Moment of Truth (5 page)

“Let’s not talk right now. I’m worried you’re gonna get a migraine.”

“No, I want to know.”

“Okay.” Trevor sighed and rubbed her shoulder. “Well, she started in on you about not gaining weight, something about retaining water, whatever that is.” He sighed heavily. “And you started yelling at her and when you told her, she hit you and kicked you. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Paige tried to remember the scene. She saw herself on the floor of the dining room, rolling away from her mother’s foot. “She kicked me, okay, and yelled. She wouldn’t stop.”

“I tried to pull her off you but I couldn’t. Then, well, it was like you just went crazy. You went after her.” Trevor’s voice grew hushed. “I never saw you like that. You’ve never
been
like that. You were completely out of control. You were raging. It was like it got to you all at once or something, and you picked up the knife. Remember the knife, from the table?”

“Yes.” Paige shut her eyes to the memory. The knife. It was the knife they always used for filet. How could she have done this? Killed her mother? Was she crazy? Was she a horrible person? How could she do such a thing? She shouldn’t have done the crystal. She burst into new tears, and Trevor held her close again as she sobbed. “Oh my God, I can’t believe it. My own mother. I … killed her.”

“Don’t think about it, now. Just relax.” His arms encircled her shoulders, wrapping her in a warm, woolly cocoon. “It’s not your fault. She’s been so miserable to you. You couldn’t help it.”

Paige listened to his quiet words as the K finally came on. Her breathing slowed. The craziness of the crystal disappeared. Calm crept through her body. Her emotions grew remote, as if they didn’t belong to her, but her eyes still stung from crying and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She imagined she looked like hell. She’d studied her face like other kids study French. Trevor massaged her shoulders, loosening the muscles, easing the pressure on her head. Once he had prevented a migraine, just by giving her a massage. He took better care of her than her mother ever had.

“That’s it, that’s my girl,” he said, kneading her shoulder.

Paige heard him but her attention was focused on the pictures in her mind, filtering through her consciousness. Not a kaleidoscope anymore, but a book of photographs, one after the other, as if she were thumbing through her own portfolio. Her face in soft light. In backlight. With too little sleep or too many drugs. She was floating now.

“You all right?” Trevor’s hands moved to her nape, slipping under her hair. “You better?”

“Definitely,” Paige heard herself whisper. The photos in her mind portfolio morphed into her mother. Her mother in Mikimoto pearls. In DKNY sunglasses. With Estée Lauder eye cream. Her mother was a collection of brand names. Paige smiled inside, drifting. She looked like her mother, everyone said so. Her mother’s eye cream evaporated and her blue eyes became Paige’s blue eyes. Then her mother’s face got younger and younger and turned black.

“Babe, you there? Anybody home?”

Paige nodded, smoothing her cheeks to relax them, like her mother had taught her. Her mother was never a model; she was a deb. Her mother had made her into a model. When she was little, she was in diaper ads, then newspaper layouts and catalog work. This year, her mother was trying to get them a shot in
YM
magazine. A sudden fear disturbed Paige’s floating. “What if the police are on their way? I mean, they’ll be looking for me.”

“No, they won’t. Don’t worry.” Trevor held her closer. “They don’t know you exist. You don’t even live there anymore. How would they even find you?”

“You’re right, they can’t.” Paige squeezed his arm and it felt like an oak tree. What would she do without him? She got that giddy feeling, kind of horny, that she sometimes got with K. “I love you, Trev.”

“I love you, too. We’re gonna get through this together.”

Paige looked up at him with gratitude. She remembered that he had made her wash up after, at a gas station on the way home. He had told her to get the knife but she’d forgotten it, and he hadn’t even yelled. “I’m worried about the knife, Trev. Can they get fingerprints from it, like on TV?”

“No, I don’t think so. They have to match them to fingerprints they have on file, I think. They don’t have your fingerprints at the police station. You’ve never been arrested or anything.”

“What do we do if the cops come?” she asked, but the question sounded like it came from someone else. Someone inside was asking; whoever kept you breathing in and out. She had learned it from her science tutor before winter break; the automatic nervous system? “I mean, what do I say? I was supposed to have dinner at my parents’.”

“The cops don’t know that, and if they do, just say you were supposed to go over but you didn’t. Maybe you can say you had a migraine.”

“But what if somebody saw me leave?” Paige closed her eyes and leaned her head back in the soft chair, the drug overwhelming her fear. “That pimply guy at the desk or one of my neighbors?”

“It was the old guy at the desk and he was dozin’ again. I didn’t sign in, and nobody was out in this weather. Besides, this place has three hundred apartments. Nobody notices what you and I do.”

“What if they arrest me?” Paige said the words, but it didn’t seem like it could really happen. Not to her. Nothing could happen to her. She was above the clouds. “What if … they put me in jail?”

“Why would they even suspect you? As far as the cops know, you haven’t seen your mother all day. The last time you saw her was yesterday at the Bonner shoot. She’d been drinking again, you said.”

“Like tonight.” Her mother had been wasted when Paige got home. Then screaming, fighting. When Paige had picked up the knife, her mother had dropped her glass. Scotch had flown from the tumbler in a golden rope, like a noose. Then Paige realized something. “Wait. What about my father?”

“Your father?”

“Sure. He must have come home and found her. He was supposed to be at dinner.” Paige had almost forgotten about him because he hadn’t been in her life much until this past year. Her mother had managed her, and her father had his work. He used to spend all his time handling the family’s legal matters, until Paige had finally told him she’d had enough of her mother and wanted to move out. It was like it woke him up. “I called him today at work, and he said he’d be there. He even said to leave you home, to come alone to dinner. I told him I would. He said he would see me at seven.”

“So your father comes home and sees your mother on the floor. What will he do?”

“I don’t know, how am I supposed to know?” Paige heard her voice get high as a little kid’s. It kept her out of commercials and her voice coach hadn’t been able to get her to lower her register. It drove her mother crazy.

“Will he think you did it?”

“Maybe,” she said slowly, and Trevor looked worried for her.

“Will he turn you in?”

Paige didn’t know her father very well, but she knew the answer. “Never,” she said.

The interview room in the basement of the Roundhouse was rectangular and airless, a dingy bank of cubicles where attorneys met with clients. Grimy wood paneling covered the walls, which were plastered with curling notices in English and Spanish. The no smoking sign bore a cigarette burn, the ceiling sagged around the brown water stain in the corner, and the blue-gray paint on the interview cubicles was covered with pen marks. Phone numbers tattooed its surface and the largest scrawling read GLORIA LOVES SMOKEY, TLF.

There were no other lawyers there except Mary and Judy, and they sat on one side of a smudgy sheet of bulletproof plastic while Jack Newlin was brought in on the other. He was so attractive that Mary felt herself straighten involuntarily when she saw him. Newlin was tall, broad-shouldered, and well built; comfortable with himself in an attractive way and handsome but for the anxiety straining his features. A furrowed brow hooded light blue eyes and crow’s-feet wrinkled their corners, tugging his expression down into a frown. His full mouth was a flat line, and a shadow the color of driftwood marred his strong jaw. But Jack Newlin was a man who wore even stubble well. He reminded Mary of Kevin Costner, only smart.

“Thanks for coming, ladies,” Newlin said, sitting down. Handcuffs linked his wrists in front of him against a white paper jumpsuit. “But you both really didn’t have to bother. I only need one lawyer. Which of you answered the telephone?”

“We both talked to you,” Mary answered. She introduced herself, then Judy to her right. “For a murder case, we work as a team.”

“I appreciate that, but I won’t be needing a team. Who did I talk to first on the phone? Was that you, Mary?”

“Uh, yes.” Mary looked at Judy, who gave her a go-ahead nod. Still Mary didn’t want to go ahead. “But I can’t handle this case alone, Mr. Newlin. I don’t have much experience with homicide cases, not as much as Bennie Rosato or lots of other lawyers in town.”

Newlin smiled easily. “First, please call me Jack. Secondly, you answered my questions honestly on the phone, as you are now, and I don’t need a lawyer with decades of experience. I want you to be my lawyer.”

Mary felt her neck flush at the praise. That it came from a total hunk gave her a charge she couldn’t quite ignore. “Mr. Newlin, Jack—”

“This will be a simple case. I won’t need much fire-power. I intend to plead guilty. The truth is, I killed my wife. I did it.”

Mary fell momentarily speechless. Had she heard him right? His words hung between them in the air. “You did it?” she repeated, in shock.

“Yes. The police questioned me and I told them everything. I confessed.”

Mary met his gaze, and though she had never looked into the eyes of a murderer, she didn’t expect them to be so gorgeous. Of course, Ted Bundy had gorgeous eyes, too. Maybe gorgeous eyes should be on the killer profile. “Slow up a minute,” she said, trying to get her bearings. “You spoke to the police? Why?”

“I was wrong, I guess. Disoriented. Thought I could answer a few questions and be done with it. I know it was stupid. I called them from the scene. Maybe it was the Scotch.”

“Scotch?” Mary would never have pegged him for a drinker.

“Maybe it’s best if I tell you what happened, from the beginning?”

“Hold on, are you drunk now?”

“No. Hardly.”

“Were you drunk when you spoke to the police?”

“Not at all. I had only a few drinks.”

“How many?”

“Two, I think. I feel fine. Does it matter, legally?”

Mary had no idea. “Yes, it does. That’s why I asked. Now, go on, tell us what you told them.” She fumbled for her briefcase and dug around for a ballpoint and a fresh legal pad. “Let me just get it down,” she said, uncapping her pen as he started to talk. She recorded everything he said while Judy listened silently. When he was finished, Mary asked, “Did you tell all of this to the police?”

“Yes, I told them everything.”

“Did they read you your Miranda warnings?”

“Yes. They gave me a waiver sheet, too. Two sheets, which I signed and answered.”

Mary glanced at Judy, who shook her head. Trouble. “I think that means it’s a valid confession. Did they take down what you said?”

“Yes, and they videotaped me.”

“What else did they do?” She knew only the TV basics of police procedure. The law according to Steven Bochco.

“Fingerprinted me. Took a hair and skin sample. They took pictures of me, in my suit, and of my hands. There’s a cut on my hand from the knife. They took twelve pictures of it, I think. They took my clothes, because they had blood on them. They scraped samples of my wife’s blood off my hands and clothes.”

Mary was appalled, but hid it. Even a short legal career had perfected her false face. “You had your wife’s blood on you?”

“Yes.” He glanced away, and Mary noticed that when he looked up, he didn’t meet her eye. “Also they wrote up a statement, but I didn’t sign it.”

Mary’s pen paused over the paper. “I don’t understand. You confessed, but you didn’t sign the statement?”

“Yes, and I asked to call a lawyer.”

“Why confess,
then
call a lawyer?”

“I changed my mind. All of a sudden, I wasn’t sure I should confess. I realized maybe I couldn’t represent myself. I had thought I could handle it, being a lawyer myself, at Tribe.”

“You’re a lawyer at
Tribe
?” she asked, shocked. Tribe & Wright was law-firm royalty, almost as pretentious as Stalling & Webb, where she and Judy used to work. Jack Newlin had to be very smart, so why had he acted so stupidly? And violently? It didn’t square.