The Wicked Flea

I’d also realized that Kevin couldn’t have heard about Sylvia’s murder. The body had, after all, been found not that many hours ago.
    “Newton,” Kevin said. “So what happened next was that the woman starts screaming, goes nuts, and shoves Jennie and knocks her to the ground.”
    “What about Tae Kwon Do?” I poured myself some tea. Only then did I notice that Kevin hadn’t ordered beer. If he was enduring that sacrifice to decrease his girth, the relationship with Jennie was serious.
    Ignoring my remark, Kevin said, “Assault on a police officer. Jennie told her she was under arrest, and she still didn’t get it. Resisted. Had hysterics. When they took her in, she finally got the message. Kicked up a stink. This was all in the Sunday papers. Jennie’s been suspended. There’s a lot of political garbage going on. The woman’s threatening to sue Jennie. Everyone knows the woman’s lying”—Kevin meant everyone in blue— “but they’ve still got to investigate, and that’s hard on Jennie.”
    Instead of breaking the bad news, I said, “Kevin, I have to confess. I was there. At Cold Creek Park, when it happened. And I read about it in the papers. I just didn’t connect Jennifer Pasquarelli with your Jennie. I thought you met Jennie here. In Cambridge.”
    “I did. At a ten-K road race.”
    “I assumed it was at work. Look, there’s something you don’t know.” I started by telling Kevin all about Ceci and Quest and then outlined what I knew about Sylvia’s arrest. With remarkable tact, I avoided pointing out the differences between the account he’d given me and what I’d seen, heard, and read. For instance, according to Kevin’s report, which was presumably Jennie’s, the officer had identified herself as such before she’d landed on the ground. In contrast, I’d seen her pull out her badge and identify herself as a cop after the shoving incident. She could have done it twice, of course. Maybe she had.
    Kevin ate silently.
    “The background,” I said, “was that there really has been crime committed at the park. An exhibitionist. And there was the sense that the police weren’t doing anything about him. And then this altercation about the leash law. ”
    “It’s not about the leash law.”
    “It started that way,” I insisted, feeling only a little guilty. Technically, I hadn’t seen the beginning of the episode. “Admittedly, it escalated.” That part, I had witnessed.
    “And whose fault was that?” Kevin demanded. “Don’t yell at me! It wasn’t mine!”
    “I’m not yelling!” he yelled.
    “Kevin, listen to me. Something else happened. The woman Jennie arrested, Sylvia Metzner...” I paused. “The liar,” Kevin said.
    “Kevin, this is very serious. Rowdy and I were with Ceci today at Clear Creek Park. We were on one of the trails with a guy and his dog. The dog disappeared. The owner went after the dog. The two of them found Sylvia Metzner’s body. She’d been shot. There was no weapon there. The wounds were not self-inflicted. The Newton police told me that.”
    Kevin put down his fork, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and tossed some cash on the table. Kevin and I were old friends: He didn’t have to explain his departure, and neither of us had to say outright that his Jennie was the prime suspect. Still, as if establishing Jennie’s innocence, Kevin said in parting, “That Metzner woman was a damned liar.”
    I said nothing. Sylvia Metzner was not lying about being dead.
     

Chapter 17
     
    Before I tell you what happened next, I need to fill you in on a session I had with Dr. Foote in which I somehow drifted into talking at incredible length about a trivial, meaningless incident that wasn’t worth two expensive seconds of a fifty-minute meeting. Instead of making maximal use of my therapy so-called hour, I wasted Dr. Foote’s time and mine, as well as my insurance company’s money, by telling her about a little episode that had occurred recently at a fast-food restaurant. Therapy is for big stuff. Conflict, torment, agony, panic. And mothers! Mothers! So what did I light on? Hamburger.
    Anyway, what happened was that Kimi and I... “Have I mentioned Kimi?” I asked Dr. Foote. “My malamute bitch? Have I? Well, I’m pretty sure I have.”
    Little mental mementos of my head injury still lingered; my mind was apparently afraid that I might forget amnesia. Hah! Amnesia, let me tell you, was a bitch, and not a bitch of the Kimi variety. The