The Red Zone

by Tim Green

  The cop looked at her in a funny way, then picked up a phone, taking only a split second to say, "Hang on."

  "I've got a lady here who says she's Luther Zorn's lawyer," the sergeant said skeptically into the phone, "feah. bu're sure? That's right. Okay. I will. Thanks."

  Madison switched her briefcase from one hand to the other impatiently. She'd come a long way for a client interview and a bail hearing.

  "He's gone," the desk sergeant said after he hung up the phone.

  Madison simply stared. "We were told he was being held here until his bail hearing," Chris Pelo explained.

  "PSah," the cop told them, "I guess they had his hearing first thing this morning. He's out."

  "By himself?" Madison said incredulously.

  "Nope," the sergeant answered, "some hotshot lawyer got him in to see the judge just after breakfast and worked out the bail. Must have pulled some serious weight. You missed him by about an hour."

  Madison turned to Chris in disbelief. He looked at her helplessly.

  "I have no idea," he said apologetically. He felt like the boy who was caught crying wolf for the second time. He was crushed.

  "Where is he now?" Madison demanded of the sergeant.

  The cop shrugged and said dryly, "Its none of my business, and I guess it isn't any of yours either."

  Chapter 24

  Arnold Letterman was fifty pounds overweight and a drunk. He always had been. He always would be. He made it into the department because his mothers brother had been the mayor of Sunrise fifteen years ago when Arnold got fired from his job as a commercial light fixture salesman. Once on the inside, Arnold enjoyed the protection of a strong labor union whose power seemed to exceed not only that of his uncle but of common sense as well. Even before his uncle had been rendered powerless by a liberal Democrat, however, the department kept him pretty much out of the way. He handled missing persons.

  Arnold knew the drill. It hadn't taken him long to figure out that when some people disappeared, it mattered; when others disappeared, it didn't. The ones who didn't matter far outweighed the ones who did, and the ones who did could usually be disposed of well before lunch, which often allowed him to get into a pint of Wild Turkey as early as eleven. No one was ever the wiser for it, because the world of missing persons was vague and totally disorganized. With no nationwide information bank, those in the know considered it a miracle whenever anyone truly lost was found.

  It was quarter after eleven when a knock on Arnolds door forced him to stash his pint in the bottom drawer of his desk.

  "One moment," he mumbled, then slipped out of his chair to unlock his door. "Come in," he said, returning to his desk.

  Gerdy, the mail clerk, entered and handed him a two-page teletype.

  "Confidential and priority. Straight from the troopers," Gerdy said in a gravelly smoker s voice that reminded Arnold of an old forty-five record played with a dusty needle.

  "Thanks, Gerdy," he said, carefully directing the breath out the side of his mouth.

  Gerdy, a fifty-nine-year-old widow with a ferocious case of varicose veins, looked up at him skeptically through her thick glasses and a mop of salt-and-pepper hair.

  "All right, Arnold," she cackled, then shuffled out of his windowless office, closing the door behind her. She knew the drill, too.

  Arnold locked his door and took a stiff drink before reading the teletype. Female, mid-twenties, African-American, brown eyes, black hair, time of death only three days prior, fax of photo upon request. It was pretty clear which file this baby belonged in. Arnold placed the two sheets together and carefully folded them, his tongue slipping out of the corner of his mouth. When he was finished, he took his best shot. His paper airplane landed right in the middle of the waste can by the door.

  "Bingo!" Arnold barked, and took a double nip to celebrate.

  Royal palms rose up on either side of the road as Madison and Chris pulled up to a guardhouse. The Palm Beach Polo Club was exclusive. The ten different television trucks waiting outside the guards gate didnt fit the picture. They were parked haphazardly like emergency vehicles at the scene of an accident. Someone from CNN recognized Madison as they rolled past the trucks. The woman ran after Madison's car with a cameraman in tow. She stuck a microphone in Madison's face as she rolled the window down to speak to the guard. Like a flock of starving gulls, the other reporters swarmed the car.

  "No comment," Madison said firmly, leaving no mistake about her position. She then identified herself to the guard.

  They were allowed to proceed, and Chris scanned the decorative street signs, directing Madison. They passed riding stables and lush fairways sprinkled with middle-aged golfers. They entered a cul-de-sac, five enormous homes nestled into the sixth and seventh holes. It was the best real estate money could buy.

  Madison drove into the brick-paved circular drive and under a spacious clay-roofed porte cochere supported by massive beige columns that rose twenty feet in the air. The house was magnificent. They got out and rang the bell. The enormous handcrafted bronze door swung open and Luther Zorn greeted them wearing a well-worn thick cotton Marauders sweat suit. Out of habit, not disrespect, he surreptitiously eyed Madison's attractive figure as she marched past him into the house. Chris took notice, but said nothing.

  Chris had insisted on calling Luther the moment they left the Sheriff s Department. He reached Luther at home on his private number and Luther explained the situation. He told Chris that Pat Pdvet had arranged a bail hearing that morning, and that although he didn't trust Pdvet or anyone from the Marauders organization, he was more concerned with getting out of the jail. Evidently, Wilburn and Pdvet had enough pull with the state attorney and the Sheriff's Department to keep them from putting up a fuss about bail despite Luther's attempt to avoid arrest. Even with the team's influence, bail was set at an astronomical two million dollars. The team, through Pat Pdvet, also promised to pay the costs of having a federal marshal travel with Luther so he could leave the state with the team for their remaining away games.

  "They're not on my side," Luther promised Pelo over the phone. "No matter what they say, I know Wilburn hates my guts, and Pdvet is his lackey. They need me to win games. That's all. The coaches must have lobbied their asses off to get Wilburn and Rivet to lift one finger for me. So, I took their help and figured you'd call. I wasn't waiting around the damn jail any longer than I had to, Chris. You understand that. I need you guys, Chris. I didn't do this. I was in Fort Lauderdale with a woman. She'll vouch for me."

  Pelo had understood, and even Madison seemed undisturbed by the confusion once she heard Luther's story.

  Luther showed them to the kitchen where a Mexican woman served coffee on a thick oak table.

  "This is Maria," Luther said, introducing them, apparently uncomfortable with having a domestic. "She kind of takes care of things for me around the house."

  "Hola, Maria," Chris said with a smile, thinking of his own parents.

  Maria smiled back, but left the room without a word.

  Madison took out a yellow legal pad and her pen.

  "No hard feelings about this morning, right?" Luther said.

  "I would have done the same thing if I were you, Luther," Madison responded. "No one would expect you to stay in jail if you could get out. I just want you to be completely honest with me about everything, because no matter how important you are to the team, it still strikes me as odd that Pat Pdvet showed up at the jail this morning with everything worked out, especially after your little adventure in the swamp. I need to know everything. I'm your lawyer. It's my job to defend you no matter what. So be honest. Tell me absolutely everything. It's critically important."

  Luther looked out the window and seemed to be examining a foursome carefully putting on the seventh green. Madison noticed that his hands were dancing slowly together underneath the table.

  "I had an affair with Vivian Chase," Luther said, then turned toward Madison. "I think she had her husband killed, and I think she
wants it to look like I was the one who killed him. I think she set me up. I think she's telling them I wanted her husband dead, which is crazy. She's the one who wanted him dead. She used to talk about it. I might have said a couple of times that, yeah, it would be nice if he was gone, but that was it. I would never kill him. It's crazy."

  "Did anyone else ever hear you saying something to the effect that it would be nice if he was gone?" Madison asked. "No."

  "Is there anything else that went on between you and Chase?" Madison prodded. "Did he confront you about the affair you were having with his wife?"

  "He didn't know," Luther said. "I'm sure about that. He would have gone nuts if he did. Especially if he knew that sometimes I'd meet her in his house, in their bedroom."

  "How did that happen?" Madison said, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice. "Don't they have people working in their house?"

  "I used to come in from the beach," Luther admitted. "No one ever saw me."

  "The beach?" Madison said.

  Luther nodded and said, "I think now that may have been part of the plan, to have me coming in that way. To show that I knew the layout, where Chase swam, all that. He drowned right offshore from where I would go to meet her."

  Madison looked at him without saying anything for quite some time.

  "What else?" he said. Her stare was making him uncomfortable.

  "Tell me about where you were on the morning Chase was killed" Madison said.

  "I was with Charlene," Luther said. "She's a girl I kind of helped out. She was in a jam a few years ago, kind of a battered woman thing. I got her and her son out of a shelter, got them a place, helped her get a job, you know. But somewhere along the line things with us got. . . physical. So, sometimes I would see her and spend the night. That's what I did that night. I went to see her and I stayed."

  Madison nodded and asked for Charlene's last name and her address and phone number.

  "What have you told the police?" Madison inquired.

  Luther shrugged. "Nothing, this time. I kept telling them I wanted you."

  "What do you mean, 'this time'?" Madison said.

  "I mean," Luther said, "I spoke to this lieutenant, his name is Kratch, right after Chase died."

  This disturbed Madison.

  "He said he just wanted to talk to me," Luther explained. "I asked him what would happen if I didn't, and he told me he might think that I had something to hide, but that right then he was only checking some facts. It was really about my relationship with Vivian. He wanted to know whether or not she used to talk to me about her husband and about how she would get all his money if he was gone. He asked if I knew about her past."

  "What did you say?" Madison asked.

  "I didn't say anything," Luther told her. "I told him I didn't know what he was getting at, but he said I did. I did, too, but that was it. He didn't push it. He let me go."

  "Was that all he asked you?" Madison wondered, jotting down some notes.

  Luther nodded and then said, "He did ask me if I was there, on the beach, the morning Chase was killed."

  "Why do you think he asked that?" Madison said.

  Luther hesitated, as if calculating something very important. "I think Vivian may be trying to set me up. I think she may have said I was there."

  "And that's how she's setting you up?" Madison said.

  "I think," Luther told her. "I'm not sure, but that's what I think is going on. It's my word against hers if she's saying it."

  "And you're sure about all this, Luther?" Madison said. "Everything you're telling me is the way things really happened? Everything?"

  Luther's eyes suddenly seemed filled with dark twisting shapes, like the shadows of tortured men. "I told you," he growled. Then just as suddenly the fury was gone, she said quietly, standing her ground.

  Madison wanted to look at Chris, to see if he'd seen the same thing she had, but she didn't want to drop Luther's gaze.

  "All right," she said. She had more things she wanted to ask, but they could wait. Her first priority was finding out what the state attorney was going to be using against them. "Chris and I are going to the Royal Palm to check in. I'll be staying for the next couple of days. You can reach me there if you need me. I'm going to have to find some local counsel to get me through procedural technicalities. I'll have to file a motion with the court to let them allow me to represent you as an out-of-state attorney It shouldn't be a problem. I'm also going to file a demand motion for discovery. I'm going to set up a meeting with the state attorney. When he sees I've filed for discovery, he'll know he's only got ten days to turn everything over, so most likely he'll be willing to sit down and talk. After that, I'll have a fix on what they've got."

  "What do you mean discovery'?" Luther said.

  Madison explained, "Discovery material is any evidence they have that implicates you. They have to turn it over to me by law."

  "What do you mean," Luther said, "by anything?"

  "Anything they have that makes you look guilty," Madison told him. "Physical evidence from the crime scene, witness statements, investigative police reports, everything"

  "You think they'll really do that?" Luther said. "Give you everything?"

  "If they didn't," Madison explained, "and you were convicted, and we found out they had withheld anything . . . we'd get the conviction overturned and you'd walk. The prosecution knows this, and they'll rarely jeopardize their case by not disclosing information."

  "You said something about some local lawyer, but you're the one who's representing me, right?" Luther said.

  "Yes," Madison said. "You still have to sign a stipulation for substitution of counsel, which essentially fires Pat Pdvet and hires me, but, yes, I'm your lawyer. I said I was, and I am. With luck, we can get this whole thing resolved without a trial. From what you've told me, it shouldn't be too hard to show the state attorney that prosecuting you will just be an embarrassment for everyone. Charlene King's story will help a lot.

  "Just so you know," Madison said after a pause, "I'm going to have Chris handle the investigation, so you'll need to give him your full cooperation as well."

  Pelo looked at Madison in surprise; this was the first he'd heard about handling the investigation. Normally, Madison would use one of the private investigators she kept on retainer back in Austin. Even for a case out of state, Chris figured she would use people she knew by reputation. But he was excited at the prospect, and it made sense. He had as much investigative experience as anyone from his years at CID.

  "So, what should I do?" Luther asked.

  Madison offered him a smile and said, "Just play football, I guess. You might as well carry on with your life as best you can while we're working for you behind the scenes. I don't want you to talk to the media. They'll be haunting you everywhere you go. This is big news, and you won't have much privacy for a while. But, if you don't say anything, they'll eventually go away . . . until the trial."

  "I thought you said you could convince the DA not to take this thing to trial," Luther pointed out.

  "I said, maybe," Madison replied. "I'm not making any guarantees either way. I've got to see what they have. The police must have something, or they wouldn't have arrested you."

  "I guess if Vivian Chase is setting me up," Luther said, "then they might have almost anything."

  "Well," Madison said, "there are some things that even a good frame-up can't do."

  "Like what?" Luther said.

  "Like put you someplace you weren't," Madison told him.

  Chapter 25

  The rain came down hard, splattering the dust in the parking lot, each droplet exploding outward, leaving thousands of miniature craters before turning the ground into a soupy mess. It was impossible to say where the mud ended and the puddles began. Inside the police barracks, the cinder block walls began to sweat. A small high window lined only with corroding iron bars allowed the free flow of air as well as some of the elements into the cell. The musty smell of the cell began to
overpower even Calebs own sour-smelling flesh. He'd been in jail for nearly two days. He couldn't remember going without a drink or cigarette for such a long time. He was beginning to hear voices. And, just moments ago, he was afraid that he'd heard his own voice answering them back.

  Caleb was afraid to sleep. When it got dark, rats ran around the floor of the cell. He could hear them shifting in and out of the seams between the blocks, their sharp little nails scratching away at the mortar and stone. Occasionally, one of the bolder rats would nibble at the crumbs on his tray. When that happened Caleb would slam his tin cup against the wall. The clatter of tin against concrete would send them scurrying for cover like roaches surprised by a sudden burst of light. Because he was so tall, six foot eight, Caleb had to stick his knees straight up in the air to avoid hanging his feet over the edge of the cot. He did not want to give the rats an easy shot at his toes. The sounds of their nocturnal prowling kept Caleb awake the entire length of the night. During the day, he was so exhausted that he couldn't keep himself from dozing intermittently.

  When the rain started, he was lying face up on the narrow iron cot, fighting sleep and trying to figure out if in fact he really did do what they were saying he did. It certainly seemed possible. There had been times in his life when he'd done things and then not remembered them. Caleb had fought in Vietnam years ago. Since then, he really couldn't vouch for much of anything. Once, after consuming a pint and a half of Yukon Jack, he went inside a Pizza Hut on the edge of Belle Glade. A young girl showed him and his ex-wife, Cherry, to a booth by the window. After Caleb ordered a cheese pizza and a pitcher of beer, he inexplicably lit the curtains on fire.

  Caleb didn't remember the incident, and they'd called it an accident. The whole place burned down. Cherry told him about it later. She swore he did it, and Cherry never lied. Caleb thought about Cherry. He missed her. How long had it been since he'd come home to their run-down trailer and found her suicide note? Seven years? If there hadn't been a note, Caleb supposed they would have blamed that on him, too. The police chastised him for cutting her down, but what the hell was he supposed to do?