Wolf's Revenge

by Lachlan Smith

  “You said something along those lines the other night when we were talking through this. You were wondering if Dad hadn’t only been feeding the FBI information about the Brotherhood, but also working actively to sabotage it.”

  “During our ride just now, I found myself wondering what the government can possibly hope to accomplish by going to trial against a bunch of bad guys who’re already serving life sentences. Sure, there are plenty more on the outside, like Sims, the ones without whom the AB couldn’t possibly maintain its power anywhere but behind bars. But the ringleaders themselves are already in prison.”

  Teddy was ready to disagree with me. “I’d say Sims is worth prosecuting.”

  “Of course. But the government’s looking at him from an organizational perspective, not a moral one. Dad’s opinion of Sims before the murders was that he was a lightweight, never accepted within the inner circle. If I were Wilder, I’d be worried Sims was looking to change that.”

  “It seems to me Braxton’s probably so deliberate about assembling the case because the only punishment that can mean anything to these guys is death, the way you suggested. And these days especially, death is hard to get in federal court, at least where the defendant hasn’t committed an act of terrorism.”

  “You’re overlooking that they have the death penalty in the AB as well. ‘Going in the hat,’ it’s called. Means your name gets put in a kitty with a bunch of blank slips, and whoever draws it has to do the job.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking?”

  “Braxton struck me as fairly ruthless, willing to tolerate the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime source or even a fellow agent, provided his goals are served. The question that keeps nagging at me is this: What kind of law enforcement agency continues to reauthorize, year after year, a fifteen-year investigation that hasn’t led to a single prosecution?”

  “One that’s willing to play the long game,” Teddy suggested, shrugging.

  “But what about one for whom the goal isn’t prosecutions—which would serve only a symbolic purpose—but rather disruption, sabotage, and counterinsurgency? And that brings me back to what we were talking about before—Dad’s ‘exit strategy.’ Something tells me it didn’t involve taking the witness stand in federal court.”

  “Your theory is he intended to turn the bad guys against each other.”

  “It’d be a lot easier to start a war and get them to kill each other than to persuade a jury to sentence them to death, then convince the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to affirm it. After that, if you’re lucky, you’re looking at a trip to the injection chamber fifteen years after the case is tried. More likely, the sentence ends up being overturned thanks to the work of some clever defense lawyer. Or maybe, in the meantime, the Supreme Court finally decides the death penalty’s unconstitutional, and then the bad guys are right back where they started. In prison with smug looks on their faces. Kings on their thrones.”

  “If that’s what Dad was trying to do, then something went very wrong.”

  “I know,” I said. “But, on the other hand, it seems he was on the right track confronting Sims. Bo doesn’t trust him, and with good reason. If I’m right, and Dad’s and Dot’s covers weren’t blown, then their murders mean the civil war has already started. Dad pushed the right button—it’s just that Sims took it out on him.”

  The screen door flapped, and Tamara came out. She stood at the edge of the patio looking up at the dismal sky. Teddy gave me a significant look and went to comfort her. But before he could take her in his arms she turned and went back inside. The next morning I went to see my client at the county jail, where she was now being housed after her release from the locked ward at San Francisco General Hospital.

  We were left alone in a small consultation room with windows all around us, guards walking by every few minutes. They’d given me a thorough patting-down before letting me in. I hadn’t argued when the deputy’d demanded my pen.

  The wound was closed now, on its way to healing, covered only by a gauze pad held in place with tape. Her previous air of belligerence and boredom was almost gone. Her eyes were guarded but alert, as if she were genuinely interested in my visit.

  “I had an interesting day yesterday,” I said. “I spent the morning with a woman named Jennifer Sullivan. Later, I ended up on the floor of a van with a gun in my mouth.”

  “How did you …” She stopped talking and simply looked at me.

  “Sullivan told me your name. I won’t use it if you don’t want me to. She doesn’t know what you’ve done, but she remembers you.”

  Alice Ward slumped, looking down at her hands, then glanced up. “So what happens now? My lawyer rats me out?”

  “I don’t have any plans to do that. I’ve learned a few things about your past that I’d hoped we could discuss.”

  “I don’t want to talk about any of that.”

  “I don’t see how we can avoid it. The police are going to find out who you are. I’m not going to tell them, but someone will recognize you eventually. It’s lucky your fingerprints aren’t on file. That gives us time.”

  Her forehead rested on her hands, her arms encircling her face. Her voice seemed to come from somewhere far off. “I ran away.”

  “When?”

  “A few days after they came for me. That was the first time.”

  I wanted to ask what she’d heard that night, whether she’d truly been asleep while Leann’s murderers did their work. But I knew better than to ask such a question. “I know you found her body.”

  Just like me, I wanted to remind her. But I knew using it right at this moment would be a misstep. Besides, I wasn’t sure I was ready to discuss that experience with anyone who knew what it was like.

  She lifted her head to face me. “She OD’d, okay? She was nothing but a junkie at the end.”

  “That’s not what the police thought. They decided it was murder, that someone held her down and another person gave her the injection, a deliberate overdose. Sullivan didn’t see your mother as a drug user.”

  “Jenny didn’t see a lot of things. Not for lack of trying. That nosy bitch was always peeping out her blinds. I was there. I was just a kid, but I saw.”

  “Saw what?”

  She shook her head. “We’re not going there. Nope.”

  “Fine. Then let’s talk about something else. Why don’t you tell me what happened with your living situation after Social Services picked you up, after you ran away that first time.”

  She remained resistant. “Why do you need to know all this stuff?”

  “You’re on trial for murder. Yesterday your buddy Sims put a gun to my head and told me he’s expecting me to put up a defense. As if I didn’t know that already. I’m a defense lawyer. That’s what I do.”

  “But what defense could there be? You know I killed him.”

  Her gaze was level now, frankly confrontational but also curious, and, for the first time, not without a glimmer of hope.

  I took my time answering. “There’s always a defense. Not always a total defense, but often a partial one. For instance, if you were insane and couldn’t tell right from wrong when you pulled the trigger, or you were so far gone mentally that you didn’t know pointing a gun at a man and pulling the trigger would kill him, then you could be not guilty by reason of insanity. That’s a complete defense. An insane person can’t be convicted of any crime.”

  “What if I knew what I was doing and I meant to kill him?”

  The set of her jaw made clear to me she’d do it again if given the chance.

  “Then, hypothetically speaking, you acted with malice, which means you’re guilty of culpable homicide. There are different degrees of guilt, though, and where you fall on the spectrum has a drastic effect on the penalty you face.”

  I paused to see if she was following. She seemed to understand.

  I went on. “You’re charged with capital murder. ‘The unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.’ Tha
t’s our starting point, and it carries a mandatory life sentence. If the killing isn’t deliberate or premeditated, it’s second-degree murder, and the sentence is fifteen years to life.

  “Where things start to get interesting is voluntary manslaughter. That means you killed him in the heat of passion because you were provoked. The classic example is the husband who walks in on his wife in bed with another man. It could be any extreme provocation, though. If you’re convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the sentence is between three and eleven years.”

  Her face seemed to glow for an instant, then the light went out. “What happened, happened.”

  “But no one knows what went down before you shot Edwards dead, or why you were running. My investigator’s found plenty of witnesses to show that you were dashing like a madwoman through traffic. What they don’t know is what Sims said to you before you ran. The only source for that evidence is you.”

  “You mean I testify at the trial. Admit I shot him and tell the jury why.”

  “That’s the best way to present a heat-of-passion defense in a case like this. It’s a safe bet Sims isn’t going to testify. You don’t want to go to prison for the rest of your life, do you? … Alice?”

  Rather than answer my question, she switched tracks. “You said Sims put a gun in your mouth. Shouldn’t you be making sure I don’t talk?”

  “That’s what he wants. But you can’t beat a guy like that by doing what he wants. You’ve got to neutralize him.”

  “Good luck with that,” she said.

  I regarded her a moment. Then, prodding her from a different direction, I said, “It wasn’t an accidental overdose that killed your mom.”

  “You said that. You didn’t know her. You weren’t there.”

  “I know the circumstances. I know what you know.”

  “Listen to me: She killed herself. No sense trying to blame it on others. She made the fatal choice.”

  Her toughness, though, struck me as an act, covering up what had to be a deeper sense of betrayal.

  “You mean when she agreed to help them knock over the place where she worked. The Plum Tree.”

  “Did you come here to show off what you’ve dug up, or are you interested in hearing what I’ve got to tell you?”

  I made an apologetic gesture.

  “She was so nervous that day. She made me French toast. That’s how I knew something bad was gonna happen. I could hardly eat. Finally, she came and she sat beside me and put her arms around me and told me she was doing it for me. Without telling me what ‘it’ was.

  “A kid knows lots that she isn’t supposed to know. I went off to school as usual that day, but when I came home, she wasn’t there. I wasn’t surprised—at least that’s how it seems to me now. Part of me expected her never to come back, because of the way she’d been in the morning. As long as I can remember, I’ve always had the feeling that one day she’d just be gone.

  “Around one in the morning that night I went next door to Jack and Randolph’s. They had the blinds down. They were drinking beer. ‘Go to Jack if anything ever happens to me, like if I don’t come home when I’m supposed to,’ she’d always said. ‘Jack has no choice but to look after you. He owes me.’

  Alice’s mimicry of her murdered mother sent a shiver down my spine.

  She went on in her own voice: “Of course, it was like so many other lies she told. I don’t know how I knew they had something to do with her not coming home that night, but I did. I knew they’d been wherever she was.

  “‘My mom didn’t come home,’ I said when Randolph answered the door. They were hyped up, but looking burned out at the same time. I knew later that it must have been because they’d just shot a dude and were starting to think about what had gone wrong, probably blaming each other.

  “Jack came out of his chair so fast. ‘What did she tell you?’ He started to shake me, his eyes crazy. ‘What the fuck did she say?’

  “I was crying. ‘Nothing,’ I said. I kept repeating it.

  “I managed to, like, convince them that I was there because she’d told me to come to them if anything ever went down. She’d acted as though it was no big deal to trust myself to these white guys even though we barely knew them.

  “Finally Jack stopped looking as if he was going to kill me. Now, he laughed. Not a nice laugh, either. He was laughing at my mom for ever having believed he gave a shit about her or me or anyone other than himself.

  “‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Your mom must have had to stay late at the restaurant, but she’ll be along. If she isn’t, though, you need to remember one thing.’

  “And here he bent low and poked me. ‘If she doesn’t come back, and the police come instead, you don’t say anything about Randolph and Jack. You just keep whatever she told you between us. All of it.’ Next he gave me a look, a real scary one.

  “‘Now what are you going to tell the police?’ he wanted to know.

  “‘Nothing,’ I answered. I wasn’t crying anymore.

  “‘Good girl,’ he told me. ‘Now go home.’

  “And so I did, and before morning she came back. At first, she was manic—cleaning the apartment, doing laundry, throwing shit out. It was like time stopping. No breakfast, no school, no nothing. She didn’t go to work the next evening. When I tried to talk to her, she didn’t seem to hear. She’d hug me and hold me, but it was like being hugged by a robot. She was scared to death.”

  Here Alice’s voice stopped. As if she’d run up against a wall.

  “A week passed between the Plum Tree job and your mom’s death,” I offered.

  “That week,” she said, shaking her head. Again her voice stopped, then rose in sudden protest. “Talking about this makes my brain hurt.”

  I could see the pain on her face. “You’ve got to talk about it.”

  “You want me to tell you what happened the night she died. You probably want me to say that I lay awake and heard what was happening and didn’t move a muscle to stop it. Well, it isn’t true. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “I don’t want you to say anything but the truth.”

  “The truth is, I woke up and found her dead.”

  I nodded, reading in her eyes the terror of that moment. I was someone who understood exactly how it must have felt. I wanted to comfort her, but knew any gesture I might have made would probably have been misinterpreted, squandering the small reservoir of trust I’d built. And, even if trust weren’t an issue, I wasn’t her therapist. I was her lawyer. More strongly than ever, I wished it weren’t me with this case.

  “How’d you reconnect with Sims?”

  She looked up. “There are questions you might not want answered.”

  I didn’t say anything, as her words echoed my thoughts about the case.

  She sighed. “It wasn’t very long before I put the pieces together, just the way you did. Jack had warned me about the cops. Plus, I’d seen how my mom acted during that week after she came home.”

  She shook her head. “So I decided to kill him.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right. “What?”

  “My mom was everything to me. With her gone, I didn’t have anyone left in the world. I finally ended up with a cousin who didn’t give a shit about anything other than the check she got from the government every month for keeping me. I didn’t know where Mom first crossed paths with these men, or how they got her to break the law for them, but I knew she wouldn’t have done it if she’d felt she had a choice.”

  I couldn’t find the words to say what I was thinking, so again I said nothing.

  She studied me critically. “You’re telling me you never thought about revenge?”

  “Thinking about it and following through with it are two very different things.”

  Her eyes held mine, at last seeming to acknowledge our kinship. But was she referring to my mother’s murder or that of my father and Dot? Whatever her meaning, the idea of vengeance, for her, was a powerful one.

  “Your dad was in prison unt
il you figured out he didn’t do it. That meant you never had the chance. I did. I was walking home from school one day and Sims drove up next to me in this big Buick.

  “‘Hey, baby girl,’” he called through the window. ‘Need a ride?’

  “‘Thought you were locked up,’ I managed to say.

  “‘You thought wrong. I’m a free man now. I was just driving along, feeling lonely, and whoa, there’s a familiar face. A pretty one, too. You’re gonna have your mama’s looks. Hell, you got them already.’

  “‘I’m not getting in any car with you.’

  “‘Seen Randolph lately?’

  “‘He out, too?’

  “‘They let him out a whole year before me. You believe that?’

  “‘You both ought to be locked up the rest of your lives.’

  “‘Why would you say that?’

  “‘Because of my mom.’”

  Here she’d stopped, she said, turning to face him, her fear gone, replaced by the anger over having to spend the past ten years without the only person who’d ever loved her.

  “‘I could tell you a thing or two about what happened. It was a bad situation, but not like what you probably believe. Still, you remembered my warning. You kept your mouth shut.’

  “‘Cops say someone held her down and stuck that needle in.’

  “‘I can help you with that,’ Sims said. ‘I didn’t know who did it, then, but I’ve learned me a thing or two since. You know what they say: It’s never too late for justice.’”

  She hadn’t believed him, she said, but decided to play along. He’d come get her that weekend, he promised, and they’d go for a drive, have a good long talk. He’d tell her everything then. But the first thing she had to do, he’d said, was to get him a gun. Could she do that?

  Saturday he picked her up after work from her part-time job at the Mrs. Fields cookie shop. The first place he drove was to the big cemetery in Oakland where her mother was buried.

  He parked near the grave, but they didn’t get out. “‘You got the gun?’”

  She showed it to him. Her heart was racing, her palm slick with sweat.