The lawyer was a very short man. He was not fat, or loud, or striking in any way. The man’s tweed suit was both ugly and nondescript at the same time, and his face bore a meager expression that made him appear even shorter than he was. His lack of noticeability was such that Madeline hardly saw him next to the tall detective as they entered the room together.
The large, metal door swung open and the two men shuffled into the interrogation room in single file. The detective was first into the room, and the attorney stayed oddly close behind him the way a small child would cling to his parents, as though he were afraid of all the strange new faces. Clearly, he had bad experiences with his clients before. Madeline’s first impression of the scared little man was that he was exactly how she had always imagined a defense attorney commissioned by the state, a lawyer for the people who couldn’t actually afford a good lawyer.
Well, thought Madeline, you really do get what you pay for.
“Hello, again, Ms. Eisman. I would like you to meet your attorney, Adam Borges.” Detective Thorne introduced the lawyer with a sick little grin. “Just as you requested.”
“Nice to meet you,” muttered Borges. He stepped forward to the table, and stuck out a stubby hand that quivered as he held it in front of himself.
“And you.” When Madeline shook the hand, it was unpleasantly moist and cool. The woman cringed, and, as she shook his hand, she was close enough to get a better look at the ugly yellow handkerchief in his pocket. It was wadded up and stained—clearly not decorative. Odds were, it was used for dabbing sweat.
“Would you like to converse privately before we continue?” asked Thorne.
Madeline looked over at her lawyer, and back to the detective. “No, no thank you.”
“Alright, then, I’ll wait outside,” said the lawyer as he turned around and prepared to leave.
“No, I do want you to listen in on what’s about to happen, Mr. Borges,” said Madeline. “So I don’t have to say it again. So I don’t have to live it again.”
“Then I think we should get started,” said the detective. “We have a long night ahead of us. And so, with the advice of your lawyer, Ms. Eisman, I urge you to begin. Tell us about him. Tell us about the murdered man.”
Madeline looked to the attorney for his opinion, and he stared back at her blankly. He was no help. So she took a deep breath.
“The victim’s name is Neal Carlyle, and he... he was my boyfriend. I met him three months ago, and we’ve been dating for a while—or we had been.” And then, as she opened her mouth to speak again, she drew a blank. That was really it. He had always been so touchy about talking about himself, at times it had driven his temper out of control. He had been a nice guy, apparently nice enough for Madeline to think she loved him, but the more the woman wondered about it, the more she realized that something had been going on the whole time. The whole time, something had been very wrong. The whole thing had just been so weird. “The truth was… was that I didn’t know much about him; he never really liked to talk about himself—”
“Well what else can you tell us about him?”
And this damn detective, he wasn’t making it any easier. It was like he was working against her… She just had so much to deal with. And he seemed convinced, too convinced really, that she had done it. Determined that she be prosecuted. It was in the way he looked down at her, in the intonations he used as he spoke. “I mean I asked him about his history, but he would never tell me about his parents... Or where he was from, or what his job was… It was always a little suspicious. I liked him, though, so eventually I rented a small apartment with him.” After less than a month. After three freaking weeks, I rented an apartment with him. And he went along with it. Was I getting played? Scammed somehow?
“But the weirdest thing came after we moved into the apartment, about two months ago, when the rent came up. I asked him if he could chip in a little bit, because I couldn’t afford the place all by myself, but he said no. He said he had cash problems—he still wouldn’t tell me anything else. I kept asking him for a while, but he kept blowing me off, and whenever I was nosy about it he got upset. There was something else there, too. A little fear. I was starting to get a little scared, you know, scared that I didn’t know him well enough to live with him. I was afraid he was involved with a bad crowd, that he was doing something illegal behind my back. But he just kept on saying it was fine, that he only needed a few more weeks at most. I couldn’t afford him, though. At a certain point, I just told him he couldn’t stay unless he could help with the rent. But he flipped out. He got all mad, saying I didn’t understand what he was dealing with. It got bad, that night. We yelled.” What was he doing? What could someone like him be doing to get themselves killed like that? It wasn’t right. It was just so screwed up. She had been mad at him, but tonight, just tonight when she had seen his mangled face...
“And was that about a month ago?” interjected the detective.
“How did you know?”
“We got a few reports from people nearby your apartment.” He was looking at a file… He must have already put one together on her; maybe that’s what had taken him so long to come and see her in the interrogation room. If he had, he would know that she had been arrested before. It was nothing serious, just shoplifting, but it was seeming less and less likely that he would like her, that he would trust her. “They said they heard shouting. There was a shattering sound, and loud bashing. Most of the callers suspected domestic violence. But when we sent an officer over, the lady—I presume that was you—said everything was fine.”
“And it was. I’ll admit the argument got heated; we all know that’s no secret. We were in the kitchen, I remember, arguing, when I told him he had to go. He had just, I don’t know, pushed me over the edge. But when I told him, he got all quiet and stood there for a moment, and that’s when he took a step forward. I thought he was going to hit me, but all of a sudden he just started yelling; I think it was panic that made him so angry.” Madeline hadn’t realized it, but she was coming close to tears. The last hour of her life was just starting to sink in. And the last two months. The time when everything was starting, all leading up to this night, and yet she still didn’t know what was going on. It was maddening. “I think that whatever the hell he was mixed up in, he owed someone really bad a lot of money. And I think and if he didn’t get it to them on time, something bad was going to happen to him—apparently it did.” On that last sentence, she sniffed loudly. But she refused to cry, not in front of this man.
“That’s not exactly what we think happened,” said Thorne.
“Well, you’re wrong.” This damn detective, he was fighting her. He knew she was guilty and she knew she wasn’t, and neither would back down. But he had her in custody. Not the other way around.
“Agree to disagree. Keep talking.”
“Well, we were yelling at each other. And I was drinking from a glass, until he started screaming at me. I was terrified, and his temper was a step beyond dangerous: I needed him out of my home, and so I threw it at him. He ducked, and it missed him by a little and hit the wall; that was the crash. After that, neither of us said anything for a long, long time. Then, all of a sudden, he grabbed his hat and his coat and walked out the door—no bags or anything, he just left. A few minutes later, an officer stopped by; I told him I was fine. And that was it; that was was the last I ever heard of the son of a b****. Until tonight.”
“He was missing for a month and you never reported it?”
“I just figured Neal needed some time to cool off. Or maybe it was over. Honestly, I don’t even know if he ever planned to come back. All I know is that he was acting suspicious ever since I met him, never telling me anything about himself, least of all what his job was, and then he disappeared into thin air.”
“And you don’t know where he was, that whole time he never told you?”
“No, I had no idea.”
“Ms. Eisman, you yourself kicked him out and ended your relationship, is this correct? He wanted to stay but you wouldn’t have it?”
“Yes…” Madeline’s lips were pulled tight across her teeth.
“Did he assault you tonight? Did he come back out of spite, for revenge? If you were defending yourself, you can tell me. It’s the best way out.”
“I don’t know why he was here or why he won’t leave me alone. I don’t know what or who he was involved in that got him killed, and I only know one thing: he was dead when I found him. He was dead, detective.” Richard Thorne knew he had stuck a nerve; there was a telltale biting edge in the intonation of Eisman’s reply. “You didn’t see his face up close like I did, see his eyes. I couldn’t do that to someone, I couldn’t lie about that.”
“I saw him. And I saw you on him. I practically saw you kill him.”
“You don’t believe me? You don’t believe me... Oh, God.” Madeline’s head was spinning; she was hyperventilating. The image of the man, of her kitchen walls covered in blood up to waist height, was still fresh in her mind, she was still there. Listen to me. I will tell you what happened to me. Just please—for God’s sake—listen.”
“I very much doubt that anything you can say right now can help your case. We have everything we need. But but perhaps you can help us wrap up this investigation more quickly. It all comes down to one thing: do you have an alibi?”
“I hadn’t gotten home yet. I wasn’t at home when he was killed.”
“Is there anyone who can attest to your whereabouts at the time of the murder?”
Madeline, whose voice had been slowly escalating to a shout, suddenly got morbidly quiet. “No,” she muttered. Her head felt like someone had split it open with an ax.
Thorne had all he needed. The corners of the man’s mouth curled triumphantly into a smile and put his back to the woman to leave the room. “Goodbye, Ms. Eisman.”
Just then, though, he heard something behind him, something soft. He didn’t know why, but it sent a shiver up his spine, a shiver that twisted through him like a wire. And so he stopped dead in his tracks. The detective twisted around to see the woman face down on the chrome table. She wasn’t moving. Standing absolutely still, he watched the woman as the lawyer began to back slowly into the corner. Perplexed, he stared. It must have been fake. A ploy for attention, a last ditch effort before being convicted of murder. But he couldn’t even see her shoulders rise and fall with the rhythm of her breath…
“Ms. Eisman?” he said cautiously. “Madeline?” If he called her by her first name, maybe she would respond…? Maybe… He crept forward silently, placing each foot directly in front of the other, heel touching toe, heel touching toe. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to be so silent, but it was the same feeling you got in the presence of the dead, a feeling that crawled along your spine and up your neck and settled in your throat, like a large spider, and made it so it was all you could do just to whisper. “Madeline?” he tried to speak more loudly now, more confidently as he got closer to the woman. The only other sound was the slow, shaky breathing of the lawyer who stood trembling in the far corner of the room. As the detective reached the table, he saw the his reflection through the gaps in the round curtain of hair that laid splayed about over the surface. In the table he looked scared, and he was. The woman, after all was his responsibility. But what the hell was he supposed to do?
He couldn’t remember. God, it was so long ago, when they had made him take his first aid class to earn his badge. They always tell you, radio for an ambulance if you’re on duty, dial 9-1-1 if not. But he was “9-1-1.” And he was in the basement of the station in the middle of the night—no one was here but the emergency line operators, way up on the fourth floor. He couldn’t yell for help, so if he wanted to alert them would have to run upstairs and back; if she really wasn’t breathing, the response time would be far too slow. And the snivelling lawyer, he wouldn’t be any help, either. Through the blurry filter of panic, Thorne just remembered one piece of information from the useless g****** class: he remembered that if your patient doesn’t respond, if you can’t even see them breathing, then something’s wrong. Something is extremely wrong. But what then?
He reached out his hand to touch the woman’s wrist. He took some skin and pinched it between his fingers, but there was nothing, no reaction, no scream. He let go, and saw the skin turn white and then bright red where he had pinched it as it tugged itself back into position. No response. He twisted the wrist over slowly, and placed his finger on the warm underside, looking for the spot where he had been taught to find the pulse. He was panicking now. What if she was gone, gone on his watch? A heart attack? Maybe it was a heart attack. She had been under so much stress, he had put her under so much stress… But all he could feel was his own pulse pounding in his chest and in his fingertips as they tingled and shook; he was numb to all feeling, any hint of a pulse save his own, and he lost control to the fear. He couldn’t stop now. He had to keep going, he had to see if she was alive.
No pulse, oh s*** no pulse. His eyes were wide open with the terror—it was a different terror from the kind where your life was in danger. It was a special kind. A sort of panic that rose in your chest when you were guilty, when it was you. Staring at the body, he knew it was his fault; he had neglected her, sent her heart rate and stress levels soaring, and she had somehow died. She was his responsibility and she had died. He looked at the unmoving body: this was it. He would be discharged, he would lose his job, he would not be able to live with himself, he must have somehow killed the woman. No pulse, oh S*** no pulse.
But had he checked it right? The class was so long ago. He didn’t remember. He didn’t remember, oh God it was so surreal. He reached his palpitating hand up to her neck instead, to check her pulse again. He felt around on the flesh below the woman’s chin. And he felt something beneath his numb fingers, a pulse. It was so fast it was quivering. It was abnormal, impossible, inhuman. And then she hit him. The god**** blond just hit him straight across the face and screamed loud enough to pierce his eardrums.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” She reeled back hard and the chair tilted onto its two back legs for a moment before the other two slammed back to the floor. The woman writhed in her seat, gripping her skull, clawing at it with her sharp fingernails, just scratching and scratching as though there was something in there, slithering around under her skin. Her tremors were so violent that the chair shuddered beneath her as she sat. Again, she convulsed, and she keeled over forward, banging her head on the table, leaving makeup smudges and blood streaks all over the thing, and then collapsing to the floor as she lost control of the spasms.
As the fit of epilepsy continued the woman’s eyes lolled back into her head, and she thrashed about so violently that the officer had to hold her bleeding body down so that she didn’t hurt herself anymore; there was no doubt left in his mind that she was serious, that this was real: there was no way anyone could fake this. While he twisted the body onto its side to prevent the woman from inhaling her saliva, swinging hands pummeled his head and strange gulping sounds were emitted from her twitching lips.
“Help,” he breathed. He turned his head toward the lawyer. “Go get help.”