Binds that tie, p.19
Binds That Tie, page 19
She had tried to explain the feeling of isolation to Chris once, the way it bloomed from her center as though it was a physical part of her body.
He’d laughed at her. “No one who is beautiful is invisible.”
She’d countered, “Oh yeah? Walk down Fifth Avenue.”
Beautiful women were everywhere, and yet she’d never felt as lonely as she did on the crowded streets of Manhattan. There was a difference between being seen and being seen. Frequently, the only time a person was seen was when they allowed it. To be seen, a person had to reach out, invite someone in. Maggie wore anonymity like an old comfortable bathrobe.
When she was little, maybe ten, Charlene had taken her and Miranda to an amusement park. The other moms wore jean shorts and fanny packs. They talked, smoked cigarettes, and drank Snapple in tight circles. Their baby strollers bumped together while gooey baby hands slapped at each other across oversized food trays. Charlene stood back with a frozen smile, ever polite. Her short blond bob was sleek and shiny, a stark contrast to the closed circle of frizzy ponytails.
Maggie remembered being embarrassed by her mother’s Ann Taylor, sailor-inspired ensemble with gold buttons and tasseled shoes, a small nautical pin on her lapel. It was not an outfit for an amusement park. Miranda rode the carousel, choosing a horse on the edge so she could grab the rings. Maggie pressed her back against a stationary bench, terrified that her sister would fall and get sucked under the spinning platform. She envisioned Miranda’s body bloodied and maimed to the brass soundtrack of carnival music. She felt frozen with fear.
Later, Maggie approached the wide-open clown mouth at the Fun House with all the trepidation of a gangplank walker. She studied herself in the mirrors—her fat self, her skinny self, her upside-down self—looking for something. She pretended to laugh just to see if it was as fun as all the other kids made it seem. She stumbled through the rolling barrel, feeling along the sides for support. On the other side of the barrel, before the giant wooden slide, was a roped-off hallway and, at the end, a closed metal door. She slipped under the velvet rope and gave the door a quick pull. It gave way, opening with a whispered creak. She hunkered down in the supply closet, between buckets and mops, and felt a surge of overwhelming relief. The door shut behind her, and the sickening smell of sugar and popcorn abated. She rested her head against the wall and slept.
When the police banged open the door, hours later, Maggie startled awake. “We found her! She’s here!”
Maggie only remembered her mother’s face, frozen in a silent Oh! and the feel of her arms, thin and spidery, wrapped around Maggie from behind as she kissed her hair and thanked the police. Maggie was sure her mother had said the appropriate phrases, asked the standard question. I was so worried! Why did you hide? Are you okay? But the only thing Maggie could remember her saying was, “Do you know they shut the park down looking for you? I have never been so humiliated.”
At the time, she didn’t know what humiliated meant. For years, she thought it meant scared or worried. In fifth grade, she opened her vocabulary book to discover it simply meant ashamed.
“So the biggest issue, as I see it, Detective Small, is that you and your partner never found Mr. May’s body. Is that right?”
Maggie snuck into the courtroom, hugging the back wall, and made her way to the front. She had missed Detective Small’s testimony. Jake was at the podium for cross-examination already. Maggie sat behind Chris and was surprised to discover the hate had waned. She studied the back of his head. His hair was longer and curled above his green shirt collar. She didn’t know anything about his life in prison. He still hadn’t answered her letter, and he’d never made an attempt to call her. Their lives were out of control, and her moods swung wildly. Not even an hour earlier, she could have easily driven away, the hate choking her out. Now, she sat on her hand to keep from twirling a silky black curl around her index finger. She lightly tapped his shoulder, but he made no move to acknowledge the touch.
“No. We have yet to find the corpse.” Detective Small was composed and professional, almost cool, and not the least defensive. Really a perfect witness. Her hair was pulled back into a glossy knot, blond and streaked. Her face was small and pinched, as if all her features were crowded into too small a space. She was pretty in a kindergarten-teacher way.
If Maggie had to bet money, she’d guess that Small didn’t drink. Maggie could smell the whisky wafting from her own pores.
“If there is one. Do you have the murder weapon?” Jake asked.
Maggie gave a little gasp, and her heart raced. For a brief, senseless second, she wondered if Jake had rifled through her closet. Too late, she realized that she had nothing to do with the line of questioning.
“No, but we have a missing vase.”
“So you have a possible but missing murder weapon?” Jake asked.
“We don’t know, Mr. McHale. Mr. Stevens changed his story so many times, we think this is yet another lie. He claims his wife broke it. During questioning, she stated he must have broken it the night of the altercation. No one can find it.” She sucked her teeth.
“Your Honor, I’d like to request that be stricken from the record citing spousal privilege. Maggie’s statement to the police cannot be used against her husband.”
“Mr. McHale,” Detective Small continued, speaking over Jake’s objection, “that doesn’t change the fact that it was yet another lie. Or an inconsistency, at least. One in a string of many—”
“Detective Small, please answer the questions with information from only Mr. Stevens’s statements. Not Mrs. Stevens’s. Is that clear?” Judge Puckett leaned forward.
She sat back, her mouth set in a firm line.
Jake asked, “Do you normally arrest a suspect without a body?”
“It is done, Mr. McHale. But no, not normally. In this case, there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence.”
“Right. Tell me about the circumstantial evidence.”
“Well, there was Mr. May’s handprint in the Stevens’s living room. In Mr. Stevens’s initial questioning, he claimed he had never seen Mr. May before. When we brought him in for questioning, he changed his story and admitted that Mr. May had been in his living room. Later, he changed his story a third time, claiming he and Mr. May engaged in a physical altercation in his home.”
“Either the second or third version accounts for the handprint though, correct?”
“Well, yeah, but there was so much lying, we don’t know exactly what happened.” Small smiled sweetly, all dimples and cherry Chapstick.
“Let’s talk about the truck,” Jake said.
“We found traces of blood in the bed of Christopher Stevens’s truck. It was swabbed and sent for blood typing and DNA. It came back as a blood type match for Logan May—B negative.”
“B negative? What about DNA?”
“We were unable to obtain a usable DNA profile,” Small said. “The truck appeared to have been recently washed, and the sample was denatured. We did obtain the blood type, though.”
“What does that actually tell us, though? Blood type isn’t definitive evidence, is it, Detective Small?”
“No, of course not. B negative is the second rarest blood type. About one percent of the population in the United States share it.”
“One percent of the population? What’s the total United States population, roughly three hundred million people?”
“Something like that,” Small said.
“So Logan May shared a blood type with about three million people. So one of three million people’s blood was in that truck bed?”
“Well, it wasn’t Christopher Stevens’s blood, Mr. McHale. Mr. Stevens’s blood type is O positive.”
“Still, those are odds I wouldn’t bet on. Did you examine the truck itself?”
“We did,” Small said. “There were no fingerprints, blood, or DNA consistent with Logan May in the truck interior or anywhere else on the exterior. The blood traces were found in the back of the truck bed, closest to the cab. The rear window was cracked.”
“Did you examine the window?”
“We did. It was a spider-web crack, like someone had hit it with an object. It was concave, as though the blow had come from the outside.”
“Could you determine when or how this crack had occurred?” Jake asked.
“We could not. Over time and with exposure to heat and cold, the edges of cracked tempered glass will fracture, which is visible under a microscope. Pieces of the broken window were examined under magnification and appeared intact, indicating the break was fairly recent.”
“But you could not determine if the glass was cracked two weeks ago, or say, with a baseball bat the early morning of June second?”
Detective Small looked surprised and then gave a small smile. “No. That we couldn’t tell you.”
Jake approached the witness box with an eight-by-ten photograph. “Judging by this picture, could you tell if the glass was cracked by a baseball bat?”
Detective Small slightly rolled her eyes but took the photo and studied it briefly. “No, we have no idea how it was broken.”
“But it could have been a baseball bat?” Jake persisted.
“It could have been anything.” Detective Small cocked her head to the side.
“Answer the question, Detective. Could it have been a baseball bat?”
“Sure. Of course. It could have been a baseball bat.”
“Could you determine the angle of the object that hit the window?” Jake asked.
“We actually could. The center of the splinter was angled slightly down, indicating the object struck the rear window from about a twenty-five degree angle, give or take.”
“So is it possible that whoever broke the window was standing in the truck bed?”
“It’s possible, yes. Not definitive.”
“So let me tell you an alternate theory. Logan May visits the Stevens’ residence, intoxicated. Mr. Stevens answers the door, and Mr. May forces his way into the house, into the living room, where the two of them have a verbal exchange resulting in a physical altercation. Mr. Stevens strikes Mr. May and gives him a bloody nose. Mr. May leaves the house, retrieves a baseball bat from his car, and strikes the rear window of the truck, breaking it. In the course of doing so, he leaves traces of blood from his bleeding nose in the truck bed. Again, does the theory seem possible?”
“It seems far-fetched, Mr. McHale. I mean, where’s this bat?” Small tilted her head and gave a quick flick of her wrist, like the theory was too preposterous to be anything but dismissed.
“Where’s the wallet? The phone? For that matter, where’s Logan May?” Jake gave a quick snort.
Farnum stood. “Objection. These are speeches thinly disguised as rhetorical questions. I’ve let it go on far too long, Your Honor.”
“Stick to the facts, McHale. Ask questions, please,” Judge Puckett admonished.
“Detective Small, does the proposed theory account for the evidence, yes or no?” Jake said slowly, the floor creaking under his feet.
“Mr. McHale, why would Mr. May climb into the bed of the truck and strike the rear window? Doesn’t it seem more logical to strike the windshield?” Detective Small’s jaw jutted out, and she puffed a frustrated breath into the microphone.
“You can’t account for the logic of a drunk man, can you? Does the alternate theory seem possible?”
Detective Small took so long to answer that Judge Puckett cleared his throat and Maggie suppressed a smile. “Possible, maybe. But it seems unlikely.”
“Does that version of events account for all of your physical, circumstantial evidence?”
“Yes. It doesn’t factor in motive and the excessive lying,” she said.
“Talk to me about motive.”
“Ms. Stevens was having an affair with Mr. May.” Detective Small sat up straighter and crossed her legs, folding her hands over her knees.
“Substantiated?” Jake arched his eyebrows and cocked his head.
“We have over a hundred text messages in a month between the two of them. When we searched the house, we recovered the memory card from the trap in the toilet. From that card, we were able to retrieve the messages themselves.”
Jake approached the witness chair with a ream of documents. “Detective Small, can you read the highlighted passages?”
Detective Small took the inch-thick stack and paged through it. “All of them?” She looked at the judge.
“Let’s start from the beginning and see how far we get, okay?” Judge Puckett amended.
Detective Small took a deep breath. “May second.
“Logan: Why won’t you meet me again? Come to the hut.
“Maggie: We’ll see, okay? I might go out with the girls on Saturday, it’s possible we’ll make it there. I’ll text you and let you know.
“May fourth. Logan: I’m starving, wanna get coffee?
“Maggie: Logan, its two thirty in the morning, why aren’t you sleeping?
“Logan: Too busy thinking of you.
“Maggie: Go to sleep. Go think about someone else.
“May sixteenth. Logan: Come to the hut, everyone is here. I want to see you again.
“Maggie: Logan, I’m not coming down there, we’re watching a movie.
“Logan: You and your cheating husband?
“Maggie: He’s not cheating anymore. Fuck off, Logan. I’m getting tired of this.
“Logan: Sry, just got jealous.
“Maggie: I’m married.
“Logan: you sure don’t act like it.
“Maggie: You’re just pissed I won’t see you again.
“Logan: Can you blame me? You’ve got one gorgeous ass.
“Maggie: Good-night, Logan.
“May thirty-first. Maggie: This has to stop, Logan. I told you this, I can’t cheat on Chris.”
Detective Small turned the last page and squared the stack, avoiding eye contact with Jake. Maggie sat back in her bench, her face hot and the blood in her ears. She couldn’t look at Chris or Jake, which was fine because neither of them was looking at her. She lifted her head and met the eyes of Detective Small, gray and reproachful. Maggie kept in her seat only because slinking out would garner more attention.
Wait, Jake had those transcripts for how long? At least a week. She wracked her brain to remember when he said discovery was. The days blurred together. When he kissed me this morning, what had he been thinking of?
“So tell me, Detective, does that seem like a consummated affair to you?” Jake asked.
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. McHale. It certainly could be.”
“So is Maggie purposefully being deceitful in her texts on the off-chance that someone will read them? Even though she deleted them from her messages?”
“We don’t know what happened before, after, and in between these text messages.”
“The last one was received on May thirty-first,” Jake said, “approximately thirty-six hours before Logan left the Tiki Hut for the last time. Are you contending that an affair was established in those thirty-six hours?”
“Mr. McHale, you’re splitting hairs. What is this? The Bill Clinton school of defense? What is the definition of an affair? Everyone’s answer will be different. That line is determined by each individual couple. Yes, I maintain that this correspondence would have angered a hotheaded man enough to kill his wife’s lover, whatever the gradient of the affair.”
Maggie sucked in her breath. That was a very, very good answer.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chris
Chris lay on his back, staring at the chipped and peeling paint on the high ceiling. The flickering and buzzing fluorescent overheads and the lingering smell of dinner turned his stomach. In the day, during the hearing, he could shell himself—he felt like a Chris statue, devoid of emotion. At night, he’d wake in a sweat hearing Maggie’s voice. What if we get caught?
During the day, he could sneak glances at Maggie and remain stoic. Her honey hair was pulled back, the pervading yet familiar jasmine scent of her perfume wafting to his table. His wife had become a stranger to him. But at night, he was consumed by all things Maggie. Sleeplessness became inevitable. When she shifted in her seat or sighed or coughed—things he could sense or hear from behind him and slightly to his right—did it mean anything? How do you feel? The question was so familiar to him after ten years of marriage. With the murder, it had taken on new significance.
The creak of the bed across the room and the final flicker of lights, followed by blanketing darkness, snapped him out of his reverie. His new cellmate was a quiet man, mid-fifties, and had the sweaty, fleshy smell of an alcoholic. He shook the bed violently, a metallic clattering on the concrete floor that combined with his primal howl. More than once, Chris had summoned the guard, sure the man would die from withdrawal. Their sole conversation, three days ago, had revolved around the one topic Chris had warned Smith to avoid: what they were in for. Vehicular manslaughter.
Chris had considered telling the man to hush, giving him the same lesson he’d given Smith, but he thought better of it. After the man’s rambling, disjointed account of his accident, he seemed to revert inward and hadn’t spoken a coherent word since. After lights out, while the block back-up lights buzzed and hummed, Chris studied the ceiling and thought of Maggie. The man shouted in his sleep about hallucinatory spiders. Chris had bought earplugs at the canteen.
