A Murder of Justice

by Robert Andrews

  Emerson pointed into the crowd. “Ms. Lewis?”

  Lewis went straight for the throat. “Two years ago, you held a press conference. You told us Zelmer Austin had killed Mr. Gentry. Are you telling us today that he didn’t?”

  Emerson pursed his lips and worked his jaw muscles. “That’s not being said,” he replied, erecting the passive-voice fortress of a seasoned bureaucratic warrior. “What’s being said is that there is insufficient evidence to identify Austin as the killer.” Emerson’s eyes darted, searching for an escape route.

  Like an intercepting hockey goalie, Lewis angled herself back into Emerson’s line of sight.

  “So you had evidence once… now you don’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Emerson looked around desperately. No raised hands. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched him squirm.

  “Is that what you’re saying?” Lewis persisted.

  Emerson coughed, started to bring his hand up to his tightly knotted necktie, then, apparently thinking better of it, dropped the hand. “There,” he began slowly, “have been changes in… ah… the… um… evidentiary base.”

  “The evidentiary base?” Lewis repeated scornfully before she sprang the trap. “Isn’t it a fact that you solved the Gentry case by a bureaucratic dodge? That you relied primarily on the testimony of an informant, and that then, on the basis of that testimony, you declared Austin the killer and the case closed?” She paused just long enough to gather momentum and not long enough to let Emerson reclaim the floor. She delivered high and hard. “And haven’t you found that the weapon that was used to kill Skeeter Hodges was also used to kill Gentry?”

  Emerson searched the chief’s face, then the mayor’s. Their blank expressions offered no refuge.

  He knows she has the goods, Frank thought. He tries to dodge now, and the shit will get even deeper.

  Emerson took a deep breath. “That has been found to be the case.”

  “And so Zelmer Austin didn’t kill Kevin Gentry.”

  Emerson held up his hands in a “Halt there” gesture. “It may be that renewed efforts as described by Mayor Tompkins and Chief Day will produce proof that Austin was indeed the killer,” he said. Then, quickly moving his head up as if to see farther back into the ring of reporters, he found a raised hand. “Next question? Yes? Hugh Worsham?”

  “Oh, shit,” Jose breathed.

  Worsham, who made a living out of anarchy, confusion, and the failures of others, stood almost within arm’s length of the two detectives.

  “What”-Worsham chopped out a histrionic pause-“what are you, Captain Emerson, going to do about this imbroglio?”

  Emerson winced. “Ah… Hugh… would you care to rephrase that?”

  Worsham rolled his eyes and heaved a suffering sigh-I have to put up with such fools. “What, Captain Emerson, are you doing to make certain something like this doesn’t happen again?”

  Emerson decided to play. “Certain, Hugh? We can’t be certain of achieving perfection, as much as we try.” Emerson shot a sly smile at the mayor and Chief Day. “But we can reduce the probability of such errors.”

  “How?” Worsham followed up.

  “One step we’ve already taken. I’ve ordered a thorough internal review of our evidence-handling process. And to ensure this is an unprejudiced review, I am suspending the person who has been responsible for that process.”

  “This person have a name, Captain?”

  Emerson paused. Frank thought he saw Emerson’s eyes graze those of Chief Day. Emerson returned to Worsham.

  “Yes, Hugh. He is the head of our forensic analysis. Dr. Renfro Calkins.”

  FOURTEEN

  Frank!… Goddamnit!… Stop!”

  Grabbing his right arm and left shoulder, Jose spun his partner around, backing him against a parked patrol car.

  “That son of a bitch.” Frank heard the words come up from the murderous roaring inside his head and chest.

  Jose clamped him into a bear hug and brought his mouth close to Frank’s ear. “Let… it… go, brother.”

  The words came slow and deep, and Frank tensed as though to break Jose’s grip.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Jose said.

  “I want to talk to that bastard.”

  “Not now.” Jose tightened his grip on Frank. “You go in there now, all you’re gonna do is get a ration of his shuck-and-jive bullshit. Then you’ll get more pissed an’ do something dumb.”

  A moment like a year finally passed and the roaring inside faded into the distance and he could breathe again and he felt Jose’s arms loosen.

  Jose squeezed the back of Frank’s neck. “Let’s go find R.C.”

  Renfro Calkins lived on T Street, NW, in the 1700 block, not far from Dupont Circle. The house was on the end of a group of four red-brick row houses in a diverse neighborhood at an intersection of Washington’s black, white, gay, and Hispanic communities. A block west, the semiluxurious Washington Hilton, where Ronald Reagan had been shot. A block north, the beginnings of Adams-Morgan. A small brass plaque by the doorbell announced that the row houses, built in 1887, had been registered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

  Frank rang the bell.

  The door swung open.

  “Yes?” The smile of surprise began before the question died away. “Jose! Frank!” Elsa Calkins pulled the two men through the doorway and into the living room. Petite and fine-boned, Elsa stood on tiptoe to kiss each of them on the cheek. She smelled of vanilla and nutmeg, and her dark curly hair glistened in the light.

  “How’s he doing, Elsa?” Jose asked.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “He’s better than I am. Come on.” She led them down a hallway lined with framed displays of exotic seashells. “Almost twenty years,” she said, her voice bitter. “Now this. They throw him out. Shut the gate.”

  “It’s only a suspension, Elsa.”

  She stopped at a closed door and turned to face Frank and Jose. “It’s a travesty.” She glared at them, then turned, knocked once, and opened the door.

  Shelves and bookcases covered the walls. An antique walnut desk in the center of the room faced French doors leading to a small walled-in garden.

  Renfro Calkins, seated at the desk, swiveled around. Surprise flickered across his face, followed by a look of withdrawing caution, as though he’d pulled himself back into a protective shell. He stood, one hand on the back of his chair, the other resting on a large ledger open on the desk. Several smaller notebooks also lay open. He followed Frank’s and Jose’s gazes.

  “Updating my journal. If I don’t capture my thoughts right away, they just fly off.”

  Jose nodded. “What happened, R.C.?” he asked in a voice heavy with concern.

  Calkins gestured toward a couple of chairs. He and Elsa exchanged a wordless message, and she left, shutting the door behind her. The sound of the door had a finality to it, and the three men sat as though time had stopped.

  Jose broke the silence, asking again, softly, “What happened,

  R.C.?”

  Calkins thought about how he might describe it, then lifted a piece of paper out of the clutter on his desk.

  “Two gentlemen from IAD walked in, served me with this.”

  He handed the paper to Jose.

  Jose studied it, then handed it to Frank. It bore the Internal Affairs Division letterhead.

  “It says IAD’s investigating procedural compliance,” Jose said.

  “It also says,” Calkins added, “I’m suspended.”

  “With pay.”

  “Nice of them.”

  “Internal Affairs,” Frank asked, “they say anything?”

  “I asked. They just pointed to that.” Calkins gestured to the letter.

  “Then what?” Jose asked.

  “Then they sealed my files, my computer, my office door. Then they escorted me out of the building.” Calkins’s eyes moved to middle distance, reliving the scene. “In front of all my people… they escorted me out of the b
uilding,” he said in wonderment, as though he couldn’t believe it had happened. He brought his eyes back to focus on Frank and Jose, then smiled ruefully. “At least they didn’t cuff me.”

  Frank felt a vicarious flush of embarrassment and stole a glance into the garden. A sparrow fluttered in a lichen-covered birdbath, and Frank searched for something to say. Jose got there first.

  “How you doin’, R.C.?”

  Calkins frowned at Jose like a man who’d been asked an impertinent question. “Doing? Why, I’m updating my journal.” He motioned to his desktop. “Later, I’ll be cataloguing additions to my stamp collection…”

  “That’s not what we mean, R.C.,” Frank put in. “Inside… you okay?”

  That brought Calkins to a halt. He pondered that for a moment, then ventured out. “Am I disturbed?” Another second’s thinking. “Yes. Certainly, I’m disturbed.”

  A pause.

  “Am I angry? Yes… I suppose so… somewhat.”

  Another pause, then, “But am I despondent?” Calkins shook his head emphatically. “No. Definitely not. Evidence will out, Frank, evidence will out. We run a responsible and professional shop. And that’s what’s going to be found out when the evidence is in.”

  Frank found part of himself cheered at Calkins’s certainty, another part worried about the same certainty. He tried to shut out the worry side.

  “I’m sure it will, R.C.”

  Italian sausage, Muhammad.”

  “Jose?”

  “Steak supreme.”

  Muhammad scratched out the orders and handed Frank and Jose their numbered call slips.

  Mon Cheri Cafe was open six a.m. to three a.m. Sunday through Thursday, and twenty-four hours a day Friday and Saturday. Gleaming white ceiling with bright fluorescents, scrubbed floors of large black-and-white square tiles. Muhammad or one of his brothers was always there. So was a steady stream of police, laborers, taxi drivers, and old-time Georgetown residents.

  Frank and Jose took a table at the back along the wall. At a table toward the front, an old man sat by himself, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

  “This is a clean and pleasant cafe,” Frank said. “It is well lighted.”

  Jose squinted at Frank. “You been reading Hemingway again?”

  Frank smiled. “Can’t help myself.” He watched the old man get up and take his cup to the front for a refill. “You know, don’t you, how IAD’s going to go after R.C.?”

  Jose nodded. “But R.C.’s a man with faith in the system.”

  “Let’s hope he’s not disappointed.”

  Muhammad called their numbers. Frank added a Diet Coke to his tray, Jose picked out a cranberry juice. For several minutes they ate in silence, concentrating on keeping their overstuffed sandwiches together.

  “I’m full.” Jose put down the last of his sandwich and wrung out a paper napkin. He wadded the napkin and dropped it on the table. “R.C.,” he began experimentally, “you don’t think there’s a chance IAD can tag him with something? Anything? I mean, Emerson needs a scapegoat bad.”

  Frank shrugged. “I think there’s always a chance. But do I think there’s any probability?” He shook his head, answering his own question. “Slim and none. R.C.’s too meticulous.”

  “Yeah.” Jose nodded.

  “So?”

  “So maybe we ought to talk to Milt some more.” After a second thought, Jose finished off his sandwich.

  The two men locked eyes.

  “IAD investigation’s under way,” Frank cautioned. “Milt’s a material witness.”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “We go talking to Milt, that could bring down a load of shit.”

  “Unh-hunh,” Jose agreed. “Sure could.”

  First the sleek sound of precision-milled metal turning. Then light breaking the darkness, framing a man in a doorway. The figure flicked a wall switch. Nothing. A muttered curse. The man closed the door behind him and made his way through the dark. A table lamp suddenly snapped on. The light caught Milton in the middle of the living room, keys still in his right hand.

  “Evening, Milt,” Frank said.

  “Hi, Milt,” Jose chimed in.

  “What the fuck?”

  Frank motioned to the sofa. “Why don’t you sit down, Milt? We’d like to talk.”

  Surprise kept Milton rooted in the middle of the room.

  “Renfro Calkins,” Jose rumbled. “Frank and I think a good man’s being railroaded to save Emerson’s ass.”

  “So? So why the fuck does that give you the right to bust in here?”

  “Sit down, Milt,” Frank said pleasantly.

  Milton paused, as though weighing what to do.

  “Sit down, Milt,” Frank repeated, this time not so pleasantly.

  Milton took a seat on the sofa, both feet on the floor, hands guarding his crotch, fingers interlaced.

  “We’d like to understand better how you came to close the Gentry case. You had to rely on this snitch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The snitch told you that Zelmer Austin’s woman said that Austin did Gentry.”

  “Right.”

  “The snitch have a name, Milt?”

  Milton mumbled something.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Frank said.

  “Cookie.”

  “He have a last name?”

  “Yeah, but he wouldn’t give it to me. Real hard on that. Like he was scared. And look, Frank, Jose, the guy knew the hold-out details. He knew stuff he couldn’t a read in the papers or see on the tube… how many times Gentry was shot, what time it was, no money taken.”

  “You find him, Milt?” Jose asked. “Or did he find you?”

  Milton took a deep breath of resignation. “He called me. We met.”

  He looked at Frank and Jose, pleading with his eyes. “Emerson and the chief put the squeeze on me. I didn’t want to close the case on the snitch alone. But before I could say anything, they were out with a press release saying we’d found the killer.”

  “You didn’t say anything to Emerson?” Jose asked. “Like hold up on the release?”

  Milton’s face clouded. “I…” He began, then stopped.

  His chin dropped a fraction, his shoulders sagged. “Emerson called me in,” Milton whispered hoarsely. “Asked me how I was doing. I told him we had good poop from the snitch… about how the guy knew the hold-out details. Emerson damn near danced around that desk of his. I told him I wanted more before signing off on the Three-oh-four-point-one. But he waved me off. Said he’d already told the chief, the chief had already called the mayor.”

  “Essentially, Emerson told you to shut it down.” Frank said.

  Milton looked at Frank, then at the ground. “Not exactly… not so many words… but I knew what it was he wanted.”

  Frank looked at Jose, who was staring at his shoes with the embarrassed expression of a man who’d stumbled on another man’s private weakness.

  We’ve all been there, Frank wanted to tell Milton. Maybe we didn’t make your mistake. But we know what it was like… how close we came.

  The three men sat silently, all aware of what had happened, none wanting to say any more about it.

  Jose started the car and checked the rearview. “You’ve had a hot day,” he told Frank. “Gave your blood pressure a workout.”

  Frank slumped in the passenger seat. His anger gone, in its place a debilitating fatigue.

  “Emerson really got to him,” Jose said, pulling out into the evening traffic.

  “One thing about Cookie what’s-his-name…”

  Jose nodded. “About getting the story from Austin’s woman?”

  “Funny that Austin would tell her the hold-out details.”

  “Ha-ha?”

  “No,” Frank said, gazing at the headlights of the oncoming cars. “Not ha-ha funny.”

  Jose was quiet for a block or two. “You think this is just a case of Emerson covering his ass?”

  Frank looked at him. “Or?”

/>   “Or something else?”

  You got it made,” Frank said.

  Monty sat on a nearby chair, giving Frank the look that said he wanted dinner, not conversation.

  Frank mixed a half-cup of shredded chicken with some pureed pumpkin and banana, and put the result in a bowl by Monty’s door. The big gray cat pondered whether to make the effort, then leaped, achieving a cushioned four-point landing on the floor. He sent a cool glance to Frank, then began working on his dinner.

  Frank turned to the refrigerator. He foraged listlessly through the freezer compartment. The sausage sandwich from lunch was still with him, dulling his appetite. Nothing in the emergency cache of Lean Cuisine appealed. Two beers would have worked. But you didn’t drink dinner. You ate at the end of a day, even a day as shitty as this one.

  Groping at the back of the freezer, he found a plastic container. He brushed the frost off and held it to the light. It came to him-the last of a batch of his father’s chili.

  He bounced the container in his palm. Nothing else came to mind. “What the hell,” he muttered, and started the microwave.

  Monty glanced up, then nosed back into his dinner.

  Frank watched the microwave timer on its countdown. A restless pulse hit him.

  Call Kate?

  He stopped his hand halfway to the phone.

  And we’ll talk about… what?

  His hand detoured to the TV remote on the counter.

  For a fractured moment, the story on Channel 9 rocked him back to another time: A helicopter crash in Vietnam-seven GIs killed? Not his war. Not this time. Days ago, not 1968. A few days ago, seven Americans died searching for remains of other Americans killed thirty-some years before. And so, in 2001, Americans continued to die in Vietnam.

  Channel 7 dissected a report that Michael Jordan would return to the NBA to play for the Washington Wizards.

  They used to be the Washington Bullets. Then D.C. earned the title of “America’s Murder Capital,” and sensitive souls changed the team name to Wizards, and they never had a season worth a damn after that.

  Frank flicked over to Channel 4. A file clip of Chief Noah Day’s face filled the screen. Then the camera switched to Jim Vance. Barely concealing a smile, Vance reported a congressional investigation into obscene e-mails being sent among DCMPD patrol cars.