When feeling returns to Caleb's fingers and feet, it comes slowly, an emotional frostbite that leaves his extremities swollen and unfamiliar. He stumbles forward, past the spot where Nina has just shot a man in cold blood, past the people jostling for position so that they can do the jobs they were trained to do.
Caleb gives the body of Father Szyszynski a wide berth. His body jerks toward the door where he last saw Nina, being shoved forward into a cell.
Jesus, a cell.
A detective who does not recognize him grabs his arm. "Where do you think you're going?" Silent, Caleb pushes past the man, and then he sees Patrick's face in the small window of the door. Caleb knocks, but Patrick seems to be deciding whether or not to open the door.
At that point, Caleb realizes that all these people, all these detectives, think he might be Nina's accomplice.
His mouth goes dry as sand, so that when Patrick finally does open the door a crack, he can't even request to see his wife. "Get Nathaniel and go home," Patrick suggests quietly. "I'll call you, Caleb."
Yes, Nathaniel. Nathaniel. The very thought of his son, a floor below while all this has been going on, makes Caleb's stomach cramp. He moves with a speed and grace unlikely for someone his size, barreling past people until he reaches the far end of the courtroom, the door at the rear of the aisle. A bailiff stands guard, watching Caleb approach. "My son, he's downstairs. Please. You have to let me get to him."
Maybe it is the pain carved into Caleb's face; maybe it is the way his words come out in the color of grief-for whatever reason, the bailiff wavers. "I swear I'll come right back. But I have to make sure he's all right."
A nod, one that Caleb isn't meant to see. When the bailiff looks away, Caleb slips out the door behind him. He takes the stairs two at a time and runs down the hall to the playroom.
For a moment, he stands outside the plate-glass window, watching his son play and letting it bring him back to center. Then Nathaniel sees him and beams, jumping up to open the door and throw himself into Caleb's arms.
Monica's tight face swims into the sea of his vision. "What happened up there?" she mouths silently.
But Caleb only buries his face against his son's neck, as silent as Nathaniel had been when something happened that he could not explain.
Nina once told Patrick that she used to stand at the side of Nathaniel's crib and watch him sleep. It's amazing, she'd said. Innocence in a blanket. He understands, now. Watching Nina sleep, you'd never know what had happened just two hours before. You'd never know from that smooth brow what thoughts lay underneath the surface.
Patrick, on the other hand, is absolutely ill. He cannot seem to catch his breath; his stomach knots with each step. And every time he looks at Nina's face, he cannot decide what he'd rather find out: that this morning, she simply went crazy ... or that she didn't.
As soon as the door opens, I'm wide-awake. I jackknife to a sitting position on the bunk, my hand smoothing the jacket Patrick gave me as a makeshift pillow. It is wool, scratchy; it has left lines pressed into my cheek.
A policeman I don't know sticks his head inside. "Lieutenant," he says formally, "we need you to come give a statement."
Of course. Patrick's seen it too.
The policeman's eyes are insects on my skin. As Patrick moves toward the door I stand, grab onto the bars of the cell. "Can you find out if he's dead? Please? I have to know. I have to. I just have to know if he's dead." My words hit Patrick between the shoulder blades, slow him down. But he doesn't look at me, not as he walks away from the holding cell, past the other policeman, and opens the door.
In the slice of room revealed, I see the activity that Patrick's kept hidden from me for the past few hours. The Murder Winnebago must have arrived-a state police mobile unit that contains everything the cops need to investigate a homicide and the key personnel to do it. Now they cover the courtroom like a mass of maggots, dusting for fingerprints and taking down the names and statements of eyewitnesses.
A person shifts, revealing a crimson smear that outlines a splayed, graying hand. As I watch, a photographer leans down, captures the spatter pattern of the blood. My heart trips tight. And I think: I did this; I did this.
It is a God's honest fact that Quentin Brown does not fancy driving anywhere, especially long distances, particularly from Augusta to York County. By the time he's in Brunswick he's certain that another moment and his six-foot-five frame will be permanently stunted into the position demanded by this ridiculously tiny Ford Probe. By the time he reaches Portland, he needs to be put into traction. But as an assistant attorney general on the murder team, he has to go where he is summoned. And if someone offs a priest in Biddeford, then Biddeford is where he has to go.
Still, by the time he reaches the district court, he is in a formidable mood, and that's saying something.
By normal standards, Quentin Brown is overpowering-add together his shaved head, his unusual height, and his more unusual skin color, given this lily-whire state, and most people assume he is either a felon or a vacationing NBA draft pick. But a lawyer? A black lawyer? Not heah, as the locals say.
In fact, the University of Maine law school heavily recruits students of color, to make up for their rainbow deficiency. Like Quentin, many come; unlike Quentin, they all leave. He's spent twenty years walking into provincial courts and surprising the hell out of the defense attorneys who come expecting someone-or something-different. And truth be told, Quentin likes it that way.
As always, a path parts for him when he strides into the Biddeford District Court, as people fall back to gape. He walks into the courtroom with the police tape crossing the doors, and continues up the aisle, past the bar. Fully aware that movement has slowed and conversation has stopped, Quentin leans down and examines the dead man. "For a crazy woman," he murmurs, appraising, "she was a damn good shot." Then Quentin eyeballs the cop who is staring at him as if he's arrived from Mars. "What's the matter?" he deadpans. "You never seen someone six-foot-five before?"
A detective walks up to him, swaggering with authority. "Can I help you?"
"Quentin Brown. From the AG's office." He extends a hand.
"Evan Chao," the detective says, working his damnedest not to do a double-take. God, how Quentin loves this moment.
"How many witnesses do we have to the shooting?"
Chao does some arithmetic on a pad. "We're up to thirty-six, but we've got about fifty people in the back room who haven't given us statements yet. They're all saying the same thing, though. And we have the whole shooting on tape; WCSH was filming the arraignment for the five o'clock news."
