Marcy was given a quick patdown by a sleepy-eyed female officer, who told her to dump her purse in the plastic basket provided and step through the metal detector. The officer also took their driver’s licenses, put them in a Baggie, and tacked it to a bulletin board with many others. ‘Also the suit and shoes, missus.’
Marcy handed them over.
‘I want to see him in that suit and looking sharp when I come for him tomorrow morning,’ Howie said, and walked through the metal detector, which went off.
‘We’ll be sure to tell his butler,’ said the officer on the far side of the detector. ‘Now get rid of whatever you’ve still got in your pockets and try again.’
The problem turned out to be his keyring. Howie handed it to the female officer and went through the detector a second time. ‘I’ve been here at least five thousand times, and I always forget my keys,’ he told Marcy. ‘It must be some kind of Freudian thing.’
She smiled nervously and made no reply. Her throat was dry, and she thought anything she said would come out in a croak.
Another officer led them through one door, then another. Marcy heard laughing children and a buzz of adult conversation. They passed through a visiting area with brown industrial carpet on the floor. Children were playing. Prisoners in brown jumpsuits were talking with their wives, sweethearts, mothers. A large man with a purple birthmark dripping down one side of his face and a healing cut on the other was helping his young daughter rearrange the furniture in a dollhouse.
This is all a dream, Marcy thought. An incredibly vivid one. I’ll wake up with Terry beside me and tell him how I had a nightmare that he’d been arrested for murder. We’ll laugh about it.
One of the inmates pointed her out, with no attempt made to hide the gesture. The woman beside him stared, round-eyed, then whispered to another woman. The officer who was guiding them seemed to be having some trouble with the key-card that opened the door on the far side of the visiting area, and Marcy couldn’t quite dismiss the idea that he was lollygagging on purpose. Before the lock clunked and he led them through, it seemed that everyone was staring at them. Even the kids.
On the far side of the door was a hallway lined with small rooms divided by what looked like cloudy glass. Terry was sitting in one of these. At the sight of him, floating inside a brown jumpsuit that was far too big, Marcy began to cry. She stepped into her side of the booth and looked at her husband through what was not glass at all but a thick sheet of Perspex. She put a hand up, fingers splayed, and he put his up against it. There was a circle of small holes, like those in an old-fashioned telephone receiver, to talk through. ‘Stop crying, honey. If you don’t, I’ll start. And sit down.’
She sat, Howie crowding onto the bench beside her.
‘How are the girls?’
‘Fine. Worried about you, but better today. We’ve got some very good news. Honey, did you know Mr Coben’s speech was taped by the public access channel?’
For a moment Terry just gaped. Then he began to laugh. ‘You know what, I think the woman who introduced him said something about that, but she was so long-winded I mostly tuned out. Holy shit.’
‘Yes, it’s an authentic holy shit,’ Howie said, smiling.
Terry leaned forward until his forehead was almost touching the barrier. His eyes were bright, intent. ‘Marcy … Howie … I asked Coben something during the Q-and-A. I know it’s a longshot, but maybe it got picked up on the audio. If it was, maybe they can run voice-recognition or something and do a match!’
Marcy and Howie looked at each other and began to laugh. It was an uncommon sound in Maximum Security Visiting, and the guard at the end of the short corridor looked up, frowning.
‘What? What did I say?’
‘Terry, you’re on video asking your question,’ Marcy said. ‘Do you understand? You are on the video.’
For a moment Terry didn’t seem to comprehend what she was saying. Then he raised his fists and shook them beside his temples, a gesture of triumph she had seen often when one of his teams scored or pulled off a cool defensive play. Without thinking about it, she raised her own hands and copied him.
‘Are you sure? Like a hundred per cent? It seems too good to be true.’
‘It’s true,’ Howie said, grinning. ‘As a matter of fact you’re on the tape half a dozen times, when they cut away from Coben to show the audience laughing or applauding. The question you asked is just icing on the cake, the whipped cream on top of the banana split.’
‘So it’s case closed, right? I’ll walk free tomorrow?’
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ Howie’s grin faded to a rather grim smile. ‘Tomorrow is just the arraignment, and they’ve got a heap of forensic evidence that they’re very proud of—’
‘How can they?’ Marcy burst out. ‘How can they, when Terry was obviously there? The tape proves it!’
Howie put a hand up in a Stop gesture. ‘We’ll worry about the conflict later, although I can tell you right now that what we’ve got trumps what they’ve got. Easily trumps it. But certain machinery has been set in motion.’
‘The machine,’ Marcy said. ‘Yes. We know about the machine, don’t we, Ter?’
He nodded. ‘It’s like I fell into a Kafka novel. Or 1984. And pulled you and the girls in along with me.’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ Howie said. ‘You didn’t pull anyone, they did. This is going to work out, guys. Uncle Howie promises it, and Uncle Howie always keeps his promises. You’re going to be arraigned tomorrow at nine o’clock, Terry, in front of Judge Horton. You will be looking reet and complete in the nice suit your wife brought, which is now hanging in the prisoner storage closet. I intend to meet with Bill Samuels to discuss bail – tonight, if he’ll take the meeting, tomorrow morning if he won’t. He won’t like it, and he’s going to insist on home confinement, but we’ll get it, because by then someone in the press will have discovered that Channel 81 tape, and the problems with the prosecution’s case will become public knowledge. I imagine you’ll have to put your home up to secure the bond, but that shouldn’t be much of a risk, unless you plan to cut off the ankle monitor and run for the hills.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Terry said grimly. Color had risen in his cheeks. ‘What did some Civil War general say? “I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.”’
‘Okay, so what’s the next battle?’ Marcy asked.
‘I will tell the DA that it would be a bad idea to present an indictment to the grand jury. And that argument will prevail. You will then walk free.’
But will he? Marcy wondered. Will we? When they claim to have his fingerprints, and people who saw him abducting that little boy, and then coming out of Figgis Park covered in blood? Will we ever be free as long as the real killer stays uncaught?
‘Marcy.’ Terry was smiling at her. ‘Take it easy. You know what I tell the boys – one base at a time.’
‘I want to ask you something,’ Howie said. ‘Just a shot in the dark.’
‘Ask away.’
‘They claim to have all sorts of forensic evidence, although the DNA’s still pending—’
‘That can’t come back a match,’ Terry said. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘I would have said that about the fingerprints,’ Howie said.
‘Maybe someone set him up,’ Marcy blurted. ‘I know how paranoid that sounds, but …’ She shrugged.
‘But why?’ Howie asked. ‘That’s the question. Can either of you think of someone who would go to such extraordinary lengths to do that?’
The Maitlands considered, one on each side of the scuffed Perspex, then shook their heads.
‘Me, either,’ Howie said. ‘Life rarely if ever imitates the novels of Robert Ludlum. Still, they’ve got evidence strong enough for them to have rushed into an arrest I’m sure they now regret. My fear is that, even if I can get you out of the machine, the shadow of the machine may remain.’