The Dead Student (6 page)

The kid had a good record at school. A community college future. Maybe the state university if he just pulled up his grades in math and continued on the basketball team. He had a part-time job flipping burgers at McDonald’s and an intact family—father, mother, grandmother all living at home with him. And, most important, he had no prior arrest record—an astonishing detail growing up in the middle of Liberty City.

But the gun—that was a real problem. And why was he taking it to school?

Eat it,
she told herself again.
The kid’s got a chance.

Eating the gun
was prosecutor slang for dropping the mandatory minimum three-year sentence in Florida for anyone who used a gun in the commission of a felony. The prosecutor’s office used the requisite prison term as a cudgel to force guilty pleas, dropping this part of the charge sheet at the last possible legal minute.

The phrase meant something very different to clinically depressed police officers and PTSD-suffering Iraq War veterans.

“Sue, give us a break here,” the public defender said. “Look at the kid’s record. It’s real good …” She knew that her onetime classmate didn’t get many clients with actual “good” records, and he would be eager—no, probably
desperate
—to find a positive outcome. “… And I don’t know about that cop’s search. I can make a pretty strong case that it was a violation of my client’s rights. But anyway, he goes away now, and he’ll be right back here in four years. You know what will happen in prison. They’ll teach him how to be a real criminal, and you know what he’ll do next will be something a helluva lot worse than a half-key of low-grade dope that really ought to plead down to a misdemeanor.”

Susan Terry ignored the public defender and stared at the teenager.

“Why’d you have the gun?” she demanded.

The teenager stole a sideways glance at his lawyer, who nodded to him, and whispered, “This is all off the record. You can tell her.”

“I was scared,” he said.

This made partial sense to Susan. Anyone who had ever driven through Liberty City after dark knew there was much to be frightened of.

“Go on,” the public defender said. “Tell her.”

The teenager launched into a halting story: street gangs, carrying the marijuana—
one time only
—for the thugs down the block so they would leave him and his little sister alone. The backpack and the gun were for the person who was supposed to move the grass.

She wasn’t sure she believed it. There were some truths, maybe, she was sure. But in its entirety?
Not damn likely.

“You got names?”

“I give you names, they’re going to kill me.”

Susan shrugged.
Not my problem,
she thought. “So what? Tell you what: You talk to your lawyer. Listen to what he tells you, because he’s the only thing standing between you and the complete ruin of your life. I’m going to call in a detective from the urban narcotics task force. When he gets here—I’m guessing maybe about fifteen minutes—you get to make your
decision. Give up all the names of the motherfuckers on your block dealing drugs and you get to walk out of here. Gun or no gun. Keep your mouth shut, and it’s
see yah later
, ’cause you’re going to prison. And whatever your momma was hoping you’d grow up to be simply ain’t going to happen. That’s what’s on the table in front of you right now.”

Susan slid effortlessly into tough-girl edginess as she spoke. She particularly liked using the word
motherfucker
because it generally shocked defendants when it fell from the lips of someone so attractive.

The teenager squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.
The basic, routine, day-to-day inner-city existential dilemma,
she thought.
Fucked one way. Or fucked the other.

Her classmate absolutely knew what her little hyper-harsh performance meant. He had his own variations on the same stage that he used from time to time. He clasped his arm around his client in a friendly, reassuring
I’m the only person in the entire world you can trust
grip, but at the same time he said to Susan, “Call your detective.”

Susan pushed away from the table. “Will do,” she said. She smiled.
Snake smile
. “Call me later,” she told the lawyer. “I have an appointment right now I don’t want to be late for.”

Andy Candy thought,
What am I doing here?
She wanted to say this out loud—maybe even scream it, high-pitched and near-panicked—but kept her mouth shut. She was seated beside Moth in the security area outside the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. He was bent forward at the waist with his hands on his knees, drumming his fingers nervously against his faded khaki pants.

Moth had said little in the drive over to the state attorney’s office, a modern, fortress-like edifice adjacent to the Metro Miami-Dade Justice Building, a sturdy, nine-floor courthouse that was no longer modern but was too young to be antique and had many of the same qualities as a factory slaughterhouse—an endless supply of crimes and criminals on a conveyor belt. They had passed through wide doors and metal detectors, ridden escalators and finally arrived at the security area, where they waited. The
comings and goings of lawyers, detectives, and court personnel kept up a steady buzzing, as sheriff’s officers behind bulletproof glass hit the electric entrance system. Most of the people arriving and departing seemed familiar with the process, and almost all seemed in an
I can’t wait
hurry, as if guilt or innocence had a timing clock attached.

Both Andy Candy and Moth straightened up when a burly thick-necked guard with a holstered 9mm pistol called his name out. They produced identification.

The cop gestured at Andy Candy. “She’s not on my list here,” he said. “She a witness?”

“Yes. Assistant State Attorney Terry wasn’t aware that I would be able to bring her along,” Moth lied.

The guard shrugged. He wrote down all of Andy Candy’s information—height, weight, eye color, hair color, date of birth, address, phone, Social Security number, driver’s license number—searched her pocketbook thoroughly, then once again made the two of them walk through a metal detector.

A secretary met them on the other side. “Follow me,” she said briskly, stating the obvious. She led them through a warren of desks filling a large central area. The prosecutors’ offices surrounded the desks. There were small name placards by each door.

They each spotted “S. Terry, Major Crimes” at the same time.

“She’s waiting,” the secretary said. “Go on in.”

Susan looked up from behind a cheap gray steel desk cluttered with thick files and a nearly-out-of-date desktop computer. Behind her, next to a window, was a whiteboard with lists of evidence and witnesses arrayed beneath a case number written in red. On another wall there was a large calendar, updated with mandatory hearings and other court appearances underscored. A single window, which overlooked the county jail, let in a weak shaft of light. There was little in the way of decoration other than a few black-framed diplomas and a half-dozen mounted newspaper articles. Three of them were illustrated with Susan’s black-and-white picture. It
was an austere place, dedicated to a single purpose: making the justice system work.

“Hello, Timothy,” Susan said.

“Susan,” Moth replied.

“Who is your friend?”

Andy Candy stepped forward. “Andrea Martine,” she said, shaking the prosecutor’s hand.

“And why are you here?”

“I needed some help,” Moth answered for her. “Andy is an old friend, and I hoped she could give me some perspective.”

This, Susan immediately realized, was probably not precisely true, nor completely untrue. She didn’t think she needed to care. She fully expected a short, somewhat sad, somewhat difficult conversation, and then her involvement in the uncle’s death would be over. She gestured the couple into chairs in front of the desk.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said. She reached down and produced a brown accordion file. “I was on duty the night your uncle died. It’s office policy that whenever feasible, an assistant state attorney be called to possible homicide scenes. This helps with the legal basis for chains of evidence. In your uncle’s case, however, it was pretty clear that it wasn’t a homicide from the get-go. Here,” she said, pushing the file toward Moth. “Read for yourself.”

As Moth began to open the file, Susan turned to her computer. “The pictures aren’t pretty,” she said briskly to Andy Candy. “There are copies in the file, and here, on the screen. Also the police report, the forensics team report, and autopsy and tox examinations.”

Moth began to pull sheets of paper from the file. “The toxicology report …”

“His system was clean. No drugs. No alcohol.”

“That didn’t surprise you?” Moth asked.

Susan responded slowly. “Well, in what way?”

“If he had fallen off the wagon after so many years, maybe then he would have been in such despair he shot himself. But he hadn’t.”

Susan again replied cautiously. “Yes. I can see how you might think that. But there was nothing in any tests that indicated anything other than a suicide. Stippling on the skin indicated the gunshot was from close range—pressed up against the flesh of the temple. The placement of the weapon on the floor was consistent with being dropped from your uncle’s hand as the force of the shot pushed him down and sideways. Nothing was taken from the office. There were no signs of any break-in. There were no signs of a struggle. His wallet, with more than two hundred dollars in cash, was in his pocket. I personally interviewed his last patient of the day, who left shortly before five p.m. She was a regular and had been seeing your uncle weekly for the last eighteen months.”

She pulled out a notebook. “Detectives also interviewed every other current patient, his ex-wife, his current partner, and some of his colleagues. We could find no evidence of any overt enemies and no one suggested any.” She flipped past a couple of pages in the notebook. “A check of his financials showed some stress: He owed more on his condo than it is currently worth—nothing new in Miami—but he had more than enough in stocks and investments to cover being upside down. He wasn’t a gambler owing some huge nut to a bookie. He wasn’t into some drug dealer for a small fortune. I wish he’d left a lengthy note, which would have been helpful. But there was one additional thing that contributed to our thinking …”

Moth’s eyes were traveling haphazardly over words on pages as Susan spoke. He looked up. His mouth opened as if to say one thing, then he shifted about and said another.

“What was that?”

“He wrote two words on his prescription pad.”

“What …”

“ ‘My fault,’ ” Susan quoted. “It’s in the photo of the desktop,” Susan said. “Do you recall seeing it when you found the body?”

“No.”

She handed a photo across the desktop to Moth, who studied it carefully.

“Of course, we can’t tell when he wrote it. It could have been there all
day, maybe even a week. It might have been in response to worrying about you, Timothy, because, after all, you called him several times throughout the morning and afternoon—we pulled all his phone records. But it indicated to us a kind of suicidal apology.”

“It doesn’t look right,” Moth said sharply. “It looks like it was scribbled quickly. Not like something he ever meant for anyone to see,” Moth added stiffly. “It could mean something else, right?”

“Yes. But I doubt it.”

“You said his last patient was at five p.m.?”

“Yes. A little before, actually.”

“He told me he had another. An emergency. Then he was supposed to meet me …”

“Yes, that was in your statement. But there was no record of another appointment. His calendar had someone coming in the next day at six p.m. He probably just mixed them up.”

“He was a shrink. He didn’t mix things up.”

“Of course not,” Susan said. She tried to limit the condescending tone in her voice. What she didn’t say out loud was,
Well, he damn straight mixed something up, because he wrote down “My fault” before shooting himself. Maybe not mixed up. Maybe just fucked up.

Susan looked over at Andy Candy. She had been silent, staring at a crime scene eight-by-ten glossy color close-up photo of Moth’s uncle facedown on his desktop, blood pooling beneath his cheek.
She’s getting an education,
the prosecutor thought.

Andy Candy had never seen this sort of picture before, other than on television and movies, and then it had seemed safe because it was unreal, a fiction made up for dramatic purposes. This picture was raw, explicit, almost obscene. She wanted to be sick, but she could not pull her gaze away.

“I’m sorry, Timothy, but it is what it is,” Susan said.

Moth hated this cliché. “That’s only
if
it is what it is,” he said, his voice stretching taut. “I still don’t believe it,” he said.

Susan waved her hand over the documents and pictures. “What do you
see here that says something different?” she asked. “I’m sorry. I know how close you were to your uncle. But depression that can cause suicide is often pretty well concealed. And your uncle, given his experience, his training, and his prominence as a psychiatrist, would know this—and how to hide it—better than most.”

Moth nodded. “That’s true.” He leaned back in his seat. “So that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Susan said. She did not add,
Unless someone somewhere comes up with something completely different that says I’m totally wrong so I’m forced to change my mind, which sure as hell isn’t going to happen.

“May I keep this?”

“I made copies of some of the reports for you. But Timothy, I’m not sure they will help you. You know what you should do,” she said.

Susan answered the question that wasn’t asked. “Go to a meeting,” she said. “Go back to Redeemer One
.
” She smiled. “See? The others there even have me calling it by the nickname you invented. Go there, Timothy. Go every night. Talk it out. You’ll feel much better.”