Dead River

by Fredric M. Ham

  Mr. Slick speaks, Harley thought.

  Vetter’s face quickly boiled up to a rich crimson hue. He waved his hand in front of his face. “Mr. Jacobson, stop right there. I told you what I wanted.” The judge inspected his wristwatch. “I suggest you recall the conversation we had about twenty-five minutes ago.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Jacobson submitted.

  Harley was certain the discussion the two men had before he entered the judge’s chambers was along the lines of Vetter warning Jacobson of the possible backlash this case could have on his political future.

  “Okay, unless you are notified otherwise, we’ll meet here in my chambers next Tuesday at one.”

  Harley stood and faced Jacobson, who was already on his feet. He extended his hand, but Jacobson refused it. Mr. Slick just stood there, cords protruding from his neck and a network of veins forming a complicated roadmap on his forehead. This is priceless, Harley thought, this is truly priceless.

  86

  VALERIE WAS DRAWN closer to her Valium, more and more Dawn hung out with her friends in Cocoa Beach who weren’t attending college, and Adam had become a solid marksman. Since picking up his Glock ten days ago at the R & R Gun Rack, he had missed only one day at the indoor range. But his continued absence from home and work had contributed to the growing wall between him and Valerie.

  While Harley sat in Vetter’s chambers that Friday morning, Adam fired round after round into dark silhouetted targets of a human form on heavy tagboard paper. As he progressed through successive magazines loaded with fat, shiny, brass .45 bullets, two gaping holes were torn into the head and chest areas of the human shape on the target. The screaming lead ripped away at the thick paper that hung from an overhead wire about thirty feet away from where he stood. The targets were his report cards, showing continued improvement.

  Adam set his sights on the chasm in the center of the chest of the silhouette and squeezed off the last round in his Glock. No paper snapped as the bullet whizzed through the middle of the opening. Ten-ring. A dull thud signaled the end of the bullet’s trajectory down range. He tested the barrel of the pistol, feeling the heat course over his fingers, and then sat it on the carpeted ledge to his right, the barrel facing down range. The smell of gun powder that lingered in the air was becoming almost intoxicating for him.

  “Damn good shootin’.”

  The voice came from behind Adam, just making it through his protective earmuffs. He spun around, snapping the earmuffs from his head. “Damn, Arno, you scared the crap out of me. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to watch you rip that target to shreds,” Arno said, smiling widely. “You know, we’re gettin’ a shit load of them Osama bin Laden targets in soon. That oughta get ’em in here shootin’ up a storm, don’t you think?”

  “I guess,” Adam said distantly.

  Arno thumbed over his shoulder toward the door leading to the gun shop. “Hey, Bill just came in. He’s up front lookin’ at some handguns. Said he wanted to see you.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Adam shoved the padded door shut with a palm then checked that it had sealed tightly. He turned from the door and immediately spotted a man with thick silver hair cut in an impeccable flat-top. It was Bill standing over one of the glass showcases.

  “Bill,” Adam said.

  “Hey, sonny. Arno said you were back there shootin’. Didn’t know you’d be here this early.”

  “Yeah, I took the day off. Not much going on at work right now. Arno said you wanted to see me?”

  The craggy, raised scar on Bill’s left cheek glistened under the overhead light. It was almost mesmerizing. Adam had to look away, glancing over Bill’s shoulder.

  “Just wanted to know how you like that model 30 Glock?”

  “Great gun, remarkably accurate.”

  “I know. I like my model 21.”

  Adam’s brow wrinkled as he recalled a question he’d been meaning to ask his new friend. “You know, all the times we’ve talked in here, I never caught your last name.”

  “I never told you, ’cause you never asked me.”

  “Okay then, what is it?” Adam asked.

  Bill offered a warm smile. “It’s Peltier, William Francis Peltier, at your service.” Bill slung his right arm under his protruding belly and gave a half-bow in Adam’s direction. “But please call me Bill.”

  This crumbled Adam’s granite expression and sent him into a fit of laughter. He looked down at the white canvas bag in Bill’s right hand. “What you got there, William Peltier? I mean, Bill?”

  Bill winked and motioned for Adam to follow him. “Over here.”

  The two walked over to the corner of the shop, stopping at a table full of discounted merchandise: aged Bianchi holsters, Sidekick nylon belts too small for any adult, and various Outers cleaning kits that were probably around before Arno took over the store.

  Bill laid the small white canvas bag between two stacks of Arno’s discounted junk and pulled the zipper across the top of the bag, revealing a brown towel. He carefully folded the towel back, exposing a revolver.

  “This was my service revolver. I carried it when I was a cop in Finchville, Kentucky,” Bill said.

  “What is it?” Adam asked.

  “Smith & Wesson .357 magnum. Here, check it out.”

  Bill held out the pistol. Adam took it in his right hand and checked the cylinder for bullets. Then he took aim at one of the wooden ceiling beams.

  “This is very well-balanced.”

  “That it is, sonny,” Bill agreed. “I have a few other handguns, but this one’s my favorite.”

  “So you used to be a policeman?”

  “Yup, in Finchville. Small town, not much to do as a cop, except write a few speeding tickets and occasionally break up some underage beer parties.”

  “What brought you to Florida?” Adam asked.

  “I retired about three years ago, and my wife and I decided to move down here to be closer to our grandchildren.”

  “That’s nice.”

  The leathery flesh on Bill’s face seemed to weaken. “It was until my wife died two years ago,” he said in almost a whisper.

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “When your time’s up, it’s up, and that’s that. Nothin’ you can do about it.”

  Adam cast a saddened gaze. “I guess not,” he said grimly.

  87

  THERE WAS NO PLACE Harley Buckwald would rather be than in the courtroom. Something had happened many years ago, and now it was in his blood. To the best of his knowledge that “something” was a ravenous bite from the legal bug that occurred during his first trial in 1968.

  He was defending a black man, Julius Staulton, accused of raping then murdering a white woman. The woman was Patricia Devereux, wife of Orlando City Councilman Cecil Devereux. The Devereuxs were lifelong residents of Orlando and very wealthy. Their wealth came from Patricia’s inheritance, which could be traced back to Harrison Flagton, her great-grandfather, who founded Whitehall Oil in Florida in 1870. Harrison, a ruthless businessman, also built the Flagton East Coast Railway that linked the entire east coast of Florida, from Jacksonville to Key West. Flagton’s railroad helped to establish agriculture and tourism as Florida’s leading industries. Along the route Harrison constructed several hotels in St. Augustine, Daytona, and Miami that were known the world over.

  Truman Gogan, the senior partner of Gogan, Houser, and Wiley, took an instant liking to Harley when he had personally hired him in 1966. Truman gave Harley the Staulton case to handle by himself after only two years with the firm. Harley had been an outstanding researcher for the firm, and Gogan saw tremendous potential in the young and energetic Buckwald.

  The evidence against Harley’s client, Julius Staulton, seemed insurmountable. Plus Staulton was black and poverty-stricken. The media predicted a conviction with maximum sentence. At that time in Florida, maximum sentence meant the electric chair.

  The big break in
the case came only one day before the final defense witness was scheduled to testify. Harley’s firm had hired the young Mark Masters. Masters and Harley worked well together, and Harley learned quickly the invaluable advantage of having a private investigator who could go deep into the dregs of society to uncover precious evidence.

  The next day, Harley called a surprise witness, Shamus Dooley, a known con man, who Masters discovered less than twenty-four hours prior to Dooley appearing in court. Dooley explained how he’d overheard Cecil Devereux in a drunken stupor, bragging to a friend in a bar about how he’d killed his wife. The night of the murder, Devereux and his wife had made love which got a little rough—that’s how she liked it—but then he strangled her with one of her nylons. He broke a window in the house and set everything up to give the appearance of a break-in and the subsequent rape and murder of his wife.

  Devereux knew Julius Staulton as a vagrant and panhandler on the streets in downtown Orlando, having given him money, mostly loose change, on several occasions. Devereux told the police he had seen Staulton fleeing his home when he returned from a charity dinner that he had attended alone because his wife had a migraine headache.

  Why did Devereux kill his wife? Quite simply, he was having an affair with another woman, and he wanted his wife out the way but still needed her fortune. Staulton was acquitted, Cecil Devereux eventually got the electric chair, and Harley soon became a partner in Gogan, Houser, and Wiley.

  And now, because of Mark Masters, history was repeating itself.

  Today, three weeks before Christmas, Harley would settle for something that was a close second to victory in the courtroom: a possible triumph in the judge’s chambers. But he knew better than to count a victory before he actually had it locked in. He would proceed with cautious optimism, as he always did.

  Unlike the previous meeting with Judge Vetter and Owen Jacobson, the prosecutor sat with Harley in the waiting area. It was 1:05 pm on Tuesday. The judge was five minutes late for their scheduled meeting. The chairs Harley and Mr. Slick sat in were identical. The wood was dark cherry with lions’ heads carved on the ends of the armrests. The upholstery on the cushions was crimson with small gold shields. The chairs reminded Harley of ones he saw once in a dean’s office at Emory University.

  “I’m sorry, but Judge Vetter is still on the phone,” the judge’s secretary explained. “He should be with you shortly.”

  Both Harley and Jacobson acknowledged with a nod. Neither man spoke a word.

  At 1:15 pm the judge’s secretary announced that Judge Vetter would see Harley and Jacobson. She performed her ritual of knocking twice on the judge’s door then escorted the two men into the chambers.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Vetter said, gesturing for the two to sit.

  “Good morning, Judge,” Jacobson said dryly.

  “Good morning, Your Honor,” Harley said.

  Vetter’s beady eyes drilled into Harley’s as if Harley had given an incorrect answer in a high-school class. Owen Jacobson sat silent. Harley had a feeling the prosecutor knew what the judge was about to say.

  “Gentlemen, I’ve read the two depositions.” Vetter picked up one of the two folders on his desk, opened it, and then smirked. “I counted forty-seven times that Mr. Weber pleaded the Fifth Amendment. Not surprising.” Vetter’s gaze then shifted to Jacobson. “Was Mr. Weber’s attorney present?”

  “Yes, sir, he was,” Jacobson answered solemnly.

  “Did Mr. Townsend have the opportunity to review the transcript and check his answers to your questions to make sure they were accurately recorded?”

  “Yes, Your Honor, he did,” Jacobson said. “He had no changes to the transcript.”

  “Okay.” The judge looked in Harley’s direction then back toward Jacobson. He took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “Mr. Buckwald, Mr. Jacobson, after carefully reviewing the deposition of Mr. Townsend, and considering the facts surrounding the unfortunate activities at the FDLE forensics lab in Orlando, I will have to grant Mr. Buckwald’s motion for suppression of evidence. The lab report will not be entered into evidence for the case against Mr. David Allen Sikes.”

  Harley mustered all the willpower he possessed to suppress a victory yowl, but he knew his face was showing some degree of satisfaction. He looked over at Jacobson. Mr. Slick’s face was deadpan, but his cheeks were beginning to redden.

  Now was the time to strike. In fact, Harley sensed the judge was waiting for him to speak and bring up the other motion.

  “Your Honor, in light of your ruling on our motion to suppress evidence, I would like to ask you to consider our second motion for dismissal of the charges of kidnapping and murder against Mr. Sikes.”

  Harley’s request finally produced a reaction from Jacobson, his entire face now glowing crimson.

  “Your Honor, I don’t see where there are grounds for dismissal of the charges against David Sikes,” Jacobson hissed through clenched teeth. “I believe the State still has enough evidence to get a conviction on both charges.”

  Harley said nothing. Instead he waited for Vetter’s response to Jacobson’s ridiculous claim.

  The judge looked back and forth between the two men and then finally spoke. “Mr. Jacobson, I’m afraid I have to agree with Mr. Buckwald.”

  Harley couldn’t believe how well this was going.

  Vetter continued. “I have thoroughly reviewed the State’s case against Mr. Sikes, and I have to say, without the hair sample evidence the case is very weak at best—”

  “But, Your Honor,” Jacobson interrupted.

  “Mr. Jacobson, let me finish.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jacobson said somberly.

  “The testimony of the two witnesses that claim they can identify the voice of Mr. Sikes on the distorted tape recordings is not strong evidence. And there are no positive DNA test results.”

  “Your Honor, with all due respect, I believe you’re not allowing me to play out all my options,” Jacobson said.

  Harley calculated it was best to only listen. Jacobson was steaming, and this was agitating Vetter. Better to keep quiet for now.

  “Sir, I know I can work with the audio tapes and obtain evidence that I believe would be critical to this case. The problem is our friend here, Mr. Buckwald, has blocked every attempt the State has made to obtain baseline recordings of David Sikes’s voice so we can perform a series of analyses.”

  Let him have it now, Harley thought. “Do you mean use the experimental signal processing methods developed at the University of Florida to analyze recorded speech?”

  Jacobson’s face turned pasty gray. “Yes,” he said, with almost a note of defeat in his voice.

  “Those techniques haven’t been proven to actually work,” Harley said with a quick smile. “I would say any evidence produced by experimental techniques would also lend to a very weak case.”

  The judge put both of his hands up as though trying to stop traffic at a busy intersection. “Wait—wait now, gentlemen,” he ordered. “I’m not going to let this turn into a pissing contest. Both of you listen to me very carefully. First of all, Mr. Jacobson, ironically, just yesterday I finally decided on the State’s request to record David Sikes’s voice. My decision was to allow the recordings to proceed. However, in light of the scandal at the FDLE lab and looking at the entire case, I’m now inclined to not allow this.”

  “But why, Judge?” Jacobson begged. “This could prove very useful to the State’s case.”

  “I disagree, Mr. Jacobson,” Vetter said, now lecturing with his index finger. “It wouldn’t provide any beneficial evidence to the case. Again, Mr. Buckwald makes a good point. Those techniques to analyze speech signals are experimental and therefore have many legal holes.”

  Vetter stared directly at Mr. Slick, as if he were the only other person in the judge’s chambers. “Mr. Jacobson, I would highly recommend that you drop the kidnapping and murder charges against Mr. Sikes and make sure he is out of the county jail no later than one wee
k from today.”

  “But, Your Honor, there’s another piece of critical evidence that has to be considered.”

  Now Vetter’s cork popped. “Are you referring to the letter that has the imprint of a phone number? Is that what you’re referring to?”

  “Well, yes, sir, I am.”

  The judge leaned forward, resting his arms on the thick desktop. “That is as weak as the testimony of the two individuals that claim they can identify the defendant’s voice on the tapes. So if—”

  “But—”

  “Don’t interrupt me again, Mr. Jacobson. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Vetter cleared his throat and continued. “So if you look at the remaining evidence, there’s basically nothing, nothing that would give you a chance in hell for a conviction. If you had an eye witness, that would be another story, but you don’t. So, I’m not going to sit through hours and hours of testimony for a trial that has a very predictable outcome. I doubt if you could even get a grand jury indictment with what you have left. So again, I would strongly suggest that you drop the kidnapping and murder charges against Mr. Sikes and ensure he’s out of the county jail in one week.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jacobson submitted.

  88

  THE SAME DAY David Allen Sikes’s fate was sealed by Judge Warren Vetter, Adam felt a strange sensation. It had no definable beginning or end, just a sense of being watched and followed. It had begun about six weeks ago, shortly after he received the mysterious phone call suggesting that David Sikes might be set free. But it couldn’t be Sikes—he was in jail. Maybe he had an accomplice. The police didn’t seem to think so, but they’d been wrong about a lot of things on this case.

  At first Adam tried to ignore the feeling, but the frequency of its occurrence increased as his power to rationalize it away slowly melted. Paranoia was engulfing him, and he found himself checking the rearview mirror in the Volvo more often now. It wasn’t unusual for him to glance over his shoulder several times walking through the company parking lot, or anywhere else for that matter. Strangers became stranger, and even people he knew were becoming suspect.