Final Appeal

with me to work. “So you figure that in, right? The dog would have attacked a stranger.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“But not someone she knew.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“So if he was killed, the killer was someone he knew.”

“He wasn’t killed. All the evidence is consistent with him killing himself.”

“It’s only consistent with him putting a gun to his right temple. What if someone made him do it?”

He shakes his head. “There would be signs of a struggle, or a forced entry, and there aren’t any.”

“But it’s possible.”

“I doubt it.”

“But is it possible? Hypothetically?”

He gets up with an audible sigh, pushing down on his thighs like a much older man. “You know, there are support groups.”

Support groups. Therapy. He sounds like Ricki.

“Listen, Miss Rossi. You may never understand it. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

I meet his cool eye. He’s a detective, an experienced one. Maybe he is right about Armen. Still, maybe he’s not.

I leave the police station and walk to my wagon, parked at a meter across the street. Bernice has escaped from the cargo area and is nestled officially in the driver’s seat, but she doesn’t notice me coming toward her. She’s watching a thick-set man get into a black boxy car a couple down the line.

Odd, he looks like someone I saw yesterday in my neighborhood.

I watch the car pull out quickly. A new car, American-made. The license plate is from Virginia.

Strange.

“Roarf!” Bernice says, startling me.

“Get back, beast,” I say to her through the car window.

You’re no fun, say her eyes.

Christ. I fish in my blazer pocket for my car keys, but they come out with a folded strip of legal paper. I figure it’s an old shopping list until I open it up:

Grace—

This is only the beginning for us. I love you.

Armen

P.S. I hope you find this before your dry cleaner.

I look at the note in disbelief. I read it again. Armen.

I love you. My God. I feel a wrenching inside my chest.

It’s his handwriting; it always looked like he was writing in Armenian, even when he wasn’t. How did this get here? When did he write it?

Of course.

The last time I wore this jacket was Monday, the night we were together. It was slung over the back of my chair.

I check the other pockets, but they’re empty. When did Armen leave this note? Then I remember. I used his bathroom before we left. My jacket was at the conference table.

This is only the beginning for us.

I shake my head. Not the sentiment of a man intending to kill himself. Not at all.

“Roarf!” Bernice barks again, trying to stand in the seat. Her slobber has smeared up the window.

I look back at the police station and consider running back inside. No. I’d have to tell the detective everything, and he’d find a way to dismiss it anyway. He’s one hundred percent, he said.

I look down at the note in my hand, feeling a surge of pain inside, and with it, a certainty. Armen didn’t commit suicide. He was murdered. I know it now. I’m holding proof positive. Exhibit A.

Unaccountably, I think of the black car. I look down the street, but it’s long gone.

Someone’s life is at stake, Armen had said. Get involved.

I put the note back in my pocket and slip my car key in the door. There’s going to be an investigation, but it’ll have to be my own. Because I’m involved, starting now.

As soon as I can get into the driver’s seat.

The intercom buzzes on my telephone as soon as I get to my desk in the vacant clerks’ office of the judge who lives in North Jersey. It’s lined with case reports and lawbooks, and furnished in a cheap utilitarian way, with a wooden desk, side table, and chair. “Yes?”

“Grace? I’ve been calling you at home, it’s your day off, isn’t it?” It’s Sarah. My heart gives a little jump.

“Yes, but I’ll be in every day for a while, and today I have to look at that marshals’ tape.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’ll be right over.”

My heart pounds as we hang up. Jesus, is she going to confess to murder? What will I do? I open my desk drawer, and a gleaming pair of scissors glints from a logjam of yellow pencils. I put the scissors near my right hand on the desktop, feeling idiotic for arming myself against a baby lawyer from Yale.

“Knock knock,” Sarah says. She leans confidently against the doorjamb. A filmy skirt billows around her freckled ankles; a melon sweater complements her hair.

“That was fast.”

“We need to talk, you and I.”

I let my hand linger near the scissors. “I’m listening.”

She slides into the hard leather chair across from my desk and crosses her long legs in the drapey skirt. “You might as well say it. You know I’m on the tape.”

“I haven’t seen it yet, so I don’t know that. Why don’t you tell me what I’m going to see?”

She tosses her hair back. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you tell me what I saw that night in Armen’s office? On the conference table and the couch, as I recall.”

I feel myself stop breathing. I love you. “What you saw was none of your business. You were spying.”

“You were fucking your boss.”

I rise to my feet involuntarily behind the desk. “What were you doing there?”

She doesn’t bat an eye. “What’s the difference what I was doing there? You were fucking him, Grace.”

The mouth on this child. “Stop saying that.”

“You two were having an affair, I knew it all along. That’s why he wanted you on Hightower. When he told you he wouldn’t marry you, you threatened to blackmail him. Tell the papers, ruin his reputation. You and Ben put so much pressure on him that he killed himself the same night.”

I look at her in astonishment. “That’s ridiculous, all of it. Where did you get that from?”

“I figured it out.”

Typical Yale grad; totally impractical—or smart enough to know that the best defense is a good offense. “It’s crazy.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she says. Her voice rises in anger, but I can’t tell if it’s an act or not.

“Wait a minute, Sarah, what were you doing in chambers in the middle of the night? You were supposed to be in bed with Artie.”

“I knew Armen would be working late. I was bringing him a sandwich.”

“You left Artie to bring another man something to eat?”

“Artie wouldn’t mind. He loves Armen.”