Fourth Person No More

by John Gastineau

  “Hey,” shouted one of the quicker-thinking twinks, “Wait a minute.”

  “Who are your suspects?” This from Marley, a pro with enough wit and intelligence to ask an actual question.

  Crandall had climbed a couple of steps when he started to pull a cigar from his coat pocket. As he peeled the cellophane, he stopped, turned halfway back to us, and gave us a smirking, sidelong look.

  The clans moved forward again to follow. Moze, who had been avoiding eye contact with me with conviction, nearly fell backward over the tape. He straightened up and put his hand on the chest of a cameraman who was crowding him. His face was getting red, and his eyes were darting back and forth between the pack and Wood, who was having his own problems keeping the clans back and at bay. By that time, the reporters had recovered and started shouting questions, jostling for position against the tape as they did.

  “Will you confirm that the telephone lines were cut?”

  “Did Aunt Lotty escape because of her wig?”

  “Will you arrest Orlo Ratliff?”

  “Sheriff, are you or the state police running the investigation?”

  If Wood answered, I couldn’t hear it. The clans were in mortar mode, lobbing questions in, each drowned out by the next. Crandall lit his cigar, shook his head in disgust, and continued his climb.

  In those situations, the best you can hope for is a question that will capture the source’s attention, make him want to stop and answer it, maybe stay for another. From the back, as loud as I could, I shouted, “Why’re you hiding Aunt Lotty?”

  It almost worked. Crandall stopped. Wood craned his neck to see over the crowd.

  I might’ve got an answer if it hadn’t been for the twink cameraman who was crowding Moze, shooting Crandall climbing the steps over Moze’s shoulder. Marley told me later that when I shouted my question the cameraman turned in my direction. As he did, a long mike that extended over the front of the camera caught Moze in the back of the head.

  Youthful and nervous, Moze reacted. Gently, as though he wished to do no more damage than necessary to either of them, Moze brushed the camera aside from the twink’s face with the back of one hand. With the other, he punched the cameraman in the mouth.

  The clans surged forward to capture the scene. Moze and the cameraman went down, out of view, like they’d been sucked into the sidewalk. Wood waded in, plucking bodies off them like chicken feathers, to break it up. He knocked a female twink to her knees. She screamed about assault and torn hose. At the top of the stairs, Crandall fixed me with one of his more malevolent stares before he went inside.

  Since the atmosphere was no longer conducive to effective newsgathering, the press conference broke up. A couple of the younger reporters drifted over my way to find out who I was and what I knew, but I shooed them away.

  Wood sent Moze off while he talked with the cameraman and his crew over to one side, trying smooth things out. In addition to a public relations fiasco, he was probably looking at a lawsuit. The other twink crews spread out around the courthouse to film standups.

  Marley sidled up to me, grinning. If he wasn’t the cat who ate the canary, he at least had feathers on his lips.

  “There’s always news when you’re around,” Marley said, knowing full well how much I hated that whole idea being part of the story.

  “I didn’t start that.”

  “Good question, though. Are they hiding the old woman?”

  I told Marley about what I’d learned. He was professional enough not to ask me how I knew what I told him.

  “I’m not asking you to kiss anybody’s ass,” Marley said when I finished. “But you’re going to have to get this—whatever this is—straightened out with the sheriff and the prosecutor. I can’t cover this stuff for you, and there’s too much going on for us to operate without at least some official sources.”

  I allowed myself a sigh. I wanted to hang my head and rub my neck, but that would’ve been too much of a cliché for an old kidder like Marley. My first instinct was screw ‘em: If Wood and Crandall wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know, I’d find somebody else who would. But in the long run, Marley was right.

  “So what’re you going to do about it?” Marley asked. He is a great believer in personal responsibility; I imagine it’s got something to do with the Program.

  “Try Wood.” I said. “At least find out what the problem is. Then figure out what to do about it?”

  “I’ll write the story,” Marley said. “I’ll try and keep your name out of it.”

  As Marley headed back toward the paper, a cameraman turned and began tracking him, probably filming for continuity or file footage or filler. Marley rarely misses a trick. Without turning, he slowly raised a fist above his head. As he extended the middle digit of that fist, the cameraman yanked his lens toward the sky.

  Wood’s office is in the jail, which is located on one corner of the square across the street from the courthouse. As I went around the other side of the courthouse, Moze appeared from the basement entryway cops use to bring prisoners in and out of the building. When he saw me, he started, like maybe I was a ghost. Then he walked right up to me and put his hand on my elbow.

  “You arresting me, Moze?”

  A bruise was blooming on his left cheekbone, and his uniform was wrinkled and smudged.

  “Well,” he said, trying to decide just what he was doing. “No,” he said finally.

  “Then what’re you doing?”

  “Crandall wants to see you.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “Well, goddamn it, I am.”

  “For that little fracas a minute ago or for letting me into Aunt Lotty’s? Or both?”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Moze said.

  He bit his lips. Apparently, he’d forgotten about Aunt Lotty’s. He shook his head in eternal regret.

  “Don’t make this any worse for me than it already is.”

  The courtrooms are in two corners of the square third floor. For convenience, the judges’ offices are in the third corner and Crandall has a suite of offices in the fourth. There are a law library, two jury rooms, and a lawyers conference room in the spaces between each corner.

  There was plenty of room for me to wait in one of those places, but they left me instead in the hall. By the time Wood stepped out of the elevator, I had twice noted that the institutional green paint on the walls was water stained and peeling near the ceiling and memorized for the fourth time the room numbers of the office directory on the wall in front of me.

  “Congratulations, Clay,” Wood said. “You just cost the county about five thousand dollars.”

  “I hope that includes pantyhose.”

  Wood opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything. I was sorry I’d said it. While waiting, I obviously had forgotten my mission. Wood went into Crandall’s offices.

  A couple of minutes later, Moze appeared at the door and jerked his head for me to come in. I raised my eyebrows at him, but his grim expression did not change and nothing in it offered a clue as to what I could expect other than something serious.

  Moze led me through the receptionist’s area into Crandall’s office. You’d think a place so spacious, windowed, and lofty would be light and airy, but by accident or design—knowing Crandall, I’d bet design—it was subterranean and dim.

  It is a long room, about half the size of one of the courtrooms with maybe a 15-foot ceiling. The only light entered from the two narrow windows at the far end of the room, but most of it was blocked by the back of a tall chair and a wide table silhouetted against the windows.

  In the shadows on either side of me, as Moze marched me forward, were shelves to the ceiling. I was vaguely aware that on the shelves were thick black, khaki, and blue statute and case books, the prosecutor’s toolboxes, collected over a hundred some years by Crandall’s predecessors, and h
aphazard piles of papers and files.

  I was more aware of the smell: musty books and cheroots. It should’ve smelled of bear.

  Crandall sat deep and inscrutable in the shadow of the high-backed chair. He had removed his coat, and his tie was loose. His white shirt glowed in the shadow, striped at the shoulders by his suspenders. The table was empty except for a corner at Crandall’s left elbow. A copy of Saturday’s edition of The Mirror-Press folded in quarters lay under a glass ashtray the size of a Frisbee. Crandall had perched a half-smoked, dead cigar on the edge.

  Wood looked to have put some distance between himself and Crandall. In one corner, hidden in deeper shadow, he leaned on the corner of a small conference table. He nodded and looked away.

  Two chairs faced the table, but Crandall let Moze and me stand in front of him for a while before he reached across the table and crisply pulled a chain to light a brass desk lamp. His pug features popped out of the shadow, underlit, like he was about to tell ghost stories to Boy Scouts.

  “Nice effect, Potter,” I said. “What do you do for an encore? Turn the light in my eyes and grill me?”

  Crandall did not smile.

  “Do I need to, Mr. Ambrose?”

  It didn’t seem like a question that I could answer in any satisfactory way, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “I’ve been doing some reading,” Crandall said. He reached over, lifted the ashtray, and pulled the paper to him. He unfolded it and spread it out flat on the table. A couple of paragraphs of my front-page stories were highlighted in yellow.

  “I’m very disappointed,” Crandall said.

  He opened the paper, turning each page, scanning it, until he reached the page where Marley had jumped the front-page stories inside to connect them with more photographs and the third story we ran. That page was speckled yellow.

  “I mean, I’m a fairly articulate man,” Crandall said. He ran his finger down one column, reached a highlighted paragraph, tapped his finger on it, then looked up at me. “But I don’t believe I have the fucking words to tell you just how goddamned angry I am.”

  He had not raised his voice, but the struggle to keep it that way was obvious.

  “We’re going to be here a while. Have a seat.”

  “No,” I said, “I think I’ll stand.”

  “Sit down.”

  Slowly and without looking at me, Wood had come off the table. Moze had turned and squared up. We considered each other for a moment. I decided that a beating was unlikely, but being made to sit was not out of the question, so I took one of the two chairs.

  Crandall turned his chair so that the light from the window hit me full in the face. I put a hand up, but I still had to blink and look away.

  “Your stories contain a wealth of information about my case,” Crandall said. He crossed his arms on the paper and leaned forward. “Why, there’s even a fucking tidbit or two that our own investigators did not know.” He directed a sour glance to Wood. “Or did not bother to tell me.” With the light in my eyes I could not see Wood’s reaction. “I’ve already told you I’m concerned about you compromising this investigation and the eventual prosecution of this case. I’m now concerned about your goddamned reporting tainting my jury pool.”

  Crandall sat back and turned his chair to the block the window light. Once more my eyes had to adjust. The guy had spent a professional lifetime manipulating witnesses. I had little doubt it was deliberate.

  “I’d like the good people of Austin County to hear this case,” Crandall said. He waved one hand. “You’ve been around enough to understand my thinking, I’m sure: It seems to me that the good people of Austin County would sooner hang the son of bitch who killed Austin County children and shot an old Austin County woman than the good people of anywhere else. So if some fucking defense attorney convinces our judge this case should be moved out of this county because too much publicity will prevent his client from getting a fair trial here, I’m not going to be happy about that. In fact, Mr. Ambrose, I will fucking hold you responsible.”

  He leaned forward, closed the newspaper, and swept it to one side with the back of his hand.

  “Today,” Crandall said, “in order to alleviate my concerns”—he stabbed the paper with a stiff index finger—“you’re going to tell me how you came by this shit.” He shrugged and looked away. “Tell me the right things, and I won’t charge you with interfering with a police investigation and obstruction of justice.” His eyes returned to me. “Then we’ll talk about the extent of your civic duty from now on.”

  The same rage that had almost made me hit the dandelion the other night lit up my temples and made my head pound. Crandall may have seen a hint of it because he blinked and glanced at Wood. I sucked in a breath and held it.

  “That’s better,” I said, exhaling. “My first instinct? Somebody threatens me? Come across the desk and smack ‘em.”

  Wood and Moze were standing at red alert, feet squared, arms loose. I smiled pleasantly at each of them and shrugged. “That hardly seems appropriate here.” I hoisted a cheek, removed the notepad from my hip pocket, and with my pen poised, looked back at Crandall. “I think I’ll just take notes about our meeting instead. Official intimidation of private citizens is always good for twelve, maybe fifteen inches, front page.”

  Crandall smiled, too, genuinely happy at the prospect of confronting a countermove.

  “You forget where you are, Mr. Ambrose,” he said. “Austin County, a small, kind of insular place. I grew up here. Sheriff Modine grew up here. Deputy Beard grew up here. You’ve been here about a year. You’re an outsider, and in a place like Austin County, you always will be.”

  He raised a hand in a dismissive wave.

  “Two of us were elected to our positions by the citizens of Austin County. You weren’t. Hell, so far as I know, the only person who invited you here was your employer, an outsider himself and a man notorious for hiring drunks. I think”—he broke off for a confirming glance at Wood and Moze—“I think all three of us’d have to deny your allegation of intimidation, and you’d have a fucking problem with credibility.”

  I was well aware of his point. I could not recite a native’s genealogy back five generations from the mere mention of her mother’s name. It was a password ability among many that seemed to be innate. I would always be an outsider, but I liked to think my status meant that I brought fresh eyes to a situation.

  And, no pun intended, I was not blind to the stakes. Every murder is appalling, but in this case, not only the number but the place compounded the horror. In Austin County, people hold the door for you and thank you for the slightest favor. People attend church, whether they believe or not, because most think it’s the right thing to do, if not for them, then their children. I had no doubt that more than few would soon tell me they could not believe that it happened here.

  But there was that promise to Moze, maybe my feelings about Crandall, and perhaps my own innate qualities, resistance to authority and direction first among them, that I had to contend with.

  “Potter,” I said, “I’m not telling you one thing about how I got my information. Sometime even in the Dark Ages when you went to law school, they must’ve told you about the First Amendment.”

  Arguing law with a lawyer was also a mistake.

  “Indeed. They told me I couldn’t restrain you from publishing the information you had,” Crandall said. “They told me—and I’ve done a little research since then, yesterday after you published, as a matter of fact—they told me that once you’d published there wasn’t much to prevent me from prosecuting you for the illegal acts you may have committed in gathering that information or for the consequences of your having published it. You’ve published. I didn’t try and stop you.” His voice was rising. “But now, goddamn it, I will know whether you were in that old lady’s fucking house trailer, and who among our fucking police agencies let you in.”
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  Crandall plucked his dead cigar from the ashtray, jammed it in his mouth, and fired it with a lighter from his shirt pocket. When he’d taken a couple of puffs and calmed down, he said, “Our prime suspect is this young troublemaker here, a promising young man who seems bent on ruining a perfectly good career.”

  We both looked up at Moze. He was tougher than I would’ve have given him credit for. He kept his gaze level, looking over Crandall’s head out the window, but his Adam’s apple bounced. I wondered if this was the first he’d heard of it.

  Not that it mattered. I knew Crandall’s game. He was throwing out chum.

  “Potter, I don’t discuss sources,” I said, refusing to be drawn.

  “You don’t deny that this boy let you in.”

  “I don’t deny or admit anything. I said I don’t discuss sources.”

  “We have people who can put you two together before he got the call to Aunt Lotty’s.”

  Moze cleared his throat. I didn’t dare look at him, but it sounded like I needed to head Crandall off before Moze’s scruples cost him his job.

  “You’ve got Hack, who saw us eating breakfast together in that dive of his. Which means you’ve also got Hack telling you that he ordered me out of his place before Deputy Beard here even left.” I smiled and, without too much of a struggle, crossed my fat legs. “I think it also means that you don’t have anything else or you’d have unloaded it by now.”

  I could see Crandall’s face darken, even in the shadow. He glared at Wood, who pursed his lips and looked down. It occurred to me maybe Wood had made this point to Crandall already. That seemed like a good sign, so I continued.

  “Before you go blaming young Moze here for the fact that I’m more than a little competent in my job, think about this. You’ve got a crime scene with maybe forty, fifty cops milling around. Maybe a dozen or more of those cops were inside before the bodies were removed, and who knows how many were inside after. It’s my job to know some cops. You going to question every one of those people to see if they talked to me, told me what they saw in there?”