Straw Men (14 page)

“Teresa?”

“No.”

Christensen wasn't prepared for that answer. “Brenna? I—”

“She's got a lot invested here, doesn't she? Professionally, I mean. She got her tail whipped the first time around, so there's a payback issue here. Don't get me wrong. I'm just worried about you.”

Christensen felt suddenly defensive, remembering Burke Padgett's ham-handed implication about Brenna's tunnel vision, his suggestion that her zeal to overturn DellaVecchio's conviction had blinded her to the possibility of his guilt and the danger he posed.

“I'm a big boy now,” Christensen said, more sarcastically than he intended.

“There's other evidence against DellaVecchio, some of it pretty strong,” Perriman said.

“I know that,” he said. “Chaytor, why are you doing this?”

His mentor studied him across the cluttered desk between them. “You've done some remarkable work here, Jim. You know how I feel about what you've accomplished. In life, not just in this case. But we're still talking about memory, and that's always uneven ground. You have to step carefully. Brenna doesn't. Her mission's entirely different.”

“I know.”

“Do you trust her?”

Christensen ended the discussion with a brisk wave of his hand. “Absolutely.”

Perriman paused, then nodded. They both looked at the wall clock at the same time. A few minutes later. Christensen was pulling on his coat and stepping out Perriman's front door. He trusted Perriman completely, but the old man's final question had him wondering about Brenna against his will. And what about the others in this unfolding drama? DellaVecchio, Brenna's loathsome client. Teresa and David Harnett. Dagnolo, Kiger, and Milsevic. They were working together, supposedly, but who among them did he trust?

Alone, he groped his way down the steep stairs in the dark.

Annie was still asleep when he left. Taylor was up, but so focused on his new 3-D puzzle of Notre Dame cathedral that he wouldn't have noticed if the Virgin herself sat down next to him. Brenna was hunkered down, too, unapproachable behind the closed door of their home office as she reviewed her strategy for the DellaVecchio hearing on Monday morning. Because of lab delays, there'd been no test results from the possible semen stain and other evidence found on the apartment building roof, or at least no public statement from Dagnolo clearing DellaVecchio of suspicion.

He'd told Brenna nothing about Teresa's latest memory conflicts, and so she was taking nothing for granted. Without additional evidence, the hearing would proceed as originally scheduled. Brenna assumed Dagnolo would try to discredit the DNA evidence that contradicted his crime theory. To be safe, she assumed, too, that Teresa Harnett would repeat the same story and identify DellaVecchio as she always had. And if lab tests later put DellaVecchio on the roof the night those shots were fired?

“I'll deal with that then,” Brenna had said.

Christensen willed himself up the hill. It wasn't steep, but it was painfully long. He shortened his stride and quickened his pace, then blew a long warm breath into a vapor trail. He checked the timer on his runner's watch. More than a minute slower than his pace on this route just a year ago. Time was catching up to him.

As he entered the park, about to cross the road onto the serpentine path that would take him around the reservoir, he heard the low drone of a slowly approaching car. What registered when he glanced back was the three-pointed star of a Mercedes-Benz, but the car was moving so slowly he stepped without hesitation into the intersection. He was halfway across the road when he heard the car's horn, a short blast.

When he looked again, the black sport-utility was stopped at the far curb. The headlights flashed once, and as soon as he was across the street Christensen stopped and stared. The driver lowered the tinted window.

Teresa looked haggard. She waved him over, but from the apprehension on her face this was not a chance encounter.

“You really do run the same circuit every Saturday morning, like you told me,” she said as he approached. “You're in a rut.”

He smiled. She didn't.

“I like ruts,” he said.

“Sure makes you easy to find. Mind if we talk?”

“Now?” he said.

They were scheduled to meet that afternoon at four, after David went to work. “He called in sick,” she said, as if she'd read Christensen's mind. “There's no way I could get out without him wondering. But he's gone right now, off doing errands, and we live just across the ravine. Thought I'd take a chance, and here you are.”

Christensen was breathing hard, starting to sweat despite the cold. “I'm not really—”

“Please, Jim. A few minutes?”

In her pleading eyes, Christensen saw no room for discussion. “Where?”

“Get in.”

The reservoir loop wasn't long. Teresa drove halfway around before she spoke again, and then only to ask if he wanted the heater off.

“Unless you want me sweating right through these leather seats,” he said.

Teresa obliged, then pulled the SUV into a small parking lot nearly hidden in a grove of trees. She checked to make sure that cars passing along the road couldn't see them, then cut the engine. As she sat in profile, Christensen could see the faint line of an old incision that began just under her right ear and ran along the underside of her jaw to her chin. Another one followed her scalp line from her widow's peak to eye level, then turned and disappeared into her dark hair. She'd left the house without her normally heavy mask of makeup.

“You OK?” he asked.

She faced him. “Not pretty, is it?”

“No, I mean why are you here? If it's just to tell me you couldn't make it this afternoon, calling would've been fine. You've got my home number.”

“I remembered something else,” she said, fixing her eyes straight ahead. Christensen looked, saw nothing but trees.

“About the attack?”

“Before that.”

“Tell me.”

He waited for her to blink. Finally, she said, “I got flowers. In a box, long and skinny. Tied with a green bow. No card. In my mind, the way I remember it, it was just a couple days before the attack.” She blinked, finally, then turned to him again. “Roses. Two of them.”

Christensen was confused. “You testified about them at the trial, Teresa. I remember that. Two red roses. You opened them because you hoped maybe they were from David, trying to make up. And when you realized they weren't you just tossed them because there was no card or anything.”

Christensen closed his eyes, trying to recall Teresa's testimony about the incident. It had little impact on the trial, because no one could ever prove who had left the flowers on Teresa's doorstep or why. But that hadn't stopped Dagnolo, who let the mysterious delivery subtly reinforce his stalking theory for the jury. The flowers fit neatly into Dagnolo's fantasy that DellaVecchio had, in some perverse way, courted Harnett before he attacked her.

“They weren't red,” she said. “Well, one of them was. I remember now. The other one was white.”

Christensen shifted in his seat. “Do you feel that's significant?”

“I don't know. I just remember them now, lying there in the box all by themselves. No baby's breath. No tissue paper. It seems odd, doesn't it? One red, one white.”

Christensen watched her, letting her talk.

“It seems like a little thing until you think about it,” she said.

“What are you thinking?”

“That it's weird, is all,” she said. “I mean, nobody sends two roses unless the number two has some significance, right? And different colors? Why would somebody do that?”

“So you think the colors mean something?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Red and white,” she said. “Love and death.”

Christensen's body heat was fogging the car's windows. It suddenly bothered him that they couldn't see out, but Teresa made no effort to clear them. He turned her words over in his mind. Love and death.

“The D.A. always felt your attacker was courting you,” he said, avoiding judgment about Dagnolo's theory. “That whoever attacked you was infatuated, maybe obsessed. ‘The courtship from hell,' he called it.”

Teresa watched him. “Looks that way.”

“But do you buy it?”

Long pause. “Looks that way.”

Christensen probed again. “You're sure David wasn't trying to make amends after you split.”

“No.”

“What makes you so sure?”

She shook her head. “It was over. Besides, that's not his style. Plus, I asked him. He didn't send them.”

“Not even maybe?”

“No chance.”

Christensen took off one of his running gloves and traced an inch-wide line across the gray windshield with his knuckle. Through it, he could see nothing but the park's bare trees. His tiny window fogged again as soon as he was done.

“Are you convinced the flowers were from the man who attacked you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“
You never rose,
”
she said. The words she remembered him whispering in her ear that night.

“But that makes no sense,” Christensen said. “Two different uses of the word
rose.
”

Teresa shrugged. “I don't know. I just—”

“One's a flower,” Christensen said, thinking out loud. “The other's the past tense of—”

“I just know, damn it,” she snapped. “They were from him. Same way I knew it was a different voice.” She pointed to the center of her chest, breathing hard, as if she'd been the one running. “I feel it right here. I just know.”

They sat in silence for what seemed like minutes. Finally, Teresa checked her watch. “Shit. I've gotta go.”

“I can still talk,” Christensen said, checking his own watch.

“I can't. David's due back. I'm out when he gets home, he'll want to know where I was. I can't keep lying to him.” She waited until Christensen reached for the door handle. “I'm sorry. I have no idea what it means, but I wanted to tell you that.”

“You're confident it's a real memory?”

“Red and white,” she said. “Definitely.”

Christensen opened the door. Cold air rushed in, chilling him inside the gray Pitt Panthers sweatshirt that was turning dark with his perspiration. He thought about the hearing, now just forty-eight hours away.

“What are you going to do, Teresa? The hearing's in two days. As of now, Dagnolo's still planning to put you on the stand.”

“I know.” A tear rolled onto her cheek, and she brushed it away.

“He's going to ask if DellaVecchio is the man who attacked you. He's going to ask if you're sure.” Christensen let the thought sink in, then prompted her again. “Teresa, what are you going to do?”

“I don't know.”

He climbed out and then leaned back into the open passenger-side door. “Does David work Sundays? I could meet you at my office if you want to talk again. Just call me at home and I'll meet you.”

She nodded. The tears were coming faster now, and this time she let them flow. “Thanks.”

Christensen started to close the door, but he remembered a loose end he'd meant to tie up when they talked the day before. He leaned back into the car. “Can I ask you to clarify something?”

Teresa wiped her tears on the sleeve of her jacket. “Sure.”

“Earlier this week when we talked, you mentioned something. I don't know if it's significant, but it's been bugging me.”

She faced him with her sad, red eyes.

“You were talking about the things going on in your life at the time you and David split,” he said. “Job pressures, that sort of stuff. You mentioned an investigation. The Tidwell investigation. Some case David was involved in.”

She nodded. “I remember,” she said.

“I tried to track it down, but the only thing I could find was a drug case, a double shooting. Not to be callous, but it seemed like kind of a slam dunk as far as the investigation. But you said there was a lot of pressure on David because of it. I'm not sure I—”

“Oh my God.”

Teresa suddenly covered her mouth with her hands, but never took her eyes off him. Christensen whirled around, wondering if maybe someone was standing behind him, but they were alone in the trees. When he turned back, Teresa seemed disoriented, swept up in the rush of a fresh memory.

“Teresa?”

“Oh my God,” she said again. “IAD.”

Christensen climbed back in and slammed the door. “What is it?”

“Internal affairs,” she said. “Oh God.”

“I'm not following. I asked about Tidwell.”

She balled her hand into a fist, then bit the knuckle on her index finger.

“Tidwell?” he prompted.

His persistence seemed to annoy her, because she turned away. “Tidwell was just street trash,” she said. “Some crankhead trying to pull his nuts out of the fire. But now I remember. IAD was really going after it.”

“IAD?”

“Internal Affairs Division,” she said. “The cops who investigate other cops.”

“They'd questioned David about the Tidwell case?”

“Twice,” she said.

“And the pressure of that was complicating your marriage?”

She nodded. “It was complicated already. IAD just added another level of stress. But now I remember. We had a big fight, bigger than usual. About IAD. That's when David moved out.”

The memory was abrupt and apparently disturbing, but Christensen couldn't see a direct link to the matter at hand.

“Do you think it had something to do with the attack?” he asked.

“No.”

“Any idea why you reacted so strongly to it?”

She gestured again to her chest. “I felt it here.”

“But you have no idea why?”

Teresa checked her watch again. “I've got to go.”

Christensen opened the door again. “You're OK?” he asked before stepping out.

She nodded. “I'll call you if I can.”

Christensen closed the door. Teresa started her car and backed away, spraying mud and gravel as she bumped back onto the pavement. He walked through the warm exhaust fumes and stood alone alongside the road, wondering whether she'd just led him down another dead end.