Night on Fire

by Douglas Corleone

  “Why are you wearing a suit today?” Josh asks me as I write out a check for this past November’s office rent. Since my accident, cash has been pouring from our accounts like rain from the sky, with very little of it being replenished.

  “I finished selecting a jury today,” I tell him.

  “For that lady who started the fire?”

  I take a deep breath and answer without looking at him. “That hasn’t been proven yet.”

  “That fire killed my grandma, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you must think this lady didn’t do it,” he says.

  I speak so softly I barely recognize my own voice. “That’s not something I get to decide, remember?”

  “The jury does?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How do they know who’s wrong and who’s right?”

  I lift my head and peer into the boy’s big brown eyes, wondering how they’ve managed to remain so innocent these past six months. “Well, as I told you, the jury listens to the arguments of the lawyers for each side and hears the testimony of whichever witnesses each lawyer calls.”

  “What’s test-money?”

  “Testimony. We’ve talked about this. Remember, Josh?”

  “Tell me again.”

  I scribble my name at the bottom of the check, then toss the dry blue pen into the wastebasket. “Testimony is the substance of what each witness says.”

  “Like I’m a witness, right?”

  “Technically, yes.” Josh was with me when I was preparing the witness list for the defense, and although he’ll never testify I added his name to the witness list to hear him giggle. Fact is, I put half the population of Oahu on the witness list in an effort to divert Maddox’s attention from the witnesses I actually intend to call.

  “What is the witness s’posed to say?”

  “Each witness is sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “But what if a witness lies?”

  I tear the check from the Harper & Corvelli operating account and stuff it into a cheap self-sealing envelope. “Then the judge gives the witness the spanking of his or her life.”

  Josh’s eyes go wide just as the intercom buzzes and Hoshi’s voice fills my office.

  “Chelsea Leffler to see you, Kevin.”

  “Thanks, Hoshi. Seat her in the conference room. I’ll be right there.”

  I stand, wincing in pain. Considering the extensive damage done to the Maserati, my injuries from the accident weren’t all that severe. A concussion, of course. A fractured finger on my left hand. And a dislocated knee cap on my right leg. I had been mending rather swiftly through the fall, through my thirty-third birthday in December, right through Christmas, in fact.

  And then it started to rain.

  And rain.

  And rain.

  And rain.

  Typically, the island of Oahu doesn’t receive all that much precipitation, at least not on the leeward side. When it does rain, areas like Waikiki and Ko Olina are spared. The mountains and windward side of the island are frequently hit with brief torrential downpours, but the only effect the precipitation has on town is the appearance of thick bright rainbows that seem to stretch from Kahuku to Koko Head. The past week proved one hell of an exception. Normally, you can escape a downpour simply by driving from one part of the island to another. But inexplicably, dark gray storm clouds now seem to hover above me wherever I turn my Jeep. Needless to say, the wet weather is pure hell on my knee.

  I tell Josh to wait and proceed slowly down the hall, favoring my right leg. As I pass the local oil painting of the Mokulua Islands, I finally pause to read the signature at the bottom. “Ah, Sandy,” I mumble to myself. “Of course, Sandy.”

  Chelsea, a hulk of a woman caked heavily in cheap makeup, wears a brightly colored muumuu and a matching smile. She stands when I enter the conference room and somehow manages to shake my hand without my offering it.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Corvelli.”

  “Kevin. Call me Kevin.” I amble around the conference table and pull out a chair.

  “Are you injured?” she asks.

  I briefly describe for the thirty-ninth time the incident of late July. Five months into the investigation there are still no suspects, no leads. Someone, we know, unscrewed the brake lines so that the brake fluid leaked slowly onto the pavement as I made my way to H-3. The emergency brake was intentionally disengaged. The Maserati was of course dusted for prints and in addition to mine, Josh’s, and Kerry’s, one additional set of unknowns was recovered. Everyone at the car rental agency and King Kam Auto offered samples and were excluded, so whoever owns those prints is most likely the perp, a person who would be arrested and charged with attempted murder if only he or she could be identified.

  After being released from the Queen’s Medical Center during the second week of August, Flan and I covertly collected prints from every suspect in the Simms case who remained on the island. We came up blank. The prints didn’t match Isaac Cassel’s or either of Erin’s parents. Tara Holland came up clean. As did Javier Vargas, who, we’ve learned, happens to be a recent transplant to Hawaii and a member of California’s 16th Street gang. The mystery of the Maserati thus remains unsolved.

  “Will you be taking Josh to Maui?” I ask Chelsea.

  “No, I rented an apartment in Waikele for the time being. I’m going to have a talk with Josh’s father and we’ll take it from there.”

  The intercom buzzes again. Hoshi says: “Kevin, you have a call on line three.”

  “Take a message, please.”

  “Kevin, it’s Turi calling from jail.”

  My stomach sinks. Turi’s doing ninety days at Halawa on that last drug bust in July. Ninety days because Heather Raffa wouldn’t extend me an inch of professional courtesy. Not an inch because everyone knows Luke Maddox is an up-and-comer, a future head prosecutor, and Luke Maddox, for some reason, wants my head on a stick.

  “Give me just a second,” I say to Chelsea.

  I pick up the phone and punch line three. “Turi,” I say, “it’s a bad time right now. Can you call my cell phone around six o’clock?”

  “Sure, Mistah C. But I t’ink you wanna hear dis right now.”

  I swivel my chair so that I’m no longer facing Chelsea. “What is it, Turi?”

  “I finally found you your firebug.”

  I press the receiver tight against my right ear and watch the hard rain attempt to smash through the conference room windows. “Seriously?”

  “Serious as shit, Mistah C. Your pyro is sitting in the cell right next to me.”

  CHAPTER 43

  “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, my name is Luke Maddox. And I’m going to cut to the chase.”

  With these words an icy tremor travels north along my spine. There is nothing in this universe more dangerous than a succinct lawyer. I should know; in the courtroom, I’m as succinct as they come.

  “The defendant Erin Simms is guilty of the crimes of arson and first degree murder and here’s why. Here is what the evidence will show.”

  I lean back in my chair with a silenced sigh. An attorney possessed of the rare ability to state his opening concisely is like a fine storyteller. By being economical with his words, summarizing only the most basic and necessary evidence, Maddox will be able to magnify his intensity without confusing the jury with redundant or useless information. Like hammering in a nail without splintering the wood.

  “The defendant Erin Simms was betrayed,” Maddox exclaims as he marches in front of the jury box like Braveheart before a battle. “Betrayed by the man she loved, the man she was about to marry. And the defendant learned of this betrayal just moments before her wedding ceremony here on the island of Oahu.”

  As Maddox takes the jury on a journey through Motive City, my mind slips back to yesterday’s telephone conversation with Turi. Prisons offer prosecutors and defense attorneys alike one of the greatest opportunities to obtain
information on open cases. Snitches, opportunists, A-1 nutballs, they all like to talk, but for most, truth isn’t high on the list of topics they’d care to discuss. But this inmate Turi discovered at Halawa seems to have as much information about the Kupulupulu Beach Resort fire as I do. And I suspect that only the arsonist himself knows more about this case than the lawyers who are about to try it.

  “During this trial, ladies and gentlemen,” Maddox continues, “you will hear testimony from members of the defendant’s wedding party who will describe in great detail how furious the defendant became upon hearing the news that her fiancé, her soon-to-be husband, had been unfaithful to her, had in fact had sexual relations with one of the defendant’s very best friends, one of her bridesmaids, Mia Landow, a mere two weeks before the wedding.

  “Now, no one in this courtroom can fault the defendant for being angry, no. Who wouldn’t be angry? Who wouldn’t be livid after learning of such a betrayal—and on her wedding day, no less? But what the defendant did later that evening is criminal and inexcusable.

  “What did she do? She committed murder. The defendant murdered her new husband Trevor Simms in cold blood. Stabbed him in the stomach with a four-inch switchblade and allowed him to bleed out right there on the king-size bed in their honeymoon suite.

  “But, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that’s not all the defendant did. To cover up the heinous deed she had done, to conceal her horrible crime, the defendant then set fire to their honeymoon suite, a fire that rapidly spread through the entire sixteenth floor of the Liholiho Tower, taking the lives of ten other people. Ten innocent guests of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort, two of whom were children.”

  Maddox solemnly lists their names without notes. For the younger victims, he follows their names with their ages.

  Next to me Erin shivers and I turn and whisper in her ear, remind her to mind her body language. I haven’t yet told Erin about the inmate at Halawa and I don’t intend to. Not until I know for certain that this inmate holds information that can be used to exonerate her.

  “Now the defense is going to contest that it was the defendant Erin Simms who stabbed her husband. My adversary, Mr. Kevin Corvelli, is going to contest that it was the defendant Erin Simms who set fire to the Liholiho Tower of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort on that hot night this past July. The defense will contest these facts, because…” With a humorless smile, Maddox shrugs his broad shoulders and holds out the palms of his hands. “Because what else are they going to do?

  “But you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, will not be swayed, will not be fooled. Because you will hear evidence during this trial that will convince you beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant Erin Simms stabbed her husband in the gut and watched him bleed out, then set fire to the tower to conceal her crime.”

  Maddox allows for a dramatic pause, a hush that undoubtedly touches each of the jurors in the belly, before moving on to the evidence he is about to present.

  “You will hear testimony from the defendant’s friend Mia Landow,” he says, “of death threats the defendant made earlier in the day against her then-fiancé, who had betrayed her.

  “You will hear testimony from Izzy Dufu, assistant chief of resort security, who was called to the defendant’s room twice because of heated arguments between the couple earlier that night.

  “You will hear the testimony of Dr. Derek Noonan, this county’s chief medical examiner, as to how each of the defendant’s victims, including her husband Trevor Simms, died.

  “You will hear testimony from veteran fire investigator Inez Rios, who will explain as precisely as possible how the fire started and how it spread.

  “You will learn from Honolulu homicide detective John Tatupu all about the department’s murder investigation and the eventful arrest of the defendant Erin Simms.

  “Finally, you will hear the testimony of Trevor Simms’s sister Lauren Simms, who observed a Pteroco Legend switchblade in the defendant’s possession just hours before Trevor was murdered.

  “And you will see physical evidence, ladies and gentlemen. You will see the Zippo lighter—engraved with the initials ED for Erin Downey—that the defendant used to set the fire.

  “You will see remnants of the canisters that held the charcoal starter fluid that the defendant used as an accelerant so that the fire would take and quickly spread.

  “You will see photographs of the suite where the defendant began this massacre, the fire’s point of origin marked by a distinctive burn pattern in the shape of the letter V.

  “And you will see—though I will try to spare you as much of the macabre as possible—images of the eleven dead. All that remains of the defendant’s victims.”

  Maddox swallows hard, stares up into the courtroom’s fluorescent lights until it looks as though he’s properly suffering from his own words and thoughts. He turns slightly away from the jury and pokes a pinky finger into the corner of his left eye, before spinning back around, a tear surfing the curve of his cheek.

  “Excuse me,” he says, his words barely audible. Quickly Maddox straightens himself, stands tall and bold as an intrepid prosecutor should, and looks each of his jurors in the eye.

  Then, like a practiced thespian, he tenderly strikes a clenched fist into an open palm and shakes the pair to symbolize his solidarity with the twelve men and women in the box. “You and I,” Maddox tells the jury, “are here in this courtroom today for the very same, simple reason. To see that justice is done.”

  When Maddox finishes with his opening statement less than an hour later, I’m already drained. Every last drip of confidence I stepped into the courtroom with this morning has evaporated, and I fear that it shows on my face.

  I’m an empty shell of an advocate.

  No longer sanguine but fatalistic.

  I am, in every respect, outgunned.

  Unless Turi’s man at Halawa can be placed at the Kupulupulu Beach Resort at twenty after two on the night of the fire, there’s a damn good chance I’m going to lose this case.

  CHAPTER 44

  He has the reddest hair I’ve ever seen, so red that it can’t be real. But then, what the hell do I know? The red jungle of tresses hasn’t been cut or cleaned in some time, that much I’m sure of. His face is so white that it blends in with the institutional walls. Eyes so pale blue that the irises are nearly transparent. He’s slight; still, there’s danger in those skeletal hands with or without a weapon. True madness makes up for a good deal of brawn. For once I’m glad that a sheet of protective glass separates me from the prisoner. This is because Corwin Pierce is not my client. I’m simply a visitor visiting during visitors’ hours on visitors’ day.

  Corwin Pierce stares at me. Studies me and smiles. Smiles as though he’s about to let me in on the greatest secret the world’s ever known.

  I’ve already sanitized the scratched-up black phone. Still, I hesitate putting the receiver to my ear. I hold it just close enough so that I can hear him.

  “Turi says you’re a lawyer.”

  The voice is strange, doesn’t remotely match the face. It’s as if his words are emanating from some bizarre far-off place. There’s a disconnect, an odd time delay as though the audio and video are running on separate tracks. I shake off the eeriness and lift the receiver in front of my mouth to speak.

  “That’s right,” I say softly. “And Turi tells me—”

  “You’re the lawyer I seen on the TV.” His is a sleepy voice. Quiet, shy, almost as soft as a young woman’s. Yet, originating from that face the slightest utterance becomes intimidating.

  I nod. “You watch a lot of television, Corwin?”

  He giggles. “Only the news and nature programs. Sometimes, if no one’s home, the naked channel.”

  I lean forward, keep my own voice low and steady. “Who do you live with?”

  “Who do you think I live with?” More sniggering.

  “I don’t know.”

  His gaze follows something behind me but I don’t turn around. “I
lived with my father’s mother till they put her in a home.”

  “So now you live alone?”

  He looks at me as though I’m hurling insults at him. “I didn’t say that.” Suddenly, he covers his mouth with his free hand as though to control his own laughter. When he recovers, he says: “That’s not what you came here to talk about, is it, though?”

  “No.”

  “You came to hear my poetry.”

  Before I can respond he’s reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a wrinkled piece of lined paper folded four times over. He opens it slowly as though he’s about to announce the Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Finally he presses the page up against the glass. My eyes reluctantly follow the words as he recites them from memory.

  if i were a god,

  god help you all.

  the world would witness why.

  i’d drown the fish,

  fell the trees,

  cut man down to size.

  i’d clip birds’ wings

  and damn all good things,

  while i laughed at their demise.

  if i were a god,

  god help you all.

  the world would catch ablaze.

  i’d douse this sphere

  in gasoline,

  end this planet’s days.

  i’d strike a wooden match,

  warm my ice cold hands.

  i’d toast my bread

  and clear my head,

  while my new sun

  sung my praise.

  “You wrote that?” I say quietly.

  “Well, who in Hell do you think wrote it, Corvelli?”

  The voice accompanying his outburst is decidedly masculine. A guard looks over, first at Corwin, then through the looking glass at me. I bow my head as if to say it’s all right, everything’s under control. Madmen are a large part of my line of work.

  When I look back at Corwin Pierce he is rocking back and forth. His mouth is a straight line, his lips seemingly sealed with cement.

  “You know why I’m here, don’t you, Corwin?”