“What you
want to know—”
“Ditto,” Johnny says, realizing that he’s falling into Burke’s game. The lawyer is distracting him, breaking up his rhythm, turning his interrogation of the witness into a skirmish between cop and lawyer. He leans across the table to focus on Nichols. “How long did the conversation last?”
“I don’t know,” Nichols says. “I didn’t look at my watch. Until we went to bed. Eleven o’clock?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“He told you he didn’t know, Detective,” Burke says, “and I’m not going to allow him to speculate.”
Of course you’re not, Johnny thinks, because it’s a critical issue.
The 911 call from the neighbor had come in at eight-seventeen; the black-and-white responding to a “shot fired” called at eight twenty-four. The responding officers kicked in the door and found Schering, in a bathrobe, already dead on his living-room floor.
Johnny got the call at eight thirty-one; logged on to the scene at eight forty-seven. He interviewed the neighbor and had Boone’s van at the scene, but the neighbor couldn’t recall if it left before or after he heard the shot, just that this van had been “lurking” around the neighborhood recently.
The ME hasn’t established time of death yet, and it would be nice to pin Nichols down to a time after which his wife’s testimony won’t help him. Personally, Johnny thinks Nichols shot his wife’s lover
this heart-to-heart talk ever happened, if it happened at all, but it’s possible that he slipped out afterward, and wants to leave that door open.
Burke isn’t going to let him narrow it down, so Johnny has to press the offensive a little harder. “Is this possible, Mr. Nichols? Let me run this scenario for you, and you tell me if it’s possible. Daniels calls you, tells you he has definitive proof that your wife is sleeping with Schering. You go over to confront your wife’s lover. I get it, I totally get how you’d be angry . . . hell, furious . . . the guy has been doing your wife—”
“That’s enough, Detective,” Burke says.
“And you get into an argument. I mean, who wouldn’t? I know I would, Harrington here certainly would.”
Harrington nods sympathetically. “Hell, yes.”
“Any man who calls himself a man would, and you argue and things get out of hand and maybe you pull the gun. Just to threaten him, scare him, I don’t know, mess with his head. Maybe he reaches for it and it goes off.”
“Don’t respond to this fiction,” Burke says.
Which pisses Johnny off, because he’s using the “fiction” to lure Nichols into putting himself at the scene. Once he does that, Johnny will use the gunshot forensics to jerk the “self-defense” rug out from under him.
He keeps at it.
“You’re freaked out,” Johnny says. “You never meant for anything like this to happen. You panic and drive away. You drive straight home and when you get there you’re so shook up you can’t hide it from your wife. She asks you what’s going on and you tell her. Just like you said, you tell her you know about the affair. You tell her about the terrible thing that happened when you went to Schering’s house. She says it’s going to be all right, you’ll both say you were home the whole evening, working on saving your marriage. Is that possible, Dan? Is it just possible it happened that way?”
He looks closely into Nichols’s eyes to see if he can discern the flicker of recognition. “No,” Nichols says. “It didn’t happen that way.”
“How
it happen?” Johnny asks. Softly. Empathetically. Like a therapist instead of a cop.
“I don’t know,” Nichols says. “I wasn’t there. I was home with my wife.”
Burke looks at Johnny and smiles.
90
It’s a little scratchy over the cheap intercom speaker, but clear enough.
“I’m sorr——”
The intercom clicks off.
He hits the button again.
“Funny thing,” Boone says. “Speaking of the police—”
Dead.
He hits it again.
“I was picked up on suspicion of murder.”
A pause, then she buzzes him in.
91
The wife’s story matches.
Almost too well.
Her husband came home, she doesn’t remember the time, and was clearly upset. He told her he knew about her affair with Philip Schering. She admitted it. They sat and talked for hours, but she doesn’t recall what time it was when they went to bed. The next thing she remembers is hearing a discussion and going downstairs to find Mr. Daniels there. That’s when she learned about Phil’s death.
“This is awkward, Mrs. Nichols,” says Johnny, “but were you seeing Mr. Schering?”
“You already know that I was.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Yes,” she says. “I was.”
“And did you have sexual relations?”
“We did.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Last night,” Donna says. “No, I guess it was the night before. I don’t know, what time is it now?”
“It’s early in the morning,” Johnny answers. “Where were you last night?”
“At home.”
“Alone?”
“No, my husband was with me.”
Johnny asks, “When did he get home?”
“Early,” Donna says. “Seven, maybe?”
Nice, Johnny thinks. She has him home by seven, the shot isn’t heard until shortly before eight-seventeen. While someone is pumping a bullet into Schering’s head, the Nicholses are at home doing Dr. Phil’s Relationship Rescue. Funny how life works.
“You said your husband confronted you with the evidence of your infidelity,” Johnny says.
“I didn’t say that,” Donna snaps. “I said that he told me he knew. There was no ‘confrontation.’”
“Did you ask him how he knew?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you?”
