by Tim Green
Chapter 49
Brinson walked in through the garage and took a cursory look around. Arnsbarger and Kelly were already there, leaning against the doorframe that led into the house.
"Want us to turn the place upside down?" Kelly asked.
"Again? No, just photo it up," Brinson said.
"Should we look around at all?" Arnsbarger said.
"Yeah," Brinson said. His detecdves stepped back so he could lead the way up into the house. "We can see if there's a note."
"Guy tied one on," Kelly said, looking over Brinson's shoulder at the mess of beer bottles on the broken coffee table.
Brinson snorted disdainfully and gobbled down a pistachio. He walked into the kitchen, looking casually around without messing the place up. Usually when someone checked themself out they left the note out in the open if they left one at all. Besides, his men would sniff around like hounds on a hare. They knew their business. Brinson walked back into the living room and let himself out through the open glass door. Out back the trees hissed in the wind. Brinson could smell the ocean--a nice way to live. If Brinson smelled anything in his own backyard it was the sour hint of the nearby landfill. And it seemed that once summer rolled around there was never enough breeze to do more than elicit an occasional tinkle from the wind chimes his wife had hanging from the eucalyptus tree.
It never surprised Brinson when he was investigating some sick crime in the home of someone who lived so well. No life could be that perfect. Something always had to give. Brinson knew that when people live as good as Clark Cromwell, something's got to give. More times than not they begin to think the rules no longer apply. They drive down the freeway in their big expensive vehicles and see a truckload of sweaty laborers or the masses of white-collar midlevel managers all struggling for a nut, and most of them just can't stop themselves from feeling a little superior. That's what Brinson figured happened with Clark Cromwell. The guy thought he was above it all, like he had a hotline to God.
Brinson couldn't keep himself from indulging in a smirk. The look on Cromwell's face that morning had been a slice of bliss. That shocked and horrified look was all about him realizing that he wasn't so high and mighty and that despite his holier-than- thou beliefs, he was going to pay the price for what he'd done-- just like the next guy.
Chapter 50
Clark had a dream about Annie. They were holding hands, walking down the beach, in love, but arguing about the name they would give their child. The argument turned bitter, then ferocious, then Annie began to hit him, tight litde fists to the face.
He woke with a start and had no idea where he was. He didn't feel well and he had the sense that something was wrong, although he didn't have the energy to lift himself from the bed to ask. There was a nurse standing over him, and then Madison's face appeared, then Tom's.
"Where am I?" he said. His words were garbled by the tubes that had been snaked up his nose.
Madison smiled nervously. "You're in the hospital, Clark."
"Clark," Tom said, his voice choking with emotion. "Clark, we love you. We're here for you, Clark. God forgives you."' *
"What do you mean? What do you mean, Tom?" Clark said, his words coming out slow and sluggish.
Tom reached out and put his hand on top of Clark's head as if he were a small boy. "I mean He forgives you," he whispered.
"I know," Clark said slowly. He raised his left arm and looked quizzically at the IV attachment. "But why am I here?"
There was a long silence. Madison looked at Tom.
"You . . . you fell asleep in your truck," Tom said. "You had carbon monoxide poisoning."
"No," Clark said, "I didn't. I wasn't in my truck. I was... I don't know where I was. I was home, wasn't I?"
"Do you remember this morning?" Madison asked. "Do you remember the police interview?"
"Yes," Clark said, his face darkening.
"Then you went home," she said.
"I had a few beers," Clark admitted. "It wasn't good at the police station."
"You were in your truck in the garage when I found you," Madison said.
Clark looked at her, then at Tom. Their faces showed more than concern. They showed pity, even fear.
"Oh no," he said, struggling to raise himself from the bed. "No. No, that's not what happened. I don't remember, but that's not what happened. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that!"
A doctor who was in the room stepped forward. "It's all right," he said, calmly putting his hands on Clark's shoulders and pushing him back down into the bed. "Everything's all right."
"No," Clark said, beginning to struggle feebly against him, "it's not! It's not all right! I didn't do that! I don't know what happened, but I didn't do that!"
"That's okay," the doctor said patiently. "No one's saying you did anything. Just lie back--"
"I won't!" Clark said, pushing the man's hands away and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Even groggy he was strong enough to overwhelm the doctor.
"No, don't do that," the doctor insisted. "Don't do that. You have to stay in bed."
Two attendants came through the door. They were strong, wiry men, bigger than the doctor. Clark looked to Madison and Tom. Neither said anything. They just stepped back out of the way, and that scared him more than anything. Clark ripped the oxygen tubes out of his nose just as the men grabbed him by-either arm. They were like pythons: The harder he fought against them, the tighter their grip became. The doctor turned away for a moment and then came back toward him with a needle.
"No!" Clark screamed. A jolt of adrenaline cut through his fog. He twisted one arm against the grip of one of the attendants and partly freed himself. He stiff-armed the little doctor, shooting him backward into some monitors and knocking over the oxygen tank.
"Hold him!" the doctor said, his formerly kind face now awash with hostility.
The attendants got him again. Still he struggled, and a menacing growl escaped him as he watched the doctor defiantly bare the needle and inject the drugs into the meat of his leg. He felt its sting and fought maniacally, gnashing his teeth and spitting locker-room invectives at the little bastard.
"You little fuck! I'll kill you, you little Juck!"
The Haldol hit him like a wave. Just swoosh, it washed over him, and suddenly nothing seemed to matter.
"I'm okay," he said slowly, relaxing his arms against the grip of the attendants. "No, iss all right. . . I'm okay . . ."
"What are you going to do?" Madison asked the doctor, who was pushing his glasses back into place.
"I'm transferring him to seven-B," he said, calmer now. "The psych unit."
"Oh," she said, glancing over at Tom. "Of course . . ."
"We'll do an evaluation," the doctor said.
"Of course."
A nurse poked her head in through the door and said to Madison, "Are you Ms. McCall?"
"Yes."
She looked from Clark, who was now lying passively in his bed, back to Madison and said, "The police are out here and they would like to speak with you."
Madison pressed her lips tightly together when she saw Brinson in the hall talking quietly with Chris.
"Lieutenant," she said coldly.
The enormous cop rotated toward her with a curt nod. "Ms. McCall."
"They're moving him to seven-B," she said. "For evaluation . . ."
Brinson nodded. "Have they got him sedated?"
"Yes."
"Good. When they're done with him, I'm going to arrest him and take him into custody."
"Is that necessary?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, "it is. I'm working right now on getting a judge to arraign him. I want him restrained and under a suicide watch. The last thing I want is for him to get out of it that way."
Madison looked at him with disgust.
"Not quite the Boy Scout we thought he was," Brinson said, not wanting to give in to Madison's stare.
"He's disturbed, Lieutenant," Madison hissed. "Who wouldn't be? But before you g
o casting aspersions, just remember who he is . . . one of the finest people in this community. All you have to do is ask."
"Fine on the outside," Brinson countered. "That doesn't always mean fine on the inside, Ms. McCall. This is L. A. This guy had an alcohol level of point one three and traces of a benzodiazepine, probably Valium, so he's not as lily-white as you and everyone else thinks."
"He's disturbed," she said. "Can't you leave it alone at that? You have to arrest him, Lieutenant?"
"That's the way it is, Ms. McCall. We're the police. We want to know what happened," he said. His fat face was droopy and bland. He cracked open a nut he'd pulled from his jacket pocket and, pointing it at Chris, said, "You can ask your partner here about that. He knows. He was a cop."
Madison turned away from him without speaking. "Come on, Chris," she said.
The two of them walked down the hospital corridor together but didn't speak until they were alone on the elevator.
"What'd he mean, 'they want to know'?" she asked Chris as the doors closed in front of them.
"He meant they want Clark to go to trial. They want to see him convicted of killing Annie Cassidy. They want to either win or lose," Chris said with an apologetic shrug. "In police work, a suicide is like a tie."
Madison thought about that until they walked through the hospital's doors into the midnight air. A tepid breeze coming in off the ocean was freshening the day's smog-stained air.
"Where are we now?" Chris said.
"I don't know," she said. "Where?"
"I guess we were wrong," he said, sadly shaking his head. "I guess maybe I believed him because he believed himself. . . It's that religious stuff, you know. He's so whacked-out on it that I think he really believes he wasn't responsible for killing her. You know, God using him to get back at the girl for killing his baby, like it wasn't him that was doing it. Like God was using him the way you use a puppet. I don't know. The whole thing is crazy. Obviously he's crazy . . ."
"My God," Madison said as they crossed the parking lot to their car, "to see him that way in there ... It was like he really didn't remember trying to kill himself."
"It's probably too painful," Chris said, getting into the car. When they were under way he asked, "So . . . you going to go with insanity on this?"
Madison shook her head. "I don't know. I'll see what the reports come back with. We'll get our own evaluation. It's getting tougher and tougher to get a jury to buy it."
"Is he insane?" Chris asked.
"I don't know," Madison said. "Is it crazy that someone could convince themselves they killed another person because God wanted them to? I guess it is, but murder is always crazy."
Chapter 51
Ike woke up swamped with guilt. He'd done it again. What Trane had said to him was true. His weakness was women. Chalk up one for the devil. He said a quick prayer asking for forgiveness and slipped quietly out of bed solas' not to wake the lovely brown-skinned girl next to him. As he drove to the practice facility the details of the night revisited his mind in dirty little snatches. Ike shivered and wondered how he could ever resist such temptations. He couldn't. He was a damned sinner.
Ike switched on the radio and found 102.9, the Christian station. He listened to a pop band sing about Jesus, electric guitars wailing.
"Naw," he said out loud. Church gospel was something he liked, but if they were going to try and put electric guitars with Jesus, he'd rather just listen to the real thing. He punched the tuner until he heard Snoop Doggy Dogg rapping about life on the streets. That's the way he pulled into the players' lot, with his car windows buzzing from the vibrations of the bass. When he shut off the engine the silence left an emptiness that immediately backfilled with guilt.
Inside, Ike's teammates were strangely subdued. It was as if the whole team had been out freaking last night and they were sharing Ike's shame. Since he was just a rookie, Ike didn't bother asking anyone what was up. He'd know soon enough, and if he asked, odds were he'd get a fabricated line of bullshit or some kind of sarcastic remark. He undressed in silence, scratching himself and feeling his stomach flop as the notion of disease settled into his brain. How did he know that girl didn't have AIDS or something? The itching persisted, and Ike checked the big clock on the wall to see if he had enough time to grab a quick shower. He didn't, so he pulled on a pair of shorts and fretted all the way to the training room, where he hopped up on a table so Jerry could tape his ankles.
Jerry looked like someone had shot his dog. Ike said nothing, but he worried that the trainer's absent way of wrapping his ankles might lead to a sprain. Again, he kept quiet because he was a rookie and a rookie had no place questioning the head trainer about his tape job.
When Jerry finally looked up from his work, Ike saw that the older man was misty-eyed.
'"Vbu're a Christian, aren't you?" Jerry said.
Ike nodded that he was.
"You make sure you say a prayer for our boy," Jerry said in an uncharacteristically emotional voice. "He needs our prayers."
The trainer slapped Ike's ankles, sending him off like a ship from the yard before beelining for his office in the back. Ike hopped down and looked around, wondering what in heaven's name Jerry was talking about. Ike didn't even know Jerry had a boy. Ike needed to find another rookie. He left the training room and scanned the lockers. It was five minutes before the hour and his teammates were beginning to hustle toward the first meeting of the day.
"Yo, Manny," he said quietly to a fat rookie noseguard hobbling past on crutches. "Wha's up?"
"With what?" Manny said.
"Man, everybody's acting like someone died," Ike whispered. "Did Jerry have a son died or somethin'?"
Manny looked at him stupidly. "Naw, man," he whispered. "Your boy Clark Cromwell tried to ice himself last night."
"Whaaa?" Ike said in disbelief. "When?"
Manny shrugged. "I don't know. Ten o'clock, that's what they said. But his lawyer found him and they brought the boy back to life."
"Ten o'clock?" Ike said.
"That's what someone said," Manny told him. "Man, we gotta go! We gonna be late an' get our asses fined."
Ike's guilt about last night slipped away. Suddenly the girl and his weakness seemed very small. Instead he sat through the day's meetings in a frightened daze. If what Manny said was true about the ten o'clock time, then Ike had a serious problem on his hands. Conrad Dobbins had been talking about Clark's suicide attempt around nine, an hour before it happened.
Chapter 52
Madison and Chris went to their office in L. A. Each of them had enough business to keep busy on the phone all day, but underneath it all was the waiting. They knew that by the end of the day Clark's mental evaluation would probably be done, and if Brinson held true to his word he would then be arraigned and confined in the county jail. As Clark's lawyer, Madison had to be present.
At ten she went outside to make a brief statement to the press, pointing out that nothing was conclusive. The fact that everyone knew Clark had tried to kill himself made it difficult, even for her, to maintain the pretense of his innocence. Presuming guilt in the wake of a suicide attempt was a natural reaction.
Neither Madison nor Chris bothered to watch her press conference on television. Chris went through the papers, but Madison didn't have the stomach even for that. She had put a personal moratorium on newspapers since the week before, when USA Today had slammed her for being a hired gun going from one defendant to another in the same murder case. Besides, she knew what they would do with the present circumstance. They'd twist it and sensationalize it. They would harass Clark's mother and his sister. They'd find old classmates and teammates who'd be will- ing to say Clark was always a little odd. In short, they would condemn him.
At five they headed for the hospital. As they stepped into the elevator on their way to 7B, someone shouted to hold the door.
"Madison, Chris," said an out-of-breath Tom Huntington as he slipped into the elevator. "Hello."
"Hi
, Tom. How's Clark?" Madison said.
Tom's face was flushed. He was either disturbed or excited or both. "We need to talk," he said under his breath, glancing furtively at the handful of other people who were also on the elevator.
They got out at the seventh floor, and Tom led Madison by the arm to an empty lounge area. He leaned forward and, still holding Madison's arm, said, "Clark didn't do it. He didn't do any of it."
Madison and Chris glanced at each other. "What do you mean?" Chris said skeptically.
"What I mean is this," Tom said, his eyes aglow. "This whole thing was a setup. Clark was framed. For the murder of Annie Cassidy, and for his suicide. That was no suicide. Clark wouldn't kill himself. I knew that. I doubted at first, but I prayed on it and I knew.
"No," Tom went on, waving his hand in the air, "I know what you're thinking, but it's not just that. Do you know Ike Webber? He's a backup runner on the team."
"Yes, we know him," Madison said.
"Well he's a Christian," Tom said. "He's been wayward. A good soul, but sort of lost. Clark brought him into our fold and I think he's close to recommitting himself to Jesus Christ, but he's not there yet. Anyway, his agent is Conrad Dobbins!"
Tom looked at them as if he expected some kind of response. "So," he continued, "Ike was at a party last night, a party for Trane held by Zeus Shoes, and Ike heard Dobbins talking about Clark's suicide. He was talking about sin and sinners and saying that Clark was no better than any of them, that suicide was a worse sin than the carousing they did."
"Suicide?" Madison said. "How did he know?"
"Exactly!" Tom said, gripping her even tighter. "It was just after nine when that happened. Ike remembered because Trane had told him to be there at eight and he remembered when Trane and Dobbins got there. Just after they got there, Dobbins was sitting with Ike and talking about Clark's suicide. He knew!"
"Because he was behind it?" Chris said.
"Exactly!" Tom said. "Clark wouldn't kill himself!"
"How?" Chris said. He looked from Tom, who had no answer, to Madison.