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

by Steve Cavanagh

  “She’s great, Eddie. She passed that math test she was worried about. She’s made a new friend in chess club. A boy, but they’re just friends. For now. She’s happy, and she seems to like Kevin …”

  Kevin. Christine had gotten to know her boss very well. He’d helped her settle into Riverhead, introduced her to all the best people in town. He’d even done some handyman work on her apartment. I’d never met the guy, but I felt like doing some work on his face.

  “Good. I’m glad. She still reading?”

  “Every night. She’s even read a couple of those dime detective novels you keep giving her.”

  I nodded. That felt good. I bet Kevin read books on legal procedure and the history of air conditioning. Amy and I always had the same taste in books.

  I ate some food. Ignored the beer. I was buying time. Trying to work up the courage to talk about our relationship. We’d been apart for a long time. After a while, you stop talking about making things right – it’s just too painful. But things were about to change in my life. This was my chance to make things right. A job like this was all we’d ever wanted. Stability, safety, and I get to go home every night for dinner without wondering who is going to kick in the front door.

  I didn’t know how to say it. The food made me feel sick and I could feel the sweat breaking out on my forehead.

  “I got a job,” I said, blurting it out. “In Carp Law. Regular litigation, some criminal work. Nothing dangerous. Nothing controversial. Nine-to-five and well paid. I’m out, Christine. Solomon is the last big case. I want you and Amy to come home. We can get our old place back in Queens …”

  Her eyes began to water, and her lip trembled.

  “Or we could, you know, get a new place. A fresh start. I can support you and Amy now. You wouldn’t need to work. It could be like we always wanted. We could be a family again.”

  She wiped a tear from her cheek, threw her napkin at me.

  “I waited for you. Through all the shit you went through. The drinking. Rehab. I waited. And then all those cases, Eddie. You made a choice. Your work put us in the firing line. And now you’re done I’m supposed to come running?”

  “It’s not like that. People came to me. They needed help. I couldn’t turn them away. What kind of man would I be if I let all those people go to prison? I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen. It’s not a choice. There never was a choice. Not for me,” I said.

  “But I do have a choice. I didn’t want this … this life. I don’t want a husband who has to stay away from his family in case they get hurt. I tried, Eddie. I waited. I’m through waiting …”

  “You don’t have to wait. I told you, I got a job. It’s safe. Things can go back to the way they were.”

  “There’s no going back. I’ve thought about this. I wanted you to come up to the house and see Amy tonight, but I knew by this afternoon that I just had to tell you. I can’t keep this hidden anymore. So I decided I’d come meet you here because I didn’t want Amy to see this. I’m done, Eddie. I’m done waiting. Kevin and I have been seeing each other. He wants us to move in with him.”

  Right then, I wasn’t sitting at a booth with Christine. I wasn’t in the tea house. I wasn’t even in Chinatown. At that moment, I saw exactly what I’d feared, what I’d dreamt about for months. My body lay at the foot of the Empire State Building. Christine stood on the Observatory, eighty-six floors up. She took her wedding ring from her purse and tossed it over the barrier. I lay on the sidewalk, and I knew it was coming. Faster and faster. A band of gold tumbling toward me. As it got closer, I could see it. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. All I could do is bury my fingernails between the paving flags and hold on.

  And when it hit me in the chest, I woke up.

  That pain felt real now. A gaping, hollow pain that took my breath away. And I’d seen it coming. Which made it worse.

  “Don’t—”

  “Eddie, I’ve made up my mind. I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice had gone cold.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Things are going to change. I’m going to change. This new job …” But the words died in my throat. I’d already lost her. Something woke inside me. All that pain I’d fought down with the booze. It came roaring back to life. And it made me fight.

  “He doesn’t love you like I do,” I said.

  Christine counted out some bills, put them on the table and her hand lingered on top of them for a moment. She was hesitating, but not over the check. I didn’t dare say a word. I knew part of her still loved me. We’d shared too much. She blinked rapidly and shook her head. Christine got up, slid out of the booth and said, “Kevin loves me. I know that. He’ll take care of Amy. And me. Don’t call. Not for a while.”

  She made to leave, my hand snaked out. Fast. I took her wrist. She stopped. A dumb move. I let her go.

  I listened to her heels on the floor as she left. That sound, growing ever more faint as she walked away. I looked at the beer on the table in front of me. A Miller. Cold. Golden. Bubbles of condensation sliding down the bottle. I wanted it. And another ten afterwards and then vodka, whiskey, everything I needed to numb the pain. I took the bottle in my hand and as I raised it to my lips I glanced at the money Christine had left on the table.

  A gold ring sat on top of the stack of bills.

  I put the bottle back on the table. Rubbed at my temples. It felt like there was a freight train running through each vein.

  I got up, took the ring and put it in my pocket.

  My feet took me to my car. I didn’t look up the whole way to the parking lot. Not once. And when I got in and started the engine I had no memory of walking out of the restaurant. I felt sick. Like I’d swallowed a fully inflated balloon that I couldn’t bring back up.

  The drive to 46th Street seemed to have happened in a similar way. I turned into the street, without really knowing how I’d gotten there, or how long I’d been driving. I parked up outside my office and got out of the car. My keys rattled in my coat pocket as I walked toward the steps leading to my office. Head down. My breath falling in sheets of cold mist toward my feet.

  I didn’t see Detective Granger until he shoved me backward.

  I stumbled, but managed to stay on my feet. Car doors slammed. A lot of them. I looked around. Three meaty guys on my left. Two on my right. One of the guys on the right had a nightstick. Granger stepped backward, up the steps, keeping me in his sights. They’d been waiting for me. And despite only glancing at each of them, I made them as cops straight away, even before I’d seen the nightstick. The way they carried themselves. Their clothes. Levi’s and wranglers. Boots. Shirts tucked into their jeans and loose jackets to hide their shoulder holsters.

  I rolled my shoulders, shrugged off my heavy coat. It could’ve been the cold wind, or the fear flooding adrenaline through my system like a burst damn, but I started to tremble. I could feel my closed fist shaking.

  Glass exploded behind me. Shards hit my back and I knew one of the guys was taking that stick to my car.

  Granger’s voice sounded almost warm. He’d waited forty-eight hours for this and he couldn’t hide his satisfaction in his next three words.

  “Not the face,” he said.

  Son of a bitch.

  I didn’t wait for it. It was happening. I could’ve run, but I knew I wouldn’t have gotten far and they didn’t want to kill me. But they might have if I’d taken off. A shot in the back. A suspect that wouldn’t stop after they’d called out a warning.

  Happened all the time. Welcome to New York.

  The lead cop came from my right. Big guy. Short hair. Small, dark eyes. A thick mustache and no neck. Fists like a forty-dollar bag of quarters. He had three inches of height on me, and probably another four or five inches of reach. Easily the biggest of the bunch. A real hard ass.

  He drew back his right fist, elbow jutting out behind his shoulder like he was about to put that thick arm to work on a suspect. His eyes grew even smaller as his face contorted into a snar
l. Lips pulled back over clenched teeth. The others were standing back. Watching.

  I saw him bend his knees. This shot was headed for my solar plexus. A massive blow, taking me out of the game. The rest of them would dance on my ribcage, my knees, and then my ankles. A half-hour later they’d all be downing cold beers and laughing about it. Patting Granger on the back. Reliving the moment they taught me a lesson I’d never forget.

  Not tonight. No way.

  I stepped back just as the big puss threw his punch. He may have been a massive guy, but he was also slow. In truth, that didn’t matter. The muscle would do its job. You didn’t need a lot of speed when there was that much weight behind a punch.

  Lucky for me.

  I’d worked speed bags six days a week in Hell’s Kitchen for six years at the toughest Irish boxing gym in the neighborhood. Which pretty much meant it was the toughest boxing gym in New York.

  I threw out my right. Blindingly fast. A snap punch as I moved back, out of range. The big guy didn’t even see it. No hip movement, no weight behind it. I didn’t need it. I had time to pick my spot and that was enough. The huge fist was an easy target. I knew where it was headed, how hard and how fast. I’d kept my fist vertical. Like I was going in for a fist bump. But I wasn’t being friendly. My wrist was pointed down, slightly, so I had a straight line between my middle knuckle and elbow. A solid base of bone, perfectly angled to absorb the impact with zero damage.

  All the damage was going in the opposite direction. That same middle knuckle of mine crunched into his fifth metacarpal: the knuckle of his little finger. And that made a God-awful sound. It was like the big guy had tried to punch me and caught his little finger on the corner of a brick wall. Every one of those cops heard the sound of bones breaking, the ligaments tearing, and the fractures multiplying all the way down the big guy’s wrist. It sounded like a sledgehammer hitting a sack of peanuts.

  The big guy brought his broken hand up to his face, protecting it, recoiling as the shock hit his body. Then I hit his body.

  Stepping inside, I threw a left uppercut into his ribs as hard as I could. The punch hit deep and took him down into a ball on the sidewalk. I swung around, ready for the next guy.

  Too late. I heard the thunk of the stick on the side of my head before I felt it. The pavement came up fast and I put out my hands to break my fall. A gold band danced in front of my eyes. Christine’s ring had fallen out of my pocket. I heard the dull tinkle as it bounced along the pavement. I reached out, desperate to grab it. I was going to smack face down next to the ring. But I didn’t land on the sidewalk. It turned hazy, swirled before my eyes and disappeared.

  I was out cold before I hit the bricks.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The light shining in my eyes hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. May as well have been stabbed in the head with an ice pick. The light went out and my vision swam. My legs felt cold, wet. My shirt too. I was lying on a couch. A figure loomed above me. That torch light hit my eyes again, and I closed them. Fingers prized them open. The light shone in each eye and I swore.

  “You know, Eddie, I’m starting to think that a career in the law isn’t quite working out for you,” said Harry Ford.

  Harry cut the light, stepped away. I was on the couch in my office.

  “You’ve got a lump on the back of your head the size of an egg. I figure you’ve got at least one busted rib. Your pupils are reactive, and equal size. You haven’t vomited. No blood in your nose or ears. You’ll feel like you’ve been kicked in the head by a horse and you might have a mild concussion, but apart from that you’re in the same shit condition you were in yesterday.”

  Harry had started out as a medic in Vietnam, aged sixteen. The fake ID he’d used to enlist said he was twenty-one. He soon rose up through the ranks, and he’d finished a distinguished military career only to start on a more rewarding career in the law. He was the only judge I knew who could strip and reassemble an M16 with a bottle of whiskey in his gut.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?” said Harry, holding up three.

  “Three,” I said.

  “What day is it?”

  “Tuesday,” I said.

  “Who is the President of the United States?” asked Harry.

  “Some asshole,” I said.

  “Correct.”

  I tried to sit up. The room spun. I laid my head back down and decided sitting up could wait.

  “Where’d you find me?” I said.

  “Just outside. A big black Escalade cut me off as I turned in. Damn thing took off like a getaway car. I parked and found you. I was going to call 911 but I checked you out and you seemed okay. You remember talking to me on the street?”

  “No. What did I say?”

  “You asked me to find this.”

  Harry held a gold wedding ring in his hand.

  This time I managed to sit up. My side was killing me. Harry placed the ring on the table and fetched two coffee mugs. I saw a bottle of Scotch sitting on the table. Still in its brown paper sack.

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  “Don’t mention it. Christine called me. Told me what happened. You mind telling me how you ended up face down in the street. You get into a fight in a bar or something?” he said.

  “It’s complicated,” I said.

  “I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t. Seriously, though. What the hell happened?”

  “A bunch of cops jumped me. I pissed off a detective called Granger yesterday. He didn’t take too kindly to it. He must’ve had a tip-off from the city pound that I’d picked up my car, gone to my office with a gang of cops and waited for me.”

  “I don’t like what I’m hearing. You should talk to—”

  “Who? A cop? I’ll handle it,” I said.

  Harry broke the seal on the Scotch, poured each of us a drink. Every breath I took sent a flood of pain from my side into my already aching head. I took the large Scotch, put the mug back on the table empty. Harry filled me up. Another hit. He poured again.

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  I lay back and closed my eyes. Let my brain cool. I knew I was running at my limit. My marriage had finally collapsed, my body was a close second. If I didn’t get control of my head I was going to lose it. After a few minutes the pain in my skull eased. My side didn’t. I figured Granger freaked out when I took a nightstick to the head and went down. They wanted to hurt me. Not kill me. One good kick in the ribs and Granger would’ve called it off. I didn’t feel like it, but I knew I’d been lucky.

  There was a photo of Amy and Christine in my wallet. I wanted to take it out and stare at it. Then rip my office to pieces.

  Instead I drank more Scotch. I knew that I needed to start thinking about the case. I had to put Christine to the back of my mind. At least for now. Then, when I came up for air after the trial, it wouldn’t be so fresh – so raw. I needed time. She needed time. She’d thought for a long moment before she put that ring on the stack of bills in the restaurant. Maybe, just maybe I could talk her around. Maybe there was still a chance of getting her back. I had to believe it. I did believe it. But I would have to wait until after the case was over. The case. Taking my time, I raised my head and opened my eyes.

  “You shouldn’t be here. The DA would have a fit if she knew where you were.”

  “Miriam Sullivan knows I’m here. I called her before I came over. We’re not going to discuss the case and as you haven’t officially appeared before the court yet, there’s not an official problem. She’s been through a divorce. She understands. Miriam is alright. And she won’t let Art Pryor make a meal out of this either. But look, don’t worry about that. You want to talk about Christine?” said Harry.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  After a time I said, “Miriam parachuted Art Pryor in for this?”

  “She did. You ever met him?”

  “No. I only know his reputation.”

  With district attorneys’ offices crammed to the ceiling with casework, taking your to
p assistant district attorneys off their regular caseload and handing them a massive, complex case occasionally had catastrophic results. They couldn’t handle their own files and devote the necessary time to the big case. So either the office hired more staff, or they struggled on and reconciled themselves to the fact that a lot of strong prosecutions might be lost because they didn’t have the proper attention. And then, when an ADA pulled off a miracle and won a huge case – in a few years that same ADA would decide to run for office and take the DA’s job.

  The only safe bet was to bring in a lone ranger. Art Pryor was one of the best. He had a license to practice law in around twenty states. He only did murder trials. And he always prosecuted. And he always won. For the right price – Art came to town. A DA could leave all their other prosecutors to get on with the regular job – one or two would assist Art, then Art would get a conviction, put on his hat and leave town for the next big case without upsetting anyone’s apple cart. He was good, too. Art practiced shotgun prosecution.

  Most prosecutors in a murder case clog up the witness stand with every cop, profiler, forensic analyst and expert they can possibly think of. If a cop stopped his car at the murder scene to deliver donuts to his pals who hadn’t had a break in four hours, you can bet your bottom dollar the DA would call him as a witness.

  Art Pryor was the opposite. He ran a murder trial in Tennessee around ten years ago. The trial had been scheduled to last for six weeks. Art brought home a guilty verdict in four days. He only called essential witnesses, and never kept them waiting on the stand for too long. Many lawyers believed it to be a risky practice, and yet it always paid off for Pryor.

  First time I heard about that case, it came from a young prosecutor who said he wanted to try and ape Pryor’s style. He called him a revolutionary. I couldn’t help but disabuse the guy of his lofty notions. See, Pryor got paid a set fee. Didn’t matter if the trial lasted six months or six hours. Pryor’s fee was the same. Why do six months’ work when you get paid the same for winning in half the time.