A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (7 page)

"I can't think about that."

"You'd better. If he's really after the girl, you better look in the mirror damn hard and ask yourself how he got off that time and how it's not going to happen again. He strolled right out of the courtroom and now he's back in her life like nothing ever happened."

"I was there, Jim," I said. "You don't have to remind me."

"So show some fucking remorse, then."

My jaw worked as I tried to keep my temper. "Don't tell me what I did or didn't feel. I wanted Wheeler as badly as you did. I wasn't exactly handing out cigars when he got off Scott free. You're not the only one who was invested in it."

"But you were the only one in charge of the case,
Marty
," he said, stopping and jabbing a finger in my chest. "The rest of us got to stand by and watch it go down the tubes. A good woman died, a girl got orphaned, and we got to watch Wheeler walk out with a smile on his face because you screwed up."

My temper flared and I resisted the urge to take a swing. In the time it took to walk a few city blocks, Kransky had managed to peel back the layers, exposing all of the anger and disgust and self-recrimination I'd buried over the last twelve years. It didn't matter that his accusations were blown out of proportion. I hadn't been working solo on the case, for Christ's sake; there was plenty of lapsed responsibility to go around, from the beat cops to the prosecutor. But blame and guilt don't get used up by sharing; we all have an inexhaustible supply in our emotional wells. The sense of unfairness and rage I'd felt the day of the trial boiled right back up from the depths where I'd buried it, almost scaring me with how close to the surface, how raw and immediate, it was. I pointed a finger at him.

"First, you can go to hell. I did everything I could to put Wheeler away and, yeah, it didn't happen. Sometimes that's the way it goes. It sucks and I hate it but you move on if you don't want to end up going crazy. Second, who the hell are you to lay the blame on me? You were there every step of the way, pal, and while I might've been the one in charge of the case, it was the prosecution that dropped the ball and you know it. Last, what's past is past. Amanda Lane came to me for help
today
. You can stay stuck in the nineties if you want to, but whatever happened then is going to have to stay there, because she needs my help now."

I turned and walked away, cursing. I'd have to go to Dods now, something I didn't want to do. He was in charge of Homicide and had a thousand things to take care of every day, none of them named Amanda Lane. He didn't need to be running searches and sifting through MPDC records for me or baby sitting someone who might or might not become a victim of a lunatic who might or might not be stalking her.

"Singer," Kransky shouted. I kept walking.

"Marty, goddamnit," he called, and I heard quick footsteps behind me. I turned to face him. He had a hand outstretched, as though to grab my arm and stop me, or offer it in help. I looked at him, not saying anything. He scowled, looked down the street, then put his hands back in his pockets as the wind whipped the coattails on his blazer. We stood that way for a half minute.

"Look," he said. "I'm mad as hell. Still. You'd think after twelve years it'd be gone and forgotten, but it's not. Wheeler's always been at the top of my list. We didn't nail him when we had the chance and it kills me. I blame you, I blame the system, I blame myself. I guess it's a lot easier to unload on you than it is to face the fact that we all screwed up."

I took a breath and willed my muscles to relax. "Amanda needs our help now, Jim."

He scowled some more, then nodded. He was a dedicated, hard-headed, angry cop and this was the closest thing to an apology I was going to get from him. I was still seething myself, but at least I could understand his anger. It was the same as mine, a fury that should've been directed at Michael Wheeler. But since Wheeler wasn't around, I'd been a good substitute.

I said, "Truce?"

He nodded. "Truce."

"Then let's get a beer. I'm freezing my ass off."

. . .

We pulled into the first place we could find, some Pan-Asian restaurant that played bad Japanese samurai movies on the walls and served drinks with names like Bloody Mao and For Goodness Sake. We took a booth by a window and ordered beers. The Shogun-styled dining room smelled of charred vegetables, soy sauce, fried food, all of which made my gorge rise. I clamped down on the feeling and concentrated on the task ahead.

Kransky took a pull from his beer, then set it down carefully on a red paper napkin. "First steps?"

I turned my pint glass in small circles. "Find him. Make him stop. Maybe even build a case that sticks this time. It won't be murder one, but maybe something we can slap him with."

"Harassment, stalking, intent to injure?"

"Something like that," I said.

"Weak."

I shrugged, admitting it. "It's not much, but whatever jail time we can squeeze him into would make me disproportionately happy."

"How about shot while resisting arrest?"

"One can only hope. But that's going to have be your call, if the time comes."

"You carrying?'

"Naturally."

"Registered?"

"Of course."

Kransky went silent for a moment, tracing the grain on the wood table. "You got a drop?"

I stopped spinning my glass. "Let's not go there."

Kransky shrugged. "So what happens when you find him?"

"I don't know," I said. "I know what we both
want
to do, but I'm not ready to serve twenty to life for a minute's satisfaction. That'd be too much irony for me. He doesn't serve a day in jail and I die in prison? No, I have to know where he is, what his situation is first. Then we can talk about how to move on it."

"How's that going to happen?"

"You. I don't have access now. To anything. If I dig something up, I can't chase it down, can't follow it until I get something out of it."

"You want me to dig up anyone from that posse he always had around him?"

"Who?" I asked. "Lawrence Ferrin? Delaney?"

He nodded. "Those assholes always stuck together. Ferrin especially, thinking he was the cat's ass because his old man would get him out of a bind if he needed it."

I shrugged. "If you don't turn something up on Wheeler, sure. It would tickle me to no end to find out that we could nail Ferrin or Delaney on something related to Wheeler. ‘Til then, though, make Wheeler number one."

We were quiet for a minute. My beer sat, untouched. Kransky took another sip of his, staring outside. All around us, the place clattered and banged with the delivery of sushi boards and rice dishes.

"You know," he said slowly, "After the trial, I made it a hobby to keep track of him."

I didn't say anything.

"I was ready to bust him on anything. Littering, jaywalking, whatever it took to reel him in. I was…a little out of my head. I wanted to make his life hell. If I'd found him, I was ready to plant something on him. Drugs, a gun, anything to put him away. I've never done that in my life."

"And?"

"A month or two after the trial, he was gone. I checked his plates, ran his record, but he just floated away."

"When's the last time you checked?"

"Years," he admitted.

"So, nothing recent? Autotrack? LexisNexis?"

He shook his head. "Nothing in the modern age."

"So, it's been a while, but Wheeler didn't just cease to exist. Maybe something's been digitized since the last time you checked. Run the records again. If you dig something up, I can chase down the leads. And keep Amanda safe."

"I can do that. What are you going to do while I look around?"

"Something I don't want to do," I said with a sour look.

His eyebrows shot upward. "Atwater?"

"She might know something. Hell, maybe they've stayed in touch this whole time. Crooks have been known to fall in love with their defense attorneys for getting them off. Maybe all I have to do is peek in her bedroom window."

He watched the kooky samurai movie for a second. I could sense a wave of discomfort coming from him. "I heard about the…"

I gave him a second, then said, "Cancer, Jim. You can say it."

He nodded, discomfort on his face. "You up for this?"

I took a sip of beer, put my glass down. "I'd better be. She doesn't have anybody else. She's not long out of college, probably doesn't have two nickels to rub together. Who am I to turn her down?"

"What if you can't take care of it?"

I said nothing, though a muscle in my cheek ticced involuntarily. I watched his face as he figured it out.

"That's why you came to me," he said. "You were afraid if you didn't make it…"

"She needs somebody on her side, Jim. As long as I'm it, I'll do what I can. But if I'm out of the picture, I know there's only one other person who cares enough to take over. You and I don't have to hold hands over this, but it would be good to know you'll be there if she needs you. Like I said, we both owe it to her. You in?"

"I'm in," he said. "I always have been."

iii.

The old man coughed into his fist. His nurse, out of earshot but watching him closely, moved forward. The old man waved him away and spoke into the phone.

"You can't find him?"

"He's in DC, that's all we know," the voice on the other end said. "Used a credit card in Logan Circle. We squeezed the number out of the shitbird that gave it to him."

"Dead end?"

"Single use, then he ditched the card."

"Keep on it. Did you find the girl?"

"She's a professor or something at GW. There's something, though. She made a trip to Arlington."

"And?"

The man paused. "I saw her talking with Marty Singer."

The old man closed his eyes out of disgust instead of pain. "She met with Marty fucking Singer?"

The man said nothing.

"Goddamnit," the old man said, then suddenly his face clenched and rippled in pain. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep from yelling. Without opening them, he put a hand up to stop the nurse he knew had taken a step towards him again. "Put Jackson on Singer and tell him to report back to me. You keep following the girl. Try not to bump into each other if they meet again."

"What should I do if I see our target around the girl?"

"Christ, don't do anything," the old man said. "Just call me. We screwed this up twelve years ago. We can't afford to do it again."

He hung up the phone and stared at nothing for a moment, thinking. Another sharp pain brought him back to reality and, wearily, he nodded for the nurse to approach.

Breakfast is the only meal I know how to cook, but I'm pretty good at it. Well, I'm enthusiastic. I throw a lot of stuff in a pan and let it go to work. This morning's version was a diner-style extravaganza of four eggs, two pieces of toast, and a quarter pound of bacon. I hadn't exactly jumped out of bed that morning and was hoping that a thousand calorie pick-me-up would do the trick.

I frowned, though, the second the bacon hit the pan. The smell of pork fat sizzling away should've made my mouth water. Instead, my stomach clenched like I was expecting to take a punch. The feeling was so strong that I took a step back from the stove and glared at the pan like it was poisonous.

"Jesus, what's wrong with you?" I said out loud. Pierre meowed from the corner, wondering the same thing. I took a deep breath and shrugged it off, forcing my mind back to the previous day's conversation with Kransky. And then I made myself think about yet another distasteful task I'd have to do today if I truly wanted to start off on the right foot.

It worked. I stirred the contents of the pan mechanically and was staring off into space when I realized that the smoke I was seeing was coming from the eggs I was supposed to be cooking. I snapped the heat off, forked them onto a plate with the other gourmet items, then sat down to polish it all off.

I'd taken three bites when the bottom of my stomach tried to introduce itself to the back of my tongue. I jack-knifed to my feet, slamming the chair against the wall, and lurched to the sink where I spat out the mouthful with a barking cough. There was a terrible pause and then I vomited down the drain. I fumbled for the cold water tap, opening it up full blast. Long minutes passed as I stood there, dribbling and coughing into the swirling water. Tears formed around my eyes from the pressure of vomiting and I felt light-headed. I splashed my face a dozen times. When the spasms finally stopped, I risked a sip of water.

I leaned against the counter for a long, long time, then turned the water off and stood up. I avoided looking at the plate like it was a corpse at a crime scene. The smell of bacon fat hung in the air and I had to breathe through my shirt to keep my stomach under control. Despite the cold, I opened the windows and left them that way. I warmed a cup of cold coffee--for holding onto, not drinking--and retreated to my office, feeling frail, brittle, and old. If I didn't have breakfast, at least I had work.

. . .

Julie Atwater had been Michael Wheeler's defense attorney. She'd been a surprise choice at the time because Wheeler's case was such a sensational one--murderous cop, unrequited love, and so forth--and she'd tried few cases before his. She'd been a prosecutor for several years before the switch to defense attorney, so she wasn't entirely without experience, but eyebrows had been raised at the time. Only to be raised again ever higher when the verdict rolled in.

I was hoping that as Wheeler's lawyer she would know what he'd done and where he'd gone after the trial. The news would be twelve years old, but it would be more information than I had now. Or, maybe I'd get lucky and find out they'd been pen-pals this whole time and she could hand over his address without breaking a sweat.