Miracle Creek(70)

FACT #5: Janine never told him any of this at any time. She told him, the police, and Abe that she’d been home the entire night of the explosion.

It was this last fact, her secrets and lies, that got to him most. A full fucking year, and not a word about the cigarettes she’d taken from the safe confines of his car or pockets or wherever she’d found them and practically handed to the murderer. All that time, letting him pretend that this cigarette business was nothing to do with him, pretending that she didn’t know he was pretending. Jesus.

Fuck the list. Fuck facts. It was time for questions. What did Janine know and not know about him and Mary? How the hell did she find out in the first place, and why didn’t she come to him? Why did she go behind his back and confront a teenage girl, throw shit at her, for God’s sake? And after Mary ran off, did Janine just leave the items for anyone to find? Or did she … could it be like Shannon said, that whoever discarded those items was the murderer, and the “whoever” was his wife? But why? To hurt him? Mary? Both?

Matt grabbed the soap scrubber. The mosquito bites were driving him crazy—the warm water must’ve thawed them out of dormancy—and every cell in his brain was screaming for something, anything, to rip into the itch and scratch until it bled. He scoured, rough and fast, savoring the relief of the mesh biting into his skin, the sting of the mint soap seeping in.

“Honey? You in there?” The shower door clunked open.

“I’m almost done,” he said.

“It’s Abe. He’s here.” Janine looked panicky, her forehead lined with crinkles zigzagging in different directions. “He says he needs to talk to you right now. He seems upset. I think”—she brought her hand to her mouth and gnawed at her nails—“maybe he found out.”

“Found out what?” Matt said.

“You know what.” Janine looked straight into his eyes. “About the cigarettes. About you and Mary.”



* * *



JANINE WAS RIGHT. Abe was agitated. He tried to hide it, smiled and shook Matt’s hand (Matt hated handshakes, hated the repulsed-yet-curious look people got before their normal hand touched his deformed one, but it was better than the awkwardness of pretending not to notice someone’s hand thrust your way), but he was twitchy and ominous-sounding, saying he needed to talk to them separately, Matt first. Which probably meant Janine was right about Abe knowing about him and Mary, smoking, the whole bit. What else would’ve prompted Abe’s looking at him that way (or not looking at him, rather)—like a suspect instead of his star witness?

When they were alone, Abe said, “We tracked down the rep who took the arson call.”

Matt had to stop himself from letting out an audible sigh; this wasn’t about Mary, after all. The intensity of his relief made Matt realize again how stupid he’d been, doing something that brought so much shame at the slightest prospect of discovery. “Okay, so who was it? Pak?”

Abe put his hands on his chin, his fingers forming a steeple, and looked at him as if deciding something. “We’ll get to that, but first, I want you to look at this.” He slapped down a document. “This is the bill you got cross-examined about, the one with the arson call. Look at the phone number and time of each call, and tell me if you find calls you don’t recognize.”

Matt looked through the list. Most were calls to his answering service, the hospital, some to his office, some to Janine’s. One to the fertility clinic, which was unusual—Janine usually dealt with those—but not overly so, as he sometimes called if he was running late. “No. The only call that sticks out is the insurance one.”

Abe handed him a second document: another bill, this one missing the top portion with the date and phone number. “How about this one?” Abe said. “Anything look out of place?”

This sheet, like the first, listed calls to and from his answering service, the hospital, his office, and Janine’s office. “Nope. Nothing out of place,” Matt said.

“Not counting the insurance call, is one of these bills more typical of the calls you usually make?”

Matt looked again. “I guess this second one because I don’t normally call the fertility clinic. But why? What’s this about?”

Abe touched the two sheets on the table. “These are actually from the same day. This one”—he tapped the second one—“is the record for Janine’s phone, not yours.”

Matt looked back and forth between the sheets. Something about the way Abe said “not yours”—mysterious, in that gotcha! tone he liked to use in court—told Matt this was an important point, but it was hard to think. What was he missing?

Abe said, “I understand you have the same flip phone and they got switched once, right around the day of the insurance call, isn’t that right?”

Was it? That was the problem with reconstructing the past: now, August 21, 2008, was a Very Important Day, the date of The Call, but back then, it had been just another day, filled with the same errands and consultations as any other day. Who could remember if the phone switch—inconvenient, yes, but nothing you recorded for posterity—happened on this date or one of the many days just like it?

Matt shook his head. “I’ve no idea when that was. But why does that even … Wait, are you saying … you think Janine made that call?”