by Clark Howard
“He was crazy,” Cloud said.
She turned her face back to him. “The last thing he said was that he was sorry, but that—that he would have felt—dirty—every time he touched me …”
Ignorant fucking bastard, Cloud thought. He took the necktie from her hands and tossed it on the floor. He put his palms on her cheeks and drew her face down and kissed her gently on the mouth.
“There’s nothing dirty about you,” he whispered.
He held her face like that and kissed her again and again, feasting on the too-full lips that he found had suddenly become enormously attractive to him. Her damp hair slid down and made a cool, silky tent for their locked mouths.
Taking her by the shoulders, he rolled her slowly over his body onto the bed and quickly sat up so that their positions were reversed. “There’s nothing dirty about you, Carol,” he told her again. He deftly undid the front of her jeans and slipped them down and off her legs. His hand brushed one breast as he searched for the entry to her body shirt.
“Between my legs,” she whispered eagerly. “It unsnaps—”
His fingers found the way: three snaps that opened at the crotch; he pulled them apart all at once and pushed the shirt up to expose her white naked hips. He pressed his face into her and began to kiss and lick softly and wetly, and she came almost at once.
He got up and quickly undressed. Waiting, she spread her legs for him. He climbed back onto the bed and thrust himself into her, feeling her climax again. Then he began a smooth, rhythmic fucking motion that made her draw her breath in sharply. He threw his head back as a throbbing, rushing ejaculation gushed out of him, and he fell forward to press his mouth against her wonderful big wide lips again.
“God, that was good,” Carol said through labored breathing as he lay on top of her.
“It was,” he said back.
And it had been too. Except for one thing. At the precise moment he climaxed, the thought came to his mind, from out of nowhere, that Weldon Whitman had once ejaculated into this very same woman.
She was gone when Cloud awoke the next morning, though not by long. She had slipped out of the apartment at eight-ten in order to be at work by eight-thirty; and he awoke at quarter of nine. He was famished, having not eaten since breakfast the previous day. Getting up, he prowled naked through the tiny apartment. On the breakfast bar he found her note: Juice and milk in the fridge, powdered doughnuts in the breadbox. Be home at 5:20. Hope you’re here. It was unsigned.
Cloud sat down naked at the breakfast bar and ate nine doughnuts and drank a quart and a half of milk. While he was wolfing down the food, he thought about Glory Ann Luza and Doris Calder. He was now convinced that Whitman might have committed the crime against Glory Ann Luza; the cross and chain proved that. But Cloud still did not believe that Whitman was Doris Calder’s attacker. Which meant that there had to be a second Spotlight Bandit. And if there was a second Spotlight Bandit—Whitman’s ex-partner, probably—then it was possible that the other bandit, and not Whitman, might have commited the Luza crime.
Whitman’s possession of the cross still had to be explained, Cloud knew; but first the matter of the second bandit had to be settled. And Robert Cloud knew just the person who could probably settle it.
Finished eating, walking back through the living room, Cloud noticed the silver cross and chain on the coffee table. He picked it up, took it into the bedroom with him, and put it in the pocket of his coat, which was still hanging on the doorknob where Carol had hung it the night before.
After he was dressed, Cloud went back to where Carol had left the note. He scribbled on the bottom of it: I took the cross, signed it Rob, and left it in the same place. He left the apartment at nine-thirty.
An hour and a half later, in his hotel room, Cloud had showered, shaved, and put on fresh clothes. He transferred the cross and chain to a pocket of the suit he had changed to, and put all his other clothes in his suitcase. Before leaving the room, he telephoned across the boulevard to the airport terminal and booked a seat on the three-thirty commuter back to Sacramento. Then he went downstairs and checked out.
Still driving the rented car, he got on the inbound Santa Monica Freeway and headed for downtown Los Angeles. It was nearly noon when he reached the Civic Center. He drove around for ten minutes trying to find a parking place, and finally said to hell with it and pulled onto a lot clearly marked County Employees Only. Let them tow it away if they want to, he thought as he walked across the street to the Hall of Justice. If it wasn’t there when he got back, he’d tell the rental company it had been stolen. Only after he was in the building and on the elevator did he remember that his suitcase was in the car. He swore softly to himself.
He got off on the floor where the district attorney’s offices were located and hurriedly made his way to the chief prosecutor’s office. The secretary was just getting up to go to lunch when he entered.
“Excuse me, is Mr. Klein in?” he asked before she could get away from her desk. She looked at him curiously.
“Mr. Klein hasn’t been the chief prosecutor for a year.”
Cloud’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “I’m from out of town,” he explained. “I didn’t know he wasn’t here any longer. Did he go into private practice?”
“Oh, no. Mr. Klein was appointed to the bench. He’s serving as municipal court judge in Huntington Park.”
Cloud thanked her and left. In the lobby downstairs, he called the airport again; he changed his reservation from three-thirty to five o’clock. Then, remembering that he was illegally parked, he hurried back to the lot. He was relieved to see that his car was still there.
It took him forty minutes to drive to Huntington Park. When he got there, he realized that he was only a few blocks from Rancher Bob’s Sausage Company, where he had tried to find Emiliano Luza during his first unsuccessful search more than a year ago. The Weldon Whitman web, he thought. It crossed and recrossed.
He parked in front of the Huntington Park municipal court, went into the low building, and found the courtroom that had Klein’s name posted next to the double doors. Entering, he found a few people sitting in the spectator section outside the rails, and a uniformed bailiff reading a paperback novel at his duty desk. Cloud went over to the bailiff.
“Excuse me. My name is Robert Cloud. I’m a former reporter with the Ledger. Judge Klein and I were acquainted a few years back when he was the D.A.’s chief prosecutor. I’d like to see him if he has a few minutes.” “Have a seat, please, and I’ll tell him you’re here,” the bailiff said. He put his paperback in a desk drawer and went through a door leading to the judge’s chambers. In a moment, he was back. “This way, please.”
Cloud followed him into a book-lined office where, in one corner, a black judge’s robe hung from a coat tree, and behind a neat and orderly desk, sat G. Foster Klein. The bailiff left and closed the door.
“Well, well, the crusading magazine writer,” Klein said deprecatingly. He had not changed much, Cloud thought: he still sat board-straight, his black hair was still slicked back unpretentiously, and there was still about him that very definite aura of crispness, sharpness, alertness. Someday, undoubtedly, he would become as much a legend on the bench as. Carl Lukey had been when he sentenced Weldon Whitman to die twice. “To what do I owe this rather unpleasant surprise?” Klein asked.
“I’d like to talk to you about the Whitman case,” Cloud said. “May I sit down?”
“By all means,” the dapper little judge said elaborately. “Although I really can’t see what there is to discuss about the Whitman case. You and your associates seem to be doing a splendid job of subverting justice. You’ve managed to keep Whitman alive for—how many years?”
“Your Honor, I didn’t come here to antagonize you or argue with you,” Cloud said quietly. “I came here to discuss a case which you yourself prosecuted. Despite our differences, I do respect you, and I think you want justice in the Whitman case as much as I do.”
“That’s
extremely flattering, Cloud, considering some of the things you’ve written about me,” Klein said acidly. “Now, what is it you want?”
Cloud swallowed dryly. “I want to know how much, in your opinion, the outcome of the Whitman case would have been affected if evidence had been presented showing the existence of a second Spotlight Bandit?”
Klein’s face registered sudden surprise. “Why do you ask that?” he demanded.
“Because I think such a person existed,” Cloud said. He immediately noted the effect his words had on the little judge: Klein was almost stunned by what Cloud had said.
He knows! Cloud thought.
Cloud leaned forward urgently. “There was another bandit, wasn’t there?”
“Suppose there had been?” Klein said, quickly composing himself. “It doesn’t change anything. Whitman was rightfully convicted and he is rightfully on Death Row.”
“How can you be so sure of that if there was another man involved?” Cloud challenged.
“Because I know who that other man is,” Klein snapped impulsively. “And I know which crimes he committed.”
Cloud sat back in his chair and stared at Klein. The little judge immediately looked distressed, obviously upset by the impulsiveness, of his words. Both men seemed embarrassed by the secret that had just passed between them. It was Klein, almost self-consciously, who resumed the conversation.
“The other man was a former criminal associate of Whitman. They served time together in Folsom. We picked him up on other charges about a year after Whitman went to Death Row. It was while we were preparing for trial on the other charges that we learned of his implication in the Spotlight crimes. The man was eventually sent back to Folsom. He’s a three-time loser serving a fifty-year sentence. Chances are he’ll never be released.”
Cloud wet his lips. “Which of the Spotlight crimes did he do?”
“He committed the car theft in Pasadena. He was an accomplice of Whitman’s in the Redondo Beach menswear store stickup.” Klein paused for the briefest of instants. “And he did the Doris Calder crime.”
“But not the Luza crime?”
“No,” Klein said emphatically.
“How do you know?”
“The man confessed,” Klein said. “We had him on a dozen other counts, including two technical kidnapping charges. We made a deal not to ask for a death penalty if he’d wipe the slate clean. There was no reason for him not to confess to the Luza crime if it was his.”
“Why did Doris Calder lie and say it was Whitman who attacked her?” Cloud asked.
“She didn’t lie,” said Klein. “She mistakenly identified Whitman. He and this other man strongly resemble each other. It was an honest mistake.”
“Well, tell me something, Judge,” said Cloud, sitting forward again. “Why haven’t you done anything about that honest mistake?”
“Such as?” Klein asked, his voice suddenly crisp again.
“Such as getting Whitman off Death Row! Such as getting him a new trial!”
“A new trial!” snorted Klein. “If he had been convicted of only one crime, I would get him a new trial. But he was convicted on nineteen separate counts. I don’t believe he deserves to be tried again simply because he didn’t commit the crimes in two of those counts.”
“One of those crimes,” Cloud said tensely, “happens to one of the capital offenses that got him put on Death Row!”
“Which is exactly where he belongs,” Klein said adamantly. “He was rightfully convicted of the Luza crime and sentenced to death for that.”
“He might not have received the death penalty for the Luza crime if the jury hadn’t had the Calder crime to back it up—”
“Nonsense,” Klein said dogmatically. “That jury would have sent him to the gas chamber if the Luza crime had been the only one he was charged with. And even if they hadn’t, he would have wound up there sooner or later anyway.” Klein emphatically poked a finger in the air at Cloud. “No one has ever deserved a death sentence more than Weldon Whitman. In executing him—unlike most of them we gas—we will be preventing the taking of an innocent life.”
“That is not justice,” Cloud accused.
“Oh, yes, it is,” Klein insisted. “Very much so. As a matter of fact, it’s the best kind of justice. Preventive justice. Like preventive surgery. Cut out the cancer before it kills the body.”
Cloud stood and faced Klein coldly across the desk. “I want a new trial for Weldon Whitman.”
“You’ll never get it,” Judge Klein assured him.
“I’ll expose you. I’ll take this conversation to the papers.”
“I’ll deny it. The papers won’t use it then and you know it.”
Cloud’s expression darkened in outrage. He whirled from the desk and stalked to the door. “I’ll have the Whitman Foundation file a show-cause suit. I’ll subpoena Doris Calder to court and make her admit it.” He jerked open the door to leave.
“Just a moment, Cloud!”
Klein’s voice was like a gunshot. It stopped Cloud as effectively as a bullet would have.
“Turn around and look at me,” the judge ordered. “I want to see your face when I tell you why you won’t get a new trial for Weldon Whitman.”
Cloud turned, his hand still on the doorknob. His eyes met Klein’s flat, unyielding stare.
“You won’t be subpoenaing Doris Calder, and you won’t be making her admit anything,” Klein said tonelessly. “Doris Calder is dead, Cloud. She committed suicide six months after your magazine article about her was published.”
Robert Cloud’s face drained of color. His hand slipped away from the doorknob.
“She was conscience-stricken,” Klein said. “She began to believe that she had mistakenly identified Whitman—and this was before we found out that she really had. I tried to convince her that even if it were true, Whitman still deserved to go to the gas chamber for what he did to the little Luza girl. But no matter what I said, she continued to brood about it. She and her son Billy had been terribly humiliated by that magazine story of yours. When Billy came back from the Marines, he and Doris changed their names and moved to a neighborhood where they weren’t known. That should have solved their problems, but it didn’t. Doris just couldn’t get it out of her head that she might be helping send an innocent man to the gas chamber. It gradually became an intolerable mental problem, one she finally couldn’t cope with. One night she simply ended it with a lethal overdose of sleeping tablets.”
Judge G. Foster Klein leaned forward and placed his small hands on the desktop. His face was at once aggrieved and accusing. He said nothing further to Cloud, merely reached over briefly to press a button on his desk. A moment later his bailiff entered.
“Show this person out of my chambers and out of my courtroom,” Klein said.
“This way, please,” the bailiff said to Cloud.
Cloud’s shoulders sagged noticeably. He turned and mutely followed the bailiff.
He was escorted as far as the hall; the courtroom door was closed behind him. He stood there for a moment, staring vacantly, oblivious to the few people who walked past him. Finally he made his way slowly down the hall and out of the building. Instinctively he walked back to where he had parked the rented car. He unlocked it and got in. He started the car and put both hands on the steering wheel. But he made no effort to drive away. It suddenly occurred to him that he did not know where to go.
Chapter Twenty-One
Two weeks later, Genevieve Neller was pacing nervously back and forth in Morris Niebold’s office. Her face was drawn, her eyes circled, and she looked much as she had looked the weekend Weldon Whitman had come so close to being executed.
Borden White entered the office and Genevieve whirled to face him. “Where’s Morris?” she demanded. “I insist on seeing Morris.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Washington, then,” White said. “He left on the morning plane.”
“The receptionist didn’t say he was out of town,” sh
e said suspiciously.
“The receptionist doesn’t know.” White sat at Niebold’s desk and eyed her wearily. “What is it this time, Genevieve?”
“You know what it is,” she snapped. “Rob has been missing for two weeks!”
“Cloud has been gone for two weeks,” White corrected. “That does not necessarily mean that he’s missing—”
“Just what in the goddamn hell does it mean then?” she challenged, standing in front of the desk and leaning over it threateningly.
“Vulgarity does not become you, Genevieve,” White chastised mildly. “From a person of your nature, it carries no shock value at all. Only awkwardness. Besides, you know very well that you’ll get nowhere at all with me unless you conduct yourself like a lady.”
Genevieve stared at him for a moment, wanting passionately to reach across the desk to slap his smug, superior face. But that satisfaction, she knew, would cost her dearly, for then Borden White would probably also stop seeing her, as Morris Niebold already had done. Niebold was not in Washington; she was sure of it. He simply was not seeing her, just as he was no longer talking to her on the telephone. It had been that way since the morning in his office when he had sent Cloud to Los Angeles and ostracized her to the foundation’s printshop. She had tried to call him, she had come in person to see him, all on matters of the production of certain foundation printed material to which she objected. Each time she called or tried to see him, he had been “out” or “in conference” or “on long distance.” And now he was “in Washington.”