“Celebrity?”
“Hey, he’s Doctor Death. We’ve all read about him. This is going to be a major event up here.”
“Who is he accused of killing?”
“I suppose by all the rules I shouldn’t be telling you anything, but you’ll find out anyway. Your client is said to have put old Sean Cronin to sleep.” He chuckled. “The big sleep.”
The sheriff was apparently someone who liked to talk.
“How is he supposed to have done it?” I asked.
“Injection, just like they do down in Texas to those folks on death row. One little shot and out you go, no pain, no strain. Anyway, that’s what’s alleged. From what I’ve read, your client makes a habit of this sort of thing.”
He laughed. “Jesus, he really didn’t have to do it. Old Sean was eighty-eight and as sick as it’s possible to get. Bad heart, bad lungs, bad kidneys, you name it, he had it.”
“Is Cronin supposed to have requested the injection?” In every other case, that had evidently been the situation.
“Oh, no. The old man was real dotty, to boot. One of his daughters is supposed to have set things up.” He stopped. “Well, it’s a long story, and I guess the prosecutor will get bent out of shape if I tell you everything. Anyway, fact is, Cronin’s dead. The prosecutor and Cronin’s other daughter say your man did it.”
“I’ll be up as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about the doctor. Our jail isn’t much, but it’s clean. If one of our clients gots the money, we let them order in from a restaurant here in town. Damn good food. Otherwise, the menu is baloney sandwiches.”
“Thanks.”
“By the way, take your time getting here,” he said, laughing. “We don’t get much murder in this county, but we’re tough as hell on speeders.”
IT WAS A TWO-LANE HIGHWAY most of the way, but the drive up wasn’t bad. There wasn’t much traffic, and what there was moved along at a good clip.
Broken Axe, Michigan, served as the county seat for Harbor Beach County. It was a nice little town. Quaint, as if time had forgotten about it and nothing had changed in fifty years. The business section was about two blocks long and looked like it catered to farmers and their needs.
The courthouse and the jail were relics, two plain limestone buildings, and if Abe Lincoln himself had come walking out of either one of them, it wouldn’t have been all that surprising.
Above the jail, giant oaks stirred in the breeze. There was a serenity about the place that you could inhale.
I took in a lungful, and went into the jail.
The wooden floor was worn, but other than that, everything was well kept. A sign saying OFFICEhung out over an open door.
I stepped in. There was a counter and several signs instructing people what to do to apply for various permits. A stout woman looked up from a computer terminal.
Her smile was engaging. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Sheriff Miller. My name’s Sloan.”
The smile became a big grin. “Oh, you’re here for Doctor Death.” She turned and yelled at another inner door, also open. “Cork, Doctor Death’s lawyer is here!”
He looked like an advertisement for beer, the kind where they show the good ole boys sitting around the local bar playing pool and acting like adolescents, all jokes and good humor.
His uniform was clean, but not pressed. He wore a black leather belt with the largest pistol I had ever seen, hanging off at an angle.
He looked about forty, maybe more. About six foot and fifty pounds too heavy, he wore a military haircut over an uneven head. His face was fat, and when he smiled, the face looked like it spread out over his collar. And he looked like he smiled a lot.
He came around the counter and took my hand in a grip that made it seem as though we were brothers who hadn’t lain eyes on each other in years.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sloan,” he said.
“Call me Charley. Everybody does.”
“Good! We’re real informal up here. If anyone called me anything but Cork, I’d think they were mad at me. Would you like to see your client?”
“I’d like to see the prosecutor who’ll be handling the case first,” I said.
“Just one guy, the main man. This is a small county. We couldn’t afford two full-time prosecutors. His name is Eddie Rand. Young guy, got elected right out of law school. Hard worker, though. You’ll like him. Come on.”
He led me from the jail to the courthouse. “This doubles as our court and the county offices.”
We entered an office marked PROSECUTOR. A young man sat behind a desk, his feet up on it, a telephone cradled in his ear. He wore faded jeans and a work shirt. Unlike the sheriffs, his hair was long. Skinny, with long legs and an angular face, he was a flashback to the sixties.
He nodded a greeting as he spoke into the phone. “Gotta go,” he said, “looks like I got some customers who seek justice. Or whatever. I’ll see you later, sweetie.”
He got up lazily, extending his hand. “You gotta be Charles Sloan.”
“Call him Charley,” the sheriff said. “This here is the county’s chief law enforcement officer, Charley. Edward M. Rand, Esquire.”
Rand laughed. “How’d you like me to tell Charley here your real name, Cork?”
The sheriff guffawed. “You wouldn’t, now, would you? Not while I’m carrying this gun.”
“You’re right. How about some coffee, Charley?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Eddie glanced at the sheriff. “Cork, call over to your jail and have three cups sent over.” He looked at me. “Lousy jail, but the best coffee in the state. Now, Charley, what can I do for you?”
“For openers, how about letting my client go?”
Eddie might have looked like a teenager, but his manner was mature, assured.
“I would, Charley, if it was strictly up to me. Hell, keeping that man means I’m going to have to try him for murder. That’s a lotta work for the pennies they pay me. Plus, it’ll interfere with the important things in my life, like fishing and chasing women. But”—he smiled—“if I let him go, they’d let me go right after him, and work up here is hard to find. You got any easier requests?”
“Tell me what you know about the case. Frankly, I haven’t talked to my client, and outside of the fact that somebody named Sean Cronin is no longer with us, I don’t have any other details.”
The stout woman from the sheriff’s office brought over the coffee. I took a sip. As advertised, it was great coffee.
Eddie Rand went back to his usual place and once again put his long legs up on the desk.
“I’ll tell you as much as I think is fair. Okay?”
“Good enough.”
The sheriff brought up two chairs and we sat down.
“Pointe Aux Flam is a small community inhabited by some very big people. Old money people. They spend their winters in Florida and their summers up here with us common folk. Most of them are elderly, and there aren’t many of them.” He drank from his cup.
“Anyway, Sean Cronin is one of them, an old lumber baron, I’m told. Retired, and rich as hell. He has two daughters, women who you might call old maids. Unmarried, and not surprising, either, since these two are not the best-looking females to ever grace the planet. Donna and Doreen.”
“Twins?”
“Ugly enough to be, but the fact is, one is a year older than the other.”
Rand smiled. “The two women, both in their sixties, compete at everything, including taking care of Poppa. The old man should have been in a nursing home, but that would have put an end to the competition.”
“You apparently know a lot about the family,” I said.
“There’s three things we do up here. We fish, we screw, and we gossip. The fishing isn’t as good as it used to be, the screwing is dying out, but the gossip is our main source of entertainment. We know everything about everybody.”
He grinned. “Anyway, Charley, Doreen decided it was
time to end Daddy’s suffering. She reads, like the rest of us, and she contacted your client. Donna didn’t agree, by the way. Doreen paid your man two hundred thousand dollars—by check—for his services. He came up and Sean Cronin went down, so to speak.”
“Autopsy?”
I thought I saw a gleam of triumph. “Given all the circumstances, I thought our regular man might be out of his depth, so I sent for Doctor Anderson from Lansing. You know him?”
Clyde Anderson was the best forensic pathologist in the state.
“We had the body shipped to Bay City, and he did the autopsy there. The report’s not back yet.”
“So far, you haven’t got a case.”
“Well, I haven’t given you one delicious detail. Miss Donna watched Doctor Stewart go into her Daddy’s room, inject him, then sit there until he died. Not bad, eh?”
“What are you charging him with?”
“You tried that case in Detroit. That was what? Second-degree murder?”
“It’s on appeal.”
“Yeah. But this one’s not an assisted suicide thing, Charley. Here’s what this one is: one guy going into a room and killing another guy. No request. No nothing. And in front of a witness. We’re going for first-degree murder.”
“You’ll never make it stick.”
“Look, I’m a young guy. We don’t get many murders up here. I’m just trying to get all the experience I can.”
“Can I see my client?”
“You bet. No reason not to. Cork, take Charley over to the jail. Let him talk as long as he likes.”
The sheriff walked me back to the jail. He grinned. “See, I told you he’s a nice guy. I knew you’d like him right off. And I could tell he likes you. By God, this should turn out to be a lot of fun.”
THEY LET ME INTO HIS CELL. No guards, no cameras. The sheriff merely locked the cell door and told me to yell when I wanted to come out.
Dr. Miles Stewart got up as I entered. He slipped into his suit jacket and busily began to put himself together, although he was without his tie. He didn’t have a belt, or shoelaces, either.
“You took your time getting up here,” he snapped at me.
“Were you planning on going somewhere?”
He stopped and glared. “Out, that’s where I’m going. I presume you arranged bail?”
“There isn’t going to be any bail. We are going before the district judge up here in a few minutes and the prosecutor is going to charge you with first-degree murder. Bail is not granted in those circumstances.”
“You can’t be serious?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. I sat on the cot, hard and lumpy as it was. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you, can you? You’ve got yourself into a tub of trouble this time, Doctor. You better tell me your side of things before we go to court.”
“Perhaps I had better get another lawyer.”
“It might be a good idea. Sometimes a local man is best. He knows all the players. I can ask around, if you like.”
He fumed for a moment, then shook his head. “Too late now. You’re my lawyer and I’m stuck with you.”
“Actually, I’m not your lawyer. I am indeed your attorney for the Detroit murder case wherein you are accused of killing Francis X. Milliard. You paid me twenty thousand dollars to defend you, including appeals, if necessary. For that case, I am your lawyer. But this is an entirely different matter.”
“Just what are you saying?”
“If you want me to defend you on this charge that you killed Sean Cronin, I will require an additional fee. This time it’s thirty thousand dollars for the trial only. Appeals, if necessary, will be extra.”
“You are a goddamned bandit!”
“You can get a local lawyer here to do the job for a lot less, probably. It’s up to you.”
I was hoping he would be angry enough to get somebody else, although the money would buy a lot of tolerance for his infuriating arrogance.
His eyes narrowed. “You know all about me, all about the other cases. Someone new might not be as well prepared as you.”
“There’s something to be said for continuity, obviously. But if you’re worried about offending me by selecting someone else, don’t. I think I’ll be able to live with the rejection.”
His lips became one thin angry line. “All right, I’ll hire you. But this time you had better win, goddamn it.”
I smiled. I was enjoying his discomfort. “Results are not guaranteed, only effort.”
“Bandit,” he muttered as he sat next to me.
“Well, how about this—let’s hear your version, Doctor?”
“This whole thing is outrageous. As I told you, I came up here as a house guest of the Cronin family. I called you to tell you that, if you remember.”
“I remember.”
“The Cronin estate, they call it a cottage, is quite splendid. The view of Lake Huron is extraordinary. The Cronins proved to be excellent hosts.”
“Especially Sean? I presume you and he went grouse shooting or fishing or . . .”
“He was on life-support systems when I got there,” he said defensively. “The man was barely alive. I looked in on him, of course. I am, after all, a doctor. He was quite critical. He was eighty-eight and every life system was beginning to fail.”
“Was he conscious?”
He paused. “That depends on your definition. He was alert and talking, if that’s what you mean. But he mistook me for someone out of his past, and the conversation was meaningless.”
“He was dotty, in other words.”
He sneered. “That’s how a lawyer might look at it, I suppose.”
“One of the sisters is supposed to have seen you injecting Sean Cronin. True?”
He smiled that infuriating smile that was nothing short of a superior grimace. “What, did I inject him, or did she see me?”
“Did you inject him?”
“No.”
“Why would she say she saw you do it if it didn’t happen?”
“I have no idea.”
“Who invited you to be the Cronins’ house guest?”
“Miss Doreen Cronin. A very pleasant and gracious woman.”
I nodded. “The cops here say she paid you two hundred thousand dollars to do in the old man.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“It might not be so ridiculous if they produce that check in court. Does it exist?”
“I cashed it. I mailed it to my bank. But it was for scientific research. She made it out to my foundation.”
“What foundation?”
“The Miles Stewart Foundation. It’s all legal, all registered by my accountants, if you’re wondering.”
“This foundation, how many people does it employ?”
“No one at the moment, just me.”
“I presume the Cronins are old family friends?”
He arched an eyebrow. “There’s no need to be sarcastic. I met them for the first time when I came up here.”
“Why did they invite you?”
“Miss Doreen did. She had heard of my scientific accomplishments.”
“I’ll bet.”
He frowned. “Think what you like.”
“I think you were hired to come up and put old man Cronin away. How do you do it? Drugs? Strangulation?”
He smiled frostily. “No one has been able to show that I caused death to occur, not here, not anywhere.”
“This time they’ve got a witness.”
“Miss Donna?”
“That’s who they tell me.”
“She’s as dotty as her father was. You’ll have no problem discrediting her on the stand.”
“We’ll see.”
I stood up and yelled for the sheriff.
Cork Miller came lumbering along, grinning widely.
“Did Doctor Stewart have a checkbook in his possession when he was admitted to your little hotel?”
Miller nodded. “Oh yeah, wallet, checkbook, the works. He was all packed and
ready to leave when we were called over there by Donna Cronin.”
“Would you mind bringing the checkbook? The doctor here would like to retain an attorney.”
Miller laughed. “Sure, Charley. Be back in a minute.”
Stewart eyed me suspiciously. “He called you Charley.”
“I make friends wherever I go.”
After I got the doctor’s reluctant check, Cork Miller walked me back to the courthouse.
“The district judge up here is a good guy,” he said. “I think you’ll like him.”
Apparently Cork Miller knew no one evil or bad. It was an unusual and benevolent attitude in a sheriff.
“He used to be prosecutor, then he got elected to this judge job. Everybody loves him. He’s got a good sense of humor and gets around—you know, weddings, funerals, that sort of thing. Outside of my own sweet self, I think Rudy Hathaway is the most popular man in this county.”
“Rudyard K. Hathaway?”
“That’s his proper name. But we all call him Rudy. Do you know him?”
I nodded, smiling. “I went to school with him.”
“I’ll be damned. Small world, as they say.”
RUDYARD KIPLING HATHAWAY had been one of my study partners in law school. All law students form groups to help one another through the morass of the law. We had four in my group, and the least help and the most fun had been Rudy Hathaway.
His father, a rich beet farmer, had named him after his favorite author. But he didn’t look anything like the original. If anything, he favored the old Mortimer Snerd puppet made famous by Edgar Bergen. He had unruly red hair, protruding front teeth, and practically no jaw. His laugh was high pitched and distinctive, like a falsetto machine gun, and it sounded often.
Rudy and I did much of our studying at rundown bars and only got serious when exams neared.
He was one of those school friends that you tell yourself you’ll always be close to but never are. After graduation, he went up to Michigan’s Thumb to practice law.
I saw him once, ten years or so ago, at a state bar convention in Grand Rapids. We both got spectacularly drunk and almost ended up in jail.
I got a Christmas card once after that, but we never got together as we had promised each other we would.
I wondered if he had changed.
Death Penalty Page 23
