Steve Martini - Prime Witness

I pick her up and listen as she tells me about her day, where they’ve been. Something about a puppet show and friends. At the age of five, for children of moderate affluence, life is nearly always good, it seems. Nikki and I have talked about this, whether we are spoiling Sarah.

Nikki has made her way back up the driveway. A peck on her cheek. “How was your day?” I say.

“OK. And yours?”

“Fine,” I tell her. I don’t get into it, the mess over Adrian’s latest motion, the points and authorities, my continuing travails in the press. Nikki would not be sympathetic.

Lenore believes Chambers is pursuing his grand strategy in all this. Before I left the office we discussed it, his full-court press to get me to charge his client with two more murders. If we succumb, Lenore believes Adrian will drop his alibi on us at trial, solid witnesses or irrefutable documents which can place Iganovich already in Canada on the day the Scofields died. This would raise the specter of a shoddy investigation. So far we have not managed to come up with any solid information retracing the Russian’s steps on his trip up north.

This leaves me with a large dilemma, whether to charge him in Scofield or not. If I do, and there is another killer, for all intents I may give him a free pass. Except for conspirators and co-defendants acting in conceit, juries don’t like cases in which others have previously been charged with the same crime. It makes the system look too chancy.

“Home a little early tonight,” says Nikki. I look at my watch. She’s right. It’s only a little after eight. Darkness is coming earlier with each day now that we are edging toward autumn.

Nikki’s picking through the mail, separating hers and mine. Along with all the household chores, Nikki has now taken to paying the bills, another job that I no longer have time for. More of the load for Nikki to shoulder. The only thing she hands me is an envelope marked “occupant.”

“I’m not sure you qualify,” she says. Only the slightest smile. We both know there is a broad band of truth here.

She keeps for herself a letter addressed to the two of us, no return address or stamp. This apparently has been put in our mailbox by a neighbor, or some business trying to beat the government out of postage.

There’s another envelope. She looks at the return address.

“Jim and Mary,” she says. Suddenly a little lightness coming into her voice.

Jim and Mary Blaycock are former neighbors who moved back east last year, a job transfer. We have been missing them greatly, one of those relationships beginning to blossom when it was cut short. They have a little girl, Sarah’s age, and a son a little older. The chemistry of the children at play was something special that cemented the two families’ close kinship.

Nikki peels the envelope and reads as I open the door and turn on the lights in the entry hall.

I get the news in the letter line by line from her. The kids have started back to school, Jim has been promoted, Mary’s still looking for a job.

“They’ve invited us to go back for Christmas. Oh, that would be great,” says Nikki. “Snow for the holidays. Good friends.”

I can hear in my mind the unstated: Something to look forward to besides this empty existence.

She starts to package the letter up again, like so much for dreams.

“We’ll look at it,” I say.

She looks at me. “Really?”

“I can try to clear my calendar. I think we can probably do it.”

Suddenly her face is more animated than I have seen it in months. She grabs me by both shoulders, letter crinkled in one hand, and plants a deep, passionate kiss on my lips, molding her body to mine. It is the first show of real affection I can recall since my decision to help Mario Feretti.

“I said we’d look at it.” I’m trying to temper this now, prevent too many rising expectations.

“Sure,” she says. “Sarah. How would you like to go see Tim and Susie for Christmas?” Sarah’s all smiles. “Oh yes.” Little “yippee’s,” while she jumps around the table in the dining room.

“Aren’t you gonna open yours?” Nikki’s looking at the letter marked “occupant” in my hand.

“I think I’ll save it for later,” I tell her. “Something to balance the good news. What’s for dinner?”

Sarah’s already eaten, she tells me.

“How about I get a couple of steaks from the freezer, nuke ’em to thaw in the microwave and I’ll broil them? Baked potatoes and a salad to round it out,” she says.

“A little wine to celebrate.” She holds up the letter like our trip is now an accomplished fact. My wife can be good at manipulation.

“Fine. I’m gonna change. Be out in a minute,” I tell her.

I drop my briefcase in the den on my way down the hall and find my casual clothes hanging on the hook in the closet where I left them last weekend. Lately I have been getting home so late in the evening that changing into something comfortable is a waste of time and energy.

I’m into a light sweater and a pair of Dockers when I hear something smash on the kitchen floor, a bowl or dish. Sounds like a million pieces. No swearing or commotion after this. Nikki must be in a good mood, I think.

A minute later I’m buckling my belt as I walk down the hall toward the kitchen. Nikki is seated at the table, a single light on over her head. The rest of the kitchen is in shadows. I look at the microwave. It’s off. No steaks on the countertop. The broken dish, shattered in splinters, is on the floor. It is a hand-painted soup tureen, porcelain ladle and top, a gift from her parents that she has guarded with her life for ten years.

“Aw jeez. I’m sorry.” I’m looking at the bowl, little pieces all over the floor.

Nikki is not. Her head is bent low, over the table, resting in her hands, elbows propped. For a moment I thinks she’s crying. But when she looks up at me, it is not tears I see, but the abject face of fear, sheer and undisguised. This is something utterly alien to my wife’s expression, a look I have not seen more than twice in our marriage, the first time when we were told that Sarah might have juvenile diabetes, a blood test the results of which had been misread.

“What is it?” I say.

She is speechless, motioning with her hands. There spread before her on the table is an envelope, a single sheet of letter paper and a glossy photo. She says nothing, unable to speak, like her jaw is wired shut, but pushes these toward me. I pick up the page and read.

Before I can make out the first word, I know that I should not have touched this paper. The cops will want to dust it for prints. The words, some letters, have each been individually pasted on the page, neatly clipped from newsprint, magazines and newspapers. The prose has all the elegance of a Western Union telegram.

You FuCKing IVan LOVER

Charge THE russian OR Else

The note itself would be almost comic if it were not for the accompanying photograph. Someone has gone to considerable trouble to produce this. It is not the garden variety snapshot developed at your neighborhood Kodak dealer. This is a large glossy, five-by-seven inch, black-and-white, the kind not even processed by many commercial labs any longer. It has an artsy quality about it, shot against a darkening gray sky that I suspect is early morning, with a familiar backdrop.

It’s the playground at the Westchester-Sarah’s school. There in the foreground with two other little children I can see Sarah playing on the bars. It is hard to tell how far away she is from the camera. If the photographer has not used a telephoto lens, I would guess no more than ten feet.

I call Sarah. She’s watching television in the front room. She comes into the kitchen. I show her the picture. Nikki’s still sitting, looking at me, silent, at the table.