Fatal Flaw (8 page)

OUTSIDE THE
courthouse, after I had done my bit for the television cameras, Beth and I climbed down the wide front steps. I couldn’t help but notice that bulbs in the flower beds were blooming, birds were atwitter, buds were sprouting in the trees lining the street. It was as if the rain of the night before had washed away the remnants of winter and spring had suddenly swooped down with its special light to spread its finery. And yet it felt to me, for some reason, on those gray, sunlit steps, that I was still standing in the murky gloom, within a landscape of shadows and secrets. I wanted to get
away just then, to find a place where the sun might burst through my own personal fog and warm my face, when Detectives Breger and Stone stepped in our way.

“Got a minute, Mr. Carl?” said Stone.

I gestured for Beth to wait and walked off with the two of them. Stone wasn’t smiling now, a bad sign I figured, but Breger wasn’t staring at me either, which seemed to be his way of showing respect. I suppose you spend enough years staring down suspects in the interrogation room, you end up staring away from those you consider respectful and law-abiding. A habit that must make for lovely family dinners.

“You mind if we look at your hands?” asked Breger.

“My hands?”

“If you don’t mind.”

I put down my briefcase and held out my hands. Breger took one each in his big mitts and carefully examined the knuckles before letting them drop.

“Thanks,” he said as he turned his gaze to survey the street. “Troy Jefferson gave you a pretty generous offer.”

“Yes he did. He also told me you said some nice things about me. Thank you.”

“You should know we both opposed the offer. We think it is far too lenient, man one for a homicide like this. Is your client going to accept it?”

“He pled not guilty in court.”

“I know, but is he going to accept the offer?”

“He says he didn’t do it. I relayed the offer and he rejected it outright. Says he didn’t do it.”

“That means the investigation is still moving forward,” said Breger, his eyebrows raised.

“I suppose so,” I said.

“Then we have to ask you a question, Mr. Carl,” said Stone, “about the night of the killing, because something confuses us.”

“That must happen often, Detective.”

“You said that Mr. Forrest called you at your home and then you came right over.”

“That’s correct.”

“Except we got a look at the phone logs from Mr. Forrest’s line just before court and we found something peculiar. Your call to 911 showed up, as expected, and there were other calls to you from earlier dates, as expected since you were a friend, but there was no call to you registered from the night of the killing.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Any idea why that is?”

“Phone company made a mistake?”

“Is that what you think?” said Breger sharply, and as he said it he turned to stare at me. “The computers of the phone company made a mistake?” It was the first time he’d ever looked at me straight on, and I noticed now that one of his eyes wandered slightly. The effect was strangely disorienting and I didn’t like it, the variance in his gazes seemed to suggest a variance between the truth and my words. His gaze itself acted as an accusation.

“Does your client have a cell phone?” he said.

“I don’t know. I suppose if he does there are records.”

“I suppose there are. You didn’t happen to see his cell phone when you were up in that bedroom?”

“No, sir.”

He looked at me for a moment longer and then turned again to survey the street. “You said you were watching a game when he called. What game was that?”

“The Phils were in Atlanta. I slept through most of it, but they were down when I left.”

“They scored two in the bottom of the ninth to beat the bastards.”

“Good,” I said. “Is that all?”

“That’s all. Thank you for the help, Mr. Carl.”

“Call me Victor, Detective Breger.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You know, Vic,” said Stone, “when we asked you about Miss Prouix, you described her as sweet and nice. We’ve been running the usual inquiries and I have to tell you, we’ve been talking to a lot of people who knew Miss Prouix and they all seemed to have a lot to say, but not a one of them used the words ‘sweet’ or ‘nice’ when talking about her.”

“Maybe I didn’t know her all that well. What was the thing with the hands all about?”

“Last night one of our Forensic Unit technicians was heading into the house to redo a few tests,” said Stone. “A man rushed out and ran her over, a man dressed in black with a watch cap pulled over his face. When she grabbed his leg, he turned and beat her in the face pretty badly.”

“So you checked my hands?”

“Just routine, Vic.”

“Call me Mr. Carl, Detective Stone.”

“She is still in the hospital,” said Breger.

“Good thing then that I didn’t scrape my knuckles on a cement step this morning.”

“Yes it is.”

“Probably just a burglar who knew that the house was empty.”

“Probably,” he said. “Just like the phone company computer probably made a mistake.”

“Bye-bye, Vic,” said Stone with a little wave of her fingers. “We’ll talk again.”

As I walked away from them and down the steps, they huddled together, discussing something or other, apparently not pleased, apparently not pleased at all.

Beth slid over and walked down with me. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It was nothing. Detectives Stone and Breger were just asking about a phone.”

8

IT WAS
my phone the detectives were looking for, the same phone that I had picked off the crate beside the corpse of Hailey Prouix and placed in my pocket the night of her murder. My phone. That was why I had taken it that night, why I didn’t want it found anywhere near that house. My phone. Sitting now in my kitchen drawer. Registered in my name, with the bills and records going to my apartment. But I wasn’t willing to wait for the end of the month to see what calls had been made. As soon as we returned from the arraignment, I phoned my service provider and requested that it print up a record of calls for the past month and fax it to my office. The lady on the line was most agreeable and said she’d get right on it. I couldn’t complain about the service, they’d do anything they could to help you out, so long as you let them slip a fifty from your wallet every month.

I told Ellie, my secretary, that I was waiting for a fax.

“I HAVE
something for you,” I say to Hailey. This is a month before her murder. I had tried to stay away when I learned about Guy’s proposal and her acceptance, tried to forget the smell of her, the feel of her, the tang of her tongue on my own. I tried, really, but the
Sylvester matter kept showing up in my in-box and my dreams grew torrid and haunting. I had tried to stay away, but she pursued me like she needed me and I couldn’t help believing that maybe she did. She understood intuitively my weakness, I am most easily seduced by need. I had tried to stay away, and I had failed and I was glad.

“I have something for you,” I say to Hailey. We are in bed, after, the same huge presence having roared through us the way it always roared through us, leaving us exhausted and dazed.

“Diamonds?” she asks, that twang again in her voice.

“Better.”

“What could be better than diamonds? So flashy, so bright, so readily turned into ready cash.”

“What about me?”

“You?” She laughs as she lifts her legs and twists them locked behind my back, twists them tight so I can’t move in or out, here or there, trapped. “But I already have you, Victor, and you won’t look half so pretty hanging from my ears.”

Hailey in her normal life is a hard piece of work, flinty, sardonic, infected with a nervous bundle of habits that act as sword and shield to protect her inner sadness. She is both desirable and detached, which of course only makes her more desirable. It is impossible to get a straight answer from Hailey Prouix. Ask her a question and she deftly directs the line to something less threatening or, instead, asks a question of her own that puts you smack on the defensive. She is, remember, a lawyer. But after sex, oh after sex, after the two of us are run over by that charging train of hunger and need with its own strange pulse and rhythms, a train that seems to come from neither her nor me but from elsewhere, after all that, it is as if her defenses fall like the walls of Jericho under Joshua’s horn. The easy, drawly vowels replace the clipped, big-city cadence she has adopted in her adopted city and her flinty defensive manner turns richer, her emotions show through almost unguarded.

“I bought you a phone,” I tell Hailey that afternoon.

“I have a phone. I have too many damn phones.”

“But I’ve been having a hard time reaching you at night. How many times can I hang up when Guy answers?”

“So that was you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“I was hoping it was you.”

“How come you don’t answer your cell phone after hours?”

“Because my clients call. They call to complain about their pains. They call to say they can’t sleep. They want to tell me they’re taking their medicine, they want to tell me they’re not taking their medicine. They call to have me verify their paranoia. They call because, like everyone else, they’re lonely and scared and know I’m not charging by the hour. I leave my phone in the office with the rest of my workday because if I don’t, my clients will drown me.”

“But I’m not a client.”

“So why do you need to reach me?”

“To say hello. To let you know I’m thinking about you. To ask what you are wearing.”

“In other words, so you, too, can tell me you can’t sleep.”

“Exactly.”

“I’d rather have diamonds.”

“But it’s really cute, and I got it in red to match your lipstick.”

“Red?”

“Shocking red.”

“And who else has the number?”

“Just me.”

“So it’s our own private hot line.”

“That’s right.”

“I feel like the president.”

“And best of all, my number is already number one in the speed dial.”

“For now.” She laughs, her hearty, throaty laugh, but I can tell she likes the gift even though she can’t hang it from her ears, I can tell because after she laughs she starts devouring my mouth the way she does when it is time to end our talking, hungrily, meatily, in a way that still tingled even as I remembered two days after her death.

“THAT THING
you were waiting for?” said my secretary, sticking her head in my office door. “Is it from the phone company?”

“Yes,” I said, with more excitement than I meant to show. To cover myself I added, “Thanks, Ellie. Just put it on the chair and I’ll get to it when I can.”

She laid the paper on the seat, closed the door, and I leaped out from behind my desk to get my hands on the three stapled sheets.

I started at the last page, the last call. It was registered at 10:15 the night of Hailey’s death, made to my number. It was Guy, telling me that something horrible had happened. Guy. Why had he used the cell phone to make the call?

I sat down hard on the chair and thought it through. It made no sense. No sense, and that might be the only explanation. So undone by his murderous act, he picked up the first thing he could grab, the bright red phone, left out on the end table by Hailey for some reason. Picked it over the regular phone for no special reason, picked it up and dialed my number and made the call. He didn’t even remember that he had used the cell phone, hadn’t mentioned it when he told me the story, would probably swear he had used the regular phone, but he was mistaken, and here was the proof. It was a simple enough explanation, and it would certainly calm Detective Breger’s concerns, and so all I had to do was give him the fax.

Except I couldn’t. Because then I’d have to explain why a phone registered in my name, with the bills going to my home, was in that house the night of the murder. And I’d have to explain all the calls made to my number, and all the calls registered going from my number to that phone, all also listed and on the record. And with that explanation I’d surely be off the case as an attorney. Off the case as an attorney, yes, but still on as a witness or, more precisely, as a suspect. Ah, there it was, the foul root of the problem. If Guy’s unthinking, nonsensical act was discovered, I’d be a suspect. I’d be a suspect that could be used by any competent defense attorney to raise doubt, maybe even reasonable doubt. Wasn’t it I who was having a deceitful relationship with the deceased? Wasn’t it I who had possession of the gun until I dropped it in the laps of the police? Wasn’t it I who had lied about everything so that I could stay on the case as defense attorney to lay blame at the feet of the innocent Guy Forrest? The closing as much as wrote itself. How ironic that I might, in the end, be Guy’s route to freedom. What I held in my
hand was reasonable doubt as to Guy’s guilt, except I knew I didn’t do it, and I knew Guy did, and so I had to be sure that no one, no one, would ever be able to see this record.

I’d have to burn it.

I opened my office window and took an old pack of matches out of my desk drawer. Just a little fire, nothing to set off the sprinklers, I hoped, just a little fire. I lit a match. A breath of wind came through the window and killed it. I lit another and placed the flame at the document’s corner. Just as it was catching, just as the blue flame turned yellow and began to curl the three pieces of paper, I noticed something.

I tried to blow out the flame, but it grew and began to devour the pages. I dropped them to the floor and stamped, stamped, stamped out the fire. The office smelled like a cigar bar. I picked up the now blackened documents. Half of each sheet was gone, on the other halves the printing could barely be discerned. But barely was enough.

There were calls on the phone made to two strange numbers. Calls made every other afternoon or so. To a number in area code 304 and then to a number in area code 702. I grabbed my phone book. Area code 304 was West Virginia, Hailey’s home state. That made sense, calls to family or an old friend. But what about the number in the other area code. 702. Nevada. Who was she calling in Nevada?

“Desert Winds, how can I direct your call?”

“Desert Winds?” I said into the phone. “What exactly is Desert Winds?”

“Desert Winds is a full-care retirement community in Henderson, Nevada, just minutes outside exciting Las Vegas. Are you interested in a brochure? I could direct your call to Sales.”

“No, not quite yet. Do the residents have phones in their rooms?”

“Of course. Do you know the member’s extension?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m calling about a woman named Hailey Prouix. P-r-o-u-i-x.”

“One moment while I check, please. No, I’m sorry, there is no member by that name.”

“Member?”

“At Desert Winds we treat all our guests as if they are members of a very exclusive club.”

“Are there any members named Prouix?”

“No, not currently.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Are you sure I can’t direct you to Sales?”

“Do you have shuffleboard?”

“Oh, yes, tournaments and everything.”

“Well, in that case, maybe a brochure would be just the thing.”