Rough Men

by Aric Davis

  “Your son was shot with a revolver made by the Brazilian firearm manufacturer Taurus; it’s a gun called ‘the Judge,’ and it’s basically a shotgun in pistol form.”

  “How is that legal? I thought shotguns had to be a certain size.”

  “This Judge pistol rides a legal tightrope, because it has a slightly rifled barrel and can fire pistol rounds along with shotgun shells. It’s perfectly legal. Now, here’s where the problem starts. Your son was killed by a four-ten shotgun self-defense load. Turns out, even if the Judge had fired a bullet, it wouldn’t have carried identifiable rifling marks, but the point’s completely moot with a shotgun round. Pellets are pellets.”

  “So it would be impossible to tell exactly which pistol was used to shoot my son.”

  “Yes, precisely,” said Van Endel. “And of course, that’s not the news you were hoping to get. That said, there’s only been two other felonies committed with a Judge revolver in the state of Michigan in the last twelve months. One of them was a father who shot his daughter’s boyfriend in the stomach and groin with birdshot; the other is a still-unsolved murder that took place about three weeks ago. A sixteen-year-old alleged prostitute named Cassidy Reynolds was shot in the back of the head with a Judge. Just as interesting, her body was burned, with gasoline used as an accelerant, like it was with Alex. And the body was found in Kent County.”

  Will sucked in air through his teeth, his heart pounding in his chest and his mind racing. “So you think that whoever killed that girl was involved with Alex’s death?”

  Van Endel snorted. “Hell of a coincidence that the only two unsolved crimes involving one of those pistols took place in the same county, and both on the north end. The problem is that, even if we caught the guy who killed them with the pistol, the gun is basically unlinkable to the crimes. What that means for your son, the girl, and our still-unidentified suspect is that he is going to have to trip up massively in some other way to get caught.

  “The plus side, men who rob banks aren’t known for good decision making after the fact. First of all, nearly all of the money they stole was marked. If so much as one of those bills turns up again, we’ll be able to trace exactly where it was spent, and likely by whom. Secondly, these guys—as messed up as it may sound—are going to be proud of what they did. They’re not going to be able to keep it to themselves. Bragging to women, that sort of thing. Luckily for us, that sort of bragging makes the wrong kind of impression on most people, especially women. Third, they might try and pull off something like this again. And maybe they’ll make some mistake doing it.”

  “But you weren’t able to find any mistakes they made this time.”

  “Not yet,” sighed Van Endel. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you, but I figure honesty is the best policy at this point. Speaking of which, is there anything you wanted to tell me about your own history? I know you’re a bit removed from that scene, but I have to ask.”

  Will felt himself redden, shocked to have this soft accusation placed at his feet by the detective, but both the surprise and anger faded quickly. He stood from the table and left the dining room, covering the bottom of the phone with his right hand and ignoring the reactions of his wife and brother.

  “Detective Van Endel, there is nothing in my past, even the most checkered parts of it, that attaches me to this robbery in any way. The only guilt I have is that I raised a son who could do something so monstrous.”

  “I don’t mean to offend, Mr. Daniels. You do have to see no small coincidence in your son being involved in this type of activity and your past affiliation with a group pretty well known for similar extracurricular exploits.”

  Will sighed. “Long time ago. Another world. One that Alex has never had any contact with.”

  “Maybe so, Mr. Daniels. All I ask is that you think about your past and whether or not anything there could tie into more current events. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Daniels. Think about what I said.”

  The line went dead, and when Will turned, he saw Alison and Isaac standing behind him in the hallway. He felt himself flush, as though they’d caught him at something shameful. Van Endel’s digging into his past for some connection made him feel guilty in some perverse way, and he knew that was exactly what Van Endel had intended to happen. If Will were involved, such an accusation would have rattled him to his core, and Van Endel would’ve sensed it. Instead, it just made Will hate his past even more.

  Will quickly relayed everything that Van Endel had said. His wife and brother had managed to distill most of the conversation from his end of the phone, but he filled them in on the details. There were no other suspects. There were no leads at this time. There was little to hope for. He left out the odd semi accusation that had been lobbed his way, though he could tell by the way Isaac was looking at him that, at the very least, his brother suspected why he had left the room, and Will would have been surprised if his wife didn’t suspect the same thing.

  “So what now?” Alison asked. “We just wait for the media to leave us alone?”

  Will stared at the smoked-glass tabletop. He was bone tired and had never felt so useless—which was saying something, considering the behavior he’d engaged in before getting his head straight.

  Isaac spoke up. “One of you mentioned your lawyer wanting to get together to release a statement to the press. Why don’t we get hold of him and get that sorted out?”

  Will plucked his cell from the table and took it with him down the hall to the entryway. He eased apart two slats in the blinds over the window next to the door and could see at least two news trucks parked in front of the house. What do they want from us? My son is dead. What could I say that wouldn’t be horrible to hear?

  Clicking his phone on, Will called Lou. No shenanigans this time—Lou answered as himself on the first ring.

  “Lou, it’s Will. I spoke with the police, and Alison and I are ready to stop sitting on our hands and work on the press release that you mentioned.”

  “Well, I’d hate to even imagine what my colleagues would say about a lawyer who’d make two house calls in the same week—and without raising his rates, no less—but what am I going to do with a pair of shut-ins for clients? You still drawing a crowd outside, I imagine?”

  “We should’ve put in bleachers.”

  “I’ll be over shortly, and you can save the unsatisfying conversation you had with the police for when I get there.”

  Lou hung up on his end before Will could say anything, and he returned to the kitchen, the one room in the house that had retained any semblance of normalcy.

  “Lou’s on his way.”

  It took Lou a long time to get to them. When he finally did knock at the door, Will, Alison, and Isaac all stood at the same time. Isaac waved them away. “Don’t even think about it,” he said, and walked to the door.

  Will followed most of the way down the hall and watched as his older brother opened the door. In the short window before Lou walked in but the door was open, Will could see cameras pointing at and into his house. Then the door was shut, and Lou and Isaac followed Will back into the kitchen.

  It turned out that Lou had arrived only about a half hour after Will had hung up the phone, but it had taken him the better part of another hour to make his way into the house. “Feeding the beast,” Lou said, then looked them over. “Will, Alison, how are we holding up?”

  “Good,” said Alison.

  Will just nodded.

  “I noticed some family resemblance on your doorman. You are Will’s...older brother?”

  “Yes. Isaac. Nice to meet you.”

  The two men shook hands and then sat at the table, Lou across from Will, Isaac across from Alison.

  “I’m glad you were able to come visit for a little while, Isaac. These two people are going to need some help, you can be sure of that.

  “First things first, I want you guys to get me up to speed on where the cops are at with this whole thing. I’m not at a point where I feel like I need all of y
our contact with them to be face-to-face with me sitting next to you, or even with me listening in as counsel on phone calls, but we might get there. So where are we at with the law? Do they have any leads?”

  Will told most of the story, but Alison and Isaac filled in the gaps, even mentioning things that Will hadn’t told them, at least not through words.

  “I could tell by watching Will that the detective was prodding him, trying to get some kind of emotional response out of him,” said Alison. “I don’t see how he would think we were involved. And if he even suspects that, then it must mean that the cops are already desperate.”

  “Cops are always desperate,” said Lou. “That’s how people get fucking railroaded all the time. A cop doesn’t need to catch the right guy for the crime; he needs to catch a guy that a jury will think is the right guy for the crime. Sometimes that means they catch the bad guys; sometimes it means some poor asshole is up to his knees in bullshit. I had a case a few years ago where a guy I wound up working with had been held for six months on a hundred-thousand-dollar bond for possession of heroin. Now, this poor guy had maintained since day one that the ‘heroin’ that he had was just a bag of vitamins that had melted together while he ran in the rain. ‘Bullshit,’ said the cops. ‘We tested it. Heroin.’

  “Except, guess what? They hadn’t, and my client was telling the truth. You will never believe the hurdles I had to jump just to get that judge to finally test the fucking dope. That put some egg on some people’s faces, let me tell you. Here’s the thing, though. By then, the guy had lost his wife over it, had terrible custody issues, the whole nine yards. I begged that poor asshole to sue the hell out of them, but he wouldn’t. Settled out of court for like fifty thousand dollars. Pennies for what he could have had. Pennies for what he deserved.”

  Lou’s story had only made the three of them feel worse, and he must have seen it on their faces. “But seriously, guys? Things like that are few and far between.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s get to it, then.

  “What we need to do now is figure out what exactly you want to say to the press, plus the community at large, and then get it to them. We either establish that you’re victims in this—and you are, you’ve lost your son, for God’s sake—or you risk coming off as complicit in what happened. I don’t think it does anyone any good to keep on waiting, you or them. What do you want to say?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Alison. “I guess I would want people to know that, as his mother, this affects me very deeply. And even though I’m as horrified as everyone else by what Alex did, and certainly ashamed, I’m still mourning my son.”

  “Absolutely. There are a few factors in play here, though, guys. What you say, how it’s perceived by the media, and then how that spin is taken by the public. Now, we need to word this in a way that elicits sympathy without coming anywhere close to outright asking for it.

  “And then there’s the fact that you, Will, are in the public eye a little bit. That’s another potential complication. It’s extremely important that we handle it right.”

  Will gave his head a shake as if to jar it into service. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Leo opened palms on the table. “The novels you’ve written, Will. No one would ever connect them to anything insidious under normal circumstances, but people get killed in both of them—in the second one, quite a number of them, if I recall correctly.”

  “You are fucking kidding me. Those are stories.”

  “I’m not saying that it would be fair for you to be judged over a work of fiction, but it’s reality. People, and lots of them, are going to be judging your actions as parents, and you need to accept that. No matter how well we spin this, and no matter how well the media behaves, there are still going to be people out there that regard you as, at best, bad parents.”

  The kitchen went quiet. Outside, an engine rumbled—one of the TV trucks, maybe, shifting its position—then went silent.

  A black emptiness yawned open in Will. Like opening a tap, he let the rage fill it. “Well, at worst, what will they think?” he snapped. “We weren’t the best parents—me especially—but we did the best we could with Alex.” No, you didn’t. And just like that, the rage drained out of him again.

  “That,” said Lou, “is the exact opposite of the attitude you need to have. Think contrite. I’m going to put something together, and then we’ll all sit here and go over it, and maybe I’ll let you make some suggestions, as long as they’re polite and you don’t make me feel too bad about needing to edit my work. Which reminds me, have you talked to your publisher yet, Will?”

  “Shit.”

  Hi Jack,

  I feel it’s necessary to give you an update on the goings-on here in Grand Rapids. I’m not sure how much of this has already reached you. I’m guessing it hasn’t yet—I haven’t missed any emails from you, and I know you would have at the very least done that—but it will soon, and I wanted to have the chance to tell you myself.

  Earlier this week my son was involved in a bank robbery, and several people were killed. Alison and I found out a few days after the fact that Alex was involved, when his body was discovered. Everything has been sort of a whirlwind since then. I’m not sure I even would have remembered to give you a heads-up if my lawyer hadn’t mentioned that I ought to.

  As I think you know, my son and I were not very close, but this has still been devastating, as I’m sure you can imagine. The worst part, even worse than Alex’s death, is that he could do something like this at all.

  My family is going to issue a press release later this afternoon. If you could direct any contact that comes your way to my lawyer—I’ll add his contact info below—that would be great. If there are other issues involving us continuing to work together after this, I totally understand, and please don’t feel that you guys are doing anything wrong if that’s the route you have to take. If you have any questions, I will answer them as I am best able.

  Thanks,

  Will

  Will stared at the hastily drafted, then painstakingly corrected e-mail before moving the mouse to SEND and clicking the message off to Seattle.

  The message was as nice and plain as he was able to make it, and Jack was a great friend who had gone to bat for him on more than one occasion, but Will was still worried about what his and his company’s reaction might be. He stared for a while at the cheap wood paneling on the walls, and then his eyes fell to Isaac’s stuff piled on the old sofa he kept in the office, and it all looped around to him again. He wasn’t going to wake up from this awful dream.

  His cell phone ringing broke his trance. Expecting to see another unknown number, Will was startled to see a 206 area code. Seattle.

  “Hello?”

  “Will. Jesus, buddy. You know there are some times when you just pick up a fucking phone and call, right?”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Are you doing OK? How’s Alison?”

  “I’m OK. She’s doing OK, I think. It’s been hard to tell. She keeps blaming herself for everything. That’s hard to watch.”

  “That’s understandable, I guess. Of course, it’s not either of your faults, but it’s natural to feel that way. Do you have a time for the funeral set?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to have one. My lawyer thinks I’m in for a shitstorm either way. Not that it really matters much—we had planned for cremation already, anyways. Got a jump on that, at least. That’s a good thing, right? Bastards that shot him in the head, they burned his body—”

  “Will, you do not sound like you’re doing OK. Sit down, on the floor if you have to.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you sitting? I’m serious about this. If I hear the phone drop, I’m hanging up and calling nine-one-one. Are you at home?”

  “Jack, relax. I’m sitting at my desk. I was letting my emotions get the better of me. I’m fine now.”

  “Maybe you should try grabbing a drink. But not alone. You’ve got enough friends, go gr
ab a beer, but don’t sit alone with your thoughts.”

  “No, I haven’t been drinking. I think that’s for the best.”

  “Most of the time, I’d agree. This is a little different.”

  “I’ll run it by Alison.”

  “Is there anything I can do? If there was a funeral, I know we would send flowers. I can fly in, but I’m guessing you want to be with your family.”

  “I appreciate that, Jack, but, yeah, we’re kind of hunkered down. There’s nothing you can do. No need for the flowers, either. It’s going to be a very small get-together, and I think I’m going to discourage that sort of thing as much as possible.”

  “Got it. Will, I’d like to respect your privacy, but part of me thinks folks around here should know, especially Terri. She and I are the two people most likely for the media to contact.”

  “It’s fine if you tell the office. I don’t want everyone to think I’m some murderer-raising freak, but...”

  Dead air for a beat.

  Then, “Christ, Will. No one who knows you is going to think that. And we all know you pretty well, even the people here that only know you through your books.”

  “Thanks, Jack. I really appreciate that. I did have one more question, though. I mentioned it near the end of the e-mail, and—”

  “No, no, no, Will. For God’s sake, we’re not going to drop you for something like this, something that’s not your fault. Don’t even think about that.”

  “Thanks, Jack. It’s good to hear the words.”

  “Absolutely. We might need to delay the next book a little bit, is all. It won’t do you any good to have this be the only thing people think of when you’re mentioned as an author.”

  “Thanks. I know it should be the least of my worries, but I have been thinking about that a lot.”

  “Well, I think that’s one thing you don’t need to think about, beyond what I’ve said. I’ll talk to Terri, maybe even to Bruce, the VP, to be sure we even need to have a delay on your next book.”