The Innocent (5 page)

In the end he'd been forced to betray what he had always believed in, the liberal suburban lie about skin color not mattering. In prison, skin color was all that mattered. Out here, in a whole different way, it mattered just as much.

His gaze glided over the scenery. It got snagged on an interesting chunk of graffiti. On a wall of chipped brick, someone had spray-painted two words in four-foot-high letters:

BITCHES LIE!

Normally Matt would not stop and study something like this. Today he did. The letters were red and slanted. Even if you couldn't read, you could feel the rage here. Matt wondered about the creator- what inspired him to write this. He wondered if this act of vandalism had diluted the creator's wrath- or been the first step toward greater destruction.

He walked toward Eva's building. Pastor Jill's car, a fully loaded Mercedes 560, was there. One of her sons stood guard with his arms crossed, his face set on scowl. Matt's eyes started their sweep again. The neighbors were out and about. One small child of maybe two sat atop an old lawn mower. His mother was using it as a stroller. She muttered to herself and looked strung out. People stared at Matt- a white man was not unfamiliar here but still a curiosity.

Pastor Jill's sons glared as he approached. The street went quiet, like in a Western. The people were ready for a showdown.

Matt said, "How are you doing?"

The brothers might have been twins. One kept up the stare. The other started loading Eva's belongings into the trunk. Matt did not blink. He kept smiling and walking.

"I'd like you to stop that now."

Crossed-Tree-Trunk-Arms said, "Who are you?"

Pastor Jill came out. She looked over at Matt and scowled too.

"You can't throw her out," Matt said.

Pastor Jill gave him the high-and-mighty. "I own this residence."

"No, the state owns it. You claim it's charitable housing for the city's youths."

"Eva didn't follow the rules."

"What rules are those?"

"We are a religious institution. We have a strict moral code here. Eva here broke it."

"How?"

Pastor Jill smiled. "I'm not sure that's any of your concern. May I ask your name?"

Her two sons exchanged a glance. One put down Eva's stuff. They turned toward him.

Matt pointed at Pastor Jill's Mercedes. "Sweet wheels."

The brothers frowned and strolled toward him. One cracked his neck as he strutted. The other opened and closed fists. Matt felt his blood hum. Strangely enough the death of Stephen McGrath- the "slip"- hadn't made him fearful of violence. Perhaps if he had been more aggressive that night, not less… but that wasn't what mattered now. He had learned a valuable lesson about physical confrontations: You can predict nothing. Sure, whoever lands the first blow usually wins. The bigger man was usually victorious too. But once it got going, once the red tornado took hold of the combatants, anything could happen.

The Neck Cracker said, "Who are you?" again.

Matt would not risk it. He sighed and took out his camera phone. "I'm Bob Smiley, Channel Nine News."

That stopped them.

He pointed the camera in their direction and pretended to turn it on. "If you don't mind, I'm going to film what you're doing here. The Channel Nine News van will be here for clearer shots in three minutes."

The brothers looked back at their mother. Pastor Jill's face broke into a beatific albeit phony smile.

"We're helping Eva move," she said. "To better quarters."

"Uh huh."

"But if she'd rather just stay here…"

"She'd rather stay here," Matt said.

"Milo, move her things back into the apartment."

Milo, the Neck Cracker, gave Matt the fish eye. Matt held up the camera. "Hold that pose, Milo." Milo and Fist Flex started to take the stuff out of the van. Pastor Jill hurried to her Mercedes and waited in the back. Eva looked down at Matt from the window and mouthed a thank-you. Matt nodded and turned away.

It was then, turning away, not really looking at anything, that Matt saw the gray Ford Taurus.

The car was idling about thirty yards behind him. Matt froze. Gray Ford Tauruses were plentiful, of course, perhaps the most popular car in the country. Seeing two in a day would hardly be uncommon. Matt figured that there was probably another Ford Taurus on this very block. Maybe two or three. And he would not be surprised to learn that another one might even be gray.

But would it have a license plate that started with MLH, so close to his own initials of MKH?

His eyes stayed glued to the license plate.

MLH-472.

The same car he'd seen outside his office.

Matt tried to keep his breathing even. It could, he knew, be nothing more than a coincidence. Taking a step back, that was indeed a strong possibility. A person could see the same car twice in a day. He was only, what, half a mile away from his office. This was a fairly congested neighborhood. There was no big shock here.

On a normal day- check that: On pretty much
any
other day- Matt would have let that logic win him over.

But not today. He hesitated, but not for very long. Then he headed toward the car.

"Hey," Milo shouted, "where you going?"

"Just keep unloading, big man."

Matt hadn't moved five steps when the front wheels of the Ford Taurus started to angle themselves to move out of the spot. Matt hurried his pace.

Without warning, the Taurus jumped forward and cut across the street. The white taillights came on and the car jerked back. Matt realized that the driver planned on making a K turn. The driver hit the brake and turned the steering wheel hard and fast. Matt was only a few feet from the back window.

Matt yelled, "Wait!"- as if that would do any good- and broke into a sprint. He leapt in front of the car.

Bad move.

The Taurus's tire grabbed gravel, made a little shriek, and shot toward him.

There was no slowdown, no hesitation. Matt jumped to the side. The Taurus accelerated. Matt was off the ground now, horizontal. The bumper clipped his ankle. A burst of pain exploded through the bone. The momentum swung Matt around in midair. He landed face-first and tucked into a roll. He ended up on his back.

For a few moments Matt lay there blinking into the sunlight. People gathered around him. "You all right?" someone asked. He nodded and sat up. He checked his ankle. Bruised hard but no break. Someone helped him to his feet.

The whole thing- from the moment he saw the car to the moment it tried to run him down- had maybe taken five, maybe ten seconds. Certainly no more. Matt stared off.

Someone had been- at the very least- following him.

He checked his pocket. The cell phone was still there. He limped back toward Eva's apartment. Pastor Jill and her sons were gone. He checked to make sure Eva was okay. Then he got into his own car and took a deep breath. He thought about what to do and realized that the first step was fairly obvious.

He dialed her private line number. When Cingle answered, he asked, "You in your office?"

"Yup," Cingle said.

"I'll be there in five minutes."

AS SOON AS COUNTY HOMICIDE INVESTIGATOR Loren Muse opened her apartment door, the waft of cigarette smoke attacked. Loren let it. She stood there and sucked in a deep breath.

Her garden apartment was on Morris Avenue in Union, New Jersey. She never understood the term "garden." The place was a pit- all brick, no personality, and nothing resembling green. This was New Jersey's version of purgatory, a way station, the place people stayed on the way up or down economic and social ladders. Young couples lived here until they could afford the house. Unlucky pensioners returned here after the kids flew the coop.

And, of course, single women on the verge of old-maidhood who worked too hard and entertained too little- they ended up here too.

Loren was thirty-four years old, a serial dater who, to quote her cigarette-toting mother who was currently on the couch, "never closed the sale." The cop-thing worked liked that. It initially attracted men and then sent them scurrying when the commitment-aka-expiration date approached. She was currently dating a guy named Pete whom her mother labeled a "total loser," and Loren had trouble arguing with that assessment.

Her two cats, Oscar and Felix, were nowhere in sight, but that was normal. Her mother, the lovely Carmen Valos Muse Brewster Whatever, lay sprawled on the couch watching
Jeopardy!
She watched the show nearly every day and had never gotten a question right.

"Hey," Loren said.

"This place is a pigsty," her mother said.

"Then clean it. Or better yet, move out."

Carmen had recently split with Husband Four. Her mother was a good-looking woman- far better looking than the plain daughter who'd taken after her suicidal father. Still sexy, though now it was in a sort of sloppy-seconds way. Her looks were starting to droop, but she still landed better dates than Loren. Men loved Carmen Valos Muse Etcetera.

Carmen turned back to the television and took another deep puff of the cigarette.

Loren said, "I told you a thousand times not to smoke in here."

"You smoke."

"No, Ma, I quit."

Carmen turned the big browns in her direction, blinking seductively out of habit. "You quit?"

"Yes."

"Oh, come on. Two months? That's not quitting."

"It's five months."

"Still. Didn't you smoke in here?"

"So?"

"So what's the big deal? It's not like the smell is gone or anything. It's not like this is one of those fancy no-smoking hotel rooms. Right?"

Her mother gave her the familiar judgmental eye, sizing Loren up the way she always did and finding her wanting the way she always did. Loren waited for the inevitable "just trying to help" beauty tip: Your hair could use some shape, you should wear something clingier, why do you have to look like a boy, have you seen the new push-up bras at Victoria's Secret, would a little makeup kill you, short girls should never go out without heels…

Carmen's mouth opened and the phone rang.

"Hold that thought," Loren said.

She picked up the receiver.

"Yo, Squirt, it's
moi
."

"Moi"
was Eldon Teak, a sixty-two-year-old Caucasian grandfather who only listened to rap music. Eldon was also the Essex County medical examiner.

"What's up, Eldon?"

"You catch the Stacked Nun case?"

"That's what you're calling it?"

"Until we come up with something funnier. I liked Our Lady with the Valley or Mount Saint Mountains, but no one else did."

She gently rubbed her eyes with an index finger and thumb. "You got something for me?"

"I do."

"Like?"

"Like the death wasn't accidental."

"She was murdered?"

"Yup. Pillow over the face."

"God, how the hell did they miss that?"

"How the hell did who miss that?"

"Wasn't she originally listed as death by natural causes?"

"Yes."

"Well, Eldon, see, that's what I mean when I say, how the hell did they miss that?"

"And I asked you who you meant."

"Whoever originally examined her."

"No one originally examined her. That's the point."

"Why not?"

"You're kidding, right?"

"No. I mean, shouldn't that have shown up right away?"

"You watch too much TV. Every day zillions of people die, right? Wife finds the husband dead on the floor. You think we do an autopsy? You think we check to see if it's murder? Most of the time cops don't even come in. My old man croaked, what, ten years ago. My mom called the funeral home, a doc declares him dead, they pick him up. That's how it normally works, you know that. So here a nun dies, looks like natural causes to anyone who doesn't know exactly what to look for. I would have never gotten her on the table if your Mother Superior doesn't say something."

"You sure it was a pillow?"

"Yup. Pillow in her room, matter of fact. Plenty of fibers in the throat."

"How about under her fingernails?"

"They're clean."

"Isn't that unusual?"

"Depends."

Loren shook her head, tried to put it together. "You have an ID?"

"An ID on what?"

"On the victim?"

"I thought she was Sister Silicon or something. What do we need an ID for?"

Loren checked her watch. "How much longer are you in the office?"

"Another two hours," Eldon Teak said.

"I'm on my way."

HERE IS HOW you find your soul mate.

It is spring break your freshman year of college. Most of your friends head down to Daytona Beach, but your high school bud Rick has a mother in the travel business. She gets you super-low rates to Vegas, so you and six friends go for a five-night stay at the Flamingo Hotel.

On the last night, you head to a nightclub at Caesars Palace because you hear it's supposed to be a great hangout for coeds on vacation. The nightclub, no surprise, is noisy and crowded. There is too much neon. It is not your scene. You are with your friends, trying to hear them over the loud crush of music, when you look across the bar.

That is when you see Olivia for the first time.

No, the music doesn't stop or segue to angelic harps. But something happens to you. You look at her and feel it in your chest, a warm twang, and you can see that she feels it too.

You are normally shy, not good with approaches, but tonight you can do no wrong. You make your way over to her and introduce yourself. We all have special nights like this, you think. You're at a party and you see a beautiful girl and she's looking at you and you start talking and you just click in a way that makes you think about lifetimes instead of one-nights.

You talk to her. You talk for hours. She looks at you as if you're the only person in the world. You go somewhere quieter. You kiss her. She responds. You start to make out. You make out all night and have no real desire to push it any further. You hold her. You talk some more. You love her laugh. You love her face. You love everything about her.

You fall asleep in each other's arms, fully clothed, and you wonder if you will ever be this happy again. Her hair smells like lilacs and berries. You will never forget that smell.

You'd do anything to make this last, but you know it won't. These sorts of interactions aren't built for the long term. You have a life, and Olivia has a "serious" boyfriend, a fiancé really, back home. This isn't about that. It is about the two of you, your own world, for just too brief a time. You pack a small life span into that night, a complete cycle of courtship, relationship, breakup into those few hours.

In the end, you will go back to your life and she'll go back to hers.

You don't bother trading phone numbers- neither one of you wants to pretend like that- but she takes you to the airport and you passionately kiss good-bye. Her eyes are wet when you release her. You return to school.

You go on, of course, but you never quite forget her or that night or the way it felt to kiss her or the smell of her hair. She stays with you. You think of her. Not every day, maybe not even every week. But she's there. The memory is something you take out every now and then, when you're feeling alone, and you don't know if it comforts or stings.

You wonder if she ever does the same.

Eleven years pass. You don't see her in all that time.

You are no longer the same person, of course. The death of Stephen McGrath had set you off the rails. You have spent time in prison. But you're free now. Your life has been given back to you, you guess. You work at the Carter Sturgis law firm.

One day you sign onto the computer and Google her name.

You know it is stupid and immature. You realize that she probably married the fiancé, has three or four kids by now, maybe taken her husband's name. But this is harmless. You will take it no further. You are simply curious.

There are several Olivia Murrays.

You search a little deeper and find one that might be her. This Olivia Murray is the sales director for DataBetter, a consulting business that designs computer systems for small-to-midsize companies. DataBetter's Web site has employee biographies. Hers is brief but it does mention that she is a graduate of the University of Virginia. That was where your Olivia Murray was going when you met all those years ago.

You try to forget about it.

You are not one who believes in fate or kismet- just the opposite- but six months later, the partners at Carter Sturgis decide that the firm's computer system needs to be overhauled. Midlife knows that you learned about computer programming during your tenure in prison. He suggests that you be on the committee to develop a new office network. You suggest several firms come in and make bids.

One of those firms is DataBetter.

Two people from DataBetter arrive at the offices of Carter Sturgis. You are in a panic. In the end, you fake an emergency and don't attend the presentation. That would be too much- showing up like that. You let the other three men on the committee handle the interview. You stay in your office. Your leg shakes. You bite your nails. You feel like an idiot.

At noon, there is a knock on your office door.

You turn and Olivia is there.

You recognize her right away. It hits you like a physical blow. The warm twang is back. You can barely speak. You look at her left hand. At her ring finger.

There is nothing there.

Olivia smiles and tells you that she's here at Carter Sturgis doing a presentation. You try to nod. Her company is bidding to set up the firm's computer systems, she says. She spotted your name on the list of people who were supposed to be at the meeting and wondered if you were the same Matt Hunter she met all those years ago.

Still stunned, you ask her if she wants to grab a cup of coffee. She hesitates but says yes. When you rise and walk past her, you smell her hair. The lilacs and berries are still there, and you worry that your eyes will well up.

You both gloss over the phony catch-up preliminaries, which, of course, works well for you. Over the years she has thought about you too, you find out. The fiancé is long gone. She has never been married.

Your heart soars even as you shake your head. You know that this is all too impossible. Neither of you believes in concepts like love at first sight.

But there you are.

In the weeks that follow you learn what true love is. She teaches it to you. You eventually tell her the truth about your past. She gets over it. You get married. She becomes pregnant. You are happy. You both celebrate the news by buying matching camera phones.

And then, one day, you get a call and see the woman you met during that long-ago spring break- the only woman you ever loved- in a hotel room with another man.

Why the hell would someone be following him?

Matt kept his hands steady on the wheel as his head spun with possibilities. He sorted through them. Nothing stuck.

He needed help, big-time. And that meant visiting Cingle.

He was going to be late for his appointment with the home inspector. He didn't much care. Suddenly the future he had allowed himself to imagine- house, picket fence, the always-beautiful Olivia, the 2.4 kids, the Lab retriever- seemed frighteningly unrealistic. More fooling himself, he guessed. A convicted murderer returning to the suburbs he grew up in and raising the ideal family- it suddenly sounded like a bad sitcom pitch.

Matt called Marsha, his sister-in-law, to tell her he wouldn't get out there until later, but her machine picked up. He left a message and pulled into the lot.

Housed in a building of sleek glass not far from Matt's office is MVD- Most Valuable Detection, a large private-eye firm Carter Sturgis uses. By and large Matt was not a huge fan of private detectives. In fiction they were pretty cool dudes. In reality they were, at best, retired (emphasis on the "tired") cops and at worst, guys who couldn't become cops and thus are that dangerous creation known as the "cop wannabe." Matt had seen plenty of wannabes working as prison guards. The mixture of failure and imagined testosterone produced volatile and often ugly consequences.

Matt sat in the office of one of the exceptions to this rule- the lovely and controversial Ms. Cingle Shaker. Matt didn't think that was her real name, but it was the one she used professionally. Cingle was six feet tall with blue eyes and honey-colored hair. Her face was fairly attractive. Her body caused heart arrhythmia- a total, no-let-up traffic-stopper. Even Olivia said "Wow" when she met her. Rumor had it that Cingle had been a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall, but that the other girls complained that she ruined their "symmetry." Matt did not doubt it.

Cingle had her feet up on her desk. She had on cowboy boots that added another two inches to her height and dark jeans that fit like leggings. Up top, she wore a black turtleneck that on some women would be considered clingy but on Cingle could legitimately draw a citation for indecency.

"It was a New Jersey plate," Matt told her for the third time. "MLH-472."

Cingle hadn't moved. She rested her chin in the L made by her thumb and index finger. She stared at him.

"What?" Matt said.

"What client am I supposed to bill for this?"

"No client," he said. "You bill me."

"This is for you then."

"Yes."

"Hmm." Cingle dropped her feet to the floor, stretched back, smiled. "So this is personal?"

"Man," Matt said, "you are good. I tell you to bill
me,
that it's for
me,
and bang, you figure out that it's personal."

"Years of detecting, Hunter. Don't be intimidated."

Matt tried to force up a smile.

She kept her eyes on him. "Want to hear one of the ten rules from the Cingle Shaker Book of Detection?"

"No, not really."

"Rule Six: When a man asks you to look up a license plate for personal reasons, it can be only one of two things. One"- Cingle raised a finger-"he thinks his wife is cheating and he wants to know who with."

"And two?"

"There's no two. I lied. There's only one."

"That's not it."

Cingle shook her head.

"What?"

"Ex-cons usually lie better."

He let that one alone.

"Okay, so let's say I believe you. Why, pray tell, do we want me to trace this down?"

"It's personal. Remember? Bill
me,
for
me,
personal?"

Cingle stood up, waaay up, and put her hands on her hips. She glared down at him. Unlike Olivia, Matt did not say "Wow" out loud, but maybe he thought it.

"Think of me as your religious advisor," she said. "Confession is good for the soul, you know."

"Yeah," Matt said. "Religion. That's what comes to mind." He sat up. "Will you just do this for me?"

"Okeydokey." She stared at him another beat. Matt did not cringe. Cingle sat back down and threw her feet back on the desk. "The standing up with the hands on the hips. That usually weakens a guy."

"I'm stone."

"Well, yes, that's part of it."

"Ha, ha."

She gave him the curious look again. "You love Olivia, right?"

"I'm not getting into this with you, Cingle."

"You don't have to answer. I've seen you with her. And her with you."

"So you know then."

She sighed. "Give me the plate number again."

He did. This time Cingle wrote it down.

"Shouldn't take more than an hour. I'll call you on your cell."

"Thanks." He started for the door.

"Matt?"

He turned back toward her.

"I've had some experience in stuff like this."

"I'm sure."

"Opening this door." Cingle held up the slip of paper with the license plate. "It's kinda like trying to break up a fight. Once you jump in, you don't know what could happen."

"Gee, Cingle, that's pretty subtle."

She spread her arms. "Subtlety ended for me the day I hit puberty."

"Just do this for me, okay?"

"I will."

"Thank you."

"But"- she put up her index finger-"should you feel the need to take it further, I want you to promise to let me help."

"I won't take it further," he said, and the look on her face told him all he needed to know about how much she believed him.

Matt was just entering his old hometown of Livingston when his cell phone rang again. It was Jamie Suh, Olivia's assistant, finally calling back. "Sorry, Matt, I can't find a hotel contact."

"How can that be?" he snapped without thinking.

There was too long a pause.

He tried to backtrack. "I mean, doesn't she usually leave one? Suppose there was an emergency."

"She has her cell phone."

He didn't know what to say.

"And most of the time," Jamie went on, "I book the hotel for her."

"You didn't this time?"

"No." Then she hurriedly added: "But that's not unusual or anything. Olivia does it herself sometimes too."

He didn't know what to make of that. "Have you heard from her today?"

"She called in this morning."

"Did she say where she was going to be?"

There was another pause. Matt knew that his behavior would be considered beyond the scope of normal husbandly curiosity, but he figured it was worth the risk.

"She just said she had some meetings. Nothing specific."

"Okay, if she calls back-"

"I'll tell her you're looking for her."

Then Jamie hung up.

Another memory struck him. He and Olivia had a huge fight, one of those no-holds-barred verbal brawls where you know you're wrong and you just keep pushing. She ran out in tears and didn't call for two days. Two full days. He would call, she wouldn't answer. He searched, but he couldn't find her. It punched a huge hole in his heart. That was what he remembered right now. The idea that she would never come back to him hurt so much he could barely breathe.

The home inspector was just finishing up when he arrived at the house. Nine years ago Matt walked out of jail after serving four years for killing a man. Now, incredible as it might seem, he was on the verge of buying a home, sharing it with the woman he loved, raising a child.

He shook his head.

The house was part of a suburban tract built in 1965. Like most of Livingston, the area used to be a farm. All the houses were pretty much the same, but if that discouraged Olivia, she hid it pretty well. She'd stared at the house with a nearly religious fervor and whispered, "It's perfect." Her enthusiasm had swept away any doubts he'd had about moving back.