He started to close the door again.
‘I know what your dad did,’ I said. ‘I know about the boys.’
He opened again. His cheeks flushed.
I said, ‘I know about Tomhanson Mill. I know about Jeremy Ballat. I know about Luis Gonzalez. I know about Steven and Duane Bronson.’
He looked like he would hit me. Then he looked like he would throw up. Or cry. But he spoke with quiet anger. ‘Do you know what you’re saying?’
‘I think so,’ I said.
He closed the door.
We waited.
When he opened it again, he said, ‘Do you realize what he can do to you?’
‘I know what he’s already done,’ I said. ‘I spent eight years learning it.’
He seemed unable to speak or move. He barely breathed.
Cynthia said, ‘What I want to know is—’
He said, ‘Shut up.’ Then to me, ‘You too. Both of you, shut up. You’ve seen what happens. You don’t want this – you can’t. Whatever you know or think you know, just shut up.’
Neither of us said anything, but he acted as if we did.
‘You don’t get it,’ he said. ‘No one will care what you say. I’ve tried. My mom did. Josh did. He shut us all down. He starts talking and everyone believes—’
‘Bullshit,’ Cynthia said.
‘Yeah?’ He touched the blemish above his lip. ‘Everyone believed him about this. The sheriff dragged Higby out of his house—’
I almost laughed. ‘Higby didn’t hit you?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t matter what you say. It only matters what he says.’
Cynthia looked unsure. ‘Your dad did it and then blamed a cop?’
‘If someone becomes a problem, he takes care of it. Higby became a problem.’
‘But he’s out of jail again,’ I said.
‘For now. Only as long as my dad lets that happen. You know he’s coming after you too. He’ll take anything that’s left of you.’
‘He’ll just get scraps,’ I said. ‘Others have been there before him.’
‘No one like him.’
‘Bullshit,’ Cynthia said again.
He glared at her. But then he did an amazing thing. Leaving the door open, he turned and walked into the house.
Cynthia glanced at me and stepped inside.
The front hall was cool and dark. We followed him back to a large sunroom with broad windows looking over a swimming pool, a back lawn, and a dock that tongued into Black Creek. He went to a cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. He hesitated, then removed a small piece of metal. ‘Nothing will change,’ he said. ‘You can shout in their faces. No one will believe you. Why should they? Who the hell are you? A guy with nothing left to lose?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Cynthia said.
He said, ‘One of the first things my dad taught me was that this is an old town built on old friendships. He says, if your old friends are the right friends and if you keep those friends close, you have nothing to worry about. His old friends are the right friends.’ He looked at the piece of metal.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘It should be everything, especially to someone with nothing to lose,’ he said, ‘but if I give it to you, it will almost definitely disappear. You’ll disappear too. But you deserve to have it if anyone does.’ He handed it to me.
It was a bullet slug from a small-caliber gun.
‘What?’ I said.
‘It’s the bullet my brother shot at Higby,’ he said.
I stared at it. If what he was saying was true …
‘Your brother had a gun?’ I asked. ‘Higby shot in self-defense?’
‘I don’t know who shot first, him or Josh,’ he said, ‘but Josh did shoot.’
‘Where’s the gun now?’
‘My dad has it. He thinks I got rid of the bullet.’
‘How did you find it? The cops looked for it for days.’
‘It was never missing,’ he said. ‘It was on the road when we went out to the crash. I picked it up. My dad picked up the gun. There was nothing left to find when the cops roped off the area.’
Cynthia looked suspicious. ‘Why are you giving it to Franky?’
‘It’s your only chance,’ he said to me. ‘Maybe my only chance too. It probably won’t do any good. My dad has warned you. He always warns. But then he acts.’
I said, ‘If I turn it in to the cops, will you admit you gave it to me?’
‘You haven’t been listening,’ he said. ‘If you give it to the cops, it will disappear. Even if the cops start looking at my dad, he’ll talk to the sheriff or one of his other friends, and then the cops will look at someone else.’
Cynthia said, ‘No one has that kind of—’
‘If I turn it in,’ I asked again, ‘will you admit it?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘You’re still not listening.’
‘I hear you. I just don’t like your answers.’
He said, ‘Ever since I can remember, my dad has beat up on the world and claimed he’s doing it for everyone’s good. He beat up Josh. He beats me up. He beat up my mom. He beats up everyone in the city, and then the mayor and the city council give him awards. He hangs the plaques in his courthouse office. And so now you think you’ll call him out for what he’s done to you and others, and you think everything will be OK. Give it a try, but he already knows how to beat you up again. Unless you figure out how to take him down first, this time you won’t get out of prison – you’ll be gone – and as you’re lying in a swamp or in the woods or wherever he puts you, someone will be thinking of another award to give him.’
I turned the bullet in my fingers. The blast had peeled back the copper jacket in strips and melted the lead. ‘Where did your brother get the gun?’ I asked.
‘He stole it from my dad. My dad has carried it since he was a prosecutor. He makes enemies.’
My skin crawled, and Cynthia gave me a sharp look, as if she felt it too.
‘Does he have a lot of guns?’ I asked.
He looked at me as if he knew what he was admitting. ‘Just the one. He says if a man can’t do his business with one, it’s time for him to get a new weapon.’
‘Sounds like a thought to live and die by,’ I said, and I closed my fist on the bullet.
Cynthia and I drove out from Byron Road. The bullet Andrew Skooner gave me rattled in the cup holder. It weighed only a few grams. Almost nothing. But if Andrew Skooner was telling the truth, it could blast apart the world I’d been living in for eight years. If Eric Skooner owned only one gun, the ballistic markings on the bullet should show that he committed the killings that sent me to death row. And Andrew Skooner’s testimony, if he ever felt safe enough to give it, would exonerate Higby, the man who sent me there. The bullet would shake the courthouse and the Sheriff’s Office, and who knew where the beams would fall?
Cynthia fished it out of the cup holder and turned it between her fingers.
As if she also knew it was a bomb.
She said, ‘Even if this is what he says it is, you need more. You need the gun. And you’ve got to put the gun in Eric Skooner’s hand.’
We drove to the courthouse and parked in the lot across the street. When a woman at the information desk said we could find the judge in Hearing Room 781, we rode the elevator and walked to the end of a wide hallway. The doors at 781 were open, the room empty. We went back toward the elevator and took a hall that led behind the hearing rooms.
Eric Skooner’s chambers were in a suite of offices served by a shared secretary, a red-haired woman in her fifties. I told her I had information about Bill Higby, and I needed to see Judge Skooner.
She dialed his office, and a moment later the door to his office opened. He stepped out in a charcoal gray suit with a starched white shirt and a gold tie. ‘What’s this about?’ he asked.
Cynthia stayed with the secretary, and I walked past the
judge into his office.
As Andrew Skooner said, the judge’s walls were lined with framed certificates and awards honoring him for his accomplishments and good acts. In the middle of the room, there was a big wooden desk with a high-backed black-leather office chair and, on the other side, three small chairs for lawyers and their clients.
The judge went around the desk. ‘You have information about Bill Higby?’
‘You and I share bad relations with him,’ I said. ‘He arrested me for crimes I didn’t commit. He’s hassled your family for years. He tried to put me to death. He killed Joshua.’
‘This is true.’
‘But I’m curious. You used to get along with him. I mean, you wrote a letter praising him when he brought Josh home after he ran away. So, what went wrong?’
‘I thought you said you have information about him.’
‘As far as I can tell, he started bothering you and your family around the same time he arrested me for killing the Bronson brothers.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but I fail to see either a connection or the relevance—’
‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said. ‘But when I was in prison, I learned to see connections really well. Well enough to get myself released. I’ll tell you something I’ve told very few people, though. Sometimes I saw connections where they didn’t exist. I had to be careful. Especially early on, when I was in solitary confinement, I needed to learn how to tell the real connections from the imaginary ones.’
He was getting impatient. ‘I still fail to—’
‘Except for the bedroll, which was green, and the sink and toilet, which were stainless steel, everything was white. The floor, the walls, the ceiling – all white. I had no TV or radio, so when I wasn’t exercising or writing appeals, I stared at the white. And after a while, I started to notice specks and spots in it, and then I saw connections and whole patterns between the spots and specks. I saw a horse and a fish and a bicycle frame. Crazy stuff. I was like a man thousands of years ago looking at stars in the sky and connecting the dots. I made up pictures where there were none.’
‘I’m afraid your point escapes me,’ he said.
‘Maybe Higby’s treatment of your family and his treatment of me are like one of those pictures I saw on my cell wall. No real connection. All in my imagination.’
‘I’m sure that’s the case,’ he said.
‘No constellation in the night sky.’
‘Right,’ he said.
‘And I’ve just been an idiot lying in the dark, looking for meaning.’
‘Is this all you came to tell me?’ he asked.
I said, ‘I see that a man you prosecuted twenty-five years ago was executed last night.’
He offered a thin smile. ‘Yes, Thomas LaFlora. A man particularly worthy of his fate.’
‘He was innocent,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Innocent. But the difference between innocence and guilt doesn’t mean a lot in this city. Especially with men like you and Higby. In Higby’s case, people mostly seem to think he’s trying to do good but gets confused in his thinking. But with you, the message is clear. I keep meeting people who are scared of you.’
He kept the smile. ‘Are these men who’ve spent time in prison with you? I expect I would be unpopular among them.’
I shook my head. ‘They’re mostly people who’ve never harmed anyone as far as I know.’
‘I would like to know who feels this way.’
‘Mostly people who’ve gone quiet now. A couple of boys upriver near Bostwick – you scared the hell out of them.’
His eyes showed no recognition. He said, ‘I spend little time there.’
‘By Tomhanson Mill?’
He nodded. ‘My wife’s property, not mine until after her death. Her great-grandfather started the mill. When her father passed away, it went to her. Beautiful land.’
‘Lynn Melsyn? Scared too.’
‘Should I know the name?’
‘She goes by a different one now. She was Duane Bronson’s girlfriend. And she’s the sister of Rick Melsyn, one of two guys killed a couple of weeks ago in their apartment at the beach.’
‘I saw the story. But again your point is escaping me.’
‘The point is she’s scared of you. Scared enough to change her name and hide. Frightened almost to death.’
‘That would be very strange,’ he said, ‘inasmuch as I don’t know her.’
‘She knows you. You sat next to her during my trial.’
‘I did stop in on your trial periodically,’ he said. ‘I sat next to several people, all of them unfamiliar to me.’
‘Did you threaten them all?’
For a moment he gave me a look that made me understand the fear others felt in his presence. Then he glanced at his desk and said, ‘Well, I’m sorry for this young lady if she’s frightened. I can’t imagine why she would be.’ When he raised his eyes again, he appeared tranquil, and that change was even scarier. He said, ‘At any rate, you seem to have come here under false premises. I’m interested in Bill Higby for obvious reasons. But you’ve told me nothing. I need to ask you to leave.’
I said, ‘Did the Bronson boys break into your house and steal some papers? Maybe papers showing something going on at Tomhanson Mill?’
He shook his head. ‘Whatever connections you think you see aren’t there,’ he said. ‘At least, I don’t see them. I expect no one else will either.’
‘Maybe you’ve just convinced people to close their eyes.’
He forced the thin smile. ‘Do you or don’t you have anything relevant to tell me about Bill Higby?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I hate to say it – because I hate Higby and he’s guilty of a lot of other things – but he shot your son in self-defense. But you know that already.’
Again, his eyes flashed with fury. Again, he controlled his voice. ‘It’s time for you to leave.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I’ll come back.’
As I walked to the door, he said, ‘I’ll cause a great deal of trouble for you, you know – a great deal of discomfort.’
‘I’ve heard that about you.’
‘I’ll pick up my phone. The city will close around you. You’ll wish you were back in your prison cell.’
I said, ‘That sounds hands-off. But people say you like to do the nasty stuff yourself. The stuff that’s personal. The stuff that excites you.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
After leaving the courthouse, Cynthia and I drove ten blocks to the Sheriff’s Office.
Inside, the deskman called the Homicide Room. When he hung up, he said that Deborah Holt was out on a call. I told him we’d come back and turned to go.
But Cynthia said, ‘How about Bill Higby?’
‘Don’t—’ I said.
And the deskman said, ‘He’s on administrative leave.’
Cynthia said, ‘If he’s in today, Franky Dast would like to talk to him.’
The deskman looked at me.
Cynthia did too. ‘You’ve got to do this,’ she said. ‘One way or another, you’ve got to deal with it.’
I wanted to deal with it my way, not hers, but I said to the deskman, ‘Ok – if he’s in.’
Five minutes later, Higby, wearing jeans and an untucked yellow T-shirt, came out past the security check and said, ‘Every time I see you, I hope it’ll be the last. Either someone will stick a knife in you or you’ll cut yourself and bleed out.’
My words caught in my throat.
Cynthia said to him, ‘That’s a shitty way to treat a guy who brings you good news.’
He stared at her. ‘Who are you?’
‘Franky’s girlfriend,’ she said.
‘God help you,’ he said.
She seemed to think that was funny. ‘Ask Franky for his news.’
He looked at me. ‘Are you planning to do it right next time? Because, if you are, I’ve got advice. Go for the arteries. Here�
�� – he touched his neck – ‘and here’ – he touched his wrist. ‘It’s fast, it’s effective, and it would be great news.’
‘You’re an asshole,’ Cynthia said.
I said, ‘The news is that I know the Skooners are lying. The shooting charges against you are bad.’
He just shook his head. ‘I told you before, I don’t care what you think, and I don’t care what you know. So, how does that make it good news?’
I said, ‘Because I’ve got witnesses and evidence.’
He didn’t believe it. ‘You’ve got someone who saw the shooting?’
‘Someone who saw what happened afterward.’
He said, ‘Only the Skooners and I were there.’
‘I have evidence of what they did.’
He said, ‘Give it to the lawyers. Mine or the prosecutor’s office.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll hold on to it for now.’
He gave me a long look. ‘OK, I’ll bite. What’s the evidence?’
It rested in the cup holder in my car. I said, ‘When are you going to come clean?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘When are you going to admit that I had nothing to do with the Bronson killings?’
Something happened with his face. ‘Why would I?’
‘I think you’ve always known I was innocent. Everyone says you’re a good investigator, but you screwed up with me. You knew about the killings of Jeremy Ballat and Luis Gonzalez up by Bostwick, and you knew I couldn’t have done them. I was a kid myself when they died. So, what made you want to blame the Bronson killings on me?’
‘You were on Monument Road,’ he said. ‘You picked up Duane and Steve. Your blood was on their car. You took them to the gas station. The logic was clear eight years ago. It’s still clear.’
‘The logic should have fallen apart as soon as you thought about it. Unless you had a reason to go after me – or avoid going after someone else – you should’ve known I couldn’t have killed them.’
‘I knew enough to convict you,’ he said.
‘And that wasn’t enough.’
He turned to go into the station, but then he turned back.
He said, ‘Just so you know I still think about you, I have a question for you. What do you know about Randall Haussen?’
He could’ve held me by the throat against a wall. I fought for words. ‘The people at the JNI talked to him a couple of times. I went with them.’
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