River of Secrets

by Roger Johns

  He stepped forward, freeing two steps of empty space between himself and the priest.

  Eddie looked for Marla among the growing crowd. She remained about twenty feet away, recording everything.

  “What’s this about, Detective Hartman?”

  “I’m willing to put the cuffs on hands-in-front. If you’d like to remove your jacket and have it draped it over the cuffs, I’m fine with that too. Can I count on you to be cooperative?”

  Eddie smiled and shook his head. “Absolutely not.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, then stood stock-still. “Let’s go for the full pageantry, shall we? You’ll have an opportunity to show off your handcuffing technique and your frog-marching style, and I get to add another viral video to my growing collection. Sounds like a win-win situation.”

  He knew he was about to break his rule about indulging emotions, but the moment seemed to call for exactly that. Besides, his first time through the criminal justice meat grinder taught him it was better to sail in on a tide of rising emotion than to slink in nursing an attitude of fear and defeat. He stood tall and filled his lungs with a deep, deliberate breath and looked toward the assembled crowd.

  “Help me out, folks.” His smile was huge and confident. “Should I make this easy, or should we make her work for it?”

  Some shouted “Work for it,” but some expressed the opinion that Eddie must have done something wrong, otherwise the police wouldn’t be on the scene.

  Wallace moved around behind Eddie, pulling first one hand, then the other from his pockets and snapping the cuffs around his wrists.

  Speaking just loud enough for Eddie to hear, Wallace said, “I made my offer out of—”

  “Out of respect for my brother.” He laughed and shook his head. “Always, it’s my brother. What about respect for me, Detective Hartman? When does that enter the calculation?”

  Wallace had given serious consideration to Burley’s offer to have someone else make the arrest. Eddie was the much older half-brother of Craig Stephens, one of Wallace’s closest friends since childhood. Her being the one to slap on the cuffs was going to stress her relationship with Craig.

  But she also knew that Eddie would have an easier time of it if she was the one to bring him in, because no one else on the force would have as strong a personal interest in de-escalating any crisis behavior that broke out. Either way, there would be fallout.

  She took hold of one of Eddie’s elbows and her fellow officer took the other. Carefully, but firmly, they led the smiling man through the jostling gauntlet of phone-wielding churchgoers and curiosity seekers.

  SEVEN

  Word of Eddie Pitkin’s arrest had traveled fast. A crowd of “Free Eddie” protesters greeted his arrival at the police building.

  Once Wallace delivered Eddie over to the booking process and filed her report, she fled the premises and drove to Mason’s apartment. From there, she took the two of them to her mother’s house.

  After the hassle of the afternoon, Carol Hartman’s birthday dinner turned out to be therapeutic. For the first time in days, Wallace was able to let her guard down.

  Davis McCone had arranged the party as part of an effort to rekindle an old romance. His wife had died a little over a year ago and his long-ago interest in Wallace’s mother had resurfaced.

  Wallace and her mother had been widows for several years and both now found themselves with prospects. Carol had encouraged Wallace to be receptive to the idea of having a man in her life, but Wallace had been unenthusiastic until Mason had arrived and taken her completely by surprise. Now Wallace watched with keen interest as her mother dealt with the same possibilities.

  “You’re probably wondering if she was this argumentative as a child,” Carol said to Mason after they had listened to several minutes of heated debate between Wallace and Davis over the Progressive legacies of Huey and Earl Long, two influential but controversial Louisiana governors from the early and mid-twentieth century. “Although you can never be sure whether Davis is really an anti-tax-and-spend person or if he’s just pulling Wallace’s chain.”

  “She does seem to have a very well-developed…”

  “Talent?” Wallace filled in, turning her attention to Mason.

  “Precisely the word I was looking for.” A smile spread across his face.

  “At breakfast one morning, when she was about four years old, she asked her father what sausage was made from.”

  “Mom, do you have to tell that silly story to every man who’s ever shown an interest in me?”

  “It would be a shame to waste something I’ve had so much practice at,” Carol said without missing a beat. “Anyway,” she continued, turning back to Mason, “he told her, ‘Sausage is made from pigs,’ so Wallace immediately said, ‘That means pigs are made from sausage.’ Well, that practically set off World War Three. No matter what Walter said, Wallace would simply not be parted from that bit of deductive reasoning. They went round and round on that point until I was sure there would be gunfire. That was the day her father learned that his was only the second-hardest head in the house.”

  “Are you saying I’m hardheaded?”

  “I can see the logic in Wallace’s—” Mason began.

  “You stay out of this.” Wallace raised her palm in a stop gesture. “Mom, do you really think I’m hardheaded?”

  “Wallace, you say it like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Do you think I’m hardheaded?” Wallace asked, redirecting her attention to Mason.

  “You just told me to stay out of it.”

  “And now I’m telling you to jump in … with both feet … on the correct side.”

  “There’s really nothing about you I don’t like a great deal.”

  “Weasel.”

  “Guilty.”

  “And smart,” Carol finished.

  “And handy in the kitchen too.” Mason stood, gathering dishes from the table. “This was a wonderful meal. Let me clean up.”

  “Well, aren’t you two just the sweetest pair.” Wallace laughed, looking from her mother to Mason.

  “Mason, sit. Davis and I made this mess. We’ll clean it up,” Carol said.

  Wallace watched as Mason stacked a few dishes, one on top of the other, relying mostly on his right hand. His left arm was still a bit weak and unsteady from a nearly fatal wound he had suffered several months earlier. The offending bullet had ripped through Mason’s left armpit damaging the network of arteries and nerves that fed his arm. Months of agonizing and frustrating rehabilitation had restored a great deal of function. His surgeon claimed he’d had patients who came all the way back from worse damage, but Wallace wondered whether that was more pep talk than prognosis.

  “Mom, you and Davis did all the cooking. Let me and Mason clean up.” She looked back at Mason and saw him looking at her, smiling. He wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about his injury. Wallace liked that about him. He didn’t worry about what anyone else thought and he seemed incapable of self-pity.

  Just as Wallace reached across the table for Davis’s dishes, the doorbell rang. She looked at her mother, then at Davis. Both shook their heads and gave her puzzled looks. Concern clouded her face.

  “I’ll see who it is.” She set the plate down and then moved into the hallway toward the front door. The light inside made it hard to see out through the glass panes of the door. The silhouette of a man standing several feet back, at the edge of the porch, was just visible. As she drew closer she recognized him and her spirits sank.

  She had prayed he wouldn’t come looking for her, that he wouldn’t even call. For a split second, she considered backing away from the door and disappearing into the house. He was turned away, so he hadn’t seen her yet. But he had seen her car parked at the curb. He appeared to be looking directly at it.

  Wallace slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her. The visitor turned at the sound.

  “Craig,” she said, hoping she sounded surprised to see him.

  “Hey, little white
girl.” He gave her a half-hearted smile, but worry was leeching the cheer out of his normally upbeat demeanor.

  When Wallace was a girl, her family had lived on the white side of one of the streets that marked the borderline between a white neighborhood and a black neighborhood. She had spent a good bit of her growing-up years playing with Craig and his younger sister, Berna, the black children who lived on the other side of the street—something not all of the white neighbors had found charming.

  The fact that Craig refused to call her anything but little white girl hadn’t helped matters. Craig’s mother had spanked him silly trying to make him call her Wallace, but for reasons known only to himself, Craig had stuck to his guns.

  “How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

  “I called the station. I drove by your house and Mason’s apartment. A process of elimination.”

  “I know this has got to be hard on you and your mother,” Wallace said. “How is she?”

  “She’s dealing with it.” Craig sat sidesaddle on the porch railing, one foot on the floor, the other swinging free. He shoved his hands into his pockets. The skirt of his sport coat bunched up along his forearms. “Eddie didn’t do it.”

  “You’re talking to the wrong person,” Wallace said. “I was the arresting officer and the detective of record on the investigation. I have no control over the issue of guilt or innocence.”

  “I know. That would be the judge and the jury. But I’m telling you, he didn’t do it. This is not the time to close your investigation.”

  “Who told you I was closing the investigation?”

  “You did,” he said, his voice rising. “You’re already referring to it in the past tense, as if it’s all over but the hanging.”

  Wallace leaned back against the front wall of the house. Table talk and dish clatter drifted out through the screened window to her left. She debated how much to tell him.

  “Craig, he’s been tied to the crime by some very convincing circumstantial evidence. The word is, the DA thinks she has enough to convict. Are you saying the evidence is wrong?”

  “I know what the DA’s thinking and I know what evidence she thinks is making this an open-and-shut case. But what I’m saying is that Eddie didn’t do it because he couldn’t have done it. He was at my fishing camp on False River the whole time. I don’t use it much anymore, so he’s out there most weekends.”

  Almost from the moment she’d put the cuffs on him, Eddie had remained silent. This was the first Wallace was hearing about an alibi.

  “Were you there with him?”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “He and Renata are having difficulties. The lake house is where he goes to take the ethanol cure.” Craig’s lips twisted into a sour expression. Disapproval was clear in his voice.

  “Could anyone else have been out there, offering to console him during his time of marital discord?”

  “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. But that’s not his style.”

  “And style points don’t count as evidence.” She pushed herself away from the wall and took a step toward Craig, tilting her head and looking into his worried eyes. “You know this.”

  “We’ve got an audience,” he said, staring past her, at the living room windows.

  Wallace looked back over her shoulder. Mason and Davis were in the living room.

  “Look, before—”

  The porch light came on. Wallace raised her hand for quiet. She threaded her arm through Craig’s, pulling him with her toward the sidewalk in front of the house. When she looked back at the house, Davis was standing at the front door, squinting out at them. He turned away when he saw Wallace looking at him.

  “Before Eddie’s troubles started, all those years ago,” Craig began again, “he was a first-rate criminal lawyer. He tried and consulted on cases all over the country and most of his high-profile work was based on the reliability of forensic evidence. A guy with that kind of smarts isn’t going to just forget and leave a few stray hairs lying around the scene of his latest murder.”

  Ironically, as Wallace recalled, Eddie’s long-ago troubles stemmed from an evidence-tampering scheme he had tried to pull off in a case on which he was lead counsel. Eddie was convinced his client was innocent. He was also convinced that a certain piece of evidence would be too inflammatory and unfairly bias the jury. Certain that only he was aware of the pesky evidence in question, he had buried it. But it turned out that at least one other person knew of its existence and that person had made sure the deception was brought to the court’s attention.

  Eddie’s fall from grace had been swift and complete. His client was eventually acquitted, in spite of the evidence Eddie had tried to hide, but Eddie was tried and convicted of obstruction of justice—a serious felony in Louisiana. He had been disbarred and spent three years in Angola, the state penitentiary.

  “We can debate this all night long and it won’t do you or your brother any good. When was the DA notified of this alibi?”

  “She hasn’t been told. At least, not that I know of.”

  Wallace took a step back. “Craig, you know you can’t just claim the evidence is bad because you think the odds are against it.” She looked back at the house to see if they were still being watched. They weren’t.

  “Look, Eddie’s been lying to me since we were kids. I know what that looks like. This time he’s telling the truth.”

  “If so, then either the lab got it wrong or somebody planted that evidence. Framing someone for a capital crime is a dangerous and very tricky business. Are you thinking of someone in particular who’d be willing to try a harebrained scheme like this?”

  “We both know that list would be quite long. Eddie’s not exactly the darling of the white community and there are even a fair number of black people, me included, who wish he would just stop with this crusade of his.” He shook his head. “What I can’t figure out is why anyone could honestly believe Eddie would even do something like this.”

  “I hear you, but others will see things differently. He and Herbert weren’t exactly exchanging love letters, over the years. He said things in public that came awfully close to sounding like threats of violence against Marioneaux and his family.”

  “That sounds more like a motive for Herbert Marioneaux to get rid of Eddie, not the other way around. Besides, Eddie referred to Marioneaux as the kind of person who served no useful purpose in an enlightened society. That’s not the same thing as a threat.”

  “Maybe. But when the DA does her song and dance for the jury, those old hostilities will not be ignored.”

  “I’m not asking anybody to ignore anything.” Craig’s voice trembled with barely controlled anger, “I’m just asking you not to close the investigation yet. Eddie’s been picked up for something he didn’t do and Herbert Marioneaux’s killer is still on the street.”

  “Okay.” Wallace raised her hands in surrender and took another step back. She wasn’t used to the ire and frustration she was seeing in Craig. “Did anybody else see Eddie up there? The guy at the bait store? Somebody at a restaurant where Eddie paid with a credit card and there was a nice, high-res surveillance camera staring him square in the face as he signed the bill? Maybe with a big, fat time and date stamp across the bottom of the picture?”

  “Not that we know of,” Craig said, lowering his voice. “He says it was just him and a cooler full of food and beer. He got there on Friday afternoon and didn’t leave until Sunday morning. The only place he went was to and from the house and the dock out back, so unless somebody just happened to be doing a field study of the neo-bourgeois southern Negro infiltrating the age-old habitat of the light-skinned rural cracker bird, then it’s just Eddie’s word against a couple of very inconvenient hairs.” Craig pulled his glasses off and rubbed the spot between his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “Craig, do you have to talk that way? You know it creeps me out.”

  “What can I say?” His
gaze was steady, but his voice was not. “If it takes a case of the creeps to keep this investigation going—until things get set right—then so be it.”

  “Who’s representing Eddie, and may I assume he or she knows about this little conversation you and I are having?”

  “Tasha Kovacovich, and no, she doesn’t know. But she will.”

  An uncomfortable feeling swept through her. Craig was stepping out-of-bounds. Way out-of-bounds.

  “Let me give this some thought. At the moment, that’s the best I can do.”

  “Thanks, Wallace.” It sounded more like “thanks for nothing.” His smile was weak and doubtful. “Tell your mother I said hello and Happy Birthday.”

  Without a good-bye, he turned and strode off into the gloom, leaving a heavy sensation in the air between them. It felt like a burned bridge.

  If Craig was convinced Eddie was telling the truth, the least she could do was make the argument that it was too early to close the investigation. She didn’t want the police department or the DA to get blindsided and played for fools. She called Jason Burley’s cell and left him a message with the broad outlines of her and Craig’s conversation.

  When she walked back into the house, Davis and Mason were sitting in the living room.

  “Trouble?” Mason asked.

  She shook her head. “Just some repercussions from a case.”

  “Trouble,” Davis said with the barest hint of a smile.

  Wallace looked at Davis, then back at Mason. Mason cocked an eyebrow.

  “Carol kicked us out of the kitchen.” Davis rattled the ice in his drink and brought it to his lips.

  Wallace smiled at Mason and squeezed his shoulder as she passed him on her way toward the back of the house. Craig’s revelations troubled her, but the sound of dishes being loaded into a dishwasher pushed thoughts of Craig and Eddie out of her mind. A year ago, she wouldn’t have been able to shift gears so easily. Back then, once her mind started to wrestle with a case it proved almost impossible for her to shake her thinking loose.