Thirteen_The serial killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury

by Steve Cavanagh

  Quickly, Kane stripped off his clothes, folded them neatly, and placed them in the living room. He took a towel from the bathroom, soaked it under the hot faucet in the sink, then wrung it out. He did the same with a facecloth.

  He rolled up the wet bath towel until it was a tight roll about three inches thick. He draped the facecloth over the right side of his face, but made sure it covered his nose. The rolled-up towel was long enough for Kane to tie around his head.

  Kane stood in the bathroom and took hold of the door handle with his right hand and drew the door toward his face until the edge of the door touched the bridge of his nose. The facecloth would absorb the impact from the sharp edge of the door, so it wouldn’t break his skin. Kane angled his head slightly to the left, and placed his left hand on the left side of his face. He felt his neck muscles engage, pushing against his left hand, while pushing back against his own neck. It meant his head wouldn’t snap to the left with the impact.

  Kane counted to three, swung the door away from him, then reversed it, and slammed the edge of the door into the bridge of his nose. His head held firm. His nose didn’t. He could tell by the crunch of bone. The sound was all he had to go by, because he hadn’t felt a thing.

  The towel around his head prevented the door from hitting his head, and giving him an orbital fracture. An injury like that would lead to a bleed in the eye which would need surgery to repair.

  Kane took the towel off his head, lifted the facecloth clear and threw them both in the bathtub on top of the man’s legs. He looked in the mirror. Looked at the man’s nose.

  Not quite.

  Gripping both sides of his nose, Kane twisted to the left. He heard the crepitus; the sound that bone makes when it’s shattered. It sounded like breakfast cereal, wrapped tightly in a napkin and squeezed. He looked in the mirror again.

  Pretty good. The swelling would help too. He could cover up the bruising that would inevitably appear around his nose and eyes with make-up.

  He then put on a chemical retardant suit which he’d packed in the gym bag with other items. He stripped the man naked in the bathtub. A puff of white powder escaped into the air as Kane popped the lid on the bucket of lye; the concentrated, powder form. The hot water faucet in the bath was running fast and the water soon reached an unbearable temperature. The man’s skin was turning red from the heat. Wisps of blood floated and danced like red smoke in the hot water. Kane measured out three scoops of lye and tossed them in.

  When the tub was three-quarters full, he turned off the water. From his bag, he produced a large rubber sheet, unfolded it and draped it over the tub. Tearing open a roll of duct tape, he proceeded to seal the rubber sheet to the tub with long lengths of tape.

  Kane knew all kinds of ways to get rid of a body without leaving any trace of himself behind. And this method of disposal he found to be particularly effective. The process was based on alkaline hydrolysis. Bio-cremation broke down skin, muscle, tissue, and even teeth on a cellular level. The lye powder, mixed in the right quantities with water, dissolved a human being in under sixteen hours. Then Kane would have a bath of green and brown liquid, which he would get rid of by draining the bathtub.

  The teeth and bones left behind would appear bleached, brittle and could easily be pounded into dust with the heel of a shoe. Kane knew the perfect place to get rid of the bone dust was in a large box of soap powder. Easy to mix up the bone and soap and no one would ever think to look there.

  Only thing left in the tub that would need further work would be the bullet, and Kane could toss that in the river.

  Nice and clean, just the way he liked it.

  Satisfied with his work so far, Kane nodded to himself, and went out into the short hallway of the apartment. A small table sat beside the closed front door. A stack of opened mail lay on the table. At the top of the pile, its red band proud and loud against the white paper, was the envelope Kane had photographed weeks ago. The summons for jury duty.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On Center Street, parked right outside the courthouse, I saw a black limo with the driver standing on the sidewalk, holding open the rear door. Rudy Carp had asked me to lunch. I was hungry.

  The limo driver had parked within ten feet of a hot dog stand that boasted a big picture of my face on an ad board taped on the lower panel of the cart. Like I needed the cosmos to remind me of the difference between me and Rudy. Soon as we got into the limo, Rudy took a call on his cell. The driver took us to a restaurant on Park Avenue South. I couldn’t even pronounce the name of it. It looked French. Rudy disconnected his call soon as he left the car and said, “I love this place. Best ramp soup in the city.”

  I didn’t even know what a ramp was. I was pretty sure it wasn’t an animal, but I played along and followed Rudy inside.

  The waiter made a fuss of his guest, and gave us a table in the back away from the busy lunch service. Rudy sat opposite me. It was a napkin and tablecloth joint, with somebody playing a piano, softly, in the background.

  “I like the lighting in here. It’s … atmospheric,” said Rudy.

  The lighting was so atmospheric I had to use the glare from my cell phone screen just to read the menu. It was in French. I decided to order whatever Rudy was having and be done with it. The place made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like ordering from a menu that refused to display prices beside the food. Not my kind of place. The waiter took our order, poured two glasses of water and left.

  “So let’s get down to it, Eddie. I like you. I’ve had my eye on you for a while. You’ve had a couple of great cases in the past few years. The David Child affair?”

  I nodded. I didn’t like talking about my old cases. I liked to keep it between me and the client.

  “And you’ve had some success in lawsuits against the NYPD. We’ve done our homework. You’re the real deal.”

  The way he said homework made me think he probably knew I had a reputation before I took the bar exam. All that existed about my former life as a con artist was rumor. Nobody could prove a damn thing, and I liked it that way.

  “I take it you know what case I’m currently working on,” said Rudy.

  I did. It would be hard to ignore it. I’d seen his face on the news every week for almost a year. ‘You’re representing Robert Solomon, the movie star. Trial starts next week, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Trial starts in three days. It’s jury selection tomorrow. We’d like you on the team. You can handle a few witnesses with some prep time. I think your style would be highly effective. That’s why I’m here. You get second chair, do a couple of weeks’ work, and for that you get more free advertising than you could possibly imagine and we could offer you a two-hundred-thousand-dollar flat fee.”

  Rudy smiled at me with his perfect, bleached-white teeth. He looked like a candy-store owner offering a street kid all the free chocolate he could eat. It was a benevolent look. The longer I stayed quiet, the harder it became for Rudy to hold that smile.

  “When you say we, who exactly are you talking about? I thought you ran your own ship at Carp Law.”

  He nodded, said, “I do, but when it comes to Hollywood stars on trial for murder, there’s always another player. The studio is my client. They asked me to represent Bobby and they’re footing the bill. What do you say, kid? You want to be a famous lawyer?”

  “I like to keep a low profile,” I said.

  His face dropped.

  “Come on, it’s the murder trial of the century. What do you say?” said Rudy.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  Rudy hadn’t expected this. Leaning back in his chair, he folded his arms and said, “Eddie, every lawyer in this town would kill for a spot at the defense table in this case. You know that. Is it the money? What’s the problem?”

  The waiter arrived with bowls of soup that Rudy waved away. He pulled his chair close to the table, and came forward, leaning on his elbows as he waited for my answer.

  “I don’t mean to be an asshole, Rudy. You’
re right. Most lawyers would kill to get that chair, but I’m not like most lawyers. From what I’ve read in the papers, and from what I’ve seen on TV, I think Robert Solomon murdered those people. And I’m not gonna help a murderer walk, no matter how famous he is, or how much money he’s got. Sorry, my answer’s no.”

  Rudy still wore that five-thousand-dollar smile but he was looking at me sideways, and nodding slightly.

  “I get it, Eddie,” said Rudy. “Why don’t we call it an even quarter million?”

  “It’s not about the money. I don’t roll for the guilty. I’ve been down that road a long time ago. It costs a lot more than money can buy,” I said.

  A realization spread over Rudy’s face, and he put the smile away for a while. “Oh, well, in that case we don’t have a problem. See, Bobby Solomon is innocent. The NYPD framed him for the murders,” said Rudy.

  “Really? Can you prove that?” I said.

  Rudy paused, “No,’ he said, ‘But I think you can.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kane stared at the full-length bedroom mirror in front of him. Tucked around the edges of the mirror, between the glass and the frame, were dozens of photographs of the man who was now slowly dissolving in his own bathtub. Kane had brought the photos with him. He needed a little more time to study his mark. One photograph, the only one Kane had managed to take of the man in a seated position, was drawing his attention more than the others. In the photo, the man was seated on a bench in Central Park, flicking crumbs to the birds. His legs were crossed in front of him.

  The armchair that Kane had brought in from the living room was around five inches lower than the park bench in the photo, and Kane was struggling to get the angle of his legs just right. He never crossed his legs. It had never felt comfortable, or natural, but Kane was a perfectionist when it came to becoming someone else. It was vital to success.

  Mimicry was a gift he’d discovered in school. During recess, Kane would impersonate the teachers for the rest of the class, and his fellow students would roll around on the floor, laughing. Kane never laughed, but he enjoyed the attention. He liked the sound of his classmate’s laughter, but couldn’t understand why they laughed, nor the relationship between their laughter and his impersonation. Still, he did it every now and again. It helped him fit in. He’d moved around a lot as a kid: a new school, in a new town, almost every year. Inevitably, his mother would lose her job, through sickness or booze. Then the posters would go up around their neighborhood: pictures of family pets that had gone missing.

  That was usually when it was time to move on.

  Kane had developed the ability to get to know people quickly. He was good at making new friends and it wasn’t like he’d had a lack of practice. The impressions broke the ice. The girls in his class would stop giving him strange looks for a few days, and the boys would include him in conversations about baseball. Soon Kane was impersonating celebrities as well as members of the faculty.

  He sat up straight and tried again to flick one leg over the other so that it mirrored the photograph. Right calf over the left knee, right foot extended. His right leg slipped off his knee, and he cursed himself. Kane took a moment and repeated the pangram he’d recorded the man uttering just before he’d put a bullet in his head. He recited the words, whispering them softly, then gradually letting the volume rise. Kane replayed the recording, over and over again. Eyes closed, he listened intently. The voice on the recorder could’ve been better. He could still detect the fear in that voice. Tremors from the back of the man’s throat sent ripples over some of the words. Kane tried to isolate them, and repeated them confidently, testing out how they would sound without the fear. The voice on the recorder was fairly deep. He dropped an octave, drank some milk mixed with full fat cream just to clog up his vocal cords. It worked. After some practice, and being able to hear that tone in his own head – Kane felt confident that he could repeat it, or at least get extremely close to it even without the dairy swelling his throat.

  After another fifteen minutes the sounds on the recorder, and Kane’s speech, were identical. This time, when he swept his leg up over his other knee it stayed there.

  Satisfied, he got up, went to the kitchen and returned to the fridge. When he’d poured the milk he’d seen some ingredients in the refrigerator that took his fancy. Bacon, eggs, some cheese in an aerosol can, a pack of butter, some mushy-looking tomatoes and a lemon. He decided that bacon and eggs, maybe with some fried bread, would help his calorie intake. Kane needed a few more pounds to match his victim’s weight. All things considered, he could probably get away with weighing less, and he could pad his stomach, but Kane approached these things methodically. If he could get a pound closer to his target tonight by eating a huge, fatty meal, then that was what he would do.

  He found a frying pan under the sink and prepared a meal. He read some of the American Angler fishing magazines that lay on the kitchen table while he ate. Satisfied, Kane pushed the plate away. Depending on how things went that evening, he knew he might not get another chance to eat until after midnight.

  Tonight, he thought, could be very busy indeed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I thought the ramp soup was worth waiting for. It tasted of spring onions, garlic and olive oil. Not bad. Not bad at all. The conversation had stopped as soon as Rudy allowed the waiter to bring over the soup. We ate in silence. After I made sure he’d finished, I put down my spoon, wiped my lips with a napkin and gave Rudy my full attention.

  “I think you’re tempted by this case. Maybe you want a few more details before you make up your mind. Am I right?” said Rudy.

  “Right.”

  “Wrong,” said Rudy. “This is the hottest case to ever hit the East Coast. In a couple of days I have to deliver my opening speech to a jury. I’ve been on this thing from the beginning and I’ve gone to great lengths to keep the defense a secret. The element of surprise is crucial in trial. You know that. At the moment, you’re not an attorney of record. Anything I say to you right now has no attorney-client protection.”

  “What if I sign a confidentiality agreement?” I said.

  “Not worth the paper it’s printed on,” said Rudy. “I could wallpaper my house in confidentiality agreements and you know how many have held up? Probably not enough to wipe my ass with. That’s Hollywood.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me any more about the case?” I said.

  “I can’t. All I can tell you is this. I believe the kid is innocent,” said Rudy. Sincerity can be faked. Rudy’s client was a gifted young actor. He knew how to play for the camera. But Rudy, for all of his bravado, and highly persuasive courtroom skills, couldn’t hide the truth from me. I’d only been in his company for a half-hour, maybe more. But that statement felt natural, it felt like he meant it. There were no physical or verbal tics, conscious or unconscious, as he spoke. It was clean. The words flowed. If I had to bet on it, I’d have said Rudy was telling the truth – he believed Robert Solomon was innocent.

  But that wasn’t good enough. Not for me. What if Rudy had been suckered-in by a manipulative client? An actor.

  “Look, I really appreciate the offer, but I’m going to have to—”

  “Wait,” said Rudy, cutting me off. “Don’t say no just yet. Take some time. Sleep on it and let me know in the morning. You might change your mind.”

  Rudy paid the check, included a celebrity-worthy tip and we left the dark restaurant for the street. The limo driver got out of the front cab and opened the rear door.

  “Can I drop you somewhere?” said Rudy.

  “My car’s parked on Baxter, behind the court,” I said.

  “No problem. Mind if we swing by 42nd on the way? Something I’d like to show you,” he said.

  “Fine by me,” I said.

  Rudy stared out the window, his elbow on an armrest and his fingers delicately stroking his lips. I thought about everything I’d heard. Didn’t take me long to figure out why Rudy really wanted me on the case. I couldn�
��t be sure, but I had a question that would clear it up once and for all.

  “I know you can’t give me details, but answer me one thing. I take it that an important piece of evidence, tending to show that Robert Solomon was set up by law enforcement, didn’t magically appear in the last two weeks?”

  For a second, Rudy said nothing. Then he smiled. He knew what I was thinking.

  “You’re right. There’s no new evidence. Nothing new in the last three months. So I guess you’ve got it all figured out. Don’t take it personally.”

  If I got hired to go after the NYPD, then I would be the only lawyer on the defense team handling the police witnesses. I would be the one throwing the shit at the cops. If it worked – great. If it wasn’t going down well with the jury – I would be fired. Rudy would get time to explain to the jury that I just got hired a week ago – and that any accusations I made against the cops did not come from the client. I’d gone rogue. Gone way off script. In those circumstances, Rudy could keep on good terms with the jury no matter what happened. I was an expendable member of the team – either a hero or a patsy.

  Smart. Very smart.

  I glanced up and saw Rudy pointing out the side window of the limo. I leaned forward and followed his line of vision until I saw a billboard for a new movie called The Vortex. Billboards on 42nd street weren’t cheap. The movie didn’t look cheap either. It was an expensive-looking sci-fi piece. The credits below the poster revealed the movie starred Robert Solomon and Ariella Bloom. I’d heard about the movie. Everyone in the country who’d switched on a TV in the past year knew about it too. It was a three-hundred-million-dollar gamble – starring Robert Solomon and his wife, Ariella Bloom. The arrest of a fairly nascent Hollywood bad boy for murder guaranteed mass, frenzied press coverage. In this case there were two murder victims: Bobby’s chief of security – Carl Tozer, and Bobby’s wife – Ariella Bloom. At the time of the murders, Bobby and Ariella had been married for two months. They’d just shot the first season of their reality show. Most pundits were claiming this trial would be bigger than OJ and Michael Jackson combined.