“No, we got it straightened out, more or less. But when I was trying to talk her down, I told her that given the size of Kerry County and the number of attorneys in it, that it was only a matter of time until we found ourselves on opposing sides.”
“Well, that’s certainly true.”
“She later admitted it was, but she still seems to treat me with suspicion. I think there are probably some areas of the investigation she shouldn’t discuss with me, but I don’t get anything at all from her. I learn more from the newspapers than I do from her. So back to my question: How’s the investigation going?”
Stash looked at me like I’d just grown a second nose. “That seems strange.”
“What does? What’re you talking about?”
“You ask how the investigation’s going. The last thing I heard I got direct from Sue this morning. I ran into her outside Mark Evola’s office, and she told me she had a new tack. She was taking a direction you’d given her. She seemed quite upbeat about it, and was asking for my help on an interrogation relating to it. That’s why she’ll be here later. But you don’t know what this new tack might be?”
I thought a moment. The only thing it could be was that bit of advice from Mark Conroy that I’d passed on to her. Yet she certainly hadn’t been very receptive when I’d told her. She seemed to wish I’d stop bothering her.
“Yeah, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “But it wasn’t something she showed much interest in.”
“Maybe she thought it over and changed her mind.”
“Maybe she did.”
As our harried waitress brought us our food, Stash suddenly blurted out what was on his mind. “I practically framed Bud for this false arrest suit,” he said.
“Okay, repeat after me, Stash—mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Get it out of your system.”
“No, it’s true. If I hadn’t been so goddamn tricky—”
“Let’s be practical and see what we can put together to help him. What do you know about this lawyer old man Evans got in Mt. Clemens?”
“Not much. I know his name—Dietrick Dornberger—and I know he’s young, in his twenties. He went to law school out of state.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“I think I heard someplace it was De Paul in Chicago.”
“A lot of good guys come out of there, I hear. Has he won any cases?”
“He’s won a few, mostly personal injury, all of them right in Macomb County. A couple more were settled just before the jury went out, but I hear he’s pretty good in front of a jury, too.”
“Has he ever tried a false arrest suit?” I asked.
“Not that anyone knows about.” Stash scarfed down a couple of french fries and took a big bite out of his burger.
“We ought to get hold of the transcript of one of his trials. Could you do that?”
All I got was a nod from Stash.
“We could go over it together, and then you could pass on your suggestions. John Dibble would accept them from you, but maybe not from me.”
Another nod.
“What’s Dornberger’s situation, by the way? Is he a junior partner in a firm? A full partner?”
Stash swallowed the mouthful and washed it down with a man-sized gulp of beer.
“No,” he said, “he’s on his own.”
“Really? As young as he is?” That showed some courage.
“Yeah, his father set him up. His old man’s the biggest builder in Macomb County, and he’s also his number-one client. Most of the son’s business, you won’t be surprised to learn, is real-estate law.”
Stash looked beyond me then and shot his arm up, just like he might have done at school. “Here she comes,” he said.
Whatever else she was—and she was many things to me—Sue had precisely the looks that would attract me even in a roomful of Miss Americas. There was the deep strength of her eyes, a seriousness in them now as she acknowledged me at the table that should have warned me something big was under way.
“Sit down, Sue,” said Stash with a glance at his watch. “I’m going to have to make this fast. I’ve got to be in court in about a minute and a half.”
He crammed another bite into his mouth as he reached over to the empty chair beside him and came up with a large manila envelope, about a half inch thick.
“Now,” he began at last, “what you’ve got in here is Xeroxes from his personnel folder—not the whole file, mind you, just what I thought might be of interest.”
“Is this all I’ve got to go on?”
“Well, it’s something. Just work up what you need, the questions you want asked. Don’t try to write the script. The psychologist has his own way of phrasing the questions and working them in with others. That’s his province. He insists on it. Clear enough.”
“I won’t know until I start, will I?”
“Probably not. I’ll be back in my office sometime in midafternoon, anywhere between two-thirty and four. But I’ll need your list of questions before five. Okay?”
Sue nodded vigorously. “Okay, Stash. Really, okay.”
“We’ll talk if you need to.” He stood up and turned to me. “Charley, I’m going to stick you with the check. I got to run. Sorry.”
I waved him off, smiling. We watched him go, exchanged looks, and burst out laughing. Poor Stash! He carried the weight of the whole office on his generous shoulders. Mark Evola, the elected Kerry County prosecutor, couldn’t do much but get in the way. A couple months before, they’d hired a young assistant prosecutor—very young, right out of my old law school, the University of Detroit. Stash said he was a bright kid and would make a terrific lawyer once he had some experience, but now he was being used strictly on appeal work and can’t-lose cases. As of that moment, with one slot still open in the county prosecutor’s office, every active case in the county fell to Stanislaus Olesky. I hoped they paid him enough to make it worth his while.
Our laughter subsided quickly enough. It seemed not only unkind, but also misdirected, for the man worked hard, too hard; we both knew that.
“What’re these questions you’re preparing?” I asked her.
“Charley, I’d really rather not—”
I held up my hand and managed to silence her. “Okay, okay. Not another word. I withdraw the question.”
“Thanks,” she said. “We may work this out yet.”
“Listen, I called a little before midday yesterday and left a message. I hope you weren’t putting in another day on this case.”
“Of course you called, Charley, and left a lovely message. But no, I wasn’t in the office, or out on Clarion Road, or Beulah Road, or in Hub City, or anyplace connected with the murders. I did what every sensible girl does when things just get to be too much.”
“What’s that?”
“I ran home to Mommy and Daddy.”
The look in her eyes told me that it was all right to laugh, so I laughed. “Well, that’s all right then,” I said, “as long as it did some good. Did it?”
“I think it did me a world of good,” she said earnestly. “As a matter of fact, it felt so good that I stayed until after ten, didn’t get home until after eleven, and decided it was too late to call you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you, Charley?”
Just as I was preparing a suitably eloquent speech, the waitress bustled up to the table. “What can I do for you, honey?” she asked Sue. She had her pad and pencil poised.
“Oh, gosh, I don’t know.” Sue said “gosh” like a kid. “I am hungry,” she declared. “That cheeseburger Stash had looked awfully good. Give me one of those.” And she pointed at the remains of the thing on his plate; it didn’t look that tempting to me.
“Okay, so where was I? Oh yes, you were about to forgive me for not returning your call when I came in. I suppose you sat up staring at the telephone until one or two o’clock in the morning?”
“I was asleep before eleven.”
“How disappointing.”
“I had a pretty rough one the
night before.”
I don’t know why I said that. I had no intention of elaborating on it and I certainly didn’t want to arouse her curiosity. Maybe I had some overwhelming secret desire to confide all the bloody details of the Conroy case to somebody so I could get it off my chest. Those were dangerous feelings for a lawyer under any circumstances, and in this instance they could prove positively fatal. Luckily, she wasn’t in the least interested in my night out on the town.
“One thing Mom and Dad and I settled, and that’s Thanksgiving dinner. It’s definitely on. You’re definitely expected. It’s going to be a real family occasion.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” I said, lying, with a smile on my face.
“I’m sure, you will, too.” There was such obvious sincerity in what she said that I confess I felt a bit guilty.
“They really are nice people, Charley. They just want the best for me.”
“As you said before.”
“That’s right.” She leaned close across the table, and without shouting over the crowd in Jimmy Doyle’s back room, she managed to make herself understood by some trick of tone, or perhaps by pure force of will.
“I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m feeling very good about us. You handled me just right Saturday night. I was a mess, total burnout. You have no idea, Charley, how this case has taken over my life. It’s not good for me, I know, and I’m trying to fight it, but it’s not easy. Anyway, you didn’t try to push me when we went out for dinner to be more communicative. And you didn’t try to draw me out to talk about it. I appreciated that. But most of all I was grateful that when I cut the evening short, you didn’t take it personally. You were just an absolute gentleman. And for that, dear Charley, I thank you.”
This was embarrassing. Though I don’t believe I would have behaved any differently, it was also certainly true that I had my own agenda on Saturday night. If she had begged me to stay with her, I would have taken my leave from her regretfully but firmly. And so, for good reason, I felt even more guilty than I had moments before.
“And then,” she continued, “to come home last night and hear that wonderful message—‘I hope you’re fully recovered and ready to meet the week head-on. Lean on me, kiddo.’ She quoted me word for word.
“I mean, really, Charley Sloan, you’re just terrific.”
I didn’t get back to my office until a little after two. For me, the way I’d operated in Pickeral Point during the last couple of years, it was an exceptionally long lunch. Yet I didn’t feel that it was time wasted—good company, good conversation, just exactly what I’d been missing.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Fenton gave me a frown of disapproval when I came in, and she nodded to the couch. I had a visitor. It was Dominic Benda, of all people, dressed in his twill tans and pile jacket, looking quite official, except that the Kerry County Police insignias had been neatly removed; you could hardly tell they’d been there at all. He rose uncertainly from the couch and nodded. No smile.
“What’re you doing here, Dominic?”
“Uh, well, I think I might need a lawyer, Charley.”
“Please, come on into my office and tell me about it.”
I shut the door behind him. We both sat down, and I listened to his story. Although what he told me was unexpected, there had been signs, and I should have read them.
He’d been asked to come into police headquarters early this morning, no reason given. When he got there, he was hustled into Interrogation Room Three. There he was questioned with mounting aggressiveness by Sue Gillis. It soon became obvious that he was a suspect, or at least suspected of being a suspect, in the child murders. Why? Because he had been the officer in the vicinity during the day shift when the first two of the three murders took place.
“But Charley, course I was out there,” he declared. “That’s been my territory for years. I live out in that direction. I know it real well.”
“When did you finish your shift and turn in your patrol car on those days, Dominic?” I asked him.
“Usual time, around five-thirty, maybe a little after.”
“And what about the morning out on Beulah Road? When did you start your shift?”
“Usual time, eight o’clock.”
Sue admitted to him at the end that there were some difficulties on the matter of time. But that was when the ever-popular Mark Evola made his appearance. He’d evidently been watching the interrogation through the two-way mirror. He told Dominic that he wanted him to take a lie-detector test, just to eliminate him as a suspect. When Dominic said he had some difficulty with that, Evola said that in that case there might be some difficulty continuing his pension.
“He said that? Aren’t you protected by Civil Service or something?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s all strictly county.”
I was incensed. First of all, no trial lawyer, defense or prosecution, puts any faith in the polygraph. There are so many glitches and hitches in their operation and interpretation that no court in the country accepts their results as evidence. Psychopaths and sociopaths have no difficulty beating the polygraph because they lack any ordinary human sense of guilt. And to threaten to take away a man’s pension if he refused to take such a faulty test seemed like coercion. It was probably even illegal.
“So what did you tell him?” I asked Dominic.
“I told him I’d take it. I had no choice. But I think I need a lawyer, right?”
“I think you do, yes.”
“Well, would you, you know, be my lawyer?”
“Sure, Dominic.”
“It’s gonna cost me, though, right?”
“There’ll be a retainer, yes, but don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”
“Mark Evola said I didn’t need a lawyer. That’s why I figured I did.”
“Good thinking, Dominic.”
“But Charley, I gotta tell you I’m really scared of taking that lie-detector test. I didn’t kill those children. I could never do that. I raised four kids of my own. I was a good father, or I tried to be.” Tears welled in his eyes. “But I’m so scared of that damned machine, I’m afraid I’ll set it off, no matter what they ask me.”
This wasn’t the time to give him a lecture on the fallibility of the polygraph. That was just what he was afraid of. And I couldn’t tell him his fears were completely unfounded. Instead, I thought about it for a moment, made my decision, and then gave him a bit of advice.
Later in the afternoon, after Dominic had left, I started thinking again about Ismail Carter, not in a nostalgic way, but rather in strictly utilitarian terms: How could I use him on the Conroy case? And, more important, how could I find him?
He had acknowledged a debt to me, and I knew that the one-time city councilman, a man of many faults, had one outstanding virtue. He honored his debts. I just had no idea where he might be, or if he was even still alive.
But I had an idea just who might be able to help me find Ismail Carter. I picked up the telephone and dialed a number in Detroit I knew by heart, police headquarters, and asked for Detective LeMoyne Tolliver.
I got lucky. He answered on the second ring.
“Tolliver here.” His voice sounded even bigger and deeper on the telephone.
“Do you recognize my voice?”
He held off. “I think so.”
“From Friday morning and Saturday night.”
“Now I do.”
“Good, I was just wondering if you could give me some help finding somebody—a local politician who’s dropped out of sight. He must be pretty old by now, might be dead for all I know.”
“Who you got in mind?”
“Ismail Carter. Remember him?”
“I remember him, all right. Matter of fact, it was him who got me on the force, back when there was a definite quota, if you get my meaning.”
“Sure, but do you know how I might reach him?”
“No, I don’t, but I’ll see what I can do for you. One thing’s certain, though.”
&
nbsp; “What’s that?”
“He ain’t dead. When he dies, you’ll know it. Gonna be one of the biggest funerals this town has ever seen.” He paused as if giving preliminary thought to the matter. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
“But just one thing more.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t tell our friend about this. He might not approve.”
“You’re right. He might not. But I think you’re doin’ the right thing, anyway.”
15
I had agreed to meet Dominic Benda in the parking lot outside my office at eight o’clock in the morning. I began pacing about five minutes after, looking anxiously up the road in the direction I expected him to appear. He didn’t appear. My watch said eight-ten the next time I looked. I stopped and scanned River Road in both directions, worried, afraid I’d asked too much of him. He was more than sixty years of age, overweight, and big in the butt from years of pushing that patrol car over the highways and backroads of Kerry County, not really in good physical shape at all. By eight-fifteen I had about decided that it was time for me to jump in my car and backtrack along the route into town. I might find him with his thumb out, or worse, collapsed along the side of the road. But before I climbed into my Chrysler, I went to the curb and took one last look for Dominic, and then I saw him, just about a city block away.
He was limping and staggering along, apparently exhausted totally from his long hike. As he drew closer, he appeared to me for the first time since I’d known him to be dressed in civilian clothes. His Sunday best. He must have started out in a suit and tie, and a topcoat, too. Coats were now thrown over his shoulder, his shirt collar was open, and his tie was askew. I saw that he was red-faced and sweating. I went out to meet him.
“Are you okay, Dominic?” I asked. “Here, let me take your topcoat.”
He handed it over without a word.
“Better put your jacket on. It’s too cold to go around in your shirt like that.”
He nodded, stopped, and pulled on the suitcoat. He wasn’t out of breath, just exhausted.
“Come on over and sit in the car. Take a rest. Then we’ll drive over.” Again, he nodded. He limped over to the Chrysler. I opened the door for him, and he collapsed into the passenger seat. I walked around, tossed his coat in the backseat, and got in behind the wheel. He let out a groan.
The Judgment Page 28
