The Death Factory

by Greg Iles

  “They cremated her on Wednesday, and we planned a memorial service for Friday. I didn’t know how many people to expect. I had so many cell calls I started to ignore them, and eventually I shut the thing off. After that four-month war of attrition, Sarah’s death had left us in a state of utter exhaustion. I don’t think Maribel Avila even crossed my mind during those days. I didn’t know what Cantor was doing on her case, and I didn’t much care.

  “When Friday came, nearly five hundred people showed up. Most of the lawyers from the DA’s office came, tons of cops, teachers and kids from Annie’s school, all the neighbors. We were overwhelmed. Friends I hadn’t seen in years flew in from Mississippi. Rosa and Maribel Avila even showed up. Thank God it wasn’t raining. The entire backyard was filled with people. I lit a fire in the pit, and people took turns telling stories about Sarah. A friend of hers from college sang Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides Now,’ which Annie loved. Then we had food, or spread what we had around as best we could.

  “While this was going on, Joe Cantor suddenly showed up and asked if he could speak to me in private. We went into my study, and he wasted no time getting to the point.

  “He said he’d been busting his ass on the Avila case, but we were out of time. He laid out two options. One, Conley would do nine years in Huntsville, no time off for good behavior, but no sexual component, either. Two, the case would be tried in open court. That meant no guaranteed result. An independent crime lab had verified Conley’s DNA on the carpet, but Joe felt that if they took it to trial, Conley’s legal team might make the HPD crime lab an issue in the case, and the kid could get off because of it. Evan White had already heard some rumors about Kirmani, and he had made some noise about it. To keep him in check, Joe had threatened to go for the maximum sentence for aggravated sexual battery: ninety-nine years.”

  “That’d make anybody think twice,” Jack says.

  “And you can bet Joe delivered that message without any subtlety whatever. I’ve seen him turn legal pit bulls into quivering puddles of Jell-O. Evan White was tough enough to test Joe’s resolve, but I think Conley’s old man was afraid to.”

  “Did you let the Avilas make the choice?”

  “Yes. I told Joe to go get himself a drink while I spoke to them. Then I found Rosa and Maribel and brought them into my study. They sat holding hands while I explained their choice. When I was finished, they spoke in Spanish for a couple of minutes. I think Rosa asked Maribel if she wanted to go through a trial. Maribel asked in English if I thought Joe Cantor could win a trial, given all the circumstances. I said there was a good chance, but Wes Conley had a top-flight lawyer, and there were no guarantees. In the end, they decided that putting Conley away for nine years was enough. It would ensure that he wouldn’t hurt any other women for a long time, and maybe he’d learn a lesson while he was inside. I told them he’d probably get some firsthand knowledge of what Maribel had been through, and I saw some satisfaction in Rosa’s eyes. Then we all hugged each other, Rosa blessed me, and they left.

  “When I gave Joe the news, the relief in his eyes was palpable. He did not want to take that case to trial. He left almost immediately, to close the deal before Evan White had time to persuade Old Man Conley to change his mind.”

  “Was that really the end of it?” Jack asks.

  “Not quite. It took another hour for all the guests to clear out. Our close friends and relatives were still hanging around. There was also a woman I didn’t recognize, about thirty, and black. I had the feeling she was waiting for a chance to speak to me, so I went over to her.

  “She introduced herself as Detective Eve Washington, the woman I’d called on the day Vargas contacted me. She’d worked the Avila case from the beginning. I thanked her for coming, but she told me she was there because she’d heard things were in play on the Avila case, and that most of the office lawyers were coming to the service. She’d seen Joe go into my study with me, and then the Avilas. When I told her the result of our talks, she didn’t look surprised. Then she asked what Cantor had told me about getting Conley’s plea deal vacated.

  “‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I figured he must have called in a year’s worth of favors downtown. A lot of people owe him.’

  “Detective Washington shook her head. ‘Uh-uh,’ she said. ‘He’s getting it vacated on material breach of the agreement by the defendant.’

  “This stunned me. ‘How could he manage that?’ I asked her. ‘What did Conley do?’

  “Eve Washington smiled. ‘Remember you asked me to go back over the case and see whether we might have missed anything?’

  “A chill raced up my back, and—”

  “They found the picture!” Jack cries.

  I shake my head.

  “The camera, then.”

  “No.”

  “Then what did they miss? Had the crime lab screwed up something else?”

  I smile in remembrance of Eve Washington’s satisfaction. “Detective Washington never believed Conley’s five friends with their alibi about the airport. So she got a warrant and traced all their parents’ credit cards for the day of the crime. They already had the records on the boys, but she figured, why not? Sure enough, one had bought gas at a station near Hobby Airport about ten minutes prior to the time of the rape. Washington and her partner drove out to that station and took a look at their security tapes. The station had been having a spate of drive-offs out there, so they had a great camera setup. There was beautiful footage of those five boys buying gas for a jacked-up dually pickup truck. They were all outside the vehicle, horsing around, drinking beer and acting fools.”

  “What about Conley?” Jack asks.

  “No sign of him. He wasn’t in the vehicle, either. And their story was that they had all ridden to the airport together, after leaving Conley’s truck at a friend’s house.”

  “How could the police be sure Conley wasn’t inside the truck?”

  “Once Washington had that footage, she took another run at his friends. The second one folded in five minutes. He was on probation for a drug charge. He didn’t know anything about the missing camera, but he admitted Conley had never been with them that night, and that he’d asked them to cover for him after the fact. Part of the initial plea agreement was that Conley swore to the judge that he’d been at Hobby with his friends during the rape. Washington had proved that was impossible, and that he’d lied. That gave Cantor grounds to get the plea vacated.”

  Jack gives a cynical smile and shakes his head. “And Cantor never said a word to you about that.”

  “As Eve Washington told me at the funeral, ‘He’s a politician.’ Joe wanted me to think he’d called in major favors to help me out. Or moved heaven and earth to do the right thing. Take your pick.

  “I told Washington it didn’t matter, that the Avila family was okay with the new plea, and we’d got the best result we could. I thanked her for her work and told her I was in her debt. She already knew that, but she looked grateful for the praise. You don’t get much of it in her job. ‘You, too,’ she said. ‘That was a stand-up thing, you getting into the case like that. Especially with all this other weight on you.’

  “I almost ended the conversation there. But then I asked her how bad the crime lab really was. I told her from what I’d seen, it was pretty fucked up.

  “She shrugged. ‘That question’s way above my pay grade. We work with what we have, you know? I hear weird stuff out of there. Crazy things have happened. But that’s a problem for the brass, right?’

  “‘Are they aware of the problems?’

  “‘Got to be, by now. But . . . people see what they want to see, right?’ She gave me a curious look. ‘You gonna get into that next? Make some noise downtown?’

  “I thought about it, then shook my head. ‘I pushed Joe hard on the lab,’ I told her. ‘And he promised to check it out. I’ve got my hands full with my daughter.’

  “Washington gave me a sad smile, and then she left. I never saw her again.”

&nb
sp; “Damn.” Jack is smiling strangely. “What about Vargas?”

  I shake my head. “Felix quit or was let go not long after all that. He moved his family out of town, never called me once.”

  “Huh. You know, it’s funny that it was a picture that nailed Conley in the end. It just wasn’t the picture.”

  “Yeah.” I reach out and turn down the heat in the car. “You know what happened after that. The illusion of Annie being okay fell away pretty quickly. She developed severe separation anxiety. Therapists didn’t help. I had to start homeschooling her. And the house . . . Sarah had laid every tile, refinished ever floor, chosen every paint color. Her spirit invested the whole place, which you’d think would be comforting. Yet it felt like there was a hole that moved from room to room with us. Her absence was a palpable thing. I should have realized sooner that Annie needed to get out of there.

  “I was experiencing my own disconnect. The book I’d been working on completely stalled, and the Avila case had tainted the city for me. I’d never loved Houston, but I had friends there. I’d done good work there. But my ultimatum to Joe had a strange ripple effect. I sensed a general feeling that I’d put people’s careers at risk. If I hadn’t been dealing with Annie’s problems, and my own grief, I might have made a battle of it. Tried to pull down the whole temple. But I didn’t have the strength for that. Investigations into the crime lab began soon enough. But fixing the problems proved harder than anyone could have imagined. They were so endemic to the system, to the city culture . . . the DNA section had to be closed altogether for a while. And they still haven’t straightened it all out.”

  “Joe Cantor is leading that investigation?”

  “No. Joe gracefully retired less than a year after I left Houston. Long before it all became a national scandal.”

  “He knew enough to get out while the getting was good.”

  “Maybe. I still believe he had more personal integrity than most DAs I’ve met in my life. And while quite a few convictions for lesser crimes have been reversed for flawed serology or DNA evidence in Harris County—most tried under Joe’s successors—there’s yet to be a capital case overturned. So Joe was right, in a way: the lab wasn’t as bad as Felix Vargas had feared. But the investigations are far from over, and I worry that reversals on capital cases may be coming. Think about that, Jack: a truly innocent man rotting in Huntsville Prison for murder. How do you ever make that right?”

  “You can’t. Not with all the money in the world.”

  “God forbid they ever go back and find we executed an innocent man.”

  Jack whistles softly. “Amen.”

  “A lot of good lawyers became cynical fast in that ADA job. I never did. But over time . . . what I saw changed how I felt about the death penalty in this country. Eleven years ago I shot a man because he was trying to kidnap my child. No picnic, by any means, but at least that was clean. A necessity.” I point out at the broad channel of the Mississippi. “A week ago I drowned a man twenty yards out in that river. He was trying to kill me. Not much gray area there, either. I sleep fine at night.” A rush of tangled memories flashes behind my eyes: a gasping mouth beneath eyes filled with hatred, and blood in the water. “But when you kill people with paper—with a stacked deck of cards—it starts getting easy. And when it’s easy, eventually you kill somebody who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Jack sighs deeply, then gives me a look that forgives everything without a word being spoken. “You think we’d better head back to the hospital?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you can persuade Mom to give you a turn at the bedside now.”

  “Tom’s going to make it,” Jack says, his eyes filled with faith. “I know it.”

  I nod, but I’m far from feeling his certainty. “So you think I should just let it go, about Dad telling Mom he had something important to tell me before he died?”

  Jack gives me his enigmatic look. “Let’s talk about it on the way back.”

  AS I PULL through the massive wrought-iron gate of the cemetery and turn south, toward town, Jack says, “If you thought you were going to die in half an hour, would you be at peace with it? Or would you maybe need to make a call or two? Maybe ask for forgiveness, or grant it to somebody?”

  “I hear you. I think it’s only the fact that this is Dad that’s rattled me. Of all the men I’ve ever known, he’s the one where you felt like what you saw was what you got. Somehow, his integrity has held up through every storm.”

  Jack nods. “Oh, I know. But Tom’s human, too.” He picks up the McDonald’s bag with the sandwich wrapper and loudly crushes it. “You probably never knew this, but when I was in my early forties, Frances and I nearly got divorced. It was a bad time. This was after I’d quit Hughes Aircraft and joined Argus Minicom. I’d made too much money for my age; I was drinking way too much and . . . overdoing some other things as well. When things hit the crisis point, Tom flew out to California and spent three days with me. He wasn’t overbearing about it, but he’d come to talk me back down to earth. I was out of control. Worst of all, I felt like there was no way to go back to Frances, after the things I’d done.

  “The last night he was there, Tom got to drinking with me. And then he did what we all do when we’re trying to make somebody on the low end of the downslope feel like there’s still hope. We tell them they’re not the only ones carrying heavy baggage.”

  My pulse quickens. “What did he tell you?”

  “That he’d done some things in the past that he didn’t think he could be forgiven for. He’d felt for years that he was damned because of them. Literally beyond redemption, beyond any happiness. But eventually, he got past them. I think you and your sister had a lot to do with that. And your mother.”

  “What was he talking about, Jack?”

  My uncle shrugs. “Tom stopped short of telling me. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it.” Jack looks up at me, his eyes as sober as I’ve ever seen them. “But my feeling was, it had to do with the war.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “I was only a toddler when Tom came back from Korea. But years later I talked to Phil, who was nineteen when Tom got back. Phil said Tom wouldn’t tell him a damned thing about what happened over there. But when Phil enlisted in the Marines, Tom nearly killed him. Later on, Mom and I found a couple of medals Tom had won over there. Not small stuff, either. But whatever he’d done to get them, he kept to himself.”

  “I know he was wounded, but only because of the shrapnel scars on his back and belly. When I asked how he got those, he just said he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t think he ever even told Mom the real story.”

  Jack shrugs. “There you go. If I had to lay money, I’d bet he did some things over there that no man should have to do. That was a brutal war, and he was in the thick of it. The retreat from Chosin, for God’s sake. And he was a medic. There’s no telling what he saw. So, if Tom has decided he doesn’t want to talk about whatever it was, I say let him be. He’s alive; that’s all that matters.”

  “I know. My mind’s been running wild with speculation, but Korea’s the black hole in his life, as far as the family is concerned. That must be it.”

  Jack gives me a bittersweet smile. “Let it go, Penn.”

  “Let the dead bury the dead?”

  He raises one eyebrow. “Actually, no. Jesus supposedly said that to a disciple who asked to be excused from his spiritual work to go and bury his father. In reality, the disciple wanted to leave Jesus and go live with his aging father until he died. Jesus wanted the man to focus on his spiritual calling. As an atheist, my advice is the exact opposite: go home and live with your aging father until he dies. And take him as he is. Let the past die, and let the future take care of itself.” Jack pats me on the thigh. “But I’m just an old hippie. What do I know?”

  More than most, I answer silently. As the Examiner building comes into view, I’m overwhelmed by an impulse to see my daughter and fiancée.
“Do you mind if we stop and see Annie and Caitlin before going back to the hospital?”

  “Of course not,” Jack says. “I’d love to see them.”

  Taking out my BlackBerry, I text Caitlin that Jack and I are about to pull into the front parking lot. Only moments after I finish sending my message, the ringer goes off.

  My heart thumps when I see my mother’s number on the screen. “It’s Mom,” I tell Jack.

  “It’s okay,” he says in a steady voice. “It’s going to be good news.”

  “How do you know?”

  He smiles. “Because we’re due some, by God.”

  “Hello?”

  “We got another troponin level back,” my mother says, her voice tremulous with excitement. “The damage is serious, but Dr. Bruen says he’s cautiously optimistic.”

  “Did he say what that means in concrete terms?”

  I ask this without quite thinking about what I’m making my mother face to answer me. After a long silence, she says, “A year, probably. Two or three if Tom will straighten up. He’s going to be in congestive failure soon, if he doesn’t.”

  “Then we’ll make him straighten up,” I say quickly, with some of Jack’s certainty.

  “That’s right,” Mom says. “Now you and Jack come back. Tom’s been asking for you.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  I relay the information to Jack as we pull into the Examiner lot.

  “I told you,” he says, looking more relieved than satisfied.

  Before we can get out of the car, Annie pushes open the front door of the building and looks around in confusion. Then her eyes settle on the black BMW and her face lights up.

  “My God,” Jack whispers, seeing her willowy form run toward us. “She looks exactly like Sarah.”

  “Yep,” I say, a hitch in my voice. “It’s a mixed blessing, brother.”