“No,” he responded, looking away down the same darkened passage. “She’s not here.”
“Oh.” That’s the best I could conjure up for the time being.
“She . . . umm . . . Bonnie has gone to stay with her parents for a little while,” he managed to confess.
“I see.”
“It was, I guess you could say, a little tense here after the media broke the news that I was a suspect in Tricia’s death.”
“I can see how that could create some conflict in the household.”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause during which both of us stood looking mostly anywhere but at each other. Finally, I sat down on the edge of the couch and invited him to do the same.
“Carl, I wish you had told me the truth about Tricia.” Though I meant our conversation to be about legal strategy, somehow I managed to make the statement be all about me and immediately regretted it. The last thing I needed from my client was to have him feel like I was against him. The truth was I was slowly beginning to lean that way.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded. From the sound of his voice, I could tell that whatever alcohol he’d consumed following his fight with his wife, its effects had not completely worn off. His voice was unsteady, no doubt partially from emotional turmoil, but there was also the slightest slur to his consonants. This wasn’t a good time for him to undergo any further questioning.
“Your relationship with Tricia was much more than teacher and student. I don’t know how serious it was. I don’t know if it was romance or love or lust, and I don’t care. What I do care about is the fact you were having sex with her, and you denied it to my face. That doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t help you.”
“That’s not true!” he blasted indignantly. “I told you that she was making it up. She’s trying to get me in shit!”
“Enough! No more bullshit. I know about you and Tricia.” His eyes were wild again, and I saw the flash of wild anger he had shown me two days earlier at the school. I had a momentary flash of Carl’s rage exploding and him wrapping his big hands around Tricia’s neck, choking the life out of her in a darkened park.
“Carl,” I continued, lowering my voice in an attempt to calm him, “I know about it. The police know about it. They have evidence that can and will prove it.”
Another pregnant pause passed between us as the anger flowed out of him nearly as quickly as it had appeared. Finally, he looked up and nearly whimpered, “How did you find out?”
“I didn’t,” I told him. “They did. They found some soiled garments when they searched her bedroom. Preliminary DNA tests indicate a match to you.”
“They have my DNA?” he asked. As a scientist, he certainly understood how it works. I sensed his confusion and imminent panic at the thought of what other information about him might be on file.
“Evidently we leave all kinds of DNA kicking around our classrooms. It wasn’t difficult to find something with your DNA signature.”
“Holy shit,” he mustered.
“Yeah. That was about my reaction.” I paused for a moment, afraid to ask the next question. “Why didn’t you tell me about your relationship with Tricia?”
He looked at me pleadingly. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Win.”
“What I’m thinking isn’t really the issue here. More important is what the police who are in front of your house are thinking. Not to mention the thoughts of the judge who they managed to convince to sign a warrant for your arrest.”
“The police are here? Now?”
“Yes. That’s why I’m here. You’re about to be arrested.”
Carl, I was quickly learning, was a frequent rider on the pendulum of mood swings. The confusion I had seen give way to anger was now replaced with a veritable wave of fear. He leaped to his feet and actually ran to the front window, parting the curtains to see his anticipated captors below.
“They’re out there?” he asked. He suddenly sounded very young, like an adolescent who has just been informed the school bully has shown up to punch his lights out. “I don’t understand,” he continued, his breath coming faster as real panic set in. “I thought you said their evidence was no good. I thought it was going to be all right?” He had begun to pace. I hoped Furlo and Smythe couldn’t see his shadow dancing back and forth in front of the window. They might think he was planning to run.
“I thought everything was going to be okay. I also thought you weren’t sleeping with one of your students, Carl. This sort of changes the perspective of the police, and quite frankly, I can understand why they’re looking at you very carefully.”
He continued to pace, his breathing growing shallower to the point I thought he was beginning to hyperventilate. All the while he was muttering “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”
Finally, I stood up, grabbing him by the shoulders to brace him and guide him back to the chair. “Carl, there isn’t a lot of time. I need you to sit down and talk to me for a few minutes while we can still be reasonably assured of our privacy.” He sank down and looked up at me for salvation, as though by simply listening to me he might be free of whatever demons were tearing up his insides.
“Okay,” he gasped out, recovering at least some of his composure. “What do we need to do?”
I slumped back down on the couch, looking at Carl across the coffee table. “For starters,” I began, “you can explain to me why you didn’t tell me right away about you and Tricia.”
Carl looked across the room directly into my eyes, looking for some confirmation that he ought to break his own silence and reveal the details of what had been happening.
“You’re going to need to trust someone now,” I told him gently. “It may as well be me. Your wife sounds like she’s gone, I can’t imagine anyone at school is going to come near this. Tell me the truth. Were you having sex with Tricia?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was.”
At least that much was out in the open. Glancing at my watch, I realized that in mere moments Smythe would not be able to restrain her partner any longer, and Carl would be led out in cuffs.
“Was this a one time thing, or was it a relationship like Tricia described?”
Carl stared at me, his eyes pleading for me to understand. “It isn’t what you think, Win. It really isn’t. I, we were in love.”
“You loved her?”
“And she loved me. My God, it was so wonderful but so wrong at the same time. I’ve been making this constant trip between heaven and hell for over a year.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look. It wasn’t some perverted thing, as much as it sounds that way because of her age and the fact that I’m her teacher. I don’t know if she’s very mature for her age or I’m immature, but she is just the most wonderful woman in the world.” Carl continued to refer to Tricia in the present tense. Denial, perhaps? Or was this still the liquor talking?
“It started out very innocently. She was in my Grade Eleven biology class. Of course I noticed her physical appearance. She’s a beautiful girl, and objectively I could see that. But I never set out to seduce her or anything.”
“Tricia told me you first got, uh, together one night working late on a biology lab,” I interjected, trying to move it along.
“That’s right. We’d had lots of conversations, she would just hang around and chat and then one night,