He walked past me to the door of my office and stopped. He looked back at me.
“Oh, by the way, I still have friends around here. Just heard an interesting story. They say some local would-be kingpin in one of your special cells got his head separated from his shoulders. Bad stuff. When people can be killed behind bars, it shakes your faith in the criminal justice system.”
He stepped out, moving gracefully around Cheryl who burst into the room saying, “Mr. Maitland, Chief Brown is on the line.” Brown was the man who ran the jail.
I picked up the phone.
“Maitland, all hell is breaking loose down here.”
“What happened?”
“You know Deaven Thompson, the one you had in that holding cell isolated from everyone? Well, he wasn’t isolated from everybody.”
“What?”
“He was checked on by Lieutenant Colton at 3 p.m. and he was okay, seemed to be taking a nap. When Colton came back at 3:30....the bunk was soaked in blood and Thompson was under a blanket. They pulled the blanket back and...somebody cut his damned head off. Cut it clean off.”
I looked toward the doorway, but I’d have bet Tyrone was not in sight.
“And that’s not the worst of it.”
“There’s worse?”
“They....cut his genitals off...his entire dick and his balls and stuffed them into his mouth. It was gross, goddammit. I had veteran officers throwing up.”
“And no one saw anything?”
“Colton and two other jailers had to be down on the second floor to break up a fight, actually two fights. With one thing and another, every officer we had in there was busy for a half hour or so.”
“Alright, get someone to pull the videotapes. His cell and the walkway were being monitored, right?”
There was a long silence.
“We do have videotapes, right?”
“That’s the first thing I thought of. I went to the command center. Riley and Kitty Wells were on duty monitoring. They were both out cold. They had ordered coffee and said they got it up about 3 or 3:10 and that’s the last thing they remember. The tapes for the cameras monitoring Thompson’s cell and the corridor and that whole area are missing for the last hour.”
“Who brought up the coffee?”
“Jimmy Miller. He’s a trustee, but he’s due to be out in two months. He’s scared shitless. Swears he didn’t do anything and just picked up coffee from the commissary. I’ve already had officers down there checking, but nobody will admit to seeing anything. And honestly, nobody pays any attention to who goes through there. Who expects their coffee to be doped—in the jail?”
I sat back and rubbed my lower lip. Talk about mixed emotions. I couldn’t be sorry the son of a bitch was dead. But somebody had waltzed into the heart of the criminal justice system and committed murder. I knew who had done it, and I guessed why, but I doubted I’d ever be able to prove anything.
“You’ve got detectives crawling all over everything?”
“Yes. This hasn’t gotten out, but what do we tell the press when they start calling.”
“Sheriff Knight is in charge, you do what he tells you, but I’d keep my mouth and the mouth of everybody under you, shut tight until we figure out the best way of handling this.”
I hung up and when I looked at the doorway, Charlie Case filled it.
“You heard?”
“Yeah” I said. “Hard to believe anyone could do that. And it makes you wonder who would want to kill and leave that kind of message.”
He shrugged those huge shoulders.
“Deaven was not the most pleasant person I’ve ever met. I have a hard time believing he didn’t acquire a lot of enemies along the road to the top. Remember, the Browns, the little boys’ family and their friends, they’re not the most peace-loving bunch around. They wanted a piece of him. And there are other gangs out there.”
I looked him curiously.
“That’s the strange thing, Case. I could understand his rivals or the Browns having him killed, but the way they did it...”
“Somebody wanted him really, really dead.”
“No it’s more than that. It’s a message killing. Somebody was sending a message to his people, but who was sending it and what was the message?”
“Probably the message was that anybody who threatens a prosecutor is not going to have the cops coming after them to read them their rights, but people who will cut their heads off. It’s a different kind of threat.”
“That makes sense, but the thing is, there are only three people still alive who know about that threat.”
Case’s expression was unreadable.
“And you and I both know who was behind this. He’s well on his way to South Florida. I couldn’t stop him because we couldn’t prove anything. He said he was visiting his brother Derrick over in the Panhandle. But how did he know about the threat and have the time to set this up. He’s good, but nobody is that good.”
Case shrugged again.
“I have no idea.”
I looked at the other side of my office, in the direction that Tyrone was driving or flying right now and asked, “You’ve been out of that world for awhile now, but you still know people, right?”
“Everybody knows people, Maitland.”
“You served time with some of the same hardcases that shuttle between here and Miami. I’ll bet you could still pick up the phone and in a minute get a message to somebody down there, if you wanted to.”
He looked at me and I could only sense the smile.
“Now why would I want to do that?”
“Hypothetically, if there was a problem that couldn’t be dealt with within the legal system, a man with contacts outside the system could go around the law.”
He looked at me guilelessly.
“I’m a bailiff of the court. My best friend is a judge and he’s the only reason I’m not on death row or dead right now. You don’t think I’d betray everything I believe in to have a shithead like Thompson killed, do you?”
He followed my gaze in the direction that we both knew Tyrone was headed.
“And even if I had called him and told him what was going down, you don’t think a stone killer like Biggs would put himself in jeopardy to save the family of a man who sent him to prison and kept him away from his mother’s funeral, do you?”
“No, I guess not. It’s just hard to figure.”
“Don’t give yourself a headache, Maitland. Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure what happened to Deaven.”
He walked away and I sat there for awhile while all hell broke loose as the media discovered what had happened, Sheriff Knight and Edwards started trying to do some PR damage control that would keep the media from comparing local law enforcement to the Keystone Kops.
Eventually I got dragged into it and an never-ending round of meetings with Sheriff’s Office officials, jail officers, the media, and internal meetings within the State Attorney’s Office.
Along the way I found out that, oddly enough, the tapes of Deaven’s cell weren’t the only ones that had vanished. Trying to backtrack, homicide detectives had looked for the tapes of the meeting I’d had with Deaven, his attorney Smith, and Case. But they had vanished as well. Actually, all the tapes for that meeting room for the last week had gone missing.
Courthouse staff responsible for the monitoring pointed the finger at the private tech firm that maintained the system. The tech firm fired back at the courthouse personnel as technological idiots who had probably inadvertently wiped those tapes out.
Hour blended into hour into hour until I got out of another in an interminable sequence of meetings and realized it was 8 p.m. and I was fed up with meetings. I told the diehards still meeting over one thing or another that I had put in my time, I’d been injured in an accident, I had just gotten back from a cruise and never even had a chance to get my luggage back to my condo. I was going home.
As soon as I walked
out of the courthouse and was heading for my Escalade, I remembered my earlier discussions with Doug. I called Debbie’s number and got no response. I tried again. I drove back to the condo and called again. In all, I called six times in 45 minutes with no response.
I unpacked my suitcase. As I put the clothes away they seemed like mementos from the distant past. Had it been less than a day since I’d held Aline’s naked body next to me? How could so much happen in so little time? But, how had I met and made a connection with a French woman like none other in the past 20 years, in less a week.
I had thought this little piece of anonymous apartment was lonely beyond reason, but now I realized it was like a little piece of hell. It, and I, were transient. There were no memories here, other than bad ones.
I had to get out. If I stayed here I would remember the early days when all I could think about was Debbie’s golden body, or the brunette woman I had just walked away from. I really needed to get drunk and kill all the memories.
I almost drove to The Last Call, or O’Brien’s, but something made me turn the car in a familiar direction and it almost drove itself there. I stopped down the block. Something wouldn’t let me pull in the driveway. It was dark now, at 9:30, and there were no lights in the house that had been mine and Debbie’s.
I shouldn’t wait for her, I knew. I had spent four months running as hard as I could to get away from her and the hurt she had done to me. I had refused to talk to her because I was afraid I would either physically hurt her, or burst out crying and shame myself.
Could I hurt her? I would have said never, once. But I had prosecuted men who knew they would never touch their wives or girlfriends. Until that one split second they could not bring back when they had struck out and the one they had loved lay dead at their feet.
I should probably wait and call her tomorrow. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to drive away. I had called her home phone and there had been no answer there as well. That with the absence of lights, told me she was out. At her parents? No, because she would have answered her cell there.
So she was out tonight. Maybe it was work related? Maybe it was with one of her female friends. Maybe. It wouldn’t be Doug, if he had told me the truth and BJ had heard correctly when she said they were through. Had she already found another man?
So I sat in the darkness after the streetlights came on and it became 10 and then 10:15 p.m. and finally I saw the lights of her Nissan coming down the street followed by a dark blue four-door Saturn. She pulled into our garage while the Saturn stopped in the driveway. She came out, closing the garage behind her.
A dark-haired, slender man stepped out of the Saturn and followed her to the front door. I got out of the Escalade and walked toward what had been my front door. She turned the inner hall light on and I saw her face and that of the man with her in the light it cast.
They were talking and she laughed. I had reached our front yard and started walking toward them. She laughed again, and tilted her head up in a way that I remembered. I wondered if he was planning on kissing her. Had she dumped Doug and that quickly found another man. No grass growing under her feet.
I was walking quietly and she didn’t even notice me approaching.
“You’re right, Clint. I love Thai. And thank you for keeping me out of this house. I almost hate to say goodnight...”
“Well, don’t let me interfere with your plans, Debbie. I’d just like a moment of your time.”
She jumped and stared at me as if I was the killer in a teen stalker movie.
“Bill? What in the hell....”
“I fell down some stairs. Got banged up a bit.”
The man turned quickly and gave me a searching glance. He was familiar, but I was pretty sure I’d never seen him in the flesh before.
“Bill, I was just....”
He stuck his hand out and by habit I took it.
“Hi, you’d obviously be Bill Maitland. I’m Clint Abbott. I’m a visiting professor at UNF. I’m glad to meet you. Remind me to stay away from those stairs. They did a number on you.”
Debbie continued to stare.
“I’m sorry Debbie. I didn’t mean to interrupt your date. Could we talk for just a minute? If—you’ve got further plans, just call me on my cell. I’ll be up late.”
“I’m leaving, Mr. Maitland. Debbie - Mrs. Maitland—Bascomb—and I just went out for dinner and a few drinks. I need to get home because tomorrow is a work day.”
He turned to leave and she placed her hand on his arm.
“Clint, thank you.”
As he started to walk by me the mental connection clicked and I said, “Horseman, Ride On By.”
He stared at me and then a grin grew on his face.
“Guilty. Don’t tell me you read it?”
“And saw the movie. I thought you looked familiar. Your face was all over the back cover.”
“He’s got a mind like a steel trap, Clint. I should have warned you. I don’t think he ever forgets anything.”
I couldn’t stop myself.
“Even if I wish I could....”
It was cheap and petty but it made me feel better that she looked a little hurt.
“Well, on behalf of myself and my accountant, Mr. Maitland, thank you for your patronage. It’s people like you that have let me skip meaningful hard labor for the last 20 years or so.”
“It was a good book. I’ve liked most of your stuff.”
“Not all?”
He grinned again.
“Authors are shameless. We want everybody to love everything we write. But thanks. Coming from somebody as famous as you, I’m flattered.”
I just gave him a look.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve read all about The Angel of Death. Actually....”
He stopped and gave me a speculative look.
“Actually, I had my publisher call me already. He asked me if I thought about doing any courtroom action stuff. It’s fairly hot now, what with Grisham. And Scott Turow. And Philip Margolin has done some nice stuff. I haven’t done any of that, but....I did do a little research on you after I got the call. You’re a fairly interesting figure.
“Have you ever thought of having somebody write you up—nonfiction. Although fiction is more my line. How does, ‘The Angel of Death—Scourge of the Underworld’ or something like that sound?”
I grimaced.
“Like a very, very bad 30s pulp novel. Don’t lower yourself.”
“I don’t write the titles. My first choice for ‘Horseman, Ride On By’ was ‘The Gunfighter and the Lady.’ The publisher would come up with something better. But...it was only an idea. If you change your mind and would like to talk, I’ll be at UNF for a few months.”
“I won’t, but thanks anyway. My life is...there’s too much going on to even think about that.”
Debbie gave both of us a look like we’d started talking football the way guys would do on her time.
“Good night, Clint. Thank for this evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He grinned at me and then at her as he realized what had happened and said “goodnight,” to both of us and walked away.
She watched Clint Abbott walk away and felt like she was in high school, having one boyfriend show up while she was on a date with another. Of course, it wasn’t the same. But it felt the same. She was embarrassed, and she had no reason to be. She stared at Bill’s face and remembered the last time she’d seen him that beat up.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Not important. I apologize. I wouldn’t have come by except that I couldn’t get you on the phone.”
“Oh, I forgot. I turned my cell off when I went out with Clint—Professor Abbott.”
“Didn’t want to be disturbed on a hot date?”
She felt that anger flare again and tamped it down. Naturally he was angry and jealous. He had the right.
“Clint is just a friend, Bill. He asked me to dinner and for drinks. I just....this house is too damned empty. With Kelly an
d BJ gone...and...”
“Doug, yeah I know—that’s why-“
“I was going to say with you gone, but yeah, Doug is gone too. You know about that already? You haven’t been in town for a day? You’re good.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. BJ called me.”
“BJ?”
“He was in the house the morning that—he heard what was happening between you and Doug and Kelly.”
“I had no idea. But whatever he heard....”
“He saw Kelly coming out of your bedroom naked, Debbie, while Doug was in there. It didn’t matter what he heard. What the fuck was she doing in your bedroom with Doug—naked?”
His voice rose. She realized what he must be thinking.
“It’s not what you’re thinking...or not exactly.”
“What the hell does ‘not exactly’ mean. Debbie, for Christ’s sake, we’re talking about a 17-year-old girl and a 28-year-old man. You know what that sounds like?”
She leaned back against the front door.
“It’s bad, but not bad the way you think. Nothing really happened.”
“I’m really, really curious as to what your definition of ‘happen’ is.”
She sighed and then said, “I’ll tell you everything, Bill. I’ve got no reason to lie and I know you too well to think that I could. But...can we do this inside? I don’t want to talk about this outside.”
“I don’t want to go inside.”
“Why? It’s your house?”
“Correction. It was.”
“Just for a few minutes.”
He gave her a look that should have frightened her, but she knew him too well.
“Debbie for a smart woman, you can be so stupid. You threw me out of this house. You’ve been fucking another man in our bed. You probably sat in the den watching television with him. You sat in the kitchen and ate with him and then probably went upstairs and let him fuck you, if you didn’t do it in the kitchen. It’s not my house anymore.”
She tried to find the right words. He was the word man.
“Doug is gone, Bill. I can’t take back what happened. But it was your house for the last 10 years and I was your wife for 18 years. Doug came and went. It’s still your house, it always will be. And I was your wife and I still am for a few days. No matter what happens, we were married for 18 years and together for 20 years and we have two kids. You said you wanted to talk. Can’t you stand being in your house for a few minutes?”
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