Indefensible: A Novel

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Indefensible: A Novel Page 5

by Lee Goodman


  Upton Cruthers was an NFL kicker. “Best job in the world,” he tells people. “Money, babes, celebrity, travel, and a bench pass to lots of great games. And all this in exchange for about a half hour’s worth of work per year.” His professional football career was brief. I’ve seen footage of the fateful game. It was a playoff of some kind, Upton standing alone on the twenty-second-yard line, watching as the ball wobbled to the left and missed the goalposts by an easy twenty feet. The commentator was apoplectic, the crowd bellowing in rage and grief. A home game, of course. And Upton dejectedly walked off the field.

  Upton is my favorite of the assistants. We’re close to the same age, and he’s a shrewd and confident lawyer, which is no surprise. It must take the same kind of confidence to walk onto the gridiron in the last thirty seconds and to become, with one quick kick, the hero or the goat.

  Upton started as an intern during my first year here, and I hired him officially as soon as he was out of law school. He’d already played football for several years by then, so he was older and more worldly than most of the lawyers who come knocking on my door with résumé in hand. I had to pull some strings to get his application approved because DOJ flagged it; Upton had a juvenile record of minor offenses—vandalism, assault, minor-in-possession. That’s why we connected from the start, because whatever drove his youthful rebellion had left him feeling like a pretender in the conventional world of law enforcement. And I was fresh from a personal tragedy in my own life, leaving me with a similar sense of separateness. We were both local boys and both kind of surprised to find ourselves representing the government.

  After Tina and Upton leave, I call Kenny’s cell phone. “Where are you?”

  “In my office,” he says without irony.

  I walk to the law library and find him at his usual table, where he can keep an eye on who’s coming and going and where he can chat with the librarian. They’re good friends, Kenny and Penny, and I haven’t given up hoping they might someday lock the library door and create a little vortex to stir the dust that lies so heavy on all those dreary shelves. They would have to adjust their standards, though; Penny is a potato-shaped young woman hoping for a man of erudition; Kenny is an intellectually incurious young man hoping for a supermodel. But they’re both good-hearted.

  “Quick job for you, Kenny,” I say. “I need you to pick up some documents from Chip over at the Bureau.”

  “Well, I got all this copying to do,” he says, not complaining so much as making sure I don’t think that all he does is sit around all day—which is exactly what I think.

  “Lizzy’s still up north,” I say. “I’ll probably pick up a pizza and be stony-lonesome tonight, if you want to come over and split it with me.”

  “You going to rent one of those boring movies you like to get?”

  “You mean no car chases or buildings getting blown up?”

  “Yeah, right, no chases, no nothing,” he says. “Sex Life of the Oyster; Moss-Growing World Championship.”

  “Yes,” I say, “I’ll probably rent one of those.”

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “Sounds like a yawn-fest.”

  “Well, I’d love the company.” Maybe he’ll change his mind at about six-fifteen tonight, grab a six-pack, and drive over to pass the evening with me.

  • • •

  Everyone is excited about this Phippin case: Chip, Dorsey, Upton, me. We’re expecting something big. We have a huge tactical advantage because the perps don’t know we know. There are four agencies involved: the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI, the state troopers, and now the state attorney general, with dozens of smart people working hard on it, from the forensic scientists on Zander’s body, to computer whizzes, to field agents and detectives. This investigation is in the air like ozone before the rain.

  Another hour passes with no developments. I walk to the men’s room, and I sense staff eyeing me as I pass their cubicles. Also, there are more than the usual number of workers standing in gossipy pods along the hallway. They fall silent as I pass. But on my way back, one young woman, an administrative aide named Kimba, stops me outside my door.

  “We’re confused,” she says with an excited and obsequious tilt of her neck. “Was it your daughter or your ex, or both, who actually witnessed the murder?”

  I laugh. “Ahh, the rumor mill.” I step back into my office, close the door, and stand for a few seconds in light-headed disbelief. Somehow this has morphed into the misperception that not only was there an actual witness to the gangland execution, but that the witness was either Lizzy or Flora. I make my way to the desk and watch my fingers find Upton’s extension on the phone.

  “Yes, boss?” His comforting baritone voice fills the room, and my eyes fill with gratitude.

  “Upton,” I say, “I think I need your help.”

  CHAPTER 11

  It was Upton’s idea to put Tina on the whirlybird with me. “You might need a real lawyer,” he said, making a joke of it to soften me up. What he meant was someone to keep an eye on me, especially if things up north are ugly. The ’copter is Dorsey’s, so to speak, a Bell 407 Ranger, chosen over the Bureau’s because it was on the pad and ready to fly. It lighted on the roof of the federal building just long enough for Tina and me to sprint in under spinning blades, and then, with one shiver, it was in the air again.

  From the air, I watch as we move from the grid of urban streets to the green threads of tree-lined suburban avenues and into the tattered quilting of the outlying farmlands and forests. It is all a work of staggering intricacy.

  It makes me sad.

  “I’ve got to get out of this business,” I shout to Tina, who sits beside me. Her answer, instead of a shout, is to put her hand on my knee. She means it as a comforting gesture, and it works. She doesn’t just pat my knee. She rests her hand there for several seconds. And I feel that much more comforted.

  Tina and I sit facing backward, and across from us is a trooper. I put my hand out and yell my name. He does likewise. We shake, but I can’t make out his name. And he’s hard to get a fix on visually. He wears a Smokey hat and looks like a dentist or bank officer; he has an any-guy look.

  I lean toward Tina. “It’s Kenny,” I yell. She shakes her head and leans in closer. “Kenny,” I repeat, not shouting because I’m right in her ear. “He’s the leak, probably blabbing to anyone who sets foot in the library, telling just enough for them to make the wrong conclusions.”

  She nods. Then she has her mouth at my ear: “But he seems so sweet.”

  “Not malicious,” I yell. “Never malicious. Just foolish.”

  We’ll have answers pretty soon. Agents arrived to question the staff before Tina and I were even off the roof. Poor Kenny. I’ll have to fire him, and what will he do then? I can probably set him up with something. Maybe a lawn-care business.

  The pilot hands me a headset, and I put it on.

  “Can you hear me, Mr. Davis?” the pilot asks.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “I’ll need you to guide me in once we’re close. Think of someplace I can land.”

  I watch out the window. It’s mostly woods, and I catch sight of our shadow riding the contours of the land like a roller coaster.

  From way up here, it looks like the mills and factories might still be running, the homes might be kept up, and the jobs might not be gone. We’ve taken such pains building and improving all of this: society, infrastructure, government, economy. The whole shebang. It ran with the gentle hum of oiled parts spinning at a blur, until everything went to hell in the seventies and eighties. The last of the mills closed, and the disrupters, as Upton calls them—the bad genes, the pathogens, the criminal element without whom it might all be so simple—thrived.

  “It should all be so simple,” I yell cryptically, and the hand comes back to my knee.

  Realistically, there’s not much to worry about, because even if Kenny’s injudicious blab was early this morning, it needed to work its way along the gossip tree—mor
phing into the misperception that Lizzy or Flora actually witnessed the grisly deed. Then it had to find its way to whatever hypothetical traitor delivers it to the dark side, and then they, the evildoers themselves, would have to track down Lizzy and her mom—no easy feat, especially with the two of them at the lake for the week. And finally, anyone wishing to pay Flora and Lizzy a visit would have to drive several hours north, because it’s unlikely they’d have access to a jet Ranger like we do.

  Tina is watching out her window, and I know she’s worried, so I lean in close to her and explain my reasoning of how it’s all okay.

  She gives me a perplexed look for a couple of seconds, then comes back and puts her mouth against my ear. “But Nick, Kenny was back in the office Friday afternoon. Remember? You were gone all day at the reservoir, but he and your daughter came back just after lunch. What if he committed the indiscretions then? They’ve had all weekend.”

  • • •

  The lake surface is pounded into droplets by the blades. Saplings on the shore try to uproot and run. But through the dragonfly eye of the 407, I see no sign of human life around either Flora’s cabin or mine. We ascend again, and as we pivot, I catch sight of someone watching from Sammel’s dock, far down the shoreline.

  We dart over the road. “There’s local, just arriving,” the pilot says, and we settle down on a Christmas-tree field as two cruisers pull up. One’s a trooper, and the other is a local cop. I get in the front seat of the trooper car. “I’ve been briefed by Captain Dorsey,” the driver says, and he sprays gravel pulling back onto the main road, but then turns slowly into my driveway and creeps down the long gravel path. The trooper from the helicopter is in the backseat, and Tina seems to have disappeared.

  We stop. “Wait here,” the driver tells me as the other trooper walks around the corner of the cabin to the door. The driver and I lean against the car, which idles in the sun. There’s no wind, and the black flies find us and add their electric drone to the crackling of the police radio. Everything looks disturbed; leaves and pine needles are stuck to the cabin window, and there’s trash in the bushes and against the cabin, and I count three T-shirts, two of Lizzy’s and one I don’t recognize, thrown into the trees.

  “Something’s happened,” I say.

  The trooper I’m standing with answers vaguely: “I’m sure it’ll all check out.” He wears a brass name tag: J. Voight.

  I start for the cabin. Voight catches up and grabs my arm. “Best to wait with me, Mr. Davis.”

  I twist my arm loose, but I don’t make for the cabin.

  “Rotor wash,” Voight says, waving his hand at the woods and cabin. “The chopper blew things around a bit, that’s all it is.”

  I follow him back to the cruiser. We just stand, waiting, and finally, the other trooper comes out of the cabin and waves me over. “No one’s home,” he says.

  The local cop drives up and parks beside the trooper car. Tina is with him.

  “That other cabin?” Voight asks, pointing.

  “My ex-wife’s.”

  “Let’s take a look.”

  The two troopers walk over, and I tag along. At the door, one of them stands halfheartedly to one side and knocks. “State police. Anybody home?”

  Nothing.

  He looks at me questioningly, so before they can object, I open the door and go in.

  It’s a nice place, with more sunlight than mine. Flora likes pretty curtains and tablecloths, and the woodwork is finished out with gingerbread scrollwork. It smells of incense: typical Flora.

  “Everything in order?”

  “Well, I—”

  There is a rustling. The mound of quilts on the bed heaves, and Flora’s friend Lloyd emerges. “Caught me napping,” he says, blinking at the two service revolvers leveled at him in the no-nonsense, double-handed grips of my escorts.

  “Get your hands out,” one of the troopers shouts, which is overly dramatic, since it’s hard to imagine anyone less threatening than this pasty-faced guy who keeps blinking even after the shock and bleariness should have passed. He is wearing a white shirt buttoned right up to the neck, and when his hands emerge from the quilts, I’m not surprised to see sleeves buttoned at the cuffs.

  “Oh my heavens, don’t shoot me!” he says.

  “Do you know this individual?” one of the troopers asks.

  “Lloyd, where is Lizzy?” I ask.

  “I don’t . . . ummm, I’ve been asleep. Isn’t she . . . I’d ask Flora.”

  “Where’s Flora?”

  “Ummm. Isn’t she . . .”

  I glance around the room. There are pill vials on the table, and I pick one up. Haldol, which explains the midday nap. I nod at the troopers, and they lower their guns.

  “What’s going on?” Lloyd asks.

  “Probably nothing. We just need to ascertain Lizzy’s and Flora’s safety.”

  “Flora did say something about going for groceries.”

  We escort Lloyd outside, and the troopers confer with the local cop, who is a stubble-headed young man. He goes to his police radio and transmits the details of Flora’s car. Then we stand around waiting for the police in town to find Flora at the grocery store. There are six of us: Tina, Lloyd, the two troopers, the stubble-headed local cop, and me.

  “How you doing?” Tina asks me.

  “Could I wait in the car?” Lloyd climbs into the open trooper cruiser without waiting for an answer. “How do you stand the bugs?” he says, and closes the door.

  After about ten minutes, the local police call back on the radio to tell us they’ve located Flora at Rick’s grocery, and Flora says Lizzy is out for a run. The stubble-headed local gets in his car and leaves to circle the lake.

  My cell rings. It’s Upton. I tell him it looks like everything here is okay, and we’ll know for certain in a few minutes.

  “That’s good,” Upton says. “Chip has appointed a female agent to watch over Lizzy and Flora until this is all resolved. She’s driving up now.”

  With the phone at my ear, I walk to the edge of the lake and out onto the dock. I push the Adirondack chair around with my foot to face the shore. I can see Lloyd in the cruiser, watching out the backseat window with his face pressed to the glass like a little boy. How typical of Flora to find someone in such need of kindness and care. Beside the cruiser, Tina talks with one of the troopers. She laughs, he smiles. The rim of his Smokey hat dips as he nods in agreement with whatever Tina is saying. Tina’s still in her court clothes and carrying her ever-present shoulder bag.

  I can see both cabins from here, Flora’s and mine. “I have to tell you this, Upton,” I say. “I’m sure Kenny was the source of the leak. He just doesn’t think sometimes.”

  “It’s not Kenny,” Upton says. “I had thought so, too. That’s where we started the questioning, because he was with you at the reservoir that day. But he checks out. Chip and I did some of the questioning, and I talked to the librarian myself. Penny Russet. She was real contrite; says she cajoled him—that was her word, cajoled—for details. All Kenny would tell her was that he visited a crime scene with you. Period.”

  Something inside of me gives way, and I slump back into the chair, taking a second to absorb this good news. “Thank God,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “But then who?” I wonder aloud. “Maybe it was out of Dorsey’s office. Or Chip’s.”

  “No,” Upton says. “We’ve identified it. It was from this office.”

  I wait.

  “Your daughter,” Upton says apologetically.

  Of course.

  “Apparently, she was traumatized when she got back here Friday afternoon. You were at the reservoir or someplace, and she talked to at least three different people here: Paul Myrtle, Janice Troyer, and Frea Schultz, to be specific. All report her saying, ‘Don’t tell my dad I told you, but,’ and the three of them have strikingly different impressions of the who-what-and-wheres. Then it all went into the gossip machine and, well, God knows.”

  No
w I realize for the first time the magnitude of my indiscretion, bringing Lizzy to the reservoir with me. It’s one of those things nobody would give a second thought to until it turned out badly; lousy decision-making by me, head of criminal division.

  From my chair on the dock, I see Tina at the door of my cabin. She’s wearing the trooper’s Smokey hat now. She signals to ask if she can enter. I nod.

  “I wonder if I’ll have to step down,” I say, thinking aloud, forgetting for a second who is on the phone with me. Upton isn’t exactly a therapist or clergyman but, rather, one of my likely successors. And he’s ambitious. But his poise is perfect: “Don’t be an idiot,” he says.

  Tina emerges from the cabin carrying her shoes, and I notice her legs have gone from charcoal to flesh-colored. She’s wearing the Smokey hat and carrying her shoulder bag.

  “One more thing,” Upton says. “Scud Illman has slipped surveillance.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Yeah. The agents lost him. We’re not sure if he pulled a fast one or if it was a screwup.”

  CHAPTER 12

  I stay on the dock in my Adirondack chair until the local cop who left to circle the lake pulls back into the clearing with someone handcuffed in the backseat.

  The officer gets out and walks around the cruiser. He has the head-bobbing strut of a man who has accomplished something grand but is pretending it’s no big deal. I walk to the car. Inside, wide-eyed and terrified, is the scrawny, drug-wasted Sammel boy from the cabin up the lake.

  “Get him out,” I say.

  He is pulled from the car and stands in front of me with his hands locked behind his back. From their shadowy sinkholes, his eyes scan the faces in front of him, giving no sign of recognizing me. But there is a barely registerable awakening when he sees Lloyd in the other cruiser, nose against the glass.

 

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