Black Water Rising

by Attica Locke

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 383

  ing a piece of gum, Jay can see, and more than once he glances at the headlines of an abandoned sports page resting beside him on the bench. He seems to have completely lost interest in Jay, and Jay wonders again if his mind is playing tricks on him. A moment ago, he was sure the guy was here because of him, another man with a gun on his tail. But the man in the gray suit hasn’t so much as glanced back in Jay’s direction.

  “Okay, Detective,” the prosecutor says, quite courteously. She looks down at her desk, and from a mess of papers pulls a fourby-six-inch photograph. Elise sits up, nervous-like, in her chair. Charlie puts a reassuring hand on her forearm. The prosecutor asks the judge if she can approach the bench.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at here?” the judge asks when she has the photo in hand. She squints at it, turning the picture this way and that.

  Charlie stands. “You think I might get a look at that too?”

  Judge Vroland waves Charlie to the bench, and Jay sees his chance. The judge, the prosecutor, and Elise’s attorney are all huddled at the bench. The cop is watching them from the wit­

  ness stand. Which leaves only the bailiff to worry about. Jay waits for a moment when the bailiff isn’t looking toward the gallery. Charlie, at the bench, says something to the prosecutor. It’s a mumble at this distance. Then Jay hears, quite clearly, “You can’t even tell what this is.”

  “Well, if we can let the man testify,” the prosecutor says. Jay makes a leap forward, reaching out until his fingers almost touch the silky fabric across Elise’s shoulders. He drops the tiny white slip of paper, watching, breathlessly, as it dribbles down her side, landing on her right thigh.

  He waits for her to pick up the paper, to notice it even. Only once does he look back over his shoulder, surprised to find the man in the gray suit watching him again. Jay holds per­

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  fectly still, caught in the man’s gaze. He saw me, Jay thinks. He had to have seen me. The man’s cool eyes narrow slightly. Then, sud­

  denly, inexplicably, he stands and walks out of the courtroom. At the bench, the prosecutor asks to enter the photograph as

  “state’s exhibit A,” and Charlie returns to his seat.

  “Detective Stone,” the prosecutor asks. “Did you take that photograph?”

  “No, it was a crime scene technician who took this one. But I was present at the time it was taken, yes. It was a few inches from the car at the crime scene. That spot of black right there,” he says, pointing to something in the photograph the rest of them can’t see. “That’s a piece of the tire wheel right there.”

  “Why don’t you tell the court what that is a picture of, in specific?”

  “It’s a footprint, ma’am, measured as a woman’s size six and a half.” He points at the picture again. “That mark right here, that’s the heel dug in the ground.”

  Jay’s note is still resting on Elise’s thigh. At this point, it’s likely that Charlie will notice it before Elise does.

  “And what relevance did this footprint have for you at the time?”

  “Well, we’d already deduced, from the condition of the body, that Mr. Sweeney was with a woman in the minutes or so leading up to his death.”

  “The ‘condition of the body’?” the prosecutor asks.

  “The man’s pants were undone. He was parked in an out-of­

  the-way place, you know. Seemed like a lovers’ lane type deal.”

  “Which leads us to Ms. Linsey and the search of her town house on Oakwood Glen,” the prosecutor says. “Would you explain to the court why you and your partner believed Ms. Lin­

  sey’s shoes to be relevant to the case?”

  “Well, it was kind of a credibility issue, ma’am,” the cop says. Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 385

  “I mean, here she is saying she wasn’t at the crime scene, and we got a ladies’ footprint size six and a half, and it turns out Ms. Linsey is a six and a half.”

  “Did you believe the defendant was lying about being at the crime scene?”

  “Well, she’d already admitted to being on a date with the man.”

  “Yes or no, Detective?”

  “Yes, I thought she was lying,” he says. “I mean, we found him with his pants down, a woman’s footprints all around the scene of the crime, same exact shoe size as Elise Linsey . . . ,” he says. “It just all added up.”

  Charlie is on his feet in seconds. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “I have nothing further.” The prosecutor resumes her seat.

  “Fine,” Judge Vroland says.

  Charlie returns to the podium, jumping right in.

  “Detective Stone, do you know if the deceased was a homo­

  sexual?”

  “Pardon?”

  As soon as Charlie’s back is turned, Elise picks up the slip of paper in her lap. She glances at the note, but never once turns to look for its sender.

  “Do you know if Mr. Sweeney was a homosexual?”

  “Uh, no,” he says.

  “Do you know if Mr. Sweeney had any medical issues with his prostate or his urinary tract? What might make him pull off the road from time to time to relieve himself?”

  The cop purses his lips, answering in one terse syllable.

  “No.”

  “Then you couldn’t know for sure why that man’s pants were down, isn’t that right, sir?”

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

  “You can’t be sure, can you, Detective Stone?”

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  “No.”

  “The county coroner put the time of death for Mr. Sweeney at around midnight, is that correct?” Charlie asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And your officers arrived on the scene the next day, was it?”

  “August second, Sunday, yes. It was sometime after ten in the morning.”

  “So between midnight and ten a.m., how many people were at the crime scene?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “So, in theory, anybody could have walked all up and down that crime scene, thrown a party out there, between the time Mr. Sweeney was shot and when the police showed up the next day, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So those footprints that you took such care to photograph, they could belong to anyone, is that it?”

  Detective Stone answers with a smile. “Any woman wearing a size six and a half.”

  “Or any person in possession of a woman’s size six and a half shoe.”

  The prosecutor raises her hand. “Is he making a statement or asking a question, Your Honor?”

  “That’s all right, Judge,” Charlie says. “I’m done.”

  He resumes his seat next to Elise. She turns and whispers something in his ear. Out of the corner of her eye, she glances back at Jay for the first time. There is no outward reaction or acknowledgment of any kind. When the prosecutor returns to the podium, Elise lets her eyes fall away, as if she had been looking at only a stone or a tree, a thing with no meaning for her. It’s so convincing that Jay almost believes she never saw him at all.

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 387

  The only other witness is Detective Pete Smalls, Stone’s part­

  ner, who essentially repeats the same exact information as the first witness. The whole thing is over in another fifteen minutes, Charlie taking a pass on cross.

  It’s nearly four o’clock when the judge calls for closing state­

  ments.

  Charlie’s argument is simple: if the cops had wanted every shoe in his client’s closet, then they should have asked for it in the warrant, repeating, as many times as he can, what the police officers did not find—no gun, no bloody clothing, and no shoes that match the footprints at the crime scene.

  The prosecution is left with a shouldn’t-we-all-trust-the­

  instincts-of-law-enforcement argument, citing the detectives’

  homicide
investigation experience, and summing up the reasons why the shoes in Elise’s closet were relevant—enough for the cops to take them from the defendant’s home “outside the legal protection of a warrant,” which is a fancy-pants way of admitting they took the shoes illegally. At a quarter to five, Judge Vroland wraps up the court’s business for the day, announcing that she will make a ruling on the evidence shortly.

  Jay waits for Elise by the pay phones, the ones by the ladies’

  washroom.

  When she comes out of the courtroom, walking toward him, a leather clutch bag pinched under her arm, Jay sets the phone receiver on its cradle, hanging up on a call he was not actually making. He steps to the side, blocking her path in the hallway. She passes him with two little words, “Not here.”

  A whisper, and then she’s gone, slipping into the ladies’

  room.

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  He waits, keeping an eye over his shoulder, wondering how worried he ought to be about the man in the gray suit. Finally, he smells her perfume behind him.

  She presses something into his hand and tells him not to turn around. Then she’s gone, walking past him down the hallway, which is quickly emptying at this hour. Jay ignores her instruc­

  tions and turns around anyway. Just in time to see Charlie Luckman place a guiding hand on Elise’s back, leading her toward the elevators. Mr. Luckman looks up briefly. His eyes lock on Jay’s. There is a ten-, maybe fifteen-second, delay. Then an odd smile gathers on Charlie’s face, as if he can’t quite place Jay, but knows that his presence here is remarkable in some way. Charlie wrin­

  kles his brow. But soon the elevator doors open, and the moment is over almost as soon as it happens. Mr. Luckman and his client slip through the sliding doors and are gone without another look in Jay’s direction. He is left alone in the hallway with a janitor and the muffled sounds coming from the man’s transistor radio. Jay looks down at the thing in his hand. It’s the receipt from the taco place. His note to her has been scratched out, and over it, in a sharp, left-leaning print, a new message has been written expressly for him.

  C h a p t e r 2 8 The Blue Bayou is a bar on the north edge of downtown. Across the water on McKee, it sits on a rough corner out by the railroad tracks, between a uniform-supply house and a boarded-up storefront. The bright lights of downtown fade on this side of the bayou, where industry stops short and develop­

  ers seem to have lost their imagination, or patience, with this raw urban landscape. The only bright light out here is the neon sign hanging at an angle in front of the bar. A blinking guitar, blue, with yellow strings.

  The note said nine o’clock.

  Jay was early. He’s had a couple of beers and made two phone calls. He called his wife first, over to her mother and father’s place. She asked if he’d heard word about the dockworkers’ vote 390 Attic a L o c ke

  on the settlement offer, saying her daddy was asking. He told her no, and to please stay out that way ’til he could come get her. Then he called Lon Philips. He told her about the phone records, the calls to D.C., the fact that Elise has been speak­

  ing with Thomas Cole almost daily since the shooting, and Jay’s belief in her ignorance of his involvement.

  Lonnie said she’d check on the D.C. phone number and offered some new information of her own, telling it with a reporter’s finesse, starting the story back nearly thirty years—when John­

  son Cole, family founder and oil industry pioneer, made his three sons and heirs, Thomas being the youngest, start work at the very bottom of the family empire. Every last one of the boys spent time working at the company’s Deer Park refinery in their teenage years. And they’d all at one point taken part in a rigorous two-week training seminar for aspiring roughnecks, what some men have likened to boot camp for the marines. Some of the friendships formed in these training camps last a lifetime, she said. “The paper did a profile on Thomas Cole a few years back, when he was made CFO. We interviewed his former classmates, men in the same 1954 training class as him. You know, the whole

  ‘How has the big man changed?’ kind of story. Well, one of the men interviewed for the story, you’ll be interested to know, was a young Carlisle Minty, future vice president of the petrochemical workers’ union.”

  “No shit.”

  “It’s all here on file,” Lonnie said. “And you know who else was in that training seminar, way back in 1954, according to a caption under the class photo?”

  Jay can hear the delight in her voice, the almost giddy sense of discovery.

  “Who?”

  “Dwight Sweeney.”

  Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 391

  Jay is silent for a moment. “Sweeney worked for Cole Oil?”

  He had thought of Sweeney only as a career criminal.

  “I don’t think he was a lifer at the plant or anything. He mighta put in a couple of years or a couple of months. I don’t know. They’re not too hot on handing out personnel records down at company headquarters,” she said. “But hell if the whole thing ain’t interesting, you know, that Cole and Sweeney knew each other way back when. I mean, it’s some goddamned coinci­

  dence.”

  “Yeah,” Jay said.

  “Somebody ought to tell that girl’s lawyer,” Lonnie said. “If this stuff starts coming out in open court, it would be a hell of a lot easier for my editor to give a nod on a story. You know, like, ‘Look at what ol’ Charlie Luckman said in court today,’ as opposed to the newspaper reporting this kind of ‘coincidence’

  on its own, muddying up Thomas Cole’s reputation and taking down Cole Oil, one of its biggest advertisers, in the process. You see what I’m getting at?” she said. “This shit gets put out in open court, though, and it’s a different story.”

  “Yeah, well,” Jay said offhandedly, thinking of the day’s hear­

  ing and the weakness of the state’s evidence. “She’d have to have a trial first. And Charlie Luckman is doing everything in his power to keep that from happening.”

  “Well, I’ll keep picking at things on my end,” Lonnie said. They hung up saying they would talk sometime tomorrow. Twenty minutes later, he’s ordering his third beer at the bar. When Elise comes in, Jay stands off his stool at once, more wobbly on his feet than he would like. He can’t tell if it’s the liquor or the sudden bout of nerves breaking out across his whole body. The words are already in his mind. But to tell her to her face, to tell a woman she’s been lied to, that she’s been betrayed, her life threatened—he does not relish being the bearer of such 392 Attic a L o c ke

  news. He knows, personally, what a blow to the knees a betrayal can be, that after this moment she will never be the same. Elise sees him and smiles, as if she were relieved he actually showed up. She walks at a clipped speed, her size six and a half high-heeled shoes clicking on the concrete floor underfoot. She seems in a hurry to get this over with.

  The seat next to Jay is taken. He offers her his bar stool, standing to the left of her once she sits down. She’s wearing the same clothes from the courthouse this afternoon, though her hair has fallen now, down around her shoulders. “Can’t say that I expected to see you again,” she says, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her purse, a shoulder bag, he notices, larger than the one she was carrying earlier. “I was under the impression we had an agreement.”

  “You’re in a lot of trouble, Elise,” Jay says, cutting to it.

  “You think?” she says, the smile on her face edged with some­

  thing he may have earlier mistaken for nerves. On closer look, Jay thinks he sees something cagey in her expression, something hard in her brown eyes. When the bartender approaches, Elise orders a shot of tequila and a beer back. “I don’t know,” she says to Jay. “I thought it went pretty well in there today.”

  “I’m not talking about your case, Elise.”

  “Aren’t you though?” she says, laying a five-dollar bill on the bar top when the guy returns with her drinks. She downs the tequila
shot and lights the cigarette in her hand. “Last we talked, I remember you mentioned something about money, so . . . you want to tell me what this is going to cost me and we can be done with it?”

  “This isn’t about money.”

  She laughs then, a girlish trill at the back of her throat. She waves her cigarette in the air, almost wagging it like an extra fin­

  ger, as if she were scolding a young boy for wasting her time. Bla c k Wat er R isi n g 393

  “Listen to me, Elise,” he says.

  “I’m not going down on this,” she says, cutting him off, her voice hard and cold as gunmetal. “Not for anything. You under­

  stand?”

  “Then you ought to know,” Jay says, feeling a fire in his belly as the words come up through his throat, “that Thomas Cole knew Dwight Sweeney.”

  The light in Elise’s eyes dims dramatically as the words settle around her.

  For a moment, Jay actually feels sorry for her, and his pity, it’s clear, infuriates her. The skin around her neck, where she was once scratched and bruised, glows bright pink, the color climb­

  ing up her throat to the jawline. “I’m not sure I know what it is you’re getting at,” she says.

  “The man who tried to kill you? Thomas Cole knew him.”

  Then, because she says nothing, he asks, “You understand what I’m saying?” Elise looks at him and smiles darkly. “What­

  ever you think you know about me and Thomas Cole, Mr. Por­

  ter,” she says, “trust me, you don’t.”

  “I know he had a very good reason to worry about you talking to the FTC.”

  “Thomas knows I would never tell them anything,” she says.

  “You so sure?”

  “You know, I have to say I find your concern for me to be a bit uncalled for. Frankly, the details of my personal life are none of your fucking business.”

  “This is not just about you,” he says, almost hissing at the girl. “Those men at Cole Oil have committed a crime on a mas­

  sive scale, and you have helped them. Buying up that land out there, keeping their secrets. You cannot stay quiet about this unless you want to get yourself dug in deeper. You’re already looking at serious jail time over some shit that didn’t even start 394 Attic a L o c ke