Fourth Person No More

by John Gastineau

  “And if the guy did talk to me and if he talked loud enough, you might overhear what he said.”

  “According to you,” Moze said brightly, “you two’ve struck up an acquaintance. You’re buds.”

  That was it, as much as—maybe more than—anything else.

  “The voice,” I said. “You want me to ID him by his voice.”

  “It’d be thin,” I said, pretty much to myself, trying to work it through. “People sound different in person than they do on the phone. You couldn’t hang your whole case on it, but it could be used to corroborate some stuff you may already have and to open up other areas that could be corroborated by someone else.”

  The question of whether it was right grew to adulthood in their silence while we traveled on. I made a show of putting my notebook back in my hip pocket and my pen back in my shirt. It seemed like we were going to have to work out some things here, and I didn’t want the pad and its implicit promise of publicity to inhibit them.

  Before Wood picked me up, I had called the paper and left a message for Marley about being AWOL. I hadn’t called Marley at home because he’d want me to explain what was happening and I didn’t know. Now I wished I had.

  I ground at my eyes with the heels of my hands. I thought coffee, maybe a Dunkin’—not Krispy Kreme—would’ve been good. I looked from Wood to Moze and Moze to Wood, sighed, and clapped my hands lightly between my knees as I sat forward.

  “Crandall know you’re bringing me?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Wood said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he doesn’t care for me much. Probably doesn’t know you’re carrying me home with your prisoner either.”

  “Nope.”

  “Probably wouldn’t like it ‘cause it’d give Reardon all sorts of ammunition to get evidence thrown out.”

  “You a lawyer now?” Moze said.

  “Me? Hardly.” I looked down at the floor, weighed the grossness of a stain I saw there, and shook my head. “But I’ve known a few, maybe a few dozen, maybe a hundred, seen them in action. And I learned a thing or two.”

  A thought occurred to me and I looked up.

  “Jesus, Wood, tell me this wasn’t Moze’s idea and you’re going along with it.”

  “Fuck you,” Moze said, with maybe more bite in tone than was absolutely necessary.

  We were fully stopped on 16th Street, waiting for traffic to proceed. Wood unsnapped his belt, threw an arm over the seat back, and turned to look me squarely in the eye.

  “I always said you were a smart guy, so I know you know your choices. Depends how bad you want the story. What’re you going to do?”

  “Honestly? This point? I don’t know.”

  “Well, I reckon we’ll know when the boat leaves. You’ll be on it.”

  Wood turned back to the road and shrugged.

  “Or not.”

  Here’s a recipe for an ugly, public building: Take a gargantuan, rectangular cake, several tiers high. Cover it in a creamy, sculpted frosting. Turn it upside down so that it looks like its propped on its candles along the outside of what would have been the top tier. Let the pomegranate filling spill out to the ground.

  That’s pretty much what the federal building in Indianapolis looks like. In a city of ponderous, traditionally civic, gray granite and limestone architecture, it borders on weird modern and reveals among its architects and planners a certain devilish streak.

  The same hint of bi-polar disorder exists inside. There are the usual warrens of cubicles and conference rooms fashioned out of pressboard, glass, and khaki felt-covered partitions. But what makes the offices interesting, and more than a little unsettling, is the unusually high number that have gun lockers discretely affixed to the walls and handcuffs, belly chains, and leg shackles tossed casually across the top of the partitions. All the initial agencies with the police powers of the federal government—IRS, FBI, DEA, ATF—have a home in the building. As one who had spent time here straightening out a little tax problem that arose when I was drinking, I was more than happy to comply with Wood’s instructions to wait outside.

  Wood stopped a half block away from the building and let me out. Traffic honked indignantly at the unmarked squad until Wood turned on his flashers. He pointed out a drive that emerged from the ground on the south side of the federal building.

  “I’ll walk him out the main door. You guys can get your pictures. But that’s where we’ll put him in the car.”

  He gave me a long look.

  “I’d make up my mind. We won’t wait,” Wood said before pulling away.

  As I waddled up to the federal building, I knew I would be far from the only one cooling his heels on the red-orange plaza beneath the first tier. I heard it first, the pulsing rumble, the ocean-like rise and fall, of conversation that occurs at any gathering of the clans, magnified and projected in this case by its echo off the plaza tile. That noise was punctuated by the piping and squeal of children on the playground of the employees’ daycare center, which takes up the north end of the plaza.

  At the plaza, a bank of microphones had been set up in front of one orange wall to one side of the door to the building. A couple of burly marshals in the traditional gray slacks and blue blazers flanked the bank, keeping an eye on a jostling semi-circle of maybe 15 or 20 video cameramen and still photographers. Behind them, nervously scanning the horizons, afraid they might miss something, was the talent.

  You could sort the twinks from the print and radio people by their topcoats and headgear. The twinks wore trench coats but no hats. God forbid they should muss their hair. Everybody else wore parkas and caps. I doubted the locals had enough imagination or sense of history to think they were Murrow covering the Blitz. More likely, they’d seen network twinks sporting London Fog. Those of us who’d spent more than five minutes stamping our feet at a winter crime scene preferred cloaks of fat or down to hero worship or ambition.

  I waded into the clutch, found the AP photographer, and told him to make sure Marley got first dibs on whatever he shot. He didn’t seem offended by the twenty I palmed him when we shook.

  I moved to my usual position at the back of the clans, not only because it was my preferred position, but also because it afforded me an opportunity to slip away to the south side of the building. I still didn’t know what I was going to do, but why foreclose options?

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a patch of orange separate from a nearby wall.

  “Hello, Janelle,” I said, without turning my head as she sidled up.

  “Hey, asshole,” she said.

  I glanced at her. Unlike the rest of our colleagues, she was not looking around or dancing from one foot to the other. She had her eyes riveted on the door behind the microphones. There was a flush to her olive complexion that seemed not to have a thing to do with the cold. She gave Mona Lisa a run on secretive grins.

  I leaned toward her a little and purred, not in a whisper but quietly so that she would know my words were meant only for her.

  “You’re looking radiant today, Janelle.”

  You would’ve thought I’d put my tongue in her ear. She hopped back, bent away with her mouth slightly agape.

  She said, “That’s pretty much inappropriate.”

  “No, no,” I said. “The truth is never inappropriate. You seem positively aglow. With an inner light. Perhaps the light of knowledge. Like maybe you know something the rest of us do not.”

  “No, I do not,” she said and started to move closer to the clans, as though leaving in a huff.

  “Don’t leave,” I said. “I did not mean to offend. I’ll let the compliment stand by itself. I will not address you by your middle initial.”

  She cocked her head and raised her brows before she came back.

  “So,” I said, “What did Reardon tell you when he called?”

  I emphasized the pronoun to
suggest we compare notes.

  She looked at her watch and put her eyes back on the door.

  “He just said when and where,” she said casually.

  “You mean for that exclusive interview after the press conference.”

  She jerked her head around and glared at me. I smiled.

  “I bet he says that to all the girls,” I said.

  “You mean that bastard promised you an interview too.”

  “Me? Naw. We haven’t spoken in years.”

  “Then, how . . .”

  I held up one hand.

  “Remember, we don’t discuss sources.” I waved the hand around. “Besides, you don’t think a guy like the Rear doesn’t have all our competitors on speed dial?”

  A marshal appeared at the doorway. The video floods popped on, screening him behind glare off the glass. The noise level dropped. Aides shooed children off the playground into the building. Janelle nearly skipped forward, whipping out a notepad, sidearm and wide, from the folds of that damned coat.

  Crandall and Reardon emerged at the same time but, judging by their body language, not together. I knew, as they stood waiting for the shooters’ flashes to cease, their contrasts would be the theme of any number of the next day’s sidebars.

  Crandall had, to my relief, lost the blue porkpie, but he still sported the brown trench coat and otherwise looked much like he usually did: round, rumpled, and glowering. Call him puckered, a little like a sausage that had been left unwrapped too long.

  Reardon, on the other hand, was half Crandall’s age, tall, and a trim triangle in build. His face mirrored his build, thin and triangular, a feature emphasized by a black goatee. He had a full head of black hair, moussed to look wet and combed straight back. He wore no overcoat, just his usual TV rig, a fifteen-hundred-dollar, black, double-breasted suit with a blue shirt and blue silk tie. As he came out the door, he dialed up a smile, a little serene one, as though he’d just left church.

  For a moment, each gave the other the don’t-screw-with-me look lawyers use when they ask themselves yet again whether the other guy’s going to hold up his end of the deal. Then Crandall rubbed the flashes’ red spots from his eyes and stepped to the bank of microphones. He spent a moment handing out a dose of his contemptuous stare to each of us before he introduced himself by name and title.

  He said that an arrest had been made in the murders of three Austin County children and the attempted murder of their babysitter. He identified the Defendant by name, address, and date of birth. He specified the charges and the potential penalties associated with each. He said that as result of a vigorous and exhaustive investigation by local and state police the Defendant had apparently felt compelled to turn himself in to the FBI that morning. He was now in the custody of Austin County police.

  The Defendant would very shortly be transported to Austin County, Crandall said, where he would be held until he could be arraigned in the Circuit Court at 3 p.m. that afternoon.

  Crandall said he would not entertain any questions. His mandibles bulged as he arced a flamethrower glare across the heads of the clans to quell any challenge. It stopped for just an instant to bestow on me an extra blister or two. Then he broke out the boyish, beneficent grin that makes widows vote and thanked us for our time.

  Neither Reardon or Crandall looked at each other as they exchanged places. Reardon folded his arms and looked at the ground.

  “Wow,” he said.

  He bowed and shook his head.

  “Gee.”

  He shucked us a shrug.

  “Pretty powerful stuff.”

  He raised his head and looked each of the television cameras in the lens.

  “’Cept my client didn’t do it.”

  Reardon put one hand on his hip and cut the air with the heel of the other.

  “On the night and at the time of this unfortunate incident, my client was home, 40 miles away from the scene of the murders, one short, hallway away from his mother and father, 10 feet away from the crib holding his infant son, inches away from his sleeping wife. You’d think one of them would’ve noticed he was gone.”

  With that, it was on.

  “Your client has an alibi,” said someone at the front, a master of the obvious, probably a twink.

  “Obviously,” said Reardon.

  “Is this notice to Mr. Crandall of an alibi defense?”

  “Well, of course, a proper pleading will have to be filed, but it would be correct to say that Mr. Crandall was completely aware of where my client was at the time of the murders before he charged him.”

  “So you’re saying the arrest is improper.”

  “The facts speak for themselves. A man can’t be in two places at once.” He gave the cameras an impish grin. “That’s physics.”

  Some thought it witty and laughed. Crandall did not. He folded his arms and glared, apparently willing a lobotomy on Reardon.

  It was plain what Reardon was doing. He was already making his case to the jury in Austin County and, in so doing, laying the groundwork for getting the case moved out of Austin County. If he could show the judge that enough people knew about his client’s case, including his alibi, Crandall would have no choice but to move the case to a county where the facts were less well known. Since the Indianapolis television market covered about half the state, Reardon’s chances of getting the case moved a substantial distance from Austin County improved considerably.

  Reardon would speak only to the TV clan. The print people were politely raising their hands, but he would not recognize them nor respond to their shouted questions on such mundane matters as the names of his client’s family members. The twinks lobbed him underhands across the plate and Reardon smacked back line drives.

  That aspect of it—Reardon’s blatant co-opting of the television folks—and maybe a little boredom, certainly not any desire to do Crandall any favors, probably prompted me to shout from the back: “Will the missus testify to her husband’s whereabouts?”

  “Sure,” Reardon said, craning his head to see who had asked.

  “How about last night?” I did not need to shout, I found. A loud voice resonated well off the plaza tile; I was pretty sure the mikes would pick it up easily. “Can she testify to his whereabouts last night?”

  “Do I know you?” Reardon said, when he spotted me.

  “What’s the answer?”

  “Well, if you mean was she with him, yes.”

  “Which hotel was that? The one they were in last night.”

  Reardon turned to look with suspicion at Crandall, who raised his eyebrows, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Turning back to me, Reardon said: “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do. Your boy spent the last two nights in a hotel. I’m asking which one.”

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “So you’re not denying you offered to turn your client in last Friday, but you made authorities wait for two days while he shacked up?”

  “Jesus, that’s not what happened.”

  “Well,” said this ponderous, deep resonance near the front, “what did happen?” Even the TV clan was beginning to see the best angle on the story.

  Everyone peppered Reardon. He tried to juke ’em, but there was too much crossfire.

  “Where did you put them up?”

  “I didn’t put them up anywhere.”

  “Well, where’s your client been the last two nights?”

  “Spending time with his family.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m not going to get into that.”

  “Why not? Are you embarrassed?”

  “It was the Hilton.”

  “Two nights at the Hilton? Who paid for that?”

  “That’s a matter of attorney-client privilege.”

  “Meaning you did?”

>   “No comment. It’s irrelevant.”

  Then Janelle jumped in with an intelligent question: “How do you think the people in Austin County are going to feel about your client evading authorities for two days by holing up in the Hilton?”

  As an experienced advocate and grandstander, it was all Reardon needed to turn things back to his advantage.

  “My client is not guilty. He was nowhere near the premises where the homicides occurred. But it was concern about the feelings of people in Austin County that prompted us to keep my client out of the hands of Austin County authorities and that brings us here, in Indianapolis, rather than the Town of Failey, today.”

  With that, he launched into his speech about concerns for his client’s safety if he were left in the hands of Austin County authorities. Up to that point, Crandall had been enjoying Reardon’s grilling, standing behind him with crossed arms and a smirk as he watched traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  When Reardon began talking about the hostile nature of Austin County folk, Crandall must have known it would only serve to rile the folk, which would, in turn, give Reardon more ammunition for arguing that the case should be moved to another venue. The smirk gone, his full attention now on Reardon, Crandall listened for another moment, then nodded at the glass doors.

  A wedge of state troopers emerged from the glare. They moved at such a deliberate pace it could have only been premeditated. Between the forks of the wedge walked Wood and Moze, their grim features set in the flashes of the strobes. And between them was the guy.

  I don’t know exactly what I expected. Someone older? Someone taller? Someone neater? I had, after all, talked to him directly. But the man I saw did not fit the fuzzy picture in my head, and in the confusion arose doubt.

  He was just pretty ordinary, a slender, scruffy guy in his early twenties, about the same height and age as Moze. He wore thick, photogray aviator glasses. He had shaggy, shoulder-length, black hair and a full, untrimmed moustache and beard, probably to disguise the fact he had no chin. He wore faded, dirty jeans, a denim jacket and a snap-pocket cowboy shirt open at the neck. His hands were shackled to a belly chain, and the leg chains he wore made him rock side to side as he walked, like a chimpanzee.