Last Call

by Baxter Clare

  “How do you mean he’s nervous?”

  “Like irritable. Like he lets little things get to him that wouldn’t bother regular folks.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Like telling him what to do. He always take it the wrong way and get all up in your face about it. He’s sensitive, is all. Always has been. You just have to be careful how you talk to him.”

  “Must’ve been hard for him when he was a kid.”

  “Yeah, it was. He was skinny too. Other kids used to pick on him, beat him up regular like. Me and my other brother was always having to look out for him.”

  “Did he have friends?”

  “A couple here and there. None that ever lasted long. Like I said, he was nervous and it kinda made him hard to get along with.”

  “How about now? Has he got any friends? Any buddies he hangs out with?”

  “Nah, he ain’t got no regular friends.”

  “Where’s he stay when he’s not with you?”

  “Oh, he visits our parents. They’s over to Visalia now. He travels quite a lot. Likes to see things. He’s always telling how he was at Yosemite or this place or that. He’s smart. Twan likes history. Always watching the History Channel and visiting monuments and historic places. Places I ain’t never even heard of it, but he likes ‘em.”

  Frank sits back, letting Ferris’s affection work for her. “What else does he like to do?”

  “Oh, he can fix just about anything. I’m a liar if he didn’t rewire this whole house! And ain’t nothing with an engine gonna be broke for long if Twan around it. Ain’t that right, Kev?”

  Behind Frank he grunts, “Uh-huh.”

  “So he’s good with his hands.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ferris says with sisterly pride.

  “How’s he take his coffee?”

  “His coffee?” she echoes, derailed.

  Frank nods.

  “He likes cream and sugar.”

  “Good.”

  Frank moves on. She asks more questions, pushing the knife deeper and deeper into Bailey’s sister. At last she sits back and sighs dramatically. She fiddles with the pencil in her fingers. She doesn’t look at Ferris.

  Finally the woman’s anxiety crescendos and she asks, “You think he did it? You think he killed them two children?”

  Blowing noisily between puffed lips, Frank says, “Let me just say, if Twan was my brother, I’d be scared.”

  Ferris starts to cry. After six years her defenses are finally breaking. Frank moves in for the kill. She rests a hand on the woman’s arm.

  “Sharon. Your brother needs help. I know you’ve tried your best, but it’s out of your hands. This is too big for you. Antoine needs professional help. We’ve got a lot of evidence suggesting your brother was involved with those two children.”

  Frank refrains from ugly words like murdered and killed. She stresses there is hope for Antoine. She plies Sharon’s weakness as a mother and responsible older sister.

  “We also have a lot of evidence suggesting he didn’t mean to, that it was an accident. He’s never done anything like this before and as far as we know he hasn’t since. But he’s a ticking bomb, Sharon. Men like this can hold it inside for years before they act again, but we know, we see it over and over again, that sooner or later they’re bound to do this again. They can’t help themselves. Usually they don’t even want to, but it’s a compulsion. They can’t stop it, no matter how hard they try. No matter how much they hate what they’re doing. They can’t stop without help, and if this goes on much longer, it might be too late to help. Is that what you want? To know you could’ve helped Twan but you were too afraid?” Frank bends her head to Sharon’s, her voice a caress. “Is that how you’re gonna help your baby brother?”

  Frank doesn’t move until Ferris sobs, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I know. I know you don’t. That’s okay. You’ve done the very best you could do and it’s over now. You don’t have to keep trying. Turn it over to people who are trained to help him, who can deal with this kind of problem. That’s how you can help him now. It’s how you can love him and protect him.”

  “It’s like you said, I know he didn’t mean to. I know it. It had to been some kinda accident. Whatever happened, I know Antoine didn’t mean it to. He’s a good boy.”

  “I know,” Frank assures, thinking of Trevor Pryce taped and helpless, watching Antoine’s assault on his sister. Sharon Ferris is at the flash point. Frank’s job is to convince her she can help her brother. “I don’t think he’s bad either. He just needs help.”

  Ferris nods. “Yeah. He just needs help. He’d never hurt no one. Not like that. Not little children. Not my Antoine.”

  When Ferris wipes her nose and pleads, “What do I do?” Frank conceals her elation and shows only compassion for Antoine Bailey’s plight.

  Chapter 35

  Frank hasn’t expected it to be so simple, but Sharon Ferris is tired. Once she caves, the rest comes like an avalanche. There are no spectacular details, no smoking guns, just a long, dreary account of Antoine Bailey’s restive existence. The incessant wandering, his inability to keep a relationship, the family’s increasing suspicions about his activities. Sharon knows he isn’t kind to his girlfriends.

  He’d briefly dated a friend of hers, as well as two other casual acquaintances in the neighborhood. None of the word that got back to Ferris was good. Her brother had a bad temper. He was violent. He could be cruel, in bed and out. He didn’t care about other people’s feelings.

  Frank listens to Ferris for more than two hours, concluding within the first five minutes that the woman’s beloved brother is a sociopath. Yet Frank is compassionate and understanding. By the end of their third hour, Sharon Ferris has her name on a statement. She has put into writing what she has held back for six years.

  On the day the Pryces were killed, Antoine and Kevin had gotten into an argument at the breakfast table. Antoine had helped himself to a third helping of bacon and Kevin grumbled, “You gonna eat like that you better start paying for some groceries.”

  Antoine retorted, “You begrudgin’ your own brother-in-law his sister’s good cooking?”

  “I’m begrudgin’ that I already got two boys to feed and I don’t need to be shoveling food meant for their mouths into your belly.”

  Antoine whined, “You a cheap son-of-a-bitch, Kevin. Always was.”

  Kevin threw his napkin down and stomped from the room. Sharon tried to calm him before he left for work but couldn’t. He told her that Antoine either had to carry his own weight or get gone, and the latter would be preferable.

  While Antoine watched her do the dishes she suggested he should apologize for calling Kevin cheap, pointing out that he did feed Antoine and let him stay at his house every time he came to get his check.

  Antoine twisted the comment around, the way he always did, putting it on Sharon that she was siding with Kevin and they just wanted him gone. Sharon tried pouring oil on troubled waters but eventually rose to the argument, ending by cursing her brother as lazy and good for nothing. Antoine slammed out the door, accusing Kevin of turning Sharon against her own kin. Antoine then spent most of the day in his truck, coming in at suppertime to bolt two huge portions and announce he’d be leaving in the morning.

  Ferris saw him once more that night, when he came in around 11:00 pm to take a shower. Antoine stayed in the shower so long Kevin remarked he was going to use up every last drop of hot water and wouldn’t that reflect in the electric bill. Antoine slept late the next morning, which he didn’t usually do. Sharon fixed him lunch and he took off a little while later. Sharon heard about the children that afternoon. She had an uneasy thought and quickly buried it. It resurfaced when she told Antoine that the cops had come around.

  He made her put together a story, convincing her he’d be a logical scapegoat for the murders just by dint of being a black man and homeless. Plus, he admitted, he had some other business—nothing bad, he’d assured her—tha
t he didn’t want the police sticking their noses into. Sharon agreed, eager to put her doubt in the back of her mind. And there it had festered until Frank came along and lanced it like a boil.

  After six cold years, the Pryce case is resurrected. Ferris has copped to the story her brother asked her to tell when Noah started snooping around about the camper. Bailey has no alibi for significant time frames in the Pryce case. This is excellent supporting evidence, but in and of itself useless. Frank still needs to materially connect him to the case. Her enthusiasm that Bailey still has his original camper is tempered by the amount of time that has passed since the kids were killed. The odds of recovering useful evidence from the vehicle are slim to none, but Frank is anxious to compare the surfaces in Bailey’s camper against the bruise on Ladeenia’s thigh.

  She debates putting his vehicle description in the box, but the case isn’t critical enough for an APB. He doesn’t know he’s wanted and Frank wants to keep it that way. She told Ferris that if she has second thoughts and thinks to warn Antoine, it will only hurt him more than help. She gambles Ferris will keep her mouth shut, hoping the combined relief of off-loading her secrets and of duty to Antoine will keep Ferris silent.

  Besides, he’ll show up soon to collect his check. His pattern is to arrive a couple days before it’s due, expecting the check to be early, surprised when it’s not and furious if it’s late. When he shows, Frank will be there with a search warrant. She contacts Bakersfield PD. They are grudgingly cooperative, agreeing to notify her of Bailey’s arrival and accompany her when she serves the warrants.

  Frank waits patiently for Bailey to surface. When she’s not on the clock she’s at home studying the Pryce books. A bottle of Scotch is never far from her hand. Reviewing the SID reports for perhaps the fiftieth time, she bemoans the lost Pryce evidence. Frank thinks what she wouldn’t give for it and wonders where the hell it ever ended up. If she just had it and could reprocess it, maybe they’d find a tiny smear of DNA this time. Something the lab might have overlooked on its first go-round. Something to put Bailey away with. Or exonerate him. Either way it would be conclusive.

  “Yeah,” she offers to the drink in her hand. “And if wishes were horses we’d all ride.”

  She considers searching through Property one last time but hasn’t the hope or the stamina to spare in some wild-ass chase. She’ll have to build her case with what she has. But as improbable as it is, Frank still has one last ace up her sleeve.

  Chapter 36

  One of Bailey’s old girlfriends still lives in the hood. Frank talks with her. She reiterates what a girlfriend Frank tracked to San Francisco has said.

  “Front, back, sideways, upside down. That boy was just plain freaky. And he always wantin’ some. Three, four times a day. Sometimes more. He wasn’t never satisfied.”

  “What happened if you didn’t give it to him?”

  “Depends. He’d sulk or mope around sometimes. Most times he’d just take what he wanted. Just throw me down and do what he liked.”

  “Whether you were willing or not?”

  “Hell, yeah.” She snorts. “Didn’t matter what I wanted.”

  “Why’d you go out with this guy?”

  “He was nice at first. Used to bring me flowers and candy. He was real gentleman-like at the start. Then he just got rougher and meaner. Disrespectful. I just thought it was, you know, a mood, or something that would pass. But let me tell you, it didn’t pass. It weren’t no mood.”

  “Will you fill out a statement for me?”

  “Hell, yeah, I will. You investigating him for something like this, I know you are, else you wouldn’t be axing me all these questions about how he like it. Hell, I’ll testify against that nappy-headed motherfucker any day. Motherfucker threw me into a wall before he left. Chipped my tooth, see?” She lifts her lip to point at a jagged front tooth. “I had a pretty smile, too.”

  “Still do,” Frank says, showing her own. It’s a satisfying moment when someone’s willing to testify.

  Frank heads to the county courthouse with Bailey’s warrant. She’s called ahead to check the schedule of Judge Moses Braun and catches him after he’s recessed for the day. He’s particularly sympathetic to cases involving children and signs Frank’s warrants without even reading them.

  On the third floor she runs into a cop she used to patrol with. Pausing in front of her, he needles, “I’ll be damned. If it isn’t Lieutenant Six Flights Up.”

  The man has built a career out of mediocrity and she shoots back, “If the hats aren’t calling you upstairs, you aren’t doing your job.”

  “You really knock one of your own men out?”

  “Come on,” she pleads. “Do I look like I could knock a cop out?”

  Frank is tall, and despite her liquid diet she has maintained her gym muscles. Leaving the cop pondering her question, she continues to the DA’S office. Frank has to wait twenty minutes before Lydia McQueen bursts from her office like a fire hydrant under too much pressure. Short and stout, she even looks like a fireplug. She stands in front of Frank, demanding, “What do you want?”

  “Good to see you too.”

  Frank highlights the warrant request, citing Bailey’s history of aggression, assault and forced anal intercourse. She also notes a detailed timeline of his whereabouts during the afternoon of the murders and his blown alibi.

  The Queen warns, “It sounds thin.”

  “Thin, but inculpatory. If I can get into the vehicle”—she flaps her search warrant—“I hope to match the girl’s bruise marks to the edge of the tabletop.”

  “Let me see that,” she says, holding out a well-tended hand. Leafing through the papers, she repeats, “It’s still thin. This is the best you can do after six years?”

  “It was a dump, Lydia. I’m happy to have this much.”

  The Queen is puzzled that one of the items Frank is looking for are Ladeenia Pryce’s panties. “You can’t expect to find these after all this time.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Frank elaborates on Bailey’s pathology, explaining the possibility that he might keep souvenirs from his victims. The panties never turned up anywhere else and Frank hopes that’s why.

  The attorney grunts and shakes her head. “Looks like a one-on-one, Frank. The sister’s word against his.”

  “I know.”

  “So why should I waste time filing based on just this?”

  Frank offers her most ingratiating smile. “Because we’ve been working together since before either one of us had a gray hair and because you know I’m good for more. Because I hardly ever come to you until I’ve built a case. But mostly, because I need this guy.”

  Frank and the DA eye-spar.

  “Even if I do sign off, you’ll have a helluva time at the arraignment.”

  “Let me worry about that. Just get me started.”

  “You better find that underwear,” the Queen bitches, but she puts pen to paper.

  Frank is happy. After certifying and duplicating warrants, she celebrates at the Alibi. To make the evening even nicer, Nancy is there. Frank drinks, flirts and thinks only of catching up to Antoine Bailey.

  Chapter 37

  Frank doesn’t know where she is. She stands in complete bafflement and cracks her shin on what feels like a coffee table. She thinks maybe she’s in her living room, but there’s no telltale light from the street. She shuffles with her hands extended and bumps into a padded chair. She doesn’t have a padded chair. Fighting frustration and a pounding head that does nothing to clarify the situation, she gropes for a wall. She runs into another table and things clatter to the floor.

  An overhead light splits her skull. She squints into it to see Nancy holding her robe closed.

  “What’s going on?” the waitress asks.

  “Uh… sorry. Just trying to find the bathroom.”

  “Over there.” Nancy points to a door in the opposite direction.

  Holy shit, Frank thinks, gulping water from the sink. What in hell is she doin
g here? She splashes water on her face, flinches when she sees herself in the mirror. Her hair’s a snake pile, her eyes are red and puffy, and there’s a deep crease on the cheek she slept on. Passed out on, she corrects.

  She takes some comfort that she at least woke up with her clothes on. Frank stares at her ruined face. She just meant to have a couple drinks, not end up passed out on Nancy’s couch. For a horrific instant she sees how far out of control her drinking is. Queasy, she returns to the living room. Nancy has straightened the overturned table and offers Frank aspirin.

  “No. Thanks. I think I’d better get going.”

  “Your car’s not here.”

  Frank lets that filter through the jackhammer in her head. “I’ll call a cab. I’ll wait outside.”

  Frank looks for a phone, but Nancy sighs. “Let me get dressed. I’ll give you a ride back to the bar.”

  “No, Nance. It’s …” Frank glances at her wrist, amazed that it’s almost five. “Okay,” she relents.

  While Nancy dresses, Frank combs her hair with her fingers and fills her pockets with what she’d emptied onto the coffee table the night before. Or the morning before. All she can remember is drinking stouts with Scotch backs and slowing to just stout when the anchorman on the evening news developed a Siamese twin.

  Taking the stairs from Nancy’s apartment, Frank asks what time they left the Alibi.

  “You closed it.”

  “Was I obnoxious?”

  “It’d be easier if you were.”

  “Why didn’t you call me a cab?”

  Nancy stops to face Frank. Pity and anger alternate across her face. “I thought maybe I’d finally get lucky last night, but you passed out while I was making the bed.”

  Frank is mortified. “Nance, I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nancy continues and Frank stays a step behind. They are quiet in the car, until Frank tries her tired excuse.

  “It’s not you, Nance. You know that. It’s me.”