The Wages of Sin (8 page)

 

Chapter Sixteen

It was midafternoon
when Elsie opened the screen door into the courthouse coffee shop, delighted to see that it was nearly deserted. The morning coffee crowd and noon lunch diners had departed, leaving the cluster of gray Formica tables empty, save one in the corner.

The longtime proprietor Silas, a trim man in a stained apron, emerged from the cooler clutching a five-­pound package of hamburger. “What can I get you, Elsie? Grill is still hot.”

“Oh, thank goodness, Silas,” she said. “I need a cheeseburger.”

“Onion?”

“Yes, please. No lettuce or tomato.”

“It'll be just a minute. You need a Diet Coke?”

“Oh yeah.”

While Silas poured a soda from the fountain, Elsie unclipped a bag of Lay's potato chips from the dispenser and opened it. Leaning against the counter, she eyeballed the ­couple at the sole occupied table: it was Josh Nixon and a middle-­aged woman with strawberry-­blond hair fashioned into an elaborate pouf.

“Elsie,” Nixon called. He waved her over. She picked up her Diet Coke and made her way reluctantly.

“Hey there,” she said.

Nixon pulled out the chair next to his. “Sit,” he said with false enthusiasm.

She slid onto the plastic seat. Pulling the paper from her straw with a tug, she gave him a no-­nonsense look. “What's up?”

“Do you know Claire? She's from Springfield.”

Elsie nodded, giving the woman a tight smile. “We've met. In court.”

Claire O'Hara was a criminal defense attorney with a strong trial record and a tough reputation. She had worked as a defense attorney for twenty years, and was able to command some of the highest fees in southwest Missouri. Legend had it that Claire was a tiger, and she knew how to get the fee up front.

Claire extended a puffy hand. “Nice to see you again.”

Elsie gave the hand a brief squeeze, noting that a half-­dozen gold bracelets circled the woman's wrist.

Claire turned to Josh with a feral grin. “I was the defense attorney for one of Elsie's very first jury trials. A stealing case, I think.”

“Embezzlement,” Elsie said.

Claire ignored her. “The jury was only out for twenty minutes. That's a record for me—­almost. Isn't that right? Wasn't it about twenty minutes before they found him not guilty?”

Elsie sucked on her straw. “Something like that,” she said. Elsie recalled the twenty-­minute verdict like it was yesterday; she'd wept in the stall of the woman's bathroom afterwards, battling self-­doubt.

Claire nestled closer to Josh Nixon. “She was so wet behind the ears. I felt sorry for her, I really did.” Claire laughed heartily, then stopped abruptly. “Can I have a chip?”

“Sure,” Elsie said, offering the bag.

Claire took three. “My blood sugar. I'm getting woozy.” She turned to Josh and gave him a girlish grin.

“Elsie!” Silas called from the counter. “Got your burger.”

She picked up her Coke. “I should probably take it to go. Got stuff to do upstairs.”

Josh reached out and gripped her arm. “Eat it here. We need to talk.”

When he didn't release her, she looked down at his hand on her arm, and gave him an inquiring look. “We do?”

“Yes,” he said in a decided voice.

Somebody wants to ditch old Claire,
she thought with a mean fizzle of satisfaction. “Okay,” she said, setting her Coke back down. Josh freed her arm. “I'll be right back.”

She winked at Claire, who looked like she'd sucked a sour lemon. Elsie picked up the burger, pausing to snatch up packets of mustard and ketchup, and settled back in her chair.

Claire had taken over the bag of Lay's.

“What's cooking with you two,” Claire asked in a deliberately casual tone. “Big bad case? Or big bad romance?” She turned on Josh with an insinuating smile.

He didn't look at Claire when he answered. “Elsie is part of the prosecution team in the
State v. Larry Paul
case.”

Claire adjusted the sunglasses atop her head. “The murder case with the pregnant victim?”

Elsie and Josh both nodded, and Claire flashed a grin at them. “I don't envy you all being on either side of that old mess.”

Elsie doctored her burger with the mustard and ketchup. “Murder cases are never uncomplicated,” she said loftily.

“Is that right?” Claire said. “How many murder cases have you handled?”

Blood rose in Elsie's face. “One.”

Claire chuckled. Jingling her bracelets, she said, “Josh, if you need any advice from the soul of experience, just give me a call. I'll be glad to lend a hand.”

He nodded. “Thanks, Claire. I will.”

She rose, hauling the leather strap of a cherry red Coach briefcase onto her shoulder. “I'll let you kiddos get to work.”

Elsie was chewing on a bite of burger. “Nice to see you,” she said with her mouth full.

“Oh sure, yeah. You know, Elsie, we have a friend in common.”

Elsie raised her eyebrows, unsure who the friend might be.

“Dean Mitchell. Dean Junior,” said Claire. She gave Elsie a knowing wink, turned her back, and headed out the door.

Elsie nearly choked on the mouthful of hamburger. She sucked down Diet Coke to help her swallow.

“Who's Dean Mitchell?” Josh asked.

“Dean Mitchell—­Junior—­is Smokey Dean. Son of Dean Mitchell, Senior, the original Smokey Dean. Dean Senior started the meatpacking and barbeque empire that Junior has inherited.” Staring at the doorway Claire had departed through, Elsie said, “Yeah, that was a shot. Dean Junior was my blood enemy, back in school. To this day, I do my best to avoid him. Why on earth would she want to be pals with Smokey? He's mean as a snake. Good Lord, Josh, Claire O'Hara is insufferable.” Elsie turned back to Nixon and gave him a raised brow. “But she seems to like you.”

He expelled his breath with a long puff. “Thank God you showed up. I didn't think she'd ever leave.”

“Faker. I knew you didn't have any business to discuss.” Elsie stared inside her empty Lay's bag. “Bitch ate up all my chips.”

Nixon reached into a folder and pulled out several pages. “Oh, there's always business.”

While he sorted through the papers, Elsie said, “Did I mention that the tests came back on substances the police seized at the trailer the morning they took Larry Paul into custody? And the substance which looked suspiciously like meth turned out to be meth. Ashlock's wondering whether your client would like to answer some questions about that. Want to set that up?”

Nixon barked a humorless laugh. “Oh, I think Ashlock has done all the talking he's going to get to do with my client. Do you want to accept this copy of my new motion?”

“Yeah, sure. What is it?” Elsie pushed her plate to the side, so she wouldn't run the papers through hamburger grease.

“Request for leave to take a deposition. And here's something for you.” He tore off the spare carbon of a bright pink subpoena form. “I figured you'll have to produce her.”

As she scanned the pink subpoena, Elsie's brows made an angry furrow in her forehead. “What the fuck?”

“I'm going to depose her. The kid.”

The subpoena Nixon had served upon Elsie ordered Ivy Dent to appear and be deposed in the case of
State v. Larry Paul
.

“This is unprecedented.”

“Well, it's a murder case. And she's the only witness to the crime who's still available. Stout fled.”

“She's six years old.”

“Makes it even more crucial that the defense have the opportunity to fully examine her story.”

Elsie jumped to her feet. “We haven't even held the preliminary hearing yet. You have no right, no right to do this now. I will oppose this.”

Nixon leaned toward her, speaking in a conciliatory voice. “Sit down, Elsie; let's talk this through. This is a death penalty case.”

“Goddamn it, Nixon, I can't let you take advantage of a child witness. I'm going to scream and shout to the judge on this. Why should you get to depose her when you'll have the opportunity to cross-­examine her at preliminary hearing? You're double dipping. You just want to trip the kid up.”

“I'll make a deal with you.” He reached out and put a hand around her wrist but she shook him off.

“Fuck you. What can you offer that I'd want to hear?”

“Maybe I'll waive preliminary hearing.”

The suggestion took her by surprise. She stepped back to the table. He pushed the chair toward her again. “Sit down.”

She sat. “Is this a trick?”

“No trick. I'll waive preliminary hearing if you'll produce the kid for a deposition.”

Elsie looked away, debating the merits of the proposition. Aloud, she said, “In a deposition, the judge won't be on hand to rein you in.”

“True,” he said. “But the defendant won't be there either.”

Depositions could be long and messy, and a witness could be asked questions that a judge wouldn't permit in court. But the environment was far less intimidating than a courtroom, particularly for a child witness.

Elsie gave him a hard stare. “I want that waiver in writing.”

“No problem. Do we have a deal?”

Elsie started to agree before she stopped in midphrase. “I'll have to run it by Madeleine.”

 

Chapter Seventeen

Nell Stout drove
her dirty white Buick sedan slowly down Delmar Street. On the passenger side of the front seat, her son Bruce sat beside her, wearing sunglasses and a fishing hat studded with lures.

“They're going to know you're up to something, driving like that,” he said. With his molars he bit off a length of beef jerky and chewed.

“You're scarfing down jerky and soda pop when we're trying to do a job here.” Nell hissed in disgust. “No wonder you can't hold down a job. Even Smokey don't want much to do with you.”

“Quit riding me.”

“Well then, you keep your eyes open for the child. If we know when she comes and goes, you'll be able to snag her and see what's she's up to.”

Bruce swallowed. “Why don't we just go on to her house?”

“Why don't you just choke on that jerky? We got to figure out what's going on.”

“I know what's going on. Larry done got pissed off at Jessie and he gone after her with a bat. And she died. End of story.”

His mother cut her eyes at him. “You don't know shit,” she said. When they neared Ivy's foster home, Nell drove past it and parked in front of a house two doors down. “Give me a piece of jerky.”

Bruce took the bag from his lap and handed it over. Nell pulled a strip from the bag and nibbled the tough smoked hide with her front teeth, like a rabbit.

“Too bad your back teeth is gone. That ain't no way to eat jerky. You gotta tear it.” And he demonstrated, gripping the hide between his back molars and pulling.

Nell swallowed, giving him a sour look. “When you get to be as old as me, you'll be glad to have a tooth in your head,” she began, but paused as the school bus turned the corner and chugged down the street.

“Scoot down,” she mumbled around the wad of meat in her mouth. “Make sure she don't see you.”

“Don't tell me what to do,” he said, but he slumped in his seat and tugged the hat lower onto his face.

The bus stopped at an intersection several houses down the street. Children exited the vehicle: two big boys, followed by a cluster of girls. After several moments passed, Ivy emerged, pausing to pull her blue backpack high onto her shoulders.

They watched her amble down the sidewalk, a sheet of manila paper in her hand. A girl in a yellow jacket was half a block ahead of Ivy, but she stopped and turned her way.

“Ivy,” she called.

Ivy stopped on the sidewalk. She reached up and adjusted her glasses, but didn't move to join the girl on the sidewalk.

“Oh, Ivy,” the girl in the yellow jacket called again, in a singsong voice.

In the Buick, Bruce whispered, “What's she doing?” but his mother shushed him.

The girl in yellow began to backtrack, advancing toward Ivy on the sidewalk. Ducking her head, Ivy stood her ground.

“Some friend of hers, you think? Maybe we ought to head out of here,” Bruce said in an uneasy whisper; but Nell shook her head.

“Ain't no friend,” she said.

The girl sauntered up, closing the distance between them on the sidewalk. “Whatcha got, Ivy?” she said, with a nasty smile.

Ivy narrowed her eyes. She didn't reply.

When she was within arm's length of Ivy, she shouted: “I know what you got! Ivy germs!” She reached out and knocked the paper from Ivy's hand.

But as the paper fluttered to the sidewalk, Ivy reached out and snaked her fingers around the other girl's wrist, then gave it a vicious twist.

The girl backed away, fighting to free herself. “Stop it! Let me go!” But Ivy doubled her hold, using both hands to hang on.

“You're hurting me!” She finally released herself from Ivy's grasp. “I'm gonna tell!” She turned on her heel and ran away.

Ivy knelt down onto the sidewalk and picked up the paper. With her hand, she dusted it off, then blew on it, and wiped it a second time. She let out a long breath, and tugging at the blue backpack with her free hand, Ivy resumed her path down the sidewalk.

In the Buick, Bruce cleared his throat, and pushed his fishing hat back into place. One of the lures snagged his finger, and he pulled it away with a jerk. “I don't know about this, Ma. Seems like a lot of ­people around here. Kids and everything.”

Watching Ivy enter the front door of the yellow house, Nell shook her head.

“Nah. This'll be easy. Easy as pie.”

 

Chapter Eighteen

On the double-­sized
mattress in Elsie's one-­bedroom apartment, she rolled onto her side and studied Ashlock. He lay on his back with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling. The hair on his chest, she noted, was starting to turn gray.

They had just finished an evening romp, which though it was uncharacteristically speedy, had nonetheless gotten Elsie where she wanted to go. Staring at Ashlock's five-­o'clock shadow, she thought that her orgasm was more the product of her own concentration than any particular attention on Ashlock's part.

He exhaled out with a deep sigh. It didn't sound like a sigh of ecstasy. She nudged him with a bare knee. “What are you thinking about?”

His eyes opened, and he looked at her with surprise, as though he'd forgotten she was there. “Huh?”

“What is going through your head? Is it Burton?”

Ashlock's teenage son was still a sensitive topic. Elsie had no intention of stepping in as a substitute for the boy's mother, and Ashlock had never indicated that it was a role he wanted her to fill.

When he didn't answer immediately, she said in a threatening tone, “Don't tell me you're thinking about your ex.” Now that Ashlock was the primary custodian of his son, his communication with his ex-­wife, a born-­again Chris­tian who was the mother of his son and two grade-­school daughters, had become much more frequent. And contentious.

“Lord, no. Not her. Or Burton.” He closed his eyes. “I've got to locate Bruce Stout.”

Elsie kicked the tangled sheet out of the way and sat, leaning against the headboard. “That's really flattering. You're thinking about some dirtbag while you're screwing me.”

Ashlock gave a halfhearted laugh. “Not during. After.”

“Oh. That's different. Totally cool, then.”

He rubbed his face with his hands. “Sorry, Elsie. I'm frustrated, that's all.”

Scooting back onto the mattress beside him, she stroked his arm. “You don't need Bruce Stout to make our case. We have a ton of forensic evidence. We have the murder weapon. We have the little girl. And fuuuck, Ash,” and she leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Larry Paul? He confessed.”

He scratched the ear she'd whispered into. “Yeah. He did.”

She propped herself on an elbow again. “You made him sing like a bird, Ash.” And she was no longer worried about the Motion to Suppress that Josh Nixon had threatened, early on. Elsie had done her homework on the inebriation issue, and was confident that the law was on their side.

“But he said he wasn't alone that night. Bruce Stout was with him and Jessie Dent in her trailer.”

“So? Are Bruce Stout's prints on the murder weapon?”

“No.” He didn't sound convinced.

“Did Larry Paul try to attribute the murder to the other guy?”

“Not when I questioned him. But he was zoned out, stoned out of his mind. He'll change his story; he's bound to. And if I can't locate Stout, well—­it leaves a hole.”

Elsie sat up in bed. “It doesn't endanger the verdict. The case is airtight. Open and shut.” She looked down at her bare thighs with a critical eye. It would be nice to have muscle tone in her legs. But it wasn't like she had all day to exercise. She covered them with the sheet and sat up straight.

Ashlock reached out and cupped her breast. “You're a pretty sight.”

Elsie smiled. Sometimes he said exactly the right thing.

He gave a gentle squeeze and dropped his hand. “But there's no such thing as an airtight case. You know that as well as I do. The defense can always spy a pinhole.”

She nodded, thinking. “You've already done a search for the other guy—­Bruce.”

“I've been to his house twice, once with a search warrant. Looked high and low. If his mother's hiding him out, she's not giving it up.”

“He lives with his mother?” She reached to the bedside table, where a glass of Diet Coke sat. The ice had nearly melted, diluting it to a light tan color. She drank it anyway. “I thought you said he was in the drug trade.”

“Small time. He's a no-­account. Not smart enough to sell much.”

“What does his mama think?” Elsie pressed the wet glass against her neck. The September evening was warm.

He scratched the stubble on his jaw. “Not sure what to make of old Nell Stout. She's worked in the kitchen at Smokey Dean's Barbeque as long as I can remember. Worked for old man Dean, before his boy took over the franchise. They may have her at the meatpacking plant now, outside the city limits.”

“Oh shit. Smokey Dean, Junior. I can't stand him.”

The mention of Dean Mitchell conjured up ugly visions of Elsie's adolescence. Dean had been a year ahead of Elsie at middle school in Barton. He was the biggest kid in school, the product of early puberty onset and unlimited access to his family's barbeque pit.

Whether he became a bully because of his size, his upbringing, or his nature, Elsie didn't know; but he had terrorized the middle school, taunting bespectacled girls like Elsie and flinging the bookish boys down the stairways. When the principal tried to penalize the boy, Smokey Senior—­one of the most successful men in the county, with friends in local government and on the school board—­hired a lawyer and threatened the school district with a lawsuit for harassment of his son. After that, no one even tried to restrain Dean Mitchell Junior's reign of terror.

“Smokey Dean is a dick. And his old man was a dick, until he died. Do you know what Junior used to do? He would hold my head under the water at the city swimming pool in the summer. I almost quit going.” She took a gulp of watery Coke. “And it was hot as hell at my house.”

“Son of a bitch.” Ashlock caressed her arm. “I bet you put up a fight.”

“I was no match for him. But my mother was.” At the recollection, she laughed aloud: when Marge Arnold learned the reason Elsie was avoiding the city swim park, she drove straight to the pool, hunted young Dean Mitchell down in the snack bar, and confronted him.

“She grabbed him by the ear. It was positively Victorian.” Elsie threw back her head and crowed.

“Did it work?” Ashlock asked, grinning at the story.

“Yeah—­for me, anyway. He looked for other victims, but he didn't fuck with me anymore. My mother was one woman who didn't put up with his shit.” She pulled the hair off her neck, found a hair tie, and tied it back. “His dad went to the middle school that summer, and said if his son was assigned to Mom's English class, he'd sue.”

“That boy would've benefited from a year under Marge's thumb.” He threw the sheet back. “I better get going. Burton will be waiting.”

“Can't he walk home?”

“It's getting dark; I'm not comfortable with him walking all that distance. We're across the highway. And he'll want to eat. Fourteen-­year-­old boy.”

She wrapped her hand around his penis. “If you were fourteen, we could go for a second round.”

He stroked her cheek. “If I was fourteen, you'd be in jail.” He patted her hand and shifted to get off the bed. She released him.

“Guess I'm eating alone,” she said. She'd been eating alone more often than not, since Burton moved to town.

“You can eat with us, if you want.” His voice was noncommittal rather than persuasive; she knew he was only asking out of politeness.

“If you were fourteen, I'd be in kindergarten.”

Zipping his pants, he said, “I bet you were a smart-­mouthed kindergartner. But I wouldn't have messed with you on a bet, your mama is too scary. Hey, tomorrow's Saturday. Burton has a practice for the debate team. Want to get some lunch? Hang out, just the two of us.”

Elsie shook her head. “Can't do it tomorrow. It's Mom's birthday, and I'm running around with her.” She gave a weary sigh. “We got too damn many relatives, Ash. The only time I see you anymore is at the courthouse.”

He didn't reply; just pulled her to him for a kiss, then walked away, buttoning his shirt as he left.