A Circle of Wives (20 page)

Thomas Johnston has a full head of bushy black hair and black eyebrows, deep brown eyes. He strides into the police station clearly incensed. I notice him immediately. Despite his dark coloring, and darker expression, the resemblance to his blond sister is striking: the same long face, the widely spaced cheekbones, the pointed nose. You’d know they were related without being told.

He does not meet anyone’s eyes as he’s shown to my desk, where I’m still going through the rest of the tickets. I lead him to an interview room, offer to get him a glass of water. He refuses, and sits down. He looks as if he hasn’t shaved in a week. He is not unattractive, despite all this. With his delicate, almost feminine features he is a pretty, pretty boy.

“I don’t know why you asked to see
me
,” he says as I turn on the video recorder. He’s slouching in the chair.

“You are your sister’s alibi, at least for part of the evening that John Taylor was killed,” I say. “Yet there’s the matter of this ticket, which puts you quite near the scene of the death at 6:27
PM
.” I can smell his unwashed body. This is not a man who takes care of himself. Repulsive, really. Yet I think of MJ’s lifelong devotion to him. The age difference must be roughly the same as the one between Gregory and myself. But MJ took on the role of protecting and nurturing her brother, whereas mine needed to be protected against me. My on-again, off-again shrink tells me this was because my parents had created a “safe” environment.
If the emotional situation had been riskier for either you or your brother, you would have clung together
, she’s told me on more than one occasion. According to this philosophy, we would have been more devoted to each other if we’d had less love from our parents. I’m not sure I believe that. I still crush spiders with more force than I need to. I speed up when motorists are trying to merge. There is this streak in me that I must fight against, especially with Peter.

“So tell me where you were the afternoon and evening of Friday, May 10,” I say.

Thomas glowers for a moment before answering.

“I came down to visit MJ,” he says. “I knew she’d be at work until at least 5:30, but I didn’t want to hit rush hour, so I started down early—around 3
PM
. Since MJ wouldn’t be home for at least another two and a half hours, I stopped in Palo Alto and walked around, went into a bunch of different stores. As it turned out, though, MJ was home, but I didn’t know that, and by the time I got to her house, she was running errands. So I didn’t actually see her until after 7:30.”

“So can anyone verify your whereabouts between 6:30—the time you got the ticket—and the time you finally saw MJ?” I ask.

“I’m not sure. I wasn’t watching the clock. It was probably after 7:30, but before 8,” he says “And, no, no one. I was driving between Palo Alto and Los Gatos between 6:30 and 7:00. And after 7:00 I was waiting at her house, alone.” He smiled at something then.

“What?” I ask.

“I had a key,” he says. “It drove John crazy that I could—and did—walk into the house whenever I wanted. But MJ was adamant: Her house was my house.”

“What about before 6:30? What were you doing?” I ask.

“I was just walking around downtown. I suppose you could ask in the stores if they remember me,” he says. “I personally doubt it, but you never know.”

We sit there a moment, looking at each other. I frankly don’t know what to ask next.

“What was your relationship with John Taylor like?” I say, finally.

“Very friendly, the key notwithstanding.”

“How friendly?” I ask.

“He was generous with money when I was out of work,” he says. “I counted him as a true friend.”

I’m surprised at this, at the thought that anyone would trust Thomas with money or friendship. “How much money are we talking?”

He pauses and appears to be calculating. Then he says, “Maybe fifty thousand over the years. More or less.”

“John Taylor gave you fifty thousand dollars?” I ask. “It wasn’t a loan?” Again, I’m incredulous. Such a ridiculously large amount of money—almost as much as I make a year.

“No,” says Thomas. “Like I said, he was a very generous man.” He then says, “All that generosity died with him, you know. I would be the last person to benefit from his death. Unfortunately, he was on the verge of giving me more money. Had promised me another 10k the week before he died. I’ve been kinda down on my luck lately. And I had an idea for a new business venture.”

“Do you have any proof of this?” I ask. “Of the money given, or promised?”

“No,” he says. “This was all a gentleman’s agreement. John was that kind of person.”

Something about Thomas, something about his sleek complexion and the expression in his wide-set eyes, makes him appear to be holding back, to have secrets. It makes me think that if I just poked him a little, in the right way, other stuff might come out, perhaps relevant to this case, perhaps not. So I decide to poke.

“Can you give me a list of the stores you visited on that Friday?” I ask. “Then I can check to see if anyone remembers you.”

He smiles and nods before he speaks, apparently trying to give the impression of being eager to please, although he fails utterly. His affect has changed completely since he walked in the door. He’s sitting straight up in his chair, is no longer glowering, but groveling. The very picture of a parasite, a weak stooge. I resist the urge to kick him.

“I remember, I can tell you now,” he says. “The Apple Store is where I spent the most time. Then the bookstore. Then Starbucks, for a coffee. Then I figured it was time to go to MJ’s, that she’d be home.”

“Your ticket was given at 6:27
PM
,” I say. “If MJ got off work at 5:30, why would you wait so long to go to her house?”

“I didn’t want to run into commuter traffic on 280,” he says. “I figured I’d be happier sucking back a latte than sitting bumper to bumper for an hour and a half. I left Palo Alto at around 6:30. I must have just gotten the ticket when I got to my car. At that point, I whizzed to MJ’s in twenty-five minutes.”

“Only to find she wasn’t there,” I say.

Again, he nods. “Yes,” he says. “She was out running errands.”

“So between 7:30 and 8?” I ask.

He looks down at his hands and counts on his fingers. “Maybe around 7:45,” he says finally. “Around then. I didn’t look at my watch. But that sounds about right.”

“But that makes no sense,” I say. “Why not go straight down 280 from the city at 3
PM
? You’d hardly run into traffic then. You had a key to the house, after all.”

Thomas shook his head. “I didn’t want to just sit around her house. Neither did I want to hang around Los Gatos. Palo Alto’s more hip, more fun to hang out in.”

“Tell me what you did in the Apple Store.”

“I browsed the new hardware,” he says. “I’m a graphic designer. I like to keep on top of it. That’s partly why I needed more cash from John. To get the latest equipment.”

“And after that?”

“I walked down the street to the bookstore—you know, the one in that converted movie theatre, with the courtyard. I love that store. So I roamed around the books for a while.”

I lean forward. “And what kind of books do you read?” I ask. I’m going to take this slow.

“Mostly mysteries. Thrillers. Easy reads. Not like MJ. She reads the hard stuff, is in a book group that’s always reading stuff that sounds incredibly boring. Actually, I ended up buying her a book while I was there, wish I could remember. Oh, I know!
Great Expectations.
She was thrilled.”

He smiles, almost shyly. “Usually I’m on the receiving end with MJ,” he says. “It was cool to be the giver for once.” He sits back, looking pleased with himself.

“There’s just one problem with that scenario,” I say. I find, when it comes down to it, that I am genuinely unhappy at what I’m about to say, he seems so sincerely proud and affectionate when talking about his sister.

“What?” He sounds nervous.

I say, as gently as if speaking to a preschooler, “The bookstore closed two months ago. That amazing old cinema site is empty. For lease.”

He’s silent.

“So now can you tell me again why your car was parked in downtown Palo Alto from at least 4:30
PM
to 6:30
PM
?” I ask.

“I really did go to the Apple Store,” he says, and he sounds desperate. He is pulling at his shaggy hair, you can see the tension in his shoulders, and how his feet are shuffling against the tile floor. “I really did look at the new iPad there.”

“And then?”

“And then . . . I . . . I had an appointment,” he finally spits out.

“With whom?”

“I can’t say.” This he says with a determined stubbornness.

“Even though it would give you an alibi for a murder?”

Silence again before he says, “Is there some way you can promise me immunity if I tell you what I was doing during that time?”

“Immunity from being charged with another crime?” I ask. This strikes me as funny and I involuntarily laugh, but stop when I see his face.

He doesn’t answer.

“I think you better fess up. What were you doing on the afternoon and early evening of Friday, May 10?”

“At five o’clock I was in the Apple Store. Like I said. It was after that I had my . . . appointment. Then I went to MJ’s.”

I raise my eyebrow at this.

Then, in a rush, he confesses, “I was buying weed from a guy I know. My dealer in the city had run dry, referred me to a guy down here.”

I’m quiet. And now he’s sitting up, acting like someone who has confessed. I have to ask someone whether I can hold this statement against him. It’s on the record. But really, I couldn’t care less. We don’t go out of our way to bust marijuana users. On campus, we’d have to lock up half the student population. I’d estimate that half the professors have their own stashes. I’d naturally done my share of smoking at undergrad parties, but truthfully I didn’t like the way it made me feel, and hadn’t indulged for years.

“I’ll have to determine what to do with this information,” I say finally. But it rings true to me in a way the bookstore story hadn’t.. Much easier to see him scoring dope from a connection in some run-down student rental house. There are dozens of them downtown.

“Okay,” I say, and start doing the math. “Even if your sister can vouch for you from 7:45 on, and even if it would take you twenty-five minutes to get to Los Gatos, that still leaves fifty minutes unaccounted for during the critical period. In almost the exact location of the crime, from 6:30 to 7:20.”

He looks genuinely scared. “I didn’t kill John,” he says. “I have no reason to. You have to believe me.”

Oddly enough, I do. He strikes me as cowardly, but not violent. I’m quiet for a minute. Then I get up and turn off the video recorder. “That’ll be all for now,” I say, and dismiss him.

I sit in the chair he’s just vacated, still warm from his body, and sigh deeply. I don’t know what to think. But it’s the first crack in the seemingly impenetrable walls of this case.

36
MJ

THOMAS WAS SUMMONED TO THE
police department yesterday. They didn’t say why. That worried me.

The thing is, Thomas doesn’t know how to stop talking. When he was brought into the principal’s office or police station as a boy on suspicion of something he hadn’t done, he often confessed to another crime he
had
committed. The police in Tennessee knew that, and exploited it shamelessly. He also ratted out his friends frequently. Not on purpose, but because he couldn’t stop blabbing.

What makes me the most anxious is that I won’t know by questioning Thomas what he actually said. He always considered himself at the top of his game during talks with authorities, sort of a sly verbal Robin Hood who hoodwinks them at every turn. So when I called him this morning and asked him how things went yesterday, he said “fine,” and believed it, too. Now I wait fearfully for the next call from that young detective. She projects the innocence of a fawn, but is quite sharp. Not much gets past her.

When I heard she’d called in Thomas I finally took her advice and hired a lawyer. I didn’t know how to go about it, so I just picked the firm with the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages. This is costing me four hundred dollars an hour. I’ve already spent more than a thousand because he needed time “getting up to speed,”
and I told him my worries about Thomas going to the police alone. He asked if I wanted him to accompany Thomas, and I hesitated until I did the math. Given travel time, that would probably be another cool thousand dollars, so I said no. I need to conserve every penny I have for the mortgage.

Then the lawyer told me Thomas didn’t have to go in, unless they issued a subpoena, but that it’s best to cooperate as much as possible. “Unless he’s hiding anything, of course,” he said, as if casually, but he was probing, I could tell. “Thomas has nothing to hide,” I said, and hung up. Another hundred dollars wasted, as he bills in quarter-hour increments.