I squirmed against the wall. Someone had beaten Rebecca Gibson to a textbook bloody pulp, and had done it with great zest as well. It was not simply a case of passion overriding one’s best judgment and things getting out of hand. Someone with great physical strength had given themselves quite a workout. I stared at Slim as he sat at the defense table in his orange jumpsuit. The one-piece jumpsuit was short-sleeved, and Slim’s thick arms were the only thing stretching the oversized garment. Slim was young. He was well built, kept himself in shape, looked, in fact, like an iron-pumper. He didn’t smoke, had good wind.
I remembered one other thing Ray told me Slim had: a bad temper, accompanied by a history of domestic-disturbance calls.
I suddenly needed some air.
The sun on the plaza in front of the Criminal Justice Center brought me back to some level of stability. I sat on a concrete bench, the pedestrians passing by in a swirl of movement and color. The traffic stopped-and-started down the James Robertson Parkway in the long shadows cast by the courthouse across the street.
I took a few deep breaths and brought my hands to my face and rubbed hard, then leaned back and stretched, letting the bright sunlight warm my face. There were footsteps behind me, then Ray’s voice again.
“Harry?”
“Yeah?” I said without looking at him.
“They ain’t going to let him go,” he said in a monotone. He sounded as if he were in shock.
I lifted my head and gazed off down the parkway, toward the aging Municipal Auditorium. “Denied bond, huh?” That was bad. About the only time bond is ever flat out denied in this state is when they’re going for capital murder.
“No, but they set it at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
I chuckled. “Hey, things ain’t so bad. All you got to do is come up with thirty-five and he’s outta there.”
“Thirty-five thousand dollars.” He sighed. “May as well be thirty-five million. I never seen anything like it, Harry.”
I sat up straight. It was nearly lunchtime, and I hadn’t had a bite since the night before. I needed to eat, get my blood sugar back to where it ought to be. Then I needed to think. This was a hell of a lousy mess.
“When can we see him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I think Roger Vaden’s still with him.”
“I want to talk to him, Ray. I think you need to talk to him, too.”
I turned and stared at him. “Why?” he asked.
“Ol’ buddy,” I said, making a hammer out of my right fist and bouncing it once off his knee, “I think we need to grok the possibility that our boy Slim just might have done it.”
Ray and I agreed to meet back at the office building on Seventh Avenue. I picked up a sack of burgers and a couple of orders of fries, then listened to my stomach growl as the food sat congealing next to me on the car seat while I searched for a parking space.
I fought off a sense of hopelessness, with mixed success. Rarely had I felt like life was completely beyond my control. Even during the worst period of my life, which I suppose was probably when I lost my marriage and my job all within a couple of months, I had never felt the sort of psychic impotence I was feeling at this moment. The marriage wasn’t that great to begin with; there was more relief than anything else when it finally ended civilly and without drama. As for my career as a journalist, the truth was that I had become stale. After a while you feel like you’ve written every story in human history at least ten times. The challenge becomes to approach each assignment in search of the fresh insight, the new angle. After a certain number of years, the challenge becomes a tedious struggle, and then finally, not worth the effort.
So my transition from secure, staid journalist to freelance, on-the-edge investigator had been good for me in the long run. I hadn’t had a dull day since. A woman who I was beginning to suspect was going to be a far bigger part of my future than I’d ever imagined was in danger of being snatched away from me at any given miscalculated moment. Another friend stood accused of murder. I was faced with loss on personal, business, and financial levels.
And to top it all off, I realized as I parked the car and dug into the sack of food, those rat bastards at the drive-in window put tomatoes on my burgers!
Damn. I hate tomatoes.
I suffered through the insult up in Ray’s office as we snarfed down lunch and sipped slick, wet cans of Coke. Ray had put in a call to Roger Vaden’s office, and there was little conversation as we sat chewing and waiting.
I’d checked my answering machine before stepping down to Ray’s office. Nothing. No mail yet, either, which meant no incoming checks. But, I rationalized, that meant no bills either.
“When you reckon they’ll let us see him?” Ray asked.
“Visiting hours are Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons,” I answered, distracted. I was thinking about Marsha again in a generalized, unfocused way. I wondered when I’d hear from her, if they’d gotten food and supplies sent in. If she had what she needed.
“You mean we can’t see him until then?”
“That’s right. Lawyers can see prisoners almost anytime. But civilians are off-limits.”
Ray pulled the blinds back on the window and observed the traffic crawling by outside the window.
“I hate to think of him in there. You know, all my kids are up north. Since Amy and I divorced, well—”
He paused. I’d known Ray was divorced, but never knew his wife’s name was Amy.
“Hell, I guess Slim’s about all I’ve got.” Ray’s head dropped and the skin under his chin sagged. He suddenly looked old.
It was a strange confession from a man who seemed in every other aspect of his life completely happy and carefree. I’d never known Ray and Slim to have anything but a good time. The music business is a tough row to hoe; the only way to make it through is to have a good attitude and a sense of humor the size of the Goodyear blimp. This was the first crack I’d ever seen.
And I thought again of Marsha and realized that, really, she was about all I had. Lots of friends, buddies, former colleagues, contacts, clients, but people who were my day-to-day, real family? Marsha was just about it.
I suddenly knew exactly how Ray felt. I put down my sandwich and scraped a rough paper napkin across my face.
“Ray, there’s something I guess I ought to tell you. The real reason I’ve been sweating whether or not to get involved with all this.”
The phone rang, its electronic alarm bouncing off the plaster walls and abruptly jarring both of us out of our thoughts.
“Hold on, let me get this.” Ray stepped over to the desk closest to him and pressed a red button on the telephone. There was a cracking noise as a speakerphone popped.
“Yeah,” Ray called excitedly. Before the word could get out, though, a computer-generated voice spoke over his.
“Hello, you have a collect call from—” The voice paused.
“Slim!” we heard Slim say in the split second the computer gave him to talk.
“If you will accept the call, press one on your telephone keypad. If not, hang up. Thank you for using South Central Bell.”
Ray pressed the telephone keypad. “Slim?” he yelled.
“Hey, Ray, how are you?” Slim sounded artificially cheerful.
“Fine, buddy. How the hell are you?”
“I’m hanging in there,” he said. There was the sound of metal clanging, loud voices, and a blaring television in the background. “Listen, these phones are programmed to hang up after ten minutes. We ain’t got much time.”
“Okay, Slim. By the way, Harry’s in here with me. He’s going to help us out.”
“Hey, Harry.”
“Hey, Slim,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re going to try to give me some help. I could sure use it.”
“The best help I can give you is to try to get you out of there.”
“That ain’t looking too good, man. No way I can come up with the bondsman’s fee. But, Ray, there’s a co
uple of things you could do for me.”
Between the tinny speaker in the phone and the background noise of the jail, Slim’s voice sounded hollow, detached, like he was at the other end of a long metal drainpipe and we were yelling at each other.
“What can we do?” Ray asked.
“First, get the extra key to my house. It’s the green key on the plastic ring in the center of my desk.”
Ray slid the desk drawer open. “Got it.”
“Get on over to my house. Just let yourself in. It’ll be okay. Back in the den, there’s a small desk across from the TV. In the bottom drawer is a file folder. That’s the paperwork on my house and the deed to my grandmother’s house down in Winchester. That house is fully paid for. I can use it as collateral on a loan or just sign it over to a lawyer if need be.”
“Okay. What do I do with it?” Ray asked.
“Just get it out of the house for now. That is, if the cops haven’t already seized all my papers. I ain’t got a lot, but if the law puts a clamp on it, then I’m really screwed.”
“Can they do that?” Ray asked me, lowering his voice.
“I don’t know. Wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, real low.
“While you’re there, pick up the passbook to my savings account at the credit union. There ain’t much in there, maybe two thousand tops, but it’ll help. As soon as I get a lawyer, I’ll sign a power of attorney over to you, Ray, so you can handle the money. If you could write the check for my house payment and my utilities, I’d appreciate it, too. That house and my grandma’s place is about everything I own in the world.”
I didn’t think it was a proper time to tell Slim that it was almost a certainty he could kiss all that stuff goodbye. If the law didn’t confiscate it, the attorneys would get it in legal fees. The pursuit of justice had bankrupted lesser men.
“Slim, do you have any idea who you’re going to hire as your lawyer?” I asked.
“No, not really. Roger Vaden says he can’t do it. He knows a couple of guys he can call. I don’t know, Harry, it looks to me like maybe nobody wants to take the case.”
“Aw, hell, boy,” Ray boomed, “don’t you start talking like that. We’ll get you out of there just as quick as possible.”
“They’re saying it might be three months before my trial starts. If I can’t find the money to make bond, there ain’t no telling how long I’ll be in here.” The first surge of panic flowed into his voice. Again, I didn’t have the heart to tell him he might be in there a year before his case came to trial.
“Don’t think about that right now, Slim,” I said. “Take the Scarlett O’Hara approach; think about that tomorrow. For now, you can help us all by concentrating on anything that might send me off in the right direction.”
“Well, I—”
“But be careful,” I interrupted. “Keep in mind these phones are probably connected to a tape recorder.”
Ray looked at me like, aw, c’mon, they wouldn’t do that, now, would they? I shook my head like, hell, yeah, they could. It’s their jail.
“So don’t say anything you don’t want them to hear.”
Slim was quiet for a moment, with only the metallic rattling in the background, punctuated rhythmically by bursts of distant yelling.
“I ain’t got nothing to hide,” he said forcefully after a moment. “I’ll tell you what I told the police. We packed up our equipment after the Bluebird closed, and a few of us hung around after the doors were locked. Must have been getting on to about two-fifteen or so by then. Maybe a little later. I had a quick beer. Must have been maybe about eight of us total there. That’s not counting the waitresses and the bartenders and stuff.
“Anyway,” he continued, “Becca kind of pulled me off in a corner, away from everybody else. Said she had something important to tell me. It was going to make a big deal in her career.”
I looked at Ray. He nodded his head; he was there and that’s the way it went down.
“Did she give you any idea what it was?” I asked.
“She never got the chance,” Slim said. “Somebody else called me over, and I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to her. Becca was always passing shit around like it was some kind of big, important, earthshaking secret and I was her only confidant. Only problem was, she was feedin’ the same shit to just about everybody she knew.”
He sighed heavily, as if he had a weight hanging from his neck. “Becca liked her drama,” he said, sadness adding even more weight.
“What happened then, Slim? And cut to the chase. We haven’t got much time left.” I didn’t have time to worry about offending him.
“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat. “About twenty minutes later the party broke up. I didn’t give Becca another thought. Just loaded my car and headed home. My house is over in Sylvan Park, but that time of night, the traffic wasn’t bad, so I got home in about fifteen minutes. I’d just opened another beer—I don’t sleep so well after a gig and usually have to wind down with a couple—when the phone started ringing. It was Becca.”
“Okay, what’d she want now?”
“She was—hell, Harry, I guess frantic’s the word. Panicked. I’ve seen Becca get hysterical more times than I can count. This was different. She was scared. She said she needed me, couldn’t talk over the phone. I’ve had my chain jerked by that woman so many times I figured once more wouldn’t hurt. I’d had four or five beers by then. Maybe I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
“So you went to Rebecca’s house not knowing what to expect.”
“Right. When I got there, the front door was unlocked and I walked in. I could tell something wasn’t right, though. The living room was a mess, but that wasn’t unusual. Becca never did get the hang of house-cleaning. But I kept calling her name and she didn’t answer. I walked back through the hallway and her bedroom door was cracked open. Only the light was turned off. I pushed the door open and there was something against it. It wouldn’t move. I pushed harder and whatever it was, it kept … kept …” His voice weakened.
“C’mon, Slim,” I said. “We’re running out of time here.”
I heard him take a deep breath and hold it for a moment. Then he let it loose.
“I finally laid a shoulder into the door and pushed it open about a foot, then wedged my way in. I stepped in something slippery, and my boot slid until it hit something that felt like a bag of dough or something. I looked down. There was a little bit of light from the hallway shining in now, and I saw the floor was all dark and wet. I fumbled for the switch.”
He paused again. I let him take another breath. “That’s when I saw her, man. She looked like she’d been run through a threshing machine. I never seen nothing like it in my life. I yelled something—don’t remember what—then leaned down over her. There was broken glass and blood and pieces of, pieces of, Jesus, Harry, pieces of meat. Part of her face was ripped open and you could see her skull.”
Ray moaned and shook his head.
“I leaned down and put my fingers to the side of her throat that wasn’t cut. Nothing. She was still warm, but she was gone, Harry. I picked up this piece of broken glass that was laying next to her and got blood all over myself. I got real sick at my stomach and thought I was going to heave. Then all I remember was thinking I had to get the hell out of there. I jumped up and backed out of the room real slow. Then I started running. Just running, man. I got back to my car, jumped in, and hauled ass.”
I rubbed my eyes wearily. This was incredibly bad. Goddamn it, boy, I wanted to ask him, didn’t you ever watch Perry Mason? In my humble layman’s opinion, Slim was looking at about twenty to life right now.
“Did you see anybody else there?” I asked. “Any sign of anybody or anything?”
“Nothing, Harry. But it was late. Until I found Becca, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. After that, I don’t know. It’s all a blur.”
“Now this is real important,” I said. “When—”
The computerized voice of the jailhouse ph
one interrupted me: “This call will end in ten seconds.”
“When did you get there?” I demanded. “Exactly what time was it?”
C’mon, blast you, I thought, answer me.
“I don’t know, Harry. Maybe four-thirty in the morning. A few minutes before? Hell, I just don’t know.…”
“You sure, Slim? You damn sure about that?”
“As sure as I can be. I mean it was late and all—”
Then the computer cut us off.
Ray and I sat there staring at each other until another computer voice came on: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and dial your operator.”
“Ray,” I said. “We’re going to need a hell of a lot more help than any operator can give us.”
We sat there for a moment or two, struck dumber than bricks.
“Did you know any of this?” I asked. I don’t think I meant to sound pissed off, but that’s the way it came out.
Ray silently feigned innocence, and very badly, I might add.
“C’mon, Ray,” I said, “don’t give me that who, me? shit.”
Then he sighed and his shoulders relaxed. “He came pounding on my back door just before five o’clock. Woke my ass up out of a coma. He still had blood on his shirt where he’d wiped his hands.”
I felt my jaw slacken. “Goddamn it, Ray, this could make you an accessory after the fact.”
“Hey, I’m the one told him to turn hisself in.”
“Yeah, twenty-four hours later. After he’d had time to hide his shirt and boots.”
Ray shook his head. “I know. I can’t believe he did that.”
“Me, either. What an effective way to make yourself look guilty as sin.”
“Hell,” he said, almost as an afterthought, “I told him to burn ’em.”
I slapped my forehead. “Thank you, Ray. Now that I know that, I’m an accessory after the fact. Thanks for sharing that with me.”
“You’re not no damn access after the—whatever the hell you said.”
“Maybe not. I just happen to be aware of a failed attempt to suppress evidence in a murder case, that’s all. You know something, Ray? Slim may not be guilty, but you two bozos are sure conspiring to make him look that way.”
Way Past Dead Page 11