Whatever thoughts or feelings she was having, they seemed to float away as she caught herself staring back at me. Her eyes darted around the floor, she took a step back and laughed nervously.
Now we were both embarrassed.
I could see a vein pulsing in her throat. She always wore a gold crucifix that hung around her neck on a thin gold chain. The chain looked cheap and the crucifix old and slightly tarnished at the base. I always thought it had been a gift from someone special. She wore it every day. I didn’t know who had given it to her, or why. I wanted to know. I wanted to know every little personal thing about her. Every detail.
Fear held me back. I knew there was a line that I shouldn’t cross. No matter how much I wanted to do it, and no matter how strongly I suspected she wanted me to step right over that line.
‘Clarence, let’s go for a walk,’ said Harry.
Clarence got up immediately and followed Harry to the door. Before Harry left he said, ‘You should try going on a date.’
I laughed, feeling like a sixteen-year-old kid again. The embarrassment, the sickening nerves.
‘He has to ask me out, first,’ said Harper, shouting though the door at Harry.
I could hear Harry’s laughter in the hallway, and Clarence’s paws on the wooden floor getting fainter as they got closer to the stairs.
‘Hypothetically, if I were to ask you out, would that be a good thing?’ I asked, trying to smile through the nerves turning my stomach to jelly.
‘It depends,’ said Harper. ‘You’d have to make an effort. My dad bought flowers once in his life – when he asked my mom out on their first date. He wasn’t the romantic type, so he must have really been in love. My mom talked about that bunch of flowers a lot. It didn’t matter that they were cheap roses from the gas station. It was the thought that counted.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said.
TWENTY-ONE
KATE
The morning of the polygraph test, Kate sat outside the examiner’s office on a steel chair and wished with all her heart she could disappear into a hole where no one could find her. Her left hand wouldn’t stop shaking, so she tucked it behind her knee.
‘You’re more nervous than I am,’ said Alexandra.
Her client sat beside her, sipping from a half-gallon bottle of water. Kate had noticed that whenever she was with Alexandra, the woman nearly always had a big bottle of water close at hand, which she poured down her throat every five minutes. She was the most hydrated person Kate had ever met. As Alexandra drank from the bottle, Kate noticed the slight tremor in her client’s arm. The heel of Alexandra’s boot clicked on the floor tile in triple time.
Bloch leaned against the opposite wall. Cool, nonchalant, and switched on. Nothing escaped Bloch’s notice. She was like a machine. Everything around her was data to be absorbed and perhaps noted. Never forgotten. Bloch kept looking between Kate and Alexandra.
‘Just keep cool. Tell the truth,’ said Bloch.
Alexandra nodded. Took another drink.
Kate nodded and bit the nails on her right hand.
Bloch was stone.
The door to Kate’s left opened and a man in a suit came out. He greeted them, introduced himself as a licensed polygraph expert by the name of Carter Johnson, and invited them inside.
The room had no windows. One corner desk was lit with a lamp, and apart from an area no bigger than ten feet either side of the lamp, the room was in darkness. Beside the lamp sat a laptop and a desktop computer with two screens above it. Next to the desk was a chair facing into the room, its back to the wall.
Johnson beckoned Alexandra to the chair and began to attach monitors to her thumb, arms, forehead, and neck.
‘I’m just here to observe,’ said a voice in the dark.
Kate located the source of the voice and saw one half of Wesley Dreyer’s face illuminated by the glare from his cell phone screen.
‘I didn’t agree to you being here,’ said Kate.
‘You never said I wasn’t permitted to attend, either. I’m here now. I won’t get in the way. I’ll be in the corner. Quiet as a mouse,’ said Dreyer.
As Kate became more accustomed to the gloom, she saw a bank of chairs in the opposite corner of the room. Kate and Bloch sat together, watching Alexandra settle herself. Taking deep breaths through her nose, and exhaling through her mouth. Long and slow. Then short and fast. She stretched her neck, closed her eyes.
Alexandra was ready.
The examiner, Johnson, explained he was going to ask her some questions to get a baseline response.
‘Are you Alexandra Avellino?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you have blonde hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you live in New York?’
‘Yes.’
As she answered the questions, she stared straight ahead, and kept as still as she could. The only movement came from her fingers as they stroked a leather and black pearl bracelet with a few metal charms. Alexandra didn’t spin the bracelet on her wrist, as if she was fidgeting. Instead she rubbed the leather, turned the pearls, and felt the charms between her fingers as if she were exploring their feel for the first time.
‘Is Hillary Clinton President of the United States?’
‘No.’
While these questions went on, there were lines flitting across the twin screens, and Johnson was making notes and clicking on a mouse. This was new technology. Kate thought they were a long way from reams of paper feeding from a machine with a needle jumping across it in wavy lines.
‘Is today Wednesday?’
‘No.’
‘Was it snowing when you came into the building?’
‘No.’
‘Did you murder Frank Avellino?’
‘No.’
‘Did your sister kill Frank Avellino?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you lied in any of your answers so far?’
‘No.’
Johnson glanced over his shoulder, nodded toward Dreyer who let out a sigh and then gave Johnson the thumbs up. Johnson reached down with his left hand, then came up with something in a clear plastic bag.
‘Did you murder Frank Avellino with this knife?’
Pause. Alexandra stared at the thing in front of her as Kate got up and unleashed a tirade at Dreyer – her voice and indignation rising in her throat with every word.
‘This is an ambush. This test is over. I agreed to let your examiner ask questions, not show my client the knife that was used to murder her father – that’s completely outrageous. Have you no shame?’
Dreyer had his hands up in placation. Bloch strode over to Alexandra. She still hadn’t answered the question. She had turned away from the knife, hiding her eyes from it. Her chest heaving. Bloch tore the pads and sensors from her skin.
‘This is inadmissible. We’ve had enough and we’re leaving. My client is a victim. How dare you show her the weapon used to kill her father? What kind of a sick animal does that?’ said Kate.
‘She’s not a victim until twelve people on a jury say she’s not guilty, Miss Brooks. You know that. The facts of what happened here can be referred to in cross-examination. Tell your client I’m not falling for her fake tears.’
Bloch walked Alexandra to the door, Kate followed them out. In the corridor Kate bumped into the back of Bloch. She was standing still, staring straight ahead. If Kate hadn’t been standing behind them, she would’ve missed Bloch reach up and firmly take hold of Alexandra’s right arm.