Miracle Creek(71)
Abe didn’t say anything, just kept staring with that stupid give-away-nothing look.
“Is that what the customer-service guy said?” Matt said. “Tell me. Right now.”
Abe narrowed his eyes for a moment. “It wasn’t Pak. It was someone with normal English, no accent. For some marketing study they had then, they had to make notes on anything unusual like that.”
Matt shook his head. “No. There’s no way it’s Janine. She had no reason to call. I mean, why would she do that?”
“Well, if you’re Shannon Haug, you might say she worked with Pak to get 1.3 million dollars, and she called to make sure the insurance would pay out if they went ahead with their plan to set fire to the barn and blame a third party.”
Matt looked at Abe’s eyes, unblinking as if Abe didn’t want to miss a microsecond of Matt’s reaction. “And you?” Matt said. “What would you say?”
Abe’s lips relaxed—into a semi-smile or smirk, Matt couldn’t tell. “Obviously, it depends on what you and Janine have to say. But I’d hope to be able to tell the jury that Shannon is being melodramatic as usual, and this is a simple case of spouses switching phones by mistake one day, and the wife making calls in the normal course of business, one of which just happened to be a call to check on the adequacy of insurance for a business she serves as medical advisor.”
It scared Matt a little, how these lawyers could take a given set of facts and spin them in opposite directions. Not that it didn’t happen in medicine—two doctors could arrive at diametrically opposed diagnoses for the same symptoms, happened all the time. But doctors were at least trying to get at the truth. Matt got the feeling that Abe cared about the truth only insofar as it was consistent with his theory of the case; otherwise, not so much. Any new evidence that didn’t fit was not cause to reconsider his position, but something to explain away.
“So,” Abe said, “let me ask you again. Is August 21, 2008, the day when you switched phones by accident? Let me remind you that you yourself said that Janine’s records”—Abe touched the second sheet—“are more representative of the calls you normally make.”
This question confirmed it. Abe was talking to him not to find the truth, but to coach him into corroborating the version of events that would make the Problematic New Evidence go away. It pissed him off, becoming a pawn in Abe’s damage control. But not going along might mean more questions to and about Janine, which he couldn’t let happen. Matt nodded. “I think August 21 is when we switched phones.”
“And I would imagine that, as the advisor most fluent in English, Janine took care of many business matters, including insurance issues. Is that how you remember it?”
“Yes,” Matt said. “That’s exactly how I remember it.”
* * *
HE STEPPED OUT onto the deck and watched the shadows in the curtains cast by Abe and Janine, sitting across the table like opponents in a chess match. It was raining the way he was feeling—weak and lazy, like the clouds were exhausted from all the thundering and were now slumbering, drooling warm spit once in a while. Matt hated post-storm summer drizzle like this, hated the way his skin turned puffy and sticky. But tonight, it seemed appropriate, the misery. The muggy air heavy in his lungs, weighing him down.
It had been bad enough earlier, with what he’d known then: right before the explosion, Janine had been on-site with the murder weapon, fury coursing through her. But add to that Fact #6, courtesy of Abe: she’d called Miracle Submarine’s insurer to ask about arson coverage the week before its destruction by arson. Fuck!
When he saw the shadowed figures stand and leave, followed by the front door squeaking shut, he thought briefly of running away, how much easier and more pleasant the next several hours would be if he just got in his car and drove around the Beltway a few times, hard rock blaring. Instead, he went into the kitchen, not bothering to take off his shoes as Janine liked, got the Tanqueray from the freezer, and chugged. Fuck the shoes, fuck the cup.
The icy liquid went straight down, burning his throat and settling into a hot pool in his stomach. It was nearly instantaneous, the way the warmth spread outward toward his limbs, cell by cell—like dominoes, one of those long, complex designs made out of thousands of pieces, falling one by one, but so fast, the last one falling within seconds of the first.
Matt was bringing the bottle back to his mouth when Janine walked in. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said.
He slugged the bottle back. His tongue tingled, on the verge of going numb.
Janine snatched the bottle from him and slammed it down, the clang of glass against the granite counter making him wince. “Abe told me—you said I made that arson call. Why the fuck would you say that, to a prosecutor, of all people? What makes you even think that?”
Matt thought of protesting, saying he didn’t say that exactly, he merely said that it was likely, but really, what was the point? Why pussyfoot around the periphery when he could go straight for the bull’s-eye? He looked at Janine, breathed in, and said, “I know about the night of the explosion. Your meeting with Mary.”
It was like flipping through the facial-emotion identification book Elizabeth used to quiz Henry with, one picture per emotion. Shock. Panic. Fear. Curiosity. Relief. All flashing across Janine’s face in quick succes sion before finally morphing into the last emotion: resignation. She looked away.