“You spent an awful lot of time on the telephone with her.”

“I spend a lot of time on the telephone with a lot of my clients,” I snapped back.

“Your cell phone?” “Yes, my cell phone!”

“At eleven o’clock at night?” The wry smile returned. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a yellow piece of legal paper. “Until one o’clock in the morning… just a few nights before your wife was murdered?” He shoved the crumpled legal paper into his trouser pocket and removed a cigarette from inside his shirt pocket, (Marlboro, I could see through the fabric) and lit it with a silver lighter.

“Yes.” I heard my voice squelch.

Of course I knew who Amber was, but she lived in Wichita.

“God-damn-it!” I slammed my fist down onto the table again. “I did not kill my wife!” I stood abruptly, forcing my chair to fly backwards slamming it into the wall and toppling it onto its side, “and I am not having an affair. My client lives in Kansas!”

He paused again, looking up at the ceiling as if in deep thought. “What if I told you that she was in Cleveland last night?”

His words sucked the saliva from my mouth. This was news to me, and it imposed a long heavy silence. “Why would she?”

“I don’t know. Why would she?”

“What are you talking about? She’s a middle class housewife in Kansas! What the hell would she be doing in Cleveland?”

“You tell me.”

What could I say? What could I tell him? I had no idea whether what he had said was true or false. To tell you the truth I wasn’t sure that he was lying. But why would she come to Cleveland? Did she come here to kill my wife? “I want a lawyer.” I heard myself say.

He looked at me thoughtfully, studying my face as he did so. This pause was not for effect. I had surprised him.

“You want a lawyer? What for?” He took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke toward me before dropping it into the remains of his cold coffee. “You’re not under arrest, Mr. Derrick.”

All I had wanted to do from the moment of his accusation was to escape the suffocating air of the room. The room appeared to be shrinking with every passing second and I felt the onset of panic tremor through my body. I stood and took a few unsteady steps toward the door.

“This Amber Havisham,” I stopped and looked back at him, “Have you ever met her in person, Mr. Derrick, or can I call you Matt?”

“You can call me, Mr. Derrick.” I glared at the man with true hatred, “And no, I have never met her.” I stepped behind him and walked to the end of the room and opened the door.

“Would you like to?” he said.

I froze. I turned back toward him with caution, “Like to what?”

“Meet her.” He pointed behind himself with his thumb toward a door that I hadn’t even noticed until then. “What if I told you that she was in the next room?”

I paused, “That isn’t funny.” My head was spinning. I felt as though I were going to be sick.

He stepped toward the door and started to open it stopping short after cracking the door just a few inches. He was baiting me, and I knew it, and I didn’t want to feed into his little game. If I had shown any interest, any curiosity at all, he would have thought that I was in bed with Amber, so to speak. And I knew that there was no one behind that door.

“Yeah, right.” I said, and then I turned and walked out, closing the door behind me.

If she had been behind the door I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe that she would kill my wife. I sure didn’t want to see her if she had killed my wife. I took out my cell phone and I dialed her number. I waited for her to answer but all I got was a recorded message: “Sorry, this phone number has been temporarily disconnected.”

Like a claustrophobic escaping from a closet I pushed the twin glass front doors of the police station open with a burst. I felt that, for the first time in hours, I could draw air into my deflated lungs. I wondered how long I had been cooped up inside the police station. The sun was fading down past the sparsely leaved trees.

The reality of Catherine’s death hit me hard once I was out of the building as it had so often for the past week. I put my hands to my face and I tried to hold back my emotions but I started to sob aloud. I know this was selfish and horrible of me, but I was suddenly consumed by an emptiness I had not felt before, like I was the only living person on a sunless planet, and I had plenty of food and water…enough to last me a lifetime…only I no longer had a reason to be. Catherine was the only woman I had ever loved. I felt vacant inside and so very lonely. I actually grew angry at Catherine for stranding me. I wished it were me that was dead. That would have been easier.

I looked to the twilight sky and let out a silent scream of anger toward the god who supposedly watched over me.

It would be dark soon.

Cars sped past the station, their head- lights bright and their engines muffled by the foliage which towered around me. The parking-lot was spattered with black-and-white police cars mixed among a variety of colorful civilian cars. My car was nowhere to be seen. I realized then that I had not driven my car to the station. I had been driven in the back seat of a police cruiser. This revelation did nothing to boost my spirits.

I surveyed the sun while I rubbed the chill from my arms with my hands. I tried to estimate the time it would take for the sun to fade from sight and compared it to the distance I had to travel. Perhaps ten minutes of daylight, I thought, maybe a little longer.

This might not have been a problem for your average adult male…but it so happened that I was deathly afraid of the dark. Clinically afraid of being alone in the dark.

On foot my trip would take twenty minutes easily. I felt for my wallet and opened it. Three bucks. Not enough for cab fare. I could have asked a cop for a ride, but I had had enough of them to satisfy a lifetime of curiosity.

I suppressed my fear as best as I could and I began the long walk to my house heading north toward-and then east down-Lakeshore Boulevard. The air was dry and cool and smelled of dead leaves. Dead leaves crumpled under my feet. I was dead tired. Death seemed to be the theme of the day.

I walked swiftly. I hated time alone. I had too much time to think. What would I do? How could I raise Sarah on my own? How could I survive? I hadn’t cooked or cleaned or laundered a shirt in twenty-five years. I began to cry again, only this time quietly, at the thought of Catherine being gone forever; at the finality of her death. I must have looked a sight with my uncombed mussed hair, my unshaven face and my wrinkled clothes. I must have smelled (the pits of my shirt soaked through) much worse than I looked. I lifted my head to the darkened grey sky and I begged the God that I had moments ago cursed to help me through that moment in time but it seemed to me that there was no one there to hear me pray.

I surveyed the sky again. The trees around me seemed to be swallowing up the little bit of light that remained. I picked up my pace and slowly worked up to an ever increasing panicked trot.

I turned south onto Erie Road and I slowed my trot to a light jog as I climbed up the first of several hills which were divided by long valleys and guarded by towering almost leafless oak and maple trees. My weary feet stumbled on the crumbling asphalt pavement. Leaves covered the street (there was no side- walk). Each stride seemed like an unbearable burden. I was tired. I hadn’t eaten in twenty- four hours. I was completely out of shape. I had had only coffee; and the empty energy that the caffeine had sustained in me was wearing off.

But I had to get back to Sarah. She was only seven and she became hysterical when the police picked me up at home. She had clung to me like ivy ever since Catherine’s…murder. Would she be at home? Catherine’s mother, Rita, came over to watch her so that I could go to the police station for the…interrogation. But I had been gone for so long that Rita might have taken her home.