Perfect Match

FOUR

In the moments after, Patrick wonders how he could know that Nina’s favorite number is 13, that the scar on her chin came from a sledding crash, that she wished for a pet alligator for three Christmases straight—yet not know that inside her, all this time, was a grenade waiting to explode. “I did what I had to,” she murmurs, all the way across the slick and bloodied court.

In his arms, she trembles. She feels light as a cloud. Patrick’s head whirls. Nina still smells of apples, her shampoo; she still can’t walk a straight line—but she is babbling incoherently, not at all in control the way Patrick is accustomed to seeing her. As they cross the threshold into the holding cell, Patrick looks behind him into the courtroom. Pandemonium. He’s always thought that word sounds like a circus, but here it is now. Brain matter covers the front of the defense attorney’s suit. A litter of paper and pocketbooks covers the gallery, as some reporters sob, and others direct their cameramen to film. Caleb stands still as a statue. Bobby, one of the bailiffs, is talking into the radio at his shoulder: “Yeah, shots were fired, and we need an ambulance.” Roanoke, the other bailiff, hustles a white-faced Judge Bartlett into chambers. “Clear the court!” the judge yells, and Roanoke answers: “But we can’t, Your Honor. They’re all witnesses.”

On the floor, being completely ignored, is the body of Father Szyszynski.

Killing him was the right thing, Patrick thinks before he can stop himself. And then immediately afterward: Oh, God, what has she done?

“Patrick,” Nina murmurs.

He cannot look at her. “Don’t speak to me.” He will be a witness at— Christ —Nina’s murder trial. Whatever she tells him, he will have to tell a court.

As an aggressive photographer makes her way toward the holding cell, Patrick moves slightly to block the camera’s view of Nina. His job, right now, is to protect her. He just wishes there were someone to protect him.

He jostles her in his arms so that he can shut the door. It will be easier to wait out the arrival of the Biddeford Police Department that way. As it swings closed, he sees the paramedics arriving, leaning down over the body.

“Is he dead?” Nina asks. “I just need you to tell me, Patrick. I killed him, right? How many shots did I get off? I had to do it, you know I had to do it. He’s dead, isn’t he? The paramedics can’t revive him, can they? Tell me they won’t. Please, just tell me he’s dead. I promise, I’ll sit right here and not move if you just go look and see if he’s dead.”

“He’s dead, Nina,” Patrick says quietly.

She closes her eyes, sways a little. “Thank God. Oh, God, God, thank God.” She sinks down onto the metal bunk in the small cell.

Patrick turns his back on her. In the courtroom, his colleagues have arrived. Evan Chao, another detective-lieutenant in the department, supervises the securing of the crime scene, yelling over the crescendo of shrieks and sobs. Policemen crouch, dusting for fingerprints, taking photos of the spreading pool of blood and the broken railing where Patrick tackled Nina to get the gun out of her hand. The Maine state police SWAT team arrives, thundering down the center aisle like a tornado. One woman, a reporter sequestered for questioning, glances at what is left of the priest and vomits. It is a grim, chaotic scene; it is the stuff of nightmares, and yet Patrick stares fixedly, far more willing to face this reality than the one crying quietly behind him.

What Nathaniel hates about this particular board game is that all you have to do is spin the spinner the wrong way, and that’s it, your little game piece is coasting down that big long slide in the middle. It’s true that if you spin the right way, you can climb that extra tall ladder … but it doesn’t always work like that, and before you know it, you’ve lost.

Monica lets him win, but Nathaniel doesn’t like that as much as he thought he would. It makes him feel the way he did when he fell off his bike and had this totally gross cut all across his chin. People looked at him and pretended that there was nothing wrong with him but you could see in their eyes that they really wanted to turn away.

“Are you going to spin, or do I have to wait until you turn six?” Monica teases.

Nathaniel flicks the spinner. Four. He moves his little man the right number of spaces and, it figures, winds up on one of those slides. He pauses at the top, knowing that if he only moves three instead, Monica won’t say a word.

But before he can decide whether or not to cheat, something catches his attention behind her shoulder. Through the wide glass window of the playroom, he sees one policeman … no, two … five … racing through the hallway. They don’t look like Patrick does when he works—all rumply, in a regular shirt and tie. They are wearing shiny boots and silver badges, and their hands are on their guns, just like Nathaniel sees late at night on TV when he comes downstairs to get a drink and his parents don’t change the channel fast enough.

“Shoot,” he says softly.

Monica smiles at him. “That’s right, a chute. But you’ll have better luck next time, Nathaniel.”

“No … shoot.” He curves his fingers into a gun, the sign for the letter G. “You know. Bang.”

He realizes the moment Monica understands him. She looks behind her at the sound of all those running feet, and her eyes go wide. But she turns back to Nathaniel with a smile glued over the question that shivers on her lips. “It’s your spin, right?” Monica says, although they both know his turn has come and gone.

When feeling returns to Caleb’s fingers and feet, it comes slowly, an emotional frostbite that leaves his extremities swollen and unfamiliar. He stumbles forward, past the spot where Nina has just shot a man in cold blood, past the people jostling for position so that they can do the jobs they were trained to do. Caleb gives the body of Father Szyszynski a wide berth. His body jerks toward the door where he last saw Nina, being shoved forward into a cell.

Jesus, a cell.

A detective who does not recognize him grabs his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” Silent, Caleb pushes past the man, and then he sees Patrick’s face in the small window of the door. Caleb knocks, but Patrick seems to be deciding whether or not to open the door.

At that point, Caleb realizes that all these people, all these detectives, think he might be Nina’s accomplice.

His mouth goes dry as sand, so that when Patrick finally does open the door a crack, he can’t even request to see his wife. “Get Nathaniel and go home,” Patrick suggests quietly. “I’ll call you, Caleb.”

Yes, Nathaniel. Nathaniel. The very thought of his son, a floor below while all this has been going on, makes Caleb’s stomach cramp. He moves with a speed and grace unlikely for someone his size, barreling past people until he reaches the far end of the courtroom, the door at the rear of the aisle. A bailiff stands guard, watching Caleb approach. “My son, he’s downstairs. Please. You have to let me get to him.”

Maybe it is the pain carved into Caleb’s face; maybe it is the way his words come out in the color of grief—for whatever reason, the bailiff wavers. “I swear I’ll come right back. But I have to make sure he’s all right.”

A nod, one that Caleb isn’t meant to see. When the bailiff looks away, Caleb slips out the door behind him. He takes the stairs two at a time and runs down the hall to the playroom.

For a moment, he stands outside the plate glass window, watching his son play and letting it bring him back to center. Then Nathaniel sees him and beams, jumping up to open the door and throw himself into Caleb’s arms.

Monica’s tight face swims into the sea of his vision. “What happened up there?” she mouths silently.

But Caleb only buries his face against his son’s neck, as silent as Nathaniel had been when something happened that he could not explain.

Nina once told Patrick that she used to stand at the side of Nathaniel’s crib and watch him sleep. It’s amazing, she’d said. Innocence in a blanket. He understands, now. Watching Nina sleep, you’d never know what had happened just two hours before. You’d never know from that smooth brow what thoughts lay underneath the surface.

Patrick, on the other hand, is absolutely ill. He cannot seem to catch his breath; his stomach knots with each step. And every time he looks at Nina’s face, he cannot decide what he’d rather find out: that this morning, she simply went crazy … or that she didn’t.

As soon as the door opens, I’m wide-awake. I jackknife to a sitting position on the bunk, my hand smoothing the jacket Patrick gave me as a makeshift pillow. It is wool, scratchy; it has left lines pressed into my cheek.

A policeman I don’t know sticks his head inside. “Lieutenant,” he says formally, “we need you to come give a statement.”

Of course. Patrick’s seen it too.

The policeman’s eyes are insects on my skin. As Patrick moves toward the door I stand, grab onto the bars of the cell. “Can you find out if he’s dead? Please? I have to know. I have to. I just have to know if he’s dead.” My words hit Patrick between the shoulder blades, slow him down. But he doesn’t look at me, not as he walks away from the holding cell, past the other policeman, and opens the door.

In the slice of room revealed, I see the activity that Patrick’s kept hidden from me for the past few hours. The Murder Winnebago must have arrived—a state police mobile unit that contains everything the cops need to investigate a homicide and the key personnel to do it. Now they cover the courtroom like a mass of maggots, dusting for fingerprints and taking down the names and statements of eyewitnesses. A person shifts, revealing a crimson smear that outlines a splayed, graying hand. As I watch, a photographer leans down, captures the spatter pattern of the blood. My heart trips tight. And I think: I did this; I did this.

It is a God’s honest fact that Quentin Brown does not fancy driving anywhere, especially long distances, particularly from Augusta to York County. By the time he’s in Brunswick he’s certain that another moment and his six-foot-five frame will be permanently stunted into the position demanded by this ridiculously tiny Ford Probe. By the time he reaches Portland, he needs to be put into traction. But as an assistant attorney general on the murder team, he has to go where he is summoned. And if someone offs a priest in Biddeford, then Biddeford is where he has to go.

Still, by the time he reaches the district court, he is in a formidable mood, and that’s saying something. By normal standards, Quentin Brown is overpowering—add together his shaved head, his unusual height, and his more unusual skin color, given this lily white state, and most people assume he is either a felon or a vacationing NBA draft pick. But a lawyer? A black lawyer? Not heah, as the locals say.

In fact, the University of Maine law school heavily recruits students of color, to make up for their rainbow deficiency. Like Quentin, many come; unlike Quentin, they all leave. He’s spent twenty years walking into provincial courts and surprising the hell out of the defense attorneys who come expecting someone—or some thing —different. And truth be told, Quentin likes it that way.

As always, a path parts for him when he strides into the Biddeford District Court, as people fall back to gape. He walks into the courtroom with the police tape crossing the doors, and continues up the aisle, past the bar. Fully aware that movement has slowed and conversation has stopped, Quentin leans down and examines the dead man. “For a crazy woman,” he murmurs, appraising, “she was a damn good shot.” Then Quentin eyeballs the cop who is staring at him as if he’s arrived from Mars. “What’s the matter?” he deadpans. “You never seen someone six-foot-five before?”

A detective walks up to him, swaggering with authority. “Can I help you?”

“Quentin Brown. From the AG’s office.” He extends a hand.

“Evan Chao,” the detective says, working his damnedest not to do a double take. God, how Quentin loves this moment.

“How many witnesses do we have to the shooting?”

Chao does some arithmetic on a pad. “We’re up to thirty-six, but we’ve got about fifty people in the back room who haven’t given us statements yet. They’re all saying the same thing, though. And we have the whole shooting on tape; WCSH was filming the arraignment for the five o’clock news.”

“Where’s the gun?”

“Bobby grabbed it, bagged it.”

Quentin nods. “And the perp?”

“In the holding cell.”

“Good. Let’s draft up a complaint for murder.” He glances around, assessing the state of the investigation. “Where’s her husband?”

“With all the other people, waiting to be questioned, I suppose.”

“Do we have any evidence linking him to the crime? Did he participate in any way?”

Chao exchanges a glance with a few police officers, who murmur among themselves and shrug. “He hasn’t been questioned yet, apparently.”

“Then get him in here,” Quentin says. “Let’s ask him.”

Chao turns to one of the bailiffs. “Roanoke, find Caleb Frost, will you?”

The older man looks at Quentin and quails. “He, uh, ain’t in there.”

“You know this for a fact,” Quentin says slowly.

“Ayuh. He, well, he asked me if he could go get his kid, but he told me he’d come back.”

“He said what?” This is little more than a whisper, but coming from Quentin’s great height, it is threatening. “You let him walk out the door after his wife murdered the man who’s charged with molesting his son? What is this, the Keystone Kops?”

“No, sir,” the bailiff replies solemnly. “It’s the Biddeford District Court.”

A muscle jumps in Quentin’s jaw. “Get someone to go find this guy and interview him,” he tells Chao. “I don’t know what he knows; I don’t know whether he’s involved, but if he needs to be arrested, do it.”

Chao bristles. “Don’t pin this on the police force; it was the bailiff’s mistake. Nobody even told me he was in the courtroom.”

And where else would he be, if his son’s abuser was being arraigned? But Quentin only takes a deep breath. “Well, we need to deal with the shooter, anyway. Is the judge still here? Maybe we can get him to arraign her.”

“The judge is … indisposed.”

“Indisposed,” Quentin repeats.

“Took three Valium after the shots flew, and hasn’t woken up yet.”

There is a possibility of getting another judge in, but it is late in the day. And the last thing Quentin wants is to have this woman released because of some stupid bail commissioner. “Charge her. We’ll hold her overnight and arraign her in the morning.”

“Overnight?” Chao asks.

“Yes. Last time I checked, there was still a York County Jail in Alfred.”

The detective looks down at his shoes for a moment. “Yeah, but … well, you know she’s a DA?”

Of course he knows, he’s known since the moment his office was called to investigate. “What I know,” Quentin answers, “is that she’s a murderer.”

Evan Chao knows Nina Frost; every detective in Biddeford has worked with her at some time or another. And like every other guy on the force, he doesn’t even blame her for what she’s done. Hell, half of them wish they’d have the guts to do the same thing, were they in her position.

He doesn’t want to be the one to do this, but then again, better him than that asshole Brown. At least he can make sure the next step is as painless as possible for her.

He relieves the officer guarding her and takes up the position himself outside the holding cell. In a more ideal situation, he would take her to a conference room, offer her a cup of coffee, make her comfortable so that she’d be more likely to talk. But the court doesn’t have a secure conference room, so this interview will have to be conducted on opposite sides of the bars.

Nina’s hair is wild around her face; her eyes are so green they glow. On her arm are deep scratches; it looks as though she’s done that to herself. Evan shakes his head. “Nina, I’m really sorry … but I have to charge you with the murder of Glen Szyszynski.”

“I killed him?” she whispers.

“Yes.”

She is transformed by the smile that unwinds across her face. “Can I see him, please?” she asks politely. “I promise I won’t touch anything, but please, I have to see him.”

“He’s gone already, Nina. You can’t see him.”

“But I killed him?”

Evan exhales heavily. The last time he’d seen Nina Frost, she’d been arguing one of his own cases in court—a date rape. She had gotten up in front of the perp and wrung him dry on the witness stand. She had made him look the way she looks, right now. “Will you give me a statement, Nina?”

“No, I can’t. I can’t. I did what I had to do, I can’t do any more.”

He pulls out a Miranda form. “I need to read you your rights.”

“I did what I had to do.”

Evan has to raise his voice over hers. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right …”

“I can’t do any more. I did what I had to do,” Nina babbles.

Finally Evan finishes reading. Through the bars he hands her a pen to sign the paper, but it drops from her fingers. She whispers, “I can’t do any more.”

“Come on, Nina,” Evan says softly. He unlocks the holding cell, leads her through the hallways of the sheriff’s office, and outside to a police cruiser. He opens the door for her and helps her inside. “We can’t arraign you till tomorrow, so I’ve got to take you down to the jail overnight. You’re gonna get your own cell, and I’ll make sure they take care of you. Okay?”

But Nina Frost has curled up in a fetal position on the backseat of the cruiser and doesn’t seem to hear him at all.

The correctional officer at the booking desk of the jail sucks on a Halls Mentho-Lyptus cough drop while he asks me to narrow my life down to the only things they need to know in a jail: name, date of birth, height, weight. Eye color, allergies, medications, regular physician. I answer softly, fascinated by the questions. I usually enter this play in the second act; to see it at its beginning is new for me.

A blast of medicinal mint comes my way, as the sergeant taps his pencil again. “Distinguishing characteristics?” he asks.

He means birthmarks, moles, tattoos. I have a scar, I think silently, on my heart.

But before I can answer, another correctional officer unzips my black purse and empties its contents on the desk. Chewing gum, three furry Life Savers, a checkbook, my wallet. The detritus of motherhood: photographs of Nathaniel from last year, a long-forgotten teething ring, a four-pack of crayons pinched from a Chili’s restaurant. Two more rounds of ammunition for the handgun.

I grab my arms, suddenly shivering. “I can’t do it. I can’t do any more,” I whisper, and try to curl into a ball.

“Well, we’re not done yet,” the correctional officer says. He rolls my fingers across an ink pad and makes three sets of prints. He props me up against a wall, hands me a placard. I follow his directions like a zombie; I do not meet his eyes. He doesn’t tell me when the flash is going to go off; now I know why in every mug shot a criminal seems to have been caught unaware.

When my vision adjusts after the burst of light, a female guard is standing in front of me. She has one long eyebrow across her forehead and the build of a linebacker. I stumble in her wake into a room not much bigger than a closet, which holds shelves full of neatly folded hazard-orange jail scrubs. The Connecticut prisons had to sell all their brand new forest-green jumpsuits, I suddenly remember, because the convicts kept escaping into the woods.

The guard hands me a pair of scrubs. “Get undressed,” she orders.

I have to do this, I think, as I hear her snap on the rubber gloves. I have to do whatever it takes to get out of here. So I force my mind to go blank, like a screen at the close of a movie. I feel the guard’s fingers probe my mouth and my ears, my nostrils, my vagina, my anus. With a jolt, I think of my son.

When it is over, the guard takes my clothes, still damp with the blood of the priest, and bags them. I slowly put on the scrubs, tying them so tight at the waist that I find myself gasping for breath. My eyes dart back and forth as we walk back down the hall. The walls, they’re watching me.

In the booking room at the front of the jail again, the female guard leaves me standing in front of a phone. “Go ahead,” she instructs. “Make your call.”

I have a constitutional right to a private phone call, but I can feel the weight of their stares. I pick up the receiver and play with it, stroking its long neck. I stare at it as if I have never seen a telephone before.

Whatever they hear, they won’t admit to hearing. I have tried to pressure enough correctional officers to come testify, and they never will, because they have to go back and guard these prisoners every day.

For the first time, this works to my advantage.

I meet the gaze of the nearest correctional officer, then slowly shake off the act. Dialing, I wait to be connected to something outside of here. “Hello?” Caleb says, the most beautiful word in the English language.

“How’s Nathaniel?”

“Nina. Jesus Christ, what were you doing?”

“How’s Nathaniel?” I repeat.

“How the hell do you think he is? His mother’s been arrested for killing someone!”

I close my eyes. “Caleb, you need to listen to me. I’ll explain everything when I see you. Have you talked to the police?”

“No—”

“Don’t. Right now, I’m at the jail. They’re holding me here overnight, and I’m going to be arraigned tomorrow.” There are tears coming. “I need you to call Fisher Carrington.”

“Who?”

“He’s a defense attorney. And he’s the only person who can get me out of this. I don’t care what you have to do, but get him to represent me.”

“What am I supposed to tell Nathaniel?”

I take a deep breath. “That I’m okay, and that I’ll be home tomorrow.”

Caleb is angry; I can hear it in his pause. “Why should I do this for you, after what you just did to us?”

“If you want there to be an us,” I say, “you’d better do it.”

After Caleb hangs up on me, I hold the phone to my ear, pretending he is still on the other end of the line. Then I replace the receiver, turn around, and look at the correctional officer who is waiting to take me to a cell. “I had to do it,” I explain. “He doesn’t understand. I can’t make him understand. You would have done it, wouldn’t you? If it was your kid, wouldn’t you have done it?” I make my eyes flicker from left to right, lighting on nothing. I chew my fingernail till the cuticle bleeds.

I make myself crazy, because this is what I want them to see.

It is no surprise when I am led to the solitary cells. In the first place, new prisoners are often put on a suicide watch; in the second place, I put half the women in this jail. The correctional officer slams the door shut behind me, and this becomes my new world: six feet by eight feet, a metal bunk, a stained mattress, a toilet.

The guard moves off, and for the first time this day, I let myself unravel. I have killed a man. I have walked right up to his lying face and shot four bullets into it. The recollection comes in bits and pieces—the click of the trigger past the point of no return; the thunder of the gun; the backward leap of my hand as the gun recoiled, as if it were trying, too late, to stop itself.

His blood was warm where it struck my shirt.

Oh, my God, I have killed a man. I did it for all the right reasons; I did it for Nathaniel; but I did it.

My body starts shaking uncontrollably, and this time, it is no act. It is one thing to seem insane for the sake of the witnesses that will be called to testify against me; it is another thing entirely to sift through my own mind and realize what I have been capable of all along. Father Szyszynski will not preside over Mass on Sunday. He will not have his nightly cup of tea or say an evening prayer. I have killed a priest who was not given Last Rites; and I will follow him straight to Hell.

My knees draw up, my chin tucks tight. In the overheated belly of this jail, I am freezing.

“Are you all right, girlfriend?”

The voice floats from across the hall, the second solitary confinement cell. Whoever has been in there watching me has been doing it from the shadows. I feel heat rise to my face and look up to see a tall black woman, her scrubs knotted above her bellybutton, her toenails painted to orange to match her jail uniform.

“My name’s Adrienne, and I’m a real good listener. I don’t get to talk to many people.”

Does she think I’m going to fall for that setup? Stoolpigeons are as common in here as professions of innocence, and I should know—I have listened to both. I open my mouth to tell her this, but at second glance, realize I’ve been mistaken. The long feet, the rippled abdomen, the veins on the backs of the hands—Adrienne isn’t a woman at all.

“Your secret,” the transvestite says. “It’s safe with me.”

I stare right at her—his—considerable chest. “Got a Kleenex?” I ask flatly.

For just a moment, there is a beat of silence. “That’s just a technicality,” Adrienne responds.

I turn away again. “Yeah, well, I’m still not talking to you.”

Above us, there is the call for lights out. But it never gets dark in jail. It is eternally dusk, a time when creatures crawl from swamps and crickets take over the earth. In the shadows, I can see Adrienne’s smooth skin, a lighter shade of night between the bars of her cell. “What did you do?” Adrienne asks, and there is no mistaking her question.

“What did you do?”

“It’s the drugs, it’s always the drugs, honey. But I’m trying to get off them, I truly am.”

“A drug conviction? Then why did they put you in solitary?”

Adrienne shrugs. “Well, the boys, I don’t belong with them; they just want to beat me up, you know? I’d like to be in with the girls, but they won’t let me, because I haven’t had the operation yet. I been taking my medicine regular, but they say it don’t matter, so long as I’ve got the wrong kind of plumbing.” She sighs. “Quite frankly, honey, they don’t know what to do with me in here.”

I stare at the cinderblock walls, at the dim safety light on the ceiling, at my own lethal hands. “They don’t know what to do with me either,” I say.

The AG’s office puts Quentin up at a Residence Inn that has a small efficiency kitchen, cable TV, and a carpet that smells like cats. “Thank you,” he says dryly, handing the teenager who doubles as bellman a dollar. “It’s a palace.”

“Whatever,” the kid responds.

It amazes Quentin, the way adolescents are the only group that doesn’t blink twice upon seeing him. Then again, he sometimes believes they wouldn’t blink twice if a herd of mustangs tore past inches from their Skechered feet.