'So, she threw her shoe at you?'
'Only to get my attention.' He spoke as if this was completely logical. 'What does my mother have to do with any of this?'
'I'm a detective, Mr Reed. I put together clues. What I see in front of me is a man who comes from a violent family. I see someone who drives a car with blood on it – blood that belongs to a dead woman.
'Well, okay, that – I'll admit – does not look good.'
'No, it doesn't.'
'I suppose I fit the profile, don't I?' He started nodding, agreeing with himself. 'A loner who lives with his mother. Over-educated, underemployed.'
Well, he'd lost her on those last two.
'I hope you don't think I am a disorganized killer. I am a very tidy man. Ask my colleague, Unique Jones. She's often commented on my retentiveness.'
An would have liked nothing more than to talk to Unique Jones. The woman had a warrant out on her for shoplifting. The home address she had given Southern Toilet Supply was a vacant lot. 'Are you a killer, Mr Reed?'
'No, of course not!' He seemed offended again. 'I told you what happened to my car this morning, how I cut my hands. I am the victim here. Someone is setting me up.'
'Why would someone set you up?'
'Exactly!' he retorted, driving his index finger into the table as if she had made his point for him.
'Where were you last night, Mr Reed?'
He stared at his hands. The red marks from the cuffs were still visible. She saw a strange-looking purple ridge down the side of his thumb. She had noticed it during booking, and he'd mumbled something about an industrial accident.
Martin asked, 'Is "Anther" Dutch, too?'
'It's the part of a flower where pollen is produced.' She sat back, feeling overwhelmingly tired. 'My father was a botanist. He was hoping for a boy.'
Martin blinked, not understanding.
Well, it wasn't her best joke, but she didn't think it was as bad as his reaction implied. Then again, the man was sitting in a police interrogation room being questioned about his involvement in a brutal murder, so perhaps she was expecting too much.
One of the reasons Charlie, her dead husband, had gotten so mad at An was that he didn't quite get her sense of humor. He would admonish her for her smart mouth, accuse her of lording her education over him (as if a bachelor's degree in art history was anything to write home about). He would start off low, like one of those sirens you crank by hand, and the more things would spin out of control, the louder he would get, until he was on top of her, screaming, his fists pounding into her body – but never her face.
It was embarrassing, really, to be a 23-year-old woman who put on a uniform and gun every day to keep the peace, only to have the pulp beaten out of her almost every night. She never fought back, though surely Charlie deserved it. What was it about An's nature that made her seem like a victim? She saw domestic violence so much at work that it seemed almost commonplace. Those early years on the force, half of her calls were because some man had gotten drunk and taken it out on a woman. Her eyes would glaze over at their stories of love, the excuses they made. And then she would go home and Charlie would beat her.
Really, it was luck that he'd slipped in the bathtub and hit his head. When An had found him there, the only question in her mind was whether to leave the water running or not while he slowly bled to death. She was the child of Dutch parents, and knew better than to waste water. She had turned off the shower, then gone in to watch Wheel of Fortune.
This was back when you had to buy merchandise with your winnings. An could still remember the woman who had won that night. The camera panned over all the exotic, expensive items while a second camera showed the winner's excited face as she called out her purchases. 'I'll take the dinette set for fiveninety- nine, and the matching sideboard for three-fifty.' There was always a couple of hundred dollars left over, and invariably the winner would have to choose the white, ceramic greyhounds. An had always wanted one of those greyhounds. She'd yet to find one at a store. It was the kind of thoughtful gift Jill would've found for her if she'd had the strength to get out of bed (not that they had a lot of money; Jill's disability pay from the hospital barely helped with her part of the mortgage).
Bruce knocked on the door as he entered the interrogation room. He held a folder in his hand; the crime-scene photos. He put the folder on the table and slid it toward An as a twelve-year-old boy in a suit walked in behind him.
Well, the public defender couldn't have actually been twelve, but he looked it. When he walked across the room, his shoes squeaked. She noticed that his hair was wet at the crown where he'd combed down a cowlick. The sleeve of his suit still had the manufacturer's label sewn on to the cuff.
'I'm Max Jergens,' he said, and An nearly laughed, thinking the name would be more fitting for a well-endowed porn star. She couldn't help it, her eyes went directly to his crotch. Jergens noticed, of course. His lip curled up in a smile.
An tried to sound professional, and to not look at his crotch, when she told him, 'I'm Detective An Albada. We have some questions for your client in connection with the death of one of his co-workers, Sandra Burke.'
He put his briefcase on the table, opened the locks, took out a legal pad, closed the briefcase, put it on the floor, sat down at the table, took a pen out of his breast pocket, took the cap off the pen and put it on the opposite end, then wrote down the word, 'Anabada.'
Martin said helpfully, 'I made the same mistake myself,' as he took the pen from his lawyer, crossed through the word and wrote in a flourishing script much like a teenage girl's, 'Detective Anther Albada.' He even put a circle instead of a dot over the 'i'.
Bruce chuckled behind An. She didn't have to turn around to know that he had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring down his nose at Martin.
Jergens asked, 'What evidence do you have against my client?'
Martin began, 'It's silly, really-' but An cut him off with a 'Was he talking to you?' look.
She said, 'We found blood on Mr Reed's car, his own mixed with that of the victim. We have conclusive evidence that it was Mr Reed's car that ran over Ms. Burke.'
Martin's face turned a whiter shade of pale. 'I cut my hands,' he explained. 'The bumper was hanging off the front of my car. My hands got cut.' He held up his palms and she saw the criss-cross of razor-thin lines. They had taken photographs of the wounds when they were booking him, and An had thought then as she thought now that had Sandra Burke been felled by a mortal paper cut, this would have been an open and shut case.
Jergens asked, 'Where was her body found?'
'Less than half a mile from Mr Reed's place of employment – the same route he takes home every day.'
Jergens seemed surprised. 'Is that so?'
'We believe he took his mother home, then went in search of the woman who had humiliated him two days before.' An watched Martin as she laid out the scenario. He didn't look like someone who would fester with hatred, but then again, she was a grown woman who had carried on an eight-year relationship with an imaginary friend, so who could tell?
Jergens asked, 'Does he have an alibi?'
'No.'
'Ouch!' Jergens chortled. He looked down at his legal pad where he was tracing An's name with his pen. When he saw her watching, he gave her a wink and turned one of the circles into a heart.
'Are you narcoleptic?' Martin asked his lawyer.
Jergens shook his head sadly. 'Don't I wish.'
An opened the folder Bruce had given her, keeping it tilted so that Martin and his boy lawyer could not see the contents. The pictures were stark, violent. Sandy had not just been hit by a car. Her body showed extensive bruising where she had been beaten repeatedly with a blunt object. On the scene, the coroner had guessed maybe a piece of wood or something with a square end. When An had opened the trunk of Martin's Camry and seen the crushed corner of his briefcase, she had added the case to the list of possible murder weapons.