A Dancer In the Dust
Page 28
With that statement, delivered with a quite sincere show of quivering moral outrage, Mr. Singleton returned to the prosecutor’s table. He did not smile but I knew he was quite satisfied with his performance. He glanced at Morty as if to say, Top that, Jew boy!
Opening Argument: For the Defense
I glanced at Morty, who does indeed look like an anti-Semitic version of a typical yeshiva boy with his curly black hair, slightly crooked nose, and thick black glasses. He nodded softly, assumed his “What, me worry?” pose, and rose slowly from his chair. Once on his feet, he drew in a deep, theatrical breath then strolled with a deliberate lack of urgency toward the plain wooden lectern that rested a few feet in front of the judge’s bench. A thoroughgoing actor, Morty gave every appearance of thinking it quite unnecessary to make any opening statement at all since nothing Mr. Singleton had said was actually worth addressing. His gait was unhurried, and to this leisurely pace he added an air of weariness by which he wished to convey to the jury that he shared their opinion that Mr. Singleton was a pathetic little wimp who had given them nothing but empty rhetoric by way of opening argument, and that he was absolutely certain they had found every single word of it a stupendous waste of time.
“Your Honor,” he began once he reached the podium, “ladies and gentlemen of the jury.”
He brought no notes with him, and so he looked only at the jury as he continued. Who needs notes, he was asking them with this ploy, when there is no evidence whatsoever against poor Sam Madison, a grieving widower now unaccountably charged with the murder of his beloved wife?
“You know, I’m sorry that you good people have to be seated in the jury box today,” he began, “because I’m sure you’d rather be at your jobs or at home with your families. And frankly, ladies and gentlemen, you shouldn’t be here, because before bringing a person to trial, the State is obligated not just to have evidence but to have evidence that is beyond a reasonable doubt. No. Let me correct myself. This is a murder case. A capital case, if you can believe that, and, frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I have trouble believing it. But here we are in a capital trial so, no, the prosecution is obligated to present evidence that will convince you not just beyond a reasonable doubt but beyond the shadow of a doubt. That’s why each and every one of you should be at work today, ladies and gentlemen, or at home with your families, going through your usual routines. Because there is no evidence in this case. Not even enough to have brought Mr. Madison to trial, let alone try him for his life.”
I faced the jury silently as Morty continued, faced these twelve women and men who, I felt certain, were quite prepared to kill me. It was obvious to me that they despised me, and I knew precisely the cause of their hostility. For wasn’t it just such windy professors as myself who’d poisoned their children with atheism or socialism or worse, who’d infused their previously unsullied minds with dreamy fantasies of changing the world or writing a great novel, while at the same time teaching them not one skill by which they might later find employment and thus avoid returning to their parents’ homes to sit sullenly in front of the television, boiling with unrealizable hopes?
How odd that I was to be judged by these people, I thought, as I allowed my gaze to drift over to the jury, all of them dressed neatly and with quite somber expressions on their faces. How many had I passed on the street or glimpsed in the park with no anticipation that they might ever have any power over me, much less the awesome one they now possessed?
To the extent that I’d thought of them at all, it had been as characters in some Coburnite version of the Spoon River Anthology. There’d even been times when I’d sat in the park or on the town square and made up gravestone poems about the people passing by, cynical little rhymes that Sandrine had rarely found amusing, and in the midst of which she’d sometimes risen and walked some distance away.
What had she been thinking at those moments, I wondered suddenly, and on that question I once again saw her lift her eyes from that study of Iago: cynics make good murderers. Could Sandrine have sensed something dangerous in my mocking quips, I wondered, and had her sudden rising and walking away from me been only the first small steps toward the final, isolating distance she’d imposed upon me during the last weeks of her life?
She’d changed so much during those last months, I recalled as I returned my gaze to the front of the courtroom. She’d become so quiet, so still, at least until that last smoldering night when her fury had boiled over and she’d actually thrown a cup at me. Prior to that night, and because she was still so young and because there is nothing more infuriating than bad luck, I’d expected her to rage against death, rather than against me, but she’d exploded like a roadside bomb, her fury so fierce it had finally driven me from the house.
Things had been very different before that night, however. In fact, during that last week, a gravity had settled over her, so that I’d often found her sitting in complete silence, no longer reading or listening to music but simply, darkly thinking. Had it been in the midst of one of those sessions of deep thought that she had come to some monstrous judgment on her life? Is this what I had seen in that little sunroom, Sandrine wrestling with her past as her future closed, coming to grips with the cruelest of her “bottom lines”: that she could not add a single second to the clock, the one precious second that would have allowed time for her to… what?
In Sandrine’s case, I had to confess that I simply didn’t know.
On that thought, and quite suddenly, while Morty continued his opening argument, I recalled Sandrine’s suggestion that we retrace our first trip together, make it our second honeymoon.
“Let’s book a trip around the Mediterranean, Sam,” she’d said excitedly several months before her death. “We could return to all the places we visited on that first trip.” She smiled happily. “We could start in Athens and end in Albi, the way we did when we were young.”
I’d been at a loss as to how I might respond to this, and so I’d said nothing as she’d raced on.
“We could go to Alexandria, where the great library was.” She thought a moment. “Yes, Alexandria.” She smiled. “The city we named our daughter for.”
Alexandria, yes, a name I’d always been careful to pronounce clearly and distinctly. Al-ex-an-dree-ah… not Alexandra. And certainly never Alex or, God forbid, Ali.
Oh, how much can now be made of my daughter’s name, I thought as Morty finished his initial remarks to the jury, a version of our family life that was meant to convince the jury of just how perfect things had been in that little house on bucolic Crescent Road, the house, surely, of a devoted couple, a house right out of Good Housekeeping, with its bright green lawn and red bird feeder and tinkling wind chimes.
“This home was a warm home,” Morty told the jury. “It was not a cold, dark place.” He paused and gave its expressionless members a penetrating look. “The house on Crescent Road was not a place of plots and schemes. The home that was made by Sam and Sandrine Madison was a place of love.”
I cringed at this, but I kept my discomfort with the final words of Morty’s opening argument to myself. Still, the sentimental language rankled because it turned our house into a Hallmark card. Sure, there’d been love at 237 Crescent Road. Years of love, as a matter of fact. But has anything in a marriage ever been that simple?
In my mind, I saw Sandrine’s hand lift from the bed and stretch out into the gloomy air. For a moment I’d thought it a gesture intended to draw me back to her after having hurled that cup. But then that same hand had violently grabbed the white sheet and pulled it over her as if I were no longer entitled to see her body. Oh, of course there’d been love in our house on Crescent Road. But what else had been there?
Seeds of discontent?
Seeds of infidelity?
Seeds, at last, of murder?
As Morty headed back toward the defense table at the close of his argument, I thought of Sandrine when we’d first settled into the house in which, some twenty years later, she would die. It h
ad been a bright spring day, and she’d worn a brilliantly colored sundress, and for a single, exquisite moment she’d seemed gloriously happy. “Oh, Sam,” she said as she flung herself into my arms. “Let’s be careful.” She stepped back, looked at me quite seriously, then added, “Let’s be careful not to change.” Then she’d kissed me very sweetly and gently, a kiss that had been made one hundred percent of love, and which had probably bestowed upon me, as I realized quite suddenly, the single happiest moment of the life I’d shared with her.
Oh where are they, I asked myself, recalling what Sandrine had believed the saddest sentiment in all poetry, and which she had first read to me in French: Mais, où sont les neiges d’antan?
Oh where are the snows of yesteryear?
Strange, but as Morty resumed his seat beside me at the defense table and picked up some document or other, then rose again and headed toward the bench, it struck me as rather curious that, although Sandrine had quoted those lines many times over the past two decades, I had not felt their dreadful warning, time’s ever imminent peril, until then.
As if returned to that bright day, I was on the lawn with her again, her body pressed against mine as we walked to the front porch and sat down in the swing, her voice soft but firm, as if talking back to time. “Nothing will go wrong, Sam, if we don’t let it.”
How quietly they can begin, as I would starkly realize on the last day of my trial, the journeys that return us to our crimes.
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About this Book
Ray Campbell runs his own risk assessment firm in New York. But, twenty years ago, he was a well-intentioned aid worker dedicated to improving conditions in Lubanda, a newly independent African country.
When a friend from his time in Lubanda is found murdered in a New York alley, Ray is forced to reconsider his year of living dangerously. Signs suggest that this most recent tragedy is rooted in the far more distant one of Martine Aubert; the only woman Ray ever truly loved, whose fate he’d sealed in a moment of grievous error.
Martine Aubert was a white, native Lubandan farmer whose dream for her homeland starkly conflicted with those charged with its so-called development. But Ray’s failure to understand Martine’s commitment to her country had placed a noose around her neck, one tightened by a circle of vicious men, cruel taunts, and whistling machetes.
It is Ray’s return to the passion he’d once felt for Martine that makes A Dancer in the Dust an enthralling and moving story of two loves: Ray’s love for Martine Aubert, and Martine’s love for a homeland that did not love her back.
Reviews
‘Thomas H. Cook has long been one of my favourite writers.’
Harlan Coben
‘Thomas H. Cook writes with uncommon elegance, intelligence and emotional insight.’
The Times
‘Nobody does it better than Thomas H. Cook!’
Judith Kelman
‘One of crime fiction’s most prodigious talents, a master of the unexpected ending.’
New York Times
‘Cook has shown himself to be a writer of poetic gifts, constantly pushing against the presumed limits of crime fiction.’
LA Times Book Review
‘Thomas H. Cook is a rare jewel of a writer, a powerful storyteller and an elegant stylist. If you are not familiar with his work, you absolutely should be.’
John Hart
‘Thomas H. Cook is a master of the psychological suspense novel.’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Thomas H. Cook writes like a wounded angel.’
Peter Straub
‘[Cook] displays an impressive narrative simplicity and a therapist’s insightfulness, producing finely crafted psychological crime-fare.’
Kirkus
‘Cook is a marvellous stylist, gracing his prose with splendid observations about people and the lush, potentially lethal, landscape surrounding them.’
Publishers Weekly
About the Author
THOMAS H. COOK won an Edgar award for his novel The Chatham School Affair and has been shortlisted for the award seven times, most recently with Sandrine. Cook lives with his family in Cape Cod and New York City.
Keep up to date with him on Facebook and tomhcook.com
Also by this Author
Sandrine
The verdict hardly mattered. I knew what I’d done, and how I’d done it.
And by what means I had tried to get away with it.
From the outside, the marriage of Sandrine and Samuel Madison was both untroubled and enviable: jobs at the same liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, and a home filled with art and literature.
But when Sandrine is found dead in their bedroom, the coroner reports an overdose of pain medication and alcohol, and Samuel finds himself on trial for her murder.
From Edgar Award-winning author Thomas H. Cook, Sandrine is a powerful novel about the evil that can lurk within the heart of a seemingly ordinary man, and whether love can be reawakened, even after death.
Sandrine is available here.
The Crime of Julian Wells
A famous writer is dead. Suicide? Punishment? Or Justice?
Julian Wells was a writer of dark non-fiction works that detailed some of the worst crimes of the 20th Century. Was it this exploration of man’s inhumanity to man that caused him to take his own life?
When his body is found in a boat drifting in a pond in Montauk, New York, his best friend, the literary critic Philip Anders, begins to reread his work in order to prepare a eulogy. This rereading, along with other clues, convinces the critic that his friend has committed a terrible crime, and that it was as punishment for this crime that Wells took his own life.
Anders’ investigation sparks an obsession with unravelling the mystery of the man he thought he knew. His journey towards understanding leads him from Paris to Budapest, spans four decades, and takes him deeper and deeper in to the heart of darkness that was Julian Wells...
The Crime of Julian Wells is available here.
OTHER FICTION
Blood Innocents
The Orchids
Tabernacle
Elena
Sacrificial Ground
Flesh and Blood
Streets of Fire
Night Secrets
The City When It Rains
Evidence of Blood
Mortal Memory
Breakheart Hill
The Chatham School Affair
Instruments of Night
Places in the Dark
The Interrogation
Taken
(based on the teleplay by Leslie Boehm)
Moon over Manhattan
(with Larry King)
Peril
Into the Web
Red Leaves
The Cloud of Unknowing
Master of the Delta
The Fate of Katherine Carr
The Last Talk with Lola Faye
The Quest for Anna Klein
The Crime of Julian Wells
NON-FICTION
Early Graves
Blood Echoes
A Father’s Story
(as told by Lionel Dahmer)
Best American Crime Writing
2000, 2001 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2002 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2003 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2004 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2005 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Writing
2006 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2007 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2008 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2009 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
Best American Crime Reporting
2010 (ed. with Otto Penzler)
A Letter from the Publisher
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The story starts here.
First published in the United States in 2014 by
Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic.
This edition first published in the UK in 2014 by
Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Thomas H. Cook, 2014
Jacket images: © Shutterstock.com
The moral right of Thomas H. Cook to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781784081652
ISBN (XTPB): 9781784081669
ISBN (E): 9781784081645
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