'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.
But, not anymore. That all stopped the day An walked out of the women's room and was greeted by her colleagues as an equal. When had it happened? When had Jill crossed over from being a figment of An's imagination into a living, breathing part of An's life? It had never occurred to her as she cleaned out loose pieces of paper and various pieces of fuzz from her purse that Jill was taking on real physical aspects in her mind.
Okay, well, An had to admit that she milked it at first. She took some personal time, claiming she wanted to sit with Jill during her treatments, when really it was because she was having bad cramps and there was a John Wayne marathon on TBS. Then, there was the day she overslept and missed an important meeting. Telling them that Jill was sick from chemo and she'd had to take her to the doctor was only a little white lie. What was the point of those stupid meetings anyway? They were cops. They didn't have to be rounded up into a smelly conference room to be told that they needed to catch the bad guys.
Of course, there was no way to get around the fact that it was a whopper of a falsehood when An had taken a week-long trip to Florida under the guise of flying Jill to the Mayo Clinic to see a world-renowned specialist. A handful of people noted her suntan, which An explained away by telling them she insisted on staying with Jill during radiation treatments. Maybe it wasn't so much of a lie, because by then An felt a real connection to Jill. While the thought of lesbian sex wasn't particularly appealing (or even concrete in her mind, because what, exactly, did two women do together?), An liked the idea of the companionship, the connection with another human being.
In short, she fell in love.
Over the ensuing months, the myth of Jill had slowly evolved into a reality. An had worked on the detective squad for three years, but no one had ever bothered to talk to her before Jill had appeared. Knowing that An had a sick lover had somehow humanized her with these men. She made friendships – lifelong relationships. A couple of them had wives who'd had breast cancer. They gave An literature on survivors. Then, one day, they had all surrounded her desk and handed her a sign-up sheet. Real tears had welled into her eyes when she realized that the entire squad had agreed to participate in the Avon Breast Cancer Walk on behalf of Jill.
It was then that she knew that Jill had to die. Too much water had passed under the bridge. An was telling so many stories that she didn't know how to keep up with them anymore. The worst part was that people wanted to meet Jill. They wanted to know this strong woman who had stared death in the face. Oddly enough, the day An called into work to tell her boss that Jill had passed away (conveniently occurring on the same day that Macy's was having its annual fifty
per cent off white sale), she had gotten so choked up that she'd had to hang up the phone.
It hadn't stopped there, really. There were the condolence cards to deal with. The flowers. Of course they'd had an impromptu wake at the same bar where the legend of Jill had been born. They drank to her: the nurse, the friend, the lover. They had sung sad songs and An had told them about the time Jill had saved a homeless man from a burning building and the way she always put toothpaste on An's toothbrush, even at the end when she was so sick she could barely lift her head. She had thought about cheating on Jill once – had she ever told them that? Nothing had happened, but it had been a hard time for them both, and, in the end, An felt like it made them stronger.
The worst part was that An had chosen the name Jill because she enjoyed watching Gillian Anderson on The X-Files. Her thick, red hair, her sharp chin and petite waist were all attributes An would have loved for herself. She knew now that basing Jill on a real person was a big mistake. Sometimes, An would see Anderson, introducing a PBS special or promoting one of her many causes, and would get a lump in her throat, as if she was seeing a ghost from a happier time in her life.
'Hey,' Bruce said. 'You in there?'
An nodded her head. They both stared at Martin, who was mumbling to himself.
'Hard day for you, huh?'
An nodded again. Bruce's mother had died of breast cancer when he was a child. He had brought An flowers this morning, marking the five-year anniversary of Jill's death.
'You had eight good years,' Bruce reminded her. 'That's more than most people get.'
'Yeah.' An fought the sadness that came with the false memories: Jill rubbing her feet; Jill fixing her dinner; Jill running her a bath. (It must be said that many of An's fantasies cast Jill in a decidedly subservient role.)
'I'm here for you, babe.' Bruce patted her shoulder. 'You know that, right?'
His touch was warm, and An flashed back to that crazy night six years ago when she had for some reason let herself fall for the limited charms of Bruce Benedict. They were working hard on a case, and the truth of the matter was that An missed a man's touch. She missed the gruffness, the warmness, the sense of being filled to the brim with a man who knew what he was doing. It had been a horrible, stupid mistake to think that this man would be Bruce (and they had both agreed never to tell Jill; it would've broken her heart).
Bruce dropped his hand. 'I dunno, An, this guy's just creepy. If he didn't do this, he did something.'
She nodded a third time, glad that the focus was back on Martin Reed. The pasty man knew his way around the law. He had refused to talk to them without a lawyer present and insisted that he was not signing any statements unless they were written in his own hand. What kind of game was he playing?
Bruce said, 'You should probably take this. I got no traction with him in the car.'
Possibly because Bruce had noted the fat around Martin's wrists as he'd tightened the handcuffs looked like dough squeezing out of the donut maker at Krispy Kreme.
An chewed her cuticles. She thought about Sandra Burke, the way her broken body had been discarded in a drainage ditch. The car had nearly pulverized the woman. Treadmarks crushed into her brain, squirting gray matter on to the road.
The intercom buzzed behind them. Bruce pressed the button, asking, 'Yeah?'
'Reed's lawyer is here.'
'Be right there.' Bruce opened the door to leave, but An stopped him.
'Give me a couple of minutes with him,' she said, indicating Martin with a tilt of her head.
'Sure.'
'Did you get the crime-scene photos back yet?'
'Should be here any minute.'
'Bring them in with the lawyer. I'm going to see if I can get something out of him.'
Bruce nodded and left, letting the door swing back. One of the downsides of being a pretend lesbian was that men didn't open doors for her anymore.
An pulled back her hair into a loose pony tail as she walked toward the interrogation room. There was a small sliver of glass in the door, and she saw Martin still sitting at the table, still clenching his fists. When she entered the room, he stood up, as if they were in a Jane Austen movie. She expected him to say something like, 'Forsooth', but he just stood there, hands clenched, staring at her with his dark green eyes.
'Please sit down,' she told him, taking the chair opposite. 'Your lawyer is on his way.'
'Does he have any experience?'
An was surprised by the question. 'I don't know,' she admitted.
'Because a lot of times people get courtappointed lawyers who aren't experienced,' Martin told her. 'I've read about it – cases where innocent people get lazy lawyers who are blind, literally blind, as in they can't see. Some of them are even alcoholics or have narcolepsy!'
'Is that so?'
'It's very troubling. There have been many books written about this very thing.'
An had never been a fan of public defenders, but she was a cop, so that was hardly an earthshattering revelation. 'My experience with public defenders is that you get what you pay for.'
'Just as I suspected. I appreciate your honesty.'
'Is there anything you want to say to me, Mr Reed?'
'Not until my lawyer gets here. I hope you don't think I am being rude, but this is a very serious situation. Do you realize I've never even gotten a speeding ticket?' He shook his head. 'Of course you do. You'll have already pulled my record. Are you searching my house? Is that why this is taking so long? You're trying to get a search warrant?'
'What do you think we'll find in your house?'
He mumbled his answer, but she heard him clearly enough: 'A very angry sixty-three-yearold woman.'
An said, 'Your mother seems to think you're an alcoholic.'
His lips sputtered, 'She wishes!'
An looked down at his hands, which were clasped together on the table. Bruce had left on the handcuffs, and An had to admit he was right about the Krispy Kreme machine. 'Give me your hands,' she said, taking out her keys. She tried not to touch him as she took off the cuffs, but there was no way to get around it. His skin was clammy enough to make her flesh crawl.
'Thank you,' he said, rubbing his wrists to get the blood back into them. 'Albada – is that German?'
'Dutch.'
He affected a very bad accent. 'Pardonnemoi.'
'That's French.'
'Oui.'
'French again.'
He blinked several times.
An sighed. 'Do you want to tell me where you were last night?'
'I told you that I took my mother to get her trowel.'
'Are you aware that your mother has a restraining order filed against her by the Peony Club of Lawrenceville?'
His throat moved as he swallowed. 'It was just a misunderstanding.'
'And what about the Ladies' Hospital Auxiliary?'
His wet lips parted in shock. 'They filed a complaint, too?'
'Did your mother not tell you that?'
He shook his head, obviously agitated.
'They seem to think she's a violent person.'
'She's not violent. She's just . . . intimidating.'
An intimidating mother. That was interesting. 'Has she ever hit you?'
'She threw her shoe at me once, but I think that was more because I was listening to the TV with my headphones on. You know, the wireless kind?' An nodded. 'They were interfering with her hearing aid somehow.'
'So, she threw her shoe at you?'
'Only to get my attention.' He spoke as if this was completely logical. 'What does my mother have to do with any of this?'
'I'm a detective, Mr Reed. I put together clues. What I see in front of me is a man who comes from a violent family. I see someone who drives a car with blood on it – blood that belongs to a dead woman.
'Well, okay, that – I'll admit – does not look good.'
'No, it doesn't.'
'I suppose I fit the profile, don't I?' He started nodding, agreeing with himself. 'A lo
ner who lives with his mother. Over-educated, underemployed.'
Well, he'd lost her on those last two.
'I hope you don't think I am a disorganized killer. I am a very tidy man. Ask my colleague, Unique Jones. She's often commented on my retentiveness.'
An would have liked nothing more than to talk to Unique Jones. The woman had a warrant out on her for shoplifting. The home address she had given Southern Toilet Supply was a vacant lot. 'Are you a killer, Mr Reed?'
'No, of course not!' He seemed offended again. 'I told you what happened to my car this morning, how I cut my hands. I am the victim here. Someone is setting me up.'
'Why would someone set you up?'
'Exactly!' he retorted, driving his index finger into the table as if she had made his point for him.
'Where were you last night, Mr Reed?'
He stared at his hands. The red marks from the cuffs were still visible. She saw a strange-looking purple ridge down the side of his thumb. She had noticed it during booking, and he'd mumbled something about an industrial accident.
Martin asked, 'Is "Anther" Dutch, too?'
'It's the part of a flower where pollen is produced.' She sat back, feeling overwhelmingly tired. 'My father was a botanist. He was hoping for a boy.'
Martin blinked, not understanding.
Well, it wasn't her best joke, but she didn't think it was as bad as his reaction implied. Then again, the man was sitting in a police interrogation room being questioned about his involvement in a brutal murder, so perhaps she was expecting too much.
One of the reasons Charlie, her dead husband, had gotten so mad at An was that he didn't quite get her sense of humor. He would admonish her for her smart mouth, accuse her of lording her education over him (as if a bachelor's degree in art history was anything to write home about). He would start off low, like one of those sirens you crank by hand, and the more things would spin out of control, the louder he would get, until he was on top of her, screaming, his fists pounding into her body – but never her face.
It was embarrassing, really, to be a 23-year-old woman who put on a uniform and gun every day to keep the peace, only to have the pulp beaten out of her almost every night. She never fought back, though surely Charlie deserved it. What was it about An's nature that made her seem like a victim? She saw domestic violence so much at work that it seemed almost commonplace. Those early years on the force, half of her calls were because some man had gotten drunk and taken it out on a woman. Her eyes would glaze over at their stories of love, the excuses they made. And then she would go home and Charlie would beat her.
Martin Misunderstood Page 4