Perfect Match (20 page)

What kind of woman doesn't keep a picture of her kid or her husband on her desk?

He mulls over what this might or might not mean for a moment, then takes out his wallet. From the folds he pulls a worn baby photo of Gideon. They'd had it taken at Sears. To get that smile on the boy's face, Quentin had pretend ed to hit Tanya on the head with a Nerf football, and he'd inadvertently kno cked out her contact lens. He sets the photograph square, now, in the corner of Nina Frost's blotter, as the door opens.

Two Biddeford detectives enter-Evan Chao and Patrick Ducharme, if Quentin r ecalls correctly. “Come in,” he says, gesturing to the seats across from hi m. “Take a seat.”

They form a solid block, their shoulders nearly touching. Quentin lifts a r emote control and turns on a television/VCR on the shelf behind them. He ha s already watched the tape a thousand times himself, and imagines that the two detectives have seen it as well. Hell, most of New England has seen it by now; it was run on all the CBS news affiliates. Chao and Ducharme turn, mesmerized by the sight of Nina Frost on the small screen, walking with a p reternatural grace toward the railing of the gallery and lifting a handgun. In this version, the unedited one, you can see the right side of Glen Szys zynski's head exploding.

“Jesus,” Chao murmurs.

Quentin lets the tape run. This time, he isn't watching it-he's watching the reactions of the detectives. He doesn't know Chao or Ducharme from a hole i n the wall, but he can tell you this-they've worked with Nina Frost for seve n years; they've worked with Quentin for twenty-four hours. As the camera ti lts wildly, coming to rest on the scuffle between Nina and the bailiffs, Chao looks into his lap. Ducharme star es resolutely at the screen, but there is no emotion on his face. With one click, Quentin shuts off the TV. “I've read the witness statements, all 124 of them. And, naturally, it doesn't hurt to have the entire fiasco in living color.” He leans forward, his elbows on Nina's desk. “The evidence is solid here. The only question is whether she is or isn't guilty by reason of insanity. She'll either run with that, or extreme anger.” Turning to Chao, h e asks, “Did you go to the autopsy?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“And?”

“They already released the body to the funeral home, but they won't give me a report until the victim's medical records arrive.”

Quentin rolls his eyes. “Like there's a question here about the cause of death ?”

“It's not that,” Ducharme interrupts. “They like to have all the medical record s attached. It's the office protocol.”

“Well, tell them to hurry up,” Quentin says. “I don't care if Szyszynski had full-blown AIDS . . . that isn't what he died of.” He opens a file on his d esk and waves a paper at Patrick Ducharme. “What the hell was this?” He lets the detective read his own report about the interrogation of Caleb Frost, under suspicion for molesting his own son. “The boy was mute,” Patri ck explains. “He was taught basic sign language, and when we pressed him to ID the perp, he kept making the sign for father.” Patrick hands back the p aper. “We went to Caleb Frost first.”

“What did she do?” Quentin asks. There is no need to spell out to whom he's referring.

Patrick rubs a hand over his face, muttering into his hand.

“I didn't quite catch that, Detective,” Quentin says.

“She got a restraining order against her husband.”

“Here?”

“In Biddeford.”

“I want a copy of that.”

Patrick shrugs. “It was vacated.”

“I don't care. Nina Frost shot the man she was convinced molested her son. B ut just four days earlier, she was convinced it was a different man. Her lawyer's going to tell a jury that she killed the priest because he w as the one who hurt her child . . . but how sure was she?”

“There was semen,” Patrick says. “On her son's underwear.”

“Yes.” Quentin rifles through some more pages. "Where's the DNA on that?

"

“At the lab. It should be back this week.”

Quentin's head comes up slowly. “She didn't even see the DNA results on th e underwear before she shot the guy?”

A muscle jumps along Patrick's jaw. “Nathaniel told me. Her son. He made a verbal ID.”

“My five-year-old nephew tells me the tooth fairy's the one who brought him a buck, but that doesn't mean I believe him, Lieutenant.” Before he has even finished his sentence, Patrick is out of his chair, lean ing across the desk toward Quentin. “You don't know Nathaniel Frost,” he bi tes out. “And you have no right to question my professional judgment.” Quentin stands, towering over the detective. “I have every right. Because r eading your file on the investigation, it sure looks to me like you fucked up simply because you were giving a DA who jumped to conclusions special tr eatment. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you do that again while we prosecute her.”

“She didn't jump to conclusions,” Patrick argues. “She knew exactly what sh e was doing. Christ, if it were my kid, I would have done the same thing.”

“Both of you listen to me. Nina Frost is a murder suspect. She made the choi ce to commit a criminal act. She killed a man in cold blood in front of a co urtroom of people. Your job is to uphold laws, and no one-no one-gets to be nd those to their own advantage, not even a district attorney.” Quentin turn s to the first policeman. “Is that clear, Detective Chao?” Chao nods tightly.

“Detective Ducharme?”

Patrick meets his eye, sinks into his chair. It is not until long after the de tectives have left the office that Quentin realizes Ducharme never actually an swered.

Getting ready for winter, in Caleb's opinion, is only wishful thinking. The best preparation in the world isn't going to keep a storm from catching you unaware. The thing about nor'easters is that you don't always see them comin g. They head out to sea, then turn around and batter Maine hard. There have been times in recent years that Caleb has opened the front door to find a ch est-high drift of snow; has dug his way free with a shovel kept in the front closet to find a world that looks nothing like it did the night before. Today, he is readying the house. That means hiding Nathaniel's bike in the ga rage, and unearthing the Flexible Flyer and the cross-country skis instead. C aleb has covered the shrubs in the front of the house with triangular wooden horses, little hats to keep their fragile branches from the ice and snow that slide off the roof.

All that is left, now, is storing enough chopped wood to last through the wi nter. He's brought in three loads now, stacking them in cross-hatches in the basement. Slivers of oak jab his thick gloves as he moves in rhythm, taking a pair of split logs from the pile dumped down the bulkhead and laying them neatly in place. Caleb feels a wistfulness press in on him, as if each grow ing inch of the woodpile is taking away something summerish-a bright flock o f goldfinches, a raging stream, the steam of loam overturned by a tiller. Al l winter long, when he burns these stacks, Caleb imagines it like a puzzle. With each log he tosses on a fire, he is able to remember the song of a cric ket, or the arc of stars in the July sky. And so on, until the basement is e mpty again, and springtime has flung itself, jubilant, over his property.

“Do you think we'll make it through the winter?”

At Nina's voice, Caleb startles. She has come down the basement stairs and stands at the bottom with her arms crossed, surveying the stacks of wood. “ Doesn't seem like much,” she adds.

“I've got plenty.” Caleb places two more logs. “I just haven't brought it all in yet.”

He is aware of Nina's eyes on him as he turns and bends, lifts a large burl into his arms, and deposits it at the top of a tall stack. “So.”

“Yes,” she answers.

“How was the lawyer's?”

She shrugs. “He's a defense attorney.”

Caleb assumes this is meant as an insult. As always in legal matters, he do esn't know what to say in response. The basement is only half full, but Cal eb is suddenly aware of how big he is, and how close he is to Nina, and how the room does not seem able to hold both of them. “Are you going back out again? Because I need to go to the hardware store to get that tarp.” He doesn't need a tarp; he has four of them stored in the garage. He does not even know why those words have flown from his mouth, like birds desper ate to escape through a chimney flue. And yet, he keeps speaking: “Can you watch Nathaniel?”

Nina goes still in front of his eyes. “Of course I can watch Nathaniel. Or do you think I'm too unstable to take care of him?”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“You did, Caleb. You may not want to admit it, but you did.” There are tear s in her eyes. But because he cannot think of the words that might take the m away, Caleb simply nods and walks past her, their shoulders brushing as h e makes his way up the stairs.

He doesn't drive to the hardware store, naturally. Instead he finds himself meandering across the county on back roads, pulling into Tequila Mockingbi rd, the little bar that Nina talks about from time to time. He knows she me ets Patrick there for lunch every week; he even knows that the ponytailed b artender is named Stuyvesant. But Caleb has never set foot in the place, an d when he walks through the door into the nearly empty afternoon room, he f eels like a secret is swelling beneath his ribs-he knows so much more about this place than it knows about him.

“Afternoon,” Stuyvesant says, as Caleb hovers at the bar. Which seat does Ni na take? He stares at each of them, lined up like teeth, trying to divine th e one. “What can I get you?”

Caleb drinks beer. He's never been much for hard liquor. But he asks for a sh ot of Talisker, a bottle he can read across the bar whose name sounds just as soothing on the tongue as, he imagines, the whiskey it describes. Stuyvesant sets it down in front of him with a bowl of peanuts. There is a businessman sitting three stools away, and a woman trying not to cry as she writes a lett er at a booth. Caleb lifts the glass to the bartender. “Sldinte,” he says, a toast he once heard in a movie.

“You Irish?” Stuyvesant asks, running a cloth around the polished hood of th e bar.

“My father was.” In fact, Caleb's parents had both been born in America, an d his ancestry was Swedish and British.

“No kidding.” This from the businessman, glancing over. “My sister lives in County Cork. Gorgeous place.” He laughs. “Why on earth did you come ov er here?”

Caleb takes a sip of his whiskey. “Didn't have much choice,” he lies. “I was two years old.”

“You live in Sanford?”

“No. Here on business. Sales.”

“Aren't we all?” The man lifts his beer. “God bless the corporate expense ac count, right?” He signals to Stuyvesant. “Another round for us,” he says, an d then to Caleb: “My treat. Or rather, my company's.” They talk about the upcoming Bruins season, and the way it feels like snow already. They debate the merits of the Midwest, where the businessman liv es, versus New England. Caleb doesn't know why he is not telling the busin essman the truth-but prevarication comes so easily, and the knowledge that this man will buy anything he says right now is oddly liberating. So Cale b pretends he's from Rochester, New Hampshire, a place he has never actual ly been. He fabricates a company name, a product line of construction equi pment, and a history of distinguished achievement. He lets the lies tumble from his lips, gathers them like marker chips at a casino, almost giddy t o see how many he can stack before they come crashing down.

The man glances at his watch and swears. “Gotta call home. If I'm late, my wife assumes I've wrapped my rental car around a tree. You know?”

“Never been married,” Caleb shrugs, and drinks the Talisker through the sieve of his teeth, like baleen.

“Smart move.” The businessman hops off the stool, headed toward the rear o f the bar, a pay phone from which Nina has called Caleb once or twice when her own cell phone's battery died. As he passes, he holds out his hand. “ Name's Mike Johanssen, by the way.”

Caleb shakes. “Glen,” he answers. “Glen Szyszynski.” He remembers too late that he is supposed to be Irish, not Polish. That Stuyvesant, who lives here, will surely pick up on the name. But neither of these things matters. By the time the businessman returns and Stuyvesant thi nks twice, Caleb has left the bar, more comfortable wearing another man's un likely identity than he feels these days in his own.

The state psychiatrist is so young that I have a profound urge to reach across the desk separating us and smooth his cowlick. But if I did that, Dr. Storrow would probably die of fright, certain I mean to strangle him with the strap o f my purse. It is why he chose to meet me at the court in Alfred, and I can't say I blame him. All of this man's clients are either insane or homicidal, and the safest place to conduct his interview-in lieu of jail-is a public venue w ith plenty of bailiffs milling around.

I have dressed with great deliberation, not in my usual conservative suit, but in khaki pants and a cotton turtleneck and loafers. When Dr. Storrow lo oks at me, I don't want him to be thinking lawyer. I want him to remember h is own mother, standing on the sidelines of his soccer game, cheering him t o victory.

The first time he speaks, I expect his voice to crack. “You were a prosecut or in York County, weren't you, Ms. Frost?”

I have to think before I answer. How crazy is crazy? Should I seem to have tr ouble understanding him, should I start gnawing the collar of my shirt? It wi ll be easy to deceive a shrink as inexperienced as Storrow . . . but that is no longer the issue. Now, I need to make sure that the insanity is temporary. That I get, as we call it, acquitted without being committed. So I smile at him. “Call me Nina,” I offer. “And yes.”

“Okay,” Dr. Storrow says. “I have this questionnaire, um, to fill out, and g ive to the court.” He takes out a piece of paper I have seen a thousand time s, fill-in-the-blanks, and begins to read. “Did you take any medication befo re you came here today?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been charged with a crime before?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been to court before?”

“Every day,” I say. “For the past ten years.”

“Oh ...” Dr. Storrow blinks at me, as if he's just remembered who he is talking to. “Oh, that's right. Well, I still need to ask you these questions, if that's okay.” He clears his throat. “Do you understand what the role of the judge is in a trial?”