Outlaws

by Tim Green

  "I didn't hear an answer," he said finally.

  "That's because I didn't give one," she retorted.

  "I want a fucking answer!" he bellowed, rising from the bed and stepping up behind her in the mirror.

  'Tough shit, Cody," she snarled, turning to face him. "Now I'll tell you what you really want to know . . . Would you like that?" she taunted.

  "It's just as you've suspected for nine fucking years. It's what's haunted your dreams, your worst nightmare."

  Cody's stomach turned and contracted. He wanted to smash her face in. She stood there, almost naked, her chin held high. She was daring him, tempting him.

  Cody felt his hand instinctively tighten. It was like on the football field. It just happened. He bellowed with rage. There was no thought. He turned and swung his fist with all his might, he even bent his knees and coiled his hips like a natural puncher, giving the impact the full force of his entire body. As he spun, he sensed and saw the fear in her eyes. He had her attention. She knew what he was capable of. She thought he would never hit her, never have the balls to hurt her, but she had pushed him too far. In that instant before contact, he smiled inwardly at the idea of her fear. She had never been afraid of anything or anyone. It was time for a wake-up call.

  The sound was like a baseball bat hitting an unripe melon, more of a crack than a thud. Cody was lucky he missed the studding. His hand burst through the plasterboard and out the other side of the wall. The terror remained in Jenny's eyes.

  "I can kill you, too, you know," he heard himself saying. He wanted it to last.

  'You're sick," she mumbled, stepping away.

  Cody pulled his fist from the wall, sending chunks of Sheetrock and dust everywhere.

  "I know," he said, before he turned and walked out of the room. 'I'm sick of you."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  On Monday afternoon Madison and Marty sat down across a conference table from Van Rawlins. He had two men with him. One was Ben Cherrit, the office's main homicide prosecutor. Cherrit would sit second with Rawlins, who was trying this case himself. The other man sitting was Dale Kooch, who seemed to go everywhere Van Rawlins did these days. Also in the room was Detective Zimmer, who stood off to the side, holding a cup of coffee.

  Zimmer watched the rest of them like a patient bird of prey waiting to swoop. He wasn't completely happy with the way things were going. He wanted a murder weapon, but the search of Cody Grey's house had turned up nothing more than the .357. He needed time to find it. He sensed that Rawlins was rushing things. A murder investigation wasn't something you just slapped together in two days. Tilings needed time to unfold. When they did unfold, an investigator needed the latitude to follow up on new leads and information without feeling the pressure of time from an impending trial.

  Something else was bothering Zimmer. He had been to Board's office that morning and discovered that the file on Cody Grey was missing. It was obvious that Cody Grey would want the file destroyed, but how could he have eliminated all traces of Board's investigation? Board's boss had assured Zimmer that even if the computer version of the file was missing, a hard-copy backup should have been there in the agent's office. Yes, she'd told him, it was possible that Board would take the file home but only in one form. He would either take the hard copy and leave his laptop computer, or take the computer and leave the hard copy. He didn't need both, and there would be no reason to take them both home. Zimmer asked if it was possible that someone could have gotten into the office and taken the file. Board's boss had shrugged and told him that she supposed someone in the office could have taken it, but she knew of no reason why,- and as for someone stealing it, the building was secured at night, and no one came or went during the day unannounced.

  Zimmer found the computer in question at Board's home. There were very few prints they could lift from it, and they were all Board's own. A computer hack at the station had done a complete search of the hard drive. Nothing was on it. Nothing at all. The missing file and the empty computer, Zimmer knew, meant something. He just didn't know what. It didn't make sense that Cody Grey would think he could avoid an investigation simply by destroying a file. The search of his tax history could and would begin anew. For Zimmer, this fact left a gaping question. He had hoped that something in this meeting might help him find the answer.

  Because of the missing weapon, Madison was prepared for Rawlins to dig in and try to use delay tactics that would push the trial off long enough for the police to find it. Just as likely, Madison knew, the gun was at the bottom of the Colorado River. Still, she expected the D. A. would try to delay things as much as possible. But it was Rawlins who had called this pretrial meeting only two days after the murder, and she wasn't exactly sure what he had in mind.

  "I want to know everything you've got," Madison said to Rawlins. She didn't have to remind him not to leave anything out. He had tried to screw around with the disclosure of some evidence during a case about five years ago. It had been the last time. If Rawlins had evidence he was withholding, they both knew she would make sure Cody walked, no matter how bad things looked.

  Rawlins recounted for her essentially everything she'd already learned on Saturday from Zimmer. He added the fact that everything documenting the IRS investigation of Cody Grey was either destroyed or taken. Rawlins tried to claim that that only bolstered the theory of Cody's motive to kill Board and destroy the investigation. The missing files bothered Madison as well, and it made her think again about the .22. Certainly if Cody Grey did kill Board, he would know that files or no files, the IRS would continue its investigation of his unclaimed playing-card income. A jury, on the other hand, might not look at this bit of evidence the same way.

  The shoes had yet to turn up as well. Lab tests showed that the print was from the kind of turf shoe used by the Outlaws. Madison bet that the gun and the shoes were never going to turn up. The only other news that she hadn't heard yet was that the bartender at Chester's remembered Cody leaving the bar at about twelve-thirty. He had more than an hour to find Board and kill him. He had the motive. He had the means.

  When Rawlins had laid out his case, he said, "So what's your position?"

  He expected Madison to begin to try and strike a deal with him. He had the goods on her client. He told her he was going to ask the grand jury later that day for an indictment for murder in the first degree. He expected she'd try to bargain a murder two or even a voluntary manslaughter. He was looking forward to telling her that he intended to take this to trial with nothing less than a guilty plea to murder in the first.

  "My client has an alibi," Madison said after considering the situation. "You only have circumstantial evidence. You have no weapon. Turf shoes are found everywhere. Players discard them when they start to wear. On top of that, my client may have been impaired by alcohol when he made the threat. He left the bar, yes, at twelve-thirty. He returned to his home immediately afterward."

  "We both know the wife heard him coming in at 2:30," Rawlins scoffed. "And 1 wouldn't call an eyewitness circumstantial."

  "You won't get the wife to testify," Madison pointed out. "And you can't subpoena her, you know that. So you've got nothing with which to contradict my client's alibi."

  This was true, and Rawlins saw it as a possible weakness in his case, except for the fact that the jury might be smart enough to wonder why the defense didn't call the wife to the stand to substantiate the alibi. But he knew better than anyone that if you didn't serve it up for a jury on a silver platter, chances were they weren't going to get it.

  "By the way," Madison said, "your witness is seventy-eight years old. He wears glasses and it was late at night. Old people have very poor night vision."

  "He was under a damn spotlight," Rawlins said, amused with her tactics.

  Still, he saw where she was going. Without a weapon, the real battle in this case would be the suppression hearing for his witness. If she could knock the old man out, he didn't even have a valid arrest. Rawlins was confident in the
old man, though. He'd already met with him that morning and felt certain that the question of the old man's competence would at least have to go to a jury. Madison was simply posturing.

  "Let's cut the bullshit, Madison," Rawlins said. "1 want to set a trial date, and 1 want it by the last week of October. Is there anything you need that will keep that from happening?"

  Madison was blown away. Rawlins was rarely so forthright. The D. A.'s case was good if the witness held up, but prudence should tell him to wait and hope for the gun or the shoes to turn up. Going to trial as things were was a great temptation to her. She knew she could out-prepare Rawlins. He was a crafty trial lawyer, good on his feet, but she was smarter than he was,- and when it came to preparation, where brains were everything, she had him. She doubted even Rawlins would dispute that. A fast trial would give her the advantage. That was why she hesitated. Why was he doing this? There had to be a reason.

  The answer came to her as soon as she asked the question. Rawlins didn't care so much about a conviction as he did a trial. The publicity would be just what he needed to win the election in November. He wanted this thing to go down the week before the election. The name Van Rawlins would be on everyone's mind and almost assure his victory. Madison didn't need more than a minute to realize she had to take the early trial. She might help get Rawlins reelected, but her sworn duty was to Cody Grey, and a rushed trial might just be the best chance he was going to have of being acquitted. With Cody's past and the evidence at hand, despite its being circumstantial, she was going to need every advantage she could get. She already knew Cody would be more than pleased, and she really didn't blame him. Strategy aside, she would hate to have a trial hanging over her head, especially if he was innocent.

  "I want a suppression hearing on the eyewitness before 1 commit to anything," she said. "If he doesn't make it, this thing isn't going to trial."

  "I'll give you a hearing in forty-eight hours," Rawlins said.

  Madison raised her eyebrows. She liked that too,- it would give the D A. next to no time to prepare the old man.

  "I'll take it," she said. Rawlins remained stone-faced, but Dale Kooch, she saw, couldn't help but smile.

  As Van Rawlins's luck would have it, the judge who drew the case of People vs. Cody Grey was Walter Connack. Walter had never seen a prosecutor try to move something through the system with such speed. At first Connack balked. An immediate suppression hearing was one thing, but a full-blown murder trial in less than two months' time, when the docket was already full, was quite another. The judiciary was not a tool to be wielded in the political campaign of some ambitious lawyer. Those were his exact words to Van Rawlins.

  Rawlins, however, reminded the judge that he, too, was an elected official and that the constituents of Travis County would not look kindly on a judge who had abused his power to dig up the rotting body of an Hispanic murder victim, against the vehement wishes of the deceased's family. Rawlins had found out about the exhumation from the mayor's office, where a barrage of irate calls were received from leaders throughout the Hispanic community.

  "I'm prepared to do one of two things," Rawlins told the judge as they spoke in his chambers on Tuesday morning, before court went into session for the suppression hearing. "One, you don't give me the early trial and win, lose, or draw in the election, I'll see that a full-scale judicial investigation is launched against you. I'll make sure the woman who did the digging is suspended without pay and investigated. And I'll file a complaint against Madison McCall with the Texas Bar Association. The second option is that you give me my trial before the election, and I tell the mayor to go smoke a pipe because what you all did was completely within the confines of the law the way I interpret it. And you know damn well the mayor doesn't know the law from his leg, and he'll do whatever the hell I say on this. So the decision is yours."

  Walter swallowed his pride and went with the program. He told himself that it was worth it if it saved the life of an innocent boy. Besides, an early trial did not compromise him, or the law, or anyone, in any way. It was merely a pain in the ass.

  By the middle of October, things for Cody Grey seemed almost normal, except for his marriage. After the first days of constant media attention, the talk started to die down. He knew, however, that the reprieve from controversy and attention would evaporate as soon as the trial began. Walter Connack, the judge for the case, had set the trial date for the last Monday of October. This suited everyone, including Cody.

  Madison told him that the case was going to be fairly straightforward and, barring any surprises, the trial could be over in four or five days. They could complete it during the week, and Cody would either be exonerated and play in the next game without an interruption in the football season, or he'd be in jail, probably for the rest of his life. Cody never had any doubts that he would be set free. He was innocent, and when he took the stand, the jury would see that. They had to. It was just not possible for him to think that twelve people could convict an innocent man. He knew the horror stories, but they involved the people who didn't have the means for a good lawyer. He had the best.

  His marriage with Jenny was now over. She stayed on at the house, living exclusively in the guest room. The only reason she stayed at all was because Striker insisted. If the agency began to think Jenny was anything more than his sometime mistress, they might start to follow her as well.

  On the rare occasions Cody and Jenny did run into each other, neither spoke. Cody stopped putting his paychecks into their joint account. He knew he was going to need all he could save. Marty had sheepishly explained to him that Madison's fee for the trial would be fifty thousand dollars. It was one time when Cody didn't want to try to cut comers and save. He knew a good lawyer was like a good doctor. She could save your life.

  If Jenny was upset about his cutting her off from the income, she didn't show it. Cody supposed that once the trial and the season were over that he would look into getting a divorce. That was if Jenny didn't do something about it first. He had the suspicion that she would. He would welcome it. It would be much easier to simply stand back and watch her tear the whole thing down.

  He realized that his relationship with Jenny had been infested like a house with termites from the very start. They had both let things deteriorate. When Cody was finally forced to pull the wall boards away to inspect the damage, he found that everything had essentially been destroyed. The whole thing would have to be torn down and abandoned. He would have to start his life over, building something new from scratch. It was a wearying prospect that saddened him. No matter how bad things with Jenny had become, Cody had grown used to living with her. It was the same kind of comfort that came from living in a house for years and years. Termites or not, it was still the only home he knew.

  Madison worked diligently on Cody's case. She developed her trial plan and orchestrated the depositions of witnesses while she closely monitored the continuing investigation of the case. She had little time to take care of her other legal business, and she had to work overtime to try and clear her calendar for the upcoming trial. One thing she didn't neglect was to make the necessary motions to delay the trial of Yusef Williams. She didn't mind that. The delay was necessary anyway. She had enlisted the help of one of her firm's private investigators to try and find the man in black. Yusef would stand a much better chance if they could identify the mystery man, find the .22 pistol, and link them both to the boys who were killed. Because the investigator was working for free and doing the work on his own time, he warned Madison that he would probably need several months to come up with anything at all.

  Occasionally, when she was thinking about Yusef's case, it occurred to her that Cody fit the description of the man Yusef said had killed his friends that night. Madison pushed this idea from her mind. She knew Cody Grey wasn't the man who had killed Yusefs friends, but there was the issue of the .22. She was obliged to show Yusef a picture of Cody and ask him if he was the man in black. No, was the answer.

  She
almost asked Alice to compare the ballistics from the Williams and Board murders, but she decided not to. Alice, she knew, was busy enough, and Madison didn't really want to pursue the idea anyway. It would be an unnecessary complication. To link the cases now would do more damage to Cody than anything. She certainly couldn't expect one jury to be swayed by the fact that a murder suspect in another case swore that Cody wasn't his mystery man. Even if the bullets matched, Yusef's murder case took place months ago, and anything could have happened to the gun in the meantime. It could easily have been pawned, then sold and reused by Cody months later. Rawlins would be sure to point that out. She had too many other things to think about and do without running down blind alleys. She needed something more.

  Along with all her lawyering, Madison was forced to continue to deal with Joe and his attorney. She was slowly and subtly trying to poison her son's mind against the father she now believed would ultimately disappoint and maybe even hurt him. She felt ruthless and manipulative using psychological tactics that she usually reserved for the courtroom on her own eight-year-old son, but she was convinced that she had only Jo-Jo's best interest at heart. Iris DuBose gave Big Joe nothing more than a hand-slap for his unauthorized icecream visits with Jo-Jo. Madison had been infuriated, but with Glen Westman's help she was quickly coming to accept that there was nothing to be done about Iris until the whole thing was over. It wouldn't be until the appeal that Madison would get a chance to drag the female judge over some hot legal coals. So far, Madison had to put up with only two of Joe's temporary authorized Saturday visits. Her ex-husband had picked Jo-Jo up in the morning and returned him both times in the evening without incident.

  Madison had Glen Westman digging in his heels, within the law, every step of the way to try and inflate the cost of the litigation as much as possible. She still hoped to force Joe into a settlement. She had Westman candidly tell Joe's attorney, Paul Gleason, to expect that Joe would run out on a big legal bill that didn't put any cash in his pocket up front. That knowledge, if Gleason believed it, would make the attorney work all the harder to push Joe to settle.