Blood Relations (28 page)

“You coming’ back for the rest of the show?”

“No, I’ve got to pick up my wife at the airport.” Sam put his notes into his coat pocket. “Tell Gene I think he’s spinning his wheels with Soto.”

The benches in the lobby downstairs were made of concrete and supported by glass blocks, fitting the neo-deco style of the police station. Caitlin Dom sat on one of them, staring through the big windows at Washington Avenue. Her hat lay beside her on top of a canvas bag.

Sam walked across the terrazzo floor, his heels echoing.

When he sat on the other end of the bench she barely glanced up.

“You’re the one who told the police who he was,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

Sam said, “What do you expect? To have certain people excluded because they happen to be your friends?”

“Rafael couldn’t kill anyone.”

“They have to ask.”

Her green eyes were on him now, cool and disapproving. “What evidence do you have against him?”

“I can’t discuss that.” Sam leaned his elbows on his knees.

“What are they doing to him, Sam?”

“Talking. Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to hurt him.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Sam remembered he hadn’t shaved this morning. He wondered if he looked as worn out as he felt.

Closing her eyes, Caitlin let her head fall back. Her throat was exposed, a long, pale line. “Love could never turn to hate for him, Sam. He isn’t made that way.”

He said, “Why don’t you stick around? Rafael might like to see a friendly face when he comes downstairs.”

“I will. I told him I’d wait.” She opened her eyes, then focused them on the ceiling. She blinked. “What is that supposed to be?”

He looked up at the sculpture hanging over their heads.

“nose colored glass disks are the souls of officers killed in the line of duty. The crumbled-up wire represents crime.”

“You’re making that up.”

He smiled, then glanced around the lobby. “Where’s Frank?”

“He had an appointment,” she said. “It’s all right if you talk to me.”

There was more humor than defiance in her voice. For a moment their gaze held. Her smile faded.

“Caitlin-” Sam frowned through the windows, past the neatly trimmed grass to the silently moving traffic on the street. He spoke quietly. “I have to discuss you with my wife. She knows I was involved with someone, but she never knew who it was. You’re going to be a more central witness now for Ali Duncan. Our past might not come up, but it could. I’d rather Dina hear about it from me.”

He turned to look at Caitlin, unable to tell what she was thinking. “I wanted you to know. Dina doesn’t plan to mention it to Frank. We should have found some other lawyer to handle the wrongful death case, but she wanted Frank to do it, and I’m reluctant to overrule her. Maybe you should talk to him-unless you already have.”

“Are you serious? Of course I haven’t.” Caitlin made a husky laugh. “What are you trying to do, ease your guilty conscience?”

“I don’t feel guilty, Caitlin.”

“Yes, you do. You’re sorry as hell. It makes me sick, how sorry you are.”

Sam stood up. I have things to do. Rafael should be down in a couple of hours.”

“See you around.”

He was halfway across the lobby when he heard her call his name. He let out a breath, then turned.

Caitlin was reclining back on her hands, swinging one crossed leg. Her body was long and curved, her bra so silky he could see the outline of nipple under the T-shirt.

“I’m not sorry,” she said quietly. “It was very good. You have to admit.”

The officer at the reception desk was talking to a couple who needed directions to the convention center.

Sam looked back at Caitlin. “I never denied that.”

With a flicker of a smile and a langorous motion of her body, she sat up, resettled her chin in her palm, and resumed looking through the window. “Good-bye, Sam.”

In the kitchen, Melanie couldn’t hear what they were saying upstairs in their bedroom, just some muffled words Inow and then. It was raining, and water drummed in the downspout and whispered on the terrace roof.

She stared into the microwave and watched the numbers counting down from thirty seconds to zero. There was a piece of frozen chocolate cake in there. She had made it herself from a mix last week. Then her mother stuck it in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer, and now there were fold marks on the frosting.

The house had been quiet all day, with her dad gone to a murder scene, then not getting home till he went by the airport first to pick up her mom. Now it was almost dark outside, and the two of them were having a talk. Why don’t you go downstairs and watch TV, Melanie, your mother and I have to talk. She wondered if they were talking about a divorce. Probably not, because they had been much nicer to each other ever since Matthew died. Maybe they were in bed. Welcome home, darling. I’ve missed you. That wasn’t likely either. They hadn’t been getting along that well.

The microwave made three beeps.

The frosting was too hot and dripped down the sides.

Melanie took a bite anyway. She finished the cake quickly, then put another piece in the microwave. When that one was ready, she looked at it. “You’re disgusting,” she said aloud. “Don’t eat that.” She grabbed the salt shaker and sprinkled salt all over the frosting so she wouldn’t be tempted, then dumped it into the garbage.

School would be out in two weeks, and she still had not lost one pound. This weekend had been a total black hole.

She was supposed to be studying for her finals, but hadn’t done anything but play her CDs with the headphones on and her door locked.

It was totally quiet upstairs. Thunder grumbled in the distance. The rainy season would be here soon.

Melanie put the cake back into the freezer, then left the kitchen. She climbed the carpeted stairs, her bare feet making no sound. She slowed going past her parents’ door. There were voices coming from inside.

He was talking about someone called Finley. Making trouble. He wasn’t going to let t at son-o a-itc: ea t e shots. And she said that was the real reason he had told her all this, because he couldn’t stand not being in control, Then he said no, the only reason was that he didn’t want her to be hurt. She laughed and said he should have thought about that three years ago.

Melanie moved a little closer to the door.

Her mother said something about irony. How ironic that they would meet again this way. “A witness in a rape case. What was she doing there? Does Frank know she goes to places like that?”

“She was taking photos. She’s a freelance photographer, Dina.”

“You believe that, don’t you?” Then a laugh. “I’ve got to say I’m surprised at your choice. I thought she would be one of the lawyers in your office, someone actually worth worrying myself sick over. But this. It’s almost funny. A middle-aged man failing for a blond model.

How … cliche.”

“Okay, fine. We’ve discussed this enough-”

“I mean, when I met her at Frank’s office I thought she looked trashy.”

“That’s enough!”

For a while there was silence, then her mother said calmly, “Are you still in love with her?”

“No. Drop it.”

Melanie closed her eyes and stepped back from the door, but she could still hear them. Her father saying he didn’t want to discuss it any more. She leaned against the opposite wall, her heart sinking.

Then he said the word lawyer and Melanie stiffened.

Hiring a lawyer. They must be talking about a divorce.

Biting her lip, she put her cheek to the door.

“I won’t do it, Sam. I’m perfectly satisfied with Frank.

I trust him…. Of course I don’t intend to tell him. If she wants to, that’s between them.”

Melanie could hear a drawer opening, then closing.

Then the closet door. Her mother might be unpacking from her trip.

There was the rumble of her father’s voice. Then she answered, “He did know about it…. Because I told him.” A drawer slammed. “Why? Because I was wretchedly, miserably alone and unhappy, and he begged me to tell him what was wrong. I wanted him to understand. He was old enough.”

“Was this your way to get back at me? To take my son?

Turn him against me?”

“Don’t you dare blame me. You brought this on yourself, Sam. The only way you ever approached Matthew was with anger and intimidation.”

“That is absolutely not true. I can’t believe this. What utter, monumental selfishness!”

“Selfish! You who went out and screwed another woman-”

“Dina, shut up. Melanie’s downstairs.”

“What are you afraid of? Let her hear. It might do her good to know what her father is. Matthew knew the truth.

I think we should all discuss it together, don’t you?

Melanie!”

The word turned to a cry, then a thud. There was silence for a while.

His voice sounded like he was trying not to cry. “What have we done? Oh, God. Dina, what have we done?”

Then a tired laugh from her mother. “Go get me my pills and a glass of water. Sam, please. I would have preferred not to know about this, but now that you’ve told me-” She laughed. “I don’t care anymore. I really don’t.”

Then his voice, and then hers. She said, “Take the damn bottle with you, then. Give me two of them. I don’t want to dream tonight…. I want to sleep and not wake up, and if I don’t wake up for a year, it will be too soon.”

One bare foot in front of another, heel and toe, Melanie moved silently down the hall toward her room. She didn’t want to think about this anymore. Maybe she’d try to study her French. She was behind in all her subjects. She would study her French, then math, each for an hour, then listen to one CD, then go to bed.

The door to Matthew’s room was open an inch or two.

She stopped. With one finger she pushed the door inward.

In the faint light coming through the window she could see the shoeboxes full of pictures on his bed and a stack of papers beside them. Her mother had been going through everything to take to the lawyer.

She sat on the floor with her arms around her knees and cried for a while, wiping her face on her T-shirt.

A little later she heard the door to her parents’ room open and close, then her dad going downstairs. Then nothing, then a clanking noise. He was working out on the back porch on his weight machine. Melanie closed her eyes, trying to decide how she felt. Whether she should hate his guts or not.

She got up and went over to the window. It was still raining and the yard was dark now. Her mother hadn’t been out there in a couple of weeks, and everything was getting overgrown, looking wild.

Matthew had never mentioned their father’s affair. He did say that all parents screamed at each other. He’d heard his friends’ parents do a lot worse than theirs, so she shouldn’t worry about it, he’d told her.

She sat on the end of the bed and put her elbow on the windowsill.

One night, Matthew woke her up by tossing pebbles on her window. He wanted to take her riding on his motorcycle. He had a dark red Harley-Davidson 1300-cc low rider. It had black fringe on the seat and on the handlebars. She sneaked out of the house and met him down the block.

He was six feet tall and really handsome, in a funny way. He had straight, thick eyebrows that almost met, a sharp nose, and lips as full and red as a girl’s. His wavy, dark brown hair came to his shoulders, and he would tie it back when he rode. That night he gave her his extra helmet to put on. He wore jeans and boots and a T-shirt with no sleeves. He had wide shoulders and ripply muscles in his stomach.

The street lights on the MacArthur Causeway slid across the chrome, and the palm trees whipped by in a blur. Then a blue police light flashed from behind them.

She saw Matthew turn his head, saw him smile. He yelled Hang on! She tightened her arms around his waist and screamed as they shot forward. They went in and out of cars, around a corner, and got away.

He parked in front of a restaurant on Ocean Drive.

People at the sidewalk tables watched him when he took off his helmet and shook his hair free. Some girls he knew came over and kissed his cheek and called him Stavros, his middle name, which he used for modeling. He put his arm around Melanie’s shoulders and introduced her. He didn’t say, This is my little sister. He said, This is Melanie. My sister. It was perfect.

Coming back they went the long way, over the Julia Tuttle bridge, black water below them on either side, the tires singing on the metal grid. Behind them the bottoms of the clouds were getting pink, but they made it home before the sun came up.

She couldn’t believe it when they told her he was dead.

He died crashing his motorcycle, and at his funeral she wished, for one crazy minute, that it could have happened on that night when he took her riding.

Thursday morning, Sam Hagen delivered the final argument in the manslaughter prosecution of a plastic surgeon. The victim was an aging actor on a Mexican soap opera who had come to the defendant’s clinic in Little Havana for liposuction of his jowls and belly.

As a surprise for his wife, he asked for penile augmentation surgery as well. The doctor failed to note that the patient was on blood thinners for a recent heart attack. In recovery, he died of massive internal bleeding while the doctor, whose license had been suspended the month before, debated whether to call for an ambulance.

The defense attorneys argued that the victim misled the doctor about his heart problem. And even if the doctor was wrong in not running tests, his negligence didn’t sink to the level of a crime. The widow had a cause of action for malpractice, but how fair was it to put the doctor in jail? Very fair, the jury decided. They came back in twenty minutes with a verdict of guilty. Sam Hagen was kissed by the grateful widow, made a short statement to the media, then left the courthouse trailed by two new assistant state attorneys, young men in their twenties, who carried the files and in high spirits made numerous jokes and puns about the type of surgery the doctor had performed. His mind on gloomier matters, Sam paid them little attention.