Martin Misunderstood

'At work.'

'I mean, after work.'

'I took my mother to the Peony Club. She left her good trowel.'

'And then what?'

Martin felt his face flush. His throat tightened. He had taken his mother home, and then he had done something awful – so awful that the words strangled in his throat. The one time someone asked him what he had done the night before, and he had actually done something, but he could not talk about it. At least not to this beautiful flower of a woman. Oh, the irony! The unseemliness of it all!

The toilet flushed. All of them turned their heads, surprised by the noise. Daryl Matheson was zipping up his coveralls as he came into the office, saying, 'Shit, Marty, gimme the spray. Something dead just crawled outta my-' He stopped when he saw Martin's guests. 'What are the cops doing here?'

Martin opened his bottom desk drawer and fetched the OdorOutter (one of Southern's most popular sellers). 'They're here about my car,' Martin told him. 'Be sure to tell Ben Sabatini that when you see him next.'

Daryl shook the spray can and headed back into the bathroom. The office was so quiet they could hear the spraying and subsequent coughing. Martin held his breath (Southern had settled a civil suit out of court with a customer who claimed that OdorOutter ate away the lining of her esophagus) and smiled at An.

Daryl came back out of the toilet, waving his hand in the air to fight the fumes. His voice cracked when he spoke. 'Damn, sorry about that, folks.' He coughed a few times, then a few more. Then even more. Martin shot an apologetic look to An as he plucked some tissues out of the Kleenex box on his desk and handed them to Daryl.

'Jesus!' Daryl choked. He cleared his throat a few times, spit in the tissue, then handed it back to Martin. 'Thanks, man.' He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands and addressed the detective. 'Are y'all here about all that blood on his car?'

Suddenly, the OdorOutter wasn't the only thing sucking breathable air from the room.

An asked, 'What blood on the car?'

Daryl nodded toward Martin. 'This morning. He had blood all over his hands, too. I thought maybe he hit a deer or something, but there was hair on the bumper – like, hair from somebody's head.' He shrugged. 'Then Darla saw him outside by the Dumpster beating the ever-loving Jesus out of his briefcase.' He glanced back at Martin. 'You oughtta talk to somebody about that temper of yours, man.' With that, he left the office.

Martin felt his mouth moving, but no words would come out.

Benedict reached underneath the back of his jacket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Martin Reed, I am arresting you for the murder of Sandra Burke.'

'Sandy?' he asked, craning his neck to look up the stairs even as Benedict slung him around like a sack of Meyer lemons. Was that why she hadn't come downstairs to talk about Dancing With the Stars? 'You don't understand!' Martin tried. 'Why would I hurt Sandy? Why would I hurt anyone?'

'Mr Reed,' An began, 'why don't you clear this up right now and tell us where you were last night?'

Martin gulped, his face reddening again. This was awful, just awful. Hadn't this very thing happened in John Grisham's The Innocent Man – some poor shlub in the wrong place at the right time?

'Mr Reed?'

Grisham was a lawyer. He knew how these things worked. In his head, Martin consulted the legal advice contained in his many books. The Client. The Broker. The Appeal. 'I believe,' Martin began, 'I have the right to remain silent.'

Wherein We Learn That There is More to Anther Than Meets the Eye, or An Another Thing

An stared at Martin Reed through the observation mirror. He sat alone in the interview room, his pudgy face squeezed into a ball of fear. The wisps of hair covering his round head reminded her of Charlie Brown. He kept clenching his fists on the table in front of him as if Lucy had yet again tricked him into trying to kick the ball. It was the same kind of clenching he'd been doing when they'd walked into his office – or at least what Martin seemed to think was his office. To An's eye, it looked like a break room that had two desks and was stacked almost wall-to- wall with boxed payables and receivables from the last fifteen years. If anyone found it odd that the accounting department was basically an adjunct to the toilets, no one was commenting.

Bruce opened the door and came into the room. 'Nothing in his house.'

An had assumed the search of the Reed home would yield little evidence.

'His mother's terrified, says he's been acting strange lately. Might be hitting the bottle again.'

'Again?'

'She says he doesn't like to talk about it. Must be in recovery.' Bruce shrugged; there were lots of cops in recovery. 'The woman's a potty mouth, by the way. Some of the shit outta her mouth made me blush.'

Coming from a man who used 'cunting' as an adjective, that was saying a lot. Of course, An couldn't talk. She was quite explicit around prisoners, who tended to respond to threats better than pleasantries.

Bruce continued, 'You should see his bedroom. Wall-to-wall books with more in boxes in the garage. We're talking tens of thousands of them. The guy must read all the time.'

An studied Martin. He didn't strike her as the cerebral type. 'What kinds of books?'

'Thrillers mostly. James Patterson, Vince Flynn – that kind of stuff.'

An couldn't say anything. She refused to answer her phone when a Columbo movie was on. Not that it rang much, but she was constantly being surveyed for her opinion on things. Talk to those people once and they never gave up. 'Did the mother give him an alibi for last night?'

'She said he took her on an errand, then they went home, then he went out and she didn't see him until she woke up this morning.'

An nodded, processing the information. Through the mirror, she could see Martin's mouth moving as he mumbled to himself.

'What a tool,' Bruce commented.

An could not disagree, but was this tool a murderer?

Bruce seemed to read her mind. 'We've got Reed's blood mixed in with the victim's on both the front bumper and in the trunk.'

'You saw his hands. What he said about the cuts would explain the blood.'

'If he's innocent, why'd he clean off his briefcase with acid?'

She allowed, 'Maybe he's more dastardly than he looks.'

'He's got a crush on you.'

'Please.' Men didn't get crushes on Anther. She was hardly a sultry siren.

'Listen, you could work that angle. Make him think he's got a chance. Guy like that probably hasn't seen a pussy since he was being born outta one.'

An did not respond to the comment. She had been a cop for almost twenty years now. Early on, she'd made a habit of challenging every sexist remark or disgusting joke uttered by her mostly male colleagues. This had done nothing but garner the reputation that she was a lesbian. When she had insisted that she was not, in fact, homosexual, they chastised her for being ashamed of her sexuality. When she had pointed out that (at the time) she was married, they had sadly shaken their heads, as if to ask to what lengths she would go in her denial of the love that dare not speak its name. An had been so maligned over the years that, in order to protect herself – really, in order to properly perform her job – she had fallen into the habit of fabrication.

Fabrication. That was a pretty word to use for a lie. An was not by nature a liar. Her father had detested lies and taught her early on that the punishment for a lie was much more harsh than the punishment for confession. And yet, here she was, fabricating to her heart's content. And her heart was content, though only when she let herself slip into believing her own stories.