SIXTY-ONE

SIXTY-ONE

KYLE TAKES ME INTO a small room inside the hospital, some kind of lounge. There is a couch and a chair and a coffee station, where an old-fashioned glass pot rests on a burner, the smell of overcooked, stale coffee permeating the room. An old radiator with peeling paint hisses, the air almost overbearingly warm.

On Kyle's phone, I watch the grainy black-and-white security footage from behind David's pub, showing the attack. A man wearing a ski mask accosts David as he's locking the rear door. The gun is long — a suppressor is attached — which must have given David the idea of reaching for it and redirecting it. It almost worked, after David tossed his keys to the suspect. David got his hand on the suppressor and even slammed his head into the attacker's face, but the suspect fired the weapon and ended it right there.

"I don't suppose you recognize the assailant." Kyle, who is holding up his phone, pauses it. "With the balaclava and all — the ski mask."

"Oh. No, obviously I don't recognize the man."

"Any idea who it might be?"

"None." As if I'm on autopilot. I don't know who it is, but I have an idea. "Play it again," I ask.

He replays the video clip from the start. It's no fun to watch, David getting shot and writhing in pain as blood gushes from his thigh, hard to see for the second time. But I had to make sure.

And now I'm sure: the assailant didn't want to kill David. That wasn't his plan. He wanted something from David, but not his life.

I look at Kyle. "You actually thought I might recognize this person while he's wearing a mask over his face or a balaclava or whatever you call it?"

"Worth a shot." Kyle lifts a shoulder. "Whether you can see his face or not, do you have any idea who would do this to David?"

The second time he's asked. I shake my head. But of course I do have an idea.

"Probably the same person who spray-painted ‘I know who you are' on the wall of your foyer last week?"

I don't answer. Kyle fiddles with his phone. Closes the video and opens something else before turning the phone to me again.

A photo. A photo of the foyer wall in my house as it currently looks, freshly painted to cover up the spray paint.

"I had Officer Risely, the one at your house babysitting? I had her take a picture ten minutes ago," he says. "Looks like somebody went to the trouble of painting over that spray paint pretty darn quickly. Who painted over it?"

Again, I don't answer.

"Was it you, Marcie? Not wanting your kids to see it? Or was it David, not wanting you to see it?"

He touches my arm, but I pull it away. "Don't touch me."

"Fine, fine." He raises his hand. "But see, that matters to me, Marcie. Because I believed you when I pulled you over today and you told me you had no idea about that spray-painted message. David hadn't told you. If it were me, in that situation, I'd have told my wife right away. But he didn't. Did he cover up the spray paint, too?"

I'm following him now. If David covered it up, if he repainted that wall, that makes me still in the dark, innocent. He's wondering what role I've played in this. Am I an innocent dupe or a guilty coconspirator?

I decide it's time to take off the victim's hat and put on the lawyer's.

"Are you questioning the wife of the victim," I say, "or interrogating a suspect?"

"Honestly?" Kyle takes a step back. "At this point, I don't know."

I steel myself, look him square in the eye. "Then maybe you should read me my rights, Sergeant."

But then it hits me, the years as a criminal defense attorney returning. I'm not in custody. I'm just standing in a hospital room, free to leave. So he doesn't have to Mirandize me.

Sneaky.

"I'm done here," I say.

Kyle shakes his head. "I don't think so, Marcie."

"No? You're telling me I'm not free to leave? Then arrest me —"

"Oh, you're free to leave," he says. "But you won't."

"No? Just watch me." But something keeps my feet planted. "Why won't I leave?"

He nods to me, plays with his phone. "Because that video of the shooting? You want to see the rest of it, Marcie."