Chapter 5 - The Geography of an Alibi
Detective Miller did not sit down. He stood by the bedside monitor, his thumb hooked into the waistband of his trousers, looking down at me with the weary, heavy-lidded gaze of a man who had seen too many women with split lips and defensive wounds explain why their husbands were actually very gentle people.
"Miss Carter," he said. "I’m Detective Miller. How are you feeling?"
"Like somebody hit me with a platter," I said.
Miller didn't smile. He took out the brown notebook, clicked a blue ballpoint pen, and flipped back three pages.
"I took a statement from your father, James Carter, at seven-thirty this morning," Miller said. "And one from your sister, Caroline."
"What did Caroline say?" I asked. My voice sounded small, even to myself.
Miller looked at his notes. "Miss Caroline Carter states that you arrived at the residence in an agitated state. She reports that there had been a long-standing dispute regarding grocery expenses and family finances. She states that during an argument over the preparation of dinner, you became combative, grabbed a heavy porcelain serving dish from the sideboard, and attempted to throw it at your father. She states that your father put his hands up to defend himself, the platter shattered, and you lost your balance, striking your head on the mahogany sideboard as you fell."
The words hung in the sterile, seventy-degree air of the ICU like old smoke.
"She said that?" I asked.
"She signed the statement under penalty of perjury," Miller said. "Your father’s account matches hers almost word for word. He was quite emotional, Miss Carter. He told Officer Kowalski that you’ve had psychological issues since your mother died. He mentioned several instances where you became violent during the holidays."
A small, high sound came from my throat. It wasn't a sob; it was the sound of a gear stripping its teeth inside an engine.
"Nathan," I said, turning my eyes to the surgeon. "Can you show him?"
Nathan didn't speak. He reached out and swung the PACS monitor toward the detective.
"Detective Miller," Dr. Vance said, her voice dropping into the authoritative register she used when testifying for the Commonwealth in homicide trials. "I want you to look at this reconstruction. This is a three-dimensional rendering of Miss Carter’s skull taken at twenty-two hundred hours last night."
Miller leaned in. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at the screen.
"This defect here," Dr. Vance pointed to the left temporal region, "is a comminuted, depressed fracture. The force was delivered from above and behind the patient. It was delivered with an object traveling at approximately forty to forty-five miles per hour. If Miss Carter had been holding the platter and threw it, the biomechanical forces would have resulted in anterior facial trauma or lacerations to the palms and forearms. She has no defensive wounds on her hands. None."
Miller nodded slowly. "And the fall against the sideboard?"
"Impossible," Dr. Vance said flatly. "The edge of the sideboard in the photographs your officers took is rounded mahogany, thirty-two inches from the floor. This fracture is fifty-six inches from the floor. Unless Miss Carter was levitating horizontally while falling backward, she could not have sustained this impact from that piece of furniture. Furthermore, the fracture pattern shows the distinct curved margin of the rim of the dish—an impact mark that precisely matches the fragment we retrieved from her hair."
Miller clicked his pen. *Click. Clack.*
"What about these other marks?" he asked, his finger pointing to the petrous ridge and the frontal sinus. "The ones lower down."
"Those," Nathan Bradley said, stepping between Miller and the bed, "are two prior skull fractures that were never reported to the authorities. One is consistent with a high-energy blunt stomp from an adult boot when she was approximately six years old. The other is a direct blunt impact to the forehead dating to early adolescence. James Carter has a thirty-year history of inflicting catastrophic cranial trauma on this woman."
Miller was quiet for five full seconds. The only sound was the rhythmic clicking of my IV pump.
"Miss Carter," Miller said, looking directly into my good eye. "Do you wish to press charges against James Carter for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon?"
I thought of the butter.
I thought of the sixty-two miles I had driven on Wednesday afternoon with the pumpkin pies in the footwell of my Subaru. I thought of the way my father had looked at the television while I unpacked the celery, and the way Caroline had rolled her eyes when I asked if she wanted the unsalted butter.
I thought of the six-year-old girl who had woken up on the linoleum floor of that kitchen, her ear ringing with the sound of a steel-toed boot, being told that she was clumsy. That she was careless. That she had ruined dinner by bleeding on the baseboards.
"No," I said.
Miller’s face fell. Nathan Bradley took a sharp, angry step forward. "Mel, what the hell are you—"
"I don't want to press charges for aggravated assault," I said, looking Miller square in the face. "I want you to charge him with attempted murder. Because that’s what he was doing yesterday. He was finishing what he started when I was six."
Miller looked at me for a long moment. Then, very slowly, the corners of his silver mustache lifted in the faintest ghost of a nod.
May you like
"Attempted homicide," Miller said, writing the words in his brown leather notebook with deliberate, heavy strokes. "Domestic violence with a deadly weapon. And we’ll be executing a search warrant on the residence within the hour to secure that boot."
***
