Key Witness (25 page)

“Well, I hope you’re right,” his partner said. “Because in a situation like this there’s no prize for second. We’re talking experience in this particular field, for which there is no substitute.”

“You’re wrong,” Wyatt responded. “All Walcott’s horses and all Walcott’s men have plenty of experience and they couldn’t do the job for Marvin White that I’m going to do, not if they stood on their heads on the Fourth of July and spat out rubies, pearls, and diamonds. And do you know why? Because I’ve got something better. I’ve got passion.” He pointed to his heart. “You can’t buy my passion for this case.”

W
YATT’S MEETING WITH WALCOTT
later in the day, if not sweet, was mercifully short. “I’m going to do a great job with this,” Wyatt said, “and I assume I’ll have your full backing and the full backing of your department.”

“We’ll do whatever we can,” Walcott said evenly. He had not offered his hand in greeting, nor had he risen in his chair. “It won’t be like what you’re used to,” he cautioned Wyatt. “We have our limits, financial and manpower-wise, but we’re all here for the client. Just like you.”

“That’s all I ask,” Wyatt responded. “Obviously, I’ll run everything by you.”

“Yes.”

“I know I won’t have a lot of full-time staff helping me,” Wyatt continued, “but I would like Josephine’s services on an exclusive basis.”

Walcott stiffened. “As much as possible, yes,” he answered noncommittally.

“It’s a capital case.”

“If you feel you need her on a full-time basis …”

“Look,” Wyatt said, feeling his temper rise and trying to keep it in check. “Let’s quit pussyfooting around, okay? You got your feelings hurt this morning. I’m sorry about that but it’s history now. I’m asking you for one lousy person to be assigned to this. I’ll scrounge for the rest of it, like everyone around here has to do.”

“All right.” Walcott folded his arms magisterially across his bantam chest. “You can have Josephine.”

“Thank you.” Wyatt reached his hand across the desk. “We don’t have to be friends, but it’ll be deadly for Marvin White if we’re enemies.”

Walcott took the offered hand. “You’re right.”

“And I know you’ll make sure the rest of this department feels the same way.”

“No one here is going to be your enemy.”

N
O ONE WAS HOME. WYATT
changed into his running gear. There was still enough light to get in a half-hour run. He stretched in the driveway, feeling his quads and hamstrings start to loosen. Punching the timer on his watch, he started an easy, comfortable jog, circling around the back of his house.

Normally Wyatt ran on the county road. It was little traveled because it didn’t go anywhere except to the houses that were set off from it, and he could run as fast as he wanted without worrying about his footing. Occasionally, though, he would go to the end of his property line, behind his pool house, and take off into the woods that abutted his lot, running along a narrow fire road that meandered through the undeveloped area for dozens of miles. The road had been cut through the woods by a state agency to facilitate firefighters in case they ever had to get back there in an emergency. In all the time Wyatt had lived here, over a dozen years now, there had never been an occasion for a fire company to use it; but it was cleared out once a year, at the end of winter, to make sure it was usable, just in case.

The road, hard-packed dirt with a thin covering of gravel, was peaked in the center, so it drained well. Along the edges there were random pools of water from the earlier rain, but in the middle it was dry enough, easy to navigate. Here and there deep root-systems from old-growth trees would break through the road, so you had to watch your step, but he had run and walked and biked it enough that he knew where the problem areas were. The road was flat for the most part; where there were grades they were gradual, gentle slopes, so it wasn’t like a normal trail through the woods, where you were constantly going up and down and you had to keep a sharp eye out for your footing.

These woods—it was more like a forest, the growth was so dense in most places—went on for miles. He ran at an easy, comfortable pace, sweating out the negative garbage through his pores, thinking about the day’s events. He had pulled off some bold moves: manipulating Marvin White and his mother so that he, Wyatt, stayed on the case—an act of muscle, guts, and bravado. And pulling rank on Walcott, which he hadn’t been particularly subtle about.

He was okay with that, because he was doing this for the right reason. He was going to defend Marvin White with every breath he drew, and he didn’t need to apologize to anyone about it.

He’d only had one misgiving, which had come to him late in the day as he was driving home: he had to go through with this now. He had to follow it to the end—the train had left the station and there was no getting off. For a moment, sitting there in the cocoon the Jaguar provided against the world, he’d panicked, his butt literally had puckered up; but that had passed almost as fast as it had come. That was the point. He wanted to have to take this all the way. This was what he had been preparing for, for twenty-five years.

Snatches of Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which he had memorized in a high school English class, flitted through his head as he ran. “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep. …” He gazed up at the trees alongside the pathway as he ran, thick stands of hardwoods, hickory and maple and cherry. Miles and miles of trees, thick, lush fern-growth underneath, heavy gnarly bush, berry and poison ivy, roots, mushrooms, native grasses. Everything green, lush, the smells of wet black dirt pungent in his nostrils as he pressed on, stride following stride. The humidity was high because of the rain; he sweated through his singlet and shorts and all down his arms, under his arms, between his legs, his brow, his neck. He should have worn a sweatband, he thought, rubbing his forearm against his eyes and forehead to clear the salty moisture off.

He was so free here, he could run forever, and he thought then of Marvin White, who was in a nine-by-six-foot jail cell, three paces long, confined like an animal in a cage, which was the point—that’s exactly what he was.

The sun set and he ran in the soft light of dusk, emerging onto his property as it was getting too dark to see anymore. Sticking his head in the pool to cool down, he slicked his hair back and went in the house through the back door.

Moira and Michaela were in the kitchen preparing dinner: take-out lasagna, garlic bread, and Caesar salad. Cloris was off, so it would be the three of them. Wyatt realized they hardly ever ate as a family anymore; Michaela wasn’t home at dinnertime usually—she either ate earlier by herself and then went out to study with friends, or she and her friends would grab a quick pizza somewhere.

“Hey,” he said, giving them each a lean-over kiss so he wouldn’t drip on them. “Where have you two been?”

“Here and there,” Moira answered gaily. She was in a good mood, he was glad to see. Mother and daughter looked at each other and shared a smile, from which he was definitely excluded.

“What’s the secret?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Moira assured him. “Just girl stuff. Jump in the shower, we can eat anytime.”

They ate in the kitchen. He opened a cheap bottle of Chianti, which they drank from tumblers. Michaela had a Coke and talked about her day. She was writing away to colleges with the help of her adviser; she would take her exploratory trip pretty soon. She definitely wanted to be in the East, and she was thinking about an all-women’s college, Smith or Wellesley. She’d check out Bryn Mawr, too. Brown was still her first choice, but she wanted to look at other schools. Wherever it was, it had to be near where she could dance.

“And how was your day, darling?” Moira asked pleasantly, turning to Wyatt.

He washed down a mouthful of lasagna with a swig of wine. “I came close to quitting the Public Defender’s today,” he told them. “It’s not a good situation. We’re oil and water—they don’t like some ‘hotshot’ coming in and stealing their thunder.”

Moira beamed. Holding her glass high, she said, “I’ll drink to that.”

She didn’t hear me, he thought, his heart sinking. She’s pulling the wool over her own eyes.

Michaela looked at him. “Why would you do that, Daddy? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He put his glass down. “It is. But I don’t fit in there.” He spread his hands, a gesture of resignation. “I’m on a different level professionally than they are, sweetie, and we’re having a hard time finding common ground.”

She nodded. “But you wouldn’t get to do what you want,” she said with concern. “Defend that murder suspect.”

“I know,” he answered her. “That’s why I decided to stick it out.”

Moira, who was helping herself to a little more lasagna, dropped her utensils and stared at him. “You’re not going to quit?” Her voice was shaking. “Then what was the point of even bringing it up?”

“You asked me how my day went,” he reminded her.

She spoke slowly, under strong control. “Why are you still doing this? Why are you working on this murder?”

“Because I want to.” The room was quiet. “Because I have to.”

She stood up and walked out of the room. “Moira,” he called after her. He put his own knife and fork down. “Fuck”—under his breath.

Michaela watched with a sense of nervousness coupled with excitement. Her father was defending the Alley Slasher. The kids in her school were going to freak.

“I wish I could make this right by her,” he said sadly to his daughter.

She touched his hand with hers. A light touch, no heavier than the alighting of a butterfly. What a womanly gesture, he thought.

He looked at her. She was seventeen years old. She was, in fact, a woman.

“It’s okay, Dad. She’ll come around. She’s always supported you in everything you’ve done.” She smiled—the child parent to the father. “You’ll see. It’ll all be fine.”

They lay in bed side by side. Not touching. Moira stared at the patterns of the curtains on the ceiling lit by the three-quarters moon that was moving in the breeze from the barely open window.

“I feel like I don’t know you anymore,” she told him, her eyes staring up ahead, not to the side where he lay.

“I’m the same man I always was.”

“No, you’re not. You’ve always been aggressive but I never thought you were reckless.”

“I’m defending a man in a trial. What I’ve always done.”

“No. You’re trying to help a killer get loose so he can go back into society and kill again. I hate what you’re doing, Wyatt. The thought that anyone would do it sets me on edge, but that it’s my own husband … I don’t know where to go with this, how I’m supposed to react.”

He didn’t answer her. Anything he said would only provoke further argument. He was going to have to let this take its normal course. Over time she’d understand why he was doing it, and that it was all right to do it. More than all right, the right thing. “I love you,” he said instead.

“That’s good,” she replied, “but life is more complicated than that.”

How long had they been married now? Almost twenty-three years. It had been an easy life. He had always had a good job, they never feared for anything. Everything had gone on an upward curve. Where was this anger coming from, he thought, this irrational fear? It wasn’t like he’d lost a job, as was happening to so many men his age recently, including some of his college classmates, or committed a crime, or had an affair, or become an alcoholic, or …

“Life is change,” he said. “Life is challenge.”

“I like our life as it is. We have a wonderful life. I don’t want it to change. We’re not kids anymore, Wyatt. I like the path we’re on. I don’t want to start anew.”

He reached over and took her hand. She was still a young woman. What was there to be afraid of? “Nothing’s going to change. Nothing important.”

“It already has.” She withdrew her hand and rolled over onto her side, her back to him.

After he was sure she’d fallen asleep he got out of bed, quietly put on sweatpants and sweatshirt, and left the room. He went downstairs, let himself out the back door, and in the moonlight walked across the yard to the pool house.

His trombone sat where he’d left it on its stand in the corner. He opened the slide, sprayed some water in it, blew a few easy first-position F’s to freshen his lip. Softly he started in on a ballad, “Yesterday,” letting the vibrato resonate in the old-fashioned Tommy Dorsey swing style. The notes came out of the end of his horn like bubbles from a child’s water pipe, fat and round and lush, filling the room with the sad sweetness he could feel in his heart for his wife.

J
OSEPHINE WAS ALREADY AT
the office when Wyatt arrived at a quarter to eight the next morning. She handed him the
New York Times.
“I called your secretary,” she explained as she handed him the paper. “She said you can’t get started until you’ve had the
Times.
Wanted to make you feel at home.”

“Don’t start spoiling me,” he warned her, “or I’ll come to expect it.” Setting his briefcase on his desk, he started to take off his raincoat.

“Another thing,” she told him, “before you get too comfortable, this isn’t your office anymore. The boss wants you to have a bigger space. More room, more quiet. You’re doing the office’s biggest case, so you need a better office.” She grabbed his briefcase. “Follow me.”

She led him through the maze, through a fire door, up a flight of service stairs, to a series of single cubicles that occupied a floor that seemed to be used for storage—there were rows and rows of old files stacked almost to the ceiling. Unlocking one of the doors, she spread out her arms. “It ain’t what you’re accustomed to, but at least you’ll have privacy. Technically this floor isn’t supposed to be used because of fire regulations, but …” She shrugged.

The room was small, about one-fifth the square footage of his own office. And there didn’t seem to be anyone else up here. Still, it was a one-person office, with walls that went all the way to the ceiling and a small window that looked out onto the brick exterior of the adjoining building, ten feet away.