Indefensible (20 page)

“Can you be more specific?”

“Of course not,” she answers. “I don't even know who killed
me
.”

They're no help, these uninvited passengers. I silence them, but they're restive, and after a few uneasy miles, Zander blurts, “My father wanted him dead.”

“Yes, but . . .” I answer, and that's all I can think of. But what? But nothing. Hollis Phippin, successful, intelligent, well spoken, a man of action. He did want Scud dead. He told me so. Crap.

At 3:09 I arrive near where I parked the day we found Zander. I turn around and drive back toward the highway.

Three hours and twenty-two minutes since I bought coffee. Last June 3, Scud bought cigarettes at 2:02
A.M.
Adding their travel time, the earliest Scud and Seth could have arrived near Zander's grave is 5:24
A.M.
, and that's if they never stopped. So if Cassandra Randall first heard them in the woods at about 6:15, which is what she told us, it means they had about fifty-one minutes to shoot two deer, gut them, and toss them in the car at the picnic area over on the west side, then on the east side to carry or drag the body into the woods, to dig the hole for Zander, pitch him in, and start filling the hole up before Cassandra came along and heard them. Impossible.

Or maybe not. What if they hadn't planned to shoot any deer? No skulking in the woods or staking out a game trail, no quartering, even: They see two deer in the headlights, jump out, shoot. Seth was a hunter. He could have gutted them in minutes. Let's say the whole process takes fifteen minutes. That leaves only thirty-eight minutes to dig Zander's grave. Impossible.

Or maybe not. What if it was already dug?

Possible. Now there are two problems: First, if they already had
a grave dug for Zander on the east shore, what were they doing on the west shore?

Second problem: All the evidence we had linking Scud and Seth to Zander's burial—the tollbooth record, the blood, the tire print, the cigarette purchase, the phone note in Seth's apartment—is perfectly explained by the deer poaching. There are no loose ends. Attributing the evidence to the established fact of two felons out poaching a couple of deer, there's nothing left. Scud becomes no more a suspect than anybody else who was out and about that night in June. Less, actually.

Bottom line: Scud and Seth could have poached a deer and buried Zander Phippin all in the same night. But they didn't. The contortions of logic and logistics overwhelm the sliver of feasibility. It's back to square one.

I drive to the highway. Darkness is peaceful now. My dead and departed passengers stayed behind at the reservoir. I wanted it to be Scud, but I'm glad it wasn't. The deer hunting changed my thinking. Not that I'm in favor of poaching (I'm not even a hunter). No, it's the pathetic and redeeming humanness of their mission. Two guys, rejects and lowlifes, team up for an illegal and unsportsmanlike venture away from the neon glow, into the startling blackness of woods. Hoods, criminals, city rats, drawn to the tepid wilderness of the reservoir district. I know the feeling, that urge to fan the primeval spark, nurturing the forgotten connection to the earth: man's longing for self-sufficiency.

We're all the same.

T
he music is zippy; Scud hoists himself up on some flotsam in the rain-swollen river and hops to the shore.

“Who killed you?” I ask.

He grins his squinty grin, and he is just about to tell me . . .

“Nick,” Tina asks, “are you okay?”

My office. Tina is in the doorway.

“Are you on the phone?” she asks.

Apparently, I am on the phone, my head pillowed against the receiver, my elbow propped on the desk, and the on-hold music in my ear.

“I'll come back later,” Tina says.

I hang up. “No. Stay.”

“Are you okay?”

“I fell asleep.”

“On the phone?”

“I was up all night.”

“Have you had coffee yet?”

“I don't think so.”

She leaves. Then she's back with two cups of coffee. “How you doing, boss?”

“This'll help.” I sip the coffee and say, “Mmm,” just to say anything, because she has settled down across from me.

“Up all night doing what?”

I tell her about driving to the reservoir.

Janice buzzes. “Agent d'Villafranca for you, Nick.”

I put him on speaker. “Hi, Chip.”

“Nick, did you just call me?”

“It's possible.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I have Tina with me here.”

“Hi, Tina.”

“Hi, Chip.”

I say, “I think it's safe to assume that Scud killed Seth Coen to keep him quiet. They were out poaching deer. Scud was a two-time loser; Seth wasn't. When the shit hit the fan, Seth probably wanted to cop to the felon-in-possession charge to remove suspicion on the murder charge. Scud couldn't allow that because he'd be in on three strikes.”

“Nice theory.”

“Do you have any evidence from Scud's body?”

“Dorsey's department,” Chip says. “The state has the body. They worked the scene.”

“I have a name to suggest,” I say. “Hollis Phippin has motive, and he's capable.”

Tina's eyes widen in surprise, then she nods in agreement.

“Talk to Dorsey,” Chip says.

So I do. I hang up with Chip and dial Dorsey's office.

“Dorsey,” Dorsey says.

“Nick here. I have a theory on who killed Scud. I'm thinking you might want to interview Hollis Phippin. He's smart, he's a doer, he has motive. He even said something to me about killing Scud himself if he had to . . .”

“Nick—”

“I mean, I'd hate like hell to see him go down. You've got to admire it, really. But that's why we have laws, am I right? I feel responsible. It was me who—”

“Nick—”

“—lost objectivity.”

“Nick,” Dorsey says, “I've got the ballistics report here. Listen to me. Seth Coen and Scud Illman were killed with the same gun.”

Tina and I look across the desk at each other as implications stream from this tidbit of data. “Self-inflicted?” she whispers. This makes sense, considering the state Scud was in when he called me on
Kendall's phone. He'd gotten himself in too deep, the pressure was too much: sayonara. But in this case, it's impossible: Not too many guys off themselves with an executionlike hole in the back of the head and then tumble into the river.

“It doesn't rule Hollis out altogether,” Dorsey says. “Like maybe he confronted Scud, got the gun away from him. We'll talk to him.”

“Sure,” I say, “but keep me out of it. Have you found anything at the scene?”

“No, so far we don't even know where he was killed. I've got investigators searching the picnic areas and waysides for anything interesting.”

“Well, keep me informed.” I end the call because something just occurred to me. “Tina, go brief Upton,” I say to get rid of her.

When she's gone, I call Kendall Vance's office and leave a message saying I need to speak with him immediately and away from the office.

Janice buzzes while I'm waiting for Kendall to call back. “Nick, I have the file you wanted.”

“What file?”

“It was several weeks ago. You wouldn't believe what I had to go through. Because it had been archived, but then they'd pulled it for digitizing, but they hadn't digitized it yet, so it was in this never-never status where nobody could find it, and finally, I went over there to look for it myself, but they wouldn't let me take it until they actually did get it digitized, so now I've got it.”

“What file?”

“Burton.”

“I don't remember Burton.”

“Well, you asked,” she says.

I go out and take it from her. Leroy Burton. It's a case that was closed almost thirty years ago. Fuseli! The tattoo guy. I'd forgotten.

•  •  •

I silence my cell phone so it won't ring while I'm with Kendall. We meet at the Sahara Café, a tiny falafel joint in the old town.

“I don't have much time,” Kendall says, “but you sounded desperate.”

“I just thought we should talk,” I say. “You lost a client. What must that be like?”

He shrugs.

“So I guess he was innocent,” I say. “Of the murder, anyway.”

“Innocent or not,” Kendall says, “I figured he was going in for life, but your case kept unraveling, and it started looking like I could get the son of a bitch acquitted. I never expected that.”

“You sound like you wanted him convicted.”

Kendall shrugs. “Scud was bad news, but it's not my fault if you guys can't put a case together.”

“I'm wondering if you know anything. Anything nonprivileged. Something to help us sort this out.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I just thought—”

“Forget it, Nick. I don't know anything, and if I did, it would be privileged.”

“He's dead.”

“Privileged, counselor.”

I sip my coffee. It's in a squat porcelain cup. I wipe the grounds off my front teeth with a napkin.

“If that's all you wanted . . .” Kendall says.

“Businesswise, sure. That's everything. But you know, Lizzy might like to see Kaylee sometime.”

“Kaylee would like that.” His tone softens.

“Crap!” I say. “Speaking of Lizzy, I was supposed to call her. Twenty minutes ago. Excuse me a minute.” I stand and reach into my jacket pocket. Then I pat all my pockets. “Crap crap crap. Kendall, I left my phone at the office. Lemme use yours a minute.” He reaches into his jacket and hands me his cell phone. I avoid his eyes. “Thanks, be right back.”

It's a tiny restaurant. I latch the bathroom door behind me, sit on the lid, then navigate Kendall's phone to the log of numbers dialed. My heart pounds in my ears; I could be disbarred for this. I'm about
to violate Kendall's privacy, and worse, the attorney/client confidentiality he had with Scud.

But Scud is dead, so why shouldn't the attorney/client thing die, too? (Never mind that the Supreme Court already nixed this logic: Ken Starr went to the Supreme Court to get Vince Foster's lawyer to surrender his notes. The court said forget about it.)

It was last Thursday afternoon when Kendall called me from his cell to arrange lunch at the Rain Tree when Lizzy met Kaylee. So Scud must have lifted the phone sometime between then and Friday evening, when he called me. That's the closest I can pin it down. At the other end, Kendall got the phone back from Scud late on Friday night. So I'm interested in all calls made between Thursday afternoon and Friday night.

On my own phone, I call voice mail and start reading the log from Kendall's phone. There are eleven calls, including the one Scud made to me. I'm done in under a minute. Now I dial Flora's office on Kendall's phone, just in case he's the suspicious sort who might look to see whom I called. I talk to Flora's voice mail a minute or two, then I flush and bring Kendall his phone back. “Thanks,” I say, “gotta run.”

“So you arranged this urgent meeting just to ask if I have any intel on who did Scud Illman?”

“Um. Yes.”

“Why you? Why not Chip or Captain Dorsey?”

He seems honestly perplexed, so I say, “I'm a lawyer. I'm more sensitive to the question of your residual loyalty to Scud. I mean, we don't want it to get all
legal,
do we?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if the Bureau or Dorsey figures you know something, they'll try to compel you. It'll make bad feelings and bad law. I'm trying to work around that.”

“Okay, Nick, I'll tell you what I know,” he says sarcastically. “I know that Scud Illman was a little player with big enemies. Other than that, I know what you know. Squat. Maybe less.”

“Will you make a statement?”

“No, I won't make a goddamn statement. What the hell would happen to my practice? My client gets whacked, then I'm snuggling with the feds, tutoring them on who's who in the city. You'd be pulling me out of the river next.”

He's not shouting, but this is too loud for the tiny restaurant. People are eyeing us. Not customers, because we're the only ones, but the owners who work in an open kitchen behind the counter: a middle-aged Lebanese couple and their twentyish daughter.

I pat my palms against the air. “Down, boy, I just want to find who killed him.”

“Who the hell cares,” he snaps, “good riddance.”

“Kendall, settle . . .”

“Scud Illman was scum. Finding whoever killed him won't get you any closer to what you really want.”

“It
is
what I want.”

“No, it's not. You want to know who killed Phippin and Cassandra and who runs the crime in this city. That's what you want to know.”

I stare at him. The café owners have given up trying to look busy.

Kendall slumps. “Listen,” he says quietly, “you've never done any criminal defense, have you?”

“No.”

“Well, it takes its toll. You feel responsible. But Scud played with a tough crowd, so like that sheriff says, ‘Let the dead bury the dead, Mr. Finch.' ”

I feel a moment of fondness for Kendall. A lot of us started our legal careers with misty-eyed visions of
To Kill a Mockingbird
—Atticus Finch's noble deeds—but we ended up with the likes of Scud Illman. I say, “So we should get our girls together sometime. Lizzy and Kaylee.” I stand up abruptly.

“Wait,” he says, “do you have suspects? Info flows both ways, Nick. Right?”

“I hear the Bureau is bringing in Hollis Phippin for questioning.”

His face contorts. “The kid's father?”

“Yes.”

“And you'd prosecute?”

“Not me personally. Someone would.”