my now soaking wet visage on his doorstep. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s important. I need to talk to you. Come on. Open up. Now.” As a rule, semi-drunk people are about the only people I ever have success with talking forcefully to. I turned towards the street and waved and smiled at the two detectives, both still standing against their car. I wondered if they were going to stand in the rain for the full ten minutes I’d been allotted, or if they’d seek refuge in the car. Smythe gave me a bendy fingertip wave back. It almost looked like flirting, but then it was late, and I do have a vivid imagination.
The door closed momentarily, and I could hear Carl wrestling with the front door safety chain. I figure those are more for show than anything else; it doesn’t really take much to push through cheap chain link.
Carl opened the door and, seemingly recovering the good manners I had always seen him demonstrate at school, waved me into the entrance hallway. “Come in. Come in. Sorry to keep you standing in the rain.” He was oblivious to the two detectives at the curb.
As I entered Carl’s house, I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that most of what my ex-wife had suggested about the earning potential of a teacher was apparently true. Looking into Carl’s modest home, I sheepishly felt the teensiest bit grateful that my previous profession, coupled with some relatively savvy investing, had permitted me to live with a lifestyle a few degrees higher than what Carl and Bonnie Turbot appeared to be living. Clearly, no one becomes a teacher as a get rich quick scheme.
From the front hallway, Carl led me immediately up a flight of stairs to the main living room area. As we reached the top of the stairs, Carl gestured into the narrow living room at the front of the house. The Turbots had done a pleasant job of decorating the shoe box. It at least looked homey. “You want something to drink?” he offered.
“No, thank you,” I replied. It was hard to know where to begin. How do you explain to your friend that he’s busted? I forced myself to refocus my mind to think of Carl just as a client. Keeping my distance was becoming increasingly necessary if I was going to give him an adequate defence. I looked quietly around the room, then gestured with my head towards the long hallway that trails off into darkness along one side of the house. “Is your wife sleeping?” I asked Carl.
“No,” he responded, looking away down the same darkened passage. “She’s not here.”
“Oh.” That’s the best I could conjure up for the time being.
“She . . . umm . . . Bonnie has gone to stay with her parents for a little while,” he managed to confess.
“I see.”
“It was, I guess you could say, a little tense here after the media broke the news that I was a suspect in Tricia’s death.”
“I can see how that could create some conflict in the household.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause during which both of us stood looking mostly anywhere but at each other. Finally, I sat down on the edge of the couch and invited him to do the same.
“Carl, I wish you had told me the truth about Tricia.” Though I meant our conversation to be about legal strategy, somehow I managed to make the statement be all about me and immediately regretted it. The last thing I needed from my client was to have him feel like I was against him. The truth was I was slowly beginning to lean that way.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. From the sound of his voice, I could tell that whatever alcohol he’d consumed following his fight with his wife, its effects had not completely worn off. His voice was unsteady, no doubt partially from emotional turmoil, but there was also the slightest slur to his consonants. This wasn’t a good time for him to undergo any further questioning.
“Your relationship with Tricia was much more than teacher and student. I don’t know how serious it was. I don’t know if it was romance or love or lust, and I don’t care. What I do care about is the fact you were having sex with her, and you denied it to my face. That doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t help you.”
“That’s not true!” he blasted indignantly. “I told you that she was making it up. She’s trying to get me in shit!”
“Enough! No more bullshit. I know about you and Tricia.” His eyes were wild again, and I saw the flash of wild anger he had shown me two days earlier at the school. I had a momentary flash of Carl’s rage exploding and him wrapping his big hands around Tricia’s neck, choking the life out of her in a darkened park.
“Carl,” I continued, lowering my voice in an attempt to calm him, “I know about it. The police know about it. They have evidence that can and will prove it.”
Another pregnant pause passed between us as the anger flowed out of him nearly as quickly as it had appeared. Finally, he looked up and nearly whimpered, “How did you find out?”
“I didn’t,” I told him. “They did. They found some soiled garments when they searched her bedroom. Preliminary DNA tests indicate a match to you.”
“They have my DNA?” he asked. As a scientist, he certainly understood how it works. I sensed his confusion and imminent panic at the thought of what other information about him might be on file.
“Evidently we leave all kinds of DNA kicking around our classrooms. It wasn’t difficult to find something with your DNA signature.”
“Holy shit,” he mustered.
“Yeah. That was about my reaction.” I paused for a moment, afraid to ask the next question. “Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with Tricia?”
He looked at me pleadingly. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Win.”
“What I’m thinking isn’t really the issue here. More important is what the police who are in front of your house are thinking. Not to mention the thoughts of the judge who they managed to convince to sign a warrant for your arrest.”
“The police are here? Now?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. You’re about to be arrested.”
Carl, I was quickly learning, was a frequent rider on the pendulum of mood swings. The confusion I had seen give way to anger was now replaced with a veritable wave of fear. He leaped to his feet and actually ran to the front window, parting the curtains to see his anticipated captors below.
“They’re out there?” he asked. He suddenly sounded very young, like an adolescent who has just been informed the school bully has shown up to punch his lights out. “I don’t understand,” he continued, his breath coming faster as real panic set in. “I thought you said their evidence was no good. I thought it was going to be all right?” He had begun to pace. I hoped Furlo and Smythe couldn’t see his shadow dancing back and forth in front of the window. They might think he was planning to run.
“I thought everything was going to be okay. I also thought you weren’t sleeping with one of your students, Carl. This sort of changes the perspective of the police, and quite frankly, I can understand why they’re looking at you very carefully.”
He continued to pace, his breathing growing shallower to the point I thought he was beginning to hyperventilate. All the while he was muttering “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”
Finally,
