Martin Misunderstood (6 page)

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.

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.

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!

He held his breath as the odor of fresh feces
filled the air. There were two toilets, both of
them out in the open for the world to see. A large,
bald man was sitting reading a magazine, doing
his business as if this was just another day in his
life. Martin had dealt with being around toilets
most of his adult life and had tucked himself into
the far corner when he had first entered the cell,
but the odor seemed to bounce off the walls and
envelop him. Sitting on the floor with his knees to
his chest, all Martin could think about was this
was how the system turned you into an animal.
How long would it take before Nature won out
and he was forced to relieve himself in front of
complete strangers? How long before his dignity
was completely removed and he was spitting on
the floor and scratching himself alongside the
other screws? Or was it fishes? Martin had still
not mastered the lingo.

Oh, if only his one phone call had been made
to his father instead of his useless mother. She
hadn't answered the phone. The answering
machine had whirred, Evie's blunt voice saying
to leave a message. He knew she was home—Evie
could not drive herself anywhere because of her
cataracts – just as he knew that she was aware
that Martin was sitting – no, rotting! – in jail.

His father would not have left his only son
among these monsters. His father would have . . .
oh, who was he kidding? Marty Reed has been
just as useless in life as he was in death. An
accountant, like his son would grow up to be,
Marty had worked in indexing and actuarials for
a large law firm downtown. His mother had
called it 'the accident' right up until the insurance
company had asserted that no matter how many
times she insisted, the cause of Martin Harrison
Reed Senior's death had been officially ruled a
suicide.

This was how it had happened: Marty had
enjoyed a nice lunch of ham salad with a devilled
egg. He had written a note on the back of an
index card and taken off his glasses. He left both
of these on his desk. The sight of Marty fumbling
blindly through the office, bumping into chairs
and walls (he was legally blind without his
glasses) as he made his way toward the hallway,
did not strike anyone as unusual at the time. He
had the remnants of his sack lunch in his hand as
he felt his way toward the trash chute. Someone
reported hearing a giggle as the door squeaked
open, though that would have been the last noise
he made. Marty didn't even scream as he
careened down the chute, landing thirty-eight
floors down beside his wadded up lunch sack.

It wasn't until several hours later when the
driver of the garbage truck found the body that
someone actually read the note: 'Please give my
glasses to the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles
of the Mystic Shrine.'

'That's nice,' Martin's mother had said,
though she had been furious to learn that the
Shriners did not allow women to attend their
meetings. Martin had always assumed that
explained the giggle. His father had finally
managed to get the last word.

'Hooty-hoo!' someone heckled. There were
whistles and a few catcalls. Martin craned to see
around the legs of the men standing in front of
the cell bars. He saw a tennis shoe . . . a calf . . .

'Shut up, you cocksuckers,' An told the men
who were reaching toward her. 'Back the fuck off
before I Tase every one of you.'

Martin scrambled to stand, his heart thumping
at the sound of her voice. The crowd parted and
he walked forward, feeling the curious, if not
outright envious, stares of his fellow cellies.

An nodded to the policeman beside her and he
opened the cell door.

'This way,' she said, walking down the
hallway.

Martin stumbled over his own feet as he tried
to keep up with her. 'It was awful in there,' he
said. 'You don't know what it does to a man.
They're animals. I feel so—'

'You were in there for less than thirty minutes,'
she told him, punching a code into the keypad by
the door.

'Really?' he asked, surprised that it hadn't
been at least an hour. 'It felt like an eternity.
Thank you so much for . . .' Martin's brain
caught up with the moment. 'Hey, where are you
taking me?'

'I'm letting you out on your own recognizance.'

'What about the blood? What about my
fingerprints?'

'Are you trying to talk me out of this?'

'I just . . . I don't want you to get into
trouble,' he said, the truth coming out. His mind
flashed on the image of An in the interrogation
room. Was that concern he had seen on her
face as he threw up all over the table? It
wasn't revulsion – Martin had seen revulsion in
enough women by now to know what that
looked like.

She asked, 'Why would I get in trouble?'

'For letting me out,' he said. 'I mean, this is a
lot of circumstantial evidence we're talking
about.'

She stared at him. He saw that one of her
eyelids drooped more than the other. The circles
under her eyes were darker in the fluorescent
light of the corridor. He wanted to hold her in his
arms. He wanted to kiss the droopiness away. Or
kiss the droopiness in, because it seemed like it
would be easier to make an eyelid droop more by
pressing into it than it would be to remove the
droopiness; it was just simple physics.

'You need a better lawyer than the one you've
got.'

'Max seems like a nice guy.' He had actually
offered Martin some good advice about making
sure to align himself with the whites as soon as he
got into the cells. Had there been any white
people, he would have certainly done so.

'I'm letting you go because forensic tests
showed that Sandy's blood on the bumper dried
before yours did.'

'You can tell that?'

'Yes,' she told him, sounding tired. 'We can tell
that.'

Martin scratched his chin, wondering if he
would ever be able to trust Kay Scarpetta again.

'Your car is in the impound lot. Keep your
nose clean,' An warned him. 'You're still our
main suspect in this case.'

'Yes, I can see why.'

'You also need to tell me what you were doing
between the time you dropped off your mother
and the time you came home.'

Martin pressed his lips together.

'Mr Reed—'

'I promise you that I would never hurt Sandy.
She teased me sometimes, but I know that she
cared about me. Sometimes, when people pick on
you, it's because, for them, that's the only way
they can show affection.' Martin shrugged. 'If
you look at it that way, Sandy and I were actually
friends.'

An stared at him. She sighed a deep raspy sigh
of exhaustion. Martin thought of all the things he
would do if he had her all to himself: stroke her
hair, rub her feet, change her lightbulbs (even if
there were spiders!). He would learn to cook for
her. The art of lovemaking would come easily to
him, the way that macramé and model shipbuilding
had come to him in the ninth grade. And
didn't his mother still have some of his ships on
the top of the kitchen cabinets? Evie wouldn't
still be displaying them after all of these years if
she didn't think they were good!

'Mr Reed?'

She had been talking and he'd missed it. 'Yes?'
My love . . .

'Leave.'

He saw that she was holding the door open for
him. A man sat behind a cage with the envelope
containing Martin's personal effects. He turned
around to thank Anther – really to get one more
look at her – only to see the door slam in his face.

The man in the cage started speaking as
Martin approached. 'Count your money, check
your belongings and sign here.'

Martin followed each step, counting down to
the last penny, checking his wallet to make sure
an unclaimed scratch-off ticket was still there.
'Thank you,' he told the man, but apparently the
fish were just as impolite as the screws. Or was it
the screws who controlled the fish? And why did
they call them fish? Perhaps because they were
swimming against the tide instead of schooling
along with the rest of society?

Martin considered this as he walked through
the packed lobby of the jail. There was row after
row of vinyl seats, enough to handle at least five
hundred people, he guessed. Families were
waiting in huddled groups. Grandparents sat
alone. Such sadness.

There was a taxi-stand outside the jail
entrance. Martin got into the first one, which
smelled vaguely of vomit. Or maybe he just
became aware of his own smell in the cramped
quarters. The driver seemed none too pleased. He
rolled down all the windows as he merged on to
the interstate. Martin's hair flapped wildly
around his face, stinging his cheeks, but he did
not care. He stared out the window at the
downtown skyline as the driver jumped on I-20,
then I-285. It wasn't until they passed Atlanta
Airport that Martin realized the driver was
taking the longest route possible.

Well,
Martin thought.
If the driver assumed he
was getting a tip, he was dead wrong.

They pulled up in front of the Reed house
exactly fifty-two minutes later. Martin was
barely able to pay the price on the meter. The
driver made it clear this was unacceptable. He
backed the cab over a row of Evie's plants as he
zoomed down the driveway. The man probably
thought he was punishing Martin, but the truth
was that Martin was so mad at his mother for not
coming to his aid that he did not care how many
flowers were sacrificed.

'What the hell are you doing home?' Evie
demanded. She stood in the open doorway of the
house, bathrobe hanging open. 'You're supposed
to be in prison.'

'Jail,' he corrected. 'Prison is where you go
when you're convicted.'

'Thank you for the lesson, Mr fucking Smarty-
Pants.'

Martin walked up the front steps and went
into the house. He stopped at the hall mirror,
noting how much he had aged since this morning.
Living life on the wrong side of the tracks would
do that to you.

'Norton Shaw called. He says you're fired.'

'What?'

'He said to get your things after work and
leave your keys in his office. I hope you don't
think you're going to stay here freeloading off
me. I'm an old woman. I have to look out for
myself.'

'Why would they fire me?'

'I dunno, Martin. Lemme go out on a limb
here and say it's because you murdered one of
your God damn co-workers.'

Martin felt his jaw ache from grinding his
teeth. 'I need to borrow your car.'

'Why, is there someone else you want to kill?'

He closed his eyes and slowly counted to ten.
'One . . . two . . . three . . .'

'I always thought you might be autistic,' his
mother muttered as she headed into the
kitchen. 'I wonder if that could be part of your
defense.'

Martin opened his eyes. His job! His livelihood!
His co-workers were the only friends he
had. What would he do without this social
outlet? Where would he go for the camaraderie,
the connection to the outside world? He studied
himself in the hall mirror. The hardness in his
eyes was new. Was this the man that An had
seen, this alternative Martin who viewed the
world as a desperate and dastardly place?

Evie tossed the keys at Martin. He tried to
catch them as they bounced off his face. 'Fill it up
with gas before you bring it back.'

Martin leaned down to pick up the keys. 'It
should have a full tank.'

'I had to get some things at the store. I'm an
old woman with a fucking criminal for a son.
Who knew how long you'd be in the pokey?'

Martin tried not to think about his mother
driving. Her cataracts had robbed her of all
peripheral vision. She had side-swiped the
mailbox last week with the riding lawnmower.

He glanced at his watch. Southern Toilet
Supply would be closed by now. 'I'm going to
work to clean out my desk,' he told her, sadness
enveloping him. How could he be fired? Why
would Norton Shaw do this to him? Martin had
not been convicted of a crime. He liked Sandy.
Why on earth would he kill her?
How
on earth
could he kill her? He didn't even like killing
insects.

Evie narrowed her eyes at him. 'If you were
really innocent, you'd threaten Southern with a
lawsuit for firing you without cause.'

'I am innocent!' he screamed. 'Mother, you
know I was home last night.'

She gave her Cheshire Cat grin. They both knew that this was
not entirely the truth.

It seemed fitting that Martin drove his mother's
car to Southern Toilet Supply. He felt as if he was
living inside a Janet Evanovich novel, so it was
only natural that, like Stephanie Plum, he was
stuck behind the wheel of an elderly relative's
powder blue Cadillac. This was no farcical
murder mystery, though. This was real life. As if
to put a fine point on it, Martin slowed the car at
the sight of the police tape marking the scene of
Sandy's death.