by Reed Arvin
“What did you say?” I ask.
She shakes her head, dumbfounded. “Right out of the blue. ‘Excuse me, ma’am. I wish to confess.’” She looks confused, like she’s not sure where she is. “He did it. He killed her.”
Ginder looks like a man who just popped up after a blow, right as rain. “Excellent news,” he says. “This solves everything.”
“Everything?”
“Never mind, Ms. West. Let the young man know I’m happy to accept his change of plea.”
“Hang on a second,” I say. “You told him about the deal first, right? Then he confessed.”
“I never had the chance. ‘I wish to confess,’ he said. That’s it. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“And he’s serious? He knows what he’s doing?”
“I made him stay put and ran down the translator, just to be sure. I explained all the implications to him. He won’t be dissuaded.”
Ginder picks up the phone and calls his clerk. “Have them put the jurors back into the pool, will you, dear? That’s right. We just got a guilty plea.” He looks up at us. “All right, Ms. West. Have your client in court tomorrow morning, ready to plead.”
Rita looks at me. “I didn’t get the deal, Thomas. What are you going to do about the death penalty?”
I STAND OUTSIDE GINDER’S COURTROOM, stunned. He did it. For some reason, I’m actually surprised. The evidence is overwhelming. Like Stillman said: the semen, the blood, the handprint. It’s all there. Hell, maybe it’s like Kwame Jamal Hale. Maybe he just wants to get right with his Maker. I lean back against the hallway wall, feeling weight fall off me. There was no coercion. He didn’t even know about the deal. It’s a free confession, freer than 99 percent of capital cases.
I stand up and breathe deeply, letting the air go with a sigh. “I did my job,” I say out loud. “It’s not my responsibility how he pleads.” I walk back out through the hallway and stop at the windows looking down on the grounds. A hundred protestors have already gathered, and it’s only 9:15. They don’t know it yet, but Moses Bol, their ticket to fifteen minutes of fame, has just made them irrelevant. “Pack up and go home,” I say to the window. “Party’s over.”
“ CONGRATULATE ME.” I am holding a four-and-one-half-inch-long Cuesta Rey Robusto, having retrieved it from the lower drawer of my desk. I plop down into one of the district attorney’s wing chairs, casually snip off the end of the cigar, and pocket the end. I roll the finished product between my fingers and set my size-eleven shoes on the edge of his desk. Rayburn and Stillman are giving me incredulous looks—in Stillman’s case, mixed with a hefty dose of malevolence—but I studiously ignore them. I pass the cigar under my nose, left to right, inhaling its deep, musky scent. “Congratulate me,” I repeat.
Rayburn stares at me. “I’m trying to decide why I shouldn’t fire you,” he grinds through his teeth. “We went over this stuff again and again. We were on the same page. And from out of the blue you go and fuck everything up.”
“The blood evidence,” Stillman says. He’s loving being on the same side as Rayburn, especially lined up against me. “The arguments between Bol and the victim. The phone call the night of the murder. It’s overwhelming. You got distracted, man. You lost your focus, and now, God knows what’s going to happen.”
“Pandora’s box,” Rayburn agrees. “You went and opened it.” He looks at my shoes. “And get your shoes off my desk.”
I smile. “It’s over. Bol confessed.”
Stillman’s mouth snaps shut. Rayburn stares a second, then leaps to his feet. “Damn you, Stillman, I told you Thomas wouldn’t do anything as idiotic as you said!” He walks over to me and pounds me on the back. “This right here is the man, Stillman. You, on the other hand, are a sniveling pup who’s still wet behind the ears.” Rayburn is beaming. “The man can close, Stillman. Like I always said.”
Stillman’s TV face is flushed a beautiful shade of rose. “What happened?” he demands. “You were going in to support a motion for a continuance.”
“Bol confessed. He’s giving his statement at one o’clock today. I told Rita we would drop the death penalty.” I look at Rayburn. “We do, right?”
Rayburn exhales. “Yeah. OK. The confession covers our asses.”
“We’re not caving; he did.”
Rayburn looks happy for the first time in a week. “God, we needed that. It gets nine pounds of shit off our backs.” He looks at the cigar. “You got another one of those?”
Oh yeah, pal. I got another one. I reach in my coat pocket and pull out another Robusto. Rayburn looks like he’s going to cry with pleasure. Strictly speaking, smoking is against regulations in any government building. And strictly speaking, we are sitting in the building that most has to do with the enforcement of laws and regulations. On the other hand, a closed door is a happy door. Rayburn nods at me like he’s reading my mind. “Stillman,” he says, “get the fuck out of my office.”
THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY of Davidson County, Tennessee, sits behind his desk, happily ensconced in a haze of cigar smoke. His coat is off, his tie loosened. Beside him is a bottle of Tennessee sipping whiskey and three shot glasses. I have removed the battery from the room’s smoke detector and now sit in one of two wing chairs, my own coat and tie having likewise decamped. Rayburn pours one glass, another, and is on the verge of tipping the bottle into the third glass when he catches himself and stops. “Shit,” he says, setting down the bottle. “The third one’s Carl’s.”
“Force of habit,” I say, nodding. “We’ve been through this ritual how many times?”
Rayburn picks up one of the glasses and hands it across the desk to me. “Twenty-five? Thirty?”
I hold the glass in my left hand, cigar in my right. “Every one of them with Carl in that chair.”
“To Carl,” Rayburn says, lifting his glass. “He was the best.”
“Still is.” We drain our glasses, and I set mine down for a refill. Rayburn pours whiskey, and I wave him off at halfway. “I gotta take Bol’s statement in a couple of hours.”
He nods, fills his own, and leans back. “Damn fine cigar,” he says. “Nicaraguan?”
“Honduran. Doesn’t matter. All your third-world dictatorships knew how to make cigars.”
Rayburn pulls on the cigar, closes his eyes, and sends a thin stream of smoke up toward the ceiling. “Guy goes into a bank to pull a job.”
“Is this a joke?”
Rayburn shakes his head. “Object lesson.”
I nod. “I’m listening.”
“It’s a bank job. The guy freaks out and kills a teller. He makes a break for it, five grand in hundreds, teller on the floor in a pool of blood. Cop catches up to him a few blocks later. He tells the guy to stop, but the guy keeps on running. What happens?”
“Teller’s down?”
“Yeah.”
“Guy is still armed, right?” Rayburn nods. I shrug. “Cop takes him out.”
Rayburn smacks his desk. “Right, dammit! No jury, no judge, no legal representation. Just instant justice. But say the cop’s bullet hits four inches to the right. Four inches. So the guy’s not dead, see? His shoulder’s hit, he goes down and gets arrested. He gets tried and convicted. Jury of his peers. He appeals and loses. Appeals again—his counsel didn’t use the right kind of aftershave or something—and he loses again.”
“OK.”
“Finally, after seven or eight years of legal process, all of which is provided to this cold-blooded bastard free of charge, it’s time to do what the cop would have done if he had just been a better shot.”
“Damn good point.”
He looks at me through the cigar haze. “At which point, Professor Philip Buchanan and his friends set up a candlelight vigil at the prison. They hold hands. They sing hymns. They raise money so Alan fucking Dershowitz or somebody can file motions to stay the execution. And then they all start crying when the clock strikes twelve, like it’s Bobby Kennedy’s funeral. And nobody—this is the fucking sal
ient point—nobody can even remember the name of the teller who got iced.” He leans forward. “The bastard who shot her’s got Web sites dedicated to him, and his victim’s just a forgotten spot in a cemetery. Can somebody please explain that shit to me?”
“Wouldn’t want to try.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’re a reasonable fucking man, that’s why.” He looks over at the empty chair. “I miss Carl at a time like this, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Call me crazy, but sometimes I wish I practiced law fifty years ago. I would have liked that. The old boy’s club. Nothing against the women, but you know.”
“They’re fine lawyers.”
“Sure. But you, me, Carl, lighting up another victory. You can’t touch that.”
I smile at Rayburn. I’ve always liked making him happy. He’s kind of a puppy dog, and getting his tail to wag is satisfying somehow.
“So now all we got to do is get through the Buchanan mess,” he says, his expression clouding. “But you know what? Right now, I can even believe that’s gonna turn out OK. I mean, who would have thought Bol would confess? Talk about out of the blue.”
“Not the first time somebody got the message at the last minute.”
Rayburn exhales another stream of smoke. “True, my friend.”
I stand, down the rest of my drink, and set the empty glass on Rayburn’s desk. “To family.”
Rayburn downs his own, smacking the glass hard on the polished surface. He stands and shakes my hand. “Damn right.”
I AM HOME. Home. The shower runs over my naked body, washing me clean. Clean of office politics, of Stillman, of Moses Bol and his godforsaken story, of Tamra Hartlett and the Wolfe Pack and angry Nationites patrolling their neighborhood. Clean of everything but a Browning pump shotgun pulled out of the ground forty miles west of here; in a few more days, I’ll have the answers to that, too. If it goes against us, there’s no shower hot and strong enough to wipe that away.
So it’s official. You said get Bol out of the way, and you’re on vacation. And if the Hale thing goes the wrong way, you just make it permanent: I’m bone fishing in the Keys. The secret of that gig is the ability to hang with men. And that, I got. Me, a boat full of pasty midlevel execs running away from a Chicago winter, and some fish on the line. Somebody else can try to figure out what justice means in the New South of the twenty-first century.
I wrap up in a towel after the shower and pull my first Killian’s out of the fridge. In Carl’s day, this ritual would have been continued from Rayburn’s office, straight to Seanachie’s. I’m drinking alone tonight. Stillman, it’s safe to say, is not celebrating. He’s licking his wounds, caught out being disloyal, which is the first deadly sin with Rayburn. I twist open the Killian’s. Here’s to you, Stillman. Here’s to the three hundred grand a year you’ll make at MSNBC. Of course, you’ll have to live in New York, and you’ll want to do it in style. So I figure you’re fifty grand in the hole, first year. I take a long, satisfying pull on the beer and set it down on the counter.
Dinner. As a concept, desirable. As a reality, more complicated. I pull out a pan and stare at it awhile, when it hits me. Omelet. Bachelor’s special. I scavenge some eggs, milk, bacon, a green onion, and some Edam cheese. Fifteen minutes later I’m pulled up in front of the TV, telling myself that beer with eggs isn’t that much of a stretch, since restaurants serve the same thing with a glass of champagne and call it brunch.
The Fox affiliate runs its news early, at five. The first feature is, without doubt, the most satisfying three and a half minutes of television I’ve ever seen. The reporter is shown on the courthouse steps, which are nearly empty. Denied the object of their hatred, the Wolfe Pack has dispersed like a popped balloon. Even Buchanan’s troops are down by two-thirds. Without a current case bringing the cameras, only the die-hard protestors have stuck out the rest of the day.
After dinner I walk to the back sliding-glass door, wondering where the hell is Indy. I put my hand on the glass and say out loud, “I take it all back, pal. The Fancy Feast is waiting.” I turn around and look at the kitchen, facing an empty evening, and smile. “And fuck you, too, Carl,” I say to the walls. “Retiring and leaving me with Stillman took some kinda nerve.”
I wait until dark and strip naked for the back half of the soak outside that Fiona interrupted. I’m almost glad I didn’t get to finish it; free of Bol’s case, the relaxation will be deeper, more satisfying. And if I’m lucky, she’ll show up again, just like last time. I drop my clothes on the bed and head out to the back deck. It’s not a bad night; clear, with a sprinkle of stars overhead, and late enough to be cool. I walk over and hit the button that turns on the jets, even before I lift the top off the spa. It rumbles to life, shooting water through the tub. Fatal error. Forgot the beer. Leaving the door open, I walk back to the kitchen and grab two bottles. The pump on the spa sounds funny; it’s straining, the pitch changing up and down for no reason. I grab a towel and listen; the pump is definitely working harder than it should. There’s a grinding sound—I can’t help thinking it’s going to turn out to be expensive—and the jets shudder to a stop. I walk out to the deck and sniff the air. There’s a burning, horrid smell in the air. The motor’s gone. That’s going to cost. I reach down and pull back the cover, exposing the spa. Immediately, I’m overwhelmed with a horrible stench. I retch involuntarily, but force myself to look down. There are dark pieces of something visible, and the water is discolored. Just then, something furry floats to the surface, in a shape I don’t like. Jesus. It’s a head. Holding back vomit, I force myself to look again. There, in my spa, is what remains of Indianapolis. I fall back, horrified. I right myself, swallow, lean over, and throw up off the side of the deck. The smell coming out of the spa is overpowering, like a suffocating blanket. I step off the deck, hands on hips, bent over, trying to pull myself together. After stewing in eighty-five-degree water for what must have been a couple of days, Indianapolis is badly decomposed. The hair and body parts quickly clogged the spa jets when I turned them on, although not before being strained and cut up through the plastic blades for twenty or thirty gruesome seconds. Heart pounding, I stumble back into the house and slam shut the sliding-glass door. I drop to a knee, holding my stomach together with an act of will. I try to figure out some way he could have gotten in the spa on his own, but realize it’s impossible. The cover is far too heavy, and anyway, he hated water. He’d sprint out of a shower.
Ten minutes later, I’ve managed to pull on some pants, but my skin hasn’t stopped crawling. Indianapolis’s water and food bowls are on the floor near the refrigerator, where they’ve sat undisturbed. I pick them up and set them on the kitchen counter. There’s a handful of food left in one, irrelevant now. I stare at the bowls for a while, numb. Eventually, I empty the food into the trash, empty the water, and stack one bowl on top of the other. I pick them up, place them carefully under the sink, and close the door.
At some point—I’m not sure how long—I realize I’m sitting in a chair, holding an empty beer bottle. I look at my watch; it’s 10:30. I pick up the phone and call Paul Landmeyer. He answers, and I can hear the TV in the background. “Paul? It’s Thomas. You up?”
“Yeah. You get more flowers?”
“Look, you got any equipment at home?”
“Some in the trunk. What’s going on, Thomas?”
“Somebody drowned Indy in the spa out back.”
“Your cat?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I couldn’t find Indianapolis the last few days. Tonight, I went out to the spa. He was floating in it.”
“Shit, Thomas. You figure it’s the same person who sent you the funeral wreath?”
“I don’t know. Listen, the flowers were one thing, but this is too far in my business, too close.”
“Especially with animal cruelty in the mix. It’s a certain kind of mentality.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
> He pauses. “Listen, I’m coming over. If it’s Nationite, it’ll be sloppy. Maybe I can find something.”
“I’d appreciate it. It wouldn’t break my heart to find out who’s behind this.”
“Gimme twenty minutes.”
It’s only fifteen before I hear Paul pull up into the driveway, and I go out to meet him. He pops the trunk of his car, gets out, and grabs two aluminum-sided cases from his trunk. He looks up at the house. “You got lights back there?”
“Yeah. I’ll turn ’em on for you.”
“Leave them off for now,” Paul answers. “I got a new toy I wanna play with.” We walk around the house and enter the backyard through a side gate. Paul stops about thirty feet away from the spa and pulls out a couple of masks from his pocket. “Put one on,” he says. “It’ll help with the stench.” He opens one of the cases and removes what looks like a large handheld spotlight. The light, which is encased in black hard plastic, is connected by a cord to a separate, lunch box–sized device. He switches the light on, and it casts a pale, blue light onto the ground. “Swiss energy light,” he says, smiling grimly. “There’s eight in the country. One’s in your backyard.”
“What’s it do?”
“Picks up debris invisible to the naked eye. We’ll start by looking for footprints. Stay behind me, OK?”
“Yeah.” The air is foul with death, and only the thought that we might be able to nail the bastard who did this to Indy keeps my thoughts focused. Paul starts toward the spa, sweeping the light in large arcs. He shines the light at the grass, peering intently. After five minutes or so, we’ve covered half the way to the spa. “Must have come the other way,” he says. We make a wide berth behind the deck to approach the spa from the opposite direction. Paul shines the light all the way around but sees nothing. “Weird,” he says. “I ought to at least see tracks for your cat.” He pauses, thinking. “Stay here, OK? I’m going to go up to the spa.”
Paul walks to the spa, the blue light arcing back and forth in the moonless darkness. He shines the light on the spa cover, inch by inch. “I see your prints, where you pulled the cover off. That’s it. It doesn’t help that the thing is dripping with warm, condensed steam.” He switches off the light and walks back to me. “No prints. No debris. No footprints in the grass.”