Cruel Justice

by William Bernhardt

  “No, I don’t,” he said emphatically.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to go into an argumentative evaluation of the facts. That’s for the courtroom, not the evening news.”

  “He won’t talk,” Bullock interjected, “because he has nothing to say. He has no defense.”

  “That’s about as true as most of what the prosecutor has said so far,” Kincaid replied.

  “Well, if you won’t talk about the case, why are you here?” the interviewer asked.

  “To make a plea.” The defense attorney turned and stared directly into the camera. Carlee had the eerie feeling he was looking at her. “My main difficulty in preparing this case has been that the crime occurred so long ago. I know there must be people out there with knowledge about this case, but how do you find them after so many years?”

  “I can see where that would present a difficulty,” the reporter commented.

  The attorney continued. “If there is anyone out there who knows anything about this crime, and I mean anything, please come forward. You can call me at my office; it’s listed in the phone book. If you know anything at all, please contact me. An innocent man’s life depends on you.”

  The anchorwoman asked another question, but Carlee didn’t hear it. Dave had moved in front of the television. He was staring down at her.

  “You’re going to testify, aren’t you?”

  Carlee looked away. “Didn’t you hear what he said?”

  “But, honey—people will laugh at you! Your story is incredible. It’s worse than incredible. It’s ridiculous.”

  “I can’t hold back just because I’m afraid someone might laugh at me.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “They’re tough. They’ll survive.”

  “What about my job?”

  “I can’t believe you’d lose your job over this.”

  “Why take the risk? Remember what happened when Craig Banner’s wife filed that sexual-harassment suit against her boss? She was splashed all over the news for weeks. People were calling her names, laughing at her. And two weeks later Craig lost his job.”

  “I think that’s a risk we have to take.”

  “Even if it tears our family apart?”

  Carlee wrung her hands around the doughnut bag. “Even if it tears our family apart.”

  Dave stared at her for a long time. Then, to Carlee’s surprise, he snuggled beside her and wrapped his arms around her. “You’re right, of course. Good for you.”

  “What? You’re not upset?”

  Dave smiled. “Well, I’m not happy about it. But I care more about you than my job, or my house, or anything else, for that matter. I know this has been tearing you up. I know you haven’t been sleeping at night, or functioning during the day. You’ve been eating junk food like it was going out of style.”

  “I’m afraid I may have gained a few pounds. …”

  “Forget it. You’ve been stressed out. I should never have tried to keep you from coming forward. I forgot one important fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  He squeezed her tightly. “I forgot what a good-hearted, good-natured, all-around good person you are. You can’t stand by quietly if there’s any chance you might be able to help an innocent man. You just can’t do it. It’s not in you. Whatever it costs, you’re going to do what you have to do.” He kissed her lightly on the neck. “That’s what I forgot.”

  “I’ll go see that attorney tomorrow, then.” Carlee pressed closer to him, then rolled over onto the bed, tugging him down with her. “Dave, I love you so much.”

  He grinned at her and began unfastening the buttons on her nightie. “Ditto.”

  56

  BEN PARKED HIS CAR just behind his mother’s Mercedes. Hard to miss; it stood out like a diamond in the dirt. Miracle she still had her hubcaps. Statistically, Tulsa was the car-theft capital of the nation; most people in this neighborhood either parked in garages or made do with worthless wrecks like Ben’s Honda.

  Ben approached his boardinghouse cautiously. This was not a good neighborhood, especially so late at night. He normally tried to be home before dark, but trials made that impossible. Especially when you’re doing interviews on the ten o’clock news.

  As expected, Bullock had used the forum to grandstand and try to influence the outcome of the case. Ben couldn’t believe some of what Bullock said. It was as if he were willing to do or say anything to—

  “Pssst.”

  Ben froze. He looked all around him, but saw nothing. He had almost made it to the front porch of the house. Where …?

  “Pssst.”

  Ben looked around the corner of the house. It was pitch-black. He couldn’t see a thing.

  Cautiously, Ben stepped around the side of the building. There were no streetlights, or any other lights, that reached back here.

  He followed the wall to the back of the brownstone. He knew from prior visits that the would-be backyard was a small rectangular area overgrown with grass and weeds. For a while Ben had parked his Honda back here, till someone had the bad taste to put a dead body in it. After that mess was finally cleared up, Ben decided it would be best just to leave his car on the street. Really, what could anyone do to it that hadn’t already been done?

  Ben squinted, trying to detect some reflection or movement somewhere in the darkness. He couldn’t find any. He kept walking, slowly, one step at a time, feeling his way along the back wall.

  Ben heard a sudden crash. He literally leaped up into the air. He felt as if his heart was going to pound its way out of his body.

  Trash bins. He had walked into the Dumpsters and knocked the lids down. Swell. If there was anyone back here, he wouldn’t be taking him by surprise.

  Two hands slapped down on Ben’s shoulders from behind. Ben whirled around, his heart racing.

  The figure before him was visible only as a shadow, an immense shadow, outlined against the dark sky.

  “You wanted to see me?” His voice was deep and menacing.

  “D-did I? I’m Ben Kincaid. I’m an attorney—”

  “I know who you are. Did you have some bizness wi’ me?”

  Something about his voice, his size, and his diction triggered a lightbulb in Ben’s brain. This was Joni’s boyfriend. Booker. She had arranged a meeting.

  “If you wants to talk, talk,” the deep voice commanded. “I ain’t s’posed to be here. If certain people knew, they’d cut my eyeballs out. Yours, too.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “ ’Cause my Joni asked me to. I do it for her. Not you.”

  Ben plunged in. Time was probably of the essence. “You know who Leeman Hayes is, right?”

  “I saw you there at his papa’s house, and you saw me.”

  “Right. Do you realize I’m defending Leeman on a murder charge?”

  “Didn’t Leeman kill no one. No way, no how. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “I agree,” Ben said. “Unfortunately, I have to prove it. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no murder.”

  “Probably not,” Ben agreed. “But I think you do know something about the Utica Greens Country Club.”

  “What makes you so certain?”

  “I saw you and your gang buddies in Captain Pearson’s office.”

  “We ain’t no gang.”

  “Fine. Your youth group. Your poor boys’ Rotary Club. Whatever you want to call it. I’ve seen you in uniform, so don’t bother lying. You’re a Demon.” Ben knew he was taking a major risk, talking tough with a guy like this. Somehow, though, he thought he would get farther if he could earn his respect.

  “So what’s your point?”

  “I want to know what the connection is between the gang and the country club.”

  Booker drew himself up. “You know what would happen if my friends knew I was talkin’ wi’ you?”

  “Yeah. The eyeballs thing. So answer my question already. What’s t
he connection?”

  “We … do some bizness together.”

  “What kind of business?”

  Booker folded his arms across his chest. “I ain’t sayin’.”

  “Booker, this could make the difference between life and death for Leeman. Think about it. Does Leeman Hayes deserve to die? Or be imprisoned for life? For a crime he didn’t commit? While some other SOB who really did it goes free?”

  There was no answer.

  “How would you feel if Leeman was a member of your gang? How would you feel if he was your brother? Would you let him die for nothing?”

  Booker hesitated a few seconds longer. “We run pickups and deliveries for Pearson.”

  “Deliveries of what?”

  “Valuable goods.”

  “And by goods, you mean drugs.”

  The shadow that was Booker nodded slowly.

  “Cocaine, right?”

  “Among others.”

  “Who gets the stuff?”

  “Don’t know. We pick it up for Pearson so he doesn’t have to risk gettin’ his pretty white neck thrown in jail, and he pays us for it. Part in cash, part in kind. What he does with his cut I don’t know.”

  “And where do the Demons get the stuff?”

  “Comes in from Peru,” Booker replied. “Pearson arranges it. He knows lots of people down there.”

  “How long has this gone on?”

  “Don’t know. Since I been with the Demons.”

  “When did you join?”

  “ ’Bout three months ago.”

  “Are the Demons planning a hit on the Cobras? Or vice versa?”

  “What’s that gotta do with Leeman?”

  “Probably nothing. But it could make this a pretty unpleasant time to be a Demon.”

  The big youth moved closer to Ben. Ben couldn’t actually see the approach; he saw only the widening of the black shadow that blotted out the sky; he felt only the heat radiating from the boy’s huge frame.

  “Joni tell me that if I help you, you won’t tell her parents about us.”

  “I never made that promise.”

  The two huge hands descended once again on Ben’s shoulders. “Then you promise me.”

  Ben tried to look him square in the eye, which was difficult, since he couldn’t even see his face. “Look, I’m not planning to tell anyone anything. But you can’t keep this romance a secret forever. Eventually someone’s going to find out. You’re going to have to face up to her parents.”

  “Joni don’t want that to happen now. When the time come, I’ll face it.”

  “Tell you what. You promise me you’ll get out of the Demons, and I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “You don’t know what you’re askin’.”

  “I know the Demons are heading toward some serious trouble. And I don’t want you and Joni to get tangled up in it.”

  “You don’t care about me.”

  “I care about Joni. And I don’t think it would make her very happy if she could only see her boyfriend twice a month on visiting day. Believe me, Booker, you don’t need the gang. You can make it without them.”

  “The Demons cared about me when no one else did.”

  “Maybe so, but Joni cares about you now. Whaddaya say?”

  Booker slowly removed his hands from Ben’s shoulders. “You just don’t know what you’re askin’.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. I know how hard it is to get out of a gang. But you need to do it anyway. Quickly.”

  The shadow took a step back. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Good.” Ben started to leave, then stopped. “And by the way. I wouldn’t wait until Joni’s parents find out about you by accident, or hear it from Mrs. Marmelstein or something. I’d tell them myself. They might not like it, but they’ll appreciate your honesty.”

  The shadow nodded.

  “Thanks again. And good luck.”

  Ben tiptoed upstairs and quietly turned the key in the door. He hoped his mother wasn’t too upset or worried or whatever it was mothers did.

  As if he didn’t have enough problems already, now he had his mother questioning and frowning and suggesting in her subtle way that everything about his life was second-rate. Pressure like this he didn’t need. He had assumed she would leave after a few days; now she seemed to be treating this like an extended holiday.

  Ben tiptoed into the main living room. To his surprise, he found his mother sound asleep on the sofa. Joey was cradled in her lap, equally asleep.

  He tiptoed closer. There was a soft whistle of air flowing in and out of her teeth, a rhythmic singsong. In sleep, her usual steely facade was gone. She seemed so vulnerable, sitting there, eyes closed. So old. So fragile.

  There was a plate of food on the dining table. More chicken something-or-other. He took a bite. Not bad, even cold. Not bad at all. He wolfed down the entire plate. Mother was definitely recovering her culinary talents.

  He tiptoed back into the living room. He thought about waking her, but she seemed so relaxed he didn’t have the heart. He lifted Joey out of her arms and carefully laid him down in his makeshift bed. Then Ben returned to the living room and put a blanket over his mother.

  It was then that the memory hit him. He was three, maybe four, and they were back at their house, not the palatial one in Nichols Hills, but someplace they had lived before, someplace smaller, someplace … closer. He was playing in bed—no, he was sick. He had a high fever, a virus or something, and he was stuck in bed but he couldn’t sleep, and his mother was reading to him, keeping him company. She was sitting in the chair beside his bed, but she fell asleep.

  Ben saw it all with crystal clarity, even though he hadn’t remembered the incident for years. Little Ben pulled a heavy blanket off his bed and wrapped it around his mother. He remembered it all so vividly, it was as if he were doing it right now, this instant, feeling just as he did then.

  He remembered why he did it, too. It wasn’t because he felt guilty. It wasn’t because he was afraid she would be mad at him, or disappointed.

  It was because he loved her.

  Gently, he kissed his mother on the cheek and tiptoed out of the room.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be such a horrible development if she stayed a bit longer. After all, she was helpful with Joey. And she made a dynamite chicken something-or-other.

  He was definitely going to have to get her Mercedes off the street, though.

  57

  IT WAS LIKE WAKING up in the middle of a Rube Goldberg nightmare machine. The shrill ringing of the phone blasted Ben out of a deep slumber. Groping in the darkness, he knocked the phone off the end table. The phone fell on his cat; his cat leaped into the air and landed on Ben’s face. Startled, Ben cried out, if only for a brief instant.

  But a brief instant was long enough. A few seconds later Ben heard me muffled sound of Joey crying in the next room.

  He grabbed the phone receiver, silencing the offending ringing. “Just a minute,” he whispered.

  He heard the shuffling slippered footsteps of his mother trudging toward the baby. What a trouper.

  Well, he thought. I’ll relieve her as soon as I get this thoughtless heathen off the phone.

  “Who the hell is this?” Ben barked.

  “My God, you sure are grumpy. What, did I interrupt a sexy dream?”

  “Mike? Is this you?” It was. “What’s going on in that febrile brain of yours? Don’t you know it’s”—he glanced at the digital clock—“three-twenty in the A.M.?”

  “I know the time. Have you got the temperature?”

  “Look, just because you stay up all night reading Shakespeare aloud to yourself doesn’t mean—”

  “I’m at a crime scene, Ben.”

  That slowed him down. “A—you mean a—”

  “Yeah. The kind with dead bodies in them.”

  “Does this relate to the Abie Rutherford abduction?”

  “So it seems. And it relates to your murder trial as well.”

 
; “It does?” Ben tried to clear the cobwebs out of his head. “In what way?”

  “Well, I think you can now safely eliminate one of your suspects.”

  “Really? Why?”

  Mike paused a good long while before answering. “Because he’s dead.”

  By the time Ben arrived at the spacious Utica Hills mansion, the corpse had already been removed. Ben was not disappointed.

  He thumbed through the crime-scene Polaroids Mike had given him. “I don’t believe it,” Ben said over and over.

  “Believe it. This is one weird world we live in.”

  “This is beyond weird. This is … grotesque.” He held the first photo out at arm’s length. It revealed the clear image of a blond man in his early forties. He was naked, except that he was wearing women’s stockings and a garter belt and had a plastic bag over his head and an apple in his mouth. “What on earth was he doing?”

  “I believe this is what the experts refer to as autoerotic asphyxiation,” Mike explained.

  “What?”

  “People who are into this stuff have known for some time that orgasm seems more intense when you’re on the brink of asphyxiation. The lack of oxygen induces light-headedness, which reduces inhibitions and, um, enhances the sexual experience. And the appeal to those with masochistic tendencies is obvious. This clown was apparently trying to induce this heightened super-sexual state while engaging in a, um, solitary sexual practice.”

  “And?”

  “And he got a little too excited and went a little too far and choked to death. It only takes seven pounds of pressure to collapse the carotid artery, and—boom! You’re unconscious within seconds.” Mike shrugged. “That’s why they call it dangerous sex.”

  Ben dropped the photos. “What’ll they think of next?”

  “Oh, this is nothing new. It’s been around for centuries, probably since someone first noticed that hanged men often got an erection while in the noose. De Sade described it in detail in Justine. It’s in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, too. Experts attribute about fifty deaths a year to this.”

  Ben stared at his friend. “Mike—why do you know these things?”

  “All in a cop’s job description.”

  “Right. Even if some wackos really do this—why would Chris Bentley? It doesn’t make any sense.”