Death Row

by William Bernhardt

  “You’re certain?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, if you’re certain.” Mike paused. “Did you know the gun that killed Erin was coated with hyperthermal luminous paraffin?”

  Baxter gave him a long look, but remained quiet.

  “No,” Sheila said. “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “It’s like invisible paint. Rubs off on anyone who fires the gun.”

  “So?”

  “So all we have to do is find the perp and put his hand under the luminal scanner. Unmistakable ID.”

  “Wouldn’t it wear off after a few days?”

  Mike shook his head. “Absent a special chemical bath, it wouldn’t wear off for a year.”

  “So,” Sheila said, knotting her fingers together, “that stuff must’ve gotten all over Erin’s hand.”

  “It was,” Mike said. “But my partner here thinks maybe . . . it got on someone else’s hand as well.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah. I think so, too.” He slapped his knees. “But if there is someone else, we’ll catch him. No one can stay clear of the police for long. Did you know we can listen in on phone calls now?”

  Baxter’s eyebrows moved closer together, but she maintained her silence.

  “We can get lists from the phone company. Tells us who called who and when.”

  Sheila’s lips twitched. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. Times are changing.” He pushed himself out of his chair. Baxter followed. “Thank you for talking to us.”

  “Sure.” She hesitated a moment. Mike got the distinct impression there was something else she wanted to say. “I know you’re just doing your jobs. But I do hope that eventually . . . soon . . . you’ll put this to rest. Put Erin to rest. She endured so much more than I could ever have handled. I don’t know how she did it. And I understand that, finally, she just couldn’t take it any longer. Thought she couldn’t go on.” Her eyes began to water. “I have to let her go now. I told you that before. I have to move on. But I can’t do that when you people keep coming around, asking questions, stirring it all up again.” She looked at Mike, tears beading in her eyes. “Please let it go. Please. Let her go.”

  Miss Jackson’s was one of the oldest and most elite shopping emporiums in Tulsa. Technically a department store, it preferred to be thought of as a boutique (a three-story one), presumably to prevent comparisons to Sears and such. Nestled in the upscale Utica Square Mall, Miss Jackson’s was a bastion of well-heeled Tulsa society, the one place you could find Bruce Webber jewelry, Herendon china, Rolex watches, and a myriad of other lovely nonessential products linked by only one factor: they were all ungodly expensive.

  Which explained why Ben never shopped at Miss Jackson’s. In fact, most of Utica Square was so far out of his reach he didn’t even like to visit. Well, maybe for dinner at the award-winning Polo Grill, ever since Christina got his name put on a plaque behind one of the booths as a birthday present. But shopping? Not hardly. Nonetheless, here he was on the first floor of Miss Jackson’s, watching the resident cosmetologist make over a matronly woman who clearly had nothing better to do with her day than, well, be made over.

  “Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful!” the woman said, when the work was at last complete. “I can’t wait to show George. He’s waiting in the car.”

  The cosmetologist blinked. “Your husband is waiting in the car?”

  “My husband?” the woman said as she gathered her purchases. “George is my poodle.”

  As soon as she was gone, Ben sidled up to the cosmetics counter. “Got anything in my color?”

  It only took her a moment to place his face. “Ben.” The initial smile faded. “What brings you here?”

  Ben extended his hands. “I was thinking maybe you could do my nails.”

  “Oh, no.” She picked up a mascara pencil. “Let me do your eyes. That’s my specialty. And you have such long luscious eyelashes. Most women would kill for those.”

  Ben grinned. “How have you been, Carrie?”

  “I’ve been well, actually.” She paused. “And you know why?”

  “Because you haven’t had to talk to me?”

  “Very close.” She glanced over her shoulder, checking to see if anyone was watching them. “I suppose this is about Ray.”

  “Of course.”

  She pushed away from the counter. “I can’t talk to you, then.”

  “Carrie, please.”

  “Not about Ray, no.”

  “Carrie, it’s important.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m sure it is. It always is.”

  “Do you know where Ray is right now?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah.”

  “He’s on death row.”

  “He’s been on death row for seven years.”

  “Well, he won’t be in less than two weeks.”

  “Because—” The light dawned. She looked downward. “Oh.”

  “That’s why I need to talk with you. We’ve only got one chance. And frankly, it’s not much of a chance. But we’ve got to take it.”

  She turned away. “I still can’t talk to you.”

  “If it’s because you’re working, I can come back—”

  “No. It’s not that. I just . . . can’t talk to you.”

  “Carrie, Ray’s life is literally on the line here. If we—”

  “Are you listening to me, Ben?” The sudden increase in volume took them both by surprise. “I’m not saying I won’t talk to you.” Her eyes rose until they found his. “I’m saying you don’t want me to talk to you.”

  “So what do you think?”

  They had traveled in silence for the first ten minutes of the drive downtown, and Baxter thought that was long enough. “Do you believe Sheila?”

  Mike didn’t mince words. “No.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “She’s holding something back. Or flat out lying.”

  “Really. Well, tell me this, super-sleuth. What possible motive could Sheila Knight have for lying about whether her deceased best friend was sexually molested?”

  Mike thought a long time before answering. “When they were young, Erin and Sheila were nearly inseparable. They spent lots of time together. As Sheila said herself, she was a frequent guest at Erin’s house. She came over for play dates, study nights, birthday parties.” He paused. “And sleepovers.”

  “So you did break up with Ray,” Ben said. “And you did it for a reason. A reason other than the fact that he’d been convicted of murder.”

  After Carrie made some excuse to her supervisor, they’d left the store and begun strolling down the sidewalks of the outdoor mall. It was a gorgeous Tulsa day, and the bustling human and vehicular traffic gave them a feeling of anonymity. “It’s been so long.”

  “But there was something else.”

  “Yes. Even before he was arrested. After our engagement.”

  Ben felt an aching in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like the direction this was taking. But he had to press on. “What happened?”

  “It’s not good.”

  Which might explain why Ray hadn’t wanted Ben to talk to her. “Still—”

  “It won’t help your case.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  “I know you’re trying to help me, Carrie. And trying to help Ray. Or not hurt him, at any rate. But if I don’t make a breakthrough soon, we’re going to go down in flames at the habeas hearing. And if I have to swallow some bad information to get to that breakthrough—so be it.”

  Carrie looked away. Her eyes were fixed somewhere above them, in the clouds. “He hit me.”

  Ben closed his eyes. “Ray?”

  “Yeah. We were at a club. I don’t remember what the row was about. I think maybe I didn’t like the way he ogled the chick at the next table. Something real important like that. Anyway, we’d probably both had too much to
drink. Tempers flared. We took it outside.” She shook her head. “That was my mistake. If we’d stayed inside the club, it never would’ve happened. But once we were alone in the parking lot . . .”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Bad enough. I mean, he only actually struck me twice. But it hurt like hell. Big black bruises. The doctor said he almost dislocated my jaw.”

  Thank God the prosecution never found this witness, Ben thought.

  “ ’Course I told the doctor I had fallen down the stairs or something stupid like that. But I don’t think he believed it for a minute.”

  “Was Ray . . . sorry?”

  “Oh yes. Immediately. He picked me up off the gravel and held me. Stroked me. Said he didn’t know what came over him. But that didn’t change anything.”

  Ben touched her arm gently, steering her toward Queenie’s, a popular sandwich emporium.

  “That’s when I should’ve broken off the engagement. But I didn’t. I already had so much invested in Ray. So much time and energy and love. I kept telling myself, it was just a one time thing. Just an accident. It will never happen again.”

  “And did it?”

  “No. But there was never a chance. Two days later, he was arrested.”

  “And he hasn’t been free since.”

  “Right.” Carrie’s eyes dropped. Her blunt-cut blonde hair hung like a veil around her face. “I tried to be the support he needed. But the memory wouldn’t go away. How could I forget what he had done? How he had . . . violated me. My trust. And then, in the courtroom, when I heard him accused of all those horrible things . . .”

  Ben could see where this was going. And as she had predicted—he didn’t like it.

  “After I heard them accuse Ray of that atrocity, I kept saying to people, ‘Not my Ray. He couldn’t do that.’ But I had seen him lose his temper. I had seen him be . . . violent.”

  “Carrie, I don’t want you to think I’m making light of domestic violence, but there’s a big difference between what he did to you in that parking lot and what happened to the Faulkner family.”

  “I know. I know.” She clenched her hands together, pressing them against her chest. “But after that, I could never be certain. That’s why I broke it off with him, eventually. I felt like a heel. I know all our friends thought I was being faithless. Bailing out when the going got tough. But I simply couldn’t be sure. And if I couldn’t be sure—I couldn’t be with him.”

  She brushed her hair back. Ben could see the pain this conversation was causing her, deeply etched in every line of her face. “I could’ve been faithful to a man on death row—I really could’ve,” she said, as if pleading her case to an imaginary court. “But not if I suspected he was guilty.”

  Long after dark, Ben tossed his briefcase into its designated spot by the coffee table and collapsed onto the ratty sofa that was the centerpiece of his living room. What a day. He was bushed. All he wanted to do now was rest. And as it happened, for once, he had managed to get inside the house and make it up to his room without being confronted by tenants who couldn’t make their rent, without having Joni assault him with a host of bills and maintenance problems, without even having Giselle purr and whine and demand immediate attention. For once, they had all just left him alone.

  He missed them.

  A sad state of affairs, he told himself, when you’re dependent upon coworkers and fussy felines for social interaction. Hadn’t he resolved that he was going to get out, that he was going to start having a life? That he was going to be more like Christina and less like himself? Of course, he’d been swamped with this Goldman habeas work. It was as dire as a case could be—life and death in the truest sense. He had to give it his full attention, he had to work long hours.

  But that was just an excuse and he knew it. Yes, this was an important case, and yes, he wanted to do everything possible to help Ray, to prevent a horrible injustice. But when had it ever been any different? He always had some big case going, some crusade that demanded his full devotion. Because when all was said and done, working long hours at the office was preferable to coming home and being . . . alone. Again.

  He saw the telephone resting on the end table. He was staring at it, but for some reason, he had the strangest feeling that it was staring at him. That it was trying to get his attention. Beckoning to him.

  What was Christina doing tonight? More than once she had suggested not too subtly that he would be welcome to join her on some engagement or another. Maybe he should call her and see what she was up to.

  His hand hovered over the receiver. He had to strike the right tone, keep it casual. For starters, she had to have an escape clause. In case she was just being nice and really dreaded the thought of going somewhere with him. After all, she did see him all day, most days. She might not be that excited at the prospect of spending an evening with him as well. And he had to make it clear that this was just a fun thing, no pressure, not really like a date. I mean, it would be a date, he supposed, but not a date date. Not a, you know, big romantic deal or anything.

  And the reason for that was . . . ? He tried to think of a good answer. Because his romantic life was so booked up? No. Because he didn’t like Christina? No. So what was the problem? Well, it would certainly complicate life in the office. The two partners dating. Could make things very uncomfortable. And if it went bad, heaven forbid he should see Christina in the role of the woman scorned.

  But why was he letting his brain wander down these paths? He wasn’t planning a marriage proposal, for pete’s sake. He was just talking about calling up a coworker and seeing if she wanted to go get a drink or something. It was a perfectly common office-worker-type thing to do. Utterly ordinary. They should’ve done it a long time ago.

  He gripped the receiver and brought it to the side of his head. He started dialing her number . . .

  And hung up. He couldn’t do this. He just couldn’t. He wanted to, damn it. But he couldn’t.

  He walked to the kitchen, poured himself a tall glass of chocolate milk, then sat down at the piano and started banging out whatever tune came to mind. It was a little late for this, he realized, but the nice thing about being the landlord was that there was no one to whom the other tenants could complain about you. He played some of his Janis Ian tunes, then a Harry number, then his favorites by Christine Lavin. He started “Old Fashioned Romance,” but for some reason, it was just making him sad.

  He went to bed early, planning the next day’s interviews as he tucked himself in. If he was only going to do one thing in this ridiculous little life of his—work—then he’d damn well better do a good job of it.

  This is so pathetic, he told himself as he eyes finally closed. Maybe I should get a dog.

  A long impassioned mewling from the kitchen reopened his eyes.

  Make that a male dog.

  Chapter

  20

  Jones tucked in his chin. “You’re joking, right?”

  “No,” Ben said, “I’m not joking.”

  “You’re actually going to do this?”

  “It’s not that big a deal, Jones. We’re just going to work out.”

  Jones remained incredulous. “You mean—you’re actually going to sweat?”

  Ben zipped up the jacket of a black-and-white warm-up suit, then applied himself to his Nikes. “And why is this a problem for you?”

  “You’re a lawyer. Lawyers don’t sweat. They . . . talk.”

  Ben continued lacing. “I’ve seen lots of lawyers sweat in my time.”

  Jones retreated from the doorway. “Hey, take a look at this!” he shouted down the corridor. “Ben’s going to work out!”

  A moment later, Christina appeared. “As in . . . exercise? Physical exertion?”

  Ben grabbed his gym bag. “And why is that so unbelievable?”

  Jones and Christina looked at each other. “You’re not exactly renowned for your physical prowess.”

  “Remember the time he tried to move the copier?” Jones said,
giggling.

  “You should hear Mike talk about Ben’s first kung fu lesson,” Christina replied with equal mirth.

  “You know,” Ben said, passing them both, “you two are starting to annoy me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Christina said. She looked at Jones. “This is really rude of us.” And then they both burst out laughing.

  “I should cancel their bonuses,” Ben muttered as he left the office. If they ever got bonuses.

  “I can’t believe this,” Baxter said, shifting from one edge of the passenger seat to the other. “Sheila Knight never did anything wrong in her life. Except maybe talk to you.”

  “Nonetheless,” Mike insisted, hands on the steering wheel, “she’s lying. Or at the very least, holding something back.”

  “She told you everything you wanted to know.”

  “Or seemed to. Trust me on this, Baxter. She’s lying.”

  “And you know this because . . .”

  “I just know.”

  “Of course. So why don’t you drag her downtown and give her a lie-detector test?”

  “Because there would be no point.” Tulsa traffic was not normally an issue, but there were a few exceptions, and Seventy-first on Friday afternoon was one of them. Even after the street had been widened to the size of something you’d expect to see in Dallas, it still clogged, worse and worse the closer you got to the on-ramp for Highway 169. Maybe it was employees fleeing en masse from the chain stores and restaurants that seemed to have sprung up overnight on this boulevard. “She’s not a suspect. I don’t know that she’s a material witness. I can’t force her.”

  “She might comply anyway.”

  “She might. But the test wouldn’t be admissible in court. And frankly, I think polygraphs are unreliable and easily manipulated.”

  “Easily manipulated?” Baxter waved a hand across her brow. “Is this the sphincter dodge?”

  “That works, actually.” It was well-known in police circles that tightening the sphincter muscle during the control questions could send the polygraph a false signal, thus disguising subsequent lies. There were several ways, actually. Putting a tack in your shoe and stepping on it at the right time. Anything that elevated the subject’s blood pressure could throw off the machine. “But it isn’t the easiest way.”