It was five o’clock and no pending emergencies: my cue to pack up my stuff and head out. I was throwing a couple of files in my briefcase to review at home when Alice walked in.
“Not so fast,” she said. “I’ve got one last thing for you. The public defender’s office just faxed this over.”
It was a motion to suppress in the case of State v. Todd Corbett. Lisa Lopez hadn’t wasted any time. I flipped through the pages. Sure enough, it was the same template motion to suppress they filed in every case involving a confession. No facts about this specific defendant, interrogation, or detective. Just a cut-and-paste beneath a new case caption. There was one tricky wrinkle, though: She was asking for a copy of Detective Mike Calabrese’s Internal Affairs file, a fishing expedition for anything that might support her claim that Mike had used the psychological equivalent of the rubber hose to get his confession. Cops see a request for their files as the lowest move a defense attorney can make. Given where things stood between Mike and me on this particular subject, I wasn’t looking forward to delivering the news.
Lisa had also thrown in a motion to suppress Peter Anderson’s identification of the defendants as the men he’d seen in the parking lot before the murder. According to her, the identification process the police had used was so unreliable it violated due process. That was a shock to me, given that the six-photo lineup they’d used was standard procedure.
I had expected Lisa to try to get the confession tossed, but I was suspicious about the timing. I stood at my desk, motion in one hand, open briefcase in the other. I looked out my office door. People were leaving. I could be one of them. Then I looked at my desk and felt the draw of the phone. One quick call to Lisa Lopez, and I’d know why she filed this motion so quickly. I’d still be home early, I told myself, and I wouldn’t have to worry all evening about what might be waiting for me in the morning.
I set my briefcase on a chair and dialed Lisa’s number.
“This is Lisa Lopez, Esquire.”
Even the way the woman answered the telephone made me shudder. “Lisa, it’s Samantha Kincaid at the DA’s office.”
“Did you get my little delivery? I was afraid you might have left with the other government workers.”
So much for a stress-free evening. I should have known that a quick call to Lisa was a surefire way to ruin my night. She always managed to be more unpleasant than even I remembered.
I tightened my grip on the handset and imagined smashing it against the desk. I kept my tone even. “Nope. I’ve still got a couple hours of work to do, but I wanted to make sure I caught you before you left. Is there anything I need to know about this motion? Given that it’s your standard fill-in-the-caption thing, I really couldn’t tell what you had in mind.” I couldn’t resist the not-so-subtle dig.
“You were the one saying you wanted to move things along. The way I see it, my client’s got no incentive to cooperate with you once your only evidence is kicked. So let’s get the arguments over the confession and your so-called witness ID out of the way as soon as possible. If I win the motion, the case goes away. If not, then we can talk about what my client wants in exchange for his testimony.”
“Lisa, does your guy know the gamble he’s taking? Even if you win the motion—which you won’t—I still have enough evidence to go forward. And if you lose the motion, what makes you think he can still get a deal?” Telephonic bluster is as vital a skill to litigation as courtroom argument.
“You’ll still need Corbett to get to Hanks.”
“I won’t need him if Hanks takes a deal first,” I said. “Maybe I should have talked to Lucas Braun today instead of you.”
“Nice try, Sam, but Hanks is way less credible than Corbett, and I think you know who deserves a deal here.” I thought again about the visit from the woman who called herself Annie, the Rape Crisis counselor who was asking questions at Hanks’s arraignment. “Let’s get the motion to suppress out of the way; then we can talk. I plan on calling the presiding judge tomorrow to see when we can get sent out for motions. How much time do you need?”
“I’m ready whenever you are.”
I knew better than to trust Lisa, but I also knew that I had little say in the matter. A judge would allow the motion to be scheduled if the defense wanted it done quickly. It would look terrible to suggest that I wasn’t ready to defend the admissibility of my own evidence.
“Well, I need to see Calabrese’s IA file first.” She said it as casually as if she were asking for a copy of the day’s paper.
“You know I’m not handing that over to you.”
“You always have to make everything difficult, don’t you, Sam? And here I thought I’d been nice by not asking for Matt York’s too.”
So much for hoping that the defense attorneys might leave Chuck’s friend out of the matter. “You think you deserve a gold star for being less of a jerk than you could have been?”
“Fine. We’ll meet at the call docket tomorrow for a ruling.”
I left a message at IA to send Mike’s file over first thing in the morning.
By the time I turned onto my block, I had worked myself into a piss-poor mood. I was still uncomfortable with the way Calabrese had gotten Corbett’s confession, and now Lisa Lopez was pushing the issue straight into court. If the confession got suppressed, I was in big trouble. Insufficient evidence against both defendants meant no leverage to flip either one of them. If both planted their feet and insisted on trials, I’d lose and they’d walk.
I had learned that there was only so much I could do as a prosecutor. Even a maximum sentence for the most serious charge does not bring back a murder victim or undo the indescribable damage of a sex offense, and many times I had to settle for far less. Sometimes it was because a jury convicted a defendant on a lesser charge. Other times, it was a result of plea negotiations brought on by doubts about the case. Lord knows I had to hold my nose during some of the deals I had brokered in MCU.
But I hadn’t had anyone walk out of the courthouse yet. Not since my time in the drug unit had I heard a judge tell a defendant, “You’re free to go.” My pride had always made the idea of an acquittal hard to stomach, even back then. But now, with rape cases and murders on the line, I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to watch anyone in my caseload rise from the defense table, shake his lawyer’s hand, and simply walk out the door while I sat there wondering what I could have done differently.
I knew it would happen eventually, but it wasn’t going to happen with Corbett and Hanks. I had to get that confession in.
When I pulled into my driveway, I saw Chuck on the porch, holding a leash. At the bottom of the porch steps, on the other end of the leash, was a very noncompliant French bulldog named Vinnie.
“What’s going on here?” I asked, stepping out of my Jetta.
“We went for a little walk,” Chuck explained, “but someone won’t come back inside now.”
Vinnie was absolutely beside himself to see me. Maybe I should modify that. To describe a dog as beside himself might bring to mind one of those big dumb shaggy animals who jumps, runs, barks, or licks when he’s happy. My stout little Vinnie’s not one of those. It’s more like he waddles a little more briskly. Snorts at a slightly higher pitch. Trust me. He was excited to see me.
He headed straight toward me, and Chuck dropped his end of the leash. “You don’t like your leash, do you, little man?” I cooed, scratching behind his stiff bat-shaped ears. “No, you don’t. Oh, no, you don’t.” Vinnie definitely brings out my sickening side.
“I didn’t want to risk him running off,” Chuck said. “You’d kick my ass if something happened to him on my watch.”
“Yeah, pretty much. Why’d you take him out at all?”
“I was being nice,” Chuck protested.
I shook my head and grabbed the straps of my purse and briefcase from the car with my free hand. “You’ve got to stop trying so hard,” I said, heading into the house. “Think of it like being a stepfather.”
“And what exactly would I know about being a stepfather?”
“You know, just use some common sense.”
“I try to give your fat dog some exercise, and that somehow means I don’t have common sense?”
So I could have been more tactful. “I just mean don’t try so hard. Give him some time to get used to you being around here. As long as you’re not a jerk in the meantime, I think that’ll be enough.”
“You spoil that thing.”
“See? You call him a thing, you call him fat? If you talked about me that way, I’d pee on your stuff too.”
“He doesn’t know English, Sam. He’s a dog. Hell, he’s a French dog, for Christ’s sake. I do not parlez ze English. Non. I parlez ze language of ze dog.” Usually, when Chuck conjures up a voice for Vinnie, he sounds like Buddy Hackett. Now he threw in a touch of Pepe Le Pew. The result was—well, the result was frightening.
As for Vinnie’s language abilities, I wasn’t so sure. “Keep it up, funny guy,” I warned. “I picture puddles of drool forthcoming on your leather jacket. Isn’t that right, little man? You don’t let anyone pick on you, do you?”
“You’re encouraging him,” Chuck objected.
“Only if he can understand me,” I teased, setting Vinnie down next to his self-operated feeder.
He plopped his head over the lip of the bowl and began cherry-picking the moist morsels. Before long, the happy snorts recommenced.
“So how was the rest of your lazy day?”
“Lazy.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed my neck. “I was in bed all day, but I could probably make another trip there if you want.”
I tried to get into the zone. For a second, I thought I was. It normally doesn’t require much effort, especially when Chuck’s in full sloppy-kisses-and-roaming-hands mode. But the few minutes of dog talk and foreplay hadn’t squelched the bad mood triggered by Lisa Lopez.
Chuck could tell I was distracted. He pulled his head back to look at my face. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
He shook his head. “No, something’s wrong,” he said, releasing his hold on me.
“Come on, let’s go upstairs,” I said, pulling him by the arm.
“Oh, man,” he said, running his hands through his hair and plopping into one of the dining room chairs. “Listen to us. You want to have sex, and I keep asking you if something’s wrong because you seem emotionally distant. Lord,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, “I am unworthy of the penis you so kindly granted me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought if we went upstairs, I’d be able to get my mind off things.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t want you to sleep with me as a distraction. So,” he said, placing both hands firmly on the table in front of him, “I am officially holding out on you until you tell me what’s wrong.”
“You’re amazing,” I said, kissing the top of his head before taking a seat at the table across from him. It didn’t take long to fill him in on the last-minute motion from Lisa and the subsequent phone call.
“You should have waited until tomorrow to call her,” he said. “We’d be having sex right now.”
That got a chuckle out of me, but I was still feeling stressed.
“I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about,” he said, standing up to squeeze my chronically sore deltoids. Chuck’s back rubs are the best. “You’re just tired. What did you get, three hours of sleep last night?”
“Not even. And I probably won’t sleep tonight either. I’m worried about this motion.”
“What’s the problem? You put Mike on the stand and ask him, ‘What happened?’ He tells the judge, and every once in a while you say, ‘And then what? And then what?’ Defense attorney asks bullshit questions; you get everyone back on track; judge lets the confession in. End of story.”
“I don’t think this one’s going to be that easy, Chuck. I mean, you were there. You saw what happened.”
The massaging stopped. I wriggled my shoulders to ask for more. Nothing.
“Yeah, I did see what happened. And if you need someone to back Mike up, call me to the stand. We’ll get the confession in.”
I turned in my chair to look at him. “Are you suggesting that you and Mike are going to say something other than what we all know actually occurred in the interrogation room?”
He shook his head. “Jesus, Sam. You make it sound like Mike hit the guy across the head with a phone book or something. And, no, I don’t testi-lie, as your attorney buds call it.”
“So what were you talking about when you said I should call you to the stand?”
“Just how things always work. You put two cops up there. We tell it like it is: why each step was called for, cut and dry. It looks a lot better if Mike’s not on his own, is all. Just to be safe, since you’re having doubts.”
“I’m having doubts, Chuck, because I think your partner screwed up. That crap with the lights? I can’t withhold that from the defense. Not that I could, in any event, since I’m pretty sure Corbett recognized me today at arraignment. Lisa’s going to have a heyday with that in court.”
“Oh, so what? So she’ll whine a little bit, and maybe the judge will say something to you off the record about reining Mike in. But you’ll get to keep the confession. What elected judge wants to be on the front page for suppressing a confession in the Percy Crenshaw case?”
He did have a point. I had noticed that the rules of constitutional criminal procedure seemed to have changed since my promotion from the drug unit into MCU. Judges who routinely suppressed confessions and overruled searches without batting an eye were suddenly siding with the government when a murder trial was at stake.
Still, the possibility that I might squeak past Lisa’s motion by drawing a judge who cared more about his low-paying local judicial position than the Constitution he’d been sworn to uphold didn’t feel like cause for celebration.
“You really don’t have a problem with what Mike did in there with Corbett?”
He paused before answering. “No, Sam. I don’t. Look, you’ll get used to it. You’re still at the point where you feel sorry for these guys. It’s because you’re looking at him like some kid who—what did you say about him?—he looked like he’d work at the Quickie Mart. Fuck, the guy killed someone. He took a bat to Percy Crenshaw so he and his loser friend could joyride in a Benz for a couple of hours. Mike’s the good guy here.”
“He won’t be looking good by the time Lisa gets done with him. We have to fight tomorrow over Mike’s IA file. Is she going to find anything in there if she gets it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Mike’s not exactly a light touch. Is there ammunition for the defense in his file? You should know.”
“No, Sam. You should know that all cops have files that someone like Lisa Lopez can turn into ammunition. Big surprise—bad guys make up shit about the police. That’s why the bureau requires your office to contest any request to see IA jackets.”
“But sometimes judges order us to produce them. And this is an aggravated murder trial where Mike’s conduct is critical. He confronted Corbett with evidence we didn’t have. He pulled out the threat of the death penalty.”
“So what should he have done instead? You said yourself, without the confession, they both walk.”
“When the calls started coming in to the news, and he knew who Corbett was, he could have held up on the arrest until we got an ID from the victim’s super. Then he would have had something legitimate to confront Corbett with in the box.”
“What’s the difference?” Chuck asked. “We got the ID in the morning. Corbett’s still guilty.”
“It matters, Chuck, because it makes the interrogation look really bad.”
“You’ve got to get over this, Sam. I’ve been trying to stay out of it, but both of you keep putting me in the middle. Mike’s my partner. He needs to trust me, and you treating him like the bad guy is making it hard between us.”
“I know he’s your partner. Why do you think I didn’t stop him in there? I knew he was going too far, and I knew I should have cut it off, but I didn’t. I let you talk me out of it.”
Chuck exhaled loudly. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got regrets about how you played things last night, and you blame me for it.”
“I don’t blame you, Chuck.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
Oh, boy. These straight-from-the-playground verbal exchanges had been one of the many reasons I’d kept my Chuck contacts strictly platonic for so long. He has a way of making me absolutely crazy. And not always in a good way.
“You wanted to cut Mike off earlier, and I convinced you not to. You just said so.”
“I stated the facts. That doesn’t mean I blame you.”
“Fine, don’t call it blame then, but I know you.”
“We both wanted the confession, Chuck. We wanted to avoid a trial where Matt York is defense exhibit A.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking to yourself that you wouldn’t be in this jam with Lisa and her stupid motion if you weren’t involved with me. And I’m thinking I wouldn’t be avoiding eye contact with my own partner all day if I weren’t involved with you.”
“I didn’t mean to make this about us. I’m just worried about the case.”
I started walking upstairs. He, of course, did the entirely wrong thing and followed me. When I hit the bedroom, I was struck for the first time by the mess of unpacked boxes of summer clothes, sporting gear, and who knew what else. My usually tidy sleigh bed was completely disheveled, the top sheet and comforter entangled with each other in a knot at the foot of the mattress. My reading chair by the window was draped not only with my moss-colored chenille throw, but a couple days’ worth of Chuck clothes. And I nearly tripped over two thirty-pound barbells that had been plopped onto the middle of my cute little raglan floor rug.
“Are you ever going to find a place to keep all this stuff?” I asked, rolling the weights near a stack of unopened boxes in the corner.
“So that’s what we’re talking about now? Whether I’ve unpacked fast enough?”
“No, I guess it’s not.” I opened the second drawer of my dresser, grabbed a sports bra and a pair of running shorts, and started to change.
Chuck sat on the bed. “I take it that you’re not getting undressed for any fun stuff.”
“I just want to go for a quick run. Clear my head. Maybe if I’m not here, you can get some of this stuff put away.”
“So we’re back to that subject.”
“Chuck, look at this room. And it’s not just this room; it’s the whole house. Do you know how much crap I got rid of to clear out half the closet space and half the drawers in this place? And you don’t use any of it. All of your stuff is still hanging out wherever you happened to use it last.”
“Whoa,” he said. “I had no idea any of this was bothering you.”
Neither did I. Until now. “Leave your stuff wherever you want it,” I said, stepping into my running shorts. “I just need to get out for a while.”
“You mean you need to get away from me.”
I pulled my sports bra over my head. “Look, just let me run a few miles and think about some things. You probably think I’m being a big bitch right now anyway.”
“Well, you are, Sam.”
I stared at him and shook my head.
“What?” he asked.
“I cannot believe you just said that. You called me the b-word.”
“You’re the one who said it. I was just agreeing with you.”
Crazy. He makes me crazy. And, of course, he followed me down the stairs and continued to argue with me as I put my shoes on.
“Don’t you see what you’re doing?” he asked. “You always do this. Whenever there’s the slightest conflict, you pull away from me. I thought that was over.”
“I’m just going for a run, Chuck. You’re being ridiculous.”
“You know I’m right. Jesus, Sam, you shouldn’t have said you were ready to live together if your instinct is still always to leave.”
“You know what? Maybe you are right.” As I walked out the door, I let it slam behind me.
I’ve never known what exactly it is about running that cures my blues—the outside air, the elevated pulse, the rhythm of my stride, the feel of my feet hitting the pavement. Whatever it is, it works. By the end of a third mile, I can send any problem that was eating at me back into the bigger picture. I can visualize solutions. I can realize that even the worst-case scenario isn’t so bad. Sometimes, when the endorphins are pumping extra well, I can even find an upside.
But my magical therapy wasn’t working for me today. I was twenty-five minutes in, with probably three miles logged, and I still felt like shit. I was worried about the case and even more worried about the exchange between Chuck and me.
I was so inside my own thoughts that I didn’t realize I had strayed from the well-worn route I use for my short runs. I was in front of the house I had grown up in. The house where my father now lived alone.
My subconscious must have been telling me something. I climbed the stairs and tried the door, but it was locked. Good, I thought, my father’s finally listening to me. I had left the house without my keys, so I knocked.
“Hey! Sammy!” Despite at least weekly visits, my dad always seems excited to see me. “Where’s the rest of the family?” He peeked behind me, obviously expecting a boyfriend and dog in tow.
“Just me, Dad.” I stepped inside and found Al Fontana, Dad’s ninety-year-old neighbor, at the dining room table. He was concentrating hard on the checkerboard in front of him.
“Hi, Mr. Fontana. Sorry to interrupt.”
He swatted at an imaginary fly between us. “Aayh, you’re not interrupting nothing. I was getting ready to hand your father here his backside again. Wasn’t I, Martin?”
“The man cheats,” Dad said, pointing an accusing finger in Al’s direction. “I walk into the kitchen for some more pretzels. I come back—he’s got a handful of my checkers and I owe him a crown.”
“Aayh.” Again with the hand wave. “So what brings my favorite girl from the block here? Did you finally find me a nice girlfriend?”
Lucky for me, I’ve known Al Fontana since I was three. As a result, I was one of the few women over the age of twenty who wasn’t a target of his affections. Yep, Dad’s checker partner is an unabashedly dirty old man.
“Not yet, Mr. Fontana. I’ll work on it, though.”
“Aayh.” This time there was only a small wave. “You work on yourself first. When’s that detective going to make an honest woman of you? I knew he was trouble when he was lurking around the first time.”
I assumed he meant my high school years, when Chuck was a pretty regular fixture. Apparently, when you’re ninety years old, a fifteen-year gap is like a momentary time-out.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, realizing my voice sounded off. “We’re still happy where things are for now.” I heard a distinct crack. I hoped they’d chalk it up to cooling down from the run.
No such luck. “You OK, kid?” Dad asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Dad raised his brows at Al.
Al’s response? “Hmph.”
Great. How did I find all these men who could read me like a roadside billboard? Al used his cane to prop himself up. I had learned long ago not to offer a helping hand. He had swatted it away, then popped off the bronze hand piece on his cane to reveal a flask of whiskey. “That’s the only reason I lug this thing around,” he had explained.
“Martin, I suggest we call it a night and agree that another win on my part was imminent.”
“Agreed.”
I tried to convince them to continue playing, but my protests went ignored. We said our goodbyes to Al at the door, and then Dad told me to come clean.
“As much as I’d like you to, you never drop by here when you’re out running. I don’t think you’d stop for George Clooney while you’re running.”
“Are you kidding? I’d throw myself in front of a bus to make him stop.” I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from a filtered pitcher in the refrigerator. I took the seat Al had vacated and started completing the moves that would have won him the game.
“All right, smarty,” he said, picking up the game’s storage box from the nearby buffet. I grinned at Dad over the lip of the glass. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” he asked.
After some initial hemming and hawing, I eventually broke down. Dad was patient and let me ramble until I had it all out of my system. It wasn’t lost on either of us that my blatherings zigged and zagged interchangeably between the fight with Chuck and my concerns about Corbett’s confession.
“You might need to accept that there are going to be things that you and Chuck don’t see eye to eye on.”
“Maybe it’s stupid, but I feel almost like Chuck’s ganging up on me with his friends. Why doesn’t he see my side on this?”
“He’s probably trying, Sammy, but cops are their own kind of animal. You said yourself he was already worried about his friend with the marriage problem. Now you’re talking about his partner.” My dad spoke from experience. Before he became a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, he had been a trooper with the Oregon State Police. “And I don’t think you’re mad at Chuck because he doesn’t agree with you. I think you’re mad at yourself because you let it affect you.”
“It affects me because when I go home and tell the person I live with that I’m worried about work, I want him to have some empathy. I don’t want an argument.”
“Maybe,” Dad said, “but maybe this isn’t about what happened when you got home today. It sounds to me like you’re upset because you think you might be in a different position on your case if you had followed your own instincts last night instead of Chuck’s.”
He was right. By the time he said it, I was ready to accept the very notion that had set off the mess at home—Chuck’s accusation that part of me blamed him. That was what it boiled down to. Yes, I was worried about losing the motion. And I wondered whether I had done the right thing at the precinct last night. But at the core of my reaction—picking at Chuck’s housekeeping skills, walking out on him, stopping here at Dad’s—lay that same old concern. Could I really share my life with Chuck and still be good at my job? Could I be with him and still be me?
I thanked my father for the visit and began a slow jog back to the house, ready to lick my wounds and come clean with my roommate. I found the door unlocked and a note on the table next to my key chain, a plastic parrot that flashed a purple light when you pinched its beak. It had seemed funny when Grace bought it for me at a cheesy gift shop in Maui.
Sorry about the door, but you left without your pinching parrot. I’m staying at Mike’s tonight to give you some space. I’ll be home tomorrow night. Chuck.