'How's my wife?' he asked in a way that might or might not have been accusatory.
'She's okay,' said Jaywalker. 'Worried about you.'
Drake's smile was as enigmatic as his question had been. 'Worried about me?' he asked. 'Or worried about herself?'
Jaywalker shrugged. He had no desire to get into their marital dynamics, and every reason to steer clear of the subject. 'Why don't we get to work,' he suggested, thumbing through his file until he found Drake's statement. 'For starters, I'd like you to tell me everything that happened at the End Zone that evening.'
'Again?'
'Again.'
Reluctantly, Drake complied. His memory was still fresh enough that he was able to recall the couple of martinis he'd started off with, the food he'd done no more than nibble at, and the two or three shots of tequila that had followed.
'And that's all?' Jaywalker fixed him with his most skeptical stare.
'That's all.'
'I spoke with the bartender,' said Jaywalker.
'I figured you had,' said Drake, 'since you came up with the name of the place.'
They exchanged smiles.
'According to him,' said Jaywalker, 'it was more like eight or ten drinks, total.'
Drake said nothing.
'Who's right?' Jaywalker asked him.
'It wasn't ten,' said Drake. 'That much I know. It might have been six, seven at the most.'
Jaywalker rubbed his eyes. 'Look, Carter, I'm your lawyer, not your dentist. This shouldn't be like pulling teeth.'
'Maybe eight. No more, honest.'
Eight would have given Drake a b.a.c. of around. 16, double the legal limit. Factor in the 120-proof tequila, and you were still at. 20, maybe a bit higher. Enough to get him convicted of drunk driving, to be sure, but hardly the stuff to turn it into a murder case.
'What made you leave the place?' Jaywalker asked. He wanted to know if Drake was going to admit that the bartender had cut him off and made him call home, or if he was going to leave that little detail out, as he had in his written statement.
'My son showed up.'
'How come?'
'I'd called my wife earlier,' said Drake. 'The two of them drove up. I guess Amanda didn't want to walk into the place. She was pissed off at me, I guess. For a change.'
'And?'
'And what?'
'And I left,' said Drake.
'Who drove?'
'I did. Amanda stayed in her car, and my son got back into it. I drove my car.'
'How come you drove?' Jaywalker asked.
'My son only has a permit,' Drake explained. 'It's not good after dark. I wouldn't allow him to drive. Besides, I really thought I was okay.'
With eight drinks under your belt? But Jaywalker only thought the words. Now wasn't the time for lectures, he knew. He wanted honest answers, even if they were stupid ones. If Carter Drake had truly thought he could drive home safely in the dark in an unfamiliar area, after knocking back two martinis and six tequilas, Jaywalker wanted to hear that. Even if a jury wouldn't.
'What happened next?' he asked.
'I got into my car, started it up and drove off.'
'And?'
'And I guess I must've missed the entrance for Route 9W heading south to the city. When I reached Route 303, I decided to take it, instead. It connects up with the Palisades Parkway, which brings you to the George Washington Bridge.'
'Okay,' said Jaywalker. He didn't want this to be a Q and A. He wanted Drake to ramble, to describe the events in his own words. Sometimes, for example, what a person left out from a story could be every bit as telling as what he included. 'What next?'
'At some point,' said Drake, 'I became aware of a wasp flying around inside the car. That concerned me because I'm very allergic to insect bites. My mouth blows up, my eyes become all puffy, and I feel like my throat's- you know, like I'm not going to be able to breathe. Anaphylaxis, they call it, and it's pretty scary. Life threatening. Emergency-room stuff. You can verify it all through my physician, if you like. Do you want his name?'
'Sure,' said Jaywalker, and he took notes for a few minutes as Drake supplied details.
'Where was I?' Drake asked.
'You'd just noticed a wasp flying around in your car.'
'Right,' said Drake. 'A wasp. I had a newspaper on the console, between the front seats. I rolled it up and took a good swat at the thing. It was on the inside of the windshield, toward the middle, but more on the passenger side. I guess as I reached over to try to kill it, I must've pulled the steering wheel to the left. You know, to keep my balance?'
Jaywalker nodded, scribbling a word or two. 'Did you get it?' he asked.
'I'm not sure,' said Drake. 'All I know is, when I straightened up, I must've been in the wrong lane, because I was looking directly at a pair of headlights. I cut back to the right as fast as I could. I never hit anything, and never heard anything but tires screeching. I assumed the other vehicle got by me safely, on my left. So I continued on home.'
Jaywalker thought for a long moment before saying anything. When finally he spoke, it was to say, 'You talk about 'the other vehicle.' When did you realize it was a van?'
'I didn't,' said Drake. 'Not till I heard the news the next morning.'
'Or that it was white?'
'Maybe when I saw the photos in the T imes. I'm not sure.'
Jaywalker had seen the photos in the T imes, too. He'd had to read the story to know it had been a van. And in the photos, it had been charred black. Just about all of it, except for some of the lettering on one side.
'How come,' he asked, 'when you wrote out your statement, you said you saw a white van in front of you?'
'I didn't say that.'
Jaywalker handed him a copy of the statement, and waited while Drake read it.
'What I meant was,' Drake explained, 'is that it must've been the same white van that was in the news. And the photos. I see what you mean, though. My fault for not being clear. Sorry about that, but this is all new to me. I've never been asked to write out a statement like that before. I should have been more precise.'
They spoke for another hour, covering a range of topics. But Jaywalker found himself oddly distracted. And as he drove home that afternoon, he found himself trying to reconcile Drake's two stories, the one contained in the written statement and the oral account he'd come up with today.
It hadn't been the first time a defendant had minimized his wrongdoing, or even lied about it outright. Hell, in Jaywalker's business, which was dealing with criminals, those things were pretty much the norm, especially in the early stages of the lawyer-client relationship. The five drinks instead of eight or ten, for instance. That one was certainly easy enough to understand.
But how about Drake's backtracking on whether or not he'd been able to tell it had been a white van in front of him? His explanation-that he'd simply been trying to acknowledge that it had to have been the v an-was tortured and lame. The only possible reason Jaywalker could come up with for Drake's correcting himself was that Amanda had gotten to him, had told him that Jaywalker had picked up on the implausibility of the version in the written statement. But if that explained why Drake had corrected himself, it still left the more important question unanswered: Why had he lied in the first place?
And there was more.
