by Ford, G. M.
I kept walking. Halfway back to the house, the alarm began to sound again. I pitched a glance back over my shoulder. Dawson had shoved his microphone between a couple of gate slats and was holding on to another with his free hand. I stopped and turned back toward the gate.
There was no leaving him there. He’d keep setting the system off. So I walked slowly back in his direction. Dawson pushed the microphone as far out as he could.
“You’re on private property,” I boomed. “I’m officially asking you to leave. If you don’t, I’m calling the cops, and then I’m calling your employer.”
Awkward silence to follow. He knew the rules. He spit out some bullshit about the public’s right to know as he eased the mic back through the gate and began to flow backward at the speed of lava, slip slidin’ away until his feet were on the public roadway.
The second TV truck pulled to the curb just north of the gate. The truck’s halogen headlights lit Dawson up like a bike reflector. Two guys in white coveralls got out of the second truck and started our way. One of them said something I couldn’t make out.
I turned and walked away, Gabe hard on my hip.
Dawson wasn’t ready to quit. “In light of tonight’s events, would either you or Dr. Duvall like to comment on the grand’s jury action?” he shouted to our backs.
Once inside the house, I bolted the front door, turned off the yard lights, and then spent ten minutes going over the operation of the security system with Gabe, who, like I figured, was a real quick learner.
I gave Gabe a restrained clap on the shoulder. “Thanks for the help tonight.”
“We’re always glad to be of service,” Gabe said.
We parted company at the bottom of the stairs, Gabe tramping back up into the stratosphere while I barefooted it for the back of the house. Halfway down the hall, I noticed the kitchen light was on, so I veered in that direction and found Rebecca sitting at the kitchen table, wearing one of my old, scruffy bathrobes and sipping at a cup of coffee.
“There’s a couple TV remote trucks camped out front,” I said, as I headed across the room, found a cup, and poured myself some coffee. “Snowdrift Dawson among them.”
“Does that mean we’re officially a wreck on the highway now?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“What do they want?”
“A statement from you.”
She emitted a short humorless laugh but didn’t say anything, so I kept talking. “Which begs the question: How in hell did they know you were here? An answer that pretty much has to be Harborview hospital.”
“Hospitals aren’t allowed to give out that sort of information.”
“From my experience, they’re pretty much fanatics about it,” I agreed.
“Then what?”
“If it wasn’t you, and it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t Gabe . . . then it’s gotta be them.” I shrugged. “Unless you can think of something else.”
“Could somebody have followed us?”
“Gabe would’ve seen ’em.”
“Sounds like you have a lot of confidence in Gabe.”
“Gabe is as advertised,” I assured her.
We lapsed into silent sipping. I was trying to decide whether to tell her what Dawson had said about some sort of a grand jury proceeding. I was thinking, you know, since there’s nothing we can do about it until morning anyway, might as well get a few hours’ sleep and then tackle it in the A.M. I have few peers when it comes to the do-it-later rationalization.
On the other hand, there was something about this whole shit storm that chafed me. Something that didn’t make the narrow kind of sense my feeble brain required. First off, I couldn’t fathom who could have enough clout to set this kind of conspiracy in motion. Maybe back in my old man’s time, when everybody was in everybody else’s pocket, but not now, not in this white man’s paradise.
A pair of killers in UPS uniforms was one thing. There are lots of scumbags you can hire for a gig like that—cheaper than you’d imagine too—but a plan that hinged on fully compromising a public employee, and possibly more than one? That’s a whole different zip code. Same with having almost instantaneous access to highly confidential hospital records. How’s that done? And then it gets really scary, when the first murder attempt fails, and somebody’s either stupid enough or desperate enough to waltz in to the busiest hospital in town, in broad daylight, and try it again. To say my mind was boggled didn’t begin to cover it.
I watched her get up, walk over to the sink, and rinse out her cup. She dried her hands on a plaid dish towel that had belonged to my mother, then leaned back against the sink and said, “It’s always been you before.”
“Me what?”
She gave me a wan smile. “You’ve always been the one with some kind of disaster going on, not me. You’ve been arrested and needed me to call Jed more times than I can count, or you’ve gotten beaten up and needed a ride home from the ER . . .” She shook her head in mock disgust. “And now it’s me, and you know what?”
“What?” I asked.
“You know, as we’ve gotten older and people we know tried to cope with the normal disasters of life—illness, family problems, money problems, all of it—I know this sounds weird to say, but I never really felt as if any of that applied to me. I realize now that a little part of me always thought that when something went terribly wrong for somebody I knew, that they must have made some sort of mistake. You know, some miscalculation or momentary inattention that got them into the fix they were in.” She heaved a sigh. “I thought I was immune to things like that.”
“I’ve known you for a long time, babe, and, more than anybody else I know, your life has turned out pretty much the way you planned it.”
The muscles along her jaw rippled like snakes. “But I never realized how arrogant I’d become,” she said. “Just standing here now, I can think of a dozen things I should have handled differently, if . . . if I hadn’t been so damn self-righteous. If I’d just shown a bit more empathy.” She went quiet.
I had a feeling we’d reached the point where I was supposed to say something soothing. I rifled my brain for a suitable homily but couldn’t muster anything more therapeutic than something about how maybe it was just her turn in the barrel, which, I felt pretty sure, wasn’t what she wanted to hear at this juncture.
I was spared the dilemma when a shout of “Hey” resounded from the hallway.
I got up, walked over to the door, and peered down the hall. Gabe was standing about three stairs up, leaning over the ornate wooden bannister. “You all probably ought to watch the news. There’s shit going on.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Oh Jesus,” Rebecca said. “What now? Locusts?” She’d wandered over and wedged herself between my shoulder and the door frame. In the fluorescent light, her skin looked nearly transparent. There was something strangely tentative in her eyes. I pretended not to notice. She picked up on it anyway.
“I’ve worked all my life to . . .” She stopped. “How can anyone think I would . . .”
She stopped again and then pinned me with an angry glare. “Do you hear me? I sound like some, some frigging soap opera heroine.” Out of the blue, she stomped her foot. “GODDAMN IT,” she bellowed. “I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING.”
Scared the shit out of me. Don’t think I’d ever heard her yell before. Certainly not in anger anyway. I stood there and waited for her echoes to exit the eaves, then stepped over and stood next to her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I lost it there for a minute.”
“This must be—”
She cut me off. “It’s just that people seem so gleeful about it. Unless I’m getting paranoid, I can feel a certain . . . like . . . a certain delight down at the bottom of it. Like there’s a whole bunch of people out there sniggering about what’s happening to me.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Something about human beings likes to see the mighty come undone,” I said. “Almost like it’s pa
rt of our DNA. That’s what tragedies are about, isn’t it? Some sort of a universal schadenfreude.”
She leaned her head on my shoulder.
“Go turn on the TV,” I said. “I’ll be right in.”
She slid her hand across my back as she squeezed by me and padded off toward the bedroom. I went the other way, rinsed out my cup, checked the lock on the back door.
Commercial on the tube. Sonic Drive-In. Two dickheads sitting in a convertible discussing their milkshakes. I sat on the edge of the bed, returned the Smith & Wesson to the nightstand, and then began picking an armada of embedded beauty bark shards from the soles of my feet.
A familiar fanfare lifted my gaze to the TV screen. “Eyewitness News Eight. Your Northwest Eye in the Sky.” Shot of a helicopter veering over downtown Seattle. Taken by another helicopter veering over downtown Seattle. Trumpets blaring. Talking head appears. New Asian woman I’d never seen before. Stacy Chen. Pretty. Dead-ass serious. There I go categorizing again. Gotta work on that.
“In today’s top story, Prosecuting Attorney Paul Woodward has announced that he has taken the unprecedented step of convening an emergency grand jury for the purpose of securing an indictment against suspended King County medical examiner Rebecca S. Duvall.”
Cut to one of the conference rooms at city hall. Bunch of ceremonial flags, a dozen guys in gray suits lined up behind a rostrum with the county seal glinting gold. Right on cue, Paul Woodward strides to the podium, nods at the assembled multitude, clears his throat, and then looks solemnly around the room.
If you needed somebody to play a prosecuting attorney, Woodward was the guy you’d hire. Fiftysomething. Even features, except for maybe a bit too much chin. Personal-trainer trim. Walking around beneath enough hair to stuff a morris chair.
He had his funeral face on as he leaned into the unruly thicket of microphones. “My office has determined that, in order to avoid any appearance of bias or favoritism, it is in the public’s interest to impanel a special grand jury for the purpose of obtaining an indictment against currently suspended King County medical examiner Rebecca S. Duvall.” Lots of shuffling around and whispering from the crowd. “The normal protocol for an internal matter such as this would be to allow civil procedures to run their course. But—”
“Oh Christ, he’s not going to quote Franklin, is he?” slipped from my lips.
“—as Benjamin Franklin said so long ago, ‘the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.’”
“Which means he’s got five attorneys so far up his ass he can taste hair gel,” I said.
“The maintenance of the public trust demands that matters of official misconduct be rectified with great dispatch. To that end, a special grand jury is being impaneled at this moment. It is our intention to seek a bill of indictment on Friday, February seventeenth, and to arraign Dr. Duvall the following Tuesday, February twenty-first.”
Woodward folded his notes and nodded gravely. Shouted questions arrived from about five people at once. Woodward bobbed his leonine mane a couple of times and then strode out of sight, entourage in hot pursuit.
Back to Stacy Chen. “Channel Eight, your Eye in the Sky, continues with exclusive interviews with the families and loved ones of some of those whose convictions have been called into question. Back in a minute.”
“Sounds a lot like you’re already guilty,” I said.
“I could go to prison,” she said.
“Nah,” I scoffed, with quite a bit more bravado than I actually felt.
She wasn’t buying it. “I’ve been being an idiot about this,” she insisted. “I’ve been treating this thing like it was a nuisance . . . like it was so ridiculous it was going to go away if I didn’t feed it any negative energy. And it’s not. This is . . . This is serious.”
On the tube, a commercial for a local pest control business. Stop Buggin’ Me. Some asshole dressed up like Superman, whuppin’ on some giant termite.
“Some of those cases are from several years ago. I need to look at my notes again,” Rebecca said, as Superman launched the six-foot vermin like a javelin.
“I’m working on it,” I said. She had to know Eagen was helping out, but if he got caught coloring outside the lines on this one, he’d be out on the street, so I was keeping the details to a minimum. Gotta have deniability.
Besides, truth be told, I was harboring a few lingering doubts myself. Not about her honesty. That was above reproach. But I couldn’t help wonder if perhaps, during the years we’d been apart, her life hadn’t gotten out of hand in some way I didn’t know anything about. Maybe she’d just gotten sloppy from the stress. I gave up expecting people to be perfect a long time ago. Makes life a whole lot more pleasant.
I pointed at the TV.
“Welcome back. Stacy Chen for Channel Eight Eye in the Sky News. Continuing our story of Prosecuting Attorney Paul Woodward’s surprise announcement of his intention to convene a special grand jury in the matter of disgraced King County medical examiner Rebecca Duvall. On the condition of anonymity, a highly placed source has told Channel Eight that the prosecuting attorney’s office has notified five families that convictions involving their loved ones have been called into question by the charges of dereliction and evidence tampering currently being leveled at suspended King County medical examiner Rebecca Duvall.”
Cut to the face of an older Hispanic woman. Midfifties. Blunt featured and stout. The banner under her face read: CARLOTTA DURAN. Under that: MOTHER OF GILBERTO DURAN, CONVICTED IN 2014 OF THE ROBBERY OF A CAPITOL HILL CONVENIENCE STORE.
“You remember Gilberto Duran?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“I always know my son not do what they say,” Carlotta Duran said in a thick accent. “They hadda be some mistake. He’s no that kind of boy. Dey took his life away. Poot him in prison. They keel him for no-thing in dat prison. For nothing. Deese woman gotta pay for what she done. Deys gotta be some kinda—”
This didn’t seem to be going anywhere we wanted to go, so I pushed the “Mute” button. Like most of TV, it was better without the sound.
Another mug shot appeared. “What do you remember about him?” I asked.
Took her a second to drag her eyes from the TV screen.
“Not a damn thing,” she said.
Stacy Chen was back. I pushed “Mute.” “Also among those notified by the prosecutor’s office was Mrs. Patricia Harrington, whose daughter Tracy was murdered earlier this year, by convicted killer Lamar Hudson.”
“Oh yeah,” Rebecca said. “The Harrington business.”
A new image flashed onto the screen. Well-to-do woman in her late sixties. Margaret Thatcher cast-iron hair, string of pearls the size of pigeon eggs. The second I saw her face, I remembered who she was.
That was because the Harringtons were Seattle’s version of the Kennedy family. Everybody knew who they were. A big old-money clan for whom the trappings of great wealth had often seemed to be little more than a gilded invitation to tragedy.
As I recalled the story, they had a junkie daughter who was found strangled in Volunteer Park. Just the sort of sordid tale the media felt compelled to trumpet to the far corners of the earth, and just the sort of story with which an old-money family like the Harringtons were least prepared to deal.
Mrs. Harrington’s husband—I was drawing a blank on his name, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Harrington—had found Tracy dead in the park. By the time the feeding frenzy was over, it had been revealed that the family had an autistic son who did not live with them and that the kid was found unconscious at the murder scene but was later exonerated of any wrongdoing. Just the sort of story that intensely private people like the Harringtons wanted plastered all over the front page.
The next day, the cops arrested a semisentient citizen named Lamar Hudson, who up and confessed to the crime; which, of course, gave the media an opportunity to dredge up the whole family soap opera once again. Took a jury all of two hours to h
and Lamar Hudson life without the possibility of parole.
Just when it seemed like the media onslaught was over, however, Lamar Hudson’s plight found its way back onto the front page when the matter of his fitness to stand trial caused considerable debate in national legal circles.
Didn’t take Sigmund Freud to see that Lamar wasn’t playing with a full deck.
Any damn fool could see that he was barely able to form complete sentences, let alone assist in his own defense. Unfortunately for Lamar, both the social status of the victim and the heinous nature of the crime were sufficient that the system didn’t really give a shit whether he was crazy or not. Lamar had unwittingly stumbled into the place in our society where Old Testament vengeance replaces new age law, and reason and metaphorical teeth and eyes start disappearing into the ozone. Last I’d heard, the Innocence Project had gotten involved with Lamar’s plight and were pushing for a new trial.
Patricia Harrington blinked at the camera. “I don’t quite know what to say,” she began. “There is, of course, no closure for us.” She stopped and allowed herself a small sigh. “Our family has done our best to cope with the matter of Tracy’s death. It has been a long and painful process. And now”—she set her jaw and stifled another sigh—“it is our sincere hope that this matter will be resolved as quickly as possible.”
Back to Stacy Chen. “Stay tuned. We’ll be back in one minute, after this word from our sponsors.”
We sat in silence, watching the same Sonic Drive-In commercial as before. Same car. Same two dickheads. This is how we Sonic.
“So I’m going to be in court on Tuesday,” she said.
“Presuming Woodward gets his indictment,” I hedged.
She made a rude noise with her lips.
Couldn’t argue with that. There was a corny old adage that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if a DA asked them to. Unfortunately, it was true.
“Woodward’s got no choice,” I said. “Next year’s an election year; he’s gotta come out of this smelling like a rose. If he needs to throw you under the bus, he will.”
“He never liked me much anyway. Told me once I wasn’t a team player.”
