The Pocket Wife (24 page)

“Right.” He fumbles with the file on his lap. Its contents embarrass him as he sits here in Lenora's office, her perfume heavy in the room. It all seems intimate, suddenly, these prints of Peter's on his neighbor's bed—this affair, captured now on the papers in Jack's hands. He watches Lenora's finger trail along the edges of the proof, the particulars, the moans and movements, the lust and sweat and laughter, the knotted hair and tangled legs, the passion, documented in the contents of the envelope that rests across his knees.

“Are these the prints from the lab?”

“Yep.” Jack hands her the file. “The neighbor's prints are all over the dead woman's bed.”

“Where?” she says.

“The headboard. The footboard, the bedposts, both of them, the— Hell, the rails . . .”

“Whose?”

“Peter Catrell's.”

She doesn't say anything. Her face is blank, expressionless, but it registers in her body, the impact of his words, the shock of them, and he wonders if she, too, was duped by this asshole, if she's disappointed that he isn't who she'd thought.

“You know him, right?”

“I do.” She smiles. “Through his clients. A couple of his clients. We worked on the Whitman case together a while back, and then a few weeks ago we—”

“Does this surprise you? His prints on the dead woman's bed?”

Her lips curve up on one side in a little half smile. “Not really. He— Let's just say I'm not all that surprised.” She peruses the report. “What a jerk,” she says. “Is he a suspect?”

“Yes.”

“Motive?”

Jack shrugs. “Celia was an inconvenience? A threat to his marriage? There's an incriminating picture somewhere.”

“Enlighten me.”

“It's complicated.”

”I've got time,” Lenora says.

“I don't,” Jack says. “But in a nutshell, the Steinhauser woman snapped a photo of Catrell in a compromising situation with his secretary.” He stands up, walks across to her desk, where Lenora now sits, the print results spread out in front of her.

“I see.” She sticks the prints back in the envelope. “Jack?”

“Yes?”

“Can you spare me a couple more minutes?”

“Sure. What can I do you for?”

“The prosecutor . . . well, Frank Gillan—you know Frank—is retiring,” she says. “Did he tell you?”

“Not really.” He slumps back in the chair beside Lenora's desk. “He mentioned he— Jeez. I really hate to hear that,” he says, and he is. “Frank's been prosecutor forever. It sure won't be the same around here without him.”

Lenora nods. “I'm in line for his position. I didn't say anything before because I wanted to be absolutely sure he was going to . . . to actually . . .” She lowers her voice as if her desk is bugged and she's divulging state secrets. “That's why I've been so— You know my thoughts on Frank, on his policy. On his attitude. What's happened to the crime rates in the county. I'd like a chance to change that, turn things around.”

She clears her throat. She twirls the ends of her bangs around her index finger. “I'm having breakfast with the judge and his entourage next Wednesday. I'm hoping he'll put in a good word for me when he sees the governor.”

“Take him to E.Claire's and it's in the bag,” Jack says.

“That's the plan! I've even made reservations.”

“You're seriously taking him there?”

She nods. “An early lunch, before the noontime rush. Great service. It's festive. Reasonable. Plus, they'll pull some tables together for a group.”

“Well,” he says, starting to stand, “best of luck to you.”

“Wait,” she says, and Jack sits down again. “I guess Rob told you the missing girl turned up.”

“Right.”

“Have you considered making an arrest in the Steinhauser case?”

“Yes,” Jack says. He looks her in the eyes.

“The Catrell woman?”

He nods.

“Maybe you should do it sooner rather than later.”

“Why is that? You know something I don't?”

“No,” she says. “No I— Actually, wrapping up this murder case on Ashby Lane would make me a far more viable candidate for Frank's position. I don't mean to put pressure on you. . . .”

And yet you are.
He bites his tongue, nods. “And Dana Catrell being arrested?”

“Is a good first step.”

“Are you ordering me to . . . ?”

“No,” she says, “of course not. But I am suggesting you make an arrest in this case soon.”

“Right,” he says. “Mrs. Catrell is locked up at the moment, won't be going anywhere right now. By the way, the husband? Peter Catrell? You're his alibi—one of them anyway—for the day Celia was killed.”

She frowns. “That could be. We did meet,” she says. “The three of us. Frank was there, too. I've forgotten the exact date. I'll have to check my calendar. The only thing is, our meeting was early in the afternoon. I don't see how he can get much mileage out of that. She stands up, extends the envelope to Jack. “Thanks,” she says.
“I appreciate your bringing this down. If we do a business meal again, we'll make it at Harry's. Promise.”

At the lab he asks for the tech he knows. “George,” he says. “I need to talk to him.”

“He's in the back.” A receptionist he's never seen before blows a small bubble with her gum, inhales it inside her mouth and chews with a series of loud snaps.

“I'll wait.” Jack sits down on one of the hard plastic chairs. It's bare-bones here. There's not even a window in the tiny lobby. It's a very different world from Lenora's.

“Sure.” She snaps some more as she leafs through a thick stack of papers.

“You guys backed up?” he says.

“Always.” The gum smacks again, forming itself into a medium-size, mud-colored bubble. “He'll be out in a sec.” Her words implode into a round of vociferous smacking as the door opens and George steps into the tiny room. She bounces out of her seat and stretches, tosses her gum into a nearby wastebasket. “Taking my lunch.” Her voice is whiny and young.

“I need a favor,” Jack says when the secretary's gone, when her cell-phone chat is fading down the hall. The elevator
dong
s its arrival, and her voice disappears behind its closing doors. “She new?”

“Yeah.” George smiles. “She's a temp. Jeez.”

“Can you get these run through quick?”

“What? For DNA?”

“Yeah.”

“Steinhauser case?”

Jack nods. “I'll owe you one.”

“One what?” George says. He takes the bag.

“One whatever.”

“Make it one receptionist and you're in,” he says. “Preferably someone over twelve and not a gum chewer.”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

“Of course really,” Jack says. He crosses his fingers and stands up. “See if there's a match with what we've already got.”

“I'll see what I can do for you, call in some favors—”

“Thanks,” he says. “And, George? Keep this on the down low, will you?”

“Sure,” he says, and disappears inside as Jack heads out the door to the hall. On the elevator the voice of George's temp chirps between floors, and Jack thinks of Lenora walking in her heels across her office, gorgeous and driven.

D
ana sits on the small bed in the tiny room that's been her home for the past several days. She's packed her things—a few items of clothing, a toothbrush, a smattering of toiletries, three novels she hasn't touched. She's tucked them back inside the suitcase that Peter delivered on her second day here, dropping it at the nurses' station as she drifted between worlds, as she struggled to return to earth. She'd refused to see him.

She sits on the bed beside her bag and stares at the wall.

He is in the lobby. She's asked the small nurse with the kind face to keep him there. “I need a minute,” Dana told her. “I need to say my good-byes.” It isn't true, actually. She's said her good-byes. She said them last night, what few she had to say.

She's given out her number to exactly three patients—a man and two women from her group. She'd like to hear from them, she's said. She'd love to get a coffee, catch up when they're discharged, but she knows they won't call. She knows she'll never hear from them again, and if she does by some random stroke of luck or coincidence see them on the street or in a coffee shop or standing on the platform waiting for a train, she knows they'll look
the other way, as if they've never met, as if she were a stranger on the street. It won't be anything personal. And then again, it will be as personal as tearing tiny pieces from their hearts or brains or lungs. “What happens in Vegas,” she mumbles, and she runs her fingers through her hair and sighs.

She doesn't really want to see her husband. She certainly doesn't want him there inside her room, undoing all her progress with his sneers and caustic comments—with his presence. She doesn't want him picking up her suitcase or opening the car door. She wants him gone. Without her pills to calm her, she would drive to the ends of the earth to get away from him. Now, though, serene and medicated, she only wants to lie across her bed and think about the things she's recently experienced, the expanding and contracting of the world around her, the way her filters seemed to thin and finally disappear, allowing time and space to flow out of sync. She wants the quiet and the solitude to absorb the knowledge that her husband no longer loves her. A painful thought at best, but for Dana, who has leaned on Peter many times throughout their married life, turned to him in the wee hours to pour into his drowsy ear all the bizarre images her sleeplessness has conjured, it is particularly disconcerting, especially now. For Dana, time is running short. The drugs have done their tricks, they've successfully turned down the volume in her head, but they've not erased the events of the past weeks.

She knows Jack Moss will soon arrest her. She saw it in his eyes when he brought her St. Christopher medal to the hospital. When they sat together in the dayroom, she heard it in the slight hesitation, the slight catch in his voice. She knew it from the way he watched her walking to her room, unaware she could see him reflected in the glass of the nurses' window, the way he shook his head just once, folding his arms across his chest. She can't afford to loll. Lolling is for other people or for her in another time or place. Right now she'll smile and nod, the model patient, gracious
and grateful. Unctuous, if need be. But once she's out of here, she'll go back off the meds that dull her, drain her energy, rein in her thoughts. She needs every ounce of drive and strength and courage she can gather. Just for a little while. She's had a chance to rest; she's had a chance to pull herself together, to regroup, as her mother used to say. She's Scotch-taped back together, and she prays the tape will hold.

The photo in the phone seemed so trivial only days before. When Moss told her what Ronald said, she'd barely blinked. It was the meds, she thinks now; they made everything seem trivial, which she supposes is the point. But now, with this great gift that Ronald handed her—risking his own neck, casting himself as the jealous husband in this eerie play—she understands. She's begun to trust her perceptions, her memory. Almost. There are still the giant gaps that afternoon, and even though she knows that her memory was accurate up to a point, it doesn't mean she didn't kill Celia. It only means she had a damn good motive.

She doesn't judge Peter. She prefers not to judge him. It isn't that he slept with her friend. It isn't that he hid it from her—that and the mysterious Tart. She now sees he played with her perceptions, marched her toward insanity, deliberately or not. But it isn't even these things, these obvious and concrete things she hates him for. It's not the thises and thats of it all—the things she can point to and say,
Here is what you've done. You see? And this! And this!
It's what she can't point to, what she can't exactly see, what she knows lurks there behind the shapes and textures of things. It's the gray he's made of her life that makes her hate him. It isn't what Peter has given or not given her over the years, it's what he's taken away—the colors, and music, and tastes—the sweetness of things, the bright orbs he's molded and fiddled into small, dull blobs.

She understands about the Poet, that he is a symbol. She knows now it isn't the Poet she longs for but the girl who loved
him. And her sessions with Dr. Ghea have allowed her to recognize that for people like her there is a slight, thin space between happiness and madness, that it's a tightrope walk, a balance between light and dark, that she will struggle all her life to find it and, once she does, to keep it.

She feels raw; she feels vulnerable and fragile, unequipped to deal with Celia's death, sitting like a boulder in the pit of her stomach. In her sessions she only vaguely alluded to it—Celia was her neighbor, she'd told Dr. Ghea. It haunts her sometimes, what happened. It's so blurry, that whole afternoon. She'd had too much to drink, she'd once said, laughing, folding and unfolding her hands, and that really bothers her. She'd looked up at Dr. Ghea through her lashes, giving her a chance to question, to interrogate, to probe, but Dr. Ghea had only jotted something down on a pad of paper and asked her why she'd chosen the word “haunted.”

“Well, really, I could have killed her, for all I know,” Dana had said, but she laughed when she said it, standing up and crossing the room to pour herself a glass of water.

Dr. Ghea hadn't brought it up again, and neither had Dana. They talked about other, less depressing things. They talked about hopeful, happy things, and she was glad the moment passed unnoticed, the hinted-at confession, but she was disappointed, too, that her demons weren't discerned, her ghosts, her guilt, that Dr. Ghea didn't pull a bottle from her coat and shake out a pill to fix her.

She stands up. She grabs her suitcase and without a backward glance walks to the lobby where Peter waits to take her home. She'll stick to her plan. She won't let anger for her husband clog her thoughts, won't let her rage derail her.