Injustice (44 page)

I drive Sabin's unmarked car into the driveway and walk into the house. The crime scene techs are in the kitchen, while Flora, Chip, Lizzy, Sabin, and Dorsey sit in the living room, appearing uncertain what to do next.

I sit beside Lizzy on the couch. “Was he really going to kill us?” she asks.

“I think so.”

“Daddy,” she says. She pulls her feet up on the cushion and curls in toward me. I wrap my arms around her. We sit that way for a while. Neither of us speaks. We're both in shock. Later this will pack the wallop of a nuclear explosion, but right now I'm having trouble making sense of it all. I need someone to tell me what to do.

Lizzy sniffles and pushed me away. “I'll be okay,” she says. “You're wanted in town.”

“I am?”

“Yes,” Chip says. “The jury is back in the Kyle Runion murder.”

S
abin sits beside me. Her head bandage makes her look like a Civil War soldier. She pulls down the visor and bobs around, trying to get a good look at herself in the mirror. She laughs.

“What?”

“There's no good way to bandage a scalp wound,” she says. “But there were so many medics, I finally had to let one of them do something.”

After that, there is too much to talk about, so we don't talk about anything. As we get farther from Turner and closer to the city, I think less about Calvin Dunbar and more about Henry Tatlock. I'm thinking about the defense Monica Brill put on. Upton was right: The weakness in her case was that she never offered the jury a good theory for who killed Lydia if it wasn't Henry. So even though the case technically has nothing to do with Lydia, and even though Monica came up with a believable story of how Henry's DNA got mixed up with Kyle Runion's remains, I'm certain the jury has voted to convict Henry. They will convict him because they think he killed his fiancée, which makes them disbelieve Monica's carefully constructed story about Philbin and Philbin's sister and Philbin's simmering, festering rage toward violent men.

Timing is everything. It was everything last night in the Friendly City parking lot. It was everything today in the kitchen of Flora's house, and it is everything in Henry Tatlock's trial. If today's events with Calvin Dunbar had taken place a week ago, or if Henry's trial had ended a week from now, Monica Brill would have had a perfect defense: Henry Tatlock was just the innocent cuckold in Lydia's long-term affair with a homicidal psychopath. If the jury had known
this, then Philbin's dogged pursuit of Henry would have looked irrational and, worse, just plain mean. The jury would have eaten up the idea of Henry being twice victimized—once by Calvin Dunbar, once by Detective Philbin.

It's too late now. Nothing about what happened today is grounds for a new trial. And even if Henry were to get a new trial for any reason, Monica's defense required the element of surprise. Now that the surprise is spent, Gregory Nations would have a thousand ways to head her off. Her case would be dead before the first witness is sworn.

Timing is everything. The trial is over. All that's left is the reading of the verdict. Henry has lost.

“So, about Philbin,” I say to Rachel.

She looks over at me and smiles sadly. She knows what I'm asking. She doesn't want to talk about it. She doesn't want to answer my question, and maybe she wouldn't have had to yesterday, but many things have changed between us now.

“Could he have done it?” I ask.

She doesn't answer me for a few seconds. Then she sighs. It is her surrender. The resistance goes out of her. “Philly's complicated,” she says.

I wait.

“He pretends he's Gibraltar,” she says. “Pretends nothing shakes him. But believe me, that man bleeds. If he ever got onto the couch, he'd never get up again. But talking about shit isn't his style. Philly's too old-school to get shrunk.”

She's silent. I wait.

“If I knew something, I'd tell you,” she says. “Philly knows I would. And you know it, too, right?”

I smile at her. I guess I do know it. At least in a case like this, where the only evidence against Henry is what Philbin is accused of planting, I believe Rachel would rat him out if she knew. “So the next logical question,” I say, “is whether you think Philbin is
capable
of planting the evidence.”

She doesn't smile at me this time. She just looks at me with
a pained expression. Her answer is clear: Of course he's capable. Maybe she even suspects him of it. But it's all too late.

News vans are in front of the courthouse again. It's just after seven in the evening, but nobody is heading home. The judge has scheduled court to resume at seven-thirty for reading the verdict. There are more black sedans than usual. I add Sabin's to the line of cars in the
POLICE ONLY
parking, and we walk the gauntlet of reporters into the building. With her bandage, and some of the dried blood crusted brown on her face, a cameraman runs after her, shouting questions.

Inside the courthouse, I see Tina. She sees me. She sees Rachel. She runs back through the metal detector and into my arms. She clings to me. Tears run freely down her cheeks. “Lizzy called,” she says. “Flora called. Everybody called.”

Tina steps back and looks at Sabin. “Look at you,” she says. She touches the blood on Rachel's face and strokes the bandage like it's a puppy. “Thank you,” she whispers.

I hand Rachel her car keys, and she leaves us. Tina and I get into the elevator and go up to our floor. Everything about this feels wrong, and I don't know what to do or what to think. Is Henry
actually
guilty or not? Calvin Dunbar killed Lydia; Patrick Philbin may well have planted Henry's DNA with Kyle's remains. I want to slow things down, but this train has lost its brakes. Halfway down the hallway, I stop and face Tina. Fear and tears streak her face. I want her in my arms again, but I don't want us to be a spectacle.

“I think Henry is innocent,” I say.

She nods.

Everyone is outside the courtroom. There are many FBI agents; too many. This is a state case, but Isler and several of his colleagues stand around with suit jackets bulging at holster level.

All the usuals are here: the Runions and their entourage, Peggy Devaney, Philbin, Upton, cops from Orchard Grove, and the local cops. Oddly, the one I gravitate to is Arthur Cunningham. He seems
so hapless, so uninvolved in the whole thing. He was a simple man out enjoying the woods when his dog led him to a front-row seat for this special pageant of hell. I'm like Arthur. I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't want any of this.

“Hi, Arthur,” I say.

He puts his hand out and I grab it in both of mine and our eyes meet and I think he understands what I'm saying. I'm saying that poor Kyle Runion is the central victim, but in a way, all of us have been scarred. Arthur is a victim and I'm a victim and Lydia and Tina and Detective Philbin and maybe even Henry Tatlock—all of us whose lives will never really get back to normal.

“Nick,” someone says. It's Upton. My moment of reverie with Arthur is broken. Upton has Isler with him. Isler sees something in my eyes—gratitude for his part in today's drama—but it will have to wait until later. “Step over here,” Upton says. They guide me away from the crowd.

“Do you remember Nathan Miller?” Upton asks.

“Miller? Is that the kid from Ohio who disappeared a couple of years before Kyle?”

“Right,” Upton says. “There were similarities to the Runion case. And you might recall there was some trace . . .”

“Mitochondrial DNA,” Isler says.

“Right,” Upton says. “Mitochondrial DNA that may or may not have come from the perp. It didn't really matter who it was from, because it was such a poor sample . . .”

“Really degraded,” Isler says.

“So degraded it was useless for identifying a suspect in a database of any size,” Upton says.

“It was forgotten about,” Isler says. “Until now. But a short strand like that can be a good indicator for testing against a single known suspect.”

“You tested it against Henry?” I say.

Isler nods.

“And?”

Isler motions with his head toward the FBI agents just now
walking into the courtroom. “Crossing state lines makes it federal,” he says.

“It was a match?”

“A perfect match,” Isler answers.

“So Henry's definitely guilty?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God,” I say.

“It doesn't matter what this jury decides,” Isler says. “We're arresting Henry Tatlock as soon as the verdict is read: federal charges for the murder, kidnapping, and sexual abuse of Nathan Miller.”

We are called into the courtroom. I sit beside Tina. She grabs my hand and intertwines her fingers with mine, squeezing with everything she's got. The jury is brought in. For the FBI agents and for Upton and for me, there is no suspense. The verdict has become nearly irrelevant.

Judge Ballard smacks the gavel and goes through the formalities. Then he has the jury foreman stand: “Mr. Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor.”

The judge has Henry stand and says, “Mr. Foreman, would you please read the verdict.”

The foreman unfolds his scrap of paper and says, “On the charge of murder in the first degree, we the jury find the defendant . . .”

I
t hasn't been easy. I still have my suite at Friendly City, but I'm spending more and more time at home. The important thing, according to Tina and the couples counselor, is to avoid any more upheavals until we can establish a rock-solid rhythm and flow to our lives. I don't understand any of this, but what they (Tina and the counselor) tell me is that we had a toxic mix of
Tina's issues
combined with a series of traumatic events, combined with my response to those events, which were the product of
my issues.

Whatever.

I'm halfway back through the door of the house, my slow and steady advance detectable only in time-lapse.

It's springtime. The ice is off the lake up at the cabin. The days are warming and lengthening. Everything is settling down.

Daryl Devaney is a free man. In the wake of Henry's conviction, Gregory Nations joined Tina in petitioning for Daryl's full pardon. The petition was granted, and now Daryl's civil lawyer is negotiating with the state for a hefty “wrongful conviction” award. Daryl may emerge from the whole thing a modestly rich man, which will be useful for him as he keeps paying lawyers to defend him in minor crimes like driving without a license and shoplifting. We're hoping Peggy can keep him under control.

Peggy invited Tina and me down to Orchard City for Daryl's coming-home party. I wish I could say we enjoyed it, especially since Tina, along with Daryl, was a guest of honor. But it was a sad affair. A few neighbors came, plus a few guys Daryl was in school with, and one elderly teacher from one of Daryl's remedial classes in high
school. Peggy rented a function room at the Orchard City Inn, and even though the room wasn't large, the party felt as lost inside it as a BB in a boxcar. Peggy asked whether anyone had any comments to offer. One guy said something about remembering Daryl from school, then talked about his own children for several minutes, then said, “Let's get drunk.”