‘I forgot you were tied up with that,’ said Aimee.
‘I was bar manager that night. At least we didn’t serve Denny any alcohol.’
‘It sounds pretty clear-cut. His lawyer should tell him to cop a plea.’
‘It’s complicated. Denny wants to argue provocation, but his own lawyer is trying to have him declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. Denny doesn’t believe he’s crazy, and so I’m wearing a suit while Denny’s lawyer tries to convince the judge of one thing and his client tries to convince him of the opposite. For what it’s worth, I think Denny’s crazy. The prosecution is playing hardball, but he’s been in and out of the Bangor Mental Health Institute for the past decade.’
‘And he still owned a gun.’
‘He bought it before he found his way into the state mental health system. It wasn’t like he went into the store drooling and screaming obscenities about dogs.’
Aimee was distracted by the flapping of wings behind her. A raven was trying to alight on the windowsill but couldn’t get a foothold. It returned instead to the ones in the birch. Four now.
‘I don’t like them,’ she said. ‘And these are real big. Have you ever seen ravens that big before?’
I stood and stepped over to the window. I could barely see the birds through the gap in the blinds, but I didn’t reach out to widen it with my fingers. On the road beyond I saw cars passing, each with at least one child inside, all coming from L’École Française de Maine just up the street. One of the birds turned its head and cawed an objection to their presence.
‘How long have they been here?’
‘Not long: since shortly before you arrived. I know they’re just birds, but they’re real smart, ravens. Animals have no right to be so smart, and it’s as if these ones are waiting for something.’
I stared at the ravens for just a moment longer, then returned to my chair.
‘Just birds,’ I echoed.
She sat forward in her chair. We were moving on to the business of the moment.
‘Did you see the man sitting outside?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Anything strike you about him?’
I considered the question.
‘He’s nervous, but he’s trying to hide it. Hardly unusual for someone in a lawyer’s office who isn’t a lawyer, and he doesn’t give off a lawyer vibe. He’s doing okay, though. No tapping of the feet, no tics, no hand gestures. Either for professional or personal reasons, he’s grown good at hiding what he’s feeling. But it’s there: It’s in his eyes.’
‘Did you learn how to do that from your ex-girlfriend?’
‘Some of it. She taught me how to put words to sensations.’
‘Well, you both did good. That man outside has been concealing truths about himself for a very long time. He has a story that I’d like you to hear.’
‘I’m always happy to listen.’
‘There’s a complication. I’ve acted on his behalf in the past – nothing serious, a DUI that we had quashed, and a minor dispute with a neighbor – and I’ve agreed to act for him in this matter too, insofar as I can, but I need someone with your skills to work on the ground.’
‘So I hear his story, and decide if I want to take the job.’
‘I want you to decide
before
you hear his story.’
‘That’s not how I work. Why would you want me to do that?’
‘Because I want you to be bound by the same duty of confidentiality as I am.’
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘I trust you. I’m just not sure how you’re going to react to elements of his story. And if the police become involved I want you to be able to say that you’re working for me, with the consequent protection of privilege.’
‘But if I decline to take the case, what’s the problem? How are the cops going to know?’
She took her time before answering.
‘Because you might feel compelled to share with them what you learn here.’
Now it was my turn to pause.
‘No, that’s not my style,’ I said at last.
‘Do
you
trust
me
?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll want to take this case. You’ll have reservations about the client, perhaps, but you’ll want to take the case. What he did, he did a long time ago, but it may have ramifications for an investigation that’s ongoing.’
‘What did he do?’
‘You’ll take the case?’
‘What did he
do
?’
She grimaced, then sat back in her chair.
‘He murdered a girl.’
4
H
e entered with his body slightly hunched, as though tensed to receive a blow, and there was an almost childlike aspect to his demeanor. He reminded me of an errant boy who has been called to the principal’s office in order to explain his actions, and doesn’t believe that he has a plausible excuse. Such men and women were a familiar sight to me, and to Aimee Price. Lawyers’ offices have something of the confessional about them; in their confines, truths are revealed, justifications offered, and penances negotiated.
He was wearing dark-rimmed spectacles with the faintest of tints. The lenses did not look thick, and the magnifying effect on his eyes was barely noticeable. They struck me as a shield of sorts, an element of his armory of defenses. He called himself Randall Haight. It was the name on his business card, and the name by which he was known to his neighbors, with whom, for the most part, he maintained distant yet cordial relations, the only exception being Arthur Holden, the other party in the old boundary dispute that had left a lingering bitterness hanging like a miasma over the adjacent properties. According to Aimee, Haight had backed down before it could become a matter for the court, and therefore increasingly messy, and expensive, and public.
Public: That was the important word, for Randall Haight was a most private man.
Haight took a seat next to me, having first shaken hands in a tentative manner, his body leaning away from me even as his hand was extended, possibly fearful that I might be the one to strike that long-anticipated blow. He knew that Aimee would have told me enough to give me an adverse opinion of him, should I have chosen to form one. I tried to keep my face neutral because, in truth, I wasn’t sure how I felt about Haight. I wanted to hear what he had to say before I reached any conclusions, but I could detect a mixture of curiosity and animosity in myself as I judged him despite my best efforts, and some of that must surely have communicated itself to him. I saw how he looked at me, glancing up and sideways, not quite meeting my eye. Dignity and shame fought for primacy within him, with guilt and anger bubbling beneath. I sensed it all, saw it all, and wondered what else he might have hidden away in the locked cabinet of his heart. Of the anger I was certain: I picked up on it in the same way that animals are said to be able to scent disease in humans. I was good at scenting the poisons in men, and Haight’s anger was like a pollutant in his blood, infecting his system. It would always be there, waiting to well up, seeking an outlet: a complex, many-headed thing; a hydra within. It was anger at himself for what he had done, fed by his own self-pity; anger at the girl who had died, as hers was not a passive role, and dying is itself an action; anger at the authorities who had punished him, blighting his future; and anger at his accomplice in the killing, for Aimee had informed me that Randall Haight had not acted alone. There was another with him on the day that the girl died, and Aimee’s view was that Haight’s relationship with this individual was deeply conflicted.
Anger, anger, anger. He had tried to contain it, isolating it by creating a persona and a lifestyle that allowed it no opportunity for expression. In doing so he had rendered it more dangerous, and more unpredictable, for being denied an outlet. Maybe he knew this, maybe not, but it was how he had chosen to deal with all of his emotions. He was afraid that if he allowed even a little real feeling to emerge, his entire persona would be swept away in the tide that followed.
All these things I thought as he sat next to me, smelling faintly of soap and inexpensive cologne, and prepared to expose himself before his silent judges.
‘I’ve shared with Mr. Parker only a little of what you’ve told me,’ said Aimee. ‘I felt that it was better if he heard the rest of it directly from you.’
Haight swallowed hard. The office was warm, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face. He seemed about to remove his jacket, but as he shifted it from his shoulders he noticed the sweat patches beneath his arms and instead shrugged it back on. He did not want to feel more vulnerable than he already did, so he resisted the lapse into informality, even at the cost of his own comfort.
There was a mini-fridge beside a filing cabinet in the office. Aimee removed two bottles of water from it and handed one to Haight. I took the second, even though I wasn’t thirsty. Haight drank deeply until he noticed that neither Aimee nor I was doing the same, and I saw in his face that he was simultaneously grateful to her for seeking to alleviate his distress and embarrassed at even this small demonstration of weakness on his part. A little of the water dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away with his left hand, frowning at himself and at us as he did so. He gave me another sideways glance. He knew that I was sizing him up, taking in every small movement.
‘Clumsy of me,’ he said.
He removed a padded manila envelope from his leather satchel. Inside the envelope was a series of photographs, probably printed from a home photo printer. There were five in total. He spread them on the desk so that all the images were visible. In each case, the subject matter was the same, even if the specific object was different in every photo.
They were all photographs of barn doors. Two were red, one green, one black, and the other was a reproduction of a black-and-white photo from a newspaper, but the door in question looked so weathered and old that it was impossible to tell if it had ever been painted any color at all. The grain reminded me of wrinkles on skin, an effect aided by two holes in the upper portion of the barn doors, and the way that the lock bar hung lopsidedly like a half smile, so that the whole was reminiscent of an ancient face. This photo Haight set slightly apart from the others, using the tips of his fingers. The sight of the image seemed to pain him more than the rest.
‘They began arriving four days ago,’ he said. ‘The red one came first, then the green. There was nothing on the third day, then another red one arrived along with the black, each in separate envelopes. That one’ – he pointed at the gray door – ‘came this morning.’
‘Mailed or hand-delivered?’ I asked.
‘Mailed. I kept the envelopes.’
‘Postmarks?’
‘Bangor and Augusta.’
‘I assume these images have some significance for you?’
Haight’s body tensed. He reached for his water and drank some more. He started speaking slowly, but only at first. His tale had its own momentum, and once he began telling of what he had done it moved beyond his control, almost like the killing he was describing.
‘In 1982, when I was fourteen years old, Lonny Midas and I took a girl named Selina Day into a barn in Drake Creek, North Dakota. She was fourteen too, a little black girl. She wore a white blouse and a red-and-black checked skirt, and her hair was styled in cornrows. We’d spotted her around, Lonny and I, and we’d talked about her some. There was a church outside town, barely bigger than a regular house, and its congregation was all colored. Lonny and I would go by there sometimes and watch them through the window. They had services during the week, and we’d hear them talking about how Jesus was their Lord and Savior, and they’d be amening and hallelujahing. Lonny said it was funny that all those coloreds believed they were going to be saved by a white man, but I didn’t think it was funny at all. My mother told me that Jesus loved everyone, and it didn’t matter what color their skin was.’
At this point in his narrative he pursed his lips primly and looked to us for approval.
See? I’m not a racist, and I know the difference between right and wrong. I knew it then, and I know it now. What happened, what I did, it was an aberration. I shouldn’t be judged on that alone, should I?
But we didn’t speak, because the questions were only in his eyes, and so he resumed his tale.
‘I’d never even kissed a girl. Lonny had. He’d once gone into the woods with one of the Beale girls, and he told me later that she let him touch one of her breasts, except he didn’t call them breasts, of course. He called them “titties.”’
And there was that prim look again. Nasty old Lonny Midas, with his crude speech and his white man’s Jesus.
‘But we’d never seen a girl naked, and we were curious, and everyone said that Selina Day wore nothing under her dress. So we waited for her when she was walking home from the poor kids’ school, and we walked with her for a time, and then we took her to the barn. It wasn’t hard. We told her there was a cat in there that had given birth to kittens and we were going to take a look at them and maybe give them some food. We just asked her if she wanted to come along, like it was nothing to us if she did or not, and she thought about it, and she came. When we got to the barn she started to look worried, but we told her that it was okay, and she believed us.