Final judgment lm-5

by Joel Goldman

  “Will you?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.

  She twirled the neck of her bottle in one hand, flicking condensation off with the other. “No. I’m a cop. It’s not my case. I won’t screw it up for them.”

  “Then why agree to meet me?”

  She dipped her head, took a sip from her beer. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too, Sam.”

  They sat for a moment, neither of them talking, the silence building to an awkward crest. Mason had called her to ask her to do exactly what she wouldn’t and shouldn’t do. She had said yes in the hopes he would do what he could but wouldn’t do. At least their disappointment was mutual.

  Mason broke the silence. “Hey, let’s get some dinner.”

  She shook her head again. “Can’t. I’ve got to finish up the paperwork on that domestic case. Take a rain check?”

  “Sure. How about next week-Tuesday?”

  He understood the message in her refusal. She was available, but not just so he could use her as an inside source. Dinner was a way of saying she was right, admitting that she deserved better from him.

  She brightened again. “Tuesday would be great,” she said, getting up. “There is one thing I can tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Griswold and Cates still don’t know who the victim is, but they like your client for it anyway.”

  “Why, other than where the body was found?”

  “Because it works and cops like that better than anything else.”

  SIXTEEN

  Mason told Fish he would give him a ride to the Federal Courthouse on Friday morning. Fish protested it wasn’t necessary even though the police had impounded his Cadillac as evidence.

  “I rented a car. A white Taurus. A schlepper ’s car,” he had explained when Mason called the day before to tell him about the meeting.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a Taurus,” Mason said.

  “I’m a successful businessman. It’s no car for a successful businessman.”

  “Can you fit a body in the trunk?”

  “Very funny. All right. You can pick me up. Be here at ten.”

  “The meeting isn’t until eleven. It won’t take an hour to get downtown.”

  “Look at it this way. If being a little early is a crime, we’ll be in the right place.”

  A minivan was parked in the driveway when Mason pulled up in front of Fish’s house on Friday morning. He glanced in the windows as he walked up the driveway, noting the car seats inside. When Fish opened the door, Mason heard squeals of laughter coming from the living room. Fish smiled, clapped him on the back, and pulled him toward the noise.

  Four toddlers, three boys and a girl, were chasing each other in circles until they crashed in a heap on the floor before jumping up and doing it again, breathless, giggling and glowing. Scraps of brightly colored wrapping paper littered an Oriental rug in the center of the room.

  Two women, whom Mason took to be the mothers of the children, sat in chairs on one side of the room, their arms and legs tightly crossed. One wore jeans and a sweatshirt, the other a warm-up suit. They shared the same dark hair, thin faces, and tightly pinched mouths that pronounced them as sisters. A small pile of toys was bunched beneath each of their chairs, out of harm’s way.

  Mason stood on the edge of the living room as Fish waded into the gang of kids. Their laughter reached an upper octave as they swarmed on Fish’s legs, one grabbing each knee, the others flinging their arms around his ankles. He carefully shook one leg at a time, casting them off in another game that was repeated until he made his way to an easy chair opposite the two women.

  He tousled each child’s hair, hugging them in turn, and sent them off with gentle pats on their bottoms. Satisfied, they dove under their mothers’ chairs, retrieved their toys, and raced up the stairs.

  “My daughters, Sharon and Melissa,” Fish said.

  Mason crossed the room, shaking one hand at a time. “I’m Lou Mason, your father’s lawyer.”

  “I’m Sharon,” said the woman who was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “We know who you are,” Melissa added, tugging her warm-up suit around her as if the temperature had dropped when Mason entered the room.

  Sharon gathered the wrapping paper off the floor, disappearing into the kitchen. She returned wearing a winter jacket and carrying another over her arm. She handed it to Melissa, who had laid out four tiny parkas with mittens clipped to each sleeve in a line on the floor.

  “You don’t have to leave,” Fish told them. “My lawyer’s early. We’ve got plenty of time, don’t we, Lou? Besides, the kids are having fun.”

  “Sure,” Mason answered. “There’s no rush.”

  “I’ve got a full day, Dad,” Melissa said, straightening the parkas again. She stood and ran her hands through her hair.

  “Me too,” Sharon said.

  “But you just got here,” Fish said.

  “We’ve been here long enough,” Sharon said.

  Fish let out a deep sigh. “Is it so awful?”

  Sharon cocked her head at her father, bit her lip to keep from answering, and walked to the stairs, calling the kids instead. Melissa glanced around the room, looking for anything else that hadn’t been packed up as if she were checking out of a hotel room.

  “Dad,” Melissa said. “We’ve been through this. Sharon and I agreed to let you see the kids. You’ve seen them.”

  “I’m your father and you treat me like I’m a monster.”

  Sharon said, “We know what you are, Daddy. It wasn’t good for us, and in the end it won’t be good for our kids. Especially now with this whole dead-body thing.”

  “Tell them, Lou,” Fish said. “Tell them that I didn’t kill anybody. I just want to spend time with my grandkids.”

  “Stop it!” Melissa said, covering her ears with her hands. “I can’t take any more of this.”

  The four children galloped down the stairs, skidding to a halt in front of their jackets. They bent down, slipped their arms in their coat sleeves, and flipped them over their heads. Fish spread his arms wide and they rushed into his embrace.

  “Now!” Sharon said to the kids, clapping her hands. “Let’s get going.”

  Fish followed them to the door, watching until they drove off. He turned around. “They’re my kids,” he said to Mason with a shrug. “What are you going to do? I’ll get my coat.”

  They walked down the front steps towards Mason’s car. Fish waved to a man across the street picking up his newspaper at the end of the driveway. The man returned Fish’s gesture with a tentative half-hoisting of his arm, not certain what to make of his newly notorious neighbor.

  Fish and the decapitated corpse had made a media sensation, catching the attention of the cable news networks forever hungry for the next titillating case. Mason had given Fish strict instructions to refuse all comment. Mason limited his remarks to a firm assertion of Fish’s innocence coupled with a reminder of Fish’s full cooperation with the authorities. The media beast was barely satisfied with those crumbs. They would be back at each stage of the case: when the body was identified; when an arrest was made; when the preliminary hearing was held; when the defendant farted.

  Although Avery Fish had been identified as the prime suspect according to an unidentified source close to the investigation, he acted as though he didn’t have a care in the world since his near meltdown in the U.S. attorney’s office. Except when confronting his daughters, he was buoyed by instinctive optimism and reflexive good cheer. His faith rested in the firm belief that he could sell everyone something. All he had to do was figure out what they wanted. He repeated his cheerful wave to his neighbor.

  “Good morning, Morty,” he bellowed across the street. Morty hurried back inside as if he was afraid Fish’s greeting was contagious. Fish climbed into Mason’s SUV, huffing with the effort. “Sanctimonious son-of-a-bitch, that no-goodnik Morty.”

  “Friend of yours?”

>   “Cheats on his wife and his taxes and then treats me like I’ve got the plague.”

  “These are the times when you find out who your friends are.”

  “All my friends are dead. And you met my daughters.”

  “What about their mother?”

  “My girls like me better than their mother does. We got divorced twenty-five years ago. Not that I blame her, or the girls for that matter. No one would confuse me with Father of the Year, making the kind of living I did. But those grandkids are my second chance. You get me out of this mess and maybe my family will give me a break.”

  “Is that why you told me to be an hour early?”

  “I just wanted you to know. That’s all,” Fish answered.

  “We’ll see what Pete Samuelson has in mind.”

  “Tell me again what he said.”

  Mason repeated the conversation, adding his commentary at the end. “I talked to a homicide detective who’s a good friend. She said that the body hasn’t been identified yet. The only way Samuelson can help you is if he knows something that eliminates you as the killer.”

  “He wants to trade that for something from me?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. What do you have that he wants?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think I’m going to help him.”

  “Why not? You’re facing a prison term for mail fraud and a possible murder charge. You should be willing to do back flips naked down Broadway if we can make a deal with Samuelson that gets you back with your grandkids.”

  “Listen to me, boytchik. Samuelson is playing a game with us, but I’m much better at these games than he is. If Samuelson has proof I didn’t kill that poor bastard and he doesn’t turn it over to the police, he’s the one who will end up behind bars. Once he tells you that he has that kind of information, he has to give it up. So why should I give him something in return when I’ll end up with it anyway?”

  “So what will you tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him no. At least to his first offer. That’s never the best offer anyway.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Samuelson’s secretary ushered them into a large conference room. Unlike the bleak room from earlier in the week, this one had windows that looked north over the Missouri River, past the downtown airport and halfway to Iowa. A picture of the president hung on one wall.

  This time there was a pot of hot coffee and half a dozen bottles of water arranged on a credenza beneath the Great Seal of the United States. The secretary promised that Samuelson would be right there and he was, appearing at her side as she finished uttering his name.

  “Thank you, Evelyn,” Samuelson said, dismissing her. “Gentlemen, thanks for coming down on such short notice,” he added, beaming his best government smile at them and taking a seat near the head of the long, rectangular conference table.

  Mason grabbed a bottle of water and sat in a chair across from Samuelson with his back to the windows. Fish, a wry grin creeping from the corners of his mouth, walked the length of the room as if he was measuring it, stopping to admire the view from the windows, before sitting next to Mason.

  There was a sharp knock at the door. Mason looked up as Kelly Holt walked in carrying a thin manila folder. She stood next to Samuelson, her smile polite and professional. Her piercing blue eyes held him in check as she studied his reaction to seeing her for the first time in five years.

  “Hello, Lou,” she said.

  “Kelly,” he managed, coming to his feet and nearly knocking over his water bottle.

  Her hair was a rich brown now instead of the dark blond she had when he’d first met her early on a summer morning after he had fallen asleep on a lounge chair at a resort in the Lake of the Ozarks in southwest Missouri. She was a sheriff then, having quit the FBI, driven out by accusations she’d walked on the dark side with her dead partner, who had also been her lover. She woke him to tell him that the senior partner of his law firm had been found murdered during the firm’s annual retreat.

  They had nearly fallen in love, but Kelly left to heal wounds that the murder investigation had torn open. Mason had reached out to her a few times afterward until she finally stopped returning his calls. He let go, deciding that what they’d felt came more from what they’d been through than what they had meant to each other. Circumstantial lust, he called it to lessen the loss.

  “Agent Holt told me she had worked with you on a case when she was away from the FBI,” Samuelson said.

  “I didn’t know you had gone back to the Bureau,” Mason said to Kelly.

  “A few years ago,” she said.

  “And you’ve been in Kansas City all this time?”

  He couldn’t suppress the surprise in his voice but hoped he didn’t sound hurt that she hadn’t called or, worse that he didn’t sound like a whining ex-boyfriend who’d been dumped. He didn’t know what he would have done if she had called. His relationship with Abby was the real deal. Circumstantial lust didn’t figure in the equation. There was no room for old flames no matter how intensely they had once burned. Even now, he hung on to Abby though he knew she was drifting away from him. Still, the instinctive response of I can’t believe you didn’t call rippled through him.

  “Occasionally. Special assignments.”

  The door swung open again before Mason could ask if she was taking Dennis Brewer’s place and before he could assess what her involvement might mean for Fish or for him. An older black man dressed in pinstripes, his shoulders square and his pace more like a march than a walk, joined them. Samuelson didn’t salute, but he did stand. Mason and Fish followed suit.

  “Roosevelt Holmes,” the man said, introducing himself and repeating the handshaking ritual.

  He didn’t mention his title-United States attorney-because he didn’t have to. Mason knew who he was. Appointed two years ago, he’d established a reputation as a tough administrator who let his frontline lawyers, the assistant U.S. attorneys, make deals and try cases. He was a policy maker, not a trial lawyer. He got personally involved in cases that required the prestige or approval of his office or of his commanding officer in Washington, D.C., the attorney general.

  Holmes had been an Army JAG lawyer before entering private practice. He’d given up his position as managing partner of a large downtown firm to take the U.S. attorney’s job. He knew how to give and take orders, and none of his assistants had any doubt about who was in charge.

  Holmes was there so Mason would know that Fish’s case was no longer a small-time matter entrusted to a wet-behind-the-ears assistant U.S. attorney. Samuelson was the messenger, but the message came from the top. The price of poker had gone up. Mason glanced at Fish, whose eyes danced as he shook Holmes’s hand.

  “This is a very impressive conference room, Mr. U.S. Attorney,” Fish said. “The government treats you well.”

  “The government treats everyone the same, Mr. Fish,” Holmes answered. “Fairly and justly.”

  “I couldn’t ask for anything more than that.”

  Holmes sat at the head of the table flanked by Samuelson and Kelly on his right and Mason and Fish on his left. He pursed his lips, folded his hands together, and turned to Samuelson, giving him a barely perceptible nod.

  “Yes, sir,” Samuelson said and cleared his throat. “The Kansas City Police Department has requested the FBI’s assistance in identifying the body found in Mr. Fish’s car. Agent Holt is directing the response to that request and has been designated as our liaison to the homicide investigation.”

  Kelly took her cue, opening her manila folder, drawing Mason’s eyes to her hands. No rings. Still. He remembered how confidently those hands had gripped a shotgun and how tightly they had held him. Her crisp voice brought him back.

  “The body was decapitated and the hands were amputated, which eliminated identification by facial features, dental records, and fingerprints. That made it difficult to identify the victim but not impossible.”

  Mason listened as much for what Kelly said as what she d
idn’t say. If the killer wanted to be certain that the body wasn’t identified, he wouldn’t have left it in Fish’s car. He’d have hidden it where no one would ever find it. If the feds couldn’t explain why the killer dumped the body in Fish’s lap, they didn’t know as much as they wanted him to think they knew.

  Samuelson picked up where Kelly left off. “The police provided us with a DNA sample the morning the body was discovered.”

  “The Bureau maintains a DNA database,” Kelly added, their presentation tightly choreographed. “We found a preliminary match. A complete analysis won’t be finished until next week, but the prelim has a ninety-five-percent confidence level.”

  EIGHTEEN

  They let that bit of news hang in the air like a come-on in a singles bar. Fish leaned back in his chair, arms contentedly draped over his belly. Mason sat up straight. Fish was right. If the feds had information to exonerate Fish, they had to give it to the cops. If the information somehow incriminated Fish, they had to turn that over as well.

  “I’m sure you’ve already shared that news with the police,” Mason said.

  “Actually, not yet,” Samuelson said. “We just got the information yesterday. Agent Holt has been very busy, but I’m certain she’ll get together with the detectives as soon as she can.”

  “You had time to invite us over to play Let’s Make a Deal, but you’re too busy to call the police and tell them whose body was in the trunk of my client’s car. Things must really be hopping down here,” Mason said.

  Roosevelt Holmes raised one hand an inch off the table, stopping his subordinates from responding.

  “Mr. Mason, you’d be surprised just how much things do hop down here. In fact, we can make just about anything or anyone hop, skip, or dance. You keep that in mind.” He glanced at his watch and stood. “You’ll excuse me. I have another meeting,” he said and left.

  “This must be good,” Mason said. “Your boss wants us to know he’s behind whatever you’re about to offer, but he wants the plausible deniability that comes from not being here when you offer it. Makes it lonely in the middle.”