Karin Slaughter - Martin Misunderstood

Martin often said that he did not have a racist bone in his body. He had supported Barack Obama, or at least he had told people that he did (Martin's life was run by strong women; he was not one to embrace change). His closest co-worker was black. He occasionally listened to rap music and enjoyed the comedy of Chris Rock. He was, in short, a man who did not normally see black and white. When he looked at a person, he saw a person, not a skin color.

Even with these sterling credentials, Martin could not help but notice that he was the only white man in the holding tank at the Atlanta jail. Neither had the color discrepancy gone unnoticed by his fellow prisoners. When he had first entered the cell, someone had noticed Martin's short-sleeved dress shirt and his clip-on tie and said, 'Look, a Republican.'

He could not believe that they were holding him on such flimsy evidence. Sure, his blood was mixed in with Sandy's… stuff… but that didn't mean anything. Or did it? One need only read a good Patricia Cornwell to know that blood did not come with a time-and-date stamp. Scientifically, there was no way to prove that Martin had touched the bumper the day after the incident. What a mess!

He held his breath as the odor of fresh feces filled the air. There were two toilets, both of them out in the open for the world to see. A large, bald man was sitting reading a magazine, doing his business as if this was just another day in his life. Martin had dealt with being around toilets most of his adult life and had tucked himself into the far corner when he had first entered the cell, but the odor seemed to bounce off the walls and envelop him. Sitting on the floor with his knees to his chest, all Martin could think about was this was how the system turned you into an animal. How long would it take before Nature won out and he was forced to relieve himself in front of complete strangers? How long before his dignity was completely removed and he was spitting on the floor and scratching himself alongside the other screws? Or was it fishes? Martin had still not mastered the lingo.

Oh, if only his one phone call had been made to his father instead of his useless mother. She hadn't answered the phone. The answering machine had whirred, Evie's blunt voice saying to leave a message. He knew she was home-Evie could not drive herself anywhere because of her cataracts – just as he knew that she was aware that Martin was sitting – no, rotting! – in jail.

His father would not have left his only son among these monsters. His father would have… oh, who was he kidding? Marty Reed has been just as useless in life as he was in death. An accountant, like his son would grow up to be, Marty had worked in indexing and actuarials for a large law firm downtown. His mother had called it 'the accident' right up until the insurance company had asserted that no matter how many times she insisted, the cause of Martin Harrison Reed Senior's death had been officially ruled a suicide.

This was how it had happened: Marty had enjoyed a nice lunch of ham salad with a devilled egg. He had written a note on the back of an index card and taken off his glasses. He left both of these on his desk. The sight of Marty fumbling blindly through the office, bumping into chairs and walls (he was legally blind without his glasses) as he made his way toward the hallway, did not strike anyone as unusual at the time. He had the remnants of his sack lunch in his hand as he felt his way toward the trash chute. Someone reported hearing a giggle as the door squeaked open, though that would have been the last noise he made. Marty didn't even scream as he careened down the chute, landing thirty-eight floors down beside his wadded up lunch sack.

It wasn't until several hours later when the driver of the garbage truck found the body that someone actually read the note: 'Please give my glasses to the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.'

'That's nice,' Martin's mother had said, though she had been furious to learn that the Shriners did not allow women to attend their meetings. Martin had always assumed that explained the giggle. His father had finally managed to get the last word.

'Hooty-hoo!' someone heckled. There were whistles and a few catcalls. Martin craned to see around the legs of the men standing in front of the cell bars. He saw a tennis shoe… a calf…

'Shut up, you cocksuckers,' An told the men who were reaching toward her. 'Back the fuck off before I Tase every one of you.'

Martin scrambled to stand, his heart thumping at the sound of her voice. The crowd parted and he walked forward, feeling the curious, if not outright envious, stares of his fellow cellies.

An nodded to the policeman beside her and he opened the cell door.

'This way,' she said, walking down the hallway.

Martin stumbled over his own feet as he tried to keep up with her. 'It was awful in there,' he said. 'You don't know what it does to a man. They're animals. I feel so-'

'You were in there for less than thirty minutes,' she told him, punching a code into the keypad by the door.

'Really?' he asked, surprised that it hadn't been at least an hour. 'It felt like an eternity. Thank you so much for…' Martin's brain caught up with the moment. 'Hey, where are you taking me?'

'I'm letting you out on your own recognizance.'

'What about the blood? What about my fingerprints?'

'Are you trying to talk me out of this?'

'I just… I don't want you to get into trouble,' he said, the truth coming out. His mind flashed on the image of An in the interrogation room. Was that concern he had seen on her face as he threw up all over the table? It wasn't revulsion – Martin had seen revulsion in enough women by now to know what that looked like.

She asked, 'Why would I get in trouble?'

'For letting me out,' he said. 'I mean, this is a lot of circumstantial evidence we're talking about.'

She stared at him. He saw that one of her eyelids drooped more than the other. The circles under her eyes were darker in the fluorescent light of the corridor. He wanted to hold her in his arms. He wanted to kiss the droopiness away. Or kiss the droopiness in, because it seemed like it would be easier to make an eyelid droop more by pressing into it than it would be to remove the droopiness; it was just simple physics.

'You need a better lawyer than the one you've got.'

'Max seems like a nice guy.' He had actually offered Martin some good advice about making sure to align himself with the whites as soon as he got into the cells. Had there been any white people, he would have certainly done so.

'I'm letting you go because forensic tests showed that Sandy's blood on the bumper dried before yours did.'

'You can tell that?'

'Yes,' she told him, sounding tired. 'We can tell that.'

Martin scratched his chin, wondering if he would ever be able to trust Kay Scarpetta again.

'Your car is in the impound lot. Keep your nose clean,' An warned him. 'You're still our main suspect in this case.'

'Yes, I can see why.'

'You also need to tell me what you were doing between the time you dropped off your mother and the time you came home.'

Martin pressed his lips together.

'Mr Reed-'

'I promise you that I would never hurt Sandy. She teased me sometimes, but I know that she cared about me. Sometimes, when people pick on you, it's because, for them, that's the only way they can show affection.' Martin shrugged. 'If you look at it that way, Sandy and I were actually friends.'

An stared at him. She sighed a deep raspy sigh of exhaustion. Martin thought of all the things he would do if he had her all to himself: stroke her hair, rub her feet, change her lightbulbs (even if there were spiders!). He would learn to cook for her. The art of lovemaking would come easily to him, the way that macramé and model shipbuilding had come to him in the ninth grade. And didn't his mother still have some of his ships on the top of the kitchen cabinets? Evie wouldn't still be displaying them after all of these years if she didn't think they were good!