Dead River

by Fredric M. Ham

  “When do you think you’ll hear something?”

  “Next week, some time after the Thanksgiving break. Jacobson’s going to be completely stressed out over this because the week after next the case is scheduled to go before the grand jury.”

  “Shit, that’s right. No prosecutor in his right mind would take this to a grand jury right now. He’ll have to request a postponement.”

  “You’d think,” Harley agreed.

  “Christ, the publicity’s going to kill our wannabe state attorney general.”

  “I know, and that’s why the asshole’s not going to make it easy for us.”

  “Well, if he’s smart, he’d let this one go. Hell, without the lab report he doesn’t have a case. He should give it up and cut his losses, and bank on the media moving on to something else.”

  “Smart, that’s the key word, George. Anybody else would do that, but not him. He’s truly his own worst enemy.”

  “That’s for sure,” Allison said, snorting out a laugh.

  Then Harley watched Allison’s eyes morph into a solemn gaze.

  “How do you think this is all going to play out, Harley?”

  Harley slowly sipped the last of his coffee then set the mug down on the porcelain coaster in front of him.

  “I think the first thing that’s going to happen is Judge Vetter will strongly suggest that Mr. Slick depose Sam Weber and Garrett Townsend. But that will prove interesting.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Weber’s retained an attorney. You know Rufus Cline?”

  “Isn’t he with Bowersox, Green, and Bernstein in Winter Park?”

  “That’s the one. Ole Rufus will have Weber spitting out fifth-amendments to every damn question.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Hell yes, I would. The point is that the grand jury hearing will have to be delayed, whether Mr. Slick requests it or not. But what’s really important is when Vetter reviews Garrett Townsend’s deposition testimony, he’ll have no choice but to insist the state attorney throw out the hair sample evidence.”

  “You think Jacobson will still want to go forward with prosecuting Sikes?”

  “I’m sure of it. At least initially he will, but I’m also sure the good judge will tell him to give it up. A nasty, high-profile trial, with a low probability of conviction and high probability of making him look very bad, oh yes, the judge is going to help us out here. I guarantee it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Allison offered.

  Harley pulled back his left shirt sleeve and checked his watch. “Got to go. I’m meeting with David Sikes in little over an hour.”

  83

  HIS ONLY WAY of telling time was the delivery of trays of food shoved through the narrow slit in the cell door. Breakfast at seven, lunch at twelve, and dinner at five. A couple of times Sikes didn’t make it to the door in time and the tray was left for gravity, splattering the food on the slick concrete floor, leaving a heap of garbage that was beyond anyone’s desire for sustenance. This added to the stench that seemed to grow worse with each passing day.

  The dim bulb overhead had burned out, and no one would listen to his reasonable request for a replacement. Now the days were as dark as the nights. There was only that narrow stream of light cutting its way through the slot in the stone-gray metal door, casting haunting shadows inside the cold cell. By now Sikes figured a transfer to another cell would be the only way he would see light again.

  When sleep didn’t come, Sikes kept busy by meticulously scraping the chalky green paint from the concrete-block wall opposite his bed with his fingernails. He formed a neat pile in the far corner of the cell by the toilet, where the stream of light from the slit in the door hit at its fullest extent. The pile was growing and so was his understanding of what needed to be done.

  He scratched and scraped at the paint, the flecks floating almost weightlessly to the floor, the beam of light flickering off the pieces as they fluttered down.

  “I’m doing the best I can, Mother,” he said, breathing heavily. “I always do my best.”

  He scratched harder at the wall with his right index finger, catching only a few of the paint flecks in his left hand as they floated downward.

  “But you expect too much of me. You know that, right?”

  He scraped even harder, feeling the skin beginning to tear loose. He finally stopped then guided his finger into the beam of light. Rich crimson blood flowed from his fingertip down his hand.

  “Look what you’ve done, Mother,” he snarled through clenched teeth.

  He thrust his hand upward and leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling for several moments. Droplets of blood splattered on his forehead like paint from a brush.

  “Goddamn it, look what you’ve done to me,” he shouted.

  “Hey, Sikes, who the fuck you talkin’ to in there?” a guard barked through the slot in the cell door.

  Sikes lowered his arm and stood in silence.

  “Your attorney’s here,” the guard growled.

  Still no reply.

  “You hear me in there, you crazy shit?”

  “Yes,” Sikes answered in a deep, throaty tone. “I hear you.”

  “You are one weird fuck. Okay, you know the routine. Back to the wall with your hands on your head.”

  84

  THE TWO GUARDS were nearly dragging Sikes down the long corridor that snaked through the west end of cell block B. To both men he didn’t seem to be consciously resisting them, instead the feeling was more like trying to move along a drunken friend that had finally reached a pathetic, torpid state after too many beers.

  As they approached a gray metal door, Sikes suddenly straightened up from the waist, his extremities stiffening.

  “You’re one freaky dude,” one of the guards said only inches from Sikes’s face. “Anyone in there?” he asked, giving Sikes’s brow a light knuckle rap.

  Sikes didn’t wince. He stared straight ahead as the other guard pulled the door open.

  Inside the room, Harley was poised in a thoughtful moment, his hands buried deep in his front pockets. He watched as his client was led to a metal table. They were in the maximum security sector of the jail, and Sikes’s handcuffs had to be secured to an eyelet welded crudely to the top of the table, according to regulations.

  “Just beat on the door when you’re done,” one of the guards said to Harley as he shut the heavy metal door.

  The door creaked to a close, followed by the dull thud of the lock engaging, which echoed in the musty, windowless room.

  Harley loosened his tie and pulled a chair up to the table. As he dropped into it he noted his client’s distant gaze. Sikes’s eyes were sunken into his skull, black circles painted their perimeters.

  “You all right, son?” Harley asked.

  Sikes was silent, seemingly staring at something over Harley’s head. His dark-brown hair was greasy and uncombed, matted wisps hung on his forehead. Blood stained the right shoulder of his county-issued orange jumpsuit.

  “Where’d the blood come from?”

  Still no response.

  Harley leaned sideways and reached for his briefcase, slamming it down hard on the table. He retrieved a manila folder, pushed the briefcase to the side, and spread out the contents from the folder in front of him.

  “You see these, son?” Harley asked. He held up two documents in his right hand. “They are two motions that were filed this morning with the clerk of courts.”

  Every muscle in Sikes’s face was frozen, his eyes unblinking and detached. To Harley he seemed like a department-store mannequin, rigid and vacant of life.

  “You going to talk, or should I leave?”

  The room seemed to swell with the heavy air rushing across the ventilation louvers caked with dusty mold. The two naked incandescent bulbs overhead added to the heat of the moment. Harley undid the top button on his shirt then loosened his tie further.

  “Okay, son, if you’re just going to sit there—”


  Suddenly Sikes’s eyes shifted and locked onto Harley’s, but there was still a disconnect in those bottomless, brown, dilated pupils.

  “Do you read the Bible, Mr. Buckwald?” Sikes asked, speaking deliberately, his tone deep and far away.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, do you?”

  Harley figured Sikes was at least interacting with him, so he might as well humor his client with a response. “Sure I do, but I haven’t for a while.”

  Sikes formed a partial lopsided smile, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. “I thought so. You’re too busy with your business of legal matters. Preoccupied with gaining capital and thoughts of how you and your family are perceived in this wretched society of power-hungry and self-serving pathetic excuses that we call humans.”

  Harley backed his chair up with a push off the table. Its legs let out a painful shrill as they scraped along the concrete floor. “Good God, son, what’s gotten into you?”

  Sikes shot straight up from his chair and rattled his cuffed hands, jerking the steel chain each time to its fullest extent, the padlock cracking down hard on the steel table. “John, chapter eight, verse thirty-four!” he shouted, his eyes now bulging and burning red. “He who sins is the servant of sin!”

  Harley jumped to his feet, an involuntary reaction from the surging adrenaline in his veins. His chair toppled, and with one step backward he tripped over the legs. He went sprawling face down, his chin scraping the hard concrete floor.

  “What the hell’s with you?” Harley groaned as he picked himself up from the floor.

  “Me?” Sikes let out a dire laugh. “No, the question is: what shall be done with the miscreants on earth, the fornicators, the strumpets, the unpure?” he said, tapping out each word with his fingers on the metal table.

  Harley checked his chin with his hand and came away with blood. He fished for the handkerchief stuffed in his back pocket and dabbed at what felt like a half-inch gash.

  “Remember asking me about Gabriel?” Sikes asked.

  Harley moved with caution toward the table but didn’t answer. It was then he saw the blood spurting from Sikes’s index finger.

  “So now it’s you who doesn’t want to talk. Okay, then I will. Gabriel’s everywhere and can do whatever he wants, anytime he desires.”

  Harley snatched up the papers from the table and quickly stuffed them into his briefcase. He snapped the latches shut and backed away. “What in God’s name have I done?” he whispered.

  “What was that, Mr. Buckwald?” Sikes demanded. “I couldn’t hear what you said.”

  Harley turned toward the door and didn’t look back.

  85

  A WEEK AFTER Thanksgiving the law offices of Buckwald, Allison, and Crumley received the phone call Harley had anticipated. A meeting was scheduled with Harley and Owen Jacobson the following morning at nine in Judge Vetter’s chambers at the justice center in Viera.

  After Maureen delivered the message, she gently closed Harley’s office door. He eased back in his doughy-soft leather chair, reeling in anticipated glory and conjuring up thoughts of Mr. Slick’s twisted-up face as the Honorable Warren Vetter warned of mistrials and missed political opportunities.

  But just five minutes before, Harley had sat in a sickening state of moral ineptitude that had been building up over the past several days. He couldn’t shake the chilling memory of Sikes’s crazed, almost demonic, outbursts from the previous week. It was as if he had faced a beast, something not of human form or character. The thoughts of Sikes’s protuberant, burning red eyes as he ranted and raved haunted Harley in his conscious hours as well as in his dreams.

  But not after Maureen delivered the message. The news of the impending meeting with Mr. Slick and Judge Vetter seemed to wash away any fears and doubts, like a biopsy report reading benign.

  Harley knew the relationship between Vetter and Jacobson would set the tone of the meeting. On one hand, Vetter had to follow protocol, but at the same time he didn’t want to shed unfavorable light on his friend. This was especially relevant since it appeared that Jacobson would soon be running for state attorney general. So Vetter would handle the situation with kid gloves and try to minimize any negative impact on Mr. Slick. Harley was ready for tomorrow. He’d been ready for some time.

  Friday morning was cold for central Florida. When Harley started his drive from Orlando it was forty-three degrees. But for him the cool air was refreshing. He was fifteen minutes early. The judge’s secretary had Harley take a seat in the waiting area, offering him a cup of coffee. He politely declined, not wanting to exceed his two-cups-a-day limit.

  It was five minutes after nine when the judge’s secretary came back for Harley. She knocked twice on the towering solid walnut door, opened it, and showed Harley into the large office. Much to his surprise, Owen Jacobson was already seated. Both Vetter and Jacobson stood and shook Harley’s hand. Mr. Slick’s eyes met Harley’s coldly, and his handshake was quick and without form. Harley always despised shaking hands with Jacobson. It was much like holding a wet washcloth. Harley never thought much of a man who didn’t have a steelworker’s handshake. He sat in the chair next to Jacobson in front of the judge’s large mahogany desk.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Vetter said distantly. “We all know why we’re here, but let me briefly state what’s going on, for the record.”

  Harley watched the judge as he adjusted his reading glasses, lowering them on the crook of his nose so he could pore over the documents scattered on his desk. Vetter fumbled through them for several moments then looked up at Harley.

  “Mr. Buckwald has filed two motions with the court on behalf of his client, Mr. David Allen Sikes. The first for suppression of evidence, and the second to dismiss the two charges against Mr. Sikes.”

  Harley glanced to his right and caught a glimpse of Jacobson. He sat frozen in his chair staring fiercely at Harley. Vetter stopped to clear his throat with a series of deep guttural grunts and snorts.

  Harley took advantage of the pause in the judge’s delivery.

  “Yes, sir,” Harley piped up. “First of all, we feel the evidence involving the hair samples should be inadmissible because of the problems that have been discovered at the FDLE lab where the analysis was supposed to be performed.”

  “I understand, Mr. Buckwald,” Vetter shot back, followed by one last grunt. “But thus far the purported scandal is based on the claims of a known drug dealer.”

  Harley caught Jacobson out of the corner of his eye before replying. Mr. Slick had been suspiciously silent. The prosecutor sat in his chair and continued staring at Harley, his face fixed like a stone statue.

  Harley looked back at the judge. In defense of the motion to suppress the laboratory analysis report, that was obviously falsified, Harley knew he had to play this cat-and-mouse game. It always boils down to a big game, he thought.

  “Sir, drug dealer or not, Garrett Townsend is a credible witness that can testify against Sam Weber. Weber told Townsend in the bar that night he falsified the lab report. And not just the lab report in question here. Weber has doctored other records since he’s been employed at the FDLE lab.”

  Harley figured Vetter and Jacobson both knew he had used Tannenbaum to break the scandal, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it, except give him a difficult time with the two motions he had filed.

  “Mr. Buckwald, it seems like you know quite a bit about the details of this alleged scandal,” Vetter said, as he again adjusted the thin wire-frame glasses perched on his thin nose.

  “Yes, sir, I do. It’s my responsibility to know as much as possible to properly defend my client.”

  “All right, if you would, tell us more,” Vetter said wearily.

  Every nerve ending in Harley’s body was tingling. He knew this meant that Vetter and Mr. Slick were on a fishing expedition. They wanted to know everything Harley knew. It was that simple. If Harley could convince Vetter this was not a salvageable situation for Jacobson, th
e judge would ultimately lean in favor of having the prosecution drop the charges against his client. But Mr. Slick had a different agenda—he wanted details to possibly find holes and try to salvage his case. Harley was confident of this—he knew Jacobson too well.

  Harley paused a moment for one final mental rehearsal. There would be no condescension, no rubbing the mess in their faces. In fact, his ploy was to make it look like he was doing them a favor. But there wouldn’t be too much information divulged either, just enough to crumble the walls of the prosecution’s case and send Mr. Slick on his way to Tallahassee.

  “Well, sir, apparently Sam Weber has a history of falsifying reports. It all started when he was employed by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s forensic lab before moving to Florida. They were so backlogged in LA, the lab examiners started falsifying reports to quickly clear the stacks off their desks.”

  “So why wasn’t he caught up in the LA scandal?” Vetter asked impatiently.

  “Because he left before the scandal was uncovered,” Harley replied quickly. “They were probably more concerned with cleaning up the mess in the lab than chasing down someone across the country. The main point is he’s used to operating this way.” Harley leaned forward in his chair, only inches from Vetter’s desk. “Sir, I don’t want this scandal to escalate into something ugly anymore than you or our respected state attorney does.”

  “Okay, here’s what I need,” Vetter said with a heavy sigh. “I want you, Mr. Jacobson, to depose both Mr. Garrett Townsend and Mr. Sam Weber, and I want the two depositions on my desk no later than Tuesday morning.”

  “I request that I be present for both depositions, Your Honor,” Harley said.

  “There’s no reason why you can’t be, Mr. Buckwald. Yes.”

  “May I speak, Your Honor?” Jacobson asked.

  “What is it, Mr. Jacobson?”

  “With all due respect, sir, I’m trying to determine the relevance of deposing these two men. This will certainly delay the grand jury hearing and—”