Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (3 page)

“Don’t tempt me. I was on the bar. Pete Kirby, Kevin Street, and Ronnie Fivecoat had just started their set. Weather’s so bad, the place is dead, but they were killing it, really cooking.”

Mason had heard the trio before, Kirby on piano, Street on bass, and Fivecoat on drums. He’d have happily gone anywhere to hear them play.

“So Jack Cullan and Beth Harrell are out on one of the worst nights of the year and pick your place to get warm? How does that happen?”

“People with money come into my place, I try not to ask them if they’re lost. I served them drinks and didn’t pay any more attention to them until she stands up and douses him. Cullan’s old and fat, but that old, fat man jumped up and popped her with the back of his hand. Knocked her on the floor.”

“And you couldn’t just tell them to take it outside?” Mason asked.

“Would have been the smart play. But I don’t like it when fat old men slap women around. I grabbed Cullan from behind before he could smack her again, and that little prick scratched me like a cheap whore before I squeezed the air out of him.”

Blues showed Mason the scabs on the backs of his hands.

“Was that it?”

“Almost. I told Beth Harrell that she should press charges against Cullan. She said that wasn’t necessary, that they’d just had a misunderstanding. She was very cool about the whole thing. Gave me her business card, like that was some kind of permission slip for getting punched in public.”

“And then they left?”

“Yeah. Cullan was upright and pissed. He promised me that my liquor license would be gone in a week.”

Mason knew that Blues wouldn’t let the threat go unanswered, and he waited for him to finish the story. Blues looked at the two-way mirror. “You sure they aren’t listening in on this?”

“Not if they want to see you strapped to that gurney with a needle in your arm. What did you say to Cullan?”

Blues sighed, looked at the mirror again, and then back at Mason. “I told him that if he tried jacking with my license or ever came in my bar again, I’d twist his head off and stuff it up his ass.”

“Well, that was memorable and stupid. What happened to being the strong, silent type?”

“Cullan is used to getting in the last word, shoving people around, pimp-slapping women. No way he walks out of my place like he owned it.”

“Blues’s Law. What about afterward? What did you do after you closed the bar?”

“Home, man. By myself.”

“So you fought with this guy, he threatened you, and you threatened him back. If I know Harry, he’s already talked to Beth Harrell and Kirby, Street, and Fivecoat. That makes four witnesses to your threat. And you don’t have an alibi. Can’t blame him for liking you for the murder. The coroner probably found skin and blood under Cullan’s fingernails. It’s too early for Harry to have linked you to that, but when he does, he’s going to like you even more.”

Mason pushed back from the table and stood.

“Where are you going?”

“Talk to Harry and find out what else he’s got.”

“Aren’t you forgetting to ask me one thing?”

“What’s that?”

“If I did it?”

Mason shook his head and smiled. “I never ask. Besides, you would have told me. Blues’s Law.”

Blues smiled for the first time. “I guess you can do this.”

“That I can,” Mason said.

Mason found Harry squeezed into his desk chair, talking on the phone and rolling his eyes.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’m glad it’s all over too, Mr. Mayor. Good-bye, sir.”

Harry put the phone down and motioned Mason to pull up a chair, pointing at a cup of coffee he’d poured for him.

“Did you forget to tell the mayor about the trial?”

Harry was pushing sixty, with half-gray sawdust hair, a soft-squared face, flat on the top and round on the sides. His bulk was more muscle than fat, and his hands were like catchers’ mitts.

“That’s like the next election. Mayor Sunshine will worry about that tomorrow. Today he’ll tell the public that the case has been solved and make it sound like it was his collar.”

“I never saw a politician get so much out of his last name. Anybody who can campaign on the slogan ‘Let the Sunshine in Kansas City’ with a straight face wouldn’t break a sweat solving a murder.”

“The people elected him. William ‘Billy’ Sunshine. His Honor the Asshole.”

Mason sipped and grimaced. He was an occasional coffee drinker, never quite developing an appreciation for the bitter brew.

“Get yourself some cream and sugar,” Harry said. “Make it sweet like when you were a kid. You’ll like it better that way.”

Mason set his cup down, wondering whether Harry intended his remark to be a gentle paternal reminder of their long relationship or just idle chatter. There would come a time when he’d have to tell Harry that their relationship was irrelevant to this case. He wasn’t looking forward to that moment.

“It’s fine. The mayor been pushing you guys pretty hard?”

Mason intended the question to sound casual, even innocent—more concerned about Harry than about the implications for the rush-to-judgment defense he was planning for Blues.

Harry gave him a wise smile. “Lou, I’m going to handle this case like every other one. It doesn’t matter to me that Bluestone is the defendant or that you’re his lawyer. I’ll tell you what you’re entitled to know and that’s it. Everything else you can get from the prosecutor in discovery.”

Mason felt like the little boy again. First Harry told him how to drink his coffee, and then he told him that he’s not so clever after all.

“Fair enough,” Mason said. “Tell me what I’m entitled to know, but don’t leave anything out, because it won’t be fun for either one of us if I find out the hard way.”

Harry shuffled through a stack of reports on his desk, humming under his breath until he found the one he wanted. He put on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and studied the report.

Mason had been a spectator to many of Harry’s cases, listening to his take on the bad guy of the month, his no-good defense lawyer, and the ballbusting judge, always marveling at Harry’s command of the nitty-gritty. Harry didn’t miss much, and he forgot even less.

Mason had no doubt that Harry knew everything about Cullan’s murder by heart and could recite it backward in his sleep, his pretense of unfamiliarity a dodge meant to encourage Mason to underestimate him. He figured Harry was doing it more out of habit than out of any expectation that Mason would take him lightly. Harry put the papers back on his desk along with his glasses.

“Housekeeper found the body when she came to work on Monday morning around eight o’clock. She had a key. The alarm was off, which surprised her because Cullan was never home when she got there and he always left the alarm on. She had the code. Said he ate breakfast in Westport every morning with a bunch of his cronies.”

“Where did she find him?”

“On the floor in his study with a .38-caliber bullet hole in his right eye. Your client was a good shot.”

“Or the killer was just lucky,” Mason said, not taking the bait. “Did the coroner fix the time of death?”

“That part is a bit tricky. The killer turned the heat off and opened the windows in the study. You could have hung meat in there. The cold temperature makes it tough to determine the time of death. Coroner says that it could have been any time from Friday night to Sunday night.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

“Maybe. But we detectives like clues, and we found some good ones.”

“Don’t make me beg, Harry.”

“Too soon for that. Begging comes during the sentencing phase. Cullan’s bed was made, hadn’t been slept in. The housekeeper says she made the bed on Friday. The Saturday, Sunday, and Monday newspapers were on the driveway, and the Saturday mail was in the box. Best bet, Cullan was popped on Friday night. Your client wasn’t as smart as he thought.”

“Any signs of forced entry?” Mason asked, ignoring Harry’s jab.

“No.”

“How did you get to Blues?”

“We traced Cullan’s movements last Friday. His secretary, Shirley Parker, kept his schedule. Shirley says that he was in meetings all day and that she had made reservations for dinner for two at Mancuso’s.”

“I assume his secretary knew who he was having dinner with.”

“You assume right. Cullan had dinner with Beth Harrell. She’s the one who’s head of the gaming commission. So we talked with Ms. Harrell. She said that she and Cullan went to dinner and then stopped at Blues on Broadway to listen to Pete Kirby’s trio. She wasn’t real busted up about Cullan.”

“She used Kirby’s name?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“You’ve got to be a hard-core local jazz fan to know Pete Kirby’s trio. That’s all. Did she tell you anything else?”

Harry grinned. “That’s all she told us the first time we talked to her. Kirby and his guys gave us a blow-by-blow on the fight she and Cullan had at the club and how Bluestone broke it up. My favorite part was when Bluestone threatened Cullan.”

Harry hadn’t said anything about the scratches on Blues’s hands. Mason didn’t know whether Beth Harrell or the musicians hadn’t noticed the scratches, or whether Harry was holding out on Mason, waiting for him to raise the subject.

“So you went back to Beth Harrell and jogged her memory?”

“Early morning is a good time to question people. She didn’t have her makeup on yet, and the bruise Cullan had given her was just turning yellow. She said she didn’t tell us about the fight because it was too embarrassing, but she did say that Bluestone scared her more than Cullan.”

“Why was that?”

“Because Cullan was old and mean but she could handle him. When Bluestone threatened Cullan, she didn’t think anyone could handle him.”

“None of that places Blues at the scene.”

“We’re working on that. Try this for starters.”

He tossed Mason the coroner’s report, Mason’s stomach sinking when he found the information he knew would be there. Blood and tissue had been found under Cullan’s fingernails. According to Blues’s police department personnel file, the blood type found under Cullan’s fingernails matched Blues’s blood type.

“DNA match will take a while, but we both know it’s his blood,” Harry said.

“C’mon, Harry. You talked to four witnesses who saw Blues grab Cullan from behind to stop him from beating up Beth Harrell. Cullan scratched the backs of Blues’s hands. He’s still got the marks. You’ve got to do better than that.”

Harry didn’t hesitate. “None of the witnesses saw Cullan scratch your client’s hands. They only saw him squeeze Cullan until his eyes started to bug out.”

“That doesn’t change a thing. They just didn’t see the scratches. I’ll bet none of them told you that they looked at Blues’s hands afterward and didn’t see any scratches. Because you didn’t ask them that question. Did you? Your case sucks without something that puts Blues in Cullan’s house Friday night. Tell me what you’ve got, Harry.”

Harry listened as Mason turned up the volume, his blank expression giving no clue whether Mason’s antagonism bothered him, whether he had the evidence Mason was demanding, or whether he’d even heard a word Mason had said. Harry waited until the silence pressed down as heavily as unspoken bad news.

“I’ve got enough that the prosecuting attorney was happy to sign the arrest warrant. He says he might ask for the death penalty. Your client’s first court appearance is tomorrow morning at nine in associate circuit court.”

“This isn’t a death-penalty case. It’s barely a murder-one case. Even if your take on Blues is right—and it’s not—you’ve got him killing Cullan because Cullan pissed him off. That’s murder two on a good day. Where are the aggravating circumstances that would make it a death-penalty case?”

“You’ll have to get that from the prosecutor in discovery. His orders, not mine.”

Mason knew better than to press. Harry never deviated from the chain of command.

“So who drew the short straw in the prosecutor’s office?”

Leonard Campbell, the prosecuting attorney, limited his court appearances to accepting high-profile plea bargains and trying cases with dead-certain guilty verdicts. He was more of a politician and bureaucrat than he was a trial lawyer. Mason assumed that he would assign one of his senior deputies to Blues’s case.

“Campbell says he’s going to try the case. Nobody here believes that. He may sit at the counsel table so the TV cameras can get a good shot of him, but Patrick Ortiz will be lead.”

Mason had been up against Ortiz enough times to appreciate his plodding, understated style, which could lull a defense attorney into careless mistakes. Juries responded to him, seeing him as one of them. He was a regular guy who just talked to the jury, making the complex simple, explaining why the alibi was just a lie. He had the highest conviction rate of anyone in the prosecutor’s office and was always the lead prosecutor in death-penalty cases.

“I’ve got some other things to go over with Blues. Let me know when I can get a set of the investigative reports, or are you going to make me wait for discovery?”

“I told Campbell you’d want that. You can get them tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I’d like to get a swab from your client’s mouth so we can run the DNA test.”

“Let’s see how things go in the morning, Harry.”

“You can agree or we can get a warrant. Either way, it doesn’t matter to me. We won’t have any trouble finding your client. Just tell him that when the judge imposes a sentence, he’ll ask us if Bluestone cooperated or made life difficult.”

Mason was tired of Harry’s pinpricks. “I know you’ve had a hard-on for Blues since the two of you were partners. Don’t use this case to get even. Blues’s life is on the line, and you’re too good of a cop to make it personal.”

Harry fired back. “Is that what you think? That this is personal? Well, let me tell you something, Lou. It’s damn personal! Your client killed an unarmed, innocent woman and walked away. He killed Jack Cullan last Friday, and if he thinks he’s walking away this time, he’s wrong. Murder is about as personal as it gets, and I take it real personal that I didn’t nail the son of a bitch the first time.”