Malice

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “You would do this for me?” Santacristina/Katarain said, choking up.

  “Hell no,” Ireland replied, and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m doing it for your little girl.”

  27

  THE PARKING LOT AT THE PAYETTE COUNTY DISTRICT Attorney’s Office in Sawtooth was empty except for one other car when Kip Huttington and Clyde Barnhill drove up. “You keep your mouth shut,” the attorney said. “And let me do any talking.”

  As they got out of the car, Dan Zook walked out of the building and held the front door open for them.

  “I demand to know what this is all about,” Barnhill hissed through clenched teeth when he reached the door.

  “Let’s talk about this in my office, shall we, gentlemen,” Zook replied. “Too many ears about.”

  Barnhill lifted his head and a slight smile crossed his face. No ears even close. I believe I smell someone trying to sell information, he thought. “Well, it better be good. I got better things to do on a Saturday afternoon,” he said, allowing his voice to sound a little more agreeable.

  All in all, it had been a good week, Barnhill thought. The way he saw it, the trial had been a toss-up and would have hinged on whether the jury thought Mason and Dalton were lying on the witness stand. Then he’d come up with the brilliant idea of having Huttington drop his bomb about O’Toole confessing.

  Sheer genius, he thought, mentally patting himself on the back. It had come to him when he was going back over the events before the trial, looking for any little tidbit that Zusskin, who he didn’t entirely trust despite their “agreement,” might have missed. That’s when he remembered the conversation that he and Huttington had had with O’Toole about his resigning to save himself, and the university, the trouble of going through the hearing.

  Even with Meyers making Huttington look like he’d lied, or at least omitted important information, in his deposition, Barnhill would take the stand and essentially back up the university president’s version. The plan was to recall O’Toole as a defense witness and get him to admit that he had met with the two of them, and they’d asked him to resign. Barnhill chuckled as he imagined himself on the stand claiming that the request to resign had followed O’Toole’s admission of guilt and his “nigger” statement.

  Heck, it wouldn’t even be the end of the world if the university and the ACAA lost the lawsuit, Barnhill thought as Zook led them to the elevator. The university would blame the ACAA for being overzealous when all he and Huttington had done was bring a complaint before the panel for review.

  Then the university and the ACAA would all get slapped with some—probably quite large—award for damages. But except for a reasonable deductible, their insurance companies would pay the bulk. And, of course, they’d have to welcome O’Toole back as the baseball coach.

  Surely even Big John Porter would see that they’d done everything they could to get his son back on the team. They’d just blame the Jew bastard, Karp. Maybe then Porter would finish the job started in New York and shoot him dead in the courtroom. Now, that would be a happy ending, he thought. But his bosses would just have to find another Big John to act as a liaison between Barnhill and the Unified Church of the Aryan People.

  The Unified Church was essentially Big John’s baby. He’d set it up secretly as his headquarters for the day the race war started. He even had a bombproof bunker, just like his idol, Adolph Hitler.

  The man was a buffoon, but he was a useful buffoon. Barnhill’s employers had needed a secret place to train its operatives, and the Unified Church fit the bill. Those sent to the camp by his employers were largely segregated and didn’t mix with the usual collection of inbreds, losers, and troglodytes found in the neo-Nazi and Aryan camps. It would have been like mixing purebred mastiffs with mongrel junkyard dogs. The latter could bite, but the former were bred to kill.

  Oh, don’t be so hard on the Unified Church morons, Clyde, he thought as they got off the elevator and headed to Zook’s office down the hall. Their hearts are in the right place, and even Hitler needed cannon fodder and brownshirts for beating up Jews.

  Speaking of Jews, Barnhill thought, smiling as he remembered the panic when Karp first showed up in Sawtooth. Boy, howdy, there had been some intense telephone calls from back East, particularly with Jamys Kellagh. Of course, considering all the trouble his employers had had with Karp and Company, including the recent failure of yet another mission headed by Kellagh, he didn’t blame them.

  However, all the reports about Karp and O’Toole’s brother being roommates had checked out. And, he’d pointed out to Kellagh, the case against O’Toole had been in the works long before Karp entered the picture. “I know it’s weird,” he said. “But it’s purely coincidence, and he’s shown no interest in our friends out at the Unified Church.”

  There was more at stake than just keeping Big John Porter and Little Rufus happy and in line. Barnhill had another mission and that had more to do with his position as the university’s attorney. He’d been handed the position at the university and told to find a way to force Huttington into allowing the Unified Church and also his employers to launder large amounts of money through university investment funds. All universities invested in the stock market, bonds, and mutual funds, and nobody ever checked their records, especially at some small university in Podunk, Idaho.

  The University of Northwest Idaho had also been selected because of its small but renowned Department of Computer Sciences, which had one of the most powerful mainframe Cray computers in the world. His employers had been quite successful at placing their own people within the department. And while he wasn’t privy to what they did there, he’d been told that the computer was a match for anything the U.S. government, or anyone else, had at their disposal.

  It had not taken much of an effort to find something to hold over Huttington. The man was a sex addict who had seducing coeds down to an art form. A private investigator had supplied plenty of photographs of the university president and several of his conquests, and Barnhill was about to blackmail him with a threat to go to his wife when Huttington got the little Basque bitch pregnant.

  Barnhill had hardly been able to believe his luck when Huttington broke down in his office and started crying that he just had to help him. The girl had threatened to go to the Board of Regents and file a lawsuit. His wife would leave him, and he’d lose his job and never find work at a university or college again.

  Oh, boo-hoo-hoo, Barnhill had thought back then as Huttington sniffled and sobbed. The whimpering coward would have kissed his ass if he’d told him to after promising to help. “You do know that this isn’t a game,” he’d warned Huttington. “The girl is going to have to…disappear, or you’re always going to have that hanging over your head. Can’t afford to have her show up in a couple of years with a child that looks like Kip, now, can we?”

  “Anything, anything,” Huttington pleaded.

  “Good,” Barnhill replied. “Now, leave the keys to your car with me. You can take my sedan back home, and we’ll get you a new ride tomorrow.”

  “My car? Why?” Huttington said.

  “Do you really want to know the answer to that?” Barnhill replied.

  Huttington shook his head and sobbed. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.”

  “Quit sniveling, Kip, and pull yourself together,” Barnhill sneered. “Find a pay phone on the way home and call the girl. Tell her you love her and want to see her early tomorrow morning, six a.m., at the overlook out on Saddle Mountain Road. Don’t use your home phone—that can be traced. Understand?”

  Huttington nodded and placed his keys on Barnhill’s desk. The attorney tossed him his. “Now, remember, pay phone, six a.m., far parking lot, you’ll be there waiting for her in your car,” he said. “Now go home, get some sleep, and come to work tomorrow as if nothing has happened. Oh, and never, ever say anything about this to anyone.”

  The next morning, Maria Santacristina had showed up on time, only to be forced into the trunk of the Cadillac and t
aken for one last ride. A few days later, he’d laid out the bill to Huttington, who’d initially balked until he saw the photograph of the Cadillac emailed to him by the Reverend Hamm.

  After that, Huttington had been as compliant as a two-dollar whore. He’d given Barnhill’s employers the keys to the car, so to speak. Then when Rufus Porter raped a girl and needed help, Huttington himself had gone to the university police station at night, let himself in with his master key, and absconded with the evidence. And he hadn’t protested the plan to get rid of Mikey O’Toole so that Big John’s kid could live out his baseball fantasy.

  Hamm’s photograph had come in handy a second time to chase Maly Laska off. In hindsight, the university president probably should have just shown it to her instead of sending it to her as an email attachment. But even if the girl kept a copy, which was doubtful the way she up and left in the night, no one would be able to trace it back to Huttington or Hamm.

  It was the perfect murder and blackmail. Except the girl’s father had not let it go and seized on Huttington as the only suspect. Nor had he backed off despite threats. Then Marlene Ciampi and Karp had stepped in and started making life difficult.

  Thinking about the photograph as Zook ushered them into his office and shut the door reminded Barnhill that he had not been able to raise anybody at the Unified Church all day. The phones were dead and there was no service for cell phones.

  Zook sat down at his desk and indicated they should sit at the two chairs that faced the desk. “So what can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  Barnhill’s smirk disappeared from his face. “What do you mean?”

  “Why are we here?”

  “What the fuck, Zook,” Barnhill growled. “Kip here got a call this morning from Marlene Ciampi, who told him to meet you here or else. To be honest, I’m thinking about filing a harassment complaint. It’s obviously because her husband is losing the lawsuit and she’s trying to intimidate Kip somehow, which may also constitute witness tampering.”

  “Really? And what did she say?” Zook asked innocently, looking at Huttington.

  “Her message was very short,” Huttington replied. He nervously accepted a glass of water the district attorney poured for him from a pitcher on his desk. “She said, ‘We found your car,’ and that I better show up at your office or else.”

  “So you thought that it was important to show up?” Zook inquired.

  “Well, to be honest, I found her demeanor to be—”

  “Threatening,” Barnhill said, finishing the sentence for him. “This woman has a reputation back in New York for violence. Check it out. She gets away with it because her husband is the district attorney. But that’s not the point. Are you telling me that you don’t know what this is about?”

  Zook looked surprised. “Oh no, I know what this is all about. I was just listening.”

  “So?” Barnhill said, exasperated.

  “So what?”

  “SO WHAT IN THE HELL IS THIS ALL ABOUT?” Barnhill roared.

  “Whoa, Clyde, no need to yell,” Zook replied quietly. “What this is about is that I am charging Mr. Huttington with two counts of murder in the first degree, kidnapping, and, just because I can, improper disposal of an automobile. Oh, and I’m charging you with most of those, too.”

  Huttington staggered to his feet, rushed over to a trash can in the corner of the office, and vomited. Barnhill just sat in his chair, scowling and shouting, “WHAT! WHAT! WHAT!”

  “What? You want to know what, you slimeball,” Marlene sneered as she walked into the office, followed by two Idaho state troopers. She spotted Huttington and walked up to him, holding up the photograph of Maria’s impending murder.

  “We found her, ‘Kip,’ you piece of shit.” Marlene practically spat the words in his face as he tried to duck away from her. “Just in case they didn’t fill you in on the grisly details, they buried her alive in your car. But we found her. We dug her up along with the Cadillac you reported stolen. Want to know how that’s going to play to a jury, Kip? Do you? What’s the method of execution in Idaho, Dan?”

  “Lethal injection,” Zook replied.

  “Oooh, good one,” Marlene said with a smile as she walked over to toss the photograph on the desk in front of Barnhill, who glanced at it and looked quickly away.

  “They strap you to a gurney in a bright white room and tilt you up so that a bunch of people sitting in a dark room that you can’t see can watch you die. They’ll bear witness for Maria Elena Santacristina Katarain, but who will be there for you, Kip? The wife you betrayed with your little fling and then foray into murder? I don’t think so, bub. I think you’ll be alone, scared as hell, and about to meet Lucifer himself.”

  “That photograph doesn’t prove Mr. Huttington had anything to do with any murder,” Barnhill scoffed as he pulled himself together.

  “Shut up,” Marlene said, which caused Barnhill’s jaw to open, but no sound came out of his mouth. Satisfied, she turned back to Huttington. “No, they’ll stick needles in your arms and then load you up with the same chemicals they put dogs down with. Supposed to be painless, but I don’t know. There’s a couple of cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court right now claiming that in actuality lethal injection is a very painful way to go, but the condemned man is too doped up to show it. You’re just lying there looking like you’re going to sleep when in reality, your brain is screaming like a cat on fire. And that’s how you go into the next life, Kip, like a cat on fire.”

  Huttington threw up again. But Barnhill jumped to his feet and addressed Zook. “How do you know that’s even Mr. Huttington’s car?”

  “The vehicle identification number, you idiot,” Marlene answered. “Right there on the dashboard.”

  “Well, then,” Barnhill said, trying to sound reasonable. “Obviously, whoever took the car abducted the girl, killed her, and buried the evidence. And they tried to make it look like Kip was responsible.”

  Marlene shot the lawyer a disgusted look and turned back to Huttington. “I know why you did it, Kip. I mean, we already knew because those pieces of Aryan crap, Benji Hamm and Rufus Porter, are singing like the proverbial canaries. But now we have proof to back it up. Do you know what we found inside of Maria this morning, do you, Kip?”

  Every time Marlene said his name, Huttington reacted like he was being struck with a whip. “No, I don’t want to know,” he pleaded.

  “We found a fetus, Kip. A baby. Her baby. Your baby, Kip.”

  Earlier that morning, they’d all gathered around the hole to watch Charlotte Gates remove the last of the sand and gravel from the corpse. The anthropologist had immediately taken the body to the Sawtooth coroner’s office. A couple of hours later, she called Marlene. “We have a positive identification of Maria based on dental records and fingerprints.”

  “Fingerprints?” Marlene asked. “She was that well preserved?”

  “Amazingly, yes. Jack Swanburg was able to rehydrate her hands by soaking them in a saline solution and got several usable comparisons,” Gates said. “Her parents took Maria to get fingerprinted at the sheriff’s office when she was five. It was part of a program for identifying missing children. And barring any injuries, fingerprints remain the same when you get older, they just get larger. So these will stand up in any court.”

  “Thanks, Charlotte, you guys did a great job,” Marlene said.

  “I appreciate that and will pass it on,” Gates replied. “But don’t you want to hear the clincher?…Maria’s father, you, and Lucy were all right, Maria was pregnant. We found a well-preserved fetus, about three months into gestation. I’m sending tissue off to the lab for blood work and DNA analysis.”

  “We’ll need a DNA sample from Huttington,” Marlene shot back.

  “Right on, and then we’ll analyze them to see if they match,” Gates said. “I’ll bet Dan Zook will love the idea of presenting that to a jury.”

  Zook had indeed. He now picked a paper up from his desk and handed it to one of the state troopers.
“This is a warrant from Judge Linda Lewis to obtain hair, skin, and blood samples from Mr. Huttington. When we’re finished here, would you be so kind as to arrest and escort him to the hospital, where the medical staff will obtain the samples?”

  “My pleasure,” said the trooper.

  “But it’s not really necessary, is it, Kip?” Marlene said, picking up the photograph and holding it up for Huttington again. “You know we gotcha. No need to go through the humiliation of some nurse plucking your pubic hairs for testing.”

  “I, ah, no…” Huttington started to say.

  “Shut up, Kip!” Barnhill shouted. “Not another word. This is a bunch of—”

  “Kip, you tell him to shut the fuck up unless you’re looking forward to that hot shot to hell,” Marlene snarled. “And just so you understand the magnitude of what you’re facing here, you heard Dan say two counts of murder, right, Kip? One count is for Maria. The other is for the fetus. Dan may not be able to make it stick because the courts do not currently recognize the rights of a fetus. But it’s certainly not going to go over well with a jury when it considers the death penalty, and there’s plenty of slam-dunk charges to get you strapped to that gurney.”

  Barnhill started to protest again, but Huttington kicked the trash can hard enough to send it and its contents across the floor, where they landed at the feet of the attorney.

  “No more, Clyde, no more. Just sit there,” Huttington said, pointing at Barnhill.

  Huttington looked at Zook. “I take it I’m not already in jail because you wanted to talk to me,” he said.

  Zook shrugged his shoulders. “Essentially I’m here in case you want to discuss truthfully answering a few questions, and jumping through some hoops for me at future court dates. It might save you from the death penalty, but no guarantees of course. First, let’s do this right. Officer, would you please read this man his Miranda rights.”