Read Online Head Wounds by Chris Knopf - Free Book Online Page A

you think it’s worth saving or not.”
    “Christ, Jackie. Quit the theatrics.”
    She jumped out of her chair and shoved herself into me, her face crammed up next to mine. It was the second time in recent memory that a good-looking woman did that. Jackie didn’t smell as nice as Amanda. She did, however, yell as loudly.
    “You think you’ve had trouble in your life, Sam? You don’t know trouble. This is trouble. Trouble that can get you locked away for the rest of your life, good as dead. I knew you were going to make this difficult. Like it’s all up to you to decide every goddamned thing. You’re such a fucking …”
    I put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back from my face. Then I kissed her on the forehead.
    “I’m glad you’re my lawyer, Jackie,” I said to her. “I knew I’d need you some day. That’s why I gave you that buck. A big investment for me. I’m completely in your hands, and I’ll do anything you want me to do.”
    She continued to fume, more out of suspicion than anger. Now that I had her face far enough away to get infocus, I was even more impressed with her plastic surgery. I’d seen that same face seconds after it had been ripped apart, so I felt entitled to savor the outcome. Even when she was yelling at me.
    “Okay,” she said, slowly, “first tell me you didn’t do it.”
    I heard myself snort.
    “Impeach my moral credibility, but don’t insult my intelligence.”
    “Why am I doing that?”
    I let her go and dropped back into my reading chair next to the woodstove.
    “I could care less about Robbie Milhouser. Of all the people I might want to knock off, he wouldn’t even be on the list. And if for some crazy reason that changed, I wouldn’t smash him over the head with one of my own tools. And even if that happened, through some inexplicable circumstance, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to just heave it out onto the beach. Come on, Jackie, you know that.”
    “So, you’re proposing the intellectual arrogance defense. Excellent. Juries love that. Even more than judges.”
    “The point isn’t arrogance. It’s ridiculousness.”
    “For a smart guy, you don’t know much about criminal law. All that matters is the physical evidence, and the witnesses, and whatever past behavior is admissible. And determined cops and prosecutors, which you have aplenty in this case. It’s way not enough to just say, ‘Hell, if I was going to kill that guy I’d have been a lot smarter about how I did it.’”
    “Have some more wine. It’s a sin to cork a bottle that good.”
    She huffed her way into the kitchen, giving me a moment to think without distractions.
    “Let’s back up,” I said, when she came back with a full glass. “Let’s assume they prove with the bar code that the stapler was sold to me. It probably was, since I bought onethat looked like it when I was doing my addition. That’s why it has my fingerprints on it. And why I can’t find the one I bought.”
    “You looked?”
    “The day I saw Sullivan carrying it around in an evidence bag. He asked me if it looked familiar, which it did. It wasn’t in the toolbox in my trunk, or in my shed, or my shop, the only three places it would normally be.”
    “All normally locked up?” she asked.
    “Normally, but not always. And I don’t keep close track of a tool like that. Hardly ever use it. Could have lost it anytime between now and last fall.”
    “Yours were the only prints on it.”
    “Really. Interesting.”
    “Especially to the DA. That and the footprints.”
    “Of course there were footprints. I was over there. Lots of times.”
    She made another sound of exasperation, like the deflating of a big balloon. I interrupted whatever she was about to say.
    “That big idiot’s job was right on my jogging route. I watched the whole sorry spectacle. Occasionally I’d run up there after the crews were gone to get a closer look. Never once did I bring along a hammer stapler.”
    “We’ll mark that