11:00 PM: Etta leaves for the boat.
“Here’s where it begins to get speculative,” Skye said. “Bear with me,” I said.
“None of this jibes with the deposition you took on the eighteenth,” Folger said.
“She was lying under oath, Pete.”
11:10 PM: Etta arrives at the club, parks on roadside shoulder.
11:15 PM: Etta spots Lainie’s parked Geo. Night watchman sees Etta boarding the boat.
11:20 PM: Etta discovers Brett and Lainie in bed together.
11:30 PM: Lainie leaves the boat. Witnesses report seeing car parked on road.
11:35 PM: Etta starts for stateroom.
11:38 PM: Etta enters stateroom.
11:39 PM: Brett comes oat of shower.
11:40 PM: Etta shoots him. Bannermans hear shots on Toland boat.
11:43 PM: Etta heads home.
11:55 PM: Etta arrives home, changes clothes.
12:00 AM: Etta leaves for boat again.
12:16 AM: Etta, arrives at boat, “discovers” body.
12:20 AM: Etta calls the police.
“The rest of her story is true,” I said.
“I ask you again, Matthew. What do you want us to do?”
“You know what he wants,” Frank said. “He wants you to stay all proceedings until you further investigate Etta Toland. That’s what he wants.”
“Show me a way out,” Skye said.
“You’ve got the black clothes...”
“Maybe.”
“...and a witness who saw her going aboard twenty-five minutes before the murder,” Frank said. “You’ve got her lying about Brett calling Lainie from the boat instead of the house, where she overheard the call. “You’ve also got her lying about when she herself called the boat. “You’ve got witnesses who saw a dark, expensive car parked on Silver Creek Road, which is where she herself told Matthew she...”
“What she told Matthew doesn’t interest me!”
“She says she didn’t get to the club till twelve-sixteen. Witnesses saw this dark, expensive car between eleven-thirty and midnight. Etta drives a dark green Infiniti. That puts her at the club while the murders...”
“You call that reliable?” Folger asked. “A half-hour time span?”
“Gentlemen, I need proof,” Skye said. “You can’t expect me to...”
“Will tire tracks do?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Matching tire tracks?”
“Do you have matching tire tracks?”
“I have a cast of the track found where the witnesses say they saw the car.”
“Does the track match the tires on Etta Toland’s car?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, when you do know...”
“You can find out quicker than I can, Skye.”
“Oh? How can...?”
“The police department’s been sitting on the cast since Wednesday.”
“Who’s got it?”
“Nick Alston.”
“Find him,” Skye snapped.
Folger went to the phone.
“If we get a match...” I said.
“You get a stay,” Skye said.
We got a match.
Nick Alston reported that he’d heard from the FBI late that afternoon, and that the tire in question was a Toyo A05 all-season, steel-belted radial tire in size P215/60R15 manufactured by Toyo Tire and Rubber Company Ltd. as standard factory-issued equipment on Nissan’s Infiniti J30 luxury sedan — the car Etta Toland drove.
Pete Folger merely asked for a court order to seize the car.
The rest was a piece of cake.
Patricia, I said, there are things we have to talk about. I know I have a reputation for being a sensitive, understanding, violin-playing, macho-loathing male, but I have to tell you I learned a great many things about myself after my accident — if you can call getting shot an accident — and I’m not sure the person who got out of that hospital bed is the same person who... no, please let me finish.
To begin with, I no longer have any patience with stupidity. I cannot abide stupid people. Nor can I abide amateurs. I’m not saying you’re a dumb amateur, don’t misunderstand me. In fact, I respect and admire you as a highly intelligent professional, which is really the only sort of woman I’ve ever been involved with... well, that’s not entirely true, I have known some pretty dumb broads, to tell the truth, and if you take exception to the use of that word, I can tell you here and now I don’t give a damn. Anyway, that was in another country, and the wench is dead, so to speak. That was then and this is now, and what we’re talking about, Patricia, is now.
So if I seem impatient with the trivia of life and living, it’s because I was in that valley, Patricia, I was walking in the valley of the shadow of death, and there was no one walking beside me, no one who’d gladly bear the cross of extinction for me. I wandered all alone in that valley with the clouds gathering black on the horizon, I came this close, Patricia, and I don’t ever want to come that close again. Ever.
So, yes, I may be cranky and grouchy these days, I may be a fucking grizzly, I may be short-tempered with all the ignorant, insolent, intolerant, self-centered, self-righteous, abusive, oblivious, suspicious, distrustful, blithely unaware people who would enjoy nothing better than to impose their narrow views and beliefs upon me, who would love to limit my right to choose a path appropriate to my needs and my wishes — which are very strong these days, my needs and wishes, I can tell you that, Patricia, very strong. I see things a lot more clearly now, Patricia. Getting shot did that to me. Coming close did that. I don’t care who marches in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. I just don’t want to march in any parade but my own.
Which brings me to what I’ve been trying to express for the past four months now, ever since I got out of the hospital, but which for a lawyer who’s been called glib at times, I’ve had a difficult time putting into words. I have to tell you I’ve been noticing other women, Patricia... no, please, no objections, counselor, let me finish, please. I’ve been noticing their legs and their thighs and their breasts, I sound like someone ordering a bucket of fried chicken, I know. And I know it’s politically incorrect and possibly sexist to take notice of a woman’s parts, but I really don’t care about political correctness anymore, I don’t care about any labels anymore. In fact, I find them boring. In fact, they piss me off.
A lot of things piss me off these days.
My own mortality pisses me off.
Patricia...
What I’m trying to say...
I’m okay now.
I’ve been okay for the past four months.
I want to make love to you.
I want you to stop feeling I’m not quite whole, I want you to stop thinking of me as an invalid. I was there, Patricia, but I’m back.
I’m here now.
I’m alive.
Can we start again?
Please?
“Okay,” she said.
On Monday, the twenty-fifth of September, a hot, sunny, sticky Rosh Hashanah morning, Judge Anthony Santos handed down his decision in the Commins v. Toyland, Toyland copyright, trademark, and trade dress infringement action. It read in part:
Since the early 1900s, millions of teddy bears have been sold worldwide by thousands of different manufacturers. Teddy bears trace their name to Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States.
Shortly before Christmas in the year 1902, the President took his family away from Washington on a four-day bear-hunting trip in the state of Mississippi. Although he was a skilled hunter, his fortunes ran against him, and the only bear he had an opportunity to shoot was a cub trapped in a tree. He chose not to take advantage of the poor frightened creature.