35
When You Lose
The drive back to the sheriff’s office, Jennifer beside him, not talking. Just sitting there looking like the one solid thing there was, warm and real and alive. Detective Johnson waiting for them on the sidewalk, and the long walk across to him, his hand in Jennifer’s the only thing anchoring him here.
Fifteen minutes, he told himself. You’ll talk for fifteen minutes, and then this part’s over.
Another bare white space, this one an interview room with a mirror on the wall that wasn’t really a mirror. Harlan asked, “Is somebody watching on the other side of that?”
“No,” Johnson said. Who knew if it was true.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jennifer said. “Maybe it’s better. Time for all the secrets to come out.”
“Can I get you two a cup of coffee?” Johnson asked.
“Sure,” Harlan said. “Black. Not for her, though. She’s pregnant.” He looked at Jennifer. “Water? Something else?”
“Water’s good,” she said. She was still holding his hand, or he was still holding hers, when he realized that he’d said it. He’d told somebody.
She’s pregnant.
A pause, then, while they waited for the detective to come back, and he tried to think of something to say and couldn’t. She said, “Fifteen minutes, and whatever it is, this part will be over. Even the worst moment ends sometime. I hope you’re still planning to take me to lunch afterwards, though, because it’s after noon, and I’m starved.”
“The pregnant thing,” he said. She’d said the same thing he’d been thinking, about the fifteen minutes. Huh.
“Yep,” she said. “I like that you told him so. Thanks for looking out for me.” She smiled at him, and that was so much better.
The detective came back with a bottle of water for Jennifer and a paper cup of coffee for him, which turned out to be hot and strong and exactly what he needed. He took a sip, left his hand curled around the cup for warmth, laced the fingers of the other hand through Jennifer’s under the table, and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”
Johnson turned the recorder on, gave their names, the date, checked the clock on the wall for the time, sat back, and said, “So, please. Tell me what this is about.”
“I went to see my dad at the jail this morning,” Harlan said. “He’d been calling me, telling me he had to talk to me. I guess you don’t actually only get one call.”
Johnson said, “What did he say?”
Harlan had spent the drive over trying to organize his thoughts. They still weren’t all that organized, so he just started at the beginning. “He wanted me to pay for a defense attorney. A hundred thousand, he said.”
“At the very least,” Johnson said. “If it goes to trial. How did you respond?”
“Told him hell, no.” He took a breath and said, “You probably know I play for the Portland Devils. NFL.”
“Yes,” Johnson said. “I do.”
“Which means he thought I should do it,” Harlan said, “because the money doesn’t mean that much to me.” He felt the stiffening in Jennifer, tightened his hold on her hand, and said, “I’m used to that. But not like this. I told him that he owns property, plus whatever he has saved up. Told him to use that. He said there was the bail, too. Is he going to get bail? For murder?”
“Probably,” the detective said. “The judge could deny it, but it’s a first offense, and it happened a long time ago. He’d have an ankle bracelet. The judge could call him a flight risk, though, because of your financial resources.”
What was he supposed to do about that? What could he do about that? He didn’t want his dad out, back in the house, back around town. It would feel like leaving a black-widow spider in the corner of your shed, just waiting for a kid to stick his hand in there. It would feel like failing his mom again. If he told the judge he wasn’t helping with bail or anything else, though, they’d probably be more likely to grant it.
He needed to talk to his lawyer.
A problem for later. “I’m taking my sister out of here,” he said. “To Portland. If you need us, you know my number.”
“Seems like a good idea,” Johnson agreed. Harlan could hear him thinking, You got me all the way over here on Sunday for this?
Harlan put his elbow on the table and drew his hair back from his face. “I’m going to tell you some stuff he said.”
“I’m listening,” Johnson said.
Harlan closed his eyes a second to get it straight in his brain. Like memorizing a playbook, and he was good at that. Recall under stress, and he was good at that, too. “He told me that it must be somebody else. He suggested Austin Grant, the bookstore guy, but I wouldn’t say he was focused on that. He gave me a scenario of what the guy would have done, though.”
Johnson was too good an interviewer to react to that. “Go on.”
“He said it wouldn’t have been hard to break into the office and get the keys for a Bobcat. He said that specifically. Bobcat. That the guy would drive it up onto a trailer and haul it. That the land wasn’t fenced, so all the guy had to do was haul the Bobcat behind the trees, out of sight, and dig the hole. That he’d have all night to do it, because there would be nobody to see him, not in October.”
“That’s interesting,” Johnson said.
“Yeah.” He had to breathe a couple times for the next part. “I asked him why somebody would’ve done that. Why the guy would’ve killed her. He said, maybe she wanted to leave with him, and he didn’t want to take her.”
Some definite non-interest on Johnson’s face. “Yeah,” Harlan agreed. “That one was stupid. Why would a man kill a woman for that? He’s leaving anyway. And then he said, maybe he didn’t mean to do it. Maybe she told him it was over, and they were fighting about it. Maybe he was shaking her, had his hands around her neck to shut her up, and it happened by accident. Or maybe …” He gripped Jennifer’s hand tighter. “Maybe she told him she was pregnant.”
A little noise from Jennifer, like she couldn’t help it escaping. He loosened his hold on her hand and said, “Sorry. Am I hurting you?”
“No,” she said. “It’s OK.” She wanted to say something else, he could tell, but she didn’t.
Johnson said, “Anything else?”
“That was it.” Harlan was lightheaded. He took another sip of cooling coffee, and then a second one, only a major effort of will keeping his hand from shaking. “And I kept thinking … how did he know? It was like he saw it all. The Bobcat. Driving back behind the trees. October, not whenever it would have been after the postcards stopped. The postcards that aren’t there anymore, so nobody can compare the handwriting. That would have been April, maybe, when the ground was thawed enough to dig. But he said it was October, and that you’d be digging all night.” He put the cup down and looked into the detective’s pale blue eyes. “And I swear he saw those hands around her neck.”
No answer, and he needed one. He said, “Detective. How did my mother die?”
The tension was holding Harlan’s body up like he was strung through with stiff cords. Like if you cut them, he’d collapse in a heap. He was all but vibrating with it.
With that, and dread.
A long, long pause, and the detective said, “Manual strangulation.”
Jennifer saw Harlan’s eyes close, saw the motion of his throat he swallowed. He opened his eyes again, not moving a muscle, and asked, “Was she pregnant?”
She could see the detective deciding whether to tell him. Finally, he said, “Not to my knowledge. If a fetus isn’t very far along, though, you’ve got cartilage, not bone. Cartilage dissolves.”
Unlike the bones of a skeleton. Over twelve years.
She couldn’t bear to think about those last moments. About her frantic hands around his wrists, her mouth open, trying to speak. Trying to beg. She couldn’t bear to, but she was going to have to, because it was right there in Harlan’s mind.
Johnson said, “Thank you for providing that information. It co
uld be useful.” His tone matter-of-fact, dry as unbuttered toast, as only a Norwegian could make it.
Harlan said, “He hasn’t confessed, obviously.”
“No.”
“Are you going to try to get him to?”
“Yes. It’s easier. You never know what a jury will do.”
“Can I …” Harlan’s hand was tight around hers again, almost painful. “Is there a way I can … wear a wire, or something? If I told him I’d bail him out, that I’d pay his lawyer, too, but I needed to know the truth, I’m pretty sure he’d tell me. He wants to say that it wasn’t his fault. He’s dying to say that it was an accident, to justify it. It’s what he does. I could feel it in him. All I’d have to do is give him a nudge, and I’d have it.”
“No,” the detective said. “Not at this point. Once we’ve made an arrest, we can’t go back in to try to compel a statement. It would be entrapment. He’d be incriminating himself.” A wintry smile. “Blame the Fifth Amendment.”
“You wouldn’t be doing it,” Harlan said. “It would be me.”
“Sorry,” the detective said. “I see that you want to help. You have helped. We can use what you’ve told me, as long as you’re willing to repeat it in court.”
“I’m willing to repeat it anywhere,” Harlan said.
“Good. But you can’t go back in there on purpose to extract some kind of confession, and come tell us about it. You could jeopardize the case,” he went on, when Harlan would have said something. “Go see him, if you like. Ask him whatever you want, if it’s helpful to you and your sisters. But don’t tell me about it. We can’t use it, not now.”
Jennifer could see the frustration in every line of Harlan’s body, but all he said was, “What happens next?”
“He’ll see a judge in the morning,” Johnson said. “For the bail hearing. The judge will appoint a public defender, if he hasn’t hired an attorney. It’ll be short.”
“Is there a … a plea deal?” Harlan asked. “Some way he pleads to a lesser charge, and there’s no trial?”
“That depends,” the detective said. “On whether he wants to take his chances with a jury, and on what we can get him to tell us.”
“Which won’t be much,” Harlan said. “Not if he has an attorney. You can’t play in the NFL for ten years and not know that.”
Harlan was silent again as they left the building, but he held the car door open for her and said, “You need lunch.”
She said, “Yes. I do.” It would help him, she thought, to help her. He also needed to let some of this go, to talk it out. He still had to tell his sisters and absorb all their emotion. He’d be trying to help them deal with it, too. How hard was that going to be?
And exactly how much guilt was he carrying around? How much more, after today?
He said, “I know a place,” and drove there.
It was an Irish pub, she saw when he stopped the car. He sat, though, his hands on the wheel, and said, “I just realized. Can’t do it. Maybe a drive-in or something.”
“Ah,” she said. “People will recognize you.”
“Yeah. Usually, I can. But today … I can’t.”
“Hang on,” she said. “Two minutes.”
She came back in about that long, leaned into the passenger compartment, and said, “Come on.”
He climbed out. “Is this some assistant magic?”
“Yep. That’s exactly what it is. We’ll go around to the alley. Through the kitchen.”
They ended up in a back room. Banquet tables stacked against the walls, and one hastily-set-up table with two chairs in the middle. When the server came, Harlan eyed Jennifer and asked the kid, “What’s the quickest thing you’ve got?”
“Uh …” The kid’s Adam’s apple bobbed. Twenty-one, probably, or he couldn’t serve here, but not any more than that, and awed almost to the point of speechlessness. “Soup, probably. Or Irish stew.”
Harlan looked the question at Jennifer, and she said, “Irish stew, please. Definitely.”
“Bring us two bowls of that right now, OK?” Harlan said.
Five minutes later, she was blowing on a chunk of rich beef dripping with gravy, her stomach clenching with anticipation. The stew was served in a bread bowl, too. Bonus. “I don’t know how you knew,” she told him, “but thanks. I go from, ‘Eh, I could eat,’ to ‘Oh my god feed me NOW’ in about one minute. If you don’t eat yours fast, I could start in on it, too. So you know.”
He smiled, which was so much better. “I should keep my arms out of reach, is that it? Because if you get hungry enough, anything goes?”
“That’s it,” she said, keeping it cheerful. “You’re dangerously meaty.” And he laughed. She ate the chunk of beef, then went for a carrot. “You did well in there,” she decided to say. “And before that, especially, with your dad. Did you really hold it together while he said all that? How?”
He grimaced. “I was concentrating so hard on not losing it, on getting him to talk, I didn’t realize until later that I should’ve stayed longer. I should’ve asked more. Strung him along. I didn’t know it would be the only shot I had.”
“Well,” she said, “by the time he said the ‘pregnant’ thing, I imagine all you wanted was to kill him yourself.”
He looked up at her, startled, and laughed. “Yeah.” He set his spoon down, put his palms over his face, and rubbed. “Yeah. That was … pretty bad. Especially … I thought about you. About the way I feel about it. And I’m not even sure I’m the dad. We’re not married. Not even together. And still … How could any man do that?”
“You didn’t even want it to happen,” she guessed, “and yet you still feel protective.”
“Well, yeah.” He took his hands down and sighed. “I can’t imagine any other way a guy could feel. I don’t get it.”
“Because you’re a good man,” she said. “And you get that from your mother. You could think about that. She isn’t here anymore, but she gave you such a gift. And I’ll bet she’d be so happy to know it.”
Her hand was on his, trying to let him know. Trying to show him. His deep-blue eyes were bright with unshed tears, and when he hauled in a breath, it was ragged. “But, Harlan,” she went on, urgent with the need to say this. “You don’t know that was what happened. Much more likely that she just told him she wanted out, don’t you think? That’s what I’d have done. I’d have said, ‘I want out. I can’t do this anymore.’ It just doesn’t sound to me like a baby would make your mom leave. It seems like a baby would make her stay.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “I wonder about Annabelle. I wonder if she’d have left earlier, if not for Annabelle. And maybe, Annabelle being five … maybe she thought, ‘They’re all in school now. Time to have my own life.’ That’s how it is, when you’re a mom.”
“What?” he said. “They’re in school, so you want to leave them?”
“No. Don’t you see?” She had her hand on his arm now. “She wouldn’t leave. She’d ask him to leave. She’d tell him she wanted him to move out. She was the mom. She’d stay in the house. That’s how it works. He wasn’t getting any better, from what you’ve said, and she’d think, ‘I don’t want to raise another daughter in this house with him. I don’t want to teach her that this is OK. It’s time to change, no matter how hard it is.’ And maybe, seeing you go off to college … maybe she thought, ‘There’s more life for me. All I have to do is make the move.’”
“Do you think?”
“Yes.” That she wasn’t pregnant, he meant. Did she think that was true? She hoped so, at least. She hoped so with all her heart. And she couldn’t stand—she couldn’t stand—to watch him tear himself apart over this. Not if he’d never know one way or the other.
Wait a minute. She said, “You know—if she was pregnant, they can find out. She’d have gone to a doctor, or she’d have told somebody. Somebody at her work, maybe. She’d have confided. And the pregnancy idea doesn’t fit, Harlan. Why would he fight with her, choke her, because she was pregnant?”
“He wouldn’t,” Harlan said. ‘He liked when she was pregnant. I think it …” He blew out a breath. “It made him feel like you said. Like she’d stay.”
“So why did he say it at all?” she said. “Why was it on his mind? Did that happen before?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “With me. Sad story of his life.”
“Ah.” She sat back and started to eat her stew again. “It’s not that I’m not emotionally invested in your story,” she told him. “It’s just that I’m really hungry.”
He smiled himself, just briefly, but he started to eat again, too. She said, “Let me guess. He felt trapped.”
“You got it. He played football in college, but when my mom got pregnant with me, they got married. His folks made a big deal of it. Insisted. They’re the hard-line type. Ultra-religious, in that really cheerless way. And he couldn’t keep up with school and a job and football. So he quit the team. He was sure he had a shot to go big. Blamed her forever.”
“Her,” Jennifer said, “and you. You’re his big second chance, obviously. Did he even see you? I mean, who you were?”
Harlan stopped eating and said, “I never thought about it.”
She’d bet she knew the answer. She asked, “Did he have a shot?”
“Hell, no,” Harlan said. “Do you know how many college players make it to the NFL? One-point-six percent, that’s how many. And even if you’re drafted, unless you’re taken in the first round, the odds aren’t great from there, either. Anywhere from ten to forty percent of those guys make it five years. A whole lot of them don’t make it two years.”
“And he wasn’t one of them.”
“This game takes more than talent,” Harlan said. “More than skill. More than hard work, even. Takes knowing how to suck it up and own your mistakes. Everything’s easy when you’re winning. The test is what you do when you lose. And that’s a test he’ll never pass.”
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 28