Martin Misunderstood

The coroner easily read the scene: the car had been used to knock down the victim. The subsequent beating was what had killed the woman. Then, the killer had gotten back into his car and ran over her head. Then her torso. Then her head again.

An had to admit, if only to herself, that she was having trouble feeling sympathy for the victim. Sandra Burke had two children who were being raised by the State. She had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. She had been arrested once for intimidating one of her elderly neighbors into giving her ten dollars for cigarettes.

All of this together was nothing spectacularly bad in the scheme of things – this was certainly not the first case An had seen where an alcoholic, bad mother had been brutally murdered – but there was one particular thing about Sandra Burke that really grated An's nerves: she was a hideous housekeeper. She'd left plates in the sink so long that the food had started to growmold. How hard was it to put them in the dishwasher? And would it have killed the woman to occasionally vacuum the rug in the front hall? For the love of God, the vacuum was right there in the hall closet.

'Excuse me?' Martin said.

An realized she had gone silent too long. She cleared her throat, trying to block out the image of the dirty dishes, to think of Sandra Burke as a human being instead of a grossly untidy person. 'Mr Reed, have you ever hit a woman?'

He bristled. 'Of course not. Men are stronger than women. It's an unfair advantage.'

Bruce chuckled. 'Have to be alone with them before you can hit them, right, Marty? Was that what it was all about?' He slammed his hands on the table, raising his voice. 'Tell us what happened, Martin! Tell us the truth!' He leaned closer. 'You came on to Susan and she told you to go fuck yourself! Isn't that right?'

Martin and An exchanged a look. His voice was mild when he corrected, 'It's Sandy, actually.'

Jergens scratched through the word 'Susan' on his pad and wrote 'Sandee'.

An felt a headache working its way up from the back of her neck and into the base of her brain. She asked, 'Mr Reed, where did you go last night after you dropped off your mother?'

'I just drove around,' he mumbled.

'Speak up,' Bruce chided.

'I said I just drove around,' Martin insisted. 'This is really crazy. Honestly, why would I hurt Sandy?'

An kicked Bruce's foot with her own, indicating that he should go back to glowering with his back against the wall. She told Martin, 'Your co-workers claim Sandy taunted you quite a bit.'

'No, she didn't,' Martin countered. 'Well, I mean, not in a disrespectful way. Not to be cruel, I mean. Well, maybe it was a bit cruel, but she didn't mean to hurt-'

'Two days ago, she went on the loudspeaker and called you "teeny weenie" then Super Glued a twelve-inch vibrating rubber dildo to your desk.'

Martin cleared his throat. 'She liked her pranks.'

'Apparently.'

'And Sandy knows that Super Glue can be easily removed with GlooperGone. It's one of Southern's best-selling products.' He shook his head. 'She started out on the Glooper line, for goodness' sakes.'

An tried not to imagine Martin gripping a twelve-inch vibrating dildo as he lubed it with solvent and scraped it from his desk. 'Some of the women we talked to said that you listen to them while they are urinating in the toilet.'

Jergens' lip curled in disgust. 'Seriously, dude?'

Martin explained, 'My office is right outside the toilets. I wasn't listening. I didn't have a choice.'

'Yeah, right.' Jergens went back to his doodling. An could see he had drawn a hangman's gallows with a figure resembling Humpty Dumpty hanging from the noose.

An suggested, 'Mr Reed, you can clear this up if you just tell us where you were last night.'

'I told you I drove around. I was home by eight – there was a television program I wanted to watch.'

Jergens perked up. 'What'd you watch?'

Martin looked down, his face reddening. He mumbled something unintelligible.

An, Bruce and Jergens all asked, 'What?' at the same time.

Martin held his head up high, squared his shoulders. 'Dancing With the Stars.'

Jergens shot Bruce a look, and both men chuckled. 'Did you watch it with your mommy?'

An stared at the lawyer, for some reason feeling protective of the suspect.

Martin answered, 'Yes, I watched it with my mother.' An could tell that he was struggling to hold on to a sliver of his dignity.

She asked, 'Did you watch it all the way through?'

Martin nodded. 'Mother went to bed when Mr T was doing the rumba, and as I am a lifelong A-Team fan, I wanted to see what would happen.' He added, 'There's nothing feminine about wanting to watch people dance. Mr T is very light on his feet. He's an amazing athlete. Lots of athletes take dancing lessons. It makes them more nimble.'

An sighed again, sitting back in the chair. Sandra Burke had been murdered around eightfifteen, which, if An was remembering correctly, was around the same time one of the Dancing With the Stars judges had commented that, in fact, many athletes were nimble dancers.

Martin could not stop defending his masculinity. 'There is nothing wrong with having a wide variety of interests. I am interested in many things. Very many interesting things.'

'Books?'

Martin smiled – a genuine smile. 'I love to read.'

'What subjects are you most interested in?'

'Well, murder mysteries. Science fiction, but more about social issues than space ships.' He stared down as his hands, almost bashful. 'I'm particularly fond of Kathy Reichs. Her main character is very… alluring. She gets to the bottom of things, like, you know… you.'

An felt her face flush. She never missed an episode of Bones. Was he comparing her to Tempe Brennan?

Bruce wasn't buying it. 'Come on, Reed. Dr Brennan is a forensic anthropologist.'

'He's right, man,' Jergens agreed, seeming to forget that Martin was his client. 'Andi is a detective.'

'Anther,' Martin corrected. 'Detective Anther Albada.' He kept his eyes on An as he pressed a doughy finger to the legal pad where he had written her name. 'Anther.'

An had started to chew her cuticle again. She made herself stop. Things had gotten off track, and she could not for the life of her figure out how. She asked Martin, 'Do you read true crime?'

'Definitely. But only Ann Rule – not the trashy stuff. Oh, and I never look at the pictures.'

An opened the folder so Martin could see the photos. 'Pictures like these?' she asked, flipping picture after picture around, showing him Sandra Burke splayed naked, her body creased where again and again the car had backed up and driven over her. 'We found parts of her teeth in your back right tire.'

Martin opened his mouth and vomited all over the table.

What Martin Really Did That Night, or All That Glitters is to Goad

Martin often said that he did not have a racist bone in his body. He had supported Barack Obama, or at least he had told people that he did (Martin's life was run by strong women; he was not one to embrace change). His closest co-worker was black. He occasionally listened to rap music and enjoyed the comedy of Chris Rock. He was, in short, a man who did not normally see black and white. When he looked at a person, he saw a person, not a skin color.

Even with these sterling credentials, Martin could not help but notice that he was the only white man in the holding tank at the Atlanta jail. Neither had the color discrepancy gone unnoticed by his fellow prisoners. When he had first entered the cell, someone had noticed Martin's short-sleeved dress shirt and his clip-on tie and said, 'Look, a Republican.'

He could not believe that they were holding him on such flimsy evidence. Sure, his blood was mixed in with Sandy's… stuff… but that didn't mean anything. Or did it? One need only read a good Patricia Cornwell to know that blood did not come with a time-and-date stamp. Scientifically, there was no way to prove that Martin had touched the bumper the day after the incident. What a mess!