by Joel Goldman
The next segment in the news broadcast was the interview with Marcellus’s neighbors, LaDonna Simpson, Tarla Hicks, and Latrell Kelly. Kate slowed the recording down when LaDonna Simpson appeared on the screen.
“Skip her,” I said. “And the next person, another woman. Go to the last guy interviewed. His name is Latrell Kelly. He lives directly behind Marcellus.”
“You seem awfully interested in him.”
“I should be. He gave me the dog. Play the interview straight through, then go back and break it down.”
Kate pushed the play button and Latrell began speaking, his slow, quiet voice now familiar. I mouthed the words as he said again “nobody takes care of a little boy, you see what happens.”
Kate gasped. “Unbelievable!”
“What? I didn’t see a thing.”
She rewound the tape, freezing it as Latrell finished speaking. In that instant, he looked straight into the camera. His placid, respectful, sorrowful face melted away, replaced by a vicious snarl a pit bull would have killed for. His lips were ?attened and pulled back, his teeth bared, his eyes trimmed to narrow slits, and his nostrils ?ared. His devil’s face vanished in the next frame.
We stared at him, neither of us saying a word. Kate rewound the segment once more, walking through it frame by frame. There were other micro expressions. I started to ask her what they meant, but she raised her hand, telling me to be quiet.
“Unbelievable,” she said for the second time when she finished her review. “Usually, I see ordinary expressions, the kind we associate with guilt or shame or pleasure. And I see a lot of anger and fear. But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“What’s he lying about?”
Kate sat back in her chair, her arms folded across her chest. “Oh, he’s not lying about anything. When he said nobody takes care of a little boy, you see what happens, he was absolutely telling the truth.”
“One of the murder victims was a little boy, Keyshon. Is that who Latrell was talking about?”
“I don’t think so. I think he was talking about himself.”
“So who didn’t take care of him?” I asked. “His parents?”
“Probably. He could have been abused or abandoned. Whatever it was, he’s carrying around a lot of rage.”
“Enough to kill five people, including a mother and her little boy, and then blow away another drug dealer two nights later?”
“What other drug dealer?”
“The gun used in the drug house murders was also used to blow away one of Marcellus’s competitors. A guy named Javy Ordonez.”
“If he was angry enough, but the mother and her little boy are the only ones who make any sense at all.”
“How?”
“There’s a lot of pain that goes with all that rage. People who hurt that bad sometimes kill themselves because that’s the only way they can stop the pain. Other times they kill someone they think caused their pain or someone they think is them, like a mother and a little boy that remind him too much of what happened to him.”
“Are you saying you think Latrell is the killer?”
“No. I’m just a jury consultant. I can tell you which version of the evidence the jury is more likely to believe or which juror is more likely to find for the plaintiff or the defendant. I can tell you the odds that a witness is a liar. But I can’t tell you if Latrell is a murderer, although there is one thing I can tell you for sure about him.”
“What’s that?”
She spread her palms ?at on the table. “Don’t piss him off.”
I nodded. “Good to know since he wants to talk to me.”
“You? How do you know that and why does he want to talk to you?”
I summarized my trips to Quindaro since the murders, my conversation with Latrell, and his phone call to Ammara asking for my number. Kate peppered me with questions about how Latrell looked, talked, and acted when I was with him, smiling when I told her that I had gone back to the neighborhood not just to find witnesses but that I was also following her instructions to get a dog.
Kate’s smile lit up her face, the room, and my heart. I would have freeze-framed it if only I knew what to do with it. She chuckled, watching me watch her.
“You’re so busy trying to figure everyone else out, you don’t hide much of yourself.”
“Actually, I’m a pretty good poker player but I’m not trying to bluff you.”
“At the risk of choking on trite metaphors,” she said, “you’ve got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Now what do you say we get back on task? Are you going to talk to Latrell?”
“I’ve got to.”
Kate studied me some more, nodding. “I see that. You can’t sit back and wait for something to happen even if Latrell had nothing to do with the murders and nothing to do with Wendy. You’ve got to find out for yourself.”
“I can’t hide that from you or anybody else.”
“So,” she said, clicking off her conclusions one finger at a time, “you’ll go tomorrow, when it’s light out and you’ve had some rest. And you’ll take someone with you. Maybe Ammara Iverson or that detective from Kansas City, Kansas.”
I stood and turned off the television.
“I’ll go tonight because I can’t sit around waiting for something to happen and I’ll go alone because if I show up with the FBI or the cops, he won’t talk to me.”
Kate stood, grabbing my wrist. “Then I’m going with you.”
“I don’t think so. You’re going home.”
“You said it yourself. You’re lousy at reading faces and you didn’t pick up on the micro expressions we just watched. You want to know if Latrell is telling the truth, you have to take me with you.”
“How do I explain to Latrell why I brought you along?”
She smiled again. “Tell him that I like dogs.”
“And if that doesn’t do it?”
“Then tell him that I’m your girlfriend.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck, pulled my lips to hers, and kissed me so hard I shook.
Chapter Forty-nine
Latrell knew that Jack Davis would come. He would knock on the door. Latrell would open it and let him in. Davis would walk past him into the living room. Maybe he would turn around and maybe he wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. Latrell didn’t care whether he shot Davis in the back or the front as long as he was dead when he hit the ?oor.
He held a .45 caliber Marine pistol in his right hand, the mate to the gun he’d used to kill Marcellus. Johnny McDonald had stolen the pair seventeen years ago, bragging to Latrell how he had taken them and the night-vision goggles off a gun dealer with his mother’s help, cackling as he described how she had distracted the dealer by showing him her titties, his Adam’s apple, big as a grapefruit, bobbing up and down his long neck as he told the story.
Latrell had looked at his mother. She was sprawled on the sofa, the same one that he was sitting on now while he waited for Jack Davis, her eyes closed, smiling that dreamy smile she got when she was high, her lips twitching, the only part of her knowing the high wouldn’t last.
Latrell had followed Johnny into the basement, Johnny asking him did he want to hold one of the guns. Yeah, Latrell told him, asking was it loaded, Johnny saying damn straight it was loaded. How do you shoot it, Latrell asked, Johnny telling him it’s simple kid, just pull the trigger. Like this? Latrell asked, and shot Johnny in his Adam’s apple, the target so big he couldn’t miss even if it was the first time he had shot anybody. Latrell buried Johnny in the basement, adding his mother’s body the next day after she came on to him, asking would he get her fixed up.
Latrell kept that gun in the cave and the mate in the bottom drawer of his dresser, never firing it, not even once to see that it worked. He wasn’t religious, but he saw the spare gun as his salvation, the way to make things right one last time. So he saved it, keeping it pure and clean, for the moment he would need it. He checked the magazine for the fifth time, making certain it
only held two bullets. That was all he would need.
He’d woken up that morning lying on the ?oor of the cave, hugging his knees to his chest so tightly that when he stretched out he had no feeling in his legs. Soon Latrell’s skin started to tingle, his muscles warmed, and he staggered to his feet, bracing himself with one hand against the cave wall, breathing in the moist cool air coming off the underground lake.
The last thing he remembered from the night before was how he had screamed when he discovered that Davis had been in his cave, had stolen his gun and his special things. Latrell didn’t remember his screams giving way to sobs or his sobs giving way to sleep, but he knew that’s what had happened because it had been that way so many times before.
The candles he had lit had all burned out and the batteries in his ?ashlight had died. The impenetrable darkness of the cave was broken only by shimmering ?ecks of green light that dotted the ?oor and walls, a mysterious glowing mineral that reminded him of the sparks he saw when he squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could.
Latrell was at ease in the blackness that made everything, including him, invisible. He knew the contours of the cave as well as he knew his own house and could easily navigate by touch and memory. Still groggy, he knelt at the edge of the lake, splashing the icy water on his face, then rocked back on his haunches, thinking about what he had to do and how he would do it.
He was convinced that Davis had followed him to the cave and waited until Latrell was gone so he could sneak inside, learn his secrets, and steal his gun and the picture of him and his mother that Johnny McDonald had taken in front of their house. He didn’t know what had made Davis suspect him, but he should have known something was up when Davis tried to play him with that bullshit story about losing his son.
Davis, he was certain, had given his gun to the FBI, who would figure out that it had been used to kill Marcellus, the Winston brothers, Jalise, and Keyshon. Davis would tell them how he’d followed Latrell to the cave and found the gun there and then they would come for him. He didn’t know how long these things took but guessed it would be today or tomorrow.
He thought about running but didn’t know where he would go or how he would live. He needed a place in the world, like his house and his job, and he needed a safe place away from the world, like the cave. Otherwise he would never survive.
From the instant Latrell had killed Johnny McDonald, he knew that it would eventually end like this no matter how many times he tried to make things right. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t asked for the life he’d had. He’d only wanted to be taken care of, and, when he wasn’t, he took care of himself the only way he knew how.
It had worked with Johnny and his mother, but it hadn’t worked with Marcellus. Latrell blamed Oleta Phillips. She had ruined his plan. That wasn’t his fault. It was more of the bad luck that clung to him.
He found his way through the two smaller rooms of the cave, crawled up the chute to the surface, and emerged in the woods. The sun was high overhead and breaking through the trees, the air humid and smelling like wet clay.
The day was half gone, his day just beginning. Latrell thought about walking through the woods, across the rail yard, into the terminal building, and sitting down at his desk as if it was an ordinary day, but he couldn’t think of a lie to tell that would explain why he was late, dirty, and still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
No one was waiting to arrest him when he got home. Latrell spent an hour in the shower, exhausting the hot water, letting the cold sting his skin until he was numb and clean.
Standing naked in his bedroom, he found the business card the FBI agent had given him. He ran his finger over the raised print that spelled Jack Davis’s name and turned the card over, reading the name of the other agent he was supposed to call if he remembered something about the night of the murders. Ammara Iverson. She was one of the agents who had talked to him that night.
He tensed, his shoulders knotting, and dialed her number. She answered. He told her his name, asking did she remember him, waiting for her reaction.
“Yes, Mr. Kelly. I remember. What can I do for you?”
She was polite but unexcited, not acting like he was a wanted man. His muscles eased and he loosened up.
“Agent name of Jack Davis come to see me the other night. He give me your phone number in case I remembered something about the night of the murders.”
“Well then, I’m glad you called,” she said. Her voice sharpened and he imagined her sitting up in her chair, like he was about to crack the case for her. “What did you remember?”
“That’s not why I’m calling you. I didn’t remember nothing because I didn’t see nothing, just like I told you and him.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Marcellus, he had a little dog. I took it in so it wouldn’t get hurt or nothing. Then I give it to Jack Davis, only I forgot to give him some toys I bought for the dog. I was hoping you could give me his phone number so I could tell him to come get the toys.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kelly. We’re not allowed to give out that information, but if you give me your number, I can pass it on to Agent Davis and he can get in touch with you if he wants the dog’s toys.”
“My number ain’t listed. I don’t give it out, either. You tell him I got something for him and if he wants it to come get it.”
Ammara said she would and he believed her. He started to dial the number for work to tell them that he was sick, but stopped, setting the phone down. It didn’t matter why he wasn’t at work because he was never going back.
Chapter Fifty
“I’ll drive,” Kate said.
“Why?”
“Because, in case you haven’t noticed, you’re shaking.”
I was. A few light tremors. Not constant, more like a quick shudder. “That’s from your kiss.”
She laughed, patted my cheek, and picked up her purse. “I’m ?attered, but I’m still driving.”
“I can drive.”
“I’m certain you can, but my presence will look more innocent if I’m driving. It makes the whole girlfriend thing more believable. And we should bring Ruby. That will show him we believe his story about the dog’s toys.”
“You’ve got this figured out.”
“It’s what I do.”
“I thought your job was to find jurors that are gullible enough to vote for your client.”
“Of course it is. But gullible isn’t as easy as it looks. There are a lot of ways to tell a story. My job is to frame it in the way most likely to convince the jury. You can knock on Latrell’s door by yourself doing your macho FBI thing and hope he spills his guts without trying to kill you.”
“Or?”
“Or, the three of us—you, me, and the dog—can make a social call that doesn’t scream ‘assume the position, dirt bag.’ “
“Nobody says ‘dirt bag’ anymore.”
“But you do say ‘assume the position.’ “
“Not on a first date.”
“Cute, but not cute enough,” Kate said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You’re not going to let me talk you out of this, are you?”
“No. You can leave me here but I’ll follow you. I may even call Troy Clark, tell him where you are going and that you need backup.”
We were standing less than a foot apart. Her shoulders were square and her face was tilted up at mine, her lips pressed together in a tight, determined line. I put my hands on her wrists, gently lowering her arms to her sides, pulled her closer, and returned her kiss.
“Okay,” I said. “You can drive, but I’ve got to get something from my car.”
A moment later, I slid into the front passenger seat of Kate’s BMW 730i. There was a laptop bag and a stack of journals in the backseat. Ruby was in the back with her front paws perched on the center console between Kate and me. She leaned over the dog, kissed me again, and ran her hand around my waist, stopping when she found the gun I had tucked into the back of my waistband. S
he pulled away.
“Good,” she said.
“Good?”
“In case you’re right and I’m wrong.”
***
The last traces of daylight had faded and the sky overhead in Quindaro was a dull black. Ground light had reduced the stars to patchy distant glimmers, the moon too low to make a difference.
Latrell’s house was in the middle of the block. The front door was bathed in a soft yellow glow from lamps fixed to the wall on either side. There was a double window to the left of the door, muted interior light leaking through a curtain.
The gang I’d seen playing basketball down the street from Marcellus’s house the other day were watching from a driveway across the street. They stood, forming a tight pack, the ringleader at the point, as we glided to a stop.
“Wait here,” I told Kate.
I stepped out of the car and waited until the ringleader was looking straight at me. We did the same silent dance we did before. He gave me the same slight nod, agreeing that neither of us was interested in the other’s business. I nodded in return as he motioned to the others and they ambled toward the corner.
Kate lowered the passenger window.
“What did you say to them?”
“Nothing, but it was the way I said it. Let’s go.”
She scooped Ruby into her arms and stepped ahead of me. I caught up to her at Latrell’s front door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Leading with our strengths, which are Ruby and me.”
Kate elbowed me in the ribs, pushing me outside the field of vision of the peephole in the center of the door. I stepped back, my right hand on the butt of my gun, as she rang the bell.
I’d been on this side of a suspect’s door many times, always with a partner or a SWAT team, never with the shakes. My rule was always to plan for every contingency, control everything I could, and trust my people and my training for everything else. That rule was out the window. I had no plan, no backup, and I had let a jury consultant and a dog take the lead. To make matters worse, I didn’t know whether I’d be shaken or stirred when Latrell opened the door. I took a breath and said a prayer.