The Innocent
When she finished, Thurston asked, “So what do you make of it, Loren?”
“Truth? I don’t have a clue yet.”
“We should look at this guy Hunter’s time in prison,” Yates said. “We know Talley was in the system too. Maybe they met along the way. Or maybe Hunter somehow got involved with Comb-Over’s people.”
“Right,” Thurston said. “Could be that Hunter is the one cleaning up the loose ends for Comb-Over.”
Loren kept quiet.
“You don’t agree, Loren?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s the problem?”
“This may sound hopelessly naïve, but I don’t think Matt Hunter is working as some kind of hit man. He has a record, yes, but that’s from a fight at a frat party fifteen years ago. He had no priors and has been clean ever since.”
She did not tell him that they’d gone to school together or that her “gut” didn’t like it. When other investigators used that rationale, Loren wanted to gag.
“So how do you explain Hunter’s involvement?” Thurston asked.
“I don’t know. It might be a more personal thing. According to the front-desk guy, his wife was staying at the hotel without him.”
“You think it’s a lovers’ quarrel?”
“It could be.”
Thurston looked doubtful. “Either way, we all agree that Matt Hunter is involved?”
Steinberg said, “Definitely.” Yates nodded hard. Loren stayed still.
“And right now,” Thurston continued, “we have more than enough to arrest and indict. We have the fight, the call, all that. We’ll get DNA soon linking him to the dead man.”
Loren hesitated. Ed Steinberg did not. “We got enough to arrest.”
“And with Hunter’s record, we can probably get a no-bail situation. We can put him in the system and keep him there for a little while, right, Ed?”
“I’d bet on it, yeah,” Steinberg said.
“Pick him up then,” Joan Thurston said. “Let’s get Hunter’s ass back behind bars pronto.”
Chapter 35
MATT AND OLIVIA were alone in Marsha’s guest room.
Nine years ago Matt had spent his first night as a free man in this room. Bernie had brought him home. Marsha had been outwardly polite, but looking back on it, there must have been some serious reservations. You move into a house like this to escape people like Matt. Even if you know he’s innocent, even if you think he’s a good guy and got a bad break, you don’t want your life enmeshed with his. He is a virus, a carrier of something malevolent. You have children. You want to protect them. You want to believe, as Lance Banner did, that the manicured lawns can keep this element out.
He thought about his old college buddy Duff. At one time Matt had believed that Duff was tough. Now he knew better. Now he could kick Duff’s ass around the corner without breaking a sweat. He wasn’t being boastful. He didn’t think that with any pride. It was just a fact of life. His buddies who thought they were tough—the Duffs of the world—man, they had no idea.
But tough as Matt had become, he’d spent his first night of freedom in this room crying. He couldn’t exactly say why. He had never cried in prison. Some would say that he simply feared showing weakness in such a horrible place. That was part of it, maybe. Maybe it was just a “saving up” outlet, that now he was crying for four years of anguish.
But Matt didn’t think so.
The real reason, he suspected, had more to do with fear and disbelief. He could not accept that he was really free, that prison was really behind him. It felt like a cruel hoax, that this warm bed was an illusion, that soon they’d drag him back and lock him away forever.
He’d read how interrogators and hostage-takers try to break spirits by holding mock executions. That would work, Matt thought, but what would undoubtedly be more effective, what would unquestionably make a man crack, would be the opposite—pretending you were going to set him free. You get the guy dressed, you tell him that his release has been all arranged, you say good-bye and blindfold him and drive him around and then, when they stop and take him inside and pull off his blindfold, he finds that he is back where he started, that it was all a sick joke.
That was how it felt.
Matt sat now on the same queen-size mattress. Olivia stood with her back to him. Her head was lowered. Her shoulders were still high, still proud. He loved her shoulders, the sinew of her back, the knot of gentle muscles and supple skin.
Part of him, maybe most of him, wanted to say, “Let’s just forget it. I don’t need to know. You just said that you love me. You just told me that I am the only man you ever loved. That’s enough.”
When they arrived Kyra had come out and met them in the front yard. She had been concerned. Matt remembered when she first moved in over the garage. He’d noted that she was “just like the Fonz.” Kyra had no idea what he’d been talking about. Funny what you think about when you’re terrified. Marsha looked concerned too, especially when she saw Matt’s bandages and noticed his tentative step. But Marsha knew him well enough to know that now was not the time for questions.
Olivia broke the silence. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You said something on the phone about receiving pictures.”
“Yes.”
“May I see them, please?”
He took out his cell phone and held it up. Olivia turned and took it from him without touching his skin. He watched her face now. She concentrated in that way he knew so well. Her head tilted a little to the side, the same as it always did when something confused her.
“I don’t understand this,” she said.
“Is that you?” he asked. “With the wig?”
“Yes. But it wasn’t like that.”
“Like what?”
Her eyes stayed on the camera. She hit the replay button, watched the scene again, shook her head. “Whatever you want to think of me, I never cheated on you. And the man I met with. He was wearing a wig too. So he could look like the guy in the first picture, I guess.”
“I figured that.”
“How?”
Matt showed her the window, the gray skies, the ring on the finger. He explained about the drought and about blowing up the pictures in Cingle’s office.
Olivia sat next to him on the bed. She looked so damn beautiful. “So you knew.”
“Knew what?”