The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  But it was the photographs of the two dead children, cut to pieces with a butcher knife, which removed any possibility that the absence of an eye-witness would affect the verdict. Some of the jurors, after a quick, reluctant glance at the first of the several pictures they were given, would not look at the others; two of the jurors broke down and cried. Bannister had told them at the beginning, warned them that they would be shown things no one should have to see, but there were no words in the language to prepare them for what they saw: the mangled, bloody remains of what had been two healthy, happy children, just starting out on what should have been long and happy lives, murdered in a way that went beyond all comprehension, the only thing to which their deaths could be compared the attack of a wild animal in a blood lust for food.

  “How long have you been a detective?” Alfonso asked the lead detective in the case. “How many years investigating homicides?” He did not wait for an answer. “And in all that time have you ever seen anything like this? – Anything even close to this?”

  Harlowe did not cross-exam the witness. There was nothing he could ask that would not make things worse. He could only sit back and watch the rest of the prosecution’s case unfold. Like the gun that had been used in the murder of the parents, the knife used in the killing of the children had been recovered. The blood on it matched the blood not just of the two children but that found on the defendant’s clothing. There had not been an eyewitness to the murders, but the prosecution did not need one, and everyone, including Michael Harlowe, knew it.

  Walter Bannister knew it, but he had known it before the jury had even been sworn; knew it, if the truth be told, the day Daniel Lee Atkinson had been brought under armed guard into his courtroom for arraignment on four different charges of capital murder. That did not mean that he knew Atkinson would be convicted – you could never be completely certain what a jury would do – but that Atkinson had done it, murdered four people, he never had a doubt. Harlowe had been right about that: Atkinson had the look, or rather the attitude, the scornful defiance, the hostility, the open contempt for the law and every form of authority, the complete absence of any sense of morality, any notion of right and wrong. He had seen it in the jeering grin that cut across Atkinson’s heavy twisted mouth when the first charge of murder was read from the indictment, as if that were not the half of what he had done and nothing close to the full measure of his achievement. It was inescapable, and Walter Bannister understood it immediately: Atkinson was proud of what he had done and more than willing to brag about it.

  While he followed closely the testimony of each witness, not only listening to what they said but observing with a practiced eye the way they said it, Bannister was also intensely interested in how the defendant reacted to the testimony given against him. There was seldom any reaction at all. Even when those dreadful photographs were being passed round the jury box, Atkinson continued to pick with his fingernail at a scab on his wrist. He was in this respect a typical sociopath, oblivious to the world around him, totally indifferent to what others thought. There was nothing to be learned that you could not find in a textbook on abnormal psychology or in a first year course in criminology. What could not be found in a book or learned in a lecture, what only someone like Daniel Lee Atkinson could teach, was what he had felt when the crime was being committed. Watching him now, it was hard to believe that he had felt anything, or could remember it if he had.

  Bannister followed everything said at the trial with total concentration, but it was only toward the end of the prosecution’s case, when there were just a few more witnesses to call, that he realized that something important had been missed. It was so obvious he wondered how he could have failed to notice; but more than his own failure, he wondered at the prosecutor’s. Hector Alfonso was a first rate trial lawyer. Bannister had to believe that he had not missed it at all, that he was holding it back, waiting until the last minute to add a touch of drama to a shocking revelation that would make what Daniel Lee Atkinson was said to have done even more barbaric than what everyone already believed.

  He waited, listening carefully, taking his usual meticulous shorthand notes, notes which he reviewed each night, expecting at any moment to hear Alfonso call attention to the connection of evidence that would show the real evil that had been done. But nothing happened, nothing was said, the case stayed on the same predictable course it had been on since the beginning. Bannister began to think he might be wrong, that the sequence of events had not been any different than what had been assumed. He went back through his notes, checking each known fact, not just once but several times. There was no mistake. The sequence had to have been what he thought it was; what happened that night could not have happened any other way. There had not been time.

  Two weeks after he called his first witness, Hector Alfonso was ready to call his last.

  “The prosecution has one more witness to call,” he announced at half past four on a Thursday afternoon.

  Bannister would not have minded having cases tried long into the evening, until midnight if it was necessary, but trials were a burden for juries and, except when they were in the jury room deliberating the verdict, he seldom had them stay late. Five o’clock, or a few minutes later if a witness was on the stand and there were only two or three more questions to be asked, and the gavel would come down and the jury sent home. Alfonso read his mind.

  “I imagine the testimony will take the better part of an hour, your Honor. And of course if Mr. Harlowe has questions….”

  Bannister searched Alfonso’s eyes for the answer to a question Alfonso did not understand. Was this the witness who was going to make the connection everyone had missed?

  “An hour, hour and a half, that’s my guess.” He glanced at the clock high on the wall opposite the jury box. “We could finish by six, if your Honor wishes.”

  “No, we’ll start again tomorrow. You can call your witness then.”

  The jury was excused with the usual admonition not to discuss the case among themselves or with others. Hector Alfonso gathered up his papers and got ready to leave. Harlowe waited while the two deputies without much sympathy helped the defendant to his feet, and then watched while they led him away, the rattling sound of steel chains echoing behind him as he left.

  Harlowe knew he was guilty and that he deserved whatever punishment the law allowed. What made it even worse, he could find no excuse for what Atkinson had done. Some people killed out of jealousy, or in a fit of rage; some killed because of some perceived advantage that would follow from the victim’s death; some killed for money, others for revenge. These were not excuses, but they at least provided an explanation, made intelligible, what had been done. It did not mean that you sympathized with the killer, this murderer you defended, but more often than the outside world would believe, it made it possible to feel a little sorry that this murderer you were representing had taken common human failings to their ultimate extreme. What they had done was abhorrent, inexcusable, but there was still the possibility that their soul might be redeemable. That was the reason, that and the small advantage it sometimes had with a jury, to pat the defendant on the shoulder or speak to him in tones of encouragement when a witness finished testifying. Daniel Lee Atkinson, however, was a different case altogether, a murderer who killed without any reason at all, who killed without excuse. Harlowe never touched Atkinson on the shoulder and never spoke to him in court. He ignored him, pretended he was not there.

  Atkinson did not seem to mind. Hour after hour, day after day, he sat slouched in his chair, his shackled ankles spread chain length apart, the heavy lids of his eyes hanging like a man half asleep, without noticeable interest in the proceedings that were almost certain to cost him his life. If his lawyer did not speak to him, he had nothing to say to his lawyer. Until today. The moment Bannister announced that the trial would resume tomorrow, Atkinson, suddenly alert, told Harlowe that he had to see him.

  “Now, today, right away, as soon as they take me back to m
y cell.”

  The harsh, grating quality of his voice sent a shudder down Harlowe’s spine. He had no choice; if his client wanted to see him he had to do it. But he did not have to do it when Atkinson said he did.

  “I’ll come by this evening.”

  As ignorant as anyone could be about the things most people think important, Atkinson had an instinct, not just for weakness, but for the ways it gets hidden. He looked at Harlowe with contempt. It made Harlowe furious, this knowledge that Atkinson had seen right through him, knew that the reason he would not come at once was so that Atkinson would know Harlowe was in charge.

  “All right, if it’s that important,” said Harlowe as he turned away and stuffed into his briefcase the yellow legal pad on which all day he had jotted down the things he wanted to remember.

  He did not go right away. He first wanted a cup of coffee, a chance to sit somewhere, quiet and alone, think over what had happened so far at trial, consider whether there was anything he had not done, any question he had not asked, anything he still might do before Hector Alfonso finally finished with the prosecution’s case. There was one day left. Not even that. One witness - that was all. An hour, maybe an hour and a half, and then the last chance gone: no more witnesses to cross-examine, no more testimony on which he might cast some doubt. One last witness for the prosecution, and he had none. Tomorrow, when Alfonso stood up to announce that the prosecution rests, when Judge Bannister turned to him and asked if the defense was ready to begin, he would stand straight as he could and in a voice filled with false confidence announce that ‘the defense rests, your Honor,’ and with those five words bring an end to the serious business of the trial.

  It was not unusual to offer nothing in the way of evidence, to call not even a single witness. Most of the people he represented had criminal records. Even in that rare circumstance in which they were actually innocent, the often lengthy and lamentable history of violent crimes and dishonest acts could be introduced in evidence if the defendant was put on the stand to testify in his own behalf. He had once had a client, convicted twice of murder, put on trial for a third, a man who insisted that while he had murdered before he had not done it again. No one on that jury much cared if he was telling the truth. Appalled that after two murder convictions he had for some reason been set free, they decided that, guilty or not, he had not been punished enough.

  Harlowe slowly sipped his coffee. Alone, the last customer in the courthouse cafeteria, he crossed one leg over the other and threw his left arm over the back of the wobble legged chair. He had unfastened the top button on his blue shirt and loosened his tie. He suddenly felt tired, exhausted, his face dirty and dry, the last thing he wanted to do a visit to the jail to hear what Daniel Lee Atkinson had suddenly decided to say. It would not be anything interesting, and probably a complaint, a last minute demand, now that the trial was almost over, that he finally do something, work some kind of magic, pull some slick lawyer’s trick, to save him from the death penalty he deserved.

  He finished his coffee, put the empty cup down on the gray plastic table and held it in both hands, trying to get himself ready for what he did not want to do. There was nothing for it, he had to go. Muttering an obscenity, he pushed back from the table and headed toward the jail.

  Atkinson was waiting for him in the same small dimly lit room in which they had met before. His short cropped head was bent down to the table, his wrists still shackled at his sides. He waited until the thick iron door slammed shut and Harlowe began to pull out the chair on the other side. Then, with a sudden, violent push backward with his feet, he shoved the chair around until he was sitting sideways to the table. His head jolted back and he looked down the jagged line of a broken nose at Harlowe who, not impressed, reached into his briefcase, pulled out the yellow legal pad filled, page after page, with his scrawl, and dropped it on the table in front of him.

  “There was something you wanted to tell me?”

  “You’re kind of an arrogant prick, aren’t you?” sneered Atkinson.

  Harlowe did not blink. “It’s a little late, but if you want another lawyer, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Atkinson shrugged with indifference. “I said you were an arrogant prick; I didn’t say you were a bad lawyer.”

  Harlowe shoved the legal pad to the side. He bent forward on his elbow, close enough to smell Atkinson’s stale rancid breath.

  “Let me tell you a secret. It doesn’t matter what kind of lawyer I am, good or bad, and it doesn’t really matter if I’m the arrogant prick you think I am. Clarence Darrow could not win this case. Tomorrow, when the prosecution calls its last witness, that’s it – it’s all over. There’s nothing I can do.”

  Atkinson studied him with a curious detachment, subjecting him, as it seemed, to a shrewd appraisal. It was a show of intelligence Harlow had not expected.

  “Nothing you can do,” said Atkinson, repeating the words with a skeptic’s certainty. He made it sound a secret that he had not yet decided to share.

  Harlowe leaned back, eager to get away from that corrosive smell, and spread his hands, inviting him to explain.

  “You can call a witness, the eyewitness you keep saying wasn’t there.”

  Harlowe almost came out of the chair. Atkinson was lying, making it up. There had not been any witness, at least no one left alive. And if there was a witness that would scarcely do Atkinson any good. Outraged that anyone would waste his time like this, he stood up.

  “Yeah, let’s do that: call someone who can testify that they saw you murder four people! That should help. Everyone likes an honest witness.”

  “A witness who will testify that I didn’t do it.”

  Harlowe’s mouth fell open. “A witness who will…?”

  “That’s right – a witness. Me.”

  “You…! Jesus Christ!” cried Harlowe, slapping his forehead. Suddenly, he started to laugh, and, laughing, dropped back onto the chair. As quickly as it had started, the laughing stopped. He fixed Atkinson with a hard, cold stare. “Now you listen to me. There is no way in hell you’re going to testify. You can’t take the stand and tell the truth! You murdered four people, for Christ sake! – You’re going to get up there and tell them how you did it? And you can’t take the stand and lie because I can’t call someone as a witness I know will commit perjury. You told me – remember? – the first time we met – Hell, you bragged about it! – the way you murdered them, the way you made them decide which one would die first, and then what you did. You can’t -”

  “I lied.”

  Caught off guard, Harlowe stared in disbelief.

  “You …what – lied? What do you mean?”

  “I lied when I said I did it. I didn’t do it. I tried to stop it.”

  The laughter came again, not the helpless, frustrated laughter of before, but angry and resolute.

  “Don’t try this with me. You think I’d believe something as stupid as that. You didn’t do it, and you only decided just now, the day before the last witness, to tell your lawyer about it!”

  “Believe it, don’t believe it – I don’t give a fuck. But I didn’t do it. There was someone else there, a guy I’ve done a few jobs with. We broke into a few houses together. The asshole was all strung out that night, hopped up like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Sure, makes perfect sense,” replied Harlowe. Crossing his arms over his chest, he studied Atkinson with a jaundiced eye. “Go ahead: tell me the rest of it.”

  Strangely, Atkinson did not look away, did not pause, the way most liars do, to get their story straight, remember to tell it exactly the way it had first been invented and then rehearsed. His eyes never lost contact.

  “It’s what I told you before: no one was supposed to be there; they were supposed to be gone. We got in through the window in the kitchen, did it real quiet. I went into the living room to get whatever electronic stuff there was. Jerry – that’s his name, the only name I knew him by – went upstairs to see if there was any jewelry. It was
n’t more than a few seconds after he went up there I heard those goddamn shots, two or three of them, maybe four. It was so damn loud that -”

  “There were four bullets fired,” Harlowe reminded him. “The trial, remember?”

  “I’m telling you what I thought I heard. I was so goddamn scared, I wasn’t counting. Soon as I heard it, I ran up there; hoped he’d just gone nuts and decided to shoot up the place. No one was supposed to be there, the place was supposed to be empty. So I get there, I’m at the bedroom door, and I see what he’s done: killed them two, blew them both away. But he isn’t there. Then I heard a kind of gurgling noise, something just down the hall, another bedroom, and I can’t see anything at first, it’s all dark inside. Then I saw all right, Jerry standing there, slashing with that knife of his, blood all over, some kid laying on the floor, the other one hanging limp, Jerry holding him up, his arm under the kid’s jaw, the kid’s throat slashed wide open. I grabbed the damn knife away from him, made him give me the gun. Hell, I thought he was going to kill me next, he was that strung out, more than I’ve ever seen anyone. I kicked him down the stairs, kicked him right out of the house. He disappeared somewhere, probably out the back – there were a lot of trees – and I ran like hell the other way. That was my mistake. I should have gone out the back, done what Jerry did.”

  It was, in an odd way, compelling, just insane enough to be true. But there was an obvious question and Harlowe asked it.

  “And there’s some reason you did not want to mention this before?”