“Maybe I didn’t know her all that well. What was the thing with the hands all about?”

“Last night one of our Forensic Unit technicians was heading into the house to redo a few tests,” said Stone. “A man rushed out and ran her over, a man dressed in black with a watch cap pulled over his face. When she grabbed his leg, he turned and beat her in the face pretty badly.”

“So you checked my hands?”

“Just routine, Vic.”

“Call me Mr. Carl, Detective Stone.”

“She is still in the hospital,” said Breger.

“Good thing then that I didn’t scrape my knuckles on a cement step this morning.”

“Yes it is.”

“Probably just a burglar who knew that the house was empty.”

“Probably,” he said. “Just like the phone company computer probably made a mistake.”

“Bye-bye, Vic,” said Stone with a little wave of her fingers. “We’ll talk again.”

As I walked away from them and down the steps, they huddled together, discussing something or other, apparently not pleased, apparently not pleased at all.

Beth slid over and walked down with me. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It was nothing. Detectives Stone and Breger were just asking about a phone.”

8

IT WAS my phone the detectives were looking for, the same phone that I had picked off the crate beside the corpse of Hailey Prouix and placed in my pocket the night of her murder. My phone. That was why I had taken it that night, why I didn’t want it found anywhere near that house. My phone. Sitting now in my kitchen drawer. Registered in my name, with the bills and records going to my apartment. But I wasn’t willing to wait for the end of the month to see what calls had been made. As soon as we returned from the arraignment, I phoned my service provider and requested that it print up a record of calls for the past month and fax it to my office. The lady on the line was most agreeable and said she’d get right on it. I couldn’t complain about the service, they’d do anything they could to help you out, so long as you let them slip a fifty from your wallet every month.

I told Ellie, my secretary, that I was waiting for a fax.

“I HAVE something for you,” I say to Hailey. This is a month before her murder. I had tried to stay away when I learned about Guy’s proposal and her acceptance, tried to forget the smell of her, the feel of her, the tang of her tongue on my own. I tried, really, but the Sylvester matter kept showing up in my in-box and my dreams grew torrid and haunting. I had tried to stay away, but she pursued me like she needed me and I couldn’t help believing that maybe she did. She understood intuitively my weakness, I am most easily seduced by need. I had tried to stay away, and I had failed and I was glad.

“I have something for you,” I say to Hailey. We are in bed, after, the same huge presence having roared through us the way it always roared through us, leaving us exhausted and dazed.

“Diamonds?” she asks, that twang again in her voice.

“Better.”

“What could be better than diamonds? So flashy, so bright, so readily turned into ready cash.”

“What about me?”

“You?” She laughs as she lifts her legs and twists them locked behind my back, twists them tight so I can’t move in or out, here or there, trapped. “But I already have you, Victor, and you won’t look half so pretty hanging from my ears.”

Hailey in her normal life is a hard piece of work, flinty, sardonic, infected with a nervous bundle of habits that act as sword and shield to protect her inner sadness. She is both desirable and detached, which of course only makes her more desirable. It is impossible to get a straight answer from Hailey Prouix. Ask her a question and she deftly directs the line to something less threatening or, instead, asks a question of her own that puts you smack on the defensive. She is, remember, a lawyer. But after sex, oh after sex, after the two of us are run over by that charging train of hunger and need with its own strange pulse and rhythms, a train that seems to come from neither her nor me but from elsewhere, after all that, it is as if her defenses fall like the walls of Jericho under Joshua’s horn. The easy, drawly vowels replace the clipped, big-city cadence she has adopted in her adopted city and her flinty defensive manner turns richer, her emotions show through almost unguarded.

“I bought you a phone,” I tell Hailey that afternoon.

“I have a phone. I have too many damn phones.”

“But I’ve been having a hard time reaching you at night. How many times can I hang up when Guy answers?”

“So that was you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“I was hoping it was you.”

“How come you don’t answer your cell phone after hours?”

“Because my clients call. They call to complain about their pains. They call to say they can’t sleep. They want to tell me they’re taking their medicine, they want to tell me they’re not taking their medicine. They call to have me verify their paranoia. They call because, like everyone else, they’re lonely and scared and know I’m not charging by the hour. I leave my phone in the office with the rest of my workday because if I don’t, my clients will drown me.”

“But I’m not a client.”

“So why do you need to reach me?”

“To say hello. To let you know I’m thinking about you. To ask what you are wearing.”

“In other words, so you, too, can tell me you can’t sleep.”

“Exactly.”

“I’d rather have diamonds.”

“But it’s really cute, and I got it in red to match your lipstick.”

“Red?”

“Shocking red.”

“And who else has the number?”

“Just me.”

“So it’s our own private hot line.”

“That’s right.”

“I feel like the president.”

“And best of all, my number is already number one in the speed dial.”

“For now.” She laughs, her hearty, throaty laugh, but I can tell she likes the gift even though she can’t hang it from her ears, I can tell because after she laughs she starts devouring my mouth the way she does when it is time to end our talking, hungrily, meatily, in a way that still tingled even as I remembered two days after her death.

“THAT THING you were waiting for?” said my secretary, sticking her head in my office door. “Is it from the phone company?”

“Yes,” I said, with more excitement than I meant to show. To cover myself I added, “Thanks, Ellie. Just put it on the chair and I’ll get to it when I can.”

She laid the paper on the seat, closed the door, and I leaped out from behind my desk to get my hands on the three stapled sheets.

I started at the last page, the last call. It was registered at 10:15 the night of Hailey’s death, made to my number. It was Guy, telling me that something horrible had happened. Guy. Why had he used the cell phone to make the call?

I sat down hard on the chair and thought it through. It made no sense. No sense, and that might be the only explanation. So undone by his murderous act, he picked up the first thing he could grab, the bright red phone, left out on the end table by Hailey for some reason. Picked it over the regular phone for no special reason, picked it up and dialed my number and made the call. He didn’t even remember that he had used the cell phone, hadn’t mentioned it when he told me the story, would probably swear he had used the regular phone, but he was mistaken, and here was the proof. It was a simple enough explanation, and it would certainly calm Detective Breger’s concerns, and so all I had to do was give him the fax.

Except I couldn’t. Because then I’d have to explain why a phone registered in my name, with the bills going to my home, was in that house the night of the murder. And I’d have to explain all the calls made to my number, and all the calls registered going from my number to that phone, all also listed and on the record. And with that explanation I’d surely be off the case as an attorney. Off the case as an attorney, yes, but still on as a witness or, more precisely, as a suspect. Ah, there it was, the foul root of the problem. If Guy’s unthinking, nonsensical act was discovered, I’d be a suspect. I’d be a suspect that could be used by any competent defense attorney to raise doubt, maybe even reasonable doubt. Wasn’t it I who was having a deceitful relationship with the deceased? Wasn’t it I who had possession of the gun until I dropped it in the laps of the police? Wasn’t it I who had lied about everything so that I could stay on the case as defense attorney to lay blame at the feet of the innocent Guy Forrest? The closing as much as wrote itself. How ironic that I might, in the end, be Guy’s route to freedom. What I held in my hand was reasonable doubt as to Guy’s guilt, except I knew I didn’t do it, and I knew Guy did, and so I had to be sure that no one, no one, would ever be able to see this record.