Perfect Match Read online

  The guard hands me a pair of scrubs. "Get undressed," she orders.

  I have to do this, I think, as I hear her snap on the rubber gloves. I have to do whatever it takes to get out of here. So I force my mind to go blank, like a screen at the close of a movie. I feel the guard's fingers probe my mouth and my ears, my nostrils, my vagina, my anus. With a jolt, I think of my son.

  When it is over, the guard takes my clothes, still damp with the blood of the priest, and bags them. I slowly put on the scrubs, tying them so tight at the waist that I find myself gasping for breath. My eyes dart back and forth as we walk back down the hall. The walls, they're watching me.

  In the booking room at the front of the jail again, the female guard leaves me standing in front of a phone. "Go ahead," she instructs. "Make your call."

  I have a constitutional right to a private phone call, but I can feel the weight of their stares. I pick up the receiver and play with it, stroking its long neck. I stare at it as if I have never seen a telephone before.

  Whatever they hear, they won't admit to hearing. I have tried to pressure enough correctional officers to come testify, and they never will, because they have to go back and guard these prisoners every day.

  For the first time, this works to my advantage.

  I meet the gaze of the nearest correctional officer, then slowly shake off the act. Dialing, I wait to be connected to something outside of here. "Hello?" Caleb says, the most beautiful word in the English language.

  "How's Nathaniel?"

  "Nina. Jesus Christ, what were you doing?"

  "How's Nathaniel?" I repeat.

  "How the hell do you think he is? His mother's been arrested for killing someone!"

  I close my eyes. "Caleb, you need to listen to me. I'll explain everything when I see you. Have you talked to the police?"

  "No--"

  "Don't. Right now, I'm at the jail. They're holding me here overnight, and I'm going to be arraigned tomorrow." There are tears coming. "I need you to call Fisher Carrington."

  "Who?"

  "He's a defense attorney. And he's the only person who can get me out of this. I don't care what you have to do, but get him to represent me."

  "What am I supposed to tell Nathaniel?"

  I take a deep breath. "That I'm okay, and that I'll be home tomorrow."

  Caleb is angry; I can hear it in his pause. "Why should I do this for you, after what you just did to us?"

  "If you want there to be an us," I say, "you'd better do it."

  After Caleb hangs up on me, I hold the phone to my ear, pretending he is still on the other end of the line. Then I replace the receiver, turn around, and look at the correctional officer who is waiting to take me to a cell. "I had to do it," I explain. "He doesn't understand. I can't make him understand. You would have done it, wouldn't you? If it was your kid, wouldn't you have done it?" I make my eyes flicker from left to right, lighting on nothing. I chew my fingernail till the cuticle bleeds.

  I make myself crazy, because this is what I want them to see.

  It is no surprise when I am led to the solitary cells. In the first place, new prisoners are often put on a suicide watch; in the second place, I put half the women in this jail. The correctional officer slams the door shut behind me, and this becomes my new world: six feet by eight feet, a metal bunk, a stained mattress, a toilet.

  The guard moves off, and for the first time this day, I let myself unravel. I have killed a man. I have walked right up to his lying face and shot four bullets into it. The recollection comes in bits and pieces--the click of the trigger past the point of no return; the thunder of the gun; the backward leap of my hand as the gun recoiled, as if it were trying, too late, to stop itself.

  His blood was warm where it struck my shirt.

  Oh, my God, I have killed a man. I did it for all the right reasons; I did it for Nathaniel; but I did it.

  My body starts shaking uncontrollably, and this time, it is no act. It is one thing to seem insane for the sake of the witnesses that will be called to testify against me; it is another thing entirely to sift through my own mind and realize what I have been capable of all along. Father Szyszynski will not preside over Mass on Sunday. He will not have his nightly cup of tea or say an evening prayer. I have killed a priest who was not given Last Rites; and I will follow him straight to Hell.

  My knees draw up, my chin tucks tight. In the overheated belly of this jail, I am freezing.

  "Are you all right, girlfriend?"

  The voice floats from across the hall, the second solitary confinement cell. Whoever has been in there watching me has been doing it from the shadows. I feel heat rise to my face and look up to see a tall black woman, her scrubs knotted above her bellybutton, her toenails painted to orange to match her jail uniform.

  "My name's Adrienne, and I'm a real good listener. I don't get to talk to many people."

  Does she think I'm going to fall for that setup? Stoolpigeons are as common in here as professions of innocence, and I should know--I have listened to both. I open my mouth to tell her this, but at second glance, realize I've been mistaken. The long feet, the rippled abdomen, the veins on the backs of the hands--Adrienne isn't a woman at all.

  "Your secret," the transvestite says. "It's safe with me."

  I stare right at her--his--considerable chest. "Got a Kleenex?" I ask flatly.

  For just a moment, there is a beat of silence. "That's just a technicality," Adrienne responds.

  I turn away again. "Yeah, well, I'm still not talking to you."

  Above us, there is the call for lights out. But it never gets dark in jail. It is eternally dusk, a time when creatures crawl from swamps and crickets take over the earth. In the shadows, I can see Adrienne's smooth skin, a lighter shade of night between the bars of her cell. "What did you do?" Adrienne asks, and there is no mistaking her question.

  "What did you do?"

  "It's the drugs, it's always the drugs, honey. But I'm trying to get off them, I truly am."

  "A drug conviction? Then why did they put you in solitary?"

  Adrienne shrugs. "Well, the boys, I don't belong with them; they just want to beat me up, you know? I'd like to be in with the girls, but they won't let me, because I haven't had the operation yet. I been taking my medicine regular, but they say it don't matter, so long as I've got the wrong kind of plumbing." She sighs. "Quite frankly, honey, they don't know what to do with me in here."

  I stare at the cinderblock walls, at the dim safety light on the ceiling, at my own lethal hands. "They don't know what to do with me either," I say.

  The AG's office puts Quentin up at a Residence Inn that has a small efficiency kitchen, cable TV, and a carpet that smells like cats. "Thank you," he says dryly, handing the teenager who doubles as bellman a dollar. "It's a palace."

  "Whatever," the kid responds.

  It amazes Quentin, the way adolescents are the only group that doesn't blink twice upon seeing him. Then again, he sometimes believes they wouldn't blink twice if a herd of mustangs tore past inches from their Skechered feet.

  He doesn't understand them, either as a breed or individually.

  Quentin opens the refrigerator, which gives off a dubious odor, and then sinks onto the spongy mattress. Well, it could be the Ritz-Carlton and he'd hate it. Biddeford, in general, makes him edgy.

  Sighing, he picks up his car keys and leaves the hotel. Might as well get this over with. He drives without really thinking about where he's going. He knows she's there, of course. The address for the checks has stayed the same all this time.

  There is a basketball hoop in the driveway; this surprises him. Somehow, he hasn't thought past last year's debacle to consider that Gideon might have a hobby less embarrassing to a prosecutor. A beat-up Isuzu Trooper with too many rust holes in the running board is parked in the garage. Quentin takes a deep breath, draws himself up to his full height, and knocks on the door.

  When Tanya answers, it still hits him like a blow to the chest--h