Indefensible (19 page)

“How's your friend Lloyd?” I ask.

“Having a hard time this week. But he always snaps out of it.”

“What is it with him?”

“Off the record?”

“Of course.”

“OCD, certainly, but I don't have the whole picture yet. There's more. He's a good man.”

I nod. I'm looking at my old photo of Flora with Toby. I like catching her between clients, because for just a few minutes, I can hear that old Flora, the one in the photo from before Toby's death.

“Lizzy likes your new friend,” she says.

“Tina? She just works for me.”

“That's not Lizzy's impression. But I have to go, my patient is waiting.”

“Does it ever get to you, Flo?”

“What, Nickie?”

“Listening to people's misery all day.”

“Come have dinner with us tonight. Can you?”

“That sounds nice.”

“Bring Tina if you like. Bye, dear.”

I feel better for the two seconds it takes me to remember that by dinnertime, flaky Flora will be back on the scene.

It took a few years after Toby's death before Flora and I learned who we should be to each other. But now we share one daughter
and one horrible secret, so relegating each other to the painful past is out of the question. At first we were wary and hostile, but Flora increasingly buried her deadly shards of memory beneath pillowy layers of intellectual laxity. She has become a believer in all things pseudo-spiritual and—in my thinking—kooky. I actually worried for a while about her taking Lizzy and disappearing into the lavender reality of some cult. My emotional response to Flora, as she made this sad transformation from a sharp and capable woman into a vulnerable searcher, was to feel protective of her. I guess she noticed the sputtering decline of my fury (at least the part of it directed toward her), because to my surprise, she responded with trust and affection.

After my conversation with Flora, I walk down to the library to look for Kenny. He isn't there. I go back toward my office, but then I veer into Tina's doorway, intending to ask about Tamika Curtis. The legal pad has been pushed aside, and I pick it up. “Are you done here?”

“I wrote down everything I can remember,” she says. “I, um, read it over, and now it sounds, um, flirtatious. But he's a joker. You know?”

“Tina?”

“Yes.”

“Let's have lunch,” I say, trying so hard to make it businesslike that my voice sounds to me like a rusted gate.

She nods. “Okay.”

•  •  •

Tina and I go to the Rain Tree. So far today, my new steady hand on the helm has accomplished nothing. I haven't reached Chip, Scud has disappeared, Upton is incommunicado, there are no results from the blood in Scud's car, I'm dodging TMU and Hollis Phippin because there's nothing to tell them, Kenny seems not to have bothered coming to work and hasn't called in sick, and the Tamika Curtis jury, Tina finally told me, is probably hung.

We sit by the window, looking out through the rain toward the
dam. The river is nearing flood stage, and it surges over the lip of the dam in a foamy brown cascade. Two city police cars are parked at the picnic area on the far side. My cell rings.

“Sorry,” I say to Tina, “I've got to . . .” I answer.

“Are you sitting down?” Dorsey says. Then he waits, like I'm really supposed to answer.

“Yes, Dorsey, I'm sitting down.”

“Good. Because we've got results from the blood in Scud Illman's car. You ready?”

“Yes, Dorsey, I'm ready.”

“Well, I should tell you. They kept going back to the car for more samples. Kept looking for something else. Okay? A different result. Okay? But it's all the same. Same, same, same. And it's not Zander Phippin, and it's not Cassandra Randall, and it's not even Seth Coen.”

“Tell me.”

“You know of a guy named Odocoileus?”

“Odocoileus?”

“Yeah, Odocoileus virginianus?”

“What the—”

“Ha! Got you. White-tailed deer. Scientific name,
Odocoileus virginianus.
Those assholes weren't burying Zander Phippin, they were poaching deer. It's all deer blood.”

I stare out at the river. Why didn't Scud just say so? Who wouldn't take the rap on a misdemeanor hunting violation to clear himself of suspicion in a capital murder? As I form the question in my mind, I already know the answer. It fits together perfectly. Scud and Seth are both convicted felons. Scud is a two-time loser. Deer poaching may be a state misdemeanor, but being a felon in possession of a firearm is itself a felony, which, under the state's three-strikes law, would land Scud in the slammer for somewhere between twenty-five years and life.

“You okay, Nick?” Tina asks.

We're five months into an investigation of the murder of two federal witnesses, and our whole case has just crumbled, leaving us
without a single lead. Except we do have a lead: We have Scud, who genuinely seems to know something that he wants to tell us.

“Find Scud,” I say to Dorsey. “Find Scud and find Chip. We'll immunize Scud on the felon-in-possession violation. He knows something, Dorsey. I'm sure of it. He'll talk. He's aching to talk. Forget about the threats to me. Scud is our new best friend. Go get him.”

I end the call and try Chip again. No answer. I try Upton. No answer.

“What is it?” Tina says.

I forgot about her. She's there across the table, and as luck would have it, she's about the only person in the world I can explain all of this to. So I do. And she listens. I get into details I don't intend to, like my feelings about Zander—how he was just a terrified kid; how I've strangely superimposed on him the grown-up persona of my departed son, Toby. I tell Tina about the chemistry with Cassandra, and Lizzy's feelings for Cassandra, and how much I'd love for Lizzy to have a stable mother figure (“Let's say role model,” I correct myself, embarrassed). I confess to Tina about having gotten too close to the case and maybe not exercising the best judgment. We sit talking for over an hour, until the lunch crowd disappears and we have the place to ourselves. I finish the tale with the part about Scud calling me and begging for help. “I asked who he worked for,” I tell Tina, “and all he'd say was ‘mercy.' ”

“You sure it was ‘mercy'?”

“I think so, why?”

“Maybe he said Percy. Percy Mashburn. He seems to be the new meth king. He's who Tamika Curtis was working for.”

“You think Mashburn could be running Scud?”

“Might bear looking into.”

“Maybe so.” I look out at the river. Things have gotten too complicated. I'm having trouble keeping it all clear in my head.

“That's a lot on your plate,” Tina says, reaching across the table to pat my hand, and I wonder if she might rest her hand on top of mine, and I wonder if I might turn my hand over and take hold of
hers. But we don't, and then the moment is lost, and I am tingly with the almost-ness of it. It's better this way, though. We're colleagues at lunch: supervisor and subordinate. I should ask her to dinner. Dinner is outside of work. Lunch isn't.

We order more clams. My fingers get pruny from all the peeling and dunking, and I worry that she might see the wrinkles and mistake it for age. I've got twelve years on her.

“I've always liked this place,” she says.

I could invite her to Flora's with me tonight. It's probably odd, taking someone to dinner at the ex's for a first date, but they've already met, and Tina wouldn't mind. She likes Lizzy. She liked Flora. She liked Bill-the-Dog.

Maybe I will. Her hair really isn't all that bad.

“Something's going on,” Tina says.

More police have arrived across the river. I see the coroner's van. They've strung yellow tape along the shore.

The feminine hand that was resting on the table, the hand whose comfort and warmth pulled at me with throat-tightening gravity, now goes into Tina's coat pocket and emerges with glasses. She puts them on, and the hand returns to the table.

Trooper cars have arrived at the scene. We're close enough to make out forms and actions but too far to see faces.

“Drowning, I guess,” Tina says.

“Something sad,” I say.

Across the room, the vets sit at their table drinking coffee in solemn unity. I see Steve wheeling across the room to join them; Tina and I are at the table where Lizzy and Kendall and Kaylee and I had lunch, and I remember how casually, how nonsignificantly, Lizzy put her arm across Kaylee's shoulders. And just like that, I'm holding Tina's hand across the tabletop.

Four cops are lifting a body up the bank, and gawkers watch from behind the tape. Between police and rescue, there are half a dozen vehicles. It's a light show.

A tall, slender figure separates from the crowd of officers. A man in a suit, not a uniform. He has his back to the river, and I see him
lift his hand to his ear. He paces. Then he turns to face us, and I can see that his mouth looks all black. The bear rug: Dorsey's silly mustache, and I'm reaching for my phone before it rings. And of course it does ring.

“Nick Davis here,” I say in as level a voice as I can.

“Nick, it's Dorsey.”

“Hi, Dorsey.”

“Listen, I'm down by the river across from the Rokeby Mills building, and I—”

“Yeah, I see you, Dorsey, I'm at the Rain Tree.”

He pauses and waves vaguely in our direction.

“Yeah, hi,” I say. “So I assume there's a reason you're calling me?”

“Well, it seems we got a floater here.”

“So I see.”

“And um . . .” He pauses, and I watch as his black raincoat works its way into the mass of rescue workers and police around the gurney. “Well, Nick, we can call off the search for Scud Illman, because I just found him.”

T
here's nothing at all connecting Scud Illman to Zander Phippin and Cassandra Randall anymore. The deer poaching explains away the last of it. The Bureau and the state police recognize this. Scud's only remaining interest to Dorsey and Chip is as the fourth murder victim.

But in my mind, he's so intertwined with Zander and Cassandra that I need to take pains to separate him. All the loathing I've felt has no object; it is a flopping fish tossed onto the sand. Its context has abandoned it. So I've decided to prove for myself whether it is possible that Seth and Scud could have poached a deer on one side of the reservoir on the same night they buried Zander Phippin on the other.

It is late at night. I buy coffee at the 7-Eleven across from Seymour Apartments. The register receipt reads 11:47
P.M.

The roads are empty. I drive west, skirting the reservoir to the south, then I leave the highway and turn onto County Road D, paralleling the west shore. I see deer; white tails appear like ghosts before dissolving into the black curtain of woods. But one doe freezes, proverbial deer in the headlights, her eyes burning green. It would be easy to step from the car and shoot, but I drive past, and as the headlights move off her, I see the flash of her tail.

Following my map, I arrive at the dirt road leading toward a cul-de-sac where, last June 3, a game warden found gut piles from two midnight deer poachings. I follow a gravel drive for several hundred yards until my lights shine on a picnic table and a campfire grate and a small pay box where boaters are supposed to leave a five-dollar fee for using the boat ramp. Now it is 1:43
A.M.
—an hour and fifty-six minutes since I bought coffee across from Seth's apartment. The
moon sparkles on the surface of the reservoir, and I can make out the opposite shore barely a half mile away.

I return to the hardtop and follow county roads around the reservoir toward the opposite shore. As I get into the unmarked roads of the more forested eastern shore, I'm tempted to call this off and turn back toward the highway. I'm nearing the spot where someone dumped poor Zander Phippin; the woods are getting thicker with ghosts. I wish I'd brought somebody with me as company, but whom—?

Cassandra—I picture us walking in the woods that day last June, but I change it: There is no corpse to dig up. Just the two of us, her cargo pants swishing, her hand clutching mine. But Cassandra is dead.

Toby—mid-twenties now. Lanky like his mom, messy hair, physically fit, a girlfriend at home, but he's happy to drive around in the woods with his dad, talking about who knows what; maybe grad school, or politics, or girls. Whatever: It's the company that matters. But Toby is dead.

Or Flora, the old Flora; witty, sharp, intellectual. She's gone, too.

More literally, I thought of asking Kenny, but he's not the kind to bask in the quiet pleasantness of familiar company and the woods at night. He has decided to buy a Jet Ski, and it's all he talks about now.

I also thought of Tina or Chip or Upton, but my mission—measuring time and distance where time and distance are already known—is so illogical, I don't want to involve my sober-minded associates. I thought of Lizzy, too. She would be perfect, but keeping her up on a school night to spare myself the hectoring of all my ghosts wouldn't be good parenting.

I am alone but for these ghosts, so I ask them the obvious question: Who wanted Scud dead? The obvious answer is that whoever killed Zander and Cassandra wanted Scud dead, because he was probably about to rat them out. Though it might be true, it's an unsatisfying answer. A dead end.

“Who else wanted Scud dead?” I ask my passengers.

“Doc Wallis,”
Toby yells. I ignore him, because Dr. Wallis has been dead almost as long as Toby.

“You wanted him dead,” the youthful Flora says to me in the voice I remember from eons ago—insightful and ironic and teasing all at once. I ignore her, too.

“Everyone wanted him dead,” Cassandra says.