Perfect Match Read online

  "Ah," the priest said. "You like Esme." He reached down and scratched between the cat's ears. "That's my girl." Scooping the cat into his arms, he sat down on the couch beneath the painting of the dragon. Nathaniel thought he was very brave. Had it been him, he'd be worried about the monster coming to life, eating him whole. "Would you like to pet her?"

  Nathaniel nodded, his throat so full of his good fortune that he couldn't even speak. He came closer to the couch, to the small ball of fur in the priest's lap. He placed his hand on the kitten's back, feeling the heat and the bones and the heart of her. "Hi," he whispered. "Hi, Esme."

  Her tail tickled Nathaniel under the chin, and he laughed. The priest laughed too, and put his hand on the back of Nathaniel's neck. It was the same spot where Nathaniel was petting the cat, and for a moment he saw something like the endless mirror in a carnival's fun house--him touching the cat, and the priest touching him, and maybe even the big invisible hand of God touching the priest. Nathaniel lifted his palm, took a step back.

  "She likes you," the priest said.

  "For real?"

  "Oh, yes. She doesn't act this way around most of the children."

  That made Nathaniel feel tall all over. He scratched the cat's ears again, and he would have sworn she smiled.

  "That's it," the priest encouraged. "Don't stop."

  *

  Quentin Brown sits at Nina's desk in the district attorney's office, wondering what's missing. For lack of space, he has been given her office as a base of operations, and the irony has not been lost on him that he will be planning the conviction of this woman from the very seat in which she once sat. What he has learned, from observation, is that Nina Frost is a neat-freak--her paper clips, for the love of God, are sorted by size in small dishes. Her files are alphabetized. There is not a clue to be found--no crumpled Post-it with the name of a gun dealer; not even a doodle of Father Szyszynski's face on the blotter. This could be anyone's workspace, Quentin thinks, and therein lies the problem.

  What kind of woman doesn't keep a picture of her kid or her husband on her desk?

  He mulls over what this might or might not mean for a moment, then takes out his wallet. From the folds he pulls a worn baby photo of Gideon. They'd had it taken at Sears. To get that smile on the boy's face, Quentin had pretended to hit Tanya on the head with a Nerf football, and he'd inadvertently knocked out her contact lens. He sets the photograph square, now, in the corner of Nina Frost's blotter, as the door opens.

  Two Biddeford detectives enter--Evan Chao and Patrick Ducharme, if Quentin recalls correctly. "Come in," he says, gesturing to the seats across from him. "Take a seat."

  They form a solid block, their shoulders nearly touching. Quentin lifts a remote control and turns on a television/VCR on the shelf behind them. He has already watched the tape a thousand times himself, and imagines that the two detectives have seen it as well. Hell, most of New England has seen it by now; it was run on all the CBS news affiliates. Chao and Ducharme turn, mesmerized by the sight of Nina Frost on the small screen, walking with a preternatural grace toward the railing of the gallery and lifting a handgun. In this version, the unedited one, you can see the right side of Glen Szyszynski's head exploding.

  "Jesus," Chao murmurs.

  Quentin lets the tape run. This time, he isn't watching it--he's watching the reactions of the detectives. He doesn't know Chao or Ducharme from a hole in the wall, but he can tell you this--they've worked with Nina Frost for seven years; they've worked with Quentin for twenty-four hours. As the camera tilts wildly, coming to rest on the scuffle between Nina and the bailiffs, Chao looks into his lap. Ducharme stares resolutely at the screen, but there is no emotion on his face.

  With one click, Quentin shuts off the TV. "I've read the witness statements, all 124 of them. And, naturally, it doesn't hurt to have the entire fiasco in living color." He leans forward, his elbows on Nina's desk. "The evidence is solid here. The only question is whether she is or isn't guilty by reason of insanity. She'll either run with that, or extreme anger." Turning to Chao, he asks, "Did you go to the autopsy?"

  "Yeah, I did."

  "And?"

  "They already released the body to the funeral home, but they won't give me a report until the victim's medical records arrive."

  Quentin rolls his eyes. "Like there's a question here about the cause of death?"

  "It's not that," Ducharme interrupts. "They like to have all the medical records attached. It's the office protocol."

  "Well, tell them to hurry up," Quentin says. "I don't care if Szyszynski had full-blown AIDS ... that isn't what he died of." He opens a file on his desk and waves a paper at Patrick Ducharme. "What the hell was this?"

  He lets the detective read his own report about the interrogation of Caleb Frost, under suspicion for molesting his own son. "The boy was mute," Patrick explains. "He was taught basic sign language, and when we pressed him to ID the perp, he kept making the sign for father." Patrick hands back the paper. "We went to Caleb Frost first."

  "What did she do?" Quentin asks. There is no need to spell out to whom he's referring.

  Patrick rubs a hand over his face, muttering into his hand.

  "I didn't quite catch that, Detective," Quentin says.

  "She got a restraining order against her husband."

  "Here?"

  "In Biddeford."

  "I want a copy of that."

  Patrick shrugs. "It was vacated."

  "I don't care. Nina Frost shot the man she was convinced molested her son. But just four days earlier, she was convinced it was a different man. Her lawyer's going to tell a jury that she killed the priest because he was the one who hurt her child ... but how sure was she?"

  "There was semen," Patrick says. "On her son's underwear."

  "Yes." Quentin rifles through some more pages. "Where's the DNA on that?"

  "At the lab. It should be back this week."

  Quentin's head comes up slowly. "She didn't even see the DNA results on the underwear before she shot the guy?"

  A muscle jumps along Patrick's jaw. "Nathaniel told me. Her son. He made a verbal ID."

  "My five-year-old nephew tells me the tooth fairy's the one who brought him a buck, but that doesn't mean I believe him, Lieutenant."

  Before he has even finished his sentence, Patrick is out of his chair, leaning across the desk toward Quentin. "You don't know Nathaniel Frost," he bites out. "And you have no right to question my professional judgment."

  Quentin stands, towering over the detective. "I have every right. Because reading your file on the investigation, it sure looks to me like you fucked up simply because you were giving a DA who jumped to conclusions special treatment. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you do that again while we prosecute her."

  "She didn't jump to conclusions," Patrick argues. "She knew exactly what she was doing. Christ, if it were my kid, I would have done the same thing."

  "Both of you listen to me. Nina Frost is a murder suspect. She made the choice to commit a criminal act. She killed a man in cold blood in front of a courtroom of people. Your job is to uphold laws, and no one--no one--gets to bend those to their own advantage, not even a district attorney." Quentin turns to the first policeman. "Is that clear, Detective Chao?"

  Chao nods tightly.

  "Detective Ducharme?"

  Patrick meets his eye, sinks into his chair. It is not until long after the detectives have left the office that Quentin realizes Ducharme never actually answered.

  *

  Getting ready for winter, in Caleb's opinion, is only wishful thinking. The best preparation in the world isn't going to keep a storm from catching you unaware. The thing about nor'easters is that you don't always see them coming. They head out to sea, then turn around and batter Maine hard. There have been times in recent years that Caleb has opened the front door to find a chest-high drift of snow; has dug his way free with a shovel kept in the front closet to find a world that looks nothing like it did the