by G. M. Ford
She was still lost in thought when the buzz in the room suddenly subsided, pulling her attention to the dais. She’d never seen Myron Mendenhal in person before. Only on TV. Not that he looked particularly good either way. The man was a gnome. A bandy-legged troll with a head about four sizes too big for his body. Bald on top, grown out long on the sides. Big Moscow snow-cutter eyebrows.
Mendenhal tapped at the bank of microphones. Flashbulbs twinkled all over the ballroom. TV cameras began to hum. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “It seems my client has been unavoidably delayed, so why don’t we begin.” He had a wet mouth. Everything he said sounded a little juicy. “As most of you well know, my client Walter Leroy Himes was unjustly convicted and sentenced to death for the series of murders commonly known as the Trashman killings. Whether this gross miscarriage of justice was a matter of official ineptitude or indifference will be decided in a court of law. What cannot be denied, however, is that even at this late date, it is not too late for some measure of justice to be done.”
Dorothy allowed his voice to settle into a drone. Her head no longer throbbed. Instead, the pain had become a cold river of pressure flowing directly behind her eyes, making her feel as if her eyeballs might unexpectedly pop from their sockets like champagne corks. She massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger.
Mendenhal stopped talking as the buzz in the room began to rise. Himes, in maybe the worst suit in the world. An orange-plaid pattern that could have been used as the international symbol for bad taste. Way too small. Oh, god, look at his ankles.
Himes pulled out the other chair on the dais and sat down hard enough to make the bank of microphones belch. Weaving back and forth. Obviously shitfaced drunk. Sitting there surveying the crowd with this big loopy grin on his face.
“As I was saying,” Myron Mendenhal continued, “on behalf of my client Mr. Himes”—whom he acknowledged with the smallest of nods—“I have today, in state superior court, filed a lawsuit alleging willful and malicious prosecution in the amounts of…”
Thirteen million. If they got even half of that there’d be big-time layoffs. Might get all the way down to her. She pressed at her eyes, as if to keep them in place. She heard the scrape of a chair and then another belch from the mikes.
Himes leaning over the microphones. “Now that them no-good bitches got what they deserved…now old Walter Lee gonna get somma what he deserves for a change.”
Mendenhal whispered furiously in his client’s ear. Himes sneered and kept on talking. “Gonna buy me evathin’ I want. Might even git me a little”—he winked—“you know…a little…poontang.”
Malcolm Tate rose from his front-row seat. He pointed at Himes.
“Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t you dare.”
Himes pointed back at him. “I seen you there. Eva time, in the front row, with your clean clothes and your old woman and all…up there in the good seats.”
“You shut your mouth,” Tate warned at the top of his voice.
All around the room, security guards hustled toward Malcolm Tate. His wife pulled at his pant leg, then rose to put herself between her husband and the dais.
“I’ll bet one of them bitches was yourn, wasn’t she?” Himes taunted.
Paula Tate put both palms on her husband’s chest and gently tried to force him back into his chair. Malcolm Tate, however, was having none of it. Instead, he stepped around his wife and wagged a blunt finger in Himes’s face. “You shut your filthy mouth,” he said.
Himes leaned forward over the table, grinned at the audience, and then spit on Tate’s blue denim shirt. A collective intake of breath was followed by dead silence. Malcolm Tate’s mouth fell open as he stared down at the yellow glob of phlegm now welded to his shirtfront.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please, ah….” Myron Mendenhal sputtered. “Could we perhaps…at this time—”
Tate went berserk. With a bellow, he lurched forward, toward Himes. His fingers extended like talons, as if he intended to go for the eyes. Tate took a single stride and then attempted to hurl himself upward onto the dais. He’d have made it too, except that his trailing foot became entangled in the maze of cables running along the front of the platform, stopping his ascent in mid-flight, jerking him down onto the cluster of microphones. Myron Mendenhal fell backward from his chair. An electronic shriek tore the air.
A female security guard arrived first, grabbing Tate by the belt and jerking him to the floor. Malcolm Tate got as far up as his knees before he was buried beneath an onrushing pile of uniforms. The amplifiers screamed like a jet on takeoff. The audience was on its feet, hands cupped over ears as if playing some deranged version of Simon Says. Without willing it so, Dorothy Sheridan found herself hurrying toward the front of the room. “Malcolm,” Paula Tate cried. “Oh…please, Malcolm.”
By the time Dorothy arrived, Tate had been pulled to his feet and was being led stiff-legged down the central aisle by four rent-a-cops. Somewhere in the scuffle, he’d suffered a cut on the bridge of his nose, sending a single crimson rivulet rolling down over his upper lip and into his mouth. “Mr. Tate,” Dorothy said. “Please, Mr. Tate.”
He bellowed at the ceiling, launching a spray of blood and spittle as he was muscled past her down the aisle. She turned and trotted along behind Paula Tate, who repeatedly called her husband’s name as he was dragged from the room. Dorothy patted at the pockets of her dress until she found her SPD ID badge.
Out in the hallway, Malcolm Tate had been forced to his knees. The female guard had disengaged and was whispering into a handheld radio. Holding her SPD ID badge before her, Dorothy Sheridan ran to Malcolm Tate’s side. “Don’t hurt him,” she said.
The nearest guard turned his sweaty, pockmarked face her way. “Listen, lady, why don’t you—”
She waved the ID in his face. “Don’t hurt him…you hear me? Don’t.”
Malcolm Tate hiccuped once and then vomited onto the carpet. The security guards released their grip and scrambled to their feet as his body convulsed, over and over again, until he was empty, left with nothing but a single silver strand connecting his lower lip to the carpet below. His wife knelt at his side. Put her hand on his back.
“Malcolm,” she said again.
Dorothy pointed to a bench against the wall. “Put him there,” she said. The pockmarked guard started to protest. “Do it,” she screamed.
Carefully avoiding the puddle, two of the guards helped Malcolm Tate to the bench, where he sat heavily, holding his head in his hands.
Someone brought a glass of water and some paper towels.
Ten minutes later, Paula Tate was till dabbing at her husband’s face and whispering in his ear when a pair of uniformed SPD officers came jogging around the corner and down the hall.
Dorothy held up her ID and met them halfway. As she explained the situation, they began to relax. “Poor guy,” the younger one said.
“Would you please help them to their car?” Dorothy asked.
“Sure,” they said in unison.
Paula Tate looked Sheridan’s way with red-rimmed eyes. “Come on,” Sheridan said. The Tates rose from the bench together and shuffled over. “Are we…is Malcolm being arrested?” Mrs. Tate wanted to know. Dorothy shook her head. “These officers are going to see you to your car,” she said. Paula Tate’s eyes filled with tears. “Did you hear what that man said?”
Dorothy said she had.
“How could this happen?” Paula Tate asked, as much to herself as to Sheridan. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m so sorry,” was all Dorothy could come up with. “If there’s anything I can—”
Paula Tate turned away. Her words echoed in Dorothy’s head as she watched the officers lead the couple up the stairs and around the corner.
Dorothy walked over, eased the ballroom door open, and stepped back inside. A trio of techies were putting the microphones back in order. Myron Mendenhal was still straightening his suit. Himes sat there, looking pleased w
ith himself, rocking his chair up onto its back legs and then letting it slam back down.
A voice on her right asked, “Everybody all right?” Another guard. Fat and fifty. About to burst the buttons on a Hilton security uniform that obviously didn’t belong to him. Handwritten name tag read “Bill Post.”
“Fine,” she said.
He made a gesture as if he were mopping his brow. “Gotta leave that kinda rough stuff for the young guys,” he said. “Me, I’m just moonlighting for a little vacation money. Didn’t expect anything like that. No, sir, I didn’t.”
Mendenhal was talking again. Same thing he’d said before the excitement. Thirteen million. Civil suits to follow. “How do you compensate a man for three years of his life?” he asked. “Is there some dollar figure that can repair the heart of a man who has lived for years under the specter of his own imminent death? Who has lain upon the table of death? I think not. Can we—”
Dorothy held her breath as Himes leaned toward the mikes.
“If it ain’t me or him, just gonna be somebody else, you know.”
“Excuse me?” a big-haired blonde along the wall said.
“Said there’s always gonna be somebody out there killin’ bitches. Bitches and mo’ bitches is gonna be dyin’ all over the damn place, till you-all up to your damn ass in dead bitches.”
Up front, Slobodan Nisovic slowly got to his feet. Brushed at his face, then turned his back on Mendenhal and Himes. The little man leaned over and appeared to whisper in his mother’s ear. She nodded and handed him something.
On Dorothy’s right, Bill Post muttered, “Holy shit,” under his breath and started hustling toward the front of the room with an awkward, rolling gait.
When Slobodan Nisovic straightened up, he was holding an automatic in both hands. He had tears in his eyes as he looked out over the crowded ballroom.
“No” was all he said before turning toward the front of the room and pulling the trigger. The roar of the gun ripped the air. Dorothy stood transfixed as, all around her, people threw themselves to the floor. Screams and more shots. Himes was down on his side on the dais, his chest a mass of red. Nisovic turned to face the crowd. He stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Dorothy watched the side of his face explode and waited for him to crumple to the floor.
To Dorothy’s amazement, however, Slobodan Nisovic flinched but didn’t fall. He just stood there jerking the trigger, over and over. Nothing happened. Not even a click. Just the silent finger flexing and unflexing inside the trigger guard, until old Bill Post hit him with a flying tackle and drove him to the floor. First thing Monday. Call Monica.
Chapter 32
Monday, September 24
1:35 A.M. Day 6 + 2
“Guess what’s missing?”
He pointed to the series of photos pinned to the drapes. Victim number two. Kate Mitchell. Dougherty checked her watch and scowled. She wanted to punch him in the mouth. He looked so goddamn pleased with himself. Standing there in the salon, moving from one foot to the other, like some smart-ass schoolboy who’d stolen the answers to the algebra final. She stepped in close, poked him in the chest with a long red fingernail.
“What gives with you? I finally get last night’s disaster out of my mind and sleep for the first time in forty-eight hours and what happens? You call me at one in the morning. Then, without being consulted, next thing I know, there’s a cab calling me from downstairs. What kind of shit is that? You think I’m your dog or something?”
Corso tried to look as if his feelings were hurt, but she ignored him. “In return for being dragged out of bed, I get fifteen minutes in the back of a drafty taxi, driving at two miles an hour through the worst fog I’ve ever seen and you think I’m going to play goddamn guessing games with you. Get a grip, Corso. If you’ve got a point, you better get to it.”
“How about a glass of wine?” For the first time since she’d known him, he looked vaguely embarrassed. She wanted to take advantage of the situation, to stay in his face, to puncture that veneer of his but couldn’t muster the energy. Instead, she sighed and said, “White. Dry.” He hesitated, waiting for her to step aside. She held her ground.
Corso squeezed by her, slowly, belly to belly, slipped into the galley, and opened the refrigerator. Dougherty slid the coat from her shoulders and threw it over the back of the teak desk chair. Aware of her unencumbered body moving beneath the dress, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against the built-in bookcase. She tried to focus on Corso pulling the cork, but couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting to the glossy black-and-whites of Kate Mitchell. From the way her arranged body seemed to fall away from its center. From the knot of angry bruises encircling her narrow throat. From the rubbery film covering her eyeballs like milky sandwich wrap. She pulled away. Hugging herself harder now. Her mouth felt as dry as wood.
“I can’t believe you dragged me down here in the middle of the night to look at photographs,” she groused. “This thing is over. The good guys finally won.”
“Nobody won,” Corso countered. “Himes is up in Harborview sitting in bed, stuffing his face and telling anybody who’ll listen what he’s going to do with the money he gets from the state. Old man Nisovic’s the closest thing we’ve got to a hero and that poor bastard couldn’t even blow his own brains out. Sticks a gun in his mouth and only manages to shoot off half his jawbone. Not only that, but whenever he gets out of the hospital, he’s going to have to stand trial for trying to off Himes. Excuse me if I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy over this one.”
“What’s your problem, Corso?”
“Ten brides. Eleven bodies,” he said while pouring wine. “Do the math.”
“You saw that place. Defeo was a hundred-percent stone nuts. What makes you think anything he did has to make literal sense?”
“He seemed pretty firm on the number ten to me.”
She thought about it and, although unwilling to admit it to Corso, couldn’t help but agree. The amount of trouble Defeo had gone through to play out his deranged “lambs of God” and “brides of Christ” scenario, no matter how loony it might seem to the rest of the world, suggested that he probably wasn’t going to be confused about the size of his flock.
“So how come you’re the only one bothered by the disparity?”
“The cops have already got what they want. They’ve got themselves a serial murderer, a martyr, and a couple of heroes. Cue the memorial service and the awards ceremony. End of story.”
Corso came back into the salon offering a glass of wine. She took it. Stuck her nose into the glass. Okay, not fruity. She took a sip. Then another, sipping halfway down the glass. Just the way she liked it, but she wasn’t telling him that either.
“Okay?” he inquired.
“Um,” was all she said. She waved at the photos. “So what is it I’m supposed to notice is missing?”
The glint in his eye said he was going to try to make her guess.
“Don’t,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood.”
He took her seriously, tucked his lower lip in, and said, “The ear tag.” He reached down onto the settee cushion, picked up the list of the items in Kate Mitchell’s evidence bag. He read the list: “‘One watch, Timex. One gold bracelet. One gold cross and chain. Two toe rings. One plastic ear tag, ovine,’” he intoned finally. Corso let the list float back to the cushion, then pointed to Dougherty’s photos of the evidence. Pointed.
“No tag,” he said. “Not in any of them.”
Dougherty drained her glass and handed it to Corso. She put one knee on the cushion and stuck her nose close to the pictures. Picked up the list and mouthed the words as she slowly scanned the pictures. He was right. No ear tag in any of the prints.
When she looked back over her shoulder, Corso had refilled both glasses. She stood upright, plucked the glass from his fingers. “So…what? You think I made a mistake? You think I missed something, don’t you? That’s why you dragged me down here at one o’clock in the mo
rning, to tell me I missed something.”
“Matter-of-fact, I don’t think any such thing,” he said. “I think you got everything that was there.”
“Which means what?”
“Which means somebody removed it from the evidence room.”
“Stole it?”
“Yep.”
“Why in God’s name would anybody want to steal an ear tag?”
“Good question.”
“For a souvenir, maybe?” she offered.
“Hell of a risk for a trinket.”
Grudgingly, she agreed. “What then?”
“Damned if I know.”
“You’re paranoid. You know that? You could find a conspiracy at a yard sale, Corso.”
He didn’t say anything. Just stood there rolling his wineglass between his palms, staring back at the photographs.
“How could someone get into the police evidence room and…” She stopped herself. “Unless the person was—”
“Somehow associated with the Himes case,” he finished for her.
“You mean in some kind of official capacity?”
“Absolutely. The SPD evidence room isn’t part of the building tour.”
“Maybe they used it for testing purposes or something.”
“If they did, it’d be noted in the file. Besides which, they’d never use up one whole tag. They take little pieces from all of them.”
“And all the rest of the victims still have their tags?”
“Yep.”
“You still have the rest of the files?”
“Yep.”
“Lemme see.”
She watched from the far side of the salon as Corso retrieved the cardboard box from beneath the sink and then, once again, covered the pin rail with glossy visions of murder most foul. She handed him her glass and knelt on the cushions, studying the prints. Moving a fingertip from list to photo and back. Halfway through the gallery, she heard the muted pop of a cork. He was right. Except for Kate Mitchell’s missing ear tag, the evidence lists matched the photos she’d taken on Thursday. Kate Mitchell’s crime-scene photographs, however, clearly showed the tag in her left ear at the time when the body was found. Now, her tag was gone. Ergo what?