Bullet Beth

by James Patrick Hunt

  Hastings smiled. “I never threatened her.”

  He placed a couple of boxes of photographs in the trunk of his Jaguar. He was shutting the trunk when his cell phone rang.

  It was Henry Brummell, the lawyer.

  Brummell apologized for not getting back to him sooner. Then he asked if Hastings could come to his office that afternoon.

  Henry Brummell didn’t use his desk to his advantage the way Devin Cloud had. He talked with Hastings in a conference room where there was no computer or calendar to distract him. Brummell was a short, stocky man with thick dark hair and black framed glasses. He reminded Hastings of Al Pacino. But he was careful and sparse with his words, like a soldier would be with his ammunition. He sat in his chair in his white shirt and tie, asking questions and writing things on a yellow pad. The only other thing on the table was a copy of the petition.

  George Hastings wasn’t used to answering questions. He usually asked them. He realized this short man with glasses was in control of this situation and he didn’t much like it. Eventually, Hastings told him what Devin Cloud had said about the possibility of bankruptcy.

  Brummell looked up from his glasses. “He said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well that was stupid of him.”

  “But is it a possibility?”

  “It’s a very remote possibility. First, the case would have to get to trial. Then you would have to lose. Then the jury would have to rule that what you did merits punitive damages. It’s possible in that scenario that the city’s insurance company would not have to pay a punitive damage award.”

  “Which means I would.”

  “Possibly. But if it came to that, I would exert pressure on the City to pay such an award.”

  “How?”

  “By threatening them with a bad faith lawsuit. Or, threatening their insurance company with one. The insurance company has a duty to protect you from such a thing.”

  “Not just the City?”

  “You’re an agent of the City. It’s why you got sued.”

  “I don’t think it’s why I got sued.”

  “Why do you think you did?”

  “I think it’s because Ryan Bradbury wants to torment me.”

  Brummell looked at him for a while. “Why would he want to do that?”

  “He already has plenty of money. In my opinion, he just likes to torture people. His stepdaughter, his ex-wife. Can’t we sue him?”

  “For what?”

  “For filing this suit,” Hastings said. “Isn’t there something the law can do about that?”

  “There is a cause of action called ‘abuse of process.’ But they’re very difficult to manage and, frankly, it wouldn’t do you any good.”

  “So I just have to take this?”

  “Until I can get this suit dismissed, yes. In any event, I don’t want you to spend a lot of time worrying about filing bankruptcy. The odds are very remote.”

  “But it is possible?”

  “It’s a very remote possibility.”

  “Fuck.” Hastings looked over at the lawyer. “Sorry,” he added.

  “Don’t apologize,” Brummell said. “I guess for you, the world seems pretty upside down right about now.”

  “Pardon?”

  Brummell said, “A man kills a girl and then shoots and maims his soon to be ex-wife. You help put the case together. He gets acquitted and now he’s suing you. The good guy getting punished by the bad guy. And not just any bad guy, but a cold blooded murderer. Up is down. Black is white. It’s like something out of Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s exactly how it feels. Nothing seems to make any sense anymore.”

  “I understand,” Brummell said. “You may not think I do, but I do.”

  Hastings regarded the lawyer. He said, “You think Bradbury was guilty?”

  “I’ve no doubt he was guilty.”

  “But the jury acquitted him.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  Brummell shrugged. “I suppose it does. The jury system is a marvelous thing. It doesn’t always work. But it’s the best thing we have. Bradbury had money and he could afford to hire one of the best lawyers in St. Louis. He also got lucky. He drew a judge who wasn’t that bright and Bradbury’s lawyer worked him. And…to be frank, the prosecutors could have done a better job.”

  Hastings almost asked, do you think you could have done better? But he didn’t. He wasn’t sure what to think of this man.

  Hastings said, “Did you ever work as a prosecutor?”

  “No.”

  “How about criminal defense?”

  “A handful of cases, but never anything major.” Brummell smiled. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “My background is mostly civil litigation. Mostly plaintiff’s cases.”

  “You’re a car wreck lawyer?”

  “I started off doing car wrecks, yes. And I made a pretty decent living at it. Then I got into class actions and civil rights cases. The civil rights work was more interesting, but it takes a lot longer and it doesn’t pay as well. I’ve sued the city a couple of times. I represented the firefighters on that overtime case.”

  “I heard about that. You got them a lot of money. Like four million dollars.”

  “It was 3.8 million. The City owed it to them. Also, I’ve done a few labor termination cases for the firefighters.”

  “You’ve sued the City, yet they’ve referred my case to you.”

  “John Mahoney, the City Attorney, we’re friends. He told me about it and I asked him if I could get in on it.”

  Hastings wondered how Brummell could be friends with a lawyer he’d beaten. He said, “What do you think of Cloud?”

  “Devin? Oh…Devin’s Devin. He’s not so bad when you get to know him. Between us, you wouldn’t have wanted him to represent you on this thing.”

  “That’s what someone else told me. But I still don’t understand this. Why would you…want to represent me? You don’t need the money, do you?”

  Brummell smiled again. “No, I don’t need the money.” He said it the way a rich man would say it. A man who took a hefty percentage of a 3.8 million dollar verdict. Brummell said, “I want to do this because I think it’ll be an interesting case. I know something about civil rights litigation. More than most lawyers. Certainly more than Devin does. And I don’t much like Simon Cray.”

  “Bradbury’s lawyer? Why, is there some sort of bad blood between you?”

  “No. I know him, but not real well. I know his kind, though. Cray’s very talented, but he’s a prick. For him, clients aren’t really people. They’re just a means to make money and get on television. Him and Bradbury are a better match than you realize. The Ryan Bradbury’s of this world deserve due process of law. I don’t hold that against Cray. But when Cray filed this suit, he went too far. It’s beyond offensive. I guess I’d like to take him down a peg.”

  “I don’t know that I’m comfortable with that,” Hastings said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “For you, it’s a challenge. An opportunity to beat another lawyer in the ring. A high profile lawyer. But I’ve got something more at stake than that.”

  “All right. I understand your concern. And I certainly don’t want to represent you if you don’t feel comfortable with me. If you don’t trust me, the jury will know it and the judge will know it and Simon Cray will know it. But I do want you to know that, like you, I think Ryan Bradbury is a child murderer and deserves absolutely nothing. From you or the City. And, like you, I think his lawyer is a rancid, unethical fuckpig. My goal is to get this thing dismissed as soon as possible and wipe those satisfied, smug smiles off their faces. Now. You want to talk about the case?”

  Hastings said he did.

  Hastings drove home and set the boxes of Rodgers’s photos on the dining room table. He made a ham sandwich and poured a glass of milk. He looked at th
e photos while he ate. Chief Dobbs called him.

  Dobbs said, “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch with you sooner. We had a bad auto collision and all of us had to work traffic.”

  Hastings asked, “Any of your men hurt?”

  “No. A couple of fatalities though, one of them our high school coach.”

  “I’m sorry.” Hastings was sure they knew each other.

  “It’s all right. Okay. Here are the names and addresses of the homes. You ready?”

  Hastings slid a legal pad over and grabbed a pen.

  Dobbs read out the lake addresses, the owner’s name, and then the corresponding home address and telephone numbers. Hastings wrote them down.

  Dobbs said, “I called the family members. Rodgers’s father is William Rodgers. His sister is Tudi Rodgers. They’re both in Kirksville, Missouri. That’s Kirksville, not Kirkwood.”

  “Got it.”

  “I spoke with both of them. The sister has his car and she’s already put in ad in the local paper to sell it. I asked her to hold off on selling it until you had a chance to talk to her.”

  “I appreciate that. Did she agree to?”

  “She huffed a little, asked me what authority I had to make such a request. I sort of put it on you. Said it was your request and she would be well advised to comply with it. Sorry to do that to you, but I got the feeling she would be more inclined to listen to you than she would me.”

  “She’s never seen me.”

  “Exactly.”

  Hastings smiled. “Okay,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

  “Call me if you need anything else.”

  Hastings looked at the names he had taken down. They were:

  Rupert Lackey — Kansas City, Missouri

  Joan Adelson — St. Louis, Missouri

  Andrew Poole — Marshall, Missouri

  Jack and Sarah Belmont — Webster Groves, Missouri

  Webster Groves was a suburb of St. Louis. Marshall was a small town about fifty miles east of Kansas City. So that made two owners from the St. Louis area.

  Hastings didn’t suspect the non-St. Louis residents of anything, but he wanted to cross them off the list. He called Rupert Lackey in Kansas City and got a recording and left a message. He reached Andrew Poole in Marshall. Poole said he was the owner of a convenience store in Marshall and a chicken restaurant and bar. He said he served the best chicken in the state using a recipe he’d learned from his grandmother. He said he’d never heard of Johnny Rodgers and when Hastings described Rodgers’s car, Poole said he couldn’t recall seeing that sort of vehicle anytime he’d been there. Poole said he and his family didn’t use the lake house as much as they liked because they had to keep the restaurant open on the weekends and it was a family business, his wife working the register and the kids helping wait tables and if he really had any sense he’d sell the damn thing and Hastings said, “The lake house?” and Poole said, yeah, what did you think I meant? Poole said he was sorry he wasn’t much help. Hastings said he was and thanked him for his time.

  Hastings typed his notes into his lap top computer under a file he’d named “Johnny Rodgers.” He would later append the notes on the conversation with Andrew Poole into a police report. Hastings wrote good reports and he stressed the importance of good report writing to anyone under his supervision. After he finished typing the notes, he went back to reviewing Johnny Rodgers’s photographs.

  They were good photos.

  Most of them were black and white. Some of them were of women naked from the waist up, their arms folded across their breasts. Another of a dark haired girl of about twenty wearing lingerie, sitting on an ottoman in a very narrow hallway, her legs apart.…Several of a blonde woman who had a mouth like Gwyneth Paltrow’s, only prettier, shots of her in a black T-shirt and jeans and others of her in a white T-shirt and jeans, one of her on her back with her legs straight up, balancing a little boy on her feet, her head turned toward the camera.…A lady in her fifties with a pouty expression resting on her knees, her plastic breasts bared.…A naked girl, heavily tattoed, lying in a bathtub that seemed to be in the hayloft of a barn.…Some of the women were very pretty. Some of them were not. But those who were not were made to look pretty. No…that wasn’t it. He hadn’t made them look pretty. He hadn’t even made them look particularly sexy. He had made them look interesting. He seemed to favor group shots of women smoking or holding cigars. As if women would come to a cigar party all wearing the same black brassieres. Yet it seemed to work. Rodgers had some talent.

  Yet Hastings found himself put off by the photos. Something about them depressed him. They seemed forced and false. Somehow less honest than the quick family portraits snapped by a photographer hired by a local Catholic parish, capturing quick smiles in Sunday clothes. Conventional and traditional but somehow real. Were these women real? Was the woman boldly baring her breasts on the bed genuinely horny? Or was she trying to prove she was still young and desirable? Did those women really enjoy smoking cigars? What was it that Johnny Rodgers was giving them? Was he letting them escape from themselves by pretending to be something they weren’t? From the boring, unsatisfying lives they led? They seemed vain and lonely and maybe even a little desperate. Hastings was beginning to wonder if Rodgers was the friend to women he had held himself out to be.

  He continued reviewing the photos and making notes. Terry called him about an hour later.

  He gave her a brief summary of what he had done and she invited him over for a cup of coffee.

  Hastings said, “Where’s Randi?”

  “She’s spending her spring break in Florida. A school trip. You know what they’re doing down there? Helping out a poor Hispanic community. They might go to the beach one day, but the rest of it is work.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I know. It kind of makes me feel bad.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry said. “Things are different than when we were kids. We never spent our spring breaks helping people. If we had money, we’d go on a ski trip or to the beach. Now they teach the kids community service.”

  “Yeah, it’s screwy.”

  “I know,” Terry said, smiling. She looked around the kitchen. “Kind of lonely here without her.”

  “Chet’s still in Boston?”

  “Yeah.”

  Terry McGregor was a very attractive woman. She had a good figure and a pretty face that became softer on examination. Were she a different person with a different personality engaging different body language, one could think she was making a pass. Saying she was lonely and her husband was out of town. But there was no look, no signal. She respected and trusted Hastings enough to be frank about how she felt, intuiting that he would not try to exploit it.

  Hastings was lonely too. Carol had dumped him almost a year ago. He had had a couple of dates since then but they never went anywhere. Carol had broken it off with him because she was not interested in becoming a second mother to Amy. This was not something that could be negotiated.

  Terry McGregor was a good mother. Hastings knew this because he had spent a couple of years seeing her with her own daughter. And even his daughter. But she was married. Life was a series of missed ships.

  Hastings said, “About Johnny.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever — did he ever take your picture?”

  Terry frowned at him, surprised. “No,” she said.

  “Did he ask?”

  “Yeah. Well, sort of. He asked once, sort of half-hearted. Okay. I told him it was Chet’s fortieth birthday party and he said I should give him pictures of myself. You know, in ‘sultry poses.’” She laughed at herself. A cute southern laugh. Which Hastings usually liked, but now it made him uncomfortable.

  Hastings said, “You mean nude poses?”

  It pulled her up. She gave him a look he’d never really seen from her before.

  Terry said, “Why do you want to know?” Not flirty, but maybe angry.

  “It�
�s not a personal question,” Hastings said.

  “Does it have to do with your investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right.” She seemed to relax, a little. “Yes, I think that’s what he meant. He wanted me to pose nude or partially nude.”

  “He said that?”

  “He didn’t say it, but he implied it. I know he’s done it to other women and he’s gotten them to sign…some sort of paper?”

  “A release from liability?”

  “Yes. That’s it. A release.”

  “You knew about that before you said no?”

  “Sort of. But that wasn’t why I said no.”

  “Why did you say no?”

  “Well…I guess it just wasn’t me. I mean, Chet may like that. But I’d feel like…well, I’d just feel so weird. Having photos like that in the house. What if Randi found them? And the internet. What if Chet posted them?”

  “I don’t think your husband would do that.”

  “No, of course he wouldn’t. But…what if he did accidentally? And everything is digital now. Johnny would have had them. And…”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you didn’t trust Johnny?”

  Terry seemed to think about it for a while. “No, I guess I didn’t.”

  “But you liked him.”

  “Yeah, I liked him.…What is this? Are you jealous or something?”

  It could have been very awkward, her question. But she was smiling at him.

  “Very,” Hastings said. “The man seemed to have a way with women.”

  “Well I’m not sure you know much about women.”

  “No, but I know something about people.”

  She made a face which said, how does that make any sense?

  “Okay, I suppose I am a little jealous.”

  “Of a gay man.”

  Hastings shrugged. It didn’t seem very sensible anymore.

  “Look,” Terry said. “Do you understand how little women get talked to? How little men say to us? I mean, they’ll talk to us, but they want something for it, you know? Chet and I have evenings where we barely say ten words to each other. And that’s not because we’re mad at each other or anything. We’re both just tired or we’ve had a long day or we’re tied up with kid things. Or he wants to talk about college football and I don’t. Or I want to talk about something that’s going on at Randi’s school and he could care less. It happens. It’s part of being married. It just…is. We go to this hair salon and here’s this good looking guy who talks to us and who listens to us and he tells us we’re beautiful and we’re needed. And he was funny and interesting. And vulnerable.”