Miracle Creek(73)
Janine chewed the skin around her nails. After a while, she said, “I didn’t see the need. In telling you, I mean. People were dead, you were burned, she was in a coma, and the notes and my talking to her, all that seemed so stupid. Petty. None of it seemed to matter anymore.”
Except for the fact that you were there, at the crime scene, at the time of the crime, weapon in hand, Matt thought. The police might think that matters a lot.
As if she knew what he was thinking, how her excuse must sound, Janine said, “When the police started talking about cigarettes, I thought about saying something then, but what could I say? I drove an hour to go ask a teenage girl to stop sending notes to my husband? Oh, and yeah, by the way, before I left, I gave her cigarettes and matches, possibly the same ones that caused the explosion?”
Gave. Even as he was marveling at how she’d managed to make throwing shit at someone sound like some sort of gift, he realized the bigger significance of Janine’s word choice. Gave implied that the recipient, Mary, took possession of the items in question. “Wait, so after you, um, gave her that stuff, did she maybe drop it and leave it behind with you, or did you leave her with it?” The alcohol was slush in his brain now, making it hard to think, but this seemed important somehow.
“What? I don’t know. What difference does it make? We both left. All I know is, I told her to keep that stuff away from you and not send you more notes or anything else.”
Janine said something else—something about those cigarettes being left in the woods, and it making her sick, the thought of Elizabeth, an obviously mentally ill woman, coming across those cigarettes at just the right moment and using them for murder—but Matt’s mind remained fixed on the question of who last had those cigarettes. When he thought Janine had them, he’d considered the possibility of her having set the fire. But if Janine left first, if Mary was the one who last had them, was it possible that she—
“Tomorrow,” Janine was saying, “Abe wants me to give a voice sample.”
“What?”
“He wants me to record my voice so they can play it for the customer-service guy. It’s ridiculous. It was a two-minute conversation a year ago. There’s no way this guy’s going to remember a voice from a year ago, right? I mean, he doesn’t even know if it’s a man or a woman. The only thing he knows is that the person spoke normal English with no accent, whatever that means. And think of how many people could’ve swiped your phone for a minute. I don’t know why Abe’s doing this.”
Normal English with no accent. Could’ve swiped your phone for a minute. It occurred to him then—what he’d been overlooking because he’d never entertained the possibility, been blind to it until now.
Mary knew where he hid the spare key to his car. She could’ve opened his car and used his cell phone all she wanted. And she spoke perfect English. With no accent.
THE TRIAL: DAY FOUR
Thursday, August 20, 2009
JANINE
THE INTERNET ARTICLES ON POLYGRAPHS made it sound so easy: relax and control your breathing to lower your heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure, and you, too, can lie with abandon! But it didn’t matter how long she sat in a yoga pose, picturing ocean waves and taking cleansing breaths. Every time she even pictured Matt’s phone (let alone the call), her blood went from lazy brook to Class 5 white-water rapids, as if it sensed the danger it posed and needed to escape, stat, sending her heart pumping in panic mode.
It was ironic that after all her misdeeds and lies, it was the insurance call—not even the call itself, but her switching phones with Matt on the day of the call—that was about to unravel her world. And more ironic: she hadn’t needed to call. She could’ve easily searched online or, actually, just guessed—what fire policy didn’t cover arson?—but Pak had rattled her, first with his going on about cigarettes, and then his hemming and hawing, saying maybe their whole arrangement had been a mistake, so she’d called the insurer on the spur of the moment, just as a quick check. And to have that day of all days be the one when she had Matt’s phone! If he’d switched their phones on a different day or if she’d used her office phone (she’d been at her desk, right next to it!), nothing would be on that damn phone bill and everything would be fine.
She should’ve come forward with the truth two days ago, when Shannon first brought up the call. (Well, not the whole truth; just the part about the call.) She could’ve confessed to Abe and given some plausible explanation, like wanting to confirm that her parents’ investment in Miracle Submarine was fully protected. They could’ve laughed at Shannon’s overzealousness, pinning Pak as a murderer because an absentminded husband took the wrong phone one morning. But the way that lawyer went after Pak—it made Janine panic, wonder if she’d switch her focus to Janine, investigate her calls, question her motives, pore over her phone records, including, possibly, her “cell tower pings.” What would Shannon do if she knew that Janine had been on the premises just minutes before the explosion, that she’d had those Camels in her hands that night, that she’d lied about it for a year? Wouldn’t she seize on the insurance call, use it as proof of Janine’s motive for arson and maybe even murder?
It had been easy to do nothing, say nothing. And once the moment passed, she couldn’t come forward later. That was the thing about lies: they demanded commitment. Once you lied, you had to stick to your story. Last night, when Abe sat her down and laid out exactly what had happened, down to the switched phone, she’d thought, He knows. He knows everything. And yet she couldn’t admit to it, couldn’t let herself give in to the intense humiliation of being caught in a lie. At that moment, he could’ve shown her video proof of her call, something incontrovertible, and she still would’ve denied it, said something ridiculous like, I’m being framed, this tape is fake! It was a type of loyalty—to her story, to herself. The more he threw at her—they found the customer-service rep, they’d find the recording soon—she became more set: it wasn’t her.