Sandrine's Case (9780802193520) by Cook Thomas H

Author:Cook, Thomas H.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Book Group
Published: 2013-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

Exhibit A

In a movie, it would be called Exhibit A, the note Mr. Singleton called “Sandrine’s last message,” but I failed to notice the exact identification the court assigned to it. Clearly, save for melodramatic effect, it could not actually have been labeled “A,” since a host of material had already been handed over for such labeling. But in my trial, as I had learned by then, it was the small, incremental bits of circumstantial evidence, not the “Exhibit A” of courtroom dramas, that had entangled me, little sins of both omission and commission: a cold response, a silence when I should have spoken, a question I should have asked but hadn’t, these the winding fibers in the rope that could at some point hang me.

And so I watched quite impassively as the single sheet of paper moved from desk to desk, making its slow rounds until it was finally taken away by one of the court officials. Officer Hill had described the paper as yellow, but in fact the color was beige, the paper tanned and textured to resemble papyrus, my gift to Sandrine on her fortieth birthday, and not one sheet of which she’d ever used prior to penning her final . . . what?

True, I hadn’t read it before Officer Hill pointed it out, then politely asked if she could take it. But since then I’ve read it several times, so that nothing in what Mr. Singleton began to go over in court came as a surprise.

“All right, Detective Alabrandi, after the matter of Cleopatra not being Egyptian, did you then proceed to raise another troubling issue with regard to Mrs. Madison’s death?”

“I did.”

“And what was that issue?”

The issue had been “various information,” as Alabrandi had phrased it as we continued the second of our “interviews.” I recalled the way he sat back slightly before moving to the next issue, apparently trying to relax me and probably thinking that since I was obviously the bookish type, and by definition soft, I must find him rough and a bit scary.

“According to our investigation, Mrs. Madison received her diagnosis from Dr. Ortins at just after twelve on the morning of April 12,” he told me. “Do you remember when she returned home?”

“At just after six, I think. I’d just gotten back from my afternoon class when she came through the door.”

“So for six hours after receiving such terrible news, she was . . . absent?”

“In the sense that she didn’t come home, yes.”

Alabrandi glanced at his note. “You had no classes between noon and five p.m. that day, right?”

Ah, I thought, so they have tracked down and studied my daily schedule.

“Right.”

“Where were you during that time?”

“I was here. Reading.”

“And your wife knew that you were here at home?”

“I suppose. I am a man of habits. She knew what those habits were.”

“So she assumed that you were here, but she didn’t come back home to tell you what Dr. Ortins had told her?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you ever wonder why she didn’t come home to you?” Alabrandi asked.

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