“I believe that’s the theory,” I reply.
“Your house is made of stone and has a slate roof,” she says. “Did you closely supervise when it was being built? Because you seem the sort who would. A perfectionist.”
“You’re foolish not to supervise if you’re building.”
“I’m just wondering if you might have ever seen a chipping hammer while your house was being buiit. Maybe at the construction site or in a workman’s tool belt?”
“Not that I recall. But I can’t be sure.”
”And you never owned one prior to your shopping expedition at Pleasants Hardware on the night of December seventeenthexactly one week ago and almost twenty-four hours after Bray was murdered?”
“Not before that night. No. I never owned one before then, not that I am aware of,” I tell her.
“What time was it when you bought the chipping hammer?” Berger asks as I hear the deep thunder of Marino’s truck parking in front of my house.
“Sometime around seven. I don’t know exactly. Maybe between six-thirty and seven, that Friday night, the night of December seventeenth,” I reply. I am not thinking clearly now. Berger is wearing me down and I can’t imagine how any lie could stand up to her long. The problem is knowing what is a lie, and what isn’t, and I am not convinced she believes me.
“And you went home right after the hardware store?” she goes on. “Tell me what you did the rest of the night.”
The doorbell rings. I glance at the Aiphone on the wall in the great room and see Marino’s face looming on the video screen. Berger has just asked the question. She has just tested the alchemy that I am sure Righter will use to turn my life to shit. She wants to know my alibi. She wants to know where I was at the exact time Bray was murdered on Thursday night. December sixteenth. “I’d just come in from Paris that morning,” I reply. “Ran errands, got home around six P.M. Later that night, around ten, I drove to MCV to check on JoLucy’s former girlfriend, the one who got in the shooting with her in Miami. I wanted to see if I could help out in that situation because the parents were interfering.” My doorbell rings again. “And I wanted to know where Lucy was, and Jo told me Lucy was at a baf in Greenwich Village.” 1 start walking toward the door. Berger is staring at me. “In New York. Lucy was in New York. I carne home and called her. She was drunk.” Marmo rings the bell again and pounds on the door. “So to answer your question, Ms. Berger, I have no alibi for where I was between six and maybe ten-thirty Thursday night because I was either in my home or in my caralone, absolutely alone. No one saw me. No one talked to me. I have no witnesses to the fact that where I wasn ‘t between seven-thitty and ten-thirty was at Diane Bray’s house beating her to death with a goddamn chipping hammer.”
I open the door. I can feel Berger’s eyes burning into my back. Marino looks as if he is about to fly apart. I can’t tell if he is furious or scared to death. Maybe both. ”What the hell?” he asks, his eyes going from me to her. ‘”What the shit’s going on?”
“I’m sorry for making you stand out in the cold,” I tell Marino. “Please come in.”[“_Toc37098931”]
CHAPTER 29
MARINO TOOK SO LONG GETTING HERE BECAUSE he had stopped by the property room at headquarters. I had asked him to pick up the stainless-steel key I found in the pocket of Mitch Barbosa’s running shorts. Marino tells Berger and me that he rooted around for quite some time inside that small room behind wire mesh where Spacesaver shelves are crowded with bar-coded bags, some of which hold items the police took from my house last Saturday.
I have been in the property room before. I can picture it. Portable phones ring from inside those bags. Pagers go off as unwitting people keep trying to call associates who are either locked up or dead. There are also locked refrigerators for the storage of Physical Evidence Recovery Kits and any other evidence that might be perishablesuch as the raw chicken I pounded with the chipping hammer.