by David R. Dow
I shrugged. I told Gary to let Kassie take the lead in talking to Green. Then I said to Kassie, Be sure to wear something nice.
MELISSA HARMON SAID, If you’re buying lunch, you must need something.
I’d known Melissa for close to twenty years. She had been a homicide cop before leaving the police force to open her own detective agency. She is five feet two inches tall, and weighs maybe a hundred pounds after a big breakfast. She is also a third-degree black belt. For ten years she was married to an abusive spouse. I once asked her why she didn’t beat the crap out of the guy. She turned her head to the side and shrugged. I never asked again. She did me a big favor when I was a young lawyer, and I was finally able to pay it back by getting her a divorce lawyer who put her ex-husband through the misery he deserved. When I needed a cop’s perspective, I asked her. Sometimes I even hired her.
I said, If you were investigating a crime scene, is there any reason you would think a dead guy had committed suicide if you didn’t find a gun near him? She asked what hypothetical crime scene I was talking about. I told her.
She said, Lucas Wyatt pulled that case, right? I nodded. She said, He might take too many shortcuts, but he isn’t corrupt. I said that wasn’t exactly what I had asked her. We were at Goode Company Bar-B-Q. She ate a piece of sausage. She said, I don’t know why you eat the brisket. It’s like diet food. It isn’t as good as this. She stabbed another piece of sausage with her plastic fork and waved it under my nose. I waited. She said, No, I don’t think that thought would cross my mind. I asked whether it would make a difference if the victim was a woman. She thought for a minute and asked, Wasn’t she a mother? I told her yes. She said, If the kids were dead, I might give the possibility of murder-suicide a little thought.
Even if there wasn’t a gun?
If there wasn’t a gun, it would be just a very little thought, she said.
I said, If Wyatt had found a gun next to the body he’s not the kind of cop who would neglect to put that in his report, is he?
No, he isn’t.
You sure?
She paused and said, Yeah, I am.
I said, I detected a pause before that answer.
She smiled. Then she said, I told you, he’s not corrupt. If it was my time, I wouldn’t waste it chasing that rabbit. But it isn’t my time, is it? And if I know you, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. She wiped her mouth and stood up to go. Thanks for lunch, Doc. Let’s do it again when I can bring more clarity to your life.
LINCOLN CALLED ME as I was driving back to the office. He had learned to ride his bike without training wheels two weeks earlier, and ever since all he wanted to do was practice. He would wake up with me at five and wait for it to get light, then ride up and down the driveway in his pajamas until it was time for breakfast. He asked whether I could come home for a while to help him practice. I told him to practice with Nana. He said, But she runs too slow. She won’t be able to help catch me if I fall. I told him that he would have to work it out. He said, You told me this morning you would practice with me at lunch. He was correct. I had forgotten. I said that something had come up at my office, and that I would have to do it tomorrow. He said, Okay, Dada. He waited for me to break the connection.
Why is it that when my six-year-old son says, Okay, Dada, I feel like my entire life is a waste of time?
JEROME AND BUD LOMAX were waiting for me when I got back to the office. Jerome looked at me over Bud’s shoulder and rolled his eyes.
Bud Lomax was Henry Quaker’s brother-in-law, Dorris’s younger brother. Bud had been seventeen when Dorris and the children were killed. At Henry’s trial, Lomax had testified that Dorris told him that Henry was abusive. I could not conceive of how a jury could have believed him. His eyes flitted like a bird eyeing a cat. He was a loser, and I could not imagine how anyone could believe that Dorris told him a meaningful thing. He said that Dorris was scared of Henry and once told him that Henry had threatened to kill her. Henry’s lawyer did not ask him a single question on cross-examination. Three months ago he called our office, talked to Jerome, and said he needed to see us. He told Jerome that he had lied at the trial.
Jerome drove out to Bud’s apartment. Bud told Jerome that the day after the bodies were found, a detective had come to see him and said that Henry committed the crime. He said it would help if Bud could remember fights he had witnessed between Henry and Dorris. Bud said he couldn’t remember any fights. He said Henry and Dorris loved each other. The detective told him it sure would be a shame if Henry got away with murdering his sister just because Bud had a bad memory. The detective came to see Bud four or five times. Eventually, his memory improved.
In the scheme of things, neither Bud’s original testimony nor his recantation was of great importance. Motive is overrated as an element of criminal trials. People kill for good reasons, bad reasons, and no reason at all. But in this case, the evidence against Henry was so slim that anything helped.
Bud had served twenty months in prison for drug possession. He was twenty-seven, no longer a kid, when he called Jerome. That day in my office he smelled like he’d bathed in peppermint schnapps. I said, Happy hour started a little early today, huh, partner? He looked at me blankly. Jerome asked him to tell us again what had happened after the murder. He repeated the same story Jerome had already heard. I asked him, Where were these conversations? He said at his house. I said, Inside or outside? He said he couldn’t remember. I asked him whether the detective might have found drugs inside the house. He stared at me like I had horns, with equal parts fear and disbelief. I said, How early in the morning do I need to schedule a meeting with you if I want to see you sober? He ran his thumb across his bottom lip. I told Jerome to take him home.
Later that day Jerome said, Just because the cop found drugs doesn’t mean that Bud would lie, and even if we could prove he did, just because Bud lied doesn’t mean Henry didn’t do it.
That’s true, I said. I asked Jerome whether Bud had any kids. He said, Four. Three sons, one daughter, three different mothers.
I said, Fatherhood can have unpredictable effects. I’ll see you tomorrow.
I DROVE HOME to pick up Lincoln for t-ball practice. He was waiting for me, throwing a tennis ball against the garage and catching the rebound. He seemed to have forgotten about the shitty dad episode, another great thing about six-year-olds. He said, Look, Dada. Nana helped me fix my injury. He had skinned his knee falling off the bike, Maria explained, and he had insisted he needed Neosporin and an Ace bandage. He had his leg wrapped, from ankle to thigh, with an elastic bandage. I thanked Maria and told her she could go. She said to Lincoln, Adios, amor.
He hugged her and said, Hasta mañana, Nana.
Katya had wanted Lincoln to play baseball because his three best friends from school were going to. When Lincoln said he wasn’t interested, I smiled. I’ve had enough of Little League Baseball for one lifetime. He said, I want to learn how to wrestle instead, like Dada. I thought that was a great idea. Katya gave me her be-quiet-a-minute look and asked him, Won’t you be sad if all your friends are playing and you aren’t?
Lincoln said, Maybe. He thought for a moment then said, Okay, I’ll play if Dada will be coach. Katya gave me her gotcha look. Thus it was that I became a Little League manager, outmaneuvered by the two of them for neither the first nor the last time.
The parents in our neighborhood take Little League more than a little too seriously. They sign a contract agreeing not to abuse the umpires. Some start with the abuse anyway, and they get banned from attending the games. One banned parent sued the league, claiming he had a right to free speech, which meant he could heckle any umpire he wanted. The league hired professional coaches to train the kids. At our first practice, the professional coaches had the kids line up and told them to run to a spot on the field. Most of the kids were five; a few were six. The coach said, When you get there, break down, box-step, and throw. Eleven kids looked at me. Lincoln said, Dada, what does that mean? I told him
I wasn’t sure. He picked up a stick and started to draw a picture in the dirt.
The coaches were teaching the kids how to run past first base. I was still thinking about Bud Lomax. Lincoln said, Dada, I’m hot. I told him I was hot, too; just pay attention to the coaches. Sam was running to first base and crashed into Connor, who had wandered into the base path. Connor started shrieking when he saw his nose was bleeding. I wrapped some ice in a towel and pressed it against his nose. Lincoln came trotting over. I told him to go back to the other kids, that I was busy.
He said, But I’m too hot.
That’s it, amigo. I’m tired of your arguing with me. We’re not having a snow cone after practice.
This was a severe punishment. Snow cones are one of his favorite things to eat, and he had been talking since breakfast the day before about the flavor he was going to get. On the way to the car Lincoln pleaded with me to change my mind. When I didn’t, he cried all the way home. We walked in the house and Katya asked what was the matter. I said, Sometimes I am easily the world’s worst dad.
I went out back and jumped in the pool. I blew out my breath and felt myself sink to the bottom. I rolled onto my back and looked up. The sun was low in the west, casting a dancing shadow from our curly willow over the water. The shimmering surface calmed me.
Earlier that summer, a girl who had been in Lincoln’s preschool class drowned at a classmate’s fifth birthday party at a neighborhood country club in full view of her supposed protectors. I have heard that drowning is not a painful death, but I don’t believe it. Twenty kids were swimming, and neither lifeguard saw her go under. Her hair got caught in the drain. They emptied the pool and sent the children inside and tried to revive her for half an hour before another parent who is a doctor mercifully declared her dead.
She had been an only child. I told Katya that if it had happened to Lincoln, I didn’t think I’d be able to go on. Her eyes filled and she said, I know, me neither.
Under the water, I tried to imagine what the girl’s parents felt, how they got out of bed in the morning. If you have other kids, you have to. If you don’t, you don’t. I was dizzy. I felt hollow, like the pressure had shrunk my organs and my body contained nothing but space. I sliced to the surface. When I came up, Lincoln and Winona were chasing each other around the yard. He was laughing. Her tongue was lolling to the side. She was running sawtooth slow, so he could catch her. I said, Hey Linco, you want me to go back to the field and buy you a snow cone?
He said, Nah, I think I’ll just have some ice cream instead. Two scoops, one coconut crunch and one of chocolate, and a cone on the side. He paused a beat, then added, Please.
I said, I love you, amigo.
He said, I know.
WHILE KATYA AND I were having dinner, Kassie called. Green had been friendly. He told her that he knew for a fact that Henry was innocent. He said he knew who the killer was, and that the killing had been drug related. The killer’s name was Ruben. Green told Kassie that he had been in the county jail with this Ruben during Quaker’s trial. Kassie asked why he had been in jail, and Green said he’d violated his parole. She asked why Ruben was there. Green said he didn’t know. She asked for Ruben’s last name. Green said he forgot. Kassie hadn’t pressed him for details, she just let him ramble. Kassie’s major strength as a lawyer is her instinct about people who are generally untrustworthy. She said, He might have been yanking my chain, or he might not have been. It’s hard to say. I’ll need some time to poke around. She told me she was going to investigate the drug angle, see whether Sandra Blue, the neighbor, could remember anything helpful. I told her that sounded fine, and that she should get Gary to help her. I asked her whether there was anything else. She said, Yeah. The guy asked me if I know any recipes for soul food that he can cook on his hot plate. And one other thing, too. He masturbated while he was talking to me. Didn’t try to hide it in the slightest. He’s a piece of work, Doc. I’d rather not have to go see him again.
I told Katya what Kassie had said. She said, See. You should listen to me more often. I said I’d reserve judgment on that until we could figure out whether anything Green said was true. I told her about the masturbation. She said, All I’m saying is that he’s actually trying to help you. Just because people are screwed up doesn’t mean that nothing they say is right.
Later that night we were sitting in the library reading. I started to think about Jeremy Winston’s children. I’d seen them at the prison the day I met Winston. I had given them my cell phone number, and they called me twenty times or more in less than a week. His sons were twelve and fifteen when he died. I wondered whether they went trick-or-treating on the anniversary of their dad’s execution. What happens to children whose father is a murderer? I should know the answer to this question, but I don’t. Nearly all my clients had terrible fathers, but only one, so far as I know, had a dad who killed someone. Isn’t that curious? Lincoln wants to be a wrestler because I was a wrestler, yet my clients come to murder on their own. But what about their children? What will they tell people about their dads? How do their teachers treat them? Are their classmates scared of them?
How far into a relationship do you have to be before you tell your girlfriend that the state executed your old man?
I meet many of the parents, though I can’t truly say that I know them. I wonder whether they blame themselves. I remember news footage of Timothy McVeigh’s dad, in his small yard, on a riding mower, refusing to hide from the cameras. I felt like he was trying to say, I didn’t kill anyone. Now let me mow my grass in peace. During a death-penalty trial, when a murderer’s mother gets on the witness stand to plead with jurors to spare her son’s life, the prosecutor tears into her as if she herself committed a crime, throwing in her face every bad thing her son has ever done, insinuating that she is somehow to blame. Does the prosecutor hate his own mother, or does he not see this other mother as like his own?
I’m pensive only when I have time on my hands. Socrates had it backward. He thought the unexamined life is not worth living. I think no one’s life holds up to examination. The more time you spend thinking, the more you notice that everyone else is doing something better, or more important, than you. Idleness and idolatry aren’t related, but they ought to be.
Winston’s father was a devout Jehovah’s Witness. He had forced Winston to knock on doors and invite himself in to people’s homes to discuss the Bible. When Winston misbehaved, his father beat him with a tree branch or an extension cord. He didn’t think he was being cruel. He thought he was being stern. He and Winston’s mother got divorced when Winston was fourteen. The father moved to Louisiana. He never talked to the son again. Days before the execution, he called me to say that he believed he had been too tough on his son and to ask if there was some way he could help. He asked whether he could see his son in prison. I told him no, he couldn’t. He said, I do understand. Thank you, sir. If you think it is appropriate, please tell Jeremy that I love him.
When I called Winston shortly before he died, I told him what his dad had said. If you can feel an emotion through the phone, I would swear I felt him smile, not a happy smile, more a smile of relief—no, of release, which is different, the smile of a weight being lifted.
Lincoln started to cry. I ran upstairs to his room. I tried to wake him but he was deep into a dream. He was saying, Stop, turn off, stop. I lifted him out of his bed and turned on the light. He kept screaming. I sat down at the electric keyboard in his room with him on my lap. I played two bars of Thelonious Monk’s Everything Happens to Me. At last Lincoln woke up. He told me his bad dream. He had been in our exercise room and the treadmill turned itself on. The belt was whirring and the platform raised itself to the steepest incline. Lincoln pulled the plug out of the wall, but it kept on running. He said, I tried to make it stop, Dada, but it wouldn’t. I told him it was okay, that it was over now. I put him back in his bed and stayed with him, stroking his damp hair, until he fell back asleep.
Katya had been standing in the ha
ll outside his door, ready to come in and help if I needed her. When Lincoln was three and four, he had these nightmares once or twice a week. Katya used to be the only one of us who could calm him down. I would try and fail, and she would have to intervene. This night was the first time in several months that he’d had one, and I felt absurdly happy that Katya had let me handle it by myself. I made it through the day without being a total failure. I walked out of his room, feeling serene. Katya was waiting there, right outside the door. She kissed me softly and said, You’re a great dad.
She always knows exactly which lie to tell.
WHEN I GOT TO THE OFFICE the next morning Kassie and Gary were already there, doing computer searches for the guy Green said had murdered Henry Quaker’s family. Green had been in the jail during the Quaker trial. During two days of the trial, there was also an inmate named Ruben Francisco Cantu, the only Ruben in the jail at the same time Green was there. He’d been stopped in a routine traffic stop and when cops opened the trunk they found bricks of marijuana. He bonded out two days later. I said, So I guess the rabbit chase goes on for a little while longer, huh? I asked where Cantu was now. Kassie told me that he’d served three years of a ten-year sentence and had gotten paroled five years ago. The address we had for him was two years old, but it was all we had. I said, I think I’ll take a drive over to the east side.
When the dry wind blows in from the west, carrying the petrochemical fumes toward Lafayette, the only toxic clue is that the setting sun looks like a blood orange sinking into the Sabine. People who live with poisoned air get to see the most beautiful sunsets, the bargain for not getting to see as many of them. Cantu lived five doors down from an eggshell-colored clapboard church sitting on top of cinder blocks with a listing portable sign that said, Jesus Cristo es el Hombre. I parked at the church and walked across the oyster-shell parking lot to see if anyone was inside. A man sat at a piano, picking out a tune with his left hand and jotting down the notes with his right. I said, Perdon, senor. Yo quiero saber si usted conoce a uno de sus vecinos, un hombre se llama Ruben Cantu? He asked me in English whether I was a police officer. I told him I wasn’t. He said he had a lot of neighbors named Cantu. He didn’t think he knew anyone named Ruben. I asked him whether I could leave my car in his parking lot, and when he said I could, I said, Muchisimas gracias, and walked down the street.