Proof of Intent

by William J. Coughlin

  It was getting late, so Judge Evola recessed for the day. I walked across the street, fending off a dozen or so reporters, grabbed a sandwich at Kramer’s Deli, then drove back to my office. Mrs. Fenton, as usual, had gone home at the stroke of five, so the entire office was dark. There was plenty of moonlight coming off the river to see where I was going, so I walked through the dim room and into my office.

  I was fumbling for the light switch when a soft voice said, “Don’t.”

  That was when I saw him. Seated in a chair beside my desk was a man, his back to the river, face cloaked in darkness.

  My heart was racing at top speed. “Who the hell are you?” I said, trying not to sound as petrified as I actually was.

  “You know who I am.”

  It only took me a moment. “Blair Dane,” I said softly.

  “Yup.”

  “Is all this darkness entirely necessary?”

  “I don’t see any need of you knowing what I look like.” His voice was high and clear, and there was a strangely unemotional quality, almost as though he’d been drugged. The most violent client I’d ever had, an enforcer for a Detroit drug gang back in the good old days, had the same tuneless sound to his speech. It was hard to put a finger on the precise reason, but the general effect of his speech was enormously frightening.

  I shrugged, then walked around to my desk, hoping he wouldn’t see how my hands were shaking. I tried to convince myself that this was an opportunity, that if he was intending to hurt me, he’d have already done it. “I need a cigarette,” I said, reaching into the drawer of my desk where I keep my .32. My heart kicked up another notch as I felt around. Plenty of rubber bands and pencil stubs. But the gun was gone.

  “Save yourself the trouble, Mr. Dane.” I saw a silver gleam in Blair Dane’s hand. “Smith & Wesson’s my brand of smokes, too.”

  “Look . . .” I said.

  “No, you look.” Still in that same sleepy, drugged voice. “I am not a nice person. I want you to understand that nice and clear. I am a not nice person who is real, real tired of being in jail. With me so far?”

  “Sure.”

  “You are a guy who would like to drag me into your case somehow and accuse me of murder and try to send me back to Jackson. So let me say this just once. I did not kill my mother. And I will not go back to the Jackson State Penitentiary under any circumstances whatsoever. I just will not allow that to happen.”

  “If you didn’t do it, then what are you afraid of?”

  No answer.

  “I’m not out to frame you or blame you. All I want is to know what happened that night. I promise.”

  I sensed that Blair Dane was amused—though he didn’t make any sound, and his face was as dark and invisible as ever. “You tell me you need a pack of cancer sticks, and then you reach for a gun. If you were in my shoes, would you trust the promises of Charles Sloan, Esquire? Hm?”

  The fear was starting to wear off, and now I was getting annoyed. “Hey. Give me a break. You broke into my office. What am I supposed to do, sit here and say, Do you mind if I grab my pistol?”

  “That’s exactly my point, Mr. Sloan. Miles Dane has a gun to his head, and your job is to do whatever it takes to get that gun away before the state of Michigan pulls the trigger.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What are you here for?”

  He seemed to be thinking. “You’ve seen my rap sheet. Sheets, plural, I guess I should say. You think: Sure, violent guy, liar, career criminal, scumbag . . . why wouldn’t he kill his mother? That’s who he is, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “All I’m saying is this: Comes a time when a guy like me has to face up to who he is. I’m not unlucky. I’m not put upon. I’m not conspired against. I’m not downtrodden. I’ve never been sent to jail for crimes I didn’t commit. I made my life. I did what I did. I have been an unworthy piece of toilet scum for a very very long time. And during my last incarceration, I faced up to all of that for the first time. With the help of Jesus Christ, I will build a new Blair Dane. But if I go back to Jackson for something I didn’t do, the new Blair Dane goes right down the crapper.”

  “I can’t defend your father if—”

  “We’re not talking about you. Or Miles Dane either. We’re talking about me. What I’m telling you is, you have a nice daughter. Very attractive young girl. Full of promise and all that shit, I’m sure. It would be a tragedy for her, and for you, and for me, if you made any further efforts to have me snatched up by a bunch of redneck deputies and brought into the courtroom under duress to serve as your sacrificial lamb. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You’re threatening my daughter.”

  “Good. So we understand each other.”

  “If you’re really trying to build a new Blair Dane, Blair Dane the nice guy, the harmless citizen,” I said, “does this really take you in the right direction? Morally? Spiritually? Whatever?”

  “I have prayed on that matter. My Savior, quite honestly, has not given me very firm or clear guidance. It’s one of those deals where desperate times demand desperate measures, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Maybe you ought to pray some more.”

  “This isn’t debate club,” Blair Dane said.

  “No it isn’t.” With that, I flipped the switch on my desk lamp.

  In a way, I wished I’d left the light off. He was a scary guy. Even seated I could tell he was probably close to six-foot-four, and his shoulders were broad and thickly muscled—the benefits of the prison yard gym, no doubt. Though he was only a little more than thirty-one years old, his long hair had already gone very gray. His teeth were crooked and tobacco-stained. Across the back of one hand was a muddy green jailhouse tattoo that read GO DOWN SHOOTING, with a crude picture of a revolver inked beneath it. But what was most striking about him was a certain dead quality in his pale blue eyes, an unnatural stillness.

  “I deserve a chance,” he said, standing. He looked down at me with his emotionless blue eyes. “Give me that chance.”

  “All you have to do is sit there and answer a few questions,” I said.

  “If that’s your plan, then you better keep a good watch on that girl of yours. Lot of crazy, ruthless people out there.” He studied me with his dead eyes for a moment, then he slid out the door into the darkness.

  “There’s still time,” I yelled. “You still have time to do the right thing!”

  Outside there was only darkness and a bone-chilling cold.

  Forty-eight

  There were a couple of items I wanted to talk with Miles about, but by the time I had gotten finished taking care of some matters with Stash, I found out that Miles was about to be loaded into the transport on the way back to the county jail. I had been hoping to avoid a time-consuming trip to the jail, so I ran down the hallway to the secure garage where the transport van was located. Miles was being ushered in the back door just as I broke out into the cold air of the garage. He had been changed out of his jacket and tie, put back into an orange jumpsuit, manacled at the wrists and feet.

  “Mind if I have a moment with my client, Deputy . . . ah . . .” I squinted at the plastic tag on the deputy’s chest, my eyes not being what they once were. “. . . Deputy Dehaven?”

  “It’s pronounced DEE-Haven.” He looked irritably at his watch. “We’re running late already. Sheriff’s got me on a schedule, make sure everything goes smooth.”

  “It’ll just take a moment.”

  Deputy Dehaven, the driver of the transport van, was a short guy with a red face who obviously spent all his spare time lifting weights. He had massive shoulders and short, bowed legs. Most cops are good folks, but there’s a sizable minority of people who end up in law enforcement because it gives them a chance to push people around. This deputy was one of those guys. I had run into him a few times and didn’t like him. “Nope. Can’t do it, Mr. Sloan.”

  “Can I ride along then?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  I got o
ut my cell phone, “I think I’ll call Sheriff Rice myself, see what he thinks.”

  Dehaven gave me a long, dubious look, then said, “Gimme your bag.”

  I let the deputy examine my battered briefcase, then climbed into the back of the van. He slammed the door behind me, closed it with a padlock. It was a standard-size Ford van, with a heavy cage of steel mesh surrounding the passenger compartment. Two steel benches, amateurishly spray-painted a bright red, ran along each side of the van. There were no seat belts, so when the deputy floored the accelerator and headed off into the night, I nearly slid off onto the steel floor.

  I spoke softly so that the deputy couldn’t hear me. “Okay, we’ve got some choices to make,” I said. “Basically we can either start with your character witnesses, try and build you up as a good guy, and then move on to forensics, or we can go the other way around—start by trying to undermine the forensic evidence and wrap up with character.”

  Miles frowned. I could barely make out his face in the dark. “You know what I think? I think if we start with forensics, then move to character, they’re going to want to see me on the stand. That’s the logical conclusion of the he’s-a-nice-guy defense, wouldn’t you say? But right now we aren’t sure whether it’s wise to put me on the stand, correct?”

  I nodded. The van hit a bump, and my head nearly hit the ceiling. “Does this guy always drive like this?” I said, as the deputy tore around a corner, tires screeching.

  Miles nodded. He was holding on to the bench with both manacled hands. “I think he’s a frustrated NASCAR driver.” He smiled a little. “Anyway, what I was going to say was, let’s get the character thing out of the way, try to get a warm fuzzy feeling about me, then see how the forensics goes. If we feel good at the end of forensics, we won’t need to put me on the stand. On the other hand, if forensics goes badly, we can save me as our Hail Mary at the end.”

  We screeched around another turn, nearly fishtailing, then accelerated on the straightaway. I banged on the mesh between us and the deputy. “You think you could keep it under a hundred?” I said.

  Deputy Dehaven didn’t even look at me. “When I get to tell you how to do your job, Counselor, then you can start telling me how to do mine.”

  Miles rolled his eyes. “I tried the same thing, but he won’t listen.”

  I slid back down the long steel bench, out of the deputy’s earshot. “I think you’re right. I’ll put Dan Rourke on the stand first thing tomorrow, then move on to forensics later.”

  “Dan Rourke’s a good—”

  I didn’t find out what Dan Rourke was because the next sound I heard was a screech of tires and violent bang. I know it was just my imagination, but after that it seemed as though I heard the screaming of birds, and it was as though I was being borne through the air by a vast, black cloud of angry crows, their wings buffeting my face and body.

  Then the crows were gone, and I was lying on the ceiling of the van. There was a pain in my back, and the world had gone silent. I don’t think I had been knocked out exactly, just momentarily stunned. It was obvious that we had been hit by something, and that the van had flipped over. I sat up and looked around the dark steel cage.

  The van had been smashed so hard that the rear door had been wrenched open, frigid air coming in through the gap. For a moment I thought it was the dark that kept me from seeing him. But then I realized it wasn’t my eyes at all: Miles Dane was gone.

  I threw my briefcase through the gap in the doors, then crawled out and stood up. The van lay at the corner of a stand of brushy acreage. There were no cars in either direction, no lights.

  Then I heard an engine cranking up, and a large truck with the name of a local furniture company stenciled on the side came backing out of the scrubby trees. The left front fender of the truck was a mess of buckled steel; obviously it had hit us, causing us to flip over. I expected the truck to stop, but it didn’t. It simply swung around, did a Y-turn in the road, and began driving away, heading back toward town.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!”

  The next thing I knew, the furniture truck was gone. I heard something behind me, a sizzling or popping of fluid hitting hot metal. Then I smelled smoke.

  “Miles!” I yelled. “Miles?”

  There was no reply.

  Suddenly I had a terrible feeling. What if this was a jailbreak? What if Miles had hired somebody to hit the van? A dozen nightmarish scenarios ran through my brain. Maybe Blair Dane had been driving the truck. Maybe he hit us intentionally. Maybe he had kidnapped Miles or . . .

  The popping and sizzling continued, then suddenly it was no longer dark. A small flame was licking off the top of the upside-down vehicle, off the area around the engine. A small flame that was rapidly growing higher.

  And then in the flickering light of the flame I saw the face of the deputy. He was hanging upside down, his shoulder belt pinning him to the seat. There was blood on his face, and he wasn’t moving.

  As I was about to move toward the upended van, a car pulled up, slammed on its brakes, its headlights pinned to the flaming wreck.

  “Little help!” I yelled.

  There was a loud sucking sound, a sickening whoooomp from the van. I turned back to see a large fireball erupting from the engine compartment. I also saw Miles Dane.

  He was shielding his face with his cuffed hands, while kicking out the window on the other side of the van with his prison-issue sandals. It was obvious that he was trying to help get the unconscious deputy out of the van. I ran around to the other side of the van to try and help, but the fire was so intense that I couldn’t get closer than about ten feet.

  Miles reversed his position on the ground, began trying to crawl into the smashed-out window.

  “Miles, don’t!” I yelled.

  But by then all I could see were Miles’s orange sandals. Fortunately, the fire was still confined primarily to the engine compartment and the top of the vehicle. But it was clear that the gas tank would go up soon—and when that happened, the whole thing would blow.

  It struck me then that the reason Miles could approach the van and I couldn’t was that it was cooler near the ground. I fell to my belly and wriggled forward across the weedy ground. I had no plan to be a hero; I guess I just wanted to protect my client, figuring the faster we got the deputy free, the more likely Miles would get out before the gas tank went up.

  When my head reached Miles’s sandals I saw that he was struggling with the seat belt. With his manacled hands, he appeared to be having trouble getting the buckle unfastened.

  “Let me do it,” I shouted.

  “You got a knife?” Miles shouted back.

  “Get out! I’ve got free hands.”

  “I’m in already. Give me a damn knife!”

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out the small locking liner knife that I carry with me everywhere I go, flipped it open, handed it through the shattered window. Miles had to contort his body to get at it, but he managed. Then he began sawing at the belt. It seemed painfully slow. I could hear people screaming outside the van now, cars pulling off the road, but my mind was focused on how to get the deputy out of the car.

  I crawled around to the other side of the van. I could feel the heat on my back now, pressing down. The window by Deputy Dehaven’s head was already broken.

  “Hurry, Miles.”

  He was still sawing awkwardly at the belt with his cuffed hands, his face grim and set. Suddenly the belt gave way and the big-shouldered deputy fell on his head in a heap. I grabbed his epaulets and yanked, but they just tore free.

  “Get out! Get out!” somebody was screaming from the road.

  The fire was roaring above us now.

  Miles buried his hands in one of the deputy’s armpits and, with surprising strength, forced the big man’s head and torso out the broken window. I was able to lock my hands around his chest and heave him another foot or two out of the window.

  “Get the hell out, Miles!” I said.

  Then I was
on my feet and dragging the heavy man away from the fire. I had not gotten more than twenty feet when the gas tank caught fire and a huge ball of flame erupted from the top of the van, illuminating the entire area. There must have been eight or ten cars on the side of the road now. But I couldn’t see Miles. I dropped Dehaven and tried to run back toward the van to get Miles, but the heat was so strong I couldn’t get close.

  As the first explosion of the gas tank died down, the wind shifted, and the van disappeared in a cloud of heavy black smoke.

  “Miles!” I screamed. “Miles!”

  There was no answer.

  The headlights of the various cars cut eerie swaths through the black smoke that surrounded us.

  And then, suddenly, there he was, staggering out of the smoke, his orange jumpsuit blackened, his face smudged, one orange sandal missing. He tripped on something and fell to the ground.

  “Call 911!” I shouted.

  But there was no need. I could hear the sirens already, howling toward us.

  As it turned out, other than some cuts on his foot from kicking out the window, Miles was completely unscathed. The deputy, however, had a concussion and was hauled straight off to the hospital. He had regained consciousness before the ambulance had arrived, and seemed like he would be alright.

  Miles and I stood on the side of the road watching the ambulance disappear down the road.

  “Thought you’d skipped out on me for a minute there, Miles,” I said.

  Miles looked wistfully off into the dark trees. “Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind,” he said.

  Then a sheriff’s deputy came up behind us. “Let’s go, Mr. Dane,” he said. His voice sounded, not precisely gentle, but somehow respectful.

  The crowd of gawkers on the side of the road watched silently as the deputy led Miles to the car. But as they slid him in the backseat, everyone began to cheer. Miles gave them a brief, rueful smile through the window, then the cruiser pulled onto the road and headed off toward the county jail.