled her up onto a level plateau that overlooked the parking lot of the shop and the rest of Main Street from behind a wall of narrow brush pines. The flat of the area was covered with fallen needles. "Pretty," Mia said, peeking out from the thin trunk of one tree. "I didn't know it was here."
"There's a lot of things you can't see if you aren't looking." Cam dropped down to the ground and leaned back on his elbows. "What made you come back?"
Mia sat down beside him, her legs crossed Indian style. "The pay was better."
Cam chuckled. "Not to mention the uniform. Jolly Chicken ought to be brought up on sexual harassment charges."
She waited for him to say something more, something like: Was there anything else? or, What about me? When he didn't, she took a deep breath. "I didn't have nearly as much talent when it came to flipping chicken patties, either."
"No," Cam agreed. "Although you probably met a more interesting class of customer."
Mia laughed, thinking of the pimply teenagers who would dig money out of their jeans, the coins sticky and covered with lint. "Not nearly as interesting as the people you meet," she said. She lay down on the ground, closing her eyes, unaware of the way Cam's breath stopped at her movement. "What are some of the strangest cases you've ever had?"
It felt so lovely, lying beside him again like it was the quiet after and they were letting their words get as close as their bodies had been. She imagined her sentence as a physical thing, a spider's thread that roped about Cam and drew him closer. And she pictured his response, wrapping her tight and binding her to him. This was what she had missed the most, not the sex or the forbidden excitement.
Cam forced himself to lie down without touching her. "The first year I worked as an officer--before I went over to Europe--I was the first on site at a motor vehicle accident over on Route 8. The guy who cracked up his car against a telephone pole was forty-six, sober as a judge, and just fell asleep at the wheel. When I pulled him out, he started speaking French, and then crying like a baby, and then he'd speak French again. Turned our he'd never left the Berkshires his entire life and had never studied any other languages. I guess it went away after a couple of weeks, bur he was written up in the medical journals.
"And there was the time a swarm of bees got into the hardware store and attacked every single customer. It turned out that a neighbor had started up his lawn mower near their hive and they went crazy, flying in the back windows and loading doors. Thirty people all stung, some having allergic reactions."
Mia propped herself up on an elbow. "They called the police for that?"
Cam groaned. "They call the police for everything." "What you wouldn't give for a high-speed car chase," she laughed.
"We have those, too. Wheelock's not as sleepy as it looks." He frowned. "Two years ago on Halloween someone dug up a body at the cemetery and took the head and the right arm of a corpse that had been buried thirty years back."
"Ugh."
"Tell me about it. There are some things you never get used to when you work in law enforcement." He rolled to his side, so that he was facing Mia directly. "Like telling a parent that his only kid's been killed in a motorcycle crash. Or throwing open a door and knowing someone on the other side is going to try to shoot you. There are some weapons you can't protect yourself against."
Mia thought of Cam vulnerable and under attack. "But that doesn't happen often," she whispered.
Cam stared at Mia, who knew nothing of Berettas or calibers or bullet gauges, but who could drive him to his knees with a smile. "You'd be surprised," he said.
Dear Mr. MacPhee, I read about you in the Boston Globe, and I feel that I have to write.
Three years ago my brother was in a motorcycle accident that forced an amputation of his legs. He fractured his back in several places too and was in pain for over a year, at which point he shot himself in the head. I heard the shot and went running to his room. He was moaning, moving around, half his face blown off. Without even thinking twice about it I picked up the gun and shot him a second time.
I went through the same sort of procedure I imagine your client is going through now. After six months of investigations and an awful media circus, a medical examiner decided that the first shot would have killed Jeff anyway.
Please show this letter to your client. I hope the jury has heart.
Angus woke up from the nap he'd been taking on Allie's living room sofa. He'd fallen asleep sometime during the second quarter and now it was already past halftime. Squinting, he peered at the television, trying to remember which college teams were playing.
Ellen MacDonald walked out of the kitchen bearing a casserole of yams. "Fancy that," she said, glancing at Angus. "We'd taken you for dead."
"Aye, well. Dinna give up on me yet."
He rubbed his hand over his face and got to his feet, wandering toward the kitchen. Allie backed out carrying a turkey that looked nearly half her size. "Watch out," she called, the steam waving in front of her face like a billowing curtain.
Angus sat down at his seat--which was actually Cam's seat, but Cam was working this Thanksgiving as he had every Thanksgiving for the past eight years. It was a fair trade; this way he was sure to get Christmas off. For reasons Angus had never understood, Allie always insisted on making Thanksgiving dinner, and then proceeded to invite Cam's entire family. It seemed to Angus that since she was the one left alone, she should have been the one picked up by someone else.
He supposed he'd just keep his mouth shut and enjoy the meal.
Allie leaned over Angus's shoulder and adjusted a bright orange flower in the centerpiece she'd made. It was a hollowed-out pumpkin, jammed with Oasis and a combination of strawflowers, spindle, snowberries, and Chinese lanterns. In another minute the Brussels sprouts would be done; the salad and the stuffing were already on the table. "Jamie," she called, "dinner."
He walked listlessly to the table and slid into the chair beside Angus. "So what do you think? Do they give you turkey on Thanksgiving when you're in jail?"
"Ye ken, I believe that they do. Seems I remember--"
"Stop," Allie said. "This is not polite dinner conversation."
"Then again," Jamie added, "I'm not polite company."
Ellen reached across the table and plopped a spoonful of yams onto Jamie's plate. "Eat."
Allie walked around the perimeter of the table, pouring white wine into everyone's glass. When she passed Angus, he grabbed at her sweater. "And what about me?"
"You have grape juice. You can't have any alcohol with your
heart medication."
"I would ha' rather skipped the pills," he muttered.
She set the decanter down next to the turkey and raised her glass. "Well," she said, smiling around the table. "On behalf of Cam, we're very glad you all could come here this year for another Thanksgiving. And for those of us who--who could not be with us this year, our thoughts are with you." She turned to Jamie. "I thought you might like to carve."
Jamie took the sterling utensils Allie offered. He could hear the gravy bubbling on the stove in the kitchen, the chatter at the table, and the drone of the sports announcers on the television. He glanced down at the turkey, already skinned by Allie for nutritional purposes, its pale white breast beneath his outstretched hand. He dropped the fork and touched his fingers to the curve, thinking of Maggie's skin, Maggie's throat. Then he dropped the knife and bolted up the stairs.
Allie found him sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He felt her take a seat beside him. She reached for his hand and pressed something greasy and slippery into it. He looked down to see the wishbone. "Ellen carved," she said. "But I thought you might appreciate this."
He smiled, feeling better than he had all day. She was something, this little cousin-by-marriage. "Maggie liked the wishbone, but we used to decide together on the wish. She said we both had to wish for the same thing, so that no matter who won, it would be guaranteed to come true."
"Should I guess?" Allie asked. "World peace? Winning the lottery?"
"We used to wish for kids," Jamie said, glancing up at her. "So I guess neither of us won." He traced the shape of the wishbone with his finger. "How come Cam doesn't take Thanksgiving off?"
"It's that or Christmas."
"He could take both days and dock his pay."
"But who'd watch the town?" Allie grinned. "It's like being married to a doctor. When someone's having a baby, it isn't going to wait for Thanksgiving to be over. Same for robberies and car accidents and the rest."
"All the same, he ought to be watching you."
Allie turned a shade of pink. She took the wishbone from Jamie. "Name your poison," she said, gripping her fist around one tine.
Jamie thought for a moment. Then he wrapped his hand around the other fork of the wishbone, flexing it slightly to gauge the tension. "Let's hope that the people we're crazy about come back to us," he said. "Soon."