Indefensible

by Lee Goodman

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.” He gives a self-satisfied twitch of the bear rug. He’s a very cool customer, Dorsey, giving no hint of the drama playing out here. I’m a fly caught in his web, he’s the spider, not especially hungry and in no particular hurry to suck out the juice of my existence, because he knows I can’t escape. So we engage in this discourse. He is in a quietly giddy state of anticipation; I’m in the preternatural calm of inevitability.

  “The reports aren’t in my file,” I say, “which means either we never received them, which is unlikely, or Janice misfiled them, which is impossible, or the other attorney working this case diverted them.”

  “And which attorney would that be?” Dorsey asks. It’s a strange question, because as a state cop, he doesn’t know any of the assistant U.S. attorneys except Upton.

  “Upton Cruthers,” I say.

  We lock eyes for a second.

  “Dollars to doughnuts,” Dorsey says, “it’s a clerical error. I’ll print you a copy right here.”

  “But if Scud died of asphyxiation . . . I thought you told me he was killed with the same gun that killed Seth.”

  “Yes, sorry about that. I got the ballistics report before the ME’s report. I assumed. Turns out he was merely shot with the gun that killed Seth.”

  “And you’ve never found the scene?”

  “No,” he says, “officers searched for miles upriver, both sides, never found a thing. For all we know, he was killed elsewhere, then driven to the river for a quick dumping.”

  “Which reminds me,” I say. “Apparently, Scud’s wife hasn’t seen their car since that night.”

  He squints at me. “You know this how?”

  “I talked to her.”

  “Really? She’s been unhelpful with my people.”

  “She’s scared. Maybe she’s scared that he’s not really dead. We talked a bit.”

  “And no car, eh? We’ll look into it.”

  Dorsey retrieves a new copy of the ME’s report from his printer and hands it to me. I look at the cover sheet. The body was found at about one-fifteen P.M. on that Monday afternoon when Tina and I were eating lunch at the Rain Tree. The medical examiner estimated Scud had been dead for thirty to forty hours. That makes time of death late at night on Saturday evening/Sunday morning.

  “What does it all mean?” I ask Dorsey.

  He holds up his hands helplessly. “Someone smashed him in the throat, then shot him twice for insurance as he lay on the ground dead or dying, then dumped him in the river.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well . . .” Something occurred to me, but I don’t want to voice it until I’ve had a chance to think it through, so I switch directions. “Who killed him?” I ask innocently, naively.

  “That’s the sixty-four-dollar question,” Dorsey says with a wise and weary nod.

  “Thousand,” I say. “Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  Dorsey stands and points at the reports. “Hope those help,” he says. He takes his gun and shoulder holster from a coat tree and puts them on, then his jacket. “Sorry to be rude. Gotta run.”

  Then he’s gone, and I’m back in the Volvo, driving out the highway toward Turner, wondering what the hell just happened and why I’m free without so much of a mention of what I thought was my imminent arrest.

  • • •

  I love my car. I love driving. The expression “happy as a clam” makes sense to me. A clam lives inside the walls of its bio-home, the tide bringing along something new a couple of times a day, all necessities close by, safe, familiar. The Volvo is safe and familiar, with necessities close at hand, climate adjustable for my comfort, while outside, the landscape continuously renews itself to keep my interest. Regardless of what I need to do back in the world, I can’t do anything until I get wherever I’m going.

  Driving the highway to Turner, I notice that the gold and rust of autumn have spread like a contagion across distant hills. I revel in the contemplative opportunity of the thirty-minute drive. I slow down and pull into the slow lane, hoping to stretch it to forty minutes.

  If I get charged . . . If I get tried . . . If I get convicted.

  I’ve never had thoughts like this. I’ve been focusing on trying to solve Scud’s murder to avoid getting charged with it myself. It’s the best strategy, but I should at least give a nod to how I leave the table if I actually do get sent away; how does it leave Lizzy, Kenny, Flora? Maybe even Tina.

  A horn blasts. A pickup swerves around me. The driver is a wiry kid with a cig stuck in his face. NO FEAR, his bumper sticker boasts as he roars away. I’d slowed to thirty-five without intending to. I’m a hazard.

  I think about the ME’s report. Scud went down with a brutal blow to the throat, then he was shot twice as he lay on the ground. Odd. If it were a gangland killing, then neither the blow to the throat nor the bullet in the chest makes sense. Mobsters like one-bullet execution-type jobs, like we saw with Zander. And since Scud died of asphyxiation, he was pretty well on his way to dead, if not completely there, when he was shot. Why shoot him? Dorsey called it insurance. I can think of at least one other possibility: rage. If someone killed Scud not as a business proposition but out of hatred, maybe the killer couldn’t help adding those final shots following the perverse pleasure of watching him die on the ground.

  I size up this new theory against the current suspects. I can well imagine Mrs. Illman being enraged enough to shoot up her husband’s corpse, but could such a small woman inflict a vicious blow to the throat? Even if she used a bat, her small stature and meek demeanor make it unlikely.

  As for Upton Cruthers, he isn’t the kind of guy who loses control of emotions. He’s whip-smart and levelheaded. If he were being blackmailed, I could believe him capable of making the considered decision to remove Scud Illman. But unless he has demons I’ve never had a peek at, it would be a well-planned and businesslike action. Upton might want to buy two bullets’ worth of insurance, but then why bother with the blow to the throat? The only way for Upton to be the killer is if, in committing the crime, he had the foresight and composure to execute it in a way nobody would believe him capable of.

  Now it does make sense. He’s a meticulous man, fully capable of thinking through the subtle assumptions of an investigation. He would anticipate our reasoning that the viciousness and petty cruelty of the attack places him above suspicion. Drawing the rationale one step further, if Upton were trying to make the killing look like someone else’s handiwork, who might he have in mind? Who is less in control of emotions and more passionate? Who is impulsive? Who else has a motive?

  It is diabolical. If Upton is the killer, then all of this is intentional. The killing looks professional but, on closer inspection, not professional. It was committed with brutality, like a vengeance killing, but not with the torturous or sadistic brutality of a real sicko. It was personal and impersonal, bold and timid, emotional and clinical. Yes, if Upton committed this act, he tailored it perfectly to fit the third suspect: me.

  I have slowed down again. Cars are speeding past, and I’m late picking up Lizzy. I call Flora on my cell phone.

  “Hello, Nick,” she says, “were you trying to call me? I’ve been out in the yard.”

  “No. I’m just calling now. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes—didn’t want you thinking I forgot.”

  “We’re just starting dinner. No hurry.”

  “Listen,” I say, “would you mind if I had dinner with the two of you but then left Lizzy there? I need to be at my office most of the night.”

  “Of course.”

  “And there’s something we need to talk about, you and me, in private.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Maybe,” I say, thinking about the problem between Lizzy and Kenny.

  “Sounds mysterious,” she says, but she’s missed the note of significance in my voice. “Oh, and you should park on the street. There’s equipment in the drive
way.”

  “Equipment?”

  “A truck and trailer with a steam shovel on it.”

  “I think you mean a backhoe, Flo.”

  “Backhoe.” She laughs, delighted with herself for this error. I laugh, too. I’m happy to be going there for dinner. “Finally, Kenny got his friend with the backhoe to show up.”

  “Did they move the rocks?”

  “In the morning. They just dropped if off a little while ago.”

  “Is Kenny there?”

  “No, just that equipment.”

  “See you in a minute, Flo.”

  The idea of going back to the office hadn’t occurred to me until I got Flora on the phone. I realized that if Chip is trying to find me, he’ll probably go to my house, maybe even to Flora’s, but I doubt he’ll look for me in my office in the middle of the night. More important, the details of Scud’s murder and everything I overlooked make me want to sit down with the evidence and go through it all again, item by item. Maybe I’m sitting on info that would have let the real investigators crack it open weeks ago. I’m the only one who knows that Scud snatched Kendall’s cell phone and used it to call Upton Cruthers and those other two numbers that I haven’t figured out yet. One call was to a cell phone that the Bureau traced to an alias: Maxfield Parrish. The other was to a construction firm: Bernier Construction. Chip told me that Bernier Construction is thought to have Mob involvement.

  I should take this info to Dorsey and Chip, though it will mean coming clean with Kendall Vance about my bit of snooping. He’ll be livid, but he’ll get over it.

  I exit at Turner and drive through the maple-lined rural roads. The leaves are still brilliant in the dim light of late afternoon. Flo’s kitchen is always welcoming, and it always smells good, and despite the unconventional relationship between us, she’s family. Right now I’m craving that comfort. I won’t tell them about losing out for the circuit court seat today, and I won’t tell them I’m apparently wanted by the FBI for a murder committed by my friend and colleague, and I won’t tell them I recently looked love in the face, Tina’s face, and fled. The problem between Lizzy and Kenny is plenty for one night. I will guzzle up the warmth and comfort of this home that is always open to me; I’ll guzzle like a desert wanderer at an oasis. Even now, as I pull alongside Flo’s split-rail fence and get out of the Volvo and walk toward the house, my eyes fill with the emotions of having reached, however briefly, this place of comfort and safety.

  I see the dark form of the truck in the driveway and the robotic form of the backhoe on a trailer behind.

  This mess with Kenny is so sad. Emotionally, he’s a kid, so it makes sense that he might go for girls like the developmentally delayed Amber, or like Lizzy, who, though years ahead of him emotionally and intellectually, is only fourteen to his twenty-five. I’ve always known that Kenny has a blind spot. He is infantile in his refusal to take responsibility and to anticipate consequences, infantile in his selfishness. It has been explained to me that the dehumanizing abuse of his childhood caused his emotional limitations. I guess I didn’t fully appreciate the implications.

  I’ll put the fear of God in him: threaten to banish him from our lives. Then I’ll get him into counseling and help him through. He’ll be compliant, because the one thing Kenny can’t risk is being cut out of our lives. Back in the early years, when he was a kid and we’d have him to the lake for a weekend or a Sunday together at my house, every time I’d drive him back to whichever foster home he was in at the time, he’d ply me for some reassurance that I wasn’t done with him and that we’d be together again soon. Eventually, I started ending our visits by locking him in my earnest stare: Flora and I love you, I’d tell him, you’re one of us now. That won’t change.

  At his core, Kenny is a sweet, mixed-up kid. He loves doing favors like this one, getting a buddy of his to come out here with a backhoe to move the boulders for Flora’s patio.

  As for Lizzy, I’m amazed at how maturely she handled it. Hopefully, that means it isn’t too traumatic for her. But just to be sure, we’ll get her in with a shrink to talk it through. And of course we’ll never let the two of them be alone together again. The problem will change things in our ad hoc family, but it probably won’t ruin things.

  I walk into the driveway alongside the truck, and I see the gilt lettering stenciled on the driver’s door. In the dimming light, it takes a moment for my eyes to read it and another for it to register. It is a nicely lettered, professional-looking sign. Obviously, a high-class operation. BERNIER CONSTRUCTION, it says. GENERAL CONTRACTING.

  CHAPTER 43

  Lizzy is inside doing homework. Flora and I stand in the yard on a lawn of pine needles. I’ve just told her about Kenny’s amorous advances. Flo’s right hand is pressed against her chest. This is how she listens to serious things, as though her fingertips reconnect old circuits, bypassing the flaky Flora and bringing back from her numbed-out la-la land the Flora of all those years ago.

  “The bastard,” she says. “I’ll cut his frigging dick off.”

  This makes me smile, because it is so characteristic of the former Flora; it is honest and packed with complex layers of love and contempt and exasperation. I hear in it that she loves Kenny but loves him less than Lizzy, and if this problem turns into anything, she won’t spend a second anguishing over conflicting loyalties.

  “I’ll talk to him,” I say. “Till then, we’ll make sure he stays away.”

  “Kenny,” she says. Again, this is a conversation in itself: the recognition of his childishly underdeveloped sense of responsibility and consequence. What she is saying is that though she never would have expected this from him, it makes perfect sense.

  “Kenny is Kenny,” I say.

  She sighs and says, “I just don’t know.” What she means now is that, hope though we may for the return of normalcy, Kenny is Kenny, and that even if he can be made to behave, he can’t be made to understand. He won’t feel contrite or ashamed; he’ll merely feel caught.

  Flora walks me to my car, past the truck. This glimpse of old Flora makes me sentimental, and with everything else going on—Kenny, the circuit bench, Upton, Chip, and the threat of prison—Bernier Construction is a drop too much. I grab Flora’s arm, maybe to stabilize myself or to hold on to this better Flora of yesteryear.

  “Nicky,” she says, patting my hand, “are you okay?”

  Good question.

  • • •

  At about ten P.M., I park in my designated spot and ride the elevator to the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office. The floor is quiet, but I see a sliver of light from one of the office doors. I consider stopping, backstepping quietly toward the elevator and driving off into the night. Or I could tiptoe into my own office, where, without turning on a lamp, I could stretch out on my couch and maybe catch some snooze before skulking away in the early morning.

  I could, but I don’t. I stand in the hallway, struck dumb for the second time tonight. The first was that unhappy surprise in Flora’s driveway. This time it is a good surprise. A wonderful surprise. Tina is here, and the surprise is that the light from her door enters me like breath, and where a second ago, I was mentally writing out lists of evidence, I’m now just placidly watching the cinema-verité scene as my feet transport me and knuckles rap and the sound track seems to skip at her startled scream. I see my hand push the door open and hear a voice, mine, apologize for scaring her.

  We eye each other.

  “Your hairdo is growing out,” I say.

  “Thank goodness,” she says. “Whatever possessed me?”

  “Just different ways of being. You keep trying till you find one that fits.”

  She nods. Smiles. Then the smile is gone, and she studies me. She sees something, though I don’t know whether it’s exhaustion, fear, or most likely, the tremulous surfacing of these new emotions. “Nick,” she says, and pauses a moment before finishing. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” But it’s too late; my long list of w
oes has muddled my mind. Where is my lawyerly, clearheaded objectivity that I take such pride in? I stand here gaping. I’m stunned by how happy I feel to see her.

  • • •

  Six A.M. Friday morning. Tina is going home to change and shower. I walk her to the elevator, where, before stepping in, she tugs at the two points of my shirt collar to focus my attention. “Be careful,” she says, then pulls me toward her and kisses me quickly on the lips. Our first.

  I spent last night telling her everything, including peeking at Kendall’s phone and about my being a suspect, which she said she hadn’t heard anything about in the office. My frequent absences were noticed, she said, but everyone thought it was about my circuit bench nomination. She said she’d see what she could learn today. We slept together on my office couch, fully clothed and with her head at one end and mine at the other.

  I return to my office and start packing my briefcase for the day. I’ve promised Tina that if nothing changes by the end of the day, I’ll call Chip and turn myself in. But she’s back. “Forgot something,” she says, and I wonder if she’s about to put her arms around me for a real smooch, or to say something bigger than “Be careful.” Her hair is messy and her blouse is untucked and wrinkled. She’s lovely the way women you want to sleep with are.

  “Forgot what?”

  “I saw Fuseli yesterday. He wants you to know he’s pissed.”

  “The tattoo guy?”

  “You promised him you’d come back and tell more of the story.”

  “Story isn’t over.”

  She shrugs. “Just telling you what he told me. Poor guy.”

  “Poor guy?”

  “Yeah, you know,” she says, “he’s been inside a long time. And his MS got worse in the past month. He’s in a wheelchair now.”

  “Poor guy,” I say, affectionately mocking her.

  She smiles sadly at me.

  It’s uncommon for a prosecutor like Tina to express sympathy for an inmate. As prosecutors, we apply the laws as they are handed down. If one guy gets the raw deal, there’ll be another along any minute who gets the sweet deal. It averages out. Let the politicians deal with the morality of it all; I’ll take the cookbook approach, thank you very much. I go where evidence leads, follow the rules, apply the law. That’s what goes into the oven, and what comes out is, by definition, justice.