Lesser Crimes Page 13

  "Cancer, or—"

  "Stop, James! Knock on wood. Knock on wood right now."

  "I see it's not just the accent that came back, the superstitions did as well."

  "Knock on—"

  He kicked a wooden wastepaper basket behind her. It hit the wall and then the floor with a crash. "There, is that enough for you?"

  "No," she said defiantly, "you're supposed to knock three times."

  James kicked the basket twice more. His foot hurt. "And now?"

  "Don't get all mad, Jesus!" she said, sneezing again.

  He wanted to laugh in the middle of his rage, because she was cute when she sneezed. "You’ll drive me insane soon. I'll go see if your clothes are dry."

  "I think you just like the mystery," she blurted out.

  He stopped by the door. "What mystery? Is there any more?"

  "No."

  Turning back, he caught a more naked and vulnerable expression on her face than he had ever seen.

  "This is me," she said. "You know everything there is to know now."

  "And you think that I'll be out of here because the show is over?"

  "I don't know."

  "Not every man is like your mother's boyfriends, Lee." He slowly walked back to her. "Because not every woman is your mother. This whole time all I wanted was to find out the truth, so we could really begin."

  "Begin what?"

  "To be happy." He swept her hair behind her ear. "I can't deny there is a fascination, but it isn't with your bloody secrets. I've been fascinated by you, by the person you've been trying so hard to hide. The girl who was strong enough to survive all this, who saw the beauty in strange things although no one had taught her what was what. The girl who'd do anything to keep others from suffering, even a crocodile of a mother. It's you I'm fascinated by, you idiot, not the thief, not the liar or the dazzler. I don't give a shit about any of those."

  "And the sick, sick woman who enjoyed fooling men and—?"

  He interrupted her decisively, "Let's have less about the other men and whatever went on."

  "But James—"

  "Shhh-hhh!" He scowled. "And you need to leave."

  He got her clothes from the dryer. As she put them on, he descended the stairs, making a call. It had finally stopped raining.

  "I don't want Cora here," Lee said behind him. "Not ever."

  "It may not be up to you. She'll be subpoenaed, if it comes to a trial."

  "You have to understand, James, if I even think she's coming, I will confess. I'll confess to every murder in the state, I swear. She cannot know, James, she can never know what Mama tried to do. I'll die before I let her know that."

  His arm circled her waist. "Melodramatic, but I hear you. It won't come to that."

  "How can it not?" she asked, her hands on his chest.

  "I also have my secret ways."

  She smiled. "Why on earth do you do all this?"

  He buried his nose in her hair and quoted, " 'How much better is thy love than wine, and thy smell than all spices.' " The phone rang, and he put it to his ear. "Yes, you're in the right place. Your passenger's coming."

  "Good night," Lee said, her face against his.

  "Good night," he said. "And don't come back here or I’ll throw you out."

  NINETEEN

  Lee didn't return to James's house, and he didn't return to Hawkshaw.

  He had kept his head when she had longed to lose hers. James knew people, and he had understood the situation as soon as he set foot in that town and in that bar. As soon, probably, as he talked to her mother and to Caleb.

  There were a few citizens in Hawkshaw who crossed the street so as not to meet Lee, or who changed aisles in the supermarket to avoid her and pointed at her in the street. There were anonymous messages and threats, which had become less frequent. There were others who wore stony faces, wary of her, like Chief Fisher. There were those who championed her like Austin, or who lived alongside her like Maddy and Ross. And then there was the majority: those who tolerated her and would continue doing so until after her trial.

  Lee understood the wisdom behind keeping the status quo and settled more deeply into her life with Billy. She followed the routine of his needs, his medications, his meals. James would text her that he was going to London, but that he would be back. During January and February, he left and returned four times, and each time she wondered why he returned.

  Some days Billy sounded almost healthy, as if he could recover, and Lee wished it with all her soul. She looked for the best heart surgeons in the region, planning to take him for a consultation. Maybe a surgery could help him or even cure him; medicine was always progressing.

  But a while later Billy would be exhausted again, his face ashen, his breathing labored, and he couldn’t go anywhere. It was always a step forward and two back for him, it seemed. He worried about her and the trial, and she didn’t want him to worry.

  Paxton had told Lee that a forensic expert on their team had asked for the exhumation of Joe's corpse. She didn't try to stop them, not even when April called, wailing.

  "They're going to unbury Joe, Lynn! Take him out of the earth, of his resting place! That's not right."

  April was afraid of what they would find. Paxton wanted to cast a bad light on the forensic investigation made at the time of the murder to create reasonable doubt as to Lee's guilt, which might lead to her acquittal. The defense would, however, need to present an alternative version of events.

  "I don't want blame directed at my mother or sister," Lee told Paxton over the phone. "I've told you and James that."

  "You're our client, sugar, not James," Paxton said. "We shall not use anything in your defense which you don't want brought up. We just know the lab didn't do a thorough job of looking at the evidence. It's a practice more common than I'd like to admit, when they think the case is open-and-shut."

  By running away, Lee had become the prime suspect in Joe’s murder, but Paxton could make mincemeat of the state's forensic evidence with good experts to back him up. She had to allow him to do it, because of James.

  What will it take, Lee?

  He had cared for her when she had the meanest blues, had followed her to Mexico, had carried her across a desert, had stood by her although she was accused of murder. He had given her grace, and she couldn't throw it away.

  "This is me," she had told him.

  All she knew was that the days were long without him, although she liked them best when she was alone with Billy. When Billy managed to hold a conversation, he would speak of things that had always united them: films, books, ideas.

  Billy was kind and concerned about the world and the people in it, even as he suffered.

  When others were present, existence became more tiresome. Maddy could be affectionate to Lee one moment and unreasonable the next. She would never stop telling her sister-in-law how to do the smallest thing. It's not like that, it's like this. It took the patience of a saint or of a criminal not to scream, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

  Lee wasn’t a saint, but she was a criminal.

  Caleb would come by, and she couldn't tell him not to. He was the main architect behind Hawkshaw's acceptance of her: the cop who had processed the body and the crime scene, but who gave her the benefit of the doubt. He would send Sophie and Abby to take her to a movie or to the Osprey, and she couldn't hide from them.

  Sometimes Lee went to see April, but she rarely left her mother’s house without feeling exhausted or miserable.

  The people of Hawkshaw had restless souls, and they made her restless. They had restless souls confined to a small space. It was James who calmed her; James, who had wandered all over the earth to see and understand things, even when they made him angry. It was James who had an infinite spirit.

  She was glad to be with Billy; she longed for James.

  Lee did what she could to stay busy, but a lull in time would inevitably happen, and James would fill her mind. She would think of his eyes, his voice, his body
. She would press a hand over her breast, to feel as it had felt when it had been his hand, would nuzzle her own shoulder as he so often had, but it was as if she were playing a game of shadows.

  In the real world, she looked out the window as Billy's vegetables cooked, she wrote lists of things that were needed, went to the shop, cleaned the house and the yard, made sure that Billy was always comfortable.

  At night she lay on her bed, next to Billy's, to watch TV. She lay thinking of James and wondering why they had met each other. Some people thought that things happened for a reason; she was a better person for meeting him. Perhaps that was all it was ever meant to be.

  When she woke up, the routine would begin, and she would again see things in the rational light of morning.

  "Will you take me to see the Hoffmans?" Billy asked her one day as they sat outside, sketching. It was very warm for the end of February, and Billy said that the woods had all sorts of birds and animals that didn't belong there, or not at that time, because of climate change.

  "Scott died three years ago," Lee said. "His parents must have learned to accept it by now."

  "You never accept the death of your children."

  Lee had never asked about Scott's death, but she did now: "Why was he using? He was such a healthy guy."

  It took a moment for Billy to say, "Scott screwed up. He screwed up bad, but he shouldn't have died."

  "Still, how can you help his parents?"

  Billy frowned. "I want to see them."

  "All right. A day when you're feeling strong we'll go — otherwise you'll get sick."

  That day didn't seem to come, but every now and again, as soon as he felt a little better, Billy would mention Scott's parents again.

  "He's talking of seeing the Hoffmans," Lee told Maddy and Ross at dinner one night. Most of the time she cooked dinner for them as well.

  "That was a sad, sad thing," Maddy said. "But how could Scott do something so stupid? Meth!"

  "Let it go," Ross told her. "Poor guy."

  "What should I tell Billy?" Lee insisted.

  Ross grimaced. "Can he take the emotion? He really loved Scott, you know."

  "That's what I wonder."

  "And can the Hoffmans take it? Sometimes I see them around town. I don't know them to speak to, but they looked rough after it happened. The mother especially. Now they seem to be doing better."

  "It'll just stir things up," Maddy said.

  "But doesn't Caleb go there?” Lee asked. “He said he went on holidays."

  "Yeah, but I think that seeing Billy might be worse for Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman, because he's frail." Ross looked at Lee. "Although sometimes I believe he'll make it. You made him better."

  Maddy snorted. "Yeah, she comes here and makes him all better all of a sudden — after the years I spent next to my own brother.”

  "Oh, honey, of course you took care of him."

  "I couldn't even work. We moved here for that!"

  "All right, I didn't want to start an argument, hon."

  "Then watch what you say."

  As Maddy stood to take her dish to the sink, Ross widened his eyes comically for a second. When his wife left to check on Billy, he turned back to Lee. "What does he say, exactly, when he talks of going there? I mean, why?"

  "He says Scott fucked up, but that he shouldn't have died. That kind of thing." Lee played with her food for a second. "You'd think Caleb would have known that Scott was using. They were really close. Or did that change?"

  Ross shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they didn't see each other as often, after Scott went to college and Caleb got into the force."

  "If he knew, wouldn't he have tried to help Scott? To make him stop?"

  "Can we ever stop people from doing what they want to do, especially if it's stupid?" Ross asked gently.

  When Lee went to bed, Billy was still watching TV. She leaned over, putting her head on his pillow.

  He turned to face her. "Lee, I'm serious. I need to see the Hoffmans before it's too late. Before I die."

  "Hush, Billy. You're not dying. You're getting better."

  "You'll take me there?"

  "If you want, I'll find a way."

  Billy looked at the TV again. "It wasn't Scott's fault that he died. It was mine."

  TWENTY

  One only had to look at Professor Amos Azulay to understand that he valued precision. From his carefully combed white hair, trimmed goatee and gleaming glasses to his polished leather shoes, he was the model of tidiness.

  He arrived at James' house neither a minute early nor a minute late, despite wearing an old-fashioned watch in an age where all phones were synchronized. James wondered if he had been waiting outside until the arm of minutes and seconds hit nine o’clock on his wrist.

  In the kitchen, the professor was glad to accept a cup of tea.

  "You sounded familiar,” he said, “so I looked you up. Interesting life."

  "Can't pretend it hasn't been," James replied. "Yours must not have been boring, what with opposing the settlers on the West Bank. Not an easy thing to do for an Israeli."

  The professor shrugged. "Not that difficult either. Some hardliners call you traitor, some Palestinians call you a spy and you live on. Unless they really decide to kill you." He broke into a smile. "I flirted with anthropology as an undergraduate, but it isn't science."

  "No. And in any case, I wouldn't call myself an anthropologist — I was just mucking about. What made you change your mind?"

  "The dead people won me over."

  "What, bodies calling out for justice?"

  "No, mysteries. And having the tools to solve them. This—" He tapped the files he had brought. "Ah, this is very interesting."

  It was impossible to get a preview of Azulay's findings, since Paxton, Ava and their assistant chose that moment to arrive.

  “My Lord, James,” Paxton said, patting his tie. “I’m hoping you have something sweet …”

  James opened a white box full of doughnuts and showed them to Paxton, who laid a hand over his heart.

  “My dear, you can’t imagine the relief. I fairly felt a fit of hypoglycemia coming on and didn’t know if I was going to be able to make any sense. Oh, you didn’t neglect the sprinkly ones, you are clever!”

  Koestler joined them ten minutes later, and they gathered around the dinner table once again. Paxton, happy with a cup of coffee and a dish bearing four different doughnuts, got the assistant to connect Azulay's laptop to the projector.

  "Are we getting fireworks, Professor?" he asked, leaning back in his chair, fingers interlaced behind his head.

  "I'll let you be the judge of that," Azulay said. "All right, so this is what we have."

  He projected a split image on the wall: to the left the old photo of Keane's skull from the autopsy; to the right the exhumed skull with patches of hair still clinging to it.

  "I'd like you to notice the lesions are the same on the scalp right after Keane’s death and on the skull that was dug up. The report says that on November 29th, 2013, Joseph Keane was attacked and repeatedly bludgeoned on the stairs of his home. The autopsy estimates seven blows with a blunt object. Some dragged along the scalp, causing, as you see on this original image, long lacerations where the skin was lifted. These blows pierced the skin all the way to the skull, and you can still see the ridges in the new images. This single small dent here was described in the autopsy as a straight shape consistent with the part that sticks out of the poker."

  Azulay tapped the image several times, saying, "Wrong, wrong, wrong."

  The front legs of Paxton's chair hit the ground and a great smile spread on his face. James sat perfectly still, waiting for the professor to continue.

  "As my esteemed colleague Dr. Koestler observed, the fire poker, used with force great enough to cause profuse bleeding, would also cause fractures on the skull. Where are they? Not in the old images, not in the new ones — and not in the pathologist's report. There aren't even superficial fractures. I have reviewed
thousands of cases of death by blunt trauma, and do you know in how many of those I found no brain injury, edema or at least subdural hematoma?" He looked around the table. "None."

  "It's as we thought, then," Paxton said. "They made a mess of it."

  "It's much worse than you thought," Azulay said, projecting the image of the crime scene. "Every single conclusion they announced in the report about this scene reveals their will not to see."

  He clicked his laptop, showing them a close-up of the ceramic floor with blood on it. "What do you see? The lab says that these drops and smears would have been left by the defendant, Lynn Miller, who had bloody hands, or some part of a garment steeped in blood, as she walked out of the house. Wrong — because this isn't a drop of blood, it's a dollop. Whoever left this was freely bleeding, not carrying blood by proxy, as it were."

  The laser pointer circled a smear. "And this was made by a shoe on fresh blood as it fell." He pressed another key, showing a man’s shoe. "This is what Joseph Keane was wearing, and you can see blood drops and other blood patterns on it. But what do you think is significant about this smear on the floor?"

  The next image fit the two previous ones together: the toe of Keane's foot and the smear. "It indicates that Keane's shoe was facing the inside of the house. And look where it was."

  Once again Azulay projected the entire the crime scene on the wall, this time with a red circle around the smears he had just shown them. They were near the front door.

  James leaned forward to peer. "Do you mean that he was bleeding as he walked into the house?"

  "I do. And here is a separate clear image which would confirm my finding," Azulay went on, showing another slide. "You can see the footprints of the accused, Lynn Miller, pointing outside, but over blood that was already there. And the stairs ..." He stopped and shook his head. "Well, the stairs tell many stories."

  "Many lies," James muttered.

  Ava and Paxton glanced at him as Azulay hit a key several times to get the crime scene back onto the wall. The professor used the pointer.

  "We have the assumption by the lab that the perpetrator bludgeoned Mr. Keane here on the stairs — that these smears on the wall and rail indicate that he turned and tried to face his attacker or climb the steps, until he fell and broke his neck. But all the wounds are on top of his head and were made from behind. None are on his forehead or on the side of his head, which would be the case if he ever faced his attacker. Abrasions on his hands and arms could have come from a carpet burn as he fell, but they were not blows from a poker. That means he had no defensive wounds on his arms, hands or shoulders.” He stopped to look at them. “Joe and his murderer never faced each other once the blows began, I assure you."