Lisa Scottoline - Moment Of Truth

'Sure.' Paige began to unbutton her blouse, her long red hair tumbling forward. 'I do have them. I mean, I didn't think to look, but I know I do. My stomach was killing me.' Her fingers fumbled to open the middle button, then the next and finally the third and fourth. She parted her blouse. A lacy white bra peeked out and below it lay one of the flattest, prettiest stomachs Mary had ever seen. There wasn't a bruise or a blotch on her.

Mary's mouth went dry. 'There's nothing,' she said, stricken, and Paige looked down in confusion.

'I don't get it. Where are the bruises? She was kicking me and kicking me. I know it. I remember it.'

Then how could they not be there? How could you not know?' Mary tried not to sound accusatory, but it dashed her hopes for Jack's release. 'Don't you look at your own body?'

'Not since that night, I guess. I've barely had time to

shower. But she kicked me, I remember. I was worried she was going to kill the baby. She said she was going to kill the baby!'

Mary didn't know what to say or do. What was going on here? The captain would never believe Paige now, but she had been telling the truth. Her account was exactly the way she'd told it in Mary's office and all of it made sense. But Kovich, who had been trying to help them, had also been right. If Paige had been kicked with enough force to break a toe, she would have bruises to show for it. So the only logical conclusion was that she hadn't been kicked.

There was a soft rapping at the closed door. 'Can we come in, Ms DiNunzio?' asked Captain Walsh, and Mary felt panicky.

'In a minute,' she answered, and Paige buttoned her shirt hastily.

Captain Walsh entered with Detective Donovan, and Kovich followed on their heels, holding a Polaroid camera. After him came a woman and he seemed excited as he introduced her to Mary and Paige. 'This is Detective Andersson and she'll take photos of the bruises,' he said, but Mary thought fast.

'We'll take the photos after we talk with her boyfriend. He can substantiate everything she says.'

'What? What about the bruises?' Kovich asked, his shoulders slumping visibly, as Captain Walsh scowled.

'Are there bruises or not, Ms DiNunzio?'

'No,' Mary admitted, and she ignored the knowing look that spread over Donovan's face. 'But maybe they haven't appeared yet, or something. The boyfriend was there, I know it. When we find him, he can corroborate what she says.'

'I doubt it.' Donovan folded his arms. 'Paige is obviously trying to protect her father. She's lost one parent and she doesn't want to lose the other.' He looked at Paige with sympathy. 'I'm very sorry for your losses, Paige. But you are the victim of this crime, the same as your

mother. Your father has to answer for her murder, not you.'

I'll handle this, Donovan,' Walsh said. He returned to his chair and sat down heavily, looking up at all of them. 'Tell you what, Ms DiNunzio. You take Ms Newlin out of here immediately and I won't press charges against her for filing a false police report and attempting to obstruct justice. Nor will I mention to the bar association that you're playing fast and loose with the truth. And mark my words, if either of you go to the press with this, I'll have her head.' Walsh pointed at Paige. 'Capisce?'

'Captain, as soon as we find the boyfriend, we'll come back.' Mary couldn't give up. 'Then he can tell you exactly what happened.'

'I know where the boyfriend is, and he can't help you.'

'What? Where?' Mary asked, in surprise.

'He's in federal custody,' Captain Walsh answered, and Paige gasped.

Jack left prison in a cab, feeling strange in the grey sweatshirt and jeans they'd issued him for departure. His face hurt from the beating he'd gotten and his eye was tender when he squinted against the sun, but his thoughts were filled with Paige. Now that he was free, he would protect her from Trevor and find out what the hell had happened.

The cab sped down the elevated strip of 1-95, above abandoned rowhouses and graffitied warehouses, and he ignored the driver's cold eye in the rearview mirror. The driver had to know who Jack was, because he picked him up at the prison. Jack took his hostility in stride. He understood that people outside the prison wouldn't be quite so eager to shake his hand. Life as a confessed murderer wouldn't be easy, nor should it be.

The cab reached the city in an hour, and Jack directed the driver to his town house. He didn't know why but he was drawn to it. He didn't open the car door when the cab paused at the curb, as if he had just left a funeral service and was driving past the home of the deceased. It was apropos. Jack felt dead in a way; at least that part of his life was dead. Honor was dead, and he hadn't even gone to her memorial service. Ashamed of himself, he bent his head in a moment of silence.

The cab engine thrummed in the background as he thought about her. He mourned her, but he didn't mourn the life they had. He could only mourn the life they pretended they had, but there was no point to that. He looked out the cab window at the house, its front door crisscrossed with yellow crime-scene tape. He didn't have to be told he couldn't go inside, much less live there anymore. Everything he owned was there, but he owned

none of it anymore. He had never wanted any of it in the first place. Sun bathed the colonial house in a million-dollar glow and though it shone like a sales brochure, Jack didn't want to see it ever again.

He asked the driver to take him to the hotel. He'd chosen a medium-priced one frequented by tourists because he knew no press would be there. The cabbie steered in its direction without responding and they arrived in fifteen minutes. He left the cab, entered the hotel, and pushed his American Express card across the wood counter, but again, the young woman at the reception desk didn't have to read Jack's credit card to know who he was. The newspapers stacked next to her bore a blowup of his photo, his face divided by the fold, his nose repeated twenty-five times. The young woman couldn't help but look horrified at the wounds on his face, not yet captured in news photos. He ignored it; he had to get going. Paige.

He quickly accepted his room key and card, hurried to the elevator, and punched the button, experiencing the same odd sensation his house had evoked. He felt disconnected from everything, as if he'd been unplugged from his own life. His home, his family. Mary. He tried to forget seeing her in court at his preliminary hearing. She had been there for him, to remind him to tell the truth, but there was no way he could ever do that, death penalty or no. He tried not to think about it.

Jack rode up in the elevator, spacious compared with ad seg. How could it be that in the same day he could be confined to solitary and later check into a tourist hotel? How could he so easily exchange prison blues for a sweatshirt? The disconnect Jack experienced extended even to himself, as if his body had become a hanger and he could change identities as easily as clothes. Father. Lawyer. Murderer. The elevator doors slid open and he stepped out.

He didn't know who he was any longer, but it was high time he found out.

Jack knocked at the door of the squat brick rowhouse, but there was no answer. It was cold outside but he felt warm enough in the football jacket he'd bought in the hotel gift shop, I LOVE PHILADELPHIA, it said across the chest. Still he didn't think his absurd jacket was the reason a little black boy stood on the sidewalk, staring at him. His silent gaze told Jack that few white people came to this section of the city.

Jack knocked again, then checked the address: 639 Beck Street. It was Brinkley's house; the address had been in the phone book. He had called and it had been Brinkley's voice on the machine, but he hadn't left a message. He didn't want to leave any evidence suggesting that he wasn't the killer.