Martin Misunderstood (4 page)

He took the card, electric shocks going
through his body when his fingers brushed
against hers. Martin noticed that she chewed her
cuticles, just like he did.

'Mr Reed?'

He realized he was staring at her. Martin
ducked down his head, reading the card:
Detective Anther 'An' Albada, Homicide
Division. 'An' not 'Anne' or 'Ann' but 'An'. The
simplicity was breathtaking, yet alluring. And the
Albada . . . how exotic, how foreign . . . He
wanted to touch the raised letters to see if the
tingling sensation came back.

'Mr Reed?' She was leaning against Unique's
desk, arms crossed over her chest. He saw a gold
Timex on her wrist – spare, utilitarian, just like
the lady.

She looked tired. He wondered what it might
feel like to have her put her head in his lap.
Martin blushed at the thought, thinking that, if
she could read his mind, she would assume that
his wanting her head in his lap had sexual
connotations, which was not the case – he simply
wanted to stroke her hair, to ask her about her
day. Maybe he would make her fishsticks and
Tater Tots (Martin's favorite meal), and then
when the kids came home, he would help them
with their homework and then carry her to bed
where they would make sweet, gentle love and
she would look into his eyes and—

'Mr Reed?'

Martin looked back at her. 'Yes, ma'am?'

'Can you tell us where you were yesterday?'

'At work.'

'I mean, after work.'

'I took my mother to the Peony Club. She left
her good trowel.'

'And then what?'

Martin felt his face flush. His throat tightened.
He had taken his mother home, and then he had
done something awful – so awful that the words
strangled in his throat. The
one time
someone
asked him what he had done the night before,
and he had actually
done
something, but he could
not talk about it. At least not to this beautiful
flower of a woman. Oh, the irony! The
unseemliness of it all!

The toilet flushed. All of them turned their
heads, surprised by the noise. Daryl Matheson
was zipping up his coveralls as he came into the
office, saying, 'Shit, Marty, gimme the spray.
Something dead just crawled outta my—' He
stopped when he saw Martin's guests. 'What are
the cops doing here?'

Martin opened his bottom desk drawer and
fetched the OdorOutter (one of Southern's most
popular sellers). 'They're here about my car,'
Martin told him. 'Be sure to tell Ben Sabatini that
when you see him next.'

Daryl shook the spray can and headed back
into the bathroom. The office was so quiet they
could hear the spraying and subsequent
coughing. Martin held his breath (Southern had
settled a civil suit out of court with a customer
who claimed that OdorOutter ate away the
lining of her esophagus) and smiled at An.

Daryl came back out of the toilet, waving his
hand in the air to fight the fumes. His voice
cracked when he spoke. 'Damn, sorry about that,
folks.' He coughed a few times, then a few more.
Then even more. Martin shot an apologetic look
to An as he plucked some tissues out of the
Kleenex box on his desk and handed them to
Daryl.

'Jesus!' Daryl choked. He cleared his throat a
few times, spit in the tissue, then handed it back
to Martin. 'Thanks, man.' He wiped his mouth
with the back of his hands and addressed the
detective. 'Are y'all here about all that blood on
his car?'

Suddenly, the OdorOutter wasn't the only
thing sucking breathable air from the room.

An asked, 'What blood on the car?'

Daryl nodded toward Martin. 'This morning.
He had blood all over his hands, too. I thought
maybe he hit a deer or something, but there was
hair on the bumper – like, hair from somebody's
head.' He shrugged. 'Then Darla saw him outside
by the Dumpster beating the ever-loving Jesus
out of his briefcase.' He glanced back at Martin.
'You oughtta talk to somebody about that
temper of yours, man.' With that, he left the
office.

Martin felt his mouth moving, but no words
would come out.

Benedict reached underneath the back of his
jacket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Martin
Reed, I am arresting you for the murder of
Sandra Burke.'

'Sandy?' he asked, craning his neck to look up
the stairs even as Benedict slung him around like
a sack of Meyer lemons. Was that why she hadn't
come downstairs to talk about
Dancing With the
Stars
? 'You don't understand!' Martin tried.
'Why would I hurt Sandy? Why would I hurt
anyone?'

'Mr Reed,' An began, 'why don't you clear this
up right now and tell us where you were last
night?'

Martin gulped, his face reddening again. This
was awful, just awful. Hadn't this very thing
happened in John Grisham's
The Innocent Man
– some poor shlub in the wrong place at the right
time?

'Mr Reed?'

Grisham was a lawyer. He knew how these
things worked. In his head, Martin consulted the
legal advice contained in his many books.
The
Client
.
The Broker
.
The Appeal
. 'I believe,'
Martin began, 'I have the right to remain silent.'

Wherein We Learn That There is More to Anther
Than Meets the Eye, or An Another Thing

An stared at Martin Reed through the observation
mirror. He sat alone in the interview room, his
pudgy face squeezed into a ball of fear. The
wisps of hair covering his round head reminded
her of Charlie Brown. He kept clenching his
fists on the table in front of him as if Lucy had
yet again tricked him into trying to kick the
ball. It was the same kind of clenching he'd
been doing when they'd walked into his office –
or at least what Martin seemed to think was his
office. To An's eye, it looked like a break room
that had two desks and was stacked almost
wall-to-wall with boxed payables and receivables
from the last fifteen years. If anyone
found it odd that the accounting department
was basically an adjunct to the toilets, no one
was commenting.

Bruce opened the door and came into the
room. 'Nothing in his house.'

An had assumed the search of the Reed home
would yield little evidence.

'His mother's terrified, says he's been acting
strange lately. Might be hitting the bottle again.'

'Again?'

'She says he doesn't like to talk about it. Must
be in recovery.' Bruce shrugged; there were lots
of cops in recovery. 'The woman's a potty
mouth, by the way. Some of the shit outta her
mouth made me blush.'

Coming from a man who used 'cunting' as an
adjective, that was saying a lot. Of course, An
couldn't talk. She was quite explicit around
prisoners, who tended to respond to threats
better than pleasantries.

Bruce continued, 'You should see his bedroom.
Wall-to-wall books with more in boxes in
the garage. We're talking tens of thousands of
them. The guy must read all the time.'

An studied Martin. He didn't strike her as the
cerebral type. 'What kinds of books?'

'Thrillers mostly. James Patterson, Vince
Flynn – that kind of stuff.'

An couldn't say anything. She refused to
answer her phone when a Columbo movie was
on. Not that it rang much, but she was constantly
being surveyed for her opinion on things. Talk to
those people once and they never gave up. 'Did
the mother give him an alibi for last night?'

'She said he took her on an errand, then they
went home, then he went out and she didn't see
him until she woke up this morning.'

An nodded, processing the information.
Through the mirror, she could see Martin's
mouth moving as he mumbled to himself.

'What a tool,' Bruce commented.

An could not disagree, but was this tool a
murderer?

Bruce seemed to read her mind. 'We've got
Reed's blood mixed in with the victim's on both
the front bumper and in the trunk.'

'You saw his hands. What he said about the
cuts would explain the blood.'

'If he's innocent, why'd he clean off his
briefcase with acid?'

She allowed, 'Maybe he's more dastardly than
he looks.'

'He's got a crush on you.'

'Please.' Men didn't get crushes on Anther. She
was hardly a sultry siren.

'Listen, you could work that angle. Make him
think he's got a chance. Guy like that probably
hasn't seen a pussy since he was being born outta
one.'

An did not respond to the comment. She had
been a cop for almost twenty years now. Early
on, she'd made a habit of challenging every sexist
remark or disgusting joke uttered by her mostly
male colleagues. This had done nothing but
garner the reputation that she was a lesbian.
When she had insisted that she was not, in fact,
homosexual, they chastised her for being
ashamed of her sexuality. When she had pointed
out that (at the time) she was married, they had
sadly shaken their heads, as if to ask to what
lengths she would go in her denial of the love that
dare not speak its name. An had been so
maligned over the years that, in order to protect
herself – really, in order to properly perform her
job – she had fallen into the habit of fabrication.

Fabrication
. That was a pretty word to use for
a lie. An was not by nature a liar. Her father had
detested lies and taught her early on that the
punishment for a lie was much more harsh than
the punishment for confession. And yet, here she
was, fabricating to her heart's content. And her
heart
was
content, though only when she let
herself slip into believing her own stories.

This was how it happened: Charlie, her
husband, had just died. This was fifteen years
ago. There was no one at home to cook for, no
laundry to do, no shirts to iron. A big case had
just been solved – a child killer was going to the
electric chair. People were in a celebratory mood.
An decided that she would go to the local cop bar
and have a drink with her fellow brothers in blue.

They all got drunk, but An was better at
holding her liquor. Or, maybe she wasn't. Somebody
hit on her. Somebody made a comment not
to bother. Somebody called her a dyke. Somebody
called her frigid. Maybe it was the word 'frigid,'
because that was what Charlie called her when,
for some crazy reason, she didn't want to have
sex with him after he'd beaten her.

No matter how it happened, that was when Jill
was born.

Jill was a nurse who worked with children. She
was a kind and caring woman. She had just been
diagnosed with breast cancer. She was the love of
An's life. She was dying. They all felt sorry for
her. They all shut up.

The next morning, An woke up with a
throbbing headache. When she got to work,
everyone was quiet, respectful. A few asked how
Jill was doing. 'Jill?' she had echoed, and then it
had hit her, the half-drunk fabrications from the
night before. She'd tucked her head down,
mumbled, 'I don't really want to talk about it,'
and ran to the women's room where she cleaned
out her purse, filed her nails and took a nap, only
to emerge to concerned stares and 'chin ups' from
her new friends.

Belonging to a group was an alien concept to
An. Not that she had never had friends, but as the
daughter of Dutch immigrants, she had never
quite fitted in. During the summers, when most
girls were off at camp, she was visiting relatives
in Hindeloopen, walking along the narrow
streets and wooden bridges of her seafaring
ancestors, still never quite fitting in with her
'y'alls' and 'fixin' tos'. Her parents fared no
better. Like many immigrants before them, they
had come to America seeking a new life. As with
those earlier immigrants, the life they made for
themselves was basically the same as the one they
had back home, but in a different country. They
attended parties for the Dutch–American Society.
They drank Heineken and sucked on coins of
honingdrop
that their relatives back home were
kind enough to mail. Most of their friends were
childless, Dutch ex-pats, except a few shifty
Norwegians who mostly stood in the corner at
parties talking among themselves.

Walking into the Albada house, you would
never guess that you were still in the American
South. An's mother was an art teacher who was
passionate about blending substance and style.
Every room was colorfully decorated in bright
reds, yellows and greens. The dining room was
boldly striped in blue. There were cupboards
they had brought from home, leafy floral
patterns and swirls intricately carved into every
inch of wood, then painted in complementary
colors. On Halloween, her mother would don
her chintz
wentke
, and – solely as a concession to
her ignorant art students – put on a pair of
wooden clogs she had bought at a tourist stand in
Schiphol Airport.

Her father had been overly educated, as was
the Dutch way, and he insisted his daughter be
the same. When An was not studying, she was
working on extra credit projects or helping her
father in the lab (Eduart Albada was a botanist
for the State of Georgia). He had a small shed in
the back yard – her mother called it the
likhus
after the small houses in Hindeloopen where the
sea captains' families stayed – and An would
spend hours with him there over the weekends,
watching his steady, square hands as he grafted
together different plants in hopes of creating a
tulip that was more resistant to the South's
unpredictable seasons.

And so it was that An grew up a much-beloved
only child with very few friends her own age. She
had never been particularly lonely, or at least she
thought
she'd never been lonely, but what An
realized when Jill came into her life was that she
had always been alone. Even when she was
married to Charlie, there was that sense that she
did not quite belong to him, that he did not quite
see
her when she entered a room or asked a
question.