Aftershock

by Andrew Vachss

  “Go,” Dolly said, sending me on my way with a kiss.

  I went to see the lawyer. He didn’t look happy.

  “What?” I asked his expression.

  “When your own client won’t speak to you, how can you be expected to mount a—”

  “You went to visit MaryLou? On your own?”

  “Yes. Of course I did. After all, I’m her—”

  I held up my hand to stop him talking. I had to be sure he could recite his lines when the time came.

  “You wanted to tell her about you going on TV,” I said.

  “Well, I didn’t think it would be … I mean, like I told you, we have an Ethics Code. Lawyers.”

  “Let’s get all that straight, right now. I don’t care about ethics. What we need is a strategy. You don’t want to step over certain lines, that’s your business. That’s what you hired me for, right?”

  “A lawyer is responsible for the conduct of all those working under him,” he said, pompously. I didn’t miss the “under.”

  “Only if he knows about it,” I told him, acting like I knew what I was saying was true. It didn’t matter—if he said the wrong thing, he was off the case.

  He nodded, as if there was a tape recorder in the room. Okay; that was enough.

  “When were you planning to do your interviews?”

  “Well … they called today. It was on my service.”

  I guess he didn’t want to say “answering machine.” If I was dumb enough to believe the cow in the reception area was actually his secretary, I’d probably swallow some line about his “service,” too.

  “You were going to speak to them today. So you went to see MaryLou, get her permission, yes?”

  “Well, it would be the—”

  “You’re not ready.”

  “What do you mean by that? We already agreed on what I’d say.”

  “You didn’t get a haircut. Or a real suit.”

  “Look, Mr. Whoever You Are, you think paying the bills turns me into some kind of marionette. Well, you’re wrong. I am the lawyer for—”

  “No, you’re not. The court appointed you, for peanuts. I hired you, for real money. All I have to do is nod my head and MaryLou will change to another lawyer. If you haven’t figured that out yet, you’re too stupid to be in a courtroom.”

  He didn’t like that. A lot of people don’t like the truth, especially when it comes out blunt. But this was battlefield surgery—do it or die. Either this guy got the message or he didn’t. And if he was the kind to let his ego get in the way, now was the time to find out.

  He let a few seconds pass. Then he said, “Well, it’s clear that MaryLou—the client—has placed her trust in you, so, if I want to do the best possible job for her, I have to … work with you.”

  “Done,” I told him. “I’m going over to see MaryLou now.”

  “I’ll—”

  “—go get a haircut,” I finished his sentence for him. Then I got up, turned around, and walked out.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I had one little … incident, the guards called it. And that was it.”

  I didn’t need details. Somebody finally forced MaryLou to send out a message that she wasn’t going to be pushed. My guess was that the rest of the women she was locked up with wouldn’t need another one.

  “You’re not going to tell me why you shot those boys. But here’s what I already know: you went there to kill that guy, and you just picked up whatever tool was at hand.”

  She cocked her head. “How do you know any of that?”

  “I know you’re not going to tell me because you haven’t said a word. Maybe you’ll tell Dolly, I don’t know. But you’re not going to plead insanity—you already made that clear. As for the decision you made and the tool you used, those are both the same.”

  She made a “come on with it” gesture.

  “You knew who you wanted, but you hadn’t planned it out—he would have been easy enough to ambush. And that pistol had to be something that was close at hand. A .22 revolver cut your chances of a kill way down. Only six shots, with small bullets. You’re old enough to buy a firearm. With a nine-mil, especially a long-magazine one, you could have hosed down the whole corridor.”

  She didn’t say anything, but she never dropped her eyes. So I went for it:

  “You don’t know anything about guns. You didn’t go shopping, or ask for advice. And there’s nobody you’d ask to lend you a pistol—you wouldn’t drag anyone into this. So it had to have been in your house already. It’s not what you’d call a precision piece, but it’s not a Saturday-night special, either. Somebody in your house—I’m guessing your father—got it from somewhere. He might never have shown it to you, but you knew where he kept it.”

  I could see MaryLou trying to make up her mind. She finally decided on the same “I’m not telling you anything” face. But her eyes stayed on mine.

  Dolly isn’t going to like this, I remember flashing somewhere in my head, but I was too close to stop.

  “Not knowing anything about pistols also means you think one’s pretty much the same as another. So it’s no accident that the boy you shot first was the only one who died. You had to be real close when you fired, so he was the one you wanted. Once he dropped, you just blasted away until the hammer clicked on ‘empty.’ Those extra shots, either you didn’t care what happened to the others, or you wanted it to look like you had no particular target in mind.”

  She took a deep breath in through her nose. Let it kind of trickle out, her mouth still closed.

  “Maybe they’ve got a softball team at Coffee Creek” is all she said. Then she stood up, signaling to the guard that the visit was over.

  “What’s Coffee Creek?” I asked the lawyer.

  “It’s the only prison for women in the whole state. But they’ve got different sections, depending on how much time each inmate comes in with. Or if they’re considered an escape risk.”

  “Didn’t have many of your clients end up there, did you?”

  “No,” he said. It didn’t come across as boasting; I figured that, even if he caught a woman’s case now and then, it would be plea-bargained down to jail time. He’d probably never even seen the place he was talking about.

  “MaryLou’s ready to go.”

  “She wants to plead guilty? To murder? That’s just … wrong. I mean, with her background, with all the community support—you wouldn’t believe the calls that have been coming in—we can’t just give up like that.”

  I liked the “we.” So I said, “She’s not going to plead guilty. She’s just ready to take whatever comes.”

  “She told you this?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there’s no point in me—”

  “No.”

  “This ‘strategy’ thing …?”

  “I’m working on it,” I told him. “And that haircut, it’s just perfect now. You look like a man who people should take seriously.”

  He flushed. I hoped he’d get over that habit quick.

  When I got back, Dolly was at the big table, papers scattered all over the place. She looked up, but she didn’t say a word.

  I took a seat. That was all she needed.

  “Dell, where are we?”

  “Getting there. What’s the name of the boy MaryLou killed again?” I could have asked the lawyer, but I didn’t want him to think he knew anything I didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

  “Cameron Taft. Everyone called him Cam, though. The inside joke was that it was short for ‘camshaft.’ ”

  “What’s his connection to … anything? At the school, I mean.”

  “He wasn’t on any sports team. He wasn’t some kind of brainiac. I guess he just … went there. I’ve only got this much. So far, I’m saying,” she said, promising more to come. “He was six-one, weighed one seventy-six. Dark-blond hair, medium to long. Blue eyes. No scars. No old injuries. One tattoo on his right arm: a red symbol of some kind. Japanese or Chinese characters
, maybe. The symbol was set against a black background. Another on his left pectoral: a large red heart with an ice cube in its center.”

  “Stomach contents?” I asked, showing Dolly I knew where she’d gotten that info, and how proud of her I was for having built such a place for herself in the community, having won so much respect.

  “Not much left. Whatever he ate, it was the night before. No breakfast. But his breath must have been good.”

  “Because?”

  “His teeth were perfect. Not even a cavity. No food particles anywhere. And his oral swab smelled like some serious mouthwash.”

  “Nails?”

  “Pretty much like his mouth, only without the odor. Scalp was clean, too. And if he used drugs, he wasn’t injecting them.”

  “Nice-looking boy, huh?”

  “Very nice-looking, Dell. Half the girls in the school had a crush on him.”

  “No kids?”

  “Why would a kid—? Oh. You mean, did he have any kids?”

  I nodded.

  “No. I would have heard if he had. By now, I mean.”

  “Any rectal scarring?”

  She gave me a funny look, but all she said was “No. Not even old, healed ones. Nothing.”

  I sat there, working it all through the filters I had built in my mind. I didn’t want to tip my hand to Dolly. And not just because she’d see I wasn’t holding much.

  “Can you get a photo of that symbol? The one on his arm?”

  “Sure. They photograph just about every square inch in a homicide case.”

  “Homicide.”

  “Yes, Dell. Homicide. That’s what happens when a bullet gets lodged in the brain.”

  “Why are you being so …?”

  “So … what?”

  “Snippy and sarcastic,” I told her, flat-out.

  “Maybe because you started it, Dell. You already know it was a homicide. So why ask—?”

  “I didn’t ask anything. I was just thinking out loud. I said one word. ‘Homicide.’ Now tell me if I’m wrong: when an autopsy report says ‘homicide,’ all they’re really saying is that it wasn’t suicide or accident.”

  “Well … of course. It’s a standard protocol. Any gunshot wound to the head, you have to rule out suicide. Especially with a teenage kid. But you already knew that this Taft boy didn’t shoot himself.”

  “I knew MaryLou shot him in the head. I knew he died from the shot. That’s a homicide, sure. But that doesn’t automatically make it a murder.”

  “I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

  “Neither am I, honey. Something keeps tugging at me, but I can’t see it. Not yet. MaryLou killed him. Okay. But maybe killing him wasn’t murder.”

  “What else could it be, Dell?”

  “Self-defense.”

  Dolly kind of yipped, jumped up, and gave me a kiss. A real one.

  “Don’t get all worked up, baby. I didn’t come up with an answer, just a question.”

  “But that’s so much more than we had.”

  “Only if it proves out. MaryLou didn’t shoot a burglar coming through her window, remember. And she emptied her pistol, too. The only thing we know for sure is that she’s not insane. Which means she had a reason. A reason she’s not saying. Not telling anyone. Not even you.”

  “It’s you she’d tell.”

  “Why would you say that? I’m not even—”

  “I know you, Dell,” she interrupted. “I know you better than anyone on earth. I remember every single word you ever said. With you, that’s a lot easier than it might be for someone else.” She kind of giggled.

  “I don’t get the joke.”

  “It’s no joke. Didn’t you once say that the best way to get someone to tell you what you want to know is to convince them that you already know it?”

  I just nodded. She was right. On both counts. “I give up,” I said.

  That got me another kiss. Dolly usually closes her eyes when she kisses me. This time she didn’t. So I asked her, “You ever find out where this kid Bluto—uh, Franklin—ever find out if his parents had to give up the house?”

  She gave me the address. I went downstairs to change.

  I was glad—again—for that suit Dolly had made me buy. She had called it a “three-season.” When I looked blank, she went on: “But, for around here, it’s really all-season—it’s not as if we ever get a real winter. And a silk shirt can look any way you want it to.…”

  Which is why that cedar closet she insisted on putting in holds a whole mess of them, in different colors.

  “His family’s name is Wayne,” Dolly said. “Spelled like John Wayne,” Dolly called out to me just as I was going into the garage.

  “Perfect,” I said, leaving her to take that any way she wanted.

  The Lexus fit perfect for this next job, too. Some things look different in daylight.

  The man who answered the door had to be the one Dolly told me about. They couldn’t fit more than one of him in that little house, and his face didn’t have a line on it.

  “Mr. Wayne? Franklin Wayne? My name is Jackson. Dell Jackson. I work for Mr. Swift, the attorney who’s representing your friend MaryLou.”

  When I called MaryLou his friend, the huge kid’s face brightened for just a second. Then he remembered why MaryLou would need a lawyer, and his expression went back to dull.

  “Would you help me help MaryLou, Franklin?”

  “I’d do anything for MaryLou,” he said. Maybe he didn’t have a wide range of expressions, but I could see that if he’d known MaryLou had a problem with Cameron Taft he would have handled it himself. He wouldn’t need a gun to get the same result MaryLou had, and he didn’t look like a man who’d stop halfway through a job.

  “We wouldn’t want to disturb your folks with this kind of thing. They don’t know anything. And MaryLou is your friend, not theirs.”

  “That’s right.” Telling me he wouldn’t bring a girl like MaryLou anywhere near that house or his parents.

  “So how about if we take a little ride?” I asked him, kind of nodding toward the Lexus. “I don’t know my way around here too well, but I’m sure you know a spot where we could talk without anyone bothering us.”

  If I hadn’t stepped aside quickly, he would have bowled me over on his way to the car. He had the passenger door open before I could get around to my side. Good thing I hadn’t locked it. I’d seen plenty of big, powerful men in my life, but Franklin looked as if he could drive rivets with the slabs at the end of his wrists. Or tear a door off its hinges. I was glad I’d remembered to adjust the passenger seat to maximum slide-back and leaned the backrest as far as reasonable.

  “Which way?” I asked him.

  It took almost twenty minutes of following his finger-pointing, grunting, and “over there” instructions, but he had picked the most logical spot—no Lovers’ Lane is going to be occupied in broad daylight.

  I slid the windows down before I killed the engine, in case shutting off the A/C would make the kid sweaty.

  You don’t have to be bright to be patient. I figured this kid was accustomed to responding, not initiating.

  “What can you tell me about Cameron Taft, Franklin?”

  “He’s a jerk. Him and all those others.”

  “Which others?”

  “The ones with the jackets.”

  “Black ones, with red sleeves?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is Cam a jerk?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, what makes you say Cam is a jerk?”

  “Oh. Because he’s mean, I guess.”

  “He does mean things?”

  “He always does mean things.”

  “Like call other kids names?”

  “Yeah. All of them do that, but only after Cam says it’s okay.”

  “You mean, after he does it, the others know it’s okay for them to do it, too?”

  He nodded. His head would have been at home on Easter Island.

 
“He never called you any names, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Because he only called girls names?”

  “He called boys names, too.”

  “Names like …?”

  “Just mean names. I don’t remember them all.”

  “Did he ever call MaryLou a name?”

  “Nobody called MaryLou a name.” I didn’t think that could be true, but I didn’t think he was lying, either. He could only say what he’d heard. Maybe some gutter-mouth high-school girls called MaryLou a dyke, or made cracks about male hormones turning her into such a great pitcher, but they’d only do that when they were alone, not out in the open. And I didn’t think even girls would have let the mammoth sitting next to me hear them slam his to-the-heart friend.

  “Do you like the house you live in?” I asked. Sometimes, you throw a man way off subject, his guard drops.

  But Franklin didn’t have a guard to drop. “It’s nice” is all he said.

  “Franklin, can you think of any way we could help MaryLou?”

  “I … I’ve been trying to do that. If I knew, I would do it.”

  I believed him.

  “So, if I figure out a way, you’d be willing to help me?”

  “Yes,” he said. But now his tone was even deeper, and his voice came through gritted teeth.

  “Tonight’s the night, huh?” I said to the lawyer.

  “It certainly is, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Make it ‘Dell,’ okay, Brad? We’re in this together.”

  He insisted on shaking hands, like we were being introduced all over again.

  Then he said, “You were right. About the TV, I mean. The local stations—even the ones way up in Portland—they wanted me to talk right away. And the Court TV people, too. But CNN! I guess it was worth waiting.”

  “Good. Now, remember, they can’t make you say anything. You give them what we agreed on, and that’s all. So either they’ll ask the same question over and over, or you won’t be on camera too long. And that’s just fine for us, either way. Remember, don’t let them lead you off the trail. Don’t ‘speculate.’ Don’t talk about your own experiences. Don’t talk about ‘school shooting cases.’ Stay on message. Hold your square. Don’t let them push you off it, no matter what.”