“Shut up,” Christie said. “Just shut up!” Why wasn’t her shoe going on? She twisted her ankle and jammed it on. She ran for the door and flipped the lock, and there was Elroy, his phone raised to his ear.
“Never mind, cancel security,” he was saying as she fled down the hallway. He ran after her, calling for her to wait, but she just sprinted faster. She burst out the exit door and tore down seven flights of stairs, her vision blurring.
“Christie!” she could hear him yelling.
“Get away from me!” she yelled back as she ran through the lobby. People were turning to stare at her, well-dressed businessmen and women in nice suits. Respectable people, their mouths forming circles of surprise as they watched the spectacle that was Christie, with her smeared makeup and torn blouse. No one bothered to try to help her, to ask if she was okay. Fuck you, she thought. If she’d had enough breath she would’ve shouted it. Fuck you all!
She found her way to her car and took off instantly, blaring her horn at someone who was trying to reverse out of a parking spot. She ignored the attendant who was waiting for her ticket in his little booth, and since there wasn’t a physical barrier, she sped out of the lot. Let the cops send her a ticket.
She wove through the streets until she pulled up in front of her apartment building. She parked haphazardly and ran inside, shedding her clothes the minute she hit the bathroom. She blasted the hot water and stood under it, shivering, scrubbing at her body with handfuls of body wash. She stayed until the water turned icy, but she couldn’t erase the marks the creep had left on her body. They were like tattoos, imprinting her shame and rage, forever staining her.
Christie wrapped herself in a fluffy robe and turbaned her hair into a towel, wincing as it rubbed against the tender spot on her forehead. The woman who looked back at her in the mirror had red-rimmed eyes with fine lines cobwebbing them. All her years of sunbathing, of taking her youth for granted and coating her body with baby oil and putting reflective tinfoil behind her head, were coming back to haunt her now. For the first time, she could see an unmistakable resemblance to her mother.
She turned away abruptly, went downstairs, opened the freezer, and took out a tub of Häagen-Dazs dulce de leche. She let a spoonful dissolve on her tongue, then she ate another, faster this time. She crammed more into her mouth, barely noticing when some dribbled down the front of her robe.
She heard a knock and froze with another spoonful halfway to her mouth. Her first thought was that the creep from the hotel had followed her home and that someone had buzzed him into the apartment building. She looked around wildly, her gaze brushing the knives in the butcher block on the counter. She wanted it to be him. She wanted to slice into him, to see the pain on his face, to hear him beg.
But then she recognized Elroy’s voice calling her name. She stalked to the door and flung it open.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I’m fine.” She spat out the words.
“Look, I’m really sorry that happened to you,” he said. “I’ve got it on video . . . if you want to go to the cops, I can show them.”
“And tell them what?” Christie demanded. “That I lured a guy to a hotel room with the promise of sex and he tried to take me up on it? My ex is a cop. Trust me, no one’s going to charge that asshole with anything.”
“Hey,” Elroy said. He moved closer and reached out. When she shrank back, he withdrew his hand. He stood there, blinking in the sunlight, in his white shirt that stretched over his belly and his ridiculous bolo tie.
“Just go, okay?” Christie said. “Leave me alone.”
Elroy looked at her for another few seconds, then nodded. “If that’s what you want. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother,” Christie said, in a voice so low she wasn’t sure he’d heard.
She pulled her robe tighter around herself, feeling cold again.
* * *
Chapter Ten
* * *
JAMIE SAT BESIDE MIKE in the second-floor walk-up office of attorney J. H. Brown, looking at surroundings that didn’t inspire confidence. The small space was heaped with cardboard boxes that Jamie imagined contained paperwork from other trials. There wasn’t a receptionist, and the nameplate on the door was one of those metal slide-in ones, which seemed to suggest J.H. could load his boxes into a truck and disappear tomorrow. The smell of Chinese food from the restaurant one floor below lingered in the air.
The lawyer himself was nondescript—average height and weight, brown hair, pale skin that looked as if it spent too much time under the fluorescent lights in his office. Jamie found herself studying her reaction to him, wondering how a jury might respond. Would his low voice inspire trust, or the opposite? The lawyer wasn’t making good eye contact; he kept fiddling with a pen. Jurors might not like that.
But it wasn’t as if they had a lot of choice in the matter. He’d called and offered to represent them for a reduced fee, no doubt because of the publicity involved in the case. Their other choice was the union-appointed attorney, the guy who looked barely older than Henry.
“What do you think?” Jamie had asked, covering the phone’s mouthpiece with her hand when J.H. called. “Should we meet with him?”
Mike had shrugged. “Dunno.”
As if she’d asked him to choose cereal or toast for breakfast. She’d wanted to slap his cheek and snap him out of the daze that seemed to be thickening around him. She needed her husband to be by her side, fighting along with her. Jamie had had a chilling thought: If a second-tier lawyer was offering to represent them for a reduced rate, what kinds of attorneys might be flocking to Jose’s mother?
After they were seated and had declined an offer of coffee—Jamie’s nerves were stretched far too tight for caffeine—J.H. pulled a fresh legal pad out of his top desk drawer and reached for a pen. He’d said this consultation would be free. Afterward, they’d need to choose which lawyer would represent them if the case went to trial. J.H. had also let them know that if Mike were indicted, he’d lose his paycheck, which meant he would be eligible to be represented by a public defender at no cost.
“But you need me,” J.H. had said, more cockily than Jamie thought was warranted.
The lawyer took them through a time line of what would happen. The Metropolitan Police Department’s FIT team had already completed their investigation and given their findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That was standard procedure. The next move would be the pivotal one. The U.S. Attorney’s Office would review all the evidence, do some investigating of their own, and decide whether to present the case to a grand jury and ask for an indictment.
If that happened and Mike was charged, he’d be arraigned and probably released on his own recognizance, J.H. said, his voice as bland as if he were reading a grocery list.
Jamie forced herself to listen hard as J.H. talked about what would happen when Mike was arraigned. She flinched at the word when. She wondered what the lawyer knew that they didn’t.
“Do you think he’s going to be indicted?” Jamie blurted, interrupting J.H. midsentence.
“Fact is, prosecutors don’t need much to get an indictment. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” J.H. said. He must’ve seen Jamie reach out to grip Mike’s hand, because he added, “I mean, look, they’re going to try to be fair. The folks in the U.S. Attorney’s Office who handle this stuff actually have to go to Quantico and do a simulated training. They get a laser gun and they have to react as if they’re a police officer in crisis situations. So they know it isn’t easy. The key question for them is whether Mike acted in a reasonable manner in that moment.”
J.H. seemed to know what he was talking about. But was he good enough? He’d asked for an eight-thousand-dollar retainer. Jamie had no idea how to amass that kind of cash. Sell her engagement ring, maybe, and remortgage the house. Now she wondered if they shouldn�
�t just sell the house and everything else they owned and use the money to hire the best lawyer possible.
“Do you know what kind of evidence they have?” Mike asked.
J.H. shrugged. “I hear the video surveillance sucks. There was a camera on a public housing unit a hundred yards away, but the angle isn’t good. Plus the rain. Crappy visibility; everything’s blurry and distorted. So that’s a wash. They’re going to want to reinterview anyone who was at the scene. They caught three or four guys before everyone scattered, but they all said no gun. So that’s working against us. We could make the argument that the bangers don’t want to rat out their dead homie, but your partner’s the real issue. He was closer to the threat and he didn’t even draw. He said the guy wasn’t making a move that could indicate he had a gun. That’s going to hurt us. I’ll be honest with you. It’s going to hurt a lot.”
J.H. took a sip of coffee that must’ve been cold, since his cup had been sitting there when they arrived. He leaned back, putting his feet up on his desk. He looked far too relaxed, given the stakes, and Jamie felt the urge to smack his feet to the floor. For him this was routine, like a doctor who read biopsies every day and revealed whether tumors were benign or time bombs. Maybe he was inured to the emotions of his job, but couldn’t he at least act as if this was important?
She’d sell the house. She’d sell her minivan and the opal earrings that had belonged to her mother, the ones she’d only ever worn on her wedding day. Nothing mattered but keeping Mike safe.
“We’ll offset whatever they come up with at trial, of course,” J.H. said. “Call character witnesses. Introduce reasonable doubt—show Mike thought he really did see something. Maybe it was a gun, maybe it was a cell phone. Maybe it was a set of keys.”
“It wasn’t a set of keys,” Mike muttered.
“Look, I’m not saying there couldn’t have been a piece, okay? We’ll introduce that possibility. But you and your partner both testified that you barely took your eyes off the ki— off Jose. After you fired you were both at his side in maybe thirty seconds, right? For someone to have the presence of mind to assess what happened, get to him, get his gun, and get away without anyone noticing . . . I mean, what’s the motivation? Maybe the gun was a sweet piece; we can throw that in there. But this was a brawl. We’re talking a lot of guys swarming around. People were busy protecting their own asses. You think someone’s going to run toward a gunshot, not knowing if there’s going to be another one?” J.H. shook his head. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying it’s going to be a hard sell.”
“So that’s what it’s about?” Mike asked. “What we can sell to the jury instead of the truth?”
J.H. shrugged again, unoffended. “Hey, I didn’t create the system,” he said. “I just try to work it to your advantage.”
“Can someone find the other guys who were at the scene and talk to them?” Mike asked.
“Like I said, they scattered,” J.H. said. “I’ll try to track down as many as I can, but I won’t kid you: It’s going to be tough. And hiring an outside investigator is expensive. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is probably working on that now, too.”
“We should get Ritchie to testify!” Jamie blurted. “Mike’s old partner. He’s black, you know. The jury needs to see that he believes in Mike, that Mike’s no racist.”
“I don’t think Ritchie’s in any shape to testify,” Mike said.
“But he would, if we asked!” Jamie said. “We could get an ambulance to bring him to court and he could go right back to rehab after . . . He’d do it for you, Mike.”
“Don’t you think he’s been through enough?” Mike asked. Creases appeared in his forehead, and his dark eyebrows inched lower.
“What about you?” she cried. “You’re the one that could go to jail!”
“For doing my job?” Mike said. “This is so fucked up.”
“Let’s all take a deep breath here,” J.H. interrupted them. “Okay? We good? Now, we can also explore the idea of PTSD as a defense. Everyone knows you saw your old partner and that young cop get shot a few months ago. Maybe the police department shouldn’t have let you come back to work so quickly. How soon after the shooting did you return to work?”
“A couple weeks,” Mike said in a clipped voice.
“Any therapy?” the lawyer asked. “Meds?”
Mike shook his head.
“The police counselor offered to put him on medication,” Jamie said quietly. “Mike declined.”
There was silence for a moment. Mike pulled his hand away from hers and folded his arms across his chest.
“One other thing I need to know,” J.H. said. “Is there something in your file that’s going to come out and bite us in the ass? Any charges of roughing up a suspect?”
“What? Of course not.” Mike shook his head. “I’ve been late to work a few times. That’s it.”
J.H. nodded. “Ferguson. George Zimmerman. Too many high-profile cases lately.”
Mike exhaled through his teeth and sat back, arms still folded.
“That’s the one thing you don’t want to do,” the lawyer said, pointing at him.
“What?” Mike asked. “Breathe?”
“Show anger,” J.H. said. “A jury’s going to be looking for that. And you can bet if we go to trial and I put you on the stand, the prosecutor’s going to try to provoke you.”
Jamie squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of Mike snarling at the cameraman who’d bumped into her, and the way he always yelled at football players on the TV.
“Jay wasn’t my partner,” Mike said.
“What?” J.H. asked.
“You called him my partner. He isn’t,” Mike said. “And he’s only been on the force for a year. Why are they taking his word over mine?”
J.H. finally put his feet down and leaned forward. “Look,” he said. “We want to be very careful about attacking another police officer. We can re-create the scene, point out holes in his vision, get an expert to testify about compromised visibility . . . but you realize those exact same points are going to work against you.”
“Are you going to put Mike on the stand?” Jamie asked.
J.H. shrugged. “Haven’t decided yet,” he said. “It’ll depend which way the wind is blowing at the trial. I don’t think we’re going to look at jail time, if everything you’ve said checks out. Maybe a little community service, some probation, in the worst case.”
Jamie swallowed hard. “The thing is,” she said quietly, “you mentioned PTSD . . . there might be something else that could come up.”
Mike whipped around to look at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze in case he was sending her a visual cue to stop talking. The lawyer had to know everything if he was going to have a chance of helping Mike. If making her husband angry with her could improve his chances, she’d absorb his ire.
“Things have been really difficult for Mike,” Jamie continued. “Ritchie is like his brother. Mike couldn’t sleep after the attack. He seemed kind of out of it. He blamed himself for not reacting quickly enough, even though of course it wasn’t his fault! And a few weeks ago he thought he heard someone breaking into our house. We called the police, but they didn’t find any evidence of a break-in.”
J.H. nodded slowly.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Mike asked. “You were the one who called nine-one-one, Jamie!”
“But you took out your gun!” she cried. “What if it had been Henry coming in after he’d snuck out to meet some friends or something?” The moment the words left her mouth she deeply regretted them.
When Mike was furious, his eyes were like knives. Now she felt them cutting into her. “So now you’re saying I would’ve shot my own son?”
“No, no!” she cried. “I didn’t mean it that way at all! I’m just saying there could have been other explanations for the back door being open, but
maybe we can tell the jury PTSD made you assume the worst. I mean, if we can use it as a defense . . .”
She couldn’t tell Mike that it was obvious he had PTSD, or that she knew Jose hadn’t been holding a gun, or that the old Mike, the one who’d existed before the attack on Ritchie, would never have drawn his weapon and fired. In every marriage, there are lines you don’t cross. Things you won’t say. She knew she was perilously close to that dangerous place now.
“Sure, tell them I’m crazy,” Mike said.
“Mike, please,” Jamie said. Her voice sounded tight, a giveaway that she was on the edge of tears. “I know you thought you saw a gun in Jose’s hand. I completely understand why you thought that—it was raining hard and everything happened so fast. It was an honest mistake! But you can’t keep fixating on that. We’ve got to start thinking of a way to save you. To save our family!”
Mike jerked up out of his seat, and for a moment Jamie worried he was going to stalk out of the room. But he stayed where he was standing, repeatedly curling his fists into balls and releasing them. Every time he made a fist, Jamie could see his knuckles turn white.
“That nine-one-one call is definitely going to come up at trial,” J.H. said. His voice was steady, and he seemed unaffected by the hot emotions coursing through the room. Maybe that was a plus, Jamie thought frantically. Maybe he was the right lawyer for them!
“There will be records,” J.H. continued. “The AG’s office may already have found out about it. I’m surprised a reporter hasn’t yet. And speaking of which, that interview your sister gave?”
“She didn’t mean to!” Jamie said. “She didn’t know it was a reporter. The woman tricked her! She won’t do it again.”
Mike had been okay with the idea of Lou moving in with them, but he’d gotten upset by the quotes, even though he knew Lou hadn’t meant any harm. So Jamie hadn’t asked Lou to babysit today. Instead, she’d dropped the kids at Sandy’s house, her children’s joy at seeing Finn and Daisy adding another layer to Jamie’s guilt.
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