Fury

by G. M. Ford

  “You’ve seen Bennett?” she asked.

  “What’s this about the mayor?” Corso asked.

  “I received a rather contentious call from the mayor yesterday. Regarding both the conduct of the paper in general and your conduct in particular. Stanley seemed to feel that we have seriously outstripped the bounds of civilized journalism. He went so far as to remind me that newspapers were, in a sense, public trusts. Can you imagine? That little boot-licking toady preaching ethics to me! He actually suggested that it was my civic duty to clear stories with his office before going to print. He didn’t quite say if I knew what was good for me, but it was most certainly floating somewhere nearby.”

  “Have they issued any public denials to anything we’ve printed?”

  “Not a peep,” Mrs. V. said. She made a rueful face. “They have, however, put their machine into motion.”

  “Yeah, Hawes told me. I’m a celebrity again.”

  “I’ve had to hire temps to answer the phones. We’ve been besieged.”

  “You wanted them talking about us,” Corso reminded her.

  “You’ve received nearly a hundred interview requests.”

  “Mr. Corso deeply regrets et cetera, et cetera,” Corso said.

  Leanne took hold of Corso’s arm. She smelled like peppermint.

  “What have you got for tomorrow?” Mrs. V. asked.

  He told her the same thing he’d told Hawes. She looked up at the clock on the far wall. “Three minutes,” she said.

  “Is there a TV in here?” Corso asked.

  “The lunchroom,” she said. “Mr. Hawes sent Mr. Newton downtown.”

  “That’s about what he’s good for,” Corso said. “I’m going downstairs to catch the news conference. Why don’t I take Leanne with me? The cops get here, you can send them down.” Leanne squeezed his arm tighter. Mrs. V. looked over at Beardsley.

  “No problem,” he said.

  Corso waited until the elevator door slid shut. “How you hangin’ in there?” he asked Leanne. She nodded a couple of times but didn’t say anything. “Just tell them the truth, Leanne. That’s all you’ve got to do. Your lawyer there will take care of the rest.”

  The elevator stopped at the second floor. “I’m scared, Mr. Corso,” she said.

  Corso pushed the Door Close button. He looked her in the eye. “That’s because what you’re going through is scary, Leanne You’re not making it up. You’re not having some sort of paranoid delusion. This would be a stressful situation for anybody. Not just you. Okay?”

  She favored Corso with a wan smile, then said, “Okay.” He released the button.

  A head poked in the door. “One minute, Ms. Sheridan,” she cooed. Dorothy answered with a wave of the hand. Went back to studying her notes. One stinking paragraph. When she looked up, her assistant still stood in the doorway. Leering…the way motorists rubberneck at particularly gruesome car wrecks. Sure. Why not? She was next in line, wasn’t she? When Dorothy was long gone, forced to sell her ass down by the airport to keep out of the rain, her assistant would have her office. Sure. She’d fill the shelves with those goddamn Beanie Babies she collected. She’d picked up the vibe. The door closed. Dorothy sighed.

  Dorothy crossed the room, grabbed the handle, and peeked out through the crack. Standing room only. Her eye fell on the front row, where Malcolm and Paula Tate sat holding hands. They were quiet people. Dairy farmers from Kelso. Their daughter Jennine had been a second-year nursing student when she became the Trashman’s third victim. Every week for the past three years, they’d phoned the Seattle Police Department for an update on when they might expect Walter Leroy Himes to get what was coming to him. Just their little low-key way of saying it wasn’t over for them until it was over for Himes, and that, for whatever it was worth, they were watching. Dorothy knew because she’d handled the calls. Always polite, always grateful for whatever information or solace she might be able to provide. They looked ten years older than when Dorothy had last seen them.

  At the far end of the front row were the Butlers. Neil and Madeleine. Their daughter Sara had been number five. Found by the gulls amid compacted garbage at a city transfer station in south Seattle. Traced back to a Dumpster on lower Queen Anne Hill. Two blocks from the coffee shop where she worked part-time. Neil Butler owned some kind of electronics company, but that wasn’t how he spent his time anymore. He’d become a highly visible supporter of appeal limits in death-penalty cases. Made the talk-show circuit. Testified before Congress. Started a foundation in his daughter’s name to support candidates who favored an expeditious eye-for-an-eye approach.

  In between the Tates and the Butlers sat Alice Doyle, who always wore the same print dress and always carried a picture of her murdered daughter Kelly. Her husband, Rodney, had been a King County police officer. One of those unfortunate souls for whom the rigors of policework had simply been too much. Fifteen years before his daughter’s death, Rodney Doyle had put his service revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  Then the Nisovic family. All of them. Mother, father, two grandparents, four brothers, and a sister. Albanian refugees whose eldest daughter, Analia, had been the next-to-last girl killed. The father, Slobodan, despite his halting English, always spoke for the family. Always said that his family had seen enough killing for a lifetime. And that, despite having seen the very heart torn from his family, he had no wish to see Walter Leroy Himes put to death. He always asked, in his daughter’s name, that the killing stop.

  Dorothy squared her shoulders, patted herself down, put her index finger in her mouth, and then used it to smooth her eyebrows. The moment she pulled open the door and started for the forest of microphones, it was as if someone flicked a switch, as the low drone that filled the room quickly faded to breathless silence.

  Cynthia Stone. Leaning against the wall with a CNN microphone in her hand. She never seemed to change. Corso remembered seeing her high school graduation picture and commenting that she even had the same hairdo. “If it works, I don’t mess with it,” she’d said. “If it doesn’t work, it’s history.” If Corso had only known. Movement behind the bank of microphones pulled his eyes from Cynthia. The Sheridan woman. Looking ill.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to read a brief prepared statement, after which I will not be taking questions.” She began to read. “Unanticipated developments in the case of Walter Leroy Himes have come to the attention of the Seattle Police Department. As we speak, SPD officers are in the process of investigating those developments. For that reason, the press conference that was originally scheduled for this time frame—” The buzz in the room began to rise like an airplane taxiing for takeoff. Sheridan looked around nervously. Corso knew the look well. His college roommate used to feed his pet python white rats. When you first dropped them in the cage they had that same “let-me-the-hell-out-of-here” expression. Sheridan collected her wits. “—which was originally scheduled for this time has been rescheduled for 1:00 P.M. tomorrow. The Seattle Police Department regrets any inconvenience this may cause, but feels it is in the best interest of the community that, in a capital matter such as this, all information be thoroughly investigated before further public statements are issued. Better to err on the side of caution—”

  The room went postal. A well-groomed guy in the front row began shouting and waving a fist in Sheridan’s face; his wife looked sadly about the room. Tried to pull him back into his seat. A dozen reporters shouted questions at Sheridan, who kept shaking her head and saying there would be no further comment until tomorrow at 1:00 P.M.

  “What the hell is the matter with these people?” Bennett Hawes’s voice came from behind Corso. “What’s the big deal? Am I missing something here? These guys are acting like they got evidence Chief Kesey is the Trashman.”

  On the screen, the room had erupted into chaos. Sheridan was shaking her head, sidling toward the door. On Corso’s left, Leanne Samples looked to Corso for an explanation. “They’re not going to let Mr. Himes go?�
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  “They’re not going to do anything…until they talk to you.”

  She pouted. “I already talked to them.”

  “Officially,” Corso said. “They want to take a statement and all.” What they wanted was to see if they could bully her into sticking with her original testimony, but Corso wasn’t about to tell Leanne anything of the sort. As if on cue, Corso caught sight of Beardsley, Leanne’s attorney, and a couple of cops he hadn’t seen before standing in the doorway of the lunchroom. He leaned over and put his face close to Leanne’s.

  “Just tell the truth, Leanne, and everything will be okay. Do you understand me?” She didn’t answer. “I’ll bet your mama told you that the truth will set you free, didn’t she?” She gave him a tentative nod and then picked up the vibe from the doorway, turned toward the cops, went pure white, and then looked back up at Corso.

  “Will you come with me?” she asked. “Please.”

  “I can’t,” Corso said. “This is for you and your attorney, Mr. Beardsley. I’d just be in the way.” Their arms were locked together, but now it was Corso hanging on. “Come on,” he said.

  She locked her knees and slid the first four feet, then loosened up and walked on her own. “Please,” she said to Corso again. Corso shook his head and kept her moving out through the door.

  Beardsley put an arm around her shoulder. “It will be fine,” he assured her.

  The cops stepped forward. “Miss Samples will travel with me,” the lawyer informed them. Corso turned and walked back into the lunchroom.

  On the screen, local anchor Laurie Dane had intercepted Sheridan before she made good her escape. “According to a story in the Seattle Sun, Leanne Samples has told the SPD that she lied during the trial of Walter Leroy Himes?” Sheridan waved her off.

  “Other than my earlier statement, I am not able, at this time, to elaborate further.”

  Her eyes were nearly shut, as if a great weight were pressing down on her head. Behind her, reporters jockeyed for interviews. “Try CNN,” Corso shouted over the din. At the front of the room, a woman’s hand reached up and changed the channel. A sea of eyes turned to see who had spoken. Corso kept his eyes on the screen.

  Cynthia and the well-groomed fist-shaker. “Remind me. Who’s that?”

  “Neil Butler. One of the parents,” Hawes said.

  “…just a further example of the degree of ineptitude of the Seattle Police Department and of the decay of the judicial system,” Butler pontificated. He was shaking a finger in Cynthia’s face. “In no other civilized country could an animal like Walter Himes…”

  “Try channel five,” Hawes shouted to the front. Same hand.

  Another local commentator, Grant Hutchens, was interviewing a couple. They wore matching red-and-black wool coats. Both were fair. Redheads going gray. Almost-white eyelashes. The wife was speaking. “It’s hard enough for us to take a day off from the farm. Farms don’t take holidays. Animals need feeding and milking whether or not you’ve got something else planned. We had to hire people to work the place today.”

  Her husband stepped forward. “But we’ll be here tomorrow,” he assured the camera. Whatever sense of amiability his otherwise bland face might have suggested was belied by the flat look in his pale blue eyes. “We’ll be here for as long as it takes,” he said.

  “The Tates,” Hawes said.

  The hand at the front of the room switched the channel. Another local. Interviewing the dark-haired people who’d been sitting front and center. “More parents,” Hawes sighed.

  “When in doubt, see if you can’t get somebody to cry,” Corso groused.

  “Great sound bites,” Hawes offered.

  “My fam-i-lee haf faidt een de Amerika systen,” the father was saying. Corso’s eye was drawn to the grandmother. Beneath the paisley babushka, her weathered face looked like ancient leather. Life-lined and eroded into a serpentine, almost geometrical design of amazing natural complexity. “If dey need us to com bek tomor, ve com bek tomor.” As he spoke, his wife, whose dark eyes were filled with tears, whispered a translation to the grandparents, whose faces never so much as twitched. “Ve haf seen nuf keeling.” He swallowed. “Nuf keeling,” he said again. “De Amerika systen…ov justees…”

  Hawes cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted, “All right, people. The head is officially dead. We’ve still got a paper to get out here.” The hand snapped the TV off. Corso stepped back into the corner and fiddled with the Coke machine as the crowd hustled back to their desks. Their eyes felt like hail on his back. When they’d gone, Corso headed for the door.

  “Where you going?” Hawes inquired.

  “Gonna get Dougherty and then head up to the morgue.”

  Chapter 15

  Thursday, September 20

  11:40 A.M. Day 4 of 6

  Corso listened as the wolf-pack sirens moved closer. Traffic was at a complete stop. Both directions. Despite a thick drizzle, people stood outside their cars, one foot on the doorjambs, scowling up Third Avenue as if to say, For this kind of gridlock, somebody damn well better be dead. Not out loud, though. Much like the weather, nobody talked about the traffic anymore. Sitting for hours breathing catalytic converter fumes had become such a fact of life that taking notice was now considered positively rural.

  Meg Dougherty struggled out of her yellow raincoat, threw it over into the backseat, and now sat with a legal pad in her lap. She wore a black long-sleeved blouse. Silk, it looked like. Through the cuff slits, Corso could see more tattoos; thick, green tendrils and leaves entwined both her forearms. From Corso’s vantage it was hard to tell, but he thought text of some sort was spaced along the tattooed designs.

  “As long as we’re not going anywhere…,” she began.

  “Good idea,” Corso said. He told her about the press conference. “If we’re gonna do a Himes-got-jobbed story, this is where it fits.”

  “Then you’ll be pleased to know that Himes got jobbed.”

  The red Honda Accord in front of them had a bumper sticker that read: “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming like the passengers in his car.”

  Dougherty thumbed through her notes. “The judge…,” she began. “Spearbeck.”

  Corso turned off the radio. “A slug,” she said. “His hours of operation are pretty much standard. It’s just that nobody can figure out what he does with his time. Back in ninety-eight, he had the highest backlog of any King County Superior Court judge, an honor he still qualifies for. His backlog is about twice that of his closest competitor, a Judge David Heilman. Soooo,” she said flipping the page.

  “So,” Corso said. “His caseload, then and now, was about twice what everybody else’s was.”

  “Right…and that’s not the good part.”

  “Oh?”

  “The good part is his rate of overturn.” She licked her thumb with a long pink tongue. “The state average is about seven percent overturn. Guess Spearbeck’s.”

  “Fifteen,” Corso guessed.

  “Eighteen,” she corrected. “Almost three times the average.”

  “So…he’s not only slow, but sloppy.”

  She looked up from her notes, waited for the intermittent wiper to clear the window, and took in the gridlock. “Where are we going, anyway?” she asked.

  “To the medical examiner’s office.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to put in a request for the results of the lie-detector test.”

  Corso turned up the wipers. People were getting back into their cars. Three blocks up, brake lights were going out and cars were inching forward. Corso put the car in drive and crawled down the street behind the Honda.

  “He actually issues fewer contempt citations than most of his colleagues.”

  Corso could tell she had a punch line, so he kept quiet.

  “But I spoke to the proverbial attorney-who-wishes-to-remain-nameless, who says that’s because nobody bothers arguing with Spearbeck anymore, because they kn
ow they can nearly always get a reversal in appellate court.”

  “Makes sense,” Corso said. “Why mess with contempt citations or judicial complaints if you don’t have to? Not to mention, of course, that the client now has to pay you all over again for the appeal.”

  She looked over at him. “And they say I’m cynical.”

  “What I am is paying attention,” Corso corrected quickly.

  “You know—” she began.

  “Hey,” Corso snapped. “What say today we skip the amateur psychoanalysis and stick to the job at hand?” He heard her catch her breath.

  “No need to get nasty,” she said.

  Corso flicked a glance at her from the corner of his eye. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I can be a little too…I…” She’d turned away and was looking out the side window. Part of Corso screamed at him to let it go. He clamped his jaw shut so hard his teeth threatened to crumble, but it didn’t help. Next thing he knew, he was talking again. “I’m just not warm and fuzzy. What can I tell you?” The silent treatment. Shit. “I don’t make mewing noises whenever I see a baby-something. I think newborn infants look like boiled owls.” He threw up his hands. “What can I say? I’m a terrible person. If I could find my inner child, I’d kick his little ass.” He’d hoped for a laugh. But no.

  When the northbound half of Fourth Avenue broke for a moment, Corso turned the wheel hard to the left, gunned it, and shot through the gap, roaring sharply uphill on James Street. Making all the lights. Under the freeway. All the way to the top of Pill Hill, until he had no choice but to turn left and cut over to Madison.

  “You want to hear the rest of it?” she asked in a bored voice.

  Corso said he did. He turned left on Madison. Coasted down the hill.

  “The prosecutor, Alfred Palin. He’s still with the district attorney’s office. He’s a full-fledged deputy prosecutor these days. The rumor mill says he’s thinking about running for judge but is having trouble raising enough money.” She wet her thumb again and turned the page. “His office cleared his calendar for him back at the time of the Himes trial. So, for the duration anyway, Himes was his only case. I talked to three lawyers who’ve recently gone against him. They say he’s competent, but nothing special. A law-and-order man. The general consensus was that he was a better politician than lawyer. All three seemed to think his greatest talent was for getting himself assigned to the slam-dunk cases.”