Glass House (18 page)

Cleave and Cut

Cleave

They make tools that are small and fine
enough to cut diamonds. Buzzing blades, tipped with diamond chips,
that can separate diamond planes with startling precision. Lasers,
guided by computer diagnostics, that can follow mapped-out lines to
slice stones open.

But cleaving is always the first, best move
of diamond cutting. It’s the cleanest and quickest way in, the
smoothest and surest way to open a closed stone and break it out
into the jewel or jewels it will become.

Hammers and chisels aren’t used to do that.
Cleaving is a dying art, practiced by the most experienced cutters,
using the most meager of tools – brown cleaving cement, a
cleaver’s stick and box, a cutting diamond, and a knife.

Robbe Lefevre and his cutter, Julien Dumont,
turned the pink over to Raf Martin. White-bearded, long-nosed, and
sad-eyed, Martin shuffled as he walked, and his hands bore
cleaver’s calluses on the tips of his right forefinger and thumb.
He hunched as he studied the stone, Lefevre and Dumont hovering
over him in a way he wouldn’t have allowed but for the pink’s
uniqueness and the therefore unsurprising interest the men had in
it.

They’d discussed the anticipated cut for
fifteen minutes, with Dumont laying out his thought of retrieving a
pear and two rounds from the pink. Martin nodded without comment
throughout, peering with a loupe through the window in the
diamond’s side, his only verbal reaction being an occasional small
click of his tongue as he listened to Dumont’s plan.

When the talking was done, Martin set the
stone to the side. He melted a lump of the cleaver’s cement over a
spirit lamp until the material was soft, then molded it to hold the
pink at the end of a cleaver’s stick. He worked the cement to wrap
it solidly around two-thirds of the piece, leaving the first cleave
line exposed and ready.

When the pink was clamped tightly in the
cement, Martin positioned the stick and the stone it held in a
cleaver’s box. He retrieved a cutting diamond and bent without
hesitation, etching a groove at the cleaving line that would
separate one of the sections for a round off from the bulk of the
pink.

He worked methodically, rubbing the cutting
diamond until the groove – called a kerf – was clean and
deep, with a valley tip that was sharp like a V, not rounded like a
U. He straightened only one time, his tongue clicking twice as he
peered down his long nose and over his white beard, like a wizard
preparing to dip into a cauldron. Then he bent to the task
again.

He worked a few moments more before reaching
for the knife. He set it precisely in the kerf and struck with a
single movement. The cleave was not what people unfamiliar with the
trade would imagine. It was a tap instead, a light blow that was
just strong enough to work the knife into the groove and trigger
the split that separated the pink’s planes at the marked
location.

A third of the diamond dropped away.

The men still didn’t speak as Martin
rewarmed the cement and fashioned it to expose the next cleaving
mark. Lefevre and Dumont watched the old man repeat his procedure.
He scored a new kerf at the second location, until the V-shaped
groove was perfect. Retrieved the knife. Cleaved at the plane.

The second third of the pink came off.

Martin cleaned the pieces of any remaining
cement, then collected all three in one steady hand. He held them
out to the other two men.

“A pear,” he said. “Two rounds.” He clicked
his tongue. “Now, Monsieur Dumont,” he said. “Let us cut away.”

The
Transcript

Megan had asked for a rush on the transcript
of Jeremy Waldoch’s deposition, and it was waiting for her when she
reached her office in the morning. Her briefcase and purse were
still hanging over one shoulder, her jacket draped over an arm,
when she saw the package on her desk. It was a large envelope,
official-looking and ominous on the outside, with a window that
showed the transcript’s cover page.

Megan traced a finger over the heading on
the page that showed through. Waldoch’s name was there. The date.
The parties attending. The court reporter’s name.

She hefted the envelope in one hand. It was
heavy, thick with exhibits and a reporting of testimony she didn’t
really want to revisit but had to.

She dumped the purse and briefcase on the
floor in a corner. The coat went on top of them, and she had the
deposition envelope open before she sat down.

She knew exactly what she was looking
for.

Megan flipped the pages until she found the
middle of the deposition. She read in a blur through the words,
recalling the questions that were asked, the answers given, the
general course of the back-and-forth from two days before. She
flipped steadily forward from there, working a finger down the
words and pages until she came to the questions she was searching
for.

Her throat was tight with anger as she read
over them. As she went back over Paul McCallum’s questioning of
Waldoch, Megan read faster, her hands trembling the edges of the
pages.

What she wanted was on the seventy-fourth
page, near the bottom, where the words broke across and fell onto
the seventy-fifth. She pulled a legal pad from her drawer and a pen
from the desk.

She wrote a name in large, blocked-out
letters that stretched over the top of the pad’s first page –
Lora Alexander
. Under it she added a single word –
Dead?
 – then turned back to the transcript, skimming
down the lines of text.

By Mr. McCallum:

Q
. With respect to Ms. Alexander, did
you ever give her a gift with a value of more than, say, fifty
dollars?

A
. I don’t believe so.

Q
. You don’t believe so but you’re
not sure?

A
. No, I didn’t give her gifts.

Q
. No jewelry, for example?

A
. No.

Q
. Not a necklace?

A
. No.

Q
. Nothing like an eighteen-carat
gold chain, with diamonds bezel-set in platinum? Every tenth
diamond a pink one? Say, maybe sixteen inches in length? Something
that looks a little like this?

McCallum had offered a picture of the
necklace at that point, but Megan remembered it without turning to
the exhibits at the end of the transcript. Waldoch hadn’t looked at
the photo, pushing it back across the table and testifying that he
didn’t give the necklace to Alexander and hadn’t seen it before.
Megan wrote McCallum’s description of the jewelry on the next line
on the pad.

Farther into the transcript, she flipped her
notes to the next blank sheet. She wrote
K. Landry
across
the top of that new page.

Q
. How about my client Kathleen
Landry? Ever give her any gifts?

A
. Gifts?

Q
. Gifts, sir. Presents. Rewards.
Material niceties bestowed on others. You seemed to know what the
term gifts meant when you used it a second ago. I assume you know
now. Did you ever give gifts to Kathy Landry?

A
. I don’t recall anything
specific.

Q
. How about anything in general?

A
. No.

Q
. Do you think you’d recall it? I
mean, if you gave some nice thing to Ms. Landry, do you imagine
maybe you’d remember doing so?

A
. I suppose it would depend on the
material nicety at issue.

Q
. How about a pair of earrings?
Platinum mounts. Each one with a fat Tahitian pearl and two small
marquise diamonds set under the pearls. Those diamonds were red, in
this case. Pale red, but still red. That ringing a bell?

Waldoch had admitted those. He’d given the
earrings to Kathy Landry, and Megan added their description under
her name, with a note –
where now? 
– after it.

She knew the answer to that. At least she
knew the answer McCallum suggested in the deposition. Megan glanced
over two more pages until she found the mention of Samuel
Chilcott’s name.

Q
. Just one more point before the
break that Ms. Davis requested. I’d like to know what happened to
those earrings, sir.

A
. I think you should ask your client
that.

Q
. Turns out I have, actually. She
told me about a man named Samuel Chilcott. Do you know Mr. Chilcott
by chance?

A
. I know him.

Q
. You employed him, is that
right?

A
. I did.

Q
. He reclaimed the earrings at some
point, didn’t he.

A
. I don’t know that.

Q
. You didn’t ask Samuel Chilcott to
get Kathy Landry’s seventeen-thousand-dollar earrings back for
you?

A
. No.

Q
. Didn’t order him to do that?

A
. I have no idea what happened to
the earrings.

Samuel Chilcott’s name was at the top of
Megan’s third page of notes. Waldoch testified that he didn’t know
where Chilcott was now, but he certainly seemed to know where the
man had been before he’d started his work for Waldoch. Megan wrote
it down:
Hutch correc. facility, asslt. on former DMW emp’ee,
woman
.

She closed the transcript, setting it aside
and reading over the few lines of information she’d written. Megan
had finished her representation of Waldoch in the Alexander case a
few months before Benjamin’s death and her own time off. The file
was in storage somewhere, but the firm’s client file record would
be on the computer.

She tapped at the keyboard on her desk. In a
document database, she found the client and file number and pulled
up the records for the earlier case. She went to an information
listing and wrote down the phone number for Lora Alexander. A
secondary contact was listed, too. Alexander’s mother Claire. Megan
added it to her notes.

Her first call didn’t produce much. Megan
dialed Lora’s number and listened through two rings before an
answering machine cut in. She dialed the second number, nervous as
she waited.

She was thinking back to Claire Alexander at
the trial. The walk to the elevator and how polite Waldoch had
been. And then she thought of McCallum’s call last night, with his
news.

Claire answered on the fifth ring, when
Megan was preparing to hang up. Her voice was older, but it wasn’t
old. Little cracks were starting to show in it, but she didn’t
sound frail or broken or lost. She sounded, in fact, almost exactly
as she had when they were walking down that hallway, not long
before her daughter lost a case she probably was betting her life
on.

“Mrs. Alexander?” Megan asked.

“Yes?”

“My name is Megan Davis.” She waited, not
knowing if her name would be recognized. “I worked on –”

“I know who you are.” The comment wasn’t
sharp or angry. It was only a statement.

“I’m calling about Lora,” Megan said. There
was a hesitation, an open and empty, hanging space on the line, in
which Megan had no idea what to say. “I heard about your
daughter.”

“Heard about her? Heard what, exactly? That
she died in a car accident? Or that she was killed.”

Megan bit at her lip, wondering what the
possible response was to that, but Claire let her off the hook.

“What’s this about?” The question was polite
but impatient.

“I’d like to meet with you if I could,”
Megan told her. It was an impulsive request, one she hadn’t planned
on making and that surprised her as she heard the words
herself.

“Meet with me, Ms. Davis? I’ve no reason to
know why you’re calling about these things, and I certainly don’t
know why I’d want to meet with you, of all people.”

“I’m not sure myself why it’s important.”
Megan was thinking of McCallum’s call again, but she was also
thinking of her own client’s answers to the questions he’d been
asked in the deposition. All the things revealed, spelled out in
black and white on the transcript pages in front of her. “I just
think it’s important,” she added. “I think I need to talk to
you.”

“And I think you’re long too late. For Lora,
for me, and for you. Even before the other day.”

“I need to know some things about Jeremy
Waldoch,” Megan said. Her eyes were shut tight against the sudden,
unforeseen distaste she felt for even mentioning Waldoch’s name. “I
need to….” She searched for the right words to use with this woman.
“I need to check some things about him.”

Dead space. No words or anything else in it.
Megan thought Claire was gone.

A question finally came. “Who has he hurt
now?”

The courtroom and the end of the trial came
flooding back to Megan. The congratulations on one side, the defeat
on the other. The sadness on the faces of this woman and her
daughter, and the pride that the mother showed, too, for a daughter
she’d now lost. The tangling of it all together, and the
inescapable feeling of near-guilt that came on Megan now when that
question was asked.

“Will you meet with me?” Megan asked
again.

More space, but it was shorter this time.
Megan could almost hear the woman weighing it on the other end.

“Mrs. Alexander?” Megan prompted.

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Can I come see you?”

A sigh, tinged with pain or reluctance or
something. “I suppose so.”

“Thank you. I’ll need to check on something
first. I need to talk to some people, and I’ll call you after that
if it’s all right. We’ll find a time that’s good for you.”

“That’s fine.”

Megan was going to thank her again, but the
line was truly dead now. Lora Alexander’s mother had hung up.

Megan rested the phone in its cradle. She
dragged her notes back in front of her and read the few things
she’d written down.