Perfect Match (16 page)

“Overnight?” Chao asks.

“Yes. Last time I checked, there was still a York County Jail in Alfred.” The detective looks down at his shoes for a moment. “Yeah, but . . . well, you know she's a DA?”

Of course he knows, he's known since the moment his office was called to in vestigate. “What I know,” Quentin answers, “is that she's a murderer.” Evan Chao knows Nina Frost; every detective in Biddeford has worked with he r at some time or another. And like every other guy on the force, he doesn'

t even blame her for what she's done. Hell, half of them wish they'd have t he guts to do the same thing, were they in her position.

He doesn't want to be the one to do this, but then again, better him than that asshole Brown. At least he can make sure the next step is as painless as poss ible for her.

He relieves the officer guarding her and takes up the position himself outsid e the holding cell. In a more ideal situation, he would take her to a confere nce room, offer her a cup of coffee, make her comfortable so that she'd be mo re likely to talk. But the court doesn't have a secure conference room, so th is interview will have to be conducted on opposite sides of the bars. Nina's hair is wild around her face; her eyes are so green they glow. On her arm are deep scratches; it looks as though she's done that to herself. Evan s hakes his head. “Nina, I'm really sorry . . . but I have to charge you with t he murder of Glen Szyszynski.”

“I killed him?” she whispers.

“Yes.”

She is transformed by the smile that unwinds across her face. “Can I see him, please?” she asks politely. “I promise I won't touch anything, but please, I have to see him.”

“He's gone already, Nina. You can't see him.”

“But I killed him?”

Evan exhales heavily. The last time he'd seen Nina Frost, she'd been arguin g one of his own cases in court-a date rape. She had gotten up in front of the perp and wrung him dry on the witness stand. She had made him look the way she looks, right now. “Will you give me a statement, Nina?”

“No, I can't. I can't. I did what I had to do, I can't do any more.” He pulls out a Miranda form. “I need to read you your rights.”

“I did what I had to do.”

Evan has to raise his voice over hers. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the righ t ...”

“I can't do any more. I did what I had to do,” Nina babbles. Finally Evan finishes reading. Through the bars he hands her a pen to sign th e paper, but it drops from her fingers. She whispers, “I can't do any more.”

“Come on, Nina,” Evan says softly. He unlocks the holding cell, leads her thr ough the hallways of the sheriff's office, and outside to a police cruiser. H e opens the door for her and helps her inside. “We can't arraign you till tom orrow, so I've got to take you down to the jail overnight. You're gonna get y our own cell, and I'll make sure they take care of you. Okay?” But Nina Frost has curled up in a fetal position on the backseat of the cruise r and doesn't seem to hear him at all.

The correctional officer at the booking desk of the jail sucks on a Halls Men tho-Lyptus cough drop while he asks me to narrow my life down to the only thi ngs they need to know in a jail: name, date of birth, height, weight. Eye col or, allergies, medications, regular physician. I answer softly, fascinated by the questions. I usually enter this play in the second act; to see it at its beginning is new for me.

A blast of medicinal mint comes my way, as the sergeant taps his pencil agai n. “Distinguishing characteristics?” he asks.

He means birthmarks, moles, tattoos. I have a scar, I think silently, on my he art.

But before I can answer, another correctional officer unzips my black purs e and empties its contents on the desk. Chewing gum, three furry Life Save rs, a checkbook, my wallet. The detritus of motherhood: photographs of Nat haniel from last year, a long-forgotten teething ring, a four-pack of cray ons pinched from a Chili's restaurant. Two more rounds of ammunition for t he handgun.

I grab my arms, suddenly shivering. “I can't do it. I can't do any more,” I whis per, and try to curl into a ball.

“Well, we're not done yet,” the correctional officer says. He rolls my finge rs across an ink pad and makes three sets of prints. He props me up against a wall, hands me a placard. I follow his directions like a zombie; I do not meet his eyes. He doesn't tell me when the flash is going to go off; now I k now why in every mug shot a criminal seems to have been caught unaware. When my vision adjusts after the burst of light, a female guard is standing in front of me. She has one long eyebrow across her forehead and the build of a linebacker. I stumble in her wake into a room not much bigger than a closet, which holds shelves full of neatly folded hazard-orange jail scrubs . The Connecticut prisons had to sell all their brand-new forest-green jump suits, I suddenly remember, because the convicts kept escaping into the woods. The guard hands me a pair of scrubs. “Get undressed,” she orders.

/ have to do this, I think, as I hear her snap on the rubber gloves. / have t o do whatever it takes to get out of here. So I force my mind to go blank, li ke a screen at the close of a movie. I feel the guard's fingers probe my mout h and my ears, my nostrils, my vagina, my anus. With a jolt, I think of my son. When it is over, the guard takes my clothes, still damp with the blood of th e priest, and bags them. I slowly put on the scrubs, tying them so tight at the waist that I find myself gasping for breath. My eyes dart back and forth as we walk back down the hall. The walls, they're watching me. In the booking room at the front of the jail again, the female guard leaves m e standing in front of a phone. “Go ahead,” she instructs. “Make your call.” I have a constitutional right to a private phone call, but I can feel the weight of their stares. I pick up the receiver and play with it, stroking its long neck. I stare at it as if I have never seen a telephone before.

Whatever they hear, they won't admit to hearing. I have tried to pressure en ough correctional officers to come testify, and they never will, because the y have to go back and guard these prisoners every day.

For the first time, this works to my advantage.

I meet the gaze of the nearest correctional officer, then slowly shake off th e act. Dialing, I wait to be connected to something outside of here. “Hello?” Caleb says, the most beautiful word in the English language.

“How's Nathaniel?”

“Nina. Jesus Christ, what were you doing?”

“How's Nathaniel?” I repeat.

“How the hell do you think he is? His mother's been arrested for killing so meone!”

I close my eyes. “Caleb, you need to listen to me. I'll explain everything wh en I see you. Have you talked to the police?”

“No-”

“Don't. Right now, I'm at the jail. They're holding me here overnight, and I 'm going to be arraigned tomorrow.“ There are tears coming. ”I need you to c all Fisher Carrington.”

“Who?”

“He's a defense attorney. And he's the only person who can get me out of thi s. I don't care what you have to do, but get him to represent me.”

“What am I supposed to tell Nathaniel?”

I take a deep breath. “That I'm okay, and that I'll be home tomorrow. ” Caleb is angry; I can hear it in his pause. “Why should I do this for you, aft er what you just did to us?”

“If you want there to be an us.” I say, “you'd better do it.” After Caleb hangs up on me, I hold the phone to my ear, pretending he is stil l on the other end of the line. Then I replace the receiver, turn around, and look at the correctional officer who is waiting to take me to a cell. “I had to do it,” I explain. “He doesn't understand. I can't make him understand. Y ou would have done it, wouldn't you? If it was your kid, wouldn't you have do ne it?” I make my eyes flicker from left to right, lighting on nothing. I che w my fingernail till the cuticle bleeds.

I make myself crazy, because this is what I want them to see. It is no surprise when I am led to the solitary cells. In the first place, new prisoners are often put on a suicide watch; in the second place, I put half t he women in this jail. The correctional officer slams the door shut behind me, and this becomes my new world: six feet by eight feet, a metal bunk, a staine d mattress, a toilet.

The guard moves off, and for the first time this day, I let myself unravel. I have killed a man. I have walked right up to his lying face and shot four bullets into it. The recollection comes in bits and pieces-the click of t he trigger past the point of no return; the thunder of the gun; the backward le ap of my hand as the gun recoiled, as if it were trying, too late, to stop itse lf.

His blood was warm where it struck my shirt.

Oh, my God, I have killed a man. I did it for all the right reasons; I did it for Nathaniel; but I did it.

My body starts shaking uncontrollably, and this time, it is no act. It is one thing to seem insane for the sake of the witnesses that will be called to te stify against me; it is another thing entirely to sift through my own mind an d realize what I have been capable of all along. Father Szyszynski will not p reside over Mass on Sunday. He will not have his nightly cup of tea or say an evening prayer. I have killed a priest who was not given Last Rites; and I w ill follow him straight to Hell.

My knees draw up, my chin tucks tight. In the overheated belly of this jail, I am freezing.

“Are you all right, girlfriend?”

The voice floats from across the hall, the second solitary confinement cell. Whoever has been in there watching me has been doing it from the shadows. I feel heat rise to my face and look up to see a tall black woman, her scrubs knotted above her bellybutton, her toenails painted to orange to match her jail uniform.

“My name's Adrienne, and I'm a real good listener. I don't get to talk to man y people.”

Does she think I'm going to fall for that setup? Stoolpigeons are as common in here as professions of innocence, and I should know-I have listened to bo th. I open my mouth to tell her this, but at second glance, realize I've bee n mistaken. The long feet, the rippled abdomen, the veins on the backs of th e hands-Adrienne isn't a woman at all.

“Your secret,” the transvestite says. “It's safe with me.” I stare right at her-his-considerable chest. “Got a Kleenex?” I ask flatly. For just a moment, there is a beat of silence. “That's just a technicality,” Ad rienne responds.

I turn away again. “Yeah, well, I'm still not talking to you.” Above us, there is the call for lights out. But it never gets dark in jail. I t is eternally dusk, a time when creatures crawl from swamps and crickets tak e over the earth. In the shadows, I can see Adrienne's smooth skin, a lighter shade of night between the bars of her cell. “What did you do?” Adrienne ask s, and there is no mistaking her question.

“What did you do?”

“It's the drugs, it's always the drugs, honey. But I'm trying to get off them, I truly am.”

“A drug conviction? Then why did they put you in solitary?” Adrienne shrugs. “Well, the boys, I don't belong with them; they just want t o beat me up, you know? I'd like to be in with the girls, but they won't let me, because I haven't had the operation yet. I been taking my medicine regu lar, but they say it don't matter, so long as I've got the wrong kind of plu mbing.” She sighs. “Quite frankly, honey, they don't know what to do with me in here.”

I stare at the cinderblock walls, at the dim safety light on the ceiling, at m y own lethal hands. “They don't know what to do with me either,” I say. The AG's office puts Quentin up at a Residence Inn that has a small efficien cy kitchen, cable TV, and a carpet that smells like cats. “Thank you,” he sa ys dryly, handing the teenager who doubles as bellman a dollar. “It's a pala ce.”

“Whatever,” the kid responds.

It amazes Quentin, the way adolescents are the only group that doesn't blin k twice upon seeing him. Then again, he sometimes believes they wouldn't bl ink twice if a herd of mustangs tore past inches from their Skechered feet. He doesn't understand them, either as a breed or individually. Quentin opens the refrigerator, which gives off a dubious odor, and then sin ks onto the spongy mattress. Well, it could be the Ritz-Carlton and he'd hat e it. Biddeford, in general, makes him edgy.

Sighing, he picks up his car keys and leaves the hotel. Might as well get thi s over with. He drives without really thinking about where he's going. He kno ws she's there, of course. The address for the checks has stayed the same all this time.

There is a basketball hoop in the driveway; this surprises him. Somehow, he hasn't thought past last year's debacle to consider that Gideon might have a hobby less embarrassing to a prosecutor. A beat-up Isuzu Trooper with to o many rust holes in the running board is parked in the garage. Quentin tak es a deep breath, draws himself up to his full height, and knocks on the door. When Tanya answers, it still hits him like a blow to the chest-her cognac sk in; her chocolate eyes, as if this woman is a treat to be savored. But, Quen tin reminds himself, even the most exquisite truffles can be bitter on the i nside. He takes small comfort in the fact that she steps back when she sees him, too. “Quentin Brown,” Tanya murmurs, shaking her head. “To what do I ow e this honor?”

“I'm here on a case,” he says. “Indefinitely.” He's trying to peer behind he r, to see what her home looks like inside. Without him in it. “Thought I'd s top by, since you'd probably be hearing my name around town.”

“Along with other, four letter words,” Tanya mutters.

“Didn't catch that.”

She smiles at him, and he forgets what they were discussing. “Gideon aroun d?”

“No,” she says, too quickly.

“I don't believe you.”

“And I don't like you, so why don't you take your sorry self back to your litt le car and-”

“Ma?” The loping voice precedes Gideon, who suddenly appears behind his mo ther. He is nearly Quentin's height, although he's just turned sixteen. Hi s dark face draws even more closed as he sees who's standing at the doorwa y. “Gideon,” Quentin says. “Hello again.”

“You come to haul my ass back to rehab?” He snorts. “Don't do me any favo rs.”