Indefensible (33 page)

“Her?” He sits back and puts his feet up again.

“His wife.”

“Christ, Nick, you're shooting in the dark,” he says, spitting the words in an instantaneous change of mood that has me sitting up on alert with my feet off the hassock. “These are people's lives. Do
you
like being a suspect? Look at you, you can't go back to your office; you're sleuthing around and trying to get the goods on one friend, Upton, while your other friend, Chip, is supposedly trying to arrest you.”

“Just trying to do my job, Kendall.”

“No, you're goddamn not doing your job,” he snaps, “you're just spreading the misery. If you and the Keystone Cops were doing your jobs, you'd have solved this by now. What's so goddamn wrong with the simple theory that the drug organization killed Scud? The meth makers, the heroin dealers. He knew too much, and they whacked him. End of story.”

“That's fine, except—”

“He was my client,” Kendall says. “Maybe I knew a few things about him.”

“We have no leads,” I say. “Nothing to tie anybody Mob-like to this. But they've got circumstantial against me, and I've got motive up the wazoo against Upton. Scud was blackmailing Upton, for cripe's sake, and if I could find one shred of physical or circumstantial evidence against Upton, I'd go to the grand jury in an instant and convict his ass. As for Scud's wife, why not her? The woman makes Morticia Addams seem like Mr. Rogers. And she's the only person alive with more motive than Upton: namely, that she had to live with Scud, the sociopathic, murdering son of a bitch. And she had opportunity, just like Upton had motive. She lived with him,
and who else could have had access to that gun? Remember, he was killed with his own gun, or at least with the same gun that killed Seth Coen.”

“It's all bullshit,” Kendall says. “Haven't you guys got anything? What did forensics turn up?”

“Zilch.”

“Zilch from the body and the scene both?”

“You know I can't discuss that, Kendall.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Nick, this is real life happening here. Get over yourself.”

“Go to hell.”

“You go to hell.”

“You go to hell.” After a second to consider the ridiculousness of this I lift my feet back onto the hassock. “Zilch from the body,” I tell him. “And we've never actually figured out where he was killed.”

He looks at me, confused.

“That's right,” I say. “Scud was a floater at the dam, but we've never found where he got whacked.”

“Geez. I just assumed . . . No wonder you're groping in the dark. Let's think it through. I can put my own investigator on it, I suppose, but let's think first.” He gets up and goes to his desk and takes out a legal pad. “Okay, the body was found when?”

“For pity's sake. If the FBI can't—”

“Work with me, Nick.”

“And the state troopers. I'm on borrowed time here, Kendall.”

“My hands are tied,” he says. “I'm working blind here, just like you. Let's at least pool what we know. We know he was found at the dam on a Monday at—”

“You pool it,” I tell him. “Pool it right where the sun don't shine. You want to chase the Mob, then chase the Mob. I'm chasing Upton and the dolorous Mrs. Scud. See which of us passes Go first.”

“You goddamn idiot,” he says, resorting to his steely-eyed stare. “I'm trying to help you.”

He seems desperate. So much for that comforting moment between attorney and client. Kendall, I realize, is my second kook of
the day, thinking he can theorize his way to the crime scene. “I'm a man on the run,” I say, “so I have to run. Forgive me. I see how earnestly you want to help, and that is a great comfort to me. Let's talk this evening, okay? You do your investigating, and I'll do mine, and we'll pool. I promise.”

He nods and I head for the door, but before I'm out, he says, “Wait. About Lizzy. Kaylee keeps asking me if she can see her again.”

“Of course,” I say. “Lizzy would like that. We'll do it as soon as things settle down a bit, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, and I wonder if it is hard for Kendall, the father of a girl with special needs, to remind me, the father of a girl with a million things going for her, that we talked about getting them together. I promise myself I won't forget again. Someday soon we'll get the girls together. But talking about Lizzy brings to mind this other problem I've been avoiding thinking about: One day soon I need to have it out with Kenny over his atrocious overtures to Lizzy. I leave Kendall's office and call Bart Curry to tell him I won't make it back over this afternoon. It'll have to wait until tomorrow, assuming I'm not in prison.

I wasn't exactly honest with Kendall when I told him there was zilch evidence from Scud's body. Truth is, I haven't followed up. All I know is that Scud was shot with the gun that killed Seth Coen. I've never looked at the medical examiner's report. Now, though, since I have two suspects of my own—Upton Cruthers and Mrs. Illman—it's possible there's some orphaned bit of evidence that would mean everything to me but mean nothing to the investigators because they don't have the right suspects in mind.

I drive to the trooper headquarters. It's a risk, but a small risk. I don't know many people over here, and since I doubt the Bureau considers me a fugitive, they won't have spread the word to be on the lookout. Dorsey probably knows, but so long as I avoid him, I'm okay.

At the front desk, I show my ID and explain my interest in seeing the medical examiner's report from the Scud Illman murder.

“Have a seat,” the desk clerk says, “it will be a few minutes.”

I sit. She types. I wait.

“Nick,” says a familiar voice behind me, “thanks for stopping in. Let's go to my office.”

I follow Dorsey toward his office, and I have the silly notion to bolt out a side exit as we walk down the corridor.

“How you been, Dorsey?” I say stupidly, because it's all I can think of. I feel light-headed. If I had to stand still for a few seconds, my knees would give out. I expect that any moment, someone will step up behind me and snap on the cuffs, or Dorsey will do it himself.

He steers me into his office.

“You've spoken with Chip?” I ask, my voice strange to me.

“Sit down,” Dorsey says. “You feel okay? You look green around the gills.”

“I'm fine.”

“Forensic report right here,” he says, turning the computer screen for me to see. “Not much to go on. The river washed away most of the trace. We pulled a few fibers, but nothing unique.”

“What about the ME's report?”

Dorsey clicks some tabs, and the medical examiner's report comes up on the screen.
Gunshot wound to the head . . . entry at left temple,
the report says.

Dorsey is probably enjoying studying my reactions as he leads me, like a bull with a ring in its nose, into the slaughter of self-incriminatory behavior.

(How did Mr. Davis react on reading the medical examiner's report?
the prosecutor will ask, and Dorsey will answer:
He was cold and detached and showed no emotion.
Or else Dorsey will say,
He was sweating and panicky. I'm sure he knew we were on to him.)
Whatever I do, I'm fucked.

What I find, though, is that the details of the report create an eye-of-the-storm calm inside me, and I'm more at peace than I've felt in days. I'm not faking it. I'm here and focused. I continue reading: The report describes the region of the brain the bullet traveled through, then concludes,
exited through the right occipital region.

“So if the bullet exited and he was dumped in the river, how did they match it to the gun that killed Seth?”

“Keep reading.”

The next paragraph is headed
Gunshot wound #2.
This one entered in the left shoulder, traveled down through the chest region, and lodged in the lower-right rib cage. That's where the slug was recovered and later identified.

“Odd that both bullets entered from the left side,” I say.

“And did you notice the angle?” Dorsey says. “Both of them traveled downward through the body.”

“What does it mean?”

“Well I kind of tricked you,” Dorsey says. “I didn't show you the cover sheet. Look.” He scrolls up to page one. The page is a form: victim's name, identifiers, height, weight data, and location of body. The fourth line is cause of death. The ME has typed in,
Suffocation.

“Are you kidding me? He was strangled?”

Dorsey pages forward. “Read.”

I read:
Victim's larynx and cricoid cartilage are crushed with some tearing of the pharynx, and with a submucosal hematoma . . .

I skip forward.

 . . . indicating the probable cause of death was suffocation from loss of airway, consistent with a prodigious blunt trauma directly to throat, which conclusion is born out by the above-mentioned bruising and subcutaneous hemorrhage with the region . . .

“He was slammed in the throat? What do you think he was hit with?”

“Beats us,” Dorsey says. “A fist, a stick, a bat. Who knows?”

“Did you know all this?”

“Of course. Why didn't you?”

“I, um . . .”

“You lawyers,” he says, “we've sent you all this.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.” He gives a self-satisfied twitch of the bear rug. He's a very cool customer, Dorsey, giving no hint of the drama playing out
here. I'm a fly caught in his web, he's the spider, not especially hungry and in no particular hurry to suck out the juice of my existence, because he knows I can't escape. So we engage in this discourse. He is in a quietly giddy state of anticipation; I'm in the preternatural calm of inevitability.

“The reports aren't in my file,” I say, “which means either we never received them, which is unlikely, or Janice misfiled them, which is impossible, or the other attorney working this case diverted them.”

“And which attorney would that be?” Dorsey asks. It's a strange question, because as a state cop, he doesn't know any of the assistant U.S. attorneys except Upton.

“Upton Cruthers,” I say.

We lock eyes for a second.

“Dollars to doughnuts,” Dorsey says, “it's a clerical error. I'll print you a copy right here.”

“But if Scud died of asphyxiation . . . I thought you told me he was killed with the same gun that killed Seth.”

“Yes, sorry about that. I got the ballistics report before the ME's report. I assumed. Turns out he was merely
shot
with the gun that killed Seth.”

“And you've never found the scene?”

“No,” he says, “officers searched for miles upriver, both sides, never found a thing. For all we know, he was killed elsewhere, then driven to the river for a quick dumping.”

“Which reminds me,” I say. “Apparently, Scud's wife hasn't seen their car since that night.”

He squints at me. “You know this how?”

“I talked to her.”

“Really? She's been unhelpful with my people.”

“She's scared. Maybe she's scared that he's not really dead. We talked a bit.”

“And no car, eh? We'll look into it.”

Dorsey retrieves a new copy of the ME's report from his printer and hands it to me. I look at the cover sheet. The body was found at
about one-fifteen
P.M.
on that Monday afternoon when Tina and I were eating lunch at the Rain Tree. The medical examiner estimated Scud had been dead for thirty to forty hours. That makes time of death late at night on Saturday evening/Sunday morning.

“What does it all mean?” I ask Dorsey.

He holds up his hands helplessly. “Someone smashed him in the throat, then shot him twice for insurance as he lay on the ground dead or dying, then dumped him in the river.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“What?”

“Well . . .” Something occurred to me, but I don't want to voice it until I've had a chance to think it through, so I switch directions. “Who killed him?” I ask innocently, naively.

“That's the sixty-four-dollar question,” Dorsey says with a wise and weary nod.

“Thousand,” I say. “Sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

Dorsey stands and points at the reports. “Hope those help,” he says. He takes his gun and shoulder holster from a coat tree and puts them on, then his jacket. “Sorry to be rude. Gotta run.”

Then he's gone, and I'm back in the Volvo, driving out the highway toward Turner, wondering what the hell just happened and why I'm free without so much of a mention of what I thought was my imminent arrest.

•  •  •

I love my car. I love driving. The expression “happy as a clam” makes sense to me. A clam lives inside the walls of its bio-home, the tide bringing along something new a couple of times a day, all necessities close by, safe, familiar. The Volvo is safe and familiar, with necessities close at hand, climate adjustable for my comfort, while outside, the landscape continuously renews itself to keep my interest. Regardless of what I need to do back in the world, I can't do anything until I get wherever I'm going.

Driving the highway to Turner, I notice that the gold and rust of autumn have spread like a contagion across distant hills. I revel in the
contemplative opportunity of the thirty-minute drive. I slow down and pull into the slow lane, hoping to stretch it to forty minutes.

If I get charged . . . If I get tried . . . If I get convicted.

I've never had thoughts like this. I've been focusing on trying to solve Scud's murder to avoid getting charged with it myself. It's the best strategy, but I should at least give a nod to how I leave the table if I actually do get sent away; how does it leave Lizzy, Kenny, Flora? Maybe even Tina.