by Tim Green
He probably could have eluded them for longer, but when he heard the dogs and saw the helicopters flying back and forth overhead, he realized he didn't stand a chance. Luther had turned himself in.
Luther's parched tongue shifted restlessly inside his mouth like a big cat in a small cage. He needed water. A small voice inside his head told him to give them what they wanted. Luther checked himself angrily, and bolstered his determination not to say anything without a lawyer. He now suspected that his first interview with Kratch had been a mistake. But, then, as the detective himself pointed out at the time, it would have looked very suspicious for Luther to clam up. Now, though, the situation had all changed. Luther was under arrest. The humiliation of being dragged from the swamp twisted his insides even now. Luther couldn't help fantasizing about the things he might have done if he'd kept running.
The door opened and Kratch stepped inside. Luther stared straight ahead. Kratch sat down in front of him and pulled something from his shirt pocket.
Luther's eyes came alive when he realized the chain dangling in front of his face belonged to Charlene. His heart raced.
"We found this in your car," Kratch said, and without expression he dropped it on the table in front of Luther.
Luther tried to swallow. His eyes began to mist over. He stared angrily at Kratch. Luther clenched his hands together and leaned forward, opening his mouth as if to speak. Kratch felt himself lean forward, too. Then Luther suddenly sat back and crossed his arms in front of his muscular chest.
"I want my lawyer," was all he said.
Many years ago, when he'd made the rank of investigator in the Criminal Intelligence Division of the police force, Chris Pelo moved his family from one of the Hispanic neighborhoods in the city out to the northern suburbs of Austin. Chris bought wholeheartedly into the American dream, and the suburbs were part of it. Chris liked to walk through the streets of his neighborhood late at night, when no one else was about. He took comfort in the way the dark maze of similarly constructed, similarly shaped homes rose around him like protective sentinels. Afterward, he'd stroll through the inside of his own house. Now, with four of their five kids gone, the four-bedroom house seemed spacious. Chris liked to assess what he had and remember at the same time where it was he'd come from: no money, a squalid shack in a bad part of town, the distinct smell of greasy tortillas and beans, a couple of scrawny laying hens pecking about in the small dirt plot out back, the broken seams of secondhand shoes, both his parents working as domestics in the homes of wealthy Texans in a manor on Town Lake.
Chris's family had been large, too, seven kids that survived their first year. Chris was thankful his parents lived to see what he had become, what he had. That was why they had worked so hard. They had worked themselves delirious so that the next generation of Pelos might have what they never could. This made Chris think about the generation to come. Each of his children would be college educated. One was already a lawyer. One was in medical school. In a way, it made Chris sad to think that his grandchildren would have little to strive for.
When he finished his rounds and turned off the computer his youngest son had left running in his bedroom, Chris undressed and slipped into a creaky old queen-sized bed next to his wife. She moaned softly and clung to him in her sleep. Her plump body warmed his back quickly.
Chris closed his eyes. It was midnight and he had to be up at five, but his mind couldn't seem to let go of the day's events. He thought about Luther Zorn and fretted over not having heard from him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Luther didn't have plans to use Madison as his lawyer. If he did use her, it would present many more opportunities for Chris. He could capitalize on the publicity to expand the agency to new clients. It would be the second time in almost a year that Madison had come to the aid of an NFL player involved in a murder trial. She would become a legend, and there wouldn't be a single player he couldn't get to based on Madison's reputation alone. And murder trials were Madison's forte. She could do what it was she lived for and help his cause at the same time. Maybe the whole thing was too much to hope for. Chris opened his eyes and looked at the clock. It was just past one.
The phone rang. It was Luther.
Chapter 22
It was late when Vivian came to the jail to get him out. He was relieved to see her, but he was still angry over her betrayal. She told him not to worry. They were both silent as they sped through the night in her black Ferrari. They were soon in her bedroom. A warm ocean breeze gently wafted the heavy gray curtains on the balcony. One of the French doors banged quietly against the wall. Vivian stepped into her closet, and reappeared wearing only a white negligee. She couldn't have looked more perfect. Luther reached out to touch her breasts through the silky material. She gripped his wrists and pulled him toward her, pushing herself against the hard muscular bands of his body. Vivian pulled them both toward the bed, undoing his pants as they moved slowly and deliberately.
She hiked the negligee up over her breasts and around her shoulders and wrapped her long lean legs around the small of Luther's back as she fell softly onto the bed. Luther clasped his hands around her long slender neck and tightened them as the two of them became one. Vivian struggled, and a wicked smile crossed her face. Her smile caused the furnace in Luther's soul to rage uncontrollably. He seemed to leave his body and everything turned red. His hands wrung her neck tighter and tighter, as he worked them back and forth against each other like a player trying to get a better grip on a baseball bat. A blast of wind blew through the open glass doors. Luther watched from above as his fingers sank into Vivians flesh, cutting off the blood to her brain. Her smile persisted; it was the smile of betrayal, of knowing that she had deceived him and mortally wounded him. Yet still she had the power to attract him. Luther bellowed with the effort of choking her, but his own sounds were drowned out by the deafening bang of the glass door against the bedroom wall.
It was a dream. Luther pulled himself free, springing from the narrow cot and finding himself mercifully awake in the confines of a dreary green cell. Someone was knocking on the door.
"Get dressed," came the rough voice of a guard through a vent in the Plexiglas window on the door. "Your lawyer is here."
Luther stood and quickly used the toilet. The speckled gray linoleum floor chilled his feet. He washed his hands. The tap water filled his nostrils with the smell of rotten eggs. Luther splashed some of it on his face before pulling on the top of the light blue prisoners uniform he had been given. The officer waited and watched. Luther had been given his own cell to keep him away from the other prisoners, as much for the sanctity of the jail as for Luthers safety. There were always a few pieces of garbage who would mess with someone of Luthers stature just to have something to talk about.
Luther noticed that a plastic tray had been pushed under the door. He picked up two cold stiff pancakes and jammed them into his mouth on his way out the door. It was the first thing he'd eaten since lunch yesterday He followed the guard down a long hallway that led to the conference rooms. These rooms weren't unlike the one Luther had seen the night before, except for the absence of the two-way mirrors. The room was empty when Luther sat down. A moment later the opposite door swung open and in walked Pat Rivet, the Marauders' general counsel.
Chapter 23
The long stakes were now down and the heads were gone. Emmit pulled up to the crime scene in his old brown Plymouth patrol car. The door lock was jammed and he had to reach inside the panel to jimmy it open. His fingers got greasy and he cursed silently to himself. His wife, Clara, had cured him of cursing out loud long ago. Emmit slapped the panel back in place and sheepishly looked around to make sure no one had seen him.
Emmit realized then for the first time how beautiful this spot really was. There were no other camps within sight. The cabin sat alone in a small cove; the only outlet to the big lake was between two fingers of land and rocks. Whatever happened here could certainly have happened without anyone ever seeing or hearing it. A thick patch of clouds
stacked up over the horizon. Emmit lifted his chin and drew a breath from the westerly breeze that promised rain. Right now, though, the sky overhead was blue and the sun shone warmly in the grass clearing in front of the cabin.
The state police had a large trailer tucked right up under the edge of some scratchy pines. It was the command post for the investigation, and although the major in charge promised him he could come and go as he pleased, already Emmit felt completely out of place. He had not only lost control over the investigation, he was being effectively frozen out of the loop. Earlier in the day, when he'd gone inside the trailer, everyone stopped talking. For his queries Emmit got dismissive one-word answers.
Major Irwin Slaughter, whose barracks were a few miles south in Belle Glade, had almost as little experience with homicide investigations as Emmit. What he did have, though, was the equipment and the people to conduct a large-scale investigation, exactly what was needed to cope with three severed heads whose teeth had been carefully extracted, making identification difficult and highly unlikely. This was the most excitement Slaughter had seen in his two years as head of the Belle Glade post, and he wasn't about to share it with Emmit.
Emmit, on the other hand, had contributed everything he knew. And, with little more than that information, Slaughter decided he had solved the crime. Caleb Voles was already in the jail at the state police barracks in Belle Glade. Slaughter was ebullient. Solving grisly murders proved to be rather easy. He was convinced that either Caleb, or someone he knew, had committed the crimes and that he could sweat the answers out of his prisoner. Emmit tried to convince the major otherwise, but Caleb's rap sheet worked against him.
Emmit was given the menial task of checking the county tax rolls to find out who owned the cabin. When he delivered that information, no one even said thanks. The major simply grunted. In Emmit's absence, the team had already determined that the cabin was clean. Nothing in it suggested any connection with the crimes. Also, they had discovered a fresh campsite in the patch of woods surrounding the clearing. The campsite was located in the midst of a stand of thin dark pine trees just beyond the poles. There was an open fireplace and a well-used army-issue tent. Whoever had used the site seemed to have burned any useful evidence, but investigators were scouring the ashes and the surrounding area looking for footprints, scraps of paper, cigarettes, something, anything, that would tie Caleb to the crime.
Emmit had asked Slaughter if, for the sake of being thorough, he should follow up by locating and questioning the owners of the cabin.
"Sure," the major told him. "A good thing for you to look into, just to be thorough."
Emmit didn't like the way the message was delivered. It could be the major was simply preoccupied, but he suspected he was just being rude. He looked like the rude sort. He was about fifty with bags that hung from his eyes. He wore yellow-tinted glasses that were big, even for the major's large face, which reminded Emmit of a shovel, long and fleshy without any real definition between the chin and the neck. The major's hair was dyed black. It was wavy, cut short on top and the sides, but longer in the back. He was a disagreeable-looking man and always had a Pall Mall pinched between his middle and forefingers.
Despite Emmit's feelings toward the major, he knew he had probably been lucky to get any assignment at all. So, rather than moping around, he'd looked into the cabin ownership. And now he was back at the scene of the crime, without anything of substance to report. A Tennessee corporation called Ibex owned the cabin and used it as a getaway for company officers. Except for the late spring, when most fish were in season, it went unused.
Ibex was a small financial services company located in Memphis. It wasn't hard for Emmit to get ahold of the company's president, a man named Kevin Pallidan. Strangely, Pallidan seemed only slightly concerned that a crime had been committed on Ibex property. The police search of the cabin didnt faze him either. Pallidan asked only whether everything had been returned to its place. Emmit supposed it wasn't unusual for a man like that to be so cool. As the head of a corporation, he probably had many more important things to consider.
In an attempt to get some kind of reaction from Pallidan, Emmit had finally offered some specific details of the killings. That at least seemed to affect him. Emmit wondered to himself now why he'd done it. Probably just to let him know that Emmit was not some hick cop with nothing better to do. Slaughter had warned him against giving out any details, though, and that's why Emmit kept thinking about it. The major was of the mind that when something bizarre like this was leaked to the press, the crazies came out of the floorboards. Also, Slaughter seemed to distrust the media. Of course, Pallidan wasn't the press.
Also, Emmit figured it differently anyway. The press, he believed, could help them get a lead on the identification of the victims, especially the girl. He knew that the major had had a teletype sent out to all the other police agencies across the state, but that only meant that a connection could be made if someone was actively looking for a person whose description matched the limited information the forensic people had been able to glean from the heads. Emmit knew that even in a police department of five hundred officers, usually there was only one assigned to missing persons. The connection might never be made. The media, however, with three severed heads, would have a field day and publish composite pictures of the victims. That seemed to be the best way to proceed to Emmit. Find out where the bodies came from, and try to link them through the killer. The problem was, Slaughter thought he already had the killer.
Emmit wished there was a way to get Slaughter off Caleb Voles. He wished he could lie and say that something wasn't right with Ibex. He knew Caleb didn't do it. Emmit wandered down to the water's edge to think. There was a dock and a nice little swimming area. The shore was sandy, and the shallow water sprouted silky aquatic grasses and lilies. Little waves lapped gently on the shore, and the sand underneath the water's sparkling surface was ridged like an endless mountain chain.
Emmit squatted down to clean the grease from his fingers in the shallow water. He dug deep into the soft sand. When he clenched his fingers, the index finger on his left hand struck something metal. It was small and smooth. Emmit dug deeper, pulling it free with his fingertip. He used the water to wash away the glop of sand that came with it. It was a man's ring. Emmit took it from the water and it sparkled in the sunlight. It was a nice piece of hardware, gold with a single half-carat diamond in its center. Emmit read the inscription.
For a second time, he looked around to see if anyone had seen him. There were still lab people milling around the campsite, but no one was paying him any attention. Emmit's find was a Marauders championship ring from three years ago, when the team had won the AFC title. Even though they eventually lost the Super Bowl, Floridians had been bursting with pride because the Marauders were underdogs throughout the play-offs. Emmit wondered if the ring could have some significance in the case.
It was nowhere near the campsite, so he felt it would be best to keep it to himself. It would be a good lead to follow up on his own. He could check it out on the sly, and, if the ring did turn into something, he'd go to Slaughter and look like a hero.
Emmit drew a deep breath before heading toward the trailer to give his banal report to the major. He looked the ring over as he walked, but slipped it into his pants pocket before mounting the aluminum steps to the police trailer. He wore a dumb smile on his face because he was a huge Marauders fan and considered it a lucky omen to have found it.
Chris Pelo made the plane reservations and purchased their tickets over the phone with his credit card. He picked Madison up at her house first thing in the morning and drove straight to the airport.
"How'd you know I'd do it?" Madison asked as they rode against the flow of the morning traffic.
"I figured that if youd defend Fears just because he was a client you helped with a DUI a few years ago, the loyalty issue would mean more to you than it would to most people, no matter how this thing looks for Luther," Chris said. "Then,
well, this is what you do, and I know how you like to have a couple paying customers from time to time as well. . ."
"What made you ask for so much?" Madison said, still surprised. "What made you think he'd go for it?"
When he called at one A. M. Chris informed Luther that Madison's nonrefundable retainer would be one hundred thousand dollars.
"It's twice what you normally require," Pelo said simply, "so I knew it would make it easier for you to say yes and I figured he wouldn't mind too much either. He knows you're the best. When you've got the kind of money Luther Zorn has and you're in jail, there's not much difference between fifty thousand dollars and a hundred thousand dollars. All you want to do is make sure you get out."
Madison nodded. She didn't want to make too big a deal about the money, but a hundred-thousand-dollar retainer would go a long way toward making this job less painful. She appreciated the way Chris put it, too, in terms of the good work she could do for free when she did some dirty work for the big dollars. Madison checked herself. She hadn't meant to think of representing Luther Zorn as dirty work. She had no idea what had really happened. Just because Luther made a mad dash through a swamp to elude the police didn't make him guilty of murder.
The flights to West Palm Beach were quick, and Madison and Chris made it to the Sheriff's Department by just a little after one in the afternoon.
"Hello," Madison said boldly to a big, sloppy-looking desk sergeant with a thick walrus mustache. "I'm Madison McCall. I represent Luther Zorn. He's being held here, and I need to see him."