True Crime (24 page)

“I’ve gotta go. I’ve got meetings to attend before I go to the prison. What do you want?”

I took a breath to cool the anger down. Cecilia regarded me, meanwhile, with her murky brown eyes, with that face of frowns. There was nothing stupid in those eyes, in that face, not a single stupid thing. There was nothing of kindness in them either. There were no second chances with her.

“All right,” I said, still annoyed. “Frank Beachum. The Amy Wilson case.”

She watched me impatiently, saying nothing.

“Who else was there?” I asked her.

She didn’t move or answer. She kept considering me. She would consider the execution tonight with those same eyes, I thought. She would watch Beachum on the table with that same expression. Afterward, in the visitors’ room with the other dignitaries, she would sip a little white wine from a paper cup. She would listen to jokes about local politics and if the person making the joke was important enough she would laugh, showing her crooked teeth. While Beachum’s body was being carried out the delivery door to the hearse, she would laugh. She was a damned good prosecutor.

“What do you want?” she croaked again.

“I want to know who else was at Pocum’s grocery the day Amy Wilson got shot,” I said. “There was Porterhouse and Nancy Larson outside and Beachum. And who else? Someone drove in just as Beachum was leaving, just as Nancy Larson was starting to drive away. That’s why she was backing up, to let the new arrival in. If she’d backed up from the soda machine, she’d have come at Beachum from his right side. She came at him from his left. She was backing up from the driveway cause someone blocked her path, coming in as she was leaving the lot.”

There was a long pause. There were her eyes, her frowns. There were cicadas singing in the still air and then
the light changed at the corner and there was traffic grumbling and whizzing past again. A long pause.

“What difference does it make?” said Cecilia Nussbaum finally. And I knew I was right.

I took a half step toward her. Tension made my skin feel a size too small. “He’s the shooter, Cecilia,” I said. “Whoever he was, he shot Amy Wilson. It wasn’t Beachum. It was him.”

A horn honked twice below us. Wally Cartwright had pulled up to the curb in an official brown Cadillac. He stopped it behind my Tempo. He frowned grimly up at us from behind the wheel.

Cecilia Nussbaum spared him a long, slow glance, then turned to me again. Her froggy croak was as dispassionate as before. “You’re parked illegally.”

“Who was he, Cecilia? Come on.”

“What is this?” she said. “What are you planning to write? This is a solid case.”

“Yeah, except the condemned man is innocent.”

“If you write that, it’ll be wrong. If you’re working up some conspiracy theory …”

“No, nothing like that.”

“I don’t send innocent men to the Death House.”

“I know that. I do,” I said. “But you made a mistake.”

Cartwright honked the horn again. This time, Nussbaum didn’t look at him at all.

“The guy was buying steak sauce,” I said. “That’s what the Larson woman saw in his hand. The whole thing happened after she was gone. That’s why she didn’t hear the gunshot.”

“All that was covered in the trial. Read the transcripts. A witness saw Beachum running out. It’s all solid, Everett.”

“The witness didn’t see him.” The tension pushed the volume of my voice up a notch. I forced it down again. It
was not a good idea to shout at Cecilia. “There was a rack of potato chips in his way. I went there. I saw it.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“It was six years ago. Anyway, the witness came down the aisle. He could see from there. It’s all in the transcripts.” Now the impatience was creeping into her voice as well.

“But he
didn’t
see,” I said, controlling myself as best I could. “I talked to him. He didn’t see, Cecilia.”

“You’re telling me he said that.”

“No. But … I could see it in his face. I could tell.”

When I said that, she drew back. All her leathery frowns seemed to pucker in an expression of disdain. “You mean you haven’t got anything,” she said curtly.

“There
was
somebody else there. Wasn’t there?”

“You haven’t got doodly squat.”

“He didn’t doodly do it, how much squat do I need?”

I bit my lip, reining myself in, holding down my temper. Cecilia studied me another second or two. Then she turned and started down the stairs.

I went after her. “Cecilia. Please.”

Her heels hammered the steps.

“There was someone else, wasn’t there?” I said.

“A kid,” she croaked without turning back. “He bought a Coke from the machine. He didn’t even go inside.”

“He shot her.”

“We interviewed him. I remember it. We issued a description of his car and he came in of his own free will. He didn’t see anything.”

She reached the sidewalk, headed for the car. I stumbled after her. “You’d already made the arrest. You interviewed him as a witness,” I said. “He wasn’t a witness. He was the guy!”

Wally Cartwright opened the driver’s door and loomed
up out of the car. He watched me grimly across its roof. Cecilia took hold of the passenger door handle.

I put myself in front of her. “Tell me his name. Let me talk to him.”

“I don’t know his name. He was nothing to the case.”

“It’s in your files, your records, your notes. Somewhere. He was the shooter, Cecilia.”

She pulled the door open. “My office is closed for the day. Call me tomorrow. I’ll see if I can find it.”

She started to get into the car. I felt a red sunburst go off inside me. I caught hold of the Caddy’s door, drawing it back, drawing her back with it. Those eyes and all those frowns swung around to me. I spoke into them through gritted teeth.

“If you let it wait till tomorrow, then you better sleep goddamn well tonight,” I said. “Cause after today, I’m gonna haunt you, lady. I’m gonna be your bogey man.”

At that, the circuit attorney let the door go. She brought herself full around to face me. Her small figure was very still but her gaze was cloudy, swirling.

Stupid
, I thought.
Stupid big mouth stupid
.

Cecilia Nussbaum spoke quietly, an expressionless froggy noise. “I’m not Wally,” she said.

I closed my eyes.

“I’m a lot bigger than Wally,” she said. “And if you threaten me again, there’ll be pieces of your life all over the gutter. The rest will have blown away.”

I stood still, my eyes closed.
Stupid
, I thought,
stupid big mouth stupid stupid
. Cecilia Nussbaum, meanwhile, lowered herself into the passenger seat. She drew the door shut with a heavy thud. I opened my eyes again just as the Cadillac pulled out into the traffic and drove off down Market Street.

I
walked into the city room, and Bob Findley smiled. A bad thing, that smile. A sort of tight, satisfied tightening of his lips, a flash in the quiet blue eyes. I could see it clear across the room before he lowered his head again to the papers in front of him.

I knew what that smile meant. Luther Plunkitt had called the paper to complain. I’d messed up the Beachum interview. Professionally speaking, I might just as well have handed Bob an axe.

I held my breath and went to my desk. Sat down and switched on my terminal; tapped in my name. The machine booped and my message light flashed on the screen. I tilted back in my chair and called the messages up one by one. A guy in the mayor’s office, a cop I’d been dealing with, a statistics woman in Washington. Stories I was working on. Nothing that couldn’t wait until after Frank Beachum was dead.

On the way over, I’d stopped off to pick up a ham sandwich. I opened the paper bag now and set it near the keyboard. I looked at the hard roll dripping mustard. My stomach burned. I hadn’t eaten since I’d talked to Porterhouse, and I didn’t feel much like eating now. All the same, I took up the sandwich with one hand. With the other, I opened my desk drawer and brought out the phone book. I slapped it down on the desk as I ripped into the roll.

“Hey, Ev.”

It was Mark Donaldson, my newsside pal. His lean, sharp, cynical face leaned over my monitor, trying to look confidential. I lifted my chin to him, chewing away.

“So what’s with you and Bob?” he said softly. “He’s been giving you the evil eye all day.”

I worked the hunk of sandwich down. “I porked his wife and he’s pissed,” I said.

“Ha ha. Very funny. Not that I’d blame you.”

“Any word on Michelle?”

Donaldson nodded. “Bad. They’re telling her parents to pull the plug.”

The next bite of sandwich went doughy and tasteless in my mouth. My stomach bubbled and steamed. “That’s tough,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Donaldson. “Poor kid. Now I feel bad for calling her a snotnose.”

“Forget it. She was a snotnose. But she was one of us.”

“Was she?”

“Yeah.”

“Shame,” he said. Then he leaned in even farther. He made a gesture with his hand over my terminal, a little come-ahead wave of his fingers like a traffic cop telling the pedestrians to cross. “So come on,” he said. “What’s the poop with you and Findley?”

I shook my head. “It’s personal.”

“Ah!” he said, disgusted. “You got a personal life now?”

I swallowed the wad of dough and meat and mustard. It plopped into my roiling stomach: a stone dropping into a volcano.

“I had a personal life once,” said Donaldson. “My wife gave it to me for Christmas. I exchanged it for a tie.” He held his tie up. “Whattaya think?”

“I think you’re a wise man. Is Rossiter still here?”

“I don’t know, why?”

“I was gonna try and talk her into doing some scutwork for me. Women are feeling more secure these days or something.”

“No, I think she went home. To hang herself probably.” I laughed wearily. “So how secure are you?” Donaldson shrugged. “I’ll fetch you a cup of coffee if you give me head.”

“Could you make a couple of phone calls for me?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“See if you can track down any of the detectives who worked on the Beachum case. See if anyone ever heard of another witness who was at the scene of the murder. A young guy. A kid. Just drove in and bought a soda or something. Didn’t see anything. I just need a name and address.”

“Hokay.”

“And could you fetch me a cup of coffee?”

He blew me a kiss and walked away.

I put the ham sandwich down, half finished. My stomach couldn’t take any more. I drew the phone book to me and opened it to the state listings. Legal Services, capital punishment division.

I had just found the number when I caught a movement at the corner of my eyes. I felt that in my stomach too, a hot whiplash of acid. It was Alan, opening his office door to look out. To look at me. And Bob was standing up from the city desk, ready to join the attack. They were coming to get me.

I took hold of the phone fast. Punched in the number. Phone to my ear, I swiveled in my chair and waved at Alan. Alan glanced at Bob. Bob glanced at Alan. Alan withdrew into his office. Bob sat down.

“Whew,” I said.

“Legal Services,” a man said over the phone. A young man by the sound of it. A young, very tired man.

“It’s Steve Everett at the
News
,” I said. “Who can talk to me about Beachum?”

“All of us,” he said sleepily. “Anyone here.”

“How about you? You’re there.”

“Yup.”

“Okay. Nancy Larson,” I said, “the witness in the parking lot.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“As she’s driving out, someone else drives in. Another guy, a kid, another witness.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“There’s nothing like that in the files,” said the man with a sigh of exhaustion. “Nothing,” he murmured sleepily. “Nothing …”

“Are you sure? How can you be sure?”

He made a noise. A laugh, I think. Some kind of noise like a laugh. “Because I’m sure, Mr. Everett. Believe me,” he said. “Even if I’d never seen this case before, I’d have had all the files memorized in the last two weeks. There’s nothing like that. There are no other witnesses.”

I hesitated. I listened to the silence on the line. “Thanks,” I said finally. I put the phone back in the cradle.

With a nervous glance at Alan’s door, I got up and walked down the aisle to Donaldson. He was still on the phone. He looked up at me as I leaned over his monitor. He shook his head.

“Shit,” I said.

The door to Alan’s office opened again. Alan stepped out again.

“Shit,” I said.

Donaldson hung up. “That was Benning. He was whip on the investigation. He says it rings a bell, but he doesn’t remember any names. He said it was just some minor thing.”

“Shit,” I said.

“And Ardsley, who headed the investigation, is retired. In Florida somewhere.”

“Shit,” I said. “What about the files?”

“He says they’re all over at the CA’s office.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Everett!” Alan was calling me from across the room. Bob was standing up again at the city desk. “Everett, get in here.”

“Shit,” I said.

Donaldson raised one corner of his mouth. “Come on, man, what is this?”

I left his desk and walked across the room slowly toward Alan.

Bob had joined him now at the office door. Alan waved me inside. “Would you step this way, Mr. Everett.” Bob came in behind me and closed the door. He was smiling that smile again.

“You don’t have to look so happy about it,” I told him. “I’m not happy,” he said softly. “Why would you say that?”

Alan lowered himself into his chair. He massaged his forehead with his hand. “I should be home dancing with my wife,” he said.

I grabbed my cigarettes and shot one into my mouth. “Look, I don’t have time for this. So Plunkitt’s pissed. That’s too bad.” I lit the cigarette and sucked on it hard.

“Oh yes,” said Bob, his eyes glittering. “He’s pissed all right. And there’s no smoking in this building.”

Alan heaved a deep sigh. “Boys, boys, boys. Come on. I can’t have this. I got ten reporters out there covering you guys and no one’s watching the city. Everett, say you’re sorry. Bob, punch his lights out. Let’s get it over with.”