Joel Goldman - No way out

Lucy cocked her head, one eyebrow raised.

“Okay, sorry I asked. What did he tell you?”

“Not much. He’s a pretty boy, pouts a lot and looks bored. Said he was just walking along and saw something sticking out of the rocks he thought looked like a bone. He told his mother, and she called the cops.”

“What’s the mother say about her son?” Kate asked.

“She says he graduated high school last year, tried junior college but quit. She says he’s looking for a job, but the way she says it, I don’t know how hard he’s looking. She wants him to join the army, but he isn’t interested.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Kate said.

“Sure. I’ll introduce you.”

Ellen and Adam were watching the tree line, Ellen’s hands in her coat pockets, her face drawn, crow’s feet fanning out from the corners of her eyes, her mouth turned down and sour. Adam was slender and handsome, jet-black hair falling to his eyebrows, smoking a cigarette, fingers of one hand tucked inside his pants, posing like the lead singer in a boy band waiting for the girls to go crazy.

Kate didn’t wait for an introduction. “Adam, I’m Kate Scranton. I understand you and your mother found the body. That must have been something.”

He nodded and dropped his cigarette to the ground, letting it burn until his mother glared at him, then grinding it under his heel.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it?”

He squinted at her. “I already told the police.”

“Which is a great help for them but not for us.”

“And I already told her,” he said, tilting his head at Lucy.

“The more people talk about this kind of thing, the more they remember.”

He made us wait while he rolled his shoulders and breathed deep, swelling his chest.

“Okay. We were walking up in the woods, about halfway up the hill. There was some rocks, and we seen somethin’ stickin’ out didn’t look right. I pulled on it, and it come out. I could tell right away it was a bone. Looked like a leg bone. So my mom called the cops, and that’s about it.”

“Had you been in those woods before?”

He looked away. “Nah.”

Lucy interrupted, pointing toward the woods. “Here they come.”

Four paramedics carried a gurney out of the woods, a black body bag strapped to it, the bag flat, holding individually wrapped remains too sparse to give it shape or dimension. They stopped, released a wheeled frame tucked beneath the gurney, rolling it across the uneven terrain, a lone woman trailing them.

I recognized Detective Adrienne Nardelli’s stout frame and deliberate walk. She was solid and calm, naturally deadpan, saving any hidden sense of humor for off-duty hours. When Lucy and I met with her about the Martin case, she laid down two simple, non-negotiable terms: be straight with her and she’d tell us what she could; fuck with her and she’d fuck us up. She was Quincy Carter without the charm.

Both waiting groups lurched into motion, blending into a single human wave rising and cresting, rolling toward the gurney, Peggy Martin and Jeannie Montgomery squeezed together in the center of the swell. The gurney’s wheels bogged down in a soft spot, the paramedics hoisting it to their waists, setting it down when they met the crowd on the open plain. The lake was a glistening mirrored backdrop, the rumble, whine, and whir of passing traffic an everyday overture. The crowd spread out and parted, paying silent homage as the paramedics passed among them, some gasping, others crossing themselves, still others silent and weeping. The two mothers, side-by-side, hands clasped, faced Detective Nardelli.

“We found a body,” she said. “It’s definitely an adult, probably female. I’m sorry.”

Peggy let out a low moan that exploded into a guttural wail, collapsing to her knees. Jeannie hung her head, turned, and walked away, no one touching her, no one coming close. Peggy was dying. She was a ghost.

I knew from hard experience that grief born of a lost child begins as a bottomless well; that those black waters eventually dry into a thick wall separating the before and after. Then one day, if we’re lucky, we wake up and find that the wall has eroded and all that’s left is a harsh filter through which the rest of our life passes, every moment measured against what might have been and what should have been.

But when there is no end to the beginning, when we cannot clutch our child to our breast a final time, we suffocate in uncertainty, beyond rescue or comfort, and those who try trip over clumsy words and gestures before retreating to a safe distance. So it was, as Jeannie made her way alone and Peggy’s friends fell away, all except for Ellen Koch, who helped Peggy to her feet, cupping her elbow as if she were a wayward drunk, guiding her toward a pickup truck parked on Cliff Drive where her son Adam waited behind the wheel, engine running.

“Lousy deal for them,” Detective Nardelli said to us. “Stand out here half the day, get all worked up for nothing.”

“There’s nothing else they can do,” I said.

“Doesn’t make it any less lousy. You have any good news for me?”

“We took another run at Jimmy Martin this morning, but he’s sitting on whatever he knows.”

“If he knows anything,” Nardelli said.

“Oh, he knows something. That’s for certain,” Kate said.

Nardelli turned to her with a narrowed gaze. “Do I know you?”

Kate offered her hand. “I’m Kate Scranton.”

Nardelli shook her hand, studying her face. “I’ve heard of you. Jury consultant, right?”

“Among other things.”

“So why do you think Jimmy Martin isn’t telling us what he knows? Except for the fact that if he killed his kids, he’ll get the death penalty and that’s not the kind of thing he’s likely to confess until he’s more afraid of his nightmares than the needle.”

Kate summarized her interview and impressions. It was easy to read Nardelli’s reaction. She did everything but smirk and spit, turning to me.

“That’s how you’ve been spending your time?”

“I’d listen to her, if I were you. The science is solid, and she’s usually right.”

“That so?”

“Yeah,” Kate said, her eyes firing up. “It is so. And if you’d consider the possibility that I know what I’m talking about, you’d spend some time with Adam Koch, the boy who found the body. He’s not telling us everything he knows either.”

“And which secret expressions of his told you that?” Nardelli asked.

“They aren’t secret. They just happen so quickly you’ll miss them unless you’re trained to see them. Adam had a gestural slip when I asked him to tell me what happened. He raised his left shoulder for a fraction of a second.”

“His left shoulder? For a fraction of a second? My, that does sound incriminating.”

Kate smiled, her expression cool and patient. “It’s a half shrug. In a full shrug, both shoulders rise, stay up and then drop. Tough questions can make a person feel helpless, especially when they’re lying, and people who do a half shrug feel helpless. He did it a couple of times. The last time was when I asked him if he’d been up in those woods before. He said no, but I’m pretty sure he was lying.”

“All because of the shrug?”

“Partly. His lips also stretched horizontally. That’s a micro-expression of fear, and it’s involuntary, just like the half-shrug. These gestures and micro-expressions are universal. They show up in every culture, and they mean the same thing. By themselves they might not mean that much, but when they happen together when he’s talking about finding a dead body, it’s very likely that he’s not telling us everything he knows.”