Think Twice

“The rare righty who wants to go left,” Myron said. Then: “Nice to reminisce but Jeremy is waiting. What’s your point?”

“I played in a game sometime early September.”

“Okay.”

“It was one of those games where the guys get out of hand. You know. Too much testosterone.”

Myron knew exactly what he meant. “It got physical?”

“Very. A guy elbowed me in the nose. I started bleeding. Another scratched me. At one point, someone hit me in the back of the head. Hard. I went down. I may have lost consciousness, I don’t know. I don’t remember much.”

“When was this exactly?”

“I don’t remember. Like I said, I’m pretty sure it was early September.”

“So what you’re saying is—”

“Yeah, maybe it makes no sense, but if my DNA is at that murder scene, like skin under Cecelia’s fingernails or blood... I mean, I was bleeding pretty good that night. My nose might have even been broken.”

“Did you go to a doctor or ER?”

“No, of course not. Come on, you remember what it was like. You shake it off, right? That’s how we were raised.”

Again that was true. If you could walk home, you didn’t complain. Dumb but there you go.

“But I’m thinking about it now. One of the guys handed me a towel to stop my nosebleed. I don’t know where that towel is now. And the scratch marks. You can ask Grace. They were pretty deep. So if I am being framed, if someone planted my DNA at a murder scene...”

“This pickup game,” Myron said. “Where was it?”

“There’s an outdoor court in Wallkill. I don’t remember the name of it.”

Myron nodded. “Okay, I’ll check it out. Anything else?”

“I didn’t do this, Myron.”

“It’s weird though,” Myron said. “Jordan Kravat, Cecelia Callister. You knew them both.”

“Tangentially,” Greg countered. Then he added, “How many murder victims have you known tangentially?”

Touché.

“I know you don’t owe me anything—”

“You’re still my client,” Myron said. “So I’ll do what I can.”

Chapter Twenty

You point the rifle at his chest.

Ronald Prine stares at you. You see the question come to his face. He doesn’t know who you are. He has never seen you before. He is wondering who you are and what you want and which one of his brilliant go-to lines will work for him.

Because life has always worked for him.

You smile. You love this part.

“Take my watch,” he says to you. He is rattled, sure, but not as rattled as he should be. There is still the faux bravado of a soft man who has never known tough. This is just a small problem, he thinks, because all his problems up until now have been small, inconsequential. He’ll get out of it, he’s sure. He always has in the past. For guys like him, things just seem to go right. They live in a delusion of meritocracy. They believe that they have supernatural charisma, charm, and innate talents that separate them from the rest of us mere mortals.

“It’s a Vacheron Constantin timepiece,” he tells you. “My father bought it in 1974. Do you know how much they go for?”

You shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. “Tell me,” you say.

“Probably seventy-five grand.”

You give a soft, impressed whistle. Then you say, “I’m not here for that.”

“Why are you here then?”

“I’m here,” you say, “for Jackie Newton.”

You watch for a reaction. This, you are sure, will be your favorite part. He doesn’t let you down. Bafflement crowds his face. It’s not an act, which makes it all the better or worse, depending on where you stand. “Who?”

He really doesn’t know her.

Should you tell him?

When Jackie Newton was eight years old, her mother ran off with Gus Deloy, a coworker at the old Circuit City on Bustleton Avenue in Philadelphia. Jackie remembered her mother sitting on a suitcase to close it, the lipstick smeared on her teeth, telling her daughter, “It’s best this way, I’m a shit mom,” before hurriedly dragging that suitcase along with her dad’s old army duffel bag down the cracked front walk and piling it all in the back of Gus’s Jeep. She didn’t look back as they sped off, but Gus did. He gave Jackie a reluctant half salute, an almost apologetic look on his face. Maybe Jackie’s mom would have changed her mind or regretted abandoning her daughter eventually. Maybe she would have come home or asked to see Jackie again. But for three years, there wasn’t a word. Then Jackie’s dad, Ed Newton, got a call that Mom had died in a car crash in Pasadena.

No word on the fate of half-salute Gus.

It wasn’t all bad for Jackie. Ed Newton raised Jackie the best he could. He was a good man, surprisingly gentle and patient with her. She was his whole world. You could see it every time he trudged through the door at the end of his shift. His face lit up when he saw Jackie. The rest of the world? It could go to hell, as far as Ed was concerned. He didn’t hate. He just didn’t really care. His daughter was his everything, and like the best of fathers, he somehow managed to make her feel that without suffocating her.