Stone Shadow dje-3

by Rex Miller

  But he didn't appear to pick up on it and said, “He wanted to be an entertainer for a while and he tried a fling at that. That was really the downfall. He was working these awful strip clubs and topless places and I caught his act—if you can call it that—a time or two and the crowds were a bunch of drunks waiting to see naked girls and they wouldn't listen to him, and he wasn't funny. And the odd thing is, he used to be a kind of charming guy and funny in conversation, you know, and he sort of went off the deep end. He just fell apart.

  “And you know how it is—when it's someone you care for. I don't know if you've ever been around when somebody you really cared about just began to disintegrate before your eyes but it's a paralyzing experience. You want to help but you can't, you know?"

  “I do, I think. I watched a marriage partner with the same kind of a perspective. Someone I had cared a lot about in the beginning...” Before she knew it she was telling him all about herself. It was the oddest sensation, Noel the defense lawyer putting herself on hold, so drawn to this man just as she was his brother. Wanting them to know each other well. To understand the shared secrets. To be able to help in a meaningful way.

  And they talked on and on, both of them pouring themselves out to the other. Learning they'd each grown up in the homes of foster parents, Noel and her brother close to theirs, calling them and thinking of them as Mom and Dad. Neither at the poverty level but none of the lot ever having much materially. Each of them totally at home in their respective skins. Comfortable with life and sharing that marvelous gift with their sibling brother, in each case.

  He wanted to know, “Noel, do you think that Bill—and I'm asking this in confidence of course—I don't even admit the possibility to anyone else—but do you think that he could have become so mentally unstable that he actually might have committed those terrible crimes they say he did?"

  “The burden of proof will be on them, the prosecution, to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he in fact so did. But because he told the Scannapieco woman he did or at least had buried them, perhaps speaking figuratively, the fact that he's an accessory in a mass-murder case leaves us very few viable options."

  “Those being?"

  “Those being that we can either plead him insane at the time of the homicides in the hopes of averting a death sentence, which is obviously the mandatory sentencing if there's a finding of guilty on even one count, or we can try the case—pleading him not guilty—and attempt to convince a jury that sufficient doubt exists as to your brother's guilt.

  “Wouldn't that be all but impossible?” He leaned forward, his scent reached her and it was like a fine wine to her.

  She suddenly caught herself and yanked her mind back into gear. “It probably seems that way, Joseph, but the great thing about the fairness and equity of our system of jurisprudence in this country is that the prosecuting attorney must prove the accused is guilty, as I said, beyond a REASONABLE doubt. What is a reasonable doubt? Even you and I, privy to as much inside case data as we are, we aren't sure of either his guilt or innocence, are we? Not really a hundred percent SURE. I don't happen to think he did the crimes. I think he's innocent. You THINK he's innocent but absolute certainty—that requires a lot of faith, information, and unswerving confidence in your own beliefs. One of my jobs in the courtroom is to create an atmosphere where that degree of faith takes more than a little effort. I do that in many ways, from the manner in which we select our jurors to the way in which..."

  And as he gazed into Noel Collier's beautiful, soulful eyes, hearing the words and feeling the sincerity and sensing the intelligence she brought to bear as she began to lay the case out for him, Joe Hackabee began to think for the first time that the case against his brother might not be so open and shut after all.

  They decided they'd have dinner together and continue their meeting, and she said he should plan on a grueling, late-night session, to which he agreed without a hint of guile. On her part she was having to fight to deal with the alien sensation of wanting a stranger. The soft speech patterns. The smooth sophistication of this suave man was getting to her. For one thing she'd been so unprepared for an identical twin, but to have him look and act as if he'd just stepped off the cover of Gentleman's Quarterly—the feelings were bubbling inside her.

  He looked like the kind of executive who you'd expect to see getting out of the elevator on the fortieth floor of the Southland Center looking rich, Powerful, impeccably groomed. So self-possessed there is no doubt he has the gifts of success. Noel was attracted to soft-spoken, talented, super-powerful men, often older than she. She liked super-achievers. Joe Hackabee was a type she understood. One of the urbane-but-warm Houston Rich.

  She should have spent the mealtime poring over Ukie's life. Picking Joe's brain of every relevant detail and scrap of memorabilia, but what she did was talk about herself And for some reason it was suddenly vital that this stranger know every fact about her failed marriage.

  “Bill was my husband's name. Bill Chase. Bill Chase gave his name to a naive young gal named Noel Collier Chase in a picturesque and glorious church called Centenary Francis Street Methodist. It was Easter week. A small but memorable event. Small in that there were only three of us there for the tying of the knot. Minister John Jamison Kisner, an old puppy dog of a guy I still recall wit affection, William Chase, and little moi.

  “No witnesses. Like a good hit-and-run. A marriage like an accident. My foster parents were dead and his folks weren't having any of it. Great and auspicious start. Memorable in that Bill'd been so nervous he'd perspired roughly three pints of white, Anglo-Saxon, Princetonian, Protestant perspiration.

  “Very upper-class guy. Lots of money. Honey, I'm talkin’ OLD money and BUCKETS of the stuff. He fell in love with the face and the bod and unfortunately nothing else. But he was so sex-mad hot for me he told his mammy and pappy to jam it, and first thing you know we were down on our knees in front of my minister, all alone in front of that pulpit, and both of us scared witless and the descending wrath of his parents that seemed to loom over the wedding. But we got hitched anyway. Bill and his little white-trash snip of a wife, I'm sure they thought.

  “The honeymoon lasted two years. Not the trip to the islands but the romance of it. You know that courtship period you always hope will stay hot for thirty years?"

  “Yep,” he said, tilting his head, “remember it well, had one myself once."

  “Okay. So about two years and we just woke up one morning and the whole thing was over. We decided we liked each other a lot and in the way of couples everywhere we stayed together—but married in name only.” She grimaced.

  “Bill had become ... Why am I telling you all this, Doctor? Oh, well. He'd become silly. His affectation for the British behavioral modes no longer seemed classy and elegant. His affected British wardrobe just seemed tiresome and he was becoming a ludicrous figure to me in some ways, no matter what I did to try and avert those sorts of feelings. It was like we were trying to make each other despise the other. I was a sort of outrageous chick, I guess, although you'd never believe such a thing of me now.” She smiled ironically at Joe, a quick little zinger as she looked up and saw that great smile.” And my penchant for the let's call it Bedroom Adventure had become somewhat disgusting to Bill I later learned. We'd begun to grow apart. Sex had become a rather habitual kind of thing, and that's what the relationship had really been based on.

  “As I said, he came from these real monied people up in Wisconsin, a family that had what he always called a cheese empire. And I had started teasing him about being Mr. Cheese, and the disdain I'd always felt for his snobby, elitist relatives I was now starting to feel for my husband. And of course each of us could sense the marriage going. And we just fell apart slowly.

  “We became so different at the end. He like restrained statements of stylish sex, not tight trousers and Fredericks of Hollywood nighties. I liked real men, not poseurs in leather-elbowed smoking jackets with pipes they never lit, talking about Newport or so
me new island watering hole with a bunch of stuck-up old rich assholes. I hated all his friends and he hated mine. And then my career went wild, and I started getting so much press and all, and that was the end. Kind of soured me on the marriage thing for a while. But that's all old news now.” She sighed and started to apologize for monopolizing the conversation. But she realized, that she'd told Joseph Hackabee more about herself than she'd told some guys she'd slept with.

  She couldn't believe she'd confessed to having a penchant for Bedroom Adventure, and done everything but hang a sign out advertising her marriageability.

  Suddenly the awareness of her total turn-on had her blushing prettily right down to her shoes and she looked up to see Hackabee take a sip of water, then lean over close to her ear and say, “Well, I guess this means my favorite leather-elbowed smoking jacket goes to Goodwill.” And he smiled his gorgeous smile into her eyes, and it was a beginning.

  Highland Park

  She'd never felt like this before. Never so totally open to anyone. Something magical, corny-sounding or not, was flowing between them. They had lingered over dinner as much as they dared, but the serious nature of Ukie's plight had cast a dark shadow over the conviviality that would otherwise have captured the remainder of the evening.

  The drive out to Highland Park seemed to take forever. He was following her in a rented car. She'd offered to chauffeur him of course, but he wouldn't hear of it. She could tell he was delighted by her house, which pleased her.

  “Gee,” he said jokingly, shaking his head as he took in the vast expanse of rooms, white walls, paintings, sculpture, objets d'art, and eclectics. It was breathtaking. “Maybe someday you'll be able to afford something nice,” in this cute, soft voice. It hit her just right.

  “I know,” she confided back to him, “this squalor can really get depressing."

  “So empty of objects. Is it always this bleak or did you just move and you haven't unpacked yet?” There was something everywhere you looked. A visual barrage of antiques and Deco and Nouveau and classical and impressionist and neorealist and minimalist all assaulting the eyes in a strangely pleasing hodgepodge that was so unexpected. The overall effect dazzling yet comfortable.

  “No. It wouldn't be this bleak but I have a lady who comes in once a week and bleaks it for me."

  “Yes.” He made a tsk-tsk sound. “Well, save your pennies. It won't always be this bad."

  “That's a comfort.” She laughed. “Seriously,” she asked in a soft, smiling voice, “think it's too ostentatious?” She realized his answer was rather important to her.

  “Matter of fact, what I think is"—he moved close to her—"that what you have is one helluva house. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

  And he was speaking very low and she felt like he was talking about her, not the house, and she felt like an absolute, utter idiot when he didn't kiss her right then and there, but turned and just walked around admiring things, and she stood there trembling, waiting for him to take her in his arms and knowing that he wanted her too.

  It was with the greatest effort of will that she wrenched her mind back to business, after all the man's brother was a mass-murder suspect, and she began going over Ukie's childhood.

  When he talked about the closeness of their early years, before they'd started to draw apart, he could sense how special the conversation was to her. She seemed to be identifying so strongly with everything he told her. It was almost as if it was making her high. She was positively owing. Her eyes sparkling. Bright, like a cocaine edge. Switched on.

  “Joe,” she told him finally, “I'm so bowled over by all of this."

  “Not hard to understand. Twins have that effect on a lot of pe—"

  “No. Not that. I mean, I've always felt like something was pulling me to this case but I haven't been able to verbalize my feelings. There was something acting like a magnet for me. I don't know how to say it. I'm a great believer in fate."

  He wondered if she might have done some lines, she was so intense. “You believe in God, right?” he asked. She nodded. “Call it, God. A force. Kate. It doesn't matter, I suppose. Whatever guides our destiny—” He shrugged slowly. “I believe in fate too.” And he looked at her so deeply that it spoke volumes. “And I think this was all preordained somehow."

  “I want to tell you"—she felt so corny but she had to say it—"that I know your brother is innocent. And I'll help both of you in every way that I can."

  He smiled ingenuously, with the easy grace of the very handsome.

  Dallas

  Jack came in to work badly hung over and with a guilt about his self-indulgent dream fantasies and a paranoia about his sloppy policework of late. The water he'd remembered to put in the bowl outside was still there but the dog food he'd managed to set out was gone. That was the bright spot of the day.

  When he got to work, made even more paranoid by the attempted sniping of a Dallas cop car in one of the predominantly black balkanized sectors which had dominated the morning news, the damn guys from the AG's office were all over him like white on rice and he was maneuvered into a room and found himself even before he'd had his morning coffee watching Ukie on videotape:

  “Okay. Start it.” To Eichord with a self satisfied, smiling we-told-you-so-but-you-wouldn't-listen type of nod. “Watch this."

  “He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows. You can see he's tall from the shadows. Tall like a professional basketball nigger. He likes to hur—"

  “Stop it. There! See that! Go back,” the one named Sawyer told the man standing by the video playback.

  “What?"

  “Rewind. Go back.” He was excited, turning to Jack. “Eichord. I want you to watch this. Did you catch it? Go on. Play it."

  The other man pressed the play switch and Ukie said, “In the WATER. He showed me under the water. These big—"

  “No. Shit. You went too far. Go forward just one second. Okay—STOP. All right. Now.” He pressed play again.

  “—don't know.” Ukie was crying and Eichord remembered the incongruousness of the moment, and then Ukie composed himself a bit and continued, “He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows.” Eichord watched the very convincing way that Ukie shuddered in fear. “You can see he's tall from the shadows. Tall like a professional basketball nigger.” And they stopped it again.

  Eichord thought he knew what they were going for. The shuddering or trembling was a possible tip-off. Either Ukie was one consummate actor or he believed what he was saying.

  Sawyer flipped a fluorescent light above them and Eichord, badly hung over, was blinded by it and was blinking like a bat coming out of a dark cave into a flashlight beam as the man excitedly demanded of him, “Well, what about THAT shit?"

  “Yeah. It's pretty effective-looking trembling, I'll admit. Hard to know if it's an acting job or not."

  “Trembling?” Eichord nodded. “What the hell are you talking about—TREMBLING?” He acted as if Jack had been speaking Swahili.

  And Eichord answered like Hackabee, “Trembling, Trepidant. Timorous. Timid ... tremulant?"

  “What the shit?"

  “You played the video where he shakes. A little dramatic shudder while he tells me he never sees the guy. Pretty good. Method acting, for all I know."

  “I don't understand what the fuck this man is talking about,” he said to Wally Michaels, who fought a smile back and gestured innocently as if to say keep me out of this.

  “What in the jolly fuck are you talking here, mister? I just showed you where your murder suspect implicates a fucking NIGGER in the fucking surveillance tape and you sit there with some trembling shit that doesn't make a lick of sense. And by the way you've got a piece of fucking TOILET PAPER stuck to your cheek.” The other man snickered under his breath as the AG's man shook his head in disgust.

  “Oh,” Eichord mumbled. “I forgot.” He reached and felt the impromptu coagulant on his face. “I cut myself shaving, he mumbled. No shit.
>
  “He never lets himself be seen. He stays back. In the shadows. You can see he's tall from the sh—” The man stopped it with a vengeance and turned to Eichord, who felt himself coming apart. “Pay attention. Listen, goddammit.” Click.

  “—dows. Tall like a professional basketball nigger."

  “JEEZUS! He's fucking TELLING you the killer is a tall nigger That's your own goddamn interrogation and you missed it."

  Eichord wanted a drink. No. First what he wanted to do was reach over and grab this moron by the shirt collar and tie, grab evening and just twist until the idiot was right there in his face and then put his lights out for him. No. Grab the lapels of the cheap suit in a cross-X grab and put a reverse chicken choke on the ignorant son of a bitch. Put him in a ball right here on the floor. THEN go out and get the drink. But what he did was take a very deep breath and begin slowly tap-dancing, fine-tooth comb in hand, patience ebbing but under control, as he took the two shoe flies step by step, fact by fact, through the long parade of deaths that were currently attributable to the Grave-digger perp or perps unknown, dancing all the while not unlike Gene Kelly in the rain-filled gutter, dancing through the modus operandi, the opportunity patterns, the random factoring, the lack of commonality, the day danced away, Eichord shuffle-kicking through a shit clog of red tape trying to convince these characters that “tall like a basketball nigger” was just a nigger of speech.

  The tap dance was fairly effective but they weren't buying it without music so Eichord ended up having to get on the horn and have the ballet orchestrated by McTuff, and finally he got them pulled out of his thinning hair, if not clean back to Austin, and by midafternoon, when he had an appointment with a psychiatrist named Sue Mandel, they'd left. He figured Sue to be a tough old gal in her fifties, hair pulled back into a bun, about five feet tall, Dr. Ruth only more severe-looking.