Gail Bowen - The Endless Knot

“A new dog? When did that happen?”

“Today. I saw him this afternoon. He’s an English mastiff and he’s huge.”

“But good-natured?”

“Very. He’s just been neutered, but he seems pretty happy.”

Zack winced. “I wouldn’t be happy.”

“Well, Pantera’s braver than you – he was still in there smiling and twitching.”

Zack stopped painting. “Pantera, huh? That’s a nice tribute to a great metal band.”

“You know who Pantera is?”

“Everybody knows who Pantera is. The day Dimebag died was the 9/11 of rock.”

“Who was Dimebag?”

“Pantera’s one-time guitarist. He was shot by a deranged fan.”

I shook my head. “How do you know these things?”

Zack finished his eyeball and held it up for my approval.

“Perfect,” I said.

“Not bad,” he agreed. “Anyway, when I have lunch with my clients during a trial, we talk about what they want to talk about. One of my guys was a serious Pantera fan. After the trial was over, he sent me some CDS.”

“To thank you for getting him off.”

“No, to console me for not getting him off.”

“There’s a lot about you that I don’t know,” I said.

“There’s a lot about you that I don’t know,” he said. “I thought that’s why we were getting married – to find out.”

“What happens if you don’t like what you find?”

Zack shrugged. “I’ll live with it,” he said. “Speaking of our marriage. When are we going tell your family?”

“Taylor’s birthday’s on a Friday. I was thinking we could invite Mieka and Greg and Angus and Leah down on the weekend to celebrate her birthday and make the big announcement.”

“Let’s invite the Falconers and the Wainbergs too. They’re as close to family as I have.”

“Sounds like a major shindig,” I said.

Zack looked at me hard. “You don’t look very happy about it – cold feet?”

“Just a twinge. Everything’s happened so fast with us.”

He reached for my hand. “Too fast?”

“No,” I said. “Every time I look at you, I know I don’t want a miss a moment of our life together.”

It was a nice moment, short-circuited as many nice moments in my home were by the arrival of one of my kids or their friends. This time the friend was Ethan, and he was positioned at what appeared to be his favourite post: the kitchen door.

I walked over and invited him in. He was wearing a black knit watch cap that made him appear older than thirteen. As always, he was jumpy and abrupt. “Is Taylor here?” he asked.

“She and Isobel and Gracie went out to buy more pumpkins for the party.”

“I didn’t think I’d be invited,” Ethan said. “But Taylor asked me today at school.” For a beat, the three of us stared at one another, waiting for deliverance. “I should get out of here,” Ethan said. “If Taylor sees me, she’ll think I’m stalking her.”

It was an exit line, but Ethan didn’t exit. Finally, accepting the inevitable, Zack threw Ethan a lifeline. “Why don’t you stay for a while? I’ve wanted to talk to you since I noticed you in the courtroom.”

“You saw me?” Ethan’s voice cracked with alarm.

“You were always somewhere around the doors at the back, right? So what’s the deal? Are you interested in becoming a lawyer?”

“No,” Ethan said. “I’m interested in justice.”

Zack’s mouth twitched to suppress a smile. “They’re not supposed to be mutually exclusive.”

Ethan flushed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like a dork.”

“Neither did I,” Zack said. “So, do you think justice will be done in this trial?”

“I don’t even know what justice is in this trial. At first I thought I did; now I’m not so sure. That’s why I keep coming back.”

“That’s why I keep coming back too,” Zack said.

“To make sure that the right people are punished.”

“And to make sure that the right people go free,” Zack said.

“That’s a noble aim.” Ethan’s fingers crept towards the pentangle around his neck. “The poet says that Gawain possessed five virtues that made him a noble knight – love and friendship for other men, freedom from sin, courtesy that never failed, and pity. His five senses were free of sin, his five fingers never failed him.” Ethan’s eyes were glazed as he quoted the ancient lines. “ ‘And all these fives met in one man / Joined to each other, each without end / Set in five perfect points / Wholly distinct, yet part of one whole / And closed, wherever it ended or began.’ ”

For a moment he seemed to exist in a parallel universe; then he vaulted back to ours. He stood up so suddenly that, in what appeared to be his signature move, he knocked against the table. Zack reached and caught his jar of paint just in time.

“Now you really will think that I’m a dork,” Ethan said.

“Not at all,” Zack said gently. “I enjoyed our talk, Ethan. Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

“Okay,” Ethan said. “I’d better get home.”

“I’ll tell Taylor you stopped by,” I said.

Ethan looked stricken. “No. Please. Don’t. She’ll think I’m insane.”

And with that, he raced off into the dark.

Zack stared at the door through which Ethan disappeared. “I’d forgotten how much being thirteen can hurt,” he said.

“Was it a bad time for you?”

“Apart from being friendless, hornier than hell, and convinced that the only person I’d ever have sex with was myself, it was a blast.”

“Well you have me now. All your troubles are over.”

“And believe me, I’m grateful. When I was thirteen, I never thought my troubles would be over. I’ll bet Ethan doesn’t think so either. What’s his home situation?”

“His parents are divorced. He was living with his father, but his father’s new wife doesn’t want Ethan. He’s with his mother now. She doesn’t seem to want him either.”

“So faced with a shitty world, Ethan spends his time with Gawain.”

“And longs to spend time with Taylor,” I said. “And that is beginning to trouble Taylor, which means it’s beginning to trouble me.”

As soon as the girls got back with their pumpkins, they began drawing up rules for the contest, an activity that was abandoned the moment Pete’s truck pulled up and Pantera unfolded himself from the back seat. Ungainly, enthusiastic, graceless, and boundlessly energetic, he was irresistible. The girls ran him around the backyard, then I brought Willie out and everybody bundled up and came out on the deck to watch Willie and Pantera get acquainted. The night was crisp and starry – perfect weather to sit on the deck and observe the meeting of the titans. But we had miscast our titans. After a few rips around the yard with Willie, Pantera spotted Zack, loped over, dropped his great maw on Zack’s lap, and refused to budge. Rejected, Willie slunk over to me. Pete offered wieners and praise in an effort to induce his new dog to play, but Pantera wasn’t buying. Finally, we accepted the inevitable. The girls drifted back inside to plan; the rest of us stayed outside and talked.

For Charlie, only one topic mattered: the trial. “So what’s going to happen?” he asked Zack.

Zack rubbed Pantera’s head. “Serge Kujawa used to say that speculating on what a jury is doing and why was a total waste of time, so he spent all his time speculating.”

“So if you’re speculating, you must have some idea about the outcome.”

“I’d say our chances are fifty-fifty,” Zack said. “If Linda Fritz had been there all along, the odds would have been different.”

Charlie pounced. “But Linda Fritz wasn’t there.”

“And the charge she decided on was. That was a break for us. With attempted murder, the Crown has to prove intention to kill and that’s difficult to prove. If the Crown had gone for a lesser charge, it would have been a slam-dunk for them – even with Garth.”