Trial and Terror

by ADAM L PENENBERG

  “I thought you ghouls relied on lethal injection these days,” Summer said. “Less messy.”

  Raines rippled his slight shoulders. “I will grant you one favor, though. We’ll skip the resisting arrest and assault charges.” Actually, Raines was only doing himself a favor, since no prosecutor liked to muddle a murder case—and confuse a jury—with a series of lesser charges.

  “Assault?”

  “The bailiff.”

  “Oh, right,” Summer said. “But of course you’d be opening the prosecution up to a charge of brutality.”

  Raines popped a cough drop into his mouth and smiled.

  The calendar magistrate checked a chart behind him and settled on Judge Wesley Kelly, whose docket was empty. Summer and Raines climbed the stairs to his courtroom, where she dropped off the paper work to exclude him with the clerk. All the way there and back, Raines pretended she didn’t exist, didn’t say another word to her.

  The magistrate didn’t seem surprised when they returned. He consulted the chart, then assigned SK’s case to the next available judge: Morton Hightower.

  Raines crunched the last bit of cough drop. “You should have seen this coming, Summer. You sure you’re ready for a murder trial?”

  Chapter 10

  Summer was having trouble focusing on her work, Rosie’s distant behavior gnawing at her. Office life had never before been like this. From the moment they had met, Summer and Rosie had had a special chemistry. Levi had hired them at the same time, although this wasn’t what forged what Summer had always assumed would be an unshakable bond. It was the older women in the office, graying women in drab pantsuits who had been at the vanguard of the women’s movement—the first women public defenders in the state—who had pushed Summer and Rosie together and forced them to rely on each other.

  Behind Summer’s and Rosie’s backs, these women, bitter and territorial, had taunted them, called them the “hair flippers” because of the long hair they constantly swept from their eyes. Levi also became the subject of derision: He was a life-support system for a penis, they chided. He liked hiring pretty girls: office furniture, not hardcore lawyers.

  Summer was knocked out of her reverie by Tai, who entered without knocking, poured himself a cup of coffee, and sat down. “I ran down the police witnesses and all the other stuff you requested,” he said.

  Summer looked up from paperwork. She couldn’t even remember what she had been reading. “That was fast. I just got them yesterday, after the judge was assigned.”

  “That’s why you hired me.”

  “I didn’t hire you.”

  “Right,” he said. “I forgot. Who’s the judge on the case?”

  “Hightower.”

  Tai whistled. “He can get awful ornery.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “OK. Did you know that Hightower’s up for re-election?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you know he’s going to face a primary challenge?”

  “Nobody’s announced a run against him. He’s unbeatable, which is why he’s run unopposed three times.”

  “It’s not public yet,” Tai responded. “And you’re the reason Hightower’s going to have to earn it this time. Getting that video-rape nut off.”

  “Who’s running against him?”

  Tai savored the moment. “Raines.”

  Summer tried to contain her surprise. “No way.”

  “He’s announcing in a couple days.”

  “Raines has never expressed political ambitions.”

  “Whatever.” Tai clasped his hands behind his neck, fanned his elbows out and yawned. “Want to know what I found out about Gundy, or talk about why you dislike me so much?”

  His yawn was contagious, but Summer stopped herself. “I’d rather hear about Gundy.”

  Tai held his cup near his mouth while he talked. “I ran down the same witnesses the cops did. The building super wasn’t around the night Gundy was offed, but saw SK around Gundy’s condo earlier in the day. She’s an oldie but a goodie, not too swift, doesn’t have great eyesight. She told the cops she could positively ID SK, but she doesn’t remember if she was wearing her glasses, so you might be able to impeach her.” He sipped, made a blech face. “Sugar?”

  Summer reached into a drawer and flicked him a couple of packets.

  “Milk?” he asked.

  Summer pointed to her mini-fridge. Tai leaned over and opened the fridge. He dribbled the last of the milk into his coffee, then ripped open a packet of sugar, stirred, and slurped. “Then there’s Malcolm Byers,” he continued, “the guy delivering pizza to a neighbor. In the police report, he said he saw a woman with curly red hair run from Gundy’s apartment at 10:30 P.M., which fits with the estimated time of death. You’ve read the report?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Notice how he gives such detail, as though he watched her over and over again?”

  “You think the cops led him on?”

  He gave Summer a cheeky smile. “If they had, it wouldn’t have been so obvious.”

  “Did he remember what kind of shoes she was wearing?” Summer asked.

  “Black boots, same as the cops found.”

  “That’s bad news.”

  “Perhaps, but Byers is no Boy Scout. Got expelled from high school for stealing. One of his teachers said Byers had attention deficit disorder, although that’s with 20-20 hindsight. Back then, they just called it being an asshole. I checked his movie rental record. Lots of ninja flicks and hard-core porn.”

  Summer eyed Tai warily. “You need a court order for that.”

  “Can I help it I’m persuasive? Besides, now you know you’ll need a court order—if you want to use it against him.” Tai crossed his legs, sat back lazily. “Not bad for an ex-cop.”

  “You forgot fat and lazy.”

  Tai laughed. Nothing seemed to sting him. Summer had to admit he was good, which was almost worse than him being bad, since she didn’t trust him. She needed to get him working on something else until she could figure out what he was up to.

  “And”—he stuffed the empty sugar packets into the milk carton, stood up, and tossed it behind the back into the trash, and missed—“I tracked down SK’s medical records.”

  Angrily, Summer flung the carton back at him. “What made you think I wanted SK’s medical history? The law in this state requires me to turn over evidence harmful to my client to the D.A. You know, Discovery works both ways here.”

  Tai grimaced, then shot the container into the trash. “Nothing but net,” he said. “How the hell am I supposed to turn up anything meaningful if I have to turn over the bad stuff too?”

  “The boys who write the laws don’t want the defense turning up anything useful,” she said. “It could mean big trouble if Raines gets wind.”

  Tai shrugged. “Want to know what I found out or not?”

  Summer stood up and leaned over him, placing her hands on the arm supports of his chair, staring him in the eye. “Stop acting like a cop.”

  “It’s pretty juicy.” He was taunting her.

  “I mean it.”

  “SK’s medical records show she was pregnant when she was 17.”

  Summer spun away, rubbing her eyes. “If the D.A. finds out, at the very least they’ll leak it to the press and try to influence the jury pool. An abortion to go with priors for prostitution.”

  “How do you know she had an abortion?” He was so cool, so unflappable. A beach bum with a cop’s brain.

  “She told me she has no family,” Summer said. “Besides, if you were whoring, would you take time off to have a kid?”

  “Good point.”

  “If you don’t promise me right now that you will investigate only what I tell you to investigate, I’m dropping you from the case.”

  Tai eyed the ceiling, then her. “OK, OK. I promise.”

  “All right. Now I need you to check out something for me.”

  She told him about Strickland.

&
nbsp; Afterward, Tai said, “Quite a stretch. A whole lot of coincidence to digest at once, and tough to prove without a way to ID Strickland’s body.”

  “Back then, they didn’t have DNA technology.”

  “You’d need DNA from Strickland to match against his corpse, assuming they’ll let you dig him up.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  Tai stared at Summer.

  Summer stared back. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I think it’s sexy the way you take charge.” He downed the last of his coffee. “Not going to report me to the PC police, are you?”

  “If I thought it would do any good, I might. Now get out. I have work and so do you. Start collecting background on Strickland.”

  Tai hoisted himself up. “I’m going, I’m going. First stop, Strickland’s hometown. Where was he raised?”

  “Birch Creek, but—”

  “I know it. About six hundred miles north of here. A real hick town. The town used to have a problem with kids hanging out in the 7-11 parking lot, drinking beer and vandalizing cars. So the store started piping muzak outside. Drove them away.”

  “Ingenious, but travel’s not in the budget,” she said. “Jon will never approve it.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Summer was wary of Tai’s eagerness.

  Tai seemed to read her thoughts. “Look, it’s simple,” he said. “To turn up information on someone who’s dead, not only can you go home again, you have to.”

  Chapter 11

  “This is the brass cup that Winston Taylor, the Vampire of Sedona, used to scoop the blood of victims before drinking it,” Gupta Mahakavi, collector of the macabre, told Summer.

  Summer had struggled with antiquated microfiche at the library before finding an article dated sixteen years ago describing an auction to raise money for Sean Strickland’s victims. Two phone calls and a three-hour drive later, here she was, talking to a retired forensics expert with the world’s most extensive collection of serial killer memorabilia.

  In an accent spiced with one part Bombay and one part Hollywood action adventure, Mahakavi had eagerly shown Summer display cases crammed with blood-rusted knives, guns, daggers, electric saws, a garbage disposal, garbage bags, ropes, handcuffs, packets of heavy-duty condoms, and other tools of the trade.

  “What do the scratches on the side of the cup signify?” Summer asked.

  “Winston,” Mahakavi said—he called his subjects by their first names—“filed those symbols himself with the same knife used in his crimes. Six marks, six victims.”

  The cup was still rusted with blood, which made it somehow more palatable than fresh kill, Summer thought. “What drives someone to do things like this?”

  “Besides an intense feeling of alienation and grandiosity? It is difficult to generalize. Many of them were abused or abandoned as children, or paranoid, or chemically imbalanced, or brimming with the feeling that they were wronged in some way, either by an individual or individuals or by society. Many slipped through cracks in the system. When one backtracks, one often can see that there were indications all along. For example, when Winston went from sating his thirst for blood by killing rabbits to cats and dogs, his neighbors complained to the police. But they did nothing; and as a consequence, he became emboldened and graduated to Homo sapiens.”

  Mahakavi tapped the top of the case. “From here down to there”—he swept his hand to the right—“are the rank amateurs. Like Winston, they lacked ingenuity. They were impulsive. Over there, if you’re interested, I have some marvelous artifacts from The Horoscope Killer, who stymied police for ten years. I also bought the Bible owned by the Mad Monk. He terrorized religious leaders across the state for two years. And in that display case over there, I have the client list of the prostitute Gwendolyn, one of the few female serial killers.”

  “Do you have any”—she searched for the right word—“collectibles from Sean Strickland?”

  Mahakavi was jittery. At first, Summer thought he was ill, but then realized he was laughing silently. “Sean fits into the amateur category, although he certainly held delusions of being one of the grand men of serial murder. Of course, he did manage to kill four men involved in law enforcement, and that is no easy task, but really, when you get down to it, he lacked imagination.”

  “Why did Strickland kill law enforcement?”

  “Sean believed he was the ultimate law. He felt he had to destroy the law in order to promote his own law.”

  “What law was that?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “What about the marks he left on the victims’ backs?”

  Summer watched Mahakavi’s toes curl in his sandals. “I can see you are a fan of the genre. What was your name again?”

  “Summer.”

  “Ah, yes. At the time, the police were unable to decipher the mark—not marks, which was a popular misconception. When Strickland perished, they simply closed the case. But subsequently I was able to determine its meaning.”

  “And?”

  “Om.”

  “What?”

  “The lines he drew on his victims’ skin represent the Hindu symbol Om, which is used in chants, particularly in Buddhism. It is a mantra used in contemplating the ultimate reality—oneness with the universe. But Sean didn’t render it correctly. Come with me.”

  Summer moved down the row of cases with Mahakavi, who stopped at a case containing a sheet of paper with two sets of squiggly lines, side by side. “The symbol on the right is a copy of the symbol Strickland drew on his victims. The one on the left is the correct rendition of Om. As you can see, they are identical, except for the line on the bottom right that twists incorrectly.”

  And both, Summer noted, were similar, though not identical, to the mark on Gundy’s back.

  “Strickland was strictly a thug,” Mahakavi said. “Why on earth would you be interested in him?”

  “My father was the investigator on the case.”

  “You are Wib Neuwirth’s daughter?” Mahakavi’s face beamed. “This is certainly an honor. He is retired now?”

  “He died six months ago.”

  “Oh? I am sorry for your loss.”

  Summer offered a perfunctory “Thank you.”

  “At last, I will be able to close Sean’s file. Detective Neuwirth was the last one.”

  “Last what?”

  Mahakavi acted surprised that Summer didn’t know. “Why, the last person involved in the Strickland case to die.”

  Summer jammed her hands under her armpits. She was cold. Mahakavi kept the temperature regulated to protect his collection. “Can I see the letter from Strickland to my father that you bought at auction?”

  Two cases down, a letter was tacked inside, a stamped envelope (no return address) perched on a stand next to it. An auctioneer’s certificate of authenticity was posted behind it.

  The letter was composed of letters cut out of magazines, books, and newspapers, glued to the paper:

  Mahakavi sucked his front teeth. “Notice how he spelled the first ‘you’re’?’ Sean was never one to pay attention to details.”

  Summer remembered the moment Wib opened the note, the worry that etched his face, the way his breathing became more focused, more labored, fear for his family driving blood through his heart. She flashed to the moment that had haunted her through her teens—when, on a misty night, Strickland had broken into their home through Summer’s window. She awoke to see Strickland’s lean face, hair plastered to his skull, his eyes dull and bloodshot.

  She screamed and Wib came running, gun drawn. Then an explosion of gunfire as Wib shot at Strickland, who took off across the yard. The start of a nightmare that didn’t end until Wib took off in hot pursuit, tires hydroplaning on the twisting road, and drove Strickland off the side of a mountain, where Strickland had died in a fiery ball.

  Unless he hadn’t.

  Summer studied the letter, the cracked and yellowing paper. If Strickland were alive a
nd carrying on his vendetta, Gundy might not be the only one to end up with his skull crushed, a lipstick calling card scrawled on his back. She could be next.

  Summer superimposed her memory of Strickland with the face of Marsalis. Both must have been born around the same time, were staple-thin, unkempt, reptilian in speech and manner, insane. What if they were the same man?

  Summer realized the collector was talking to her. “What?”

  Mahakavi was pointing to his phone. “I said, would you mind if I took your picture? I would like to add it to the archive. After all, it is not every day the daughter of the investigating officer of a serial murderer visits me.”

  Chapter 12

  Summer didn’t return home until dusk, a violet-gilded sunset. She stopped to listen to the crickets and the wheeze of insects, like the noise that had been ringing in her ears at work. Habit prevented her from taking out her keys until she was sure no one lurked.

  The windows of her apartment were clammed shut, the air inside dead and still. She flipped on the light. She moved furtively, unsure of where Marsalis’s surveillance cameras were placed or what he could see. She had decided to avoid compromising positions. She changed clothes by hanging a blanket over her head. Only made calls from throwaway cell phones, which she quickly discarded. Didn’t bring office paperwork home.

  When she passed by her computer monitor, she jumped back. Marsalis’s face shone onscreen. Large letters underneath: Answers to your questions, but first, answers to my questions. Then an Internet address.

  She backed away, as if the machine could infect her, and paced her apartment until she calmed down. She felt weak, her stomach all growly, and realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She pulled a box of cereal out of the pantry and stuffed Cheerios in her mouth, spilling crumbs on the floor; put the box back, realized she was still hungry, munched some more, put the box back; then finished it off and tossed the empty box into the trash.

  When she wasn’t shaky anymore, she sat down and faced the monitor.