Karin Slaughter - Martin Misunderstood

The man gave his partner a knowing, lopsided smile as he handed his card to Unique.

'Homicide!' she screamed, nearly falling out of her chair. 'Martin, you don't talk to Homicide cops. My cousin talked to them once and he got sent to jail for twenty years!'

Anabahda asked, 'What's your cousin's name?'

Unique's face went blank. She picked up her purse. 'I think I left my oven on.' She scampered out the door, only the lingering scent of garlic and mocha latte indicating she had even been there.

Martin swallowed. He was alone with her now, except for Benedict. 'Can I see your card, please?'

She took out her wallet again and dug around in one of the pockets. 'This is just routine questioning, Mr Reed. There's no reason to worry.'

He took the card, electric shocks going through his body when his fingers brushed against hers. Martin noticed that she chewed her cuticles, just like he did.

'Mr Reed?'

He realized he was staring at her. Martin ducked down his head, reading the card: Detective Anther 'An' Albada, Homicide Division. 'An' not 'Anne' or 'Ann' but 'An'. The simplicity was breathtaking, yet alluring. And the Albada… how exotic, how foreign… He wanted to touch the raised letters to see if the tingling sensation came back.

'Mr Reed?' She was leaning against Unique's desk, arms crossed over her chest. He saw a gold Timex on her wrist – spare, utilitarian, just like the lady.

She looked tired. He wondered what it might feel like to have her put her head in his lap. Martin blushed at the thought, thinking that, if she could read his mind, she would assume that his wanting her head in his lap had sexual connotations, which was not the case – he simply wanted to stroke her hair, to ask her about her day. Maybe he would make her fishsticks and Tater Tots (Martin's favorite meal), and then when the kids came home, he would help them with their homework and then carry her to bed where they would make sweet, gentle love and she would look into his eyes and-

'Mr Reed?'

Martin looked back at her. 'Yes, ma'am?'

'Can you tell us where you were yesterday?'

'At work.'

'I mean, after work.'

'I took my mother to the Peony Club. She left her good trowel.'

'And then what?'

Martin felt his face flush. His throat tightened. He had taken his mother home, and then he had done something awful – so awful that the words strangled in his throat. The one time someone asked him what he had done the night before, and he had actually done something, but he could not talk about it. At least not to this beautiful flower of a woman. Oh, the irony! The unseemliness of it all!

The toilet flushed. All of them turned their heads, surprised by the noise. Daryl Matheson was zipping up his coveralls as he came into the office, saying, 'Shit, Marty, gimme the spray. Something dead just crawled outta my-' He stopped when he saw Martin's guests. 'What are the cops doing here?'

Martin opened his bottom desk drawer and fetched the OdorOutter (one of Southern's most popular sellers). 'They're here about my car,' Martin told him. 'Be sure to tell Ben Sabatini that when you see him next.'

Daryl shook the spray can and headed back into the bathroom. The office was so quiet they could hear the spraying and subsequent coughing. Martin held his breath (Southern had settled a civil suit out of court with a customer who claimed that OdorOutter ate away the lining of her esophagus) and smiled at An.

Daryl came back out of the toilet, waving his hand in the air to fight the fumes. His voice cracked when he spoke. 'Damn, sorry about that, folks.' He coughed a few times, then a few more. Then even more. Martin shot an apologetic look to An as he plucked some tissues out of the Kleenex box on his desk and handed them to Daryl.

'Jesus!' Daryl choked. He cleared his throat a few times, spit in the tissue, then handed it back to Martin. 'Thanks, man.' He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands and addressed the detective. 'Are y'all here about all that blood on his car?'

Suddenly, the OdorOutter wasn't the only thing sucking breathable air from the room.

An asked, 'What blood on the car?'

Daryl nodded toward Martin. 'This morning. He had blood all over his hands, too. I thought maybe he hit a deer or something, but there was hair on the bumper – like, hair from somebody's head.' He shrugged. 'Then Darla saw him outside by the Dumpster beating the ever-loving Jesus out of his briefcase.' He glanced back at Martin. 'You oughtta talk to somebody about that temper of yours, man.' With that, he left the office.

Martin felt his mouth moving, but no words would come out.

Benedict reached underneath the back of his jacket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Martin Reed, I am arresting you for the murder of Sandra Burke.'

'Sandy?' he asked, craning his neck to look up the stairs even as Benedict slung him around like a sack of Meyer lemons. Was that why she hadn't come downstairs to talk about Dancing With the Stars ? 'You don't understand!' Martin tried. 'Why would I hurt Sandy? Why would I hurt anyone?'

'Mr Reed,' An began, 'why don't you clear this up right now and tell us where you were last night?'

Martin gulped, his face reddening again. This was awful, just awful. Hadn't this very thing happened in John Grisham's The Innocent Man – some poor shlub in the wrong place at the right time?

'Mr Reed?'

Grisham was a lawyer. He knew how these things worked. In his head, Martin consulted the legal advice contained in his many books. The Client . The Broker . The Appeal . 'I believe,' Martin began, 'I have the right to remain silent.'

An stared at Martin Reed through the observation mirror. He sat alone in the interview room, his pudgy face squeezed into a ball of fear. The wisps of hair covering his round head reminded her of Charlie Brown. He kept clenching his fists on the table in front of him as if Lucy had yet again tricked him into trying to kick the ball. It was the same kind of clenching he'd been doing when they'd walked into his office – or at least what Martin seemed to think was his office. To An's eye, it looked like a break room that had two desks and was stacked almost wall-to-wall with boxed payables and receivables from the last fifteen years. If anyone found it odd that the accounting department was basically an adjunct to the toilets, no one was commenting.

Bruce opened the door and came into the room. 'Nothing in his house.'

An had assumed the search of the Reed home would yield little evidence.

'His mother's terrified, says he's been acting strange lately. Might be hitting the bottle again.'

'Again?'

'She says he doesn't like to talk about it. Must be in recovery.' Bruce shrugged; there were lots of cops in recovery. 'The woman's a potty mouth, by the way. Some of the shit outta her mouth made me blush.'

Coming from a man who used 'cunting' as an adjective, that was saying a lot. Of course, An couldn't talk. She was quite explicit around prisoners, who tended to respond to threats better than pleasantries.

Bruce continued, 'You should see his bedroom. Wall-to-wall books with more in boxes in the garage. We're talking tens of thousands of them. The guy must read all the time.'

An studied Martin. He didn't strike her as the cerebral type. 'What kinds of books?'

'Thrillers mostly. James Patterson, Vince Flynn – that kind of stuff.'

An couldn't say anything. She refused to answer her phone when a Columbo movie was on. Not that it rang much, but she was constantly being surveyed for her opinion on things. Talk to those people once and they never gave up. 'Did the mother give him an alibi for last night?'