Untitled (30 page)

  "A fuckin' shrink?" Danny said out loud. Had Chemin gone nuts?

  "Is there some problem?" asked the guard. He stood up in his chair and put his hand on his side arm. Danny noticed this and had to suppress a laugh.

  Danny left and got back into his car. He sat on the street and played the radio. He was in a mess, but what was going on with Marshall and his wife? Chemin was always highstrung, but he had no idea that she needed to see a shrink.

  More important, why hadn't Marshall told him? They shared everything, but he'd withheld this for some reason. Danny was a little hurt, but maybe it was embarrassing. He decided that he would tell Marshall that he knew, but he wouldn't make a big deal out of it.

  An hour later, Chemin came out of the office, got into her car, and drove away. Danny followed her back into the city.

  He was surprised as Chemin went back to her own house and went inside. Danny parked down the block then sneaked back to the house. It was really cold outside, but when he did a job, he was thorough.

  This was some weird shit, he thought. He was staying there temporarily, and spying on the real owner. He went to a window and looked inside. Chemin was not there. He thought for a second that she might be upstairs, when he heard a door slam shut.

  Danny made his way around the back and saw Chemin by the barbecue pit. She had a pile of clothes on it. Chemin looked at the clothes for a second, her face showing a sadness that Danny had never seen. Then she sprayed lighter fluid on the clothes and set them on fire.

M
arshall stood over Jessica's lifeless body in the morgue. He felt sad, angry, and strangely guilty to see her half naked on the slab. She was naked from the waist up, and the fresh scar from the
Y
incision seemed to split her in two. Her face was cleaned up, but it was still a mess. Whoever killed her had beaten her about the head. Her right arm had been broken and bruised, probably trying to shield herself from the blows.

  Marshall felt sick seeing her breasts sticking up, the same breasts that he'd caressed, that had pulsed with vital life not so long ago.

  Jessica had been killed outside her apartment on the near east side. She'd been beaten with a heavy, blunt instrument, probably a lead pipe, said the coroner. She'd done a lot of bleeding and had probably lingered a while before going. Her purse was not found, and there was no evidence of sexual abuse. It looked to be a robbery, another casualty of the big city. The police forensic people had found nothing to link her to the killer, no hair, blood, or fiber. It was clean.

  Marshall stood with Agent Sommers. The coroner, a dreary-looking woman named Dr. Waters, worked across the room on another body.

  "So it was a garden-variety robbery?" asked Marshall.

  "Looks that way," said Sommers. "The police are checking her out to see if she was involved in drugs or anything like that."

  "She was a good person," said Marshall. "They're wasting their time." He had a note of anger in his voice.

  "You okay?" asked Sommers. "Was she a close friend?"

  "Yes. She had a crush on me."

  "I see. Was it mutual?"

  "No," said Marshall a little annoyed. "But I saw her every day, and I liked her."

  "Well, I think we can go now," said Sommers. "We are going over her apartment to make sure she didn't have any confidential papers in her possession."

  Sommers walked toward the door. Marshall couldn't take his eyes off the dead girl. He stared into her battered face and thought of her as she was, beautiful, confused, and in love with him. Suddenly, he saw the Johnsons lying on the floor, and the sooty head of Mrs. Johnson being taken from a fireplace. There was certainly a lot of death around him all of a sudden, he thought.

  "What was Jessica working on for the FBI?" asked Marshall.

  "What?" asked Sommers.

  "Jessica, what was she doing for the FBI on the Douglas case?"

  "She was just a secretary. And she was helping to coordinate our fact-finding."

  "Then why would she have anything confidential in her possession?"

  "She probably wouldn't," said Sommers, "but our good friends at the CIA suggested it as a precautionary measure. You know how they are."

  "Yes, I know." Marshall was worried. Detroit was a place where people died like any other city, but why Jessica and why now? Why did the FBI search her home, and why did the CIA prompt it?

  These were troubling questions, almost as troubling as the dead woman who lay before him. Marshall decided to do some looking of his own as he reached down and pulled the plastic cover up and over Jessica's tortured face.

  Marshall went back to the office and told the team what had happened. They all reacted with grief and shock. Roberta was especially upset. She and Jessica had been casual friends. She excused herself and went into the ladies' room, where they assumed she had a good cry.

  They all went back to work, but there was a pall over their effort for the rest of the day.

  Marshall got home late that night. He found Danny in the den watching TV with Vinny and drinking a beer. Vinny looked great. No one would have ever thought she'd been shot recently. Since Danny had come to live with him, Vinny had sort of moved in too. It was a little crowded, but he appreciated the company.

  Vinny read a book nestled under Danny's arm. They were hugged up on his sofa, looking very much in love. It was funny how Danny, who never had a life, now had love, and Marshall's life had fallen apart. Danny seemed quite happy even though he was out of a job and had almost beaten a man to death just days ago. They were quite a couple, he thought.

  "Are you two kids having sex in my house?" asked Marshall.

  "Already did that," said Danny.

  Vinny elbowed him in the stomach. "Don't listen to him," she said. "We didn't do anything."

  Marshall got comfortable on the sofa and drank a beer with Danny. He was still troubled by Jessica's death and wondered if he'd ever be the same.

  "You don't look so good," said Vinny.

  "He looks like shit," said Danny. "Just like I feel."

  "Stop worrying," said Vinny. "This thing will be over with soon."

  "One of my coworkers died," said Marshall.

  "Shit man, who was it?" said Danny.

  "It was that girl I told you about," said Marshall. He looked at Danny, to see if he remembered his story of indiscretion.

  "Yes, I remember," Danny said. His voice held a dread that Marshall didn't understand.

  "I can leave, if you two would like," said Vinny. "Then you don't have to talk in code all over my head like this."

"I'm sorry," said Marshall.

  "Don't be," said Vinny. "I'm used to it. You two are worse than women." Vinny took her book and walked out of the room.

  Danny looked after her, then when she was gone, he turned back to Marshall.

  "That girl you got into it with got slammed?" asked Danny.

  "Yes, she was beaten and left for dead. Looks like a robbery, no rape involved."

  Danny was silent. His head dropped, and he buried his face in his hands. "No," he said. "No fuckin' way."

  "What are you talking about? You didn't know Jessica."

  "Okay man, was there a lot of blood at the scene?"

  "Yes, Jessica bled a lot, but how did you know that?"

  "You're gonna need something stronger than that beer when you hear what I saw today." Danny took a deep breath. "I found Chemin. She's staying with some woman named Rochelle."

  "That's her annoying friend, but why is that upsetting?"

  "And she hasn't been into work at that place—what's it?"

  "Hallogent," said Marshall.

  "Right. She ain't been there for a while. I followed her all day. She's seeing a shrink. Some woman doctor."

  "I know about that. Figures she'd be going there a lot right now."

  "There's more," said Danny. "I followed her back here from the shrink's office." Danny stopped a moment, as if he couldn't bring himself to say what was on his mind. "Chemin . . . she went into the backyard and burned some clothes on the barbecue."

  Marshall almost dropped his beer. "No," he said. "You'd better not be fucking with me."

  "I wouldn't kid you about something like that, man. There ain't nothing funny about this."

  Marshall's head started spinning. He had to put the beer down for a second and compose himself. Jessica was dead on a half-assed robbery. A motive, but certainly a convenient one. And Chemin had caught him with Jessica. It would have been a simple thing to take a few days off, follow Jessica, then wait for her outside of her apartment and bash her pretty head in. In that instant, Marshall saw Chemin, her intelligent, calculating mind ticking, hiding in the shadows, cradling a heavy lead pipe. Then he saw her jump out into the light, and swing it at Jessica's frightened face.

  "Chemin didn't do it," said Marshall.

  "I want to believe that," said Danny. "But the shit don't look good, man. Why in the fuck was she burning them clothes?"

  "I can find out," said Marshall. "Did she leave the ashes?"

  "There wasn't nothing left of them clothes when she was finished. She washed out the grill."

  "Chemin always washes it after we use it. That doesn't mean anything." Marshall said it more for himself than for Danny.

  "I didn't say it did," said Danny. "Marsh, you gotta consider that she might have blown a gasket and killed that girl."

  "You got a lot of nerve," said Marshall, standing up. "I live with that woman. I know her. Just because you would kill over something stupid, doesn't mean she would."

  Danny seemed hurt. He stood up and took a step toward Marshall. "I know you think it's your fault. Maybe it is. But I'm your friend, and I'm not going to lie to you, man. And you're right. I'm a fuckin' psycho when it comes to love. If some guy was fucking my woman the first thing I'd think to do would be to kill him. So maybe I know what the fuck I'm talking about here. Takes one to know one."

  "Danny . . . don't listen to me," said Marshall, trying to apologize. "I got a lot of pressure on me these days."

  "I don't have pressure? I'm a goddamned monster according to the newspaper. The news had a cartoon of me with a dinosaur head on it."

  "We don't need to fight each other," said Marshall. And before he knew it, he was hugging Danny and patting him on the back. "We'll get through this, I swear."

  "What you going to do?" asked Danny. "If Chemin did this, then she's gonna need some protection."

  "If she did it, I have to turn her in."

  "Are you sick? She was fucked up for a moment, you can't let her get locked away for that. Okay, I think maybe she did it. But that don't mean she should go to the joint."

  "Danny, the girl was twenty-three years old. She was innocent."

  "She tried to fuck somebody's husband. Shit happens."

  "That's not a legal defense in this state. I can't protect Chemin. That makes me just as guilty."

  "Okay, okay," said Danny. "Listen to me here. I'm a cop, I admit I'm not the most stable muthafucka in the world, but I know how and why people kill—"

  "I was in the marines with you," said Marshall. "I shot men in that border incident."

  "That was different. We were a hundred yards away, firing in the dark. I'm talking about cold-blooded killing. Face-to-face. If Chemin did this, then she lost her damned mind, and if that's the case, then you can't let her go to jail."

  "The girl's family might not see the logic in that."

  "Yes, but they ain't you. Do you still want Chemin?"

  "You know I do."

  "Then you gotta protect her."

  Marshall was tearing apart inside. Danny was right, but to protect a murderer was against everything he stood for. But he'd driven her to it, hadn't he? That was Danny's unstated point. Y
ou did it
. If it wasn't for your weakness, none of this would have happened. Being a lawyer was a curse, he thought. It forced you to dissect the normal emotions of life and analyze them in the cold light of logic. Good and evil became just factors in an equation of decision, and death a consequence of reason.

  "I don't know, Danny. I have to think about it." Marshall thought a moment, then: "I have to get to her."

  "Let me do it," Danny said quickly. "You just think about what I said. Don't go off all crazy and shit. Think about it tonight. I'll find her and you can talk."

  "Okay, man," said Marshall. "Okay."

  Marshall went to bed that night with the unspeakable on his mind. Suddenly, he didn't care who killed Farrel Douglas. He didn't care who was assigned to be on the jury. The case was trivial to him. He might be married to a murderer. He kept trying to tell himself, his lawyer's mind, that there was another explanation, but it all made sense to him. The burned clothes, the robbery, which Chemin was smart enough to manufacture, even her shrink, a confessor who couldn't legally testify against her. It all made sense.

  Marshall took two Tylenol PM and climbed into bed. He hoped the drug would stop the thunder in his head and help him sleep. He fell into a slumber, but his mind had no peace. It was filled with terrible images of Jessica covered in blood, and his wife locked away deep in prison.

M
arshall walked into the courthouse the next day feeling worried. Normally, being in court made him feel better, but the trouble in his heart weighed down his mind. He debated asking for a continuance of the jury selection but knew Langworthy wasn't likely to grant it. And how would he ask anyway?
"Excuse me, Your Honor, can I have a personal
day to find out if my wife committed a heinous murder? By
the way, she killed a girl I almost fucked.
"
The absurdity of it almost brought a sick smile to his face.