Judgment

by Lee Goldberg

  JD was investigating those rumors, where they were coming from and why, when he was killed.

  Macklin was falling into his rhythm now, his feet padding gently and softly on the pavement, his body shifting into that exertion-fed physical and emotional high.

  Now Melody and Saul were both dead. Macklin had no doubt it was because they had talked to him. Why were they killed? What danger did they pose, and to whom?

  Again the gunman's fleeting image toyed with Macklin. I've been a fool, he thought. Someone is following me, picking off anyone that can get me closer to the truth about my father. How long has the killer been on my tail? Why and for whom?

  Why am I still alive? Surely, he's had dozens of opportunities to kill me. That question, for the moment, seemed the most puzzling. Why hadn't the gunman killed him along with Melody, Saul, and Moe? Was the bullet that killed Esteban meant for him?

  Macklin slowed a few yards short of the Batmobile, parked beside the gray rubble of a demolished building.

  The killing wasn't over—that was clear to him. Macklin tried again to hold the gunman's image long enough to recognize it. Find the gunman, Macklin knew, and he'd find his answers. And his freedom.

  Then again, it occurred to him, he might not have to find the gunman. The gunman might find him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Brett Macklin lived in the sort of single-story house a child might draw—symmetrical, a front door flanked by two windows and topped with a pointed roof.

  The sea breeze that cooled Macklin now as he rose from the Batmobile had done its subtle damage to his home, gradually stripping off the white paint in tiny flakes and exposing the turquoise underneath.

  Three old Cadillacs rested on his unkempt front lawn like tired, grazing cattle. The neighbors were constantly complaining about it, threatening to legally force him to get rid of the "ugly relics," but so far they were all bark and no bite.

  One of the cars was a mere skeleton, a rusted four-door body on blocks that Macklin had hoped to transform into a blazing red classic. He stood beside it and tried to rekindle his enthusiasm, remembering how excited Shaw had been when Macklin gave him the blue Cadillac convertible. It was pointless. The Brett Macklin who had been childishly eager about the project was gone. Those sorts of visions seemed beyond his reach now.

  He took the Magnum out and tossed it inside the gutted hulk and then trudged up the front steps, inserted the key in the deadbolt, and turned the knob. Wearily, he pushed open the door and stepped over a pile of mail, closed the door, and switched on the light.

  Macklin went into the closet-size hall bathroom under the stairs and looked at his face in the mirror. His hair was stuck to the caked blood on his forehead.

  "Shit, do you look like hell," he told his reflection. He twisted on the faucet and splashed his face with cold water.

  The water refreshed him and washed away the blood. When Macklin looked into the mirror again, he was surprised to see that the bullet had barely nicked his forehead.

  "It's always the little ones that bleed the most," he said to himself. After drying his face off with a towel, he clicked off the light and went into the kitchen.

  A week's worth of dishes sat soaking in the sink, nearly submerged in brownish water, soggy bran flakes, and bits of fat. It gave the compact kitchen a sour smell.

  The cupboards looked bleached, badly in need of restaining, and the countertops, yellowed with age, wouldn't shine if soaked for a month in Formula 409. The floor, however, was brand-new, designed to look like a cobblestone path. Because Macklin rarely swept the floor, it was easy to mistake it for one.

  Cleanliness was of little concern to Macklin. There were only two rooms in the house Macklin cared about anyway—the bedroom and the garage. The rest of the house was just space to throw his stuff.

  Macklin sauntered over to the refrigerator, opened it, and searched for the makings of a quick meal. He discovered some leftover pepperoni pizza wrapped in foil. He pulled out the pizza and a Schlitz, and closed the refrigerator door with his rear end. As he carried the food to the table, he noticed the light blinking on his telephone answering machine on the counter. So he hit the "play" button with his elbow as he passed the machine.

  He dragged a wooden chair out from under the small butcher block with his foot and sat down.

  Beep. "Hi, Brett, this is Cheshire. I haven't heard from you. Let's get together, okay? Gimme a call at home or at the hospital. Bye!"

  Beep. "Fred Jenkins here. You have just won $1,000 worth of savings for just $39.95. That's right Mr. . . . ah . . . Mr. Brett Macklin. Our coupon book, being held in your name for a limited time, will entitle you to a treasure trove of values, $1,000 worth, for just a piddling $39.95. Call me, Fred Jenkins, at 555-7497 to claim your $1,000 in spending power!"

  Beep. "I think the warp drive is busted on my Caddy. Scotty, can you give it a look-see? " It was Macklin's former brother-in-law, the proud owner of one of Macklin's rebuilt '59 Cadillacs. He smiled as he chewed a mouthful of pizza. "The thing shakes 'n' groans and the rockets in the back just aren't spitting out the flaming thrust I'm used to. See ya. Bye."

  Beep. Static. Click.

  A hanger-upper. Asshole. Macklin swallowed some beer and took another big bite out of the pizza slice.

  Beep. "Hey, old buddy, it's me, a haunting voice from your past, eh?" Kirk Jeffries still sounded as though someone had just poured a can of Drano down his throat. Macklin remembered the last time he saw Jeffries, two years ago, soaking in the rain waiting to see a Dirty Harry movie. "I'll be making my triumphant return to the sunny southland tomorrow. I've been having wet dreams about the Chicken Shack, so what do you say we meet there tomorrow night at seven thirty? Grab Ron and we can relive our college days. If you can't make it, gimme a call at the Beverly Wilshire."

  The blank remainder of the tape hissed. Macklin enjoyed the silence and then heard footsteps outside. He looked at the backyard door.

  The door slammed open and two figures sprang into the kitchen, holding guns.

  "Freeze, Macklin," Sliran barked, poised in front of Macklin and aiming his gun at his head.

  Macklin, holding a slice of pizza in front of his mouth, looked over his shoulder. Two uniformed cops stood in the hallway, their guns trained on him. Macklin turned back to Sliran and shrugged, dropping the pizza on the table and raising his hands. "C'mon in, guys, make yourselves at home."

  Sliran motioned to the officers. They hooked their hands under Macklin's shoulders, pulled him out of the chair, and pushed him against the wall.

  Macklin smiled at Sliran as an officer frisked him. "You better have a warrant."

  Sliran dropped a folded paper on the table beside the beer. "You're under arrest, Macky boy."

  "The charge?" Macklin asked, turning from the wall.

  "Jaywalking. Fuck, what do you think it is?" Macklin's arms were twisted behind his back. The handcuffs snapped closed. "It's murder, Macky boy. It isn't legal in this state to kill people. You're going down, just like I promised."

  Sliran met Macklin's tired gaze. "Get him out of my sight and read him his rights."

  The officers led Macklin out.

  Sliran picked up the can of beer, took a few gulps, and noticed the sound of static from the answering machine for the first time. He went over to the machine and hit the "rewind" button, sipping the beer as the tape whirred.

  # # # # # #

  "It's not a clean bill of health, Ronny, but at least you have your job back," Lieutenant Bohan Lieu said from inside the restroom stall.

  Shaw, standing at the urinal relieving himself, frowned. "What exactly are you telling me, Lieutenant?"

  "I'm giving you your gun and badge back—that's what I'm telling you. The board can't prove you actually beat Tomas Cruz—"

  "I didn't beat Tomas Cruz," Shaw interrupted. He zipped up his fly and flushed the urinal.

  "Okay, sorry," Lieu yelled over the sound of the water cleaning the urinal, "but there was enough to prove y
ou leaned too hard on the kid."

  The soap dispenser squirted a green glob into Shaw's hands. "Why doesn't soap look clean anymore?" he muttered to himself. He turned on the faucet and rubbed his hands together under the hot water.

  "What does that mean, Lieutenant?" Shaw asked.

  Shaw heard the toilet flush and the sound of Lieu fumbling with his belt. "It means I'm going to have to slap you on the wrists for unprofessional methods unbecoming of a police officer."

  The stall door swung open and the portly Asian lieutenant stepped to the sink beside Shaw. "A formal reprimand is going into your file, Ronny."

  Shaw shrugged, pulling a paper towel out of the dispenser. "I can accept that. I've got a question, though."

  "Shoot," Lieu said, reaching past Shaw for a paper towel.

  "Yates was after my ass. It looked like I was gonna drown in shit creek and no one was going to throw me a life preserver. What happened?"

  Lieu smiled and walked towards the door. "It's the Mr. Jury case, Ronny. We need your help."

  "What? What do you need me for?"

  Lieu and Shaw stepped out of the men's room and into the brightly lit hallway crowded with police officers scurrying to and fro. "Sliran is questioning a suspect right now. I want you to take a look."

  Lieu pushed open the door to the room adjoining the interrogation room, flicking on a light as he walked in.

  Shaw strode up to the two-way mirror, which allowed observers to look in on interrogations unseen. Lieu sat down in a chair behind him.

  Shaw caught his breath and felt a hot flush warm his face.

  Brett Macklin, looking haggard and pale, seemed to be staring right at him. Shaw stepped back even though he knew all Macklin saw was his own reflection. Macklin sat at a long table in a straight-back, uncomfortable chair occupied only an hour before by a transvestite drug dealer trying to plea-bargain his way out of an armed robbery charge.

  Sliran, his tie loosened below an open collar, sat on the table's edge beside Macklin, smoking a cigarette and deliberately exhaling the smoke into Macklin's face. Another detective, a sunken-cheeked, fifteen-year veteran of the force referred to by his peers as "skull face," stood wearily against the door.

  His hand shaking, Shaw reached out and turned on the speaker.

  "C'mon, Macky boy, it's late." Sliran's voice sounded tinny over the loudspeaker in the observation room. "I want to go home and poke my girlfriend, you know?"

  Sliran took a long drag on the cigarette, blowing out the smoke slowly and deliberately into Macklin's face. "You don't even need to talk much. Just say two words: 'I confess.' Can you do that? Read my lips. 'I confess.'"

  Sliran tapped the reel-to-reel tape recorder in front of Macklin. "Say it into the tape recorder. Better yet, say, 'Yes, I blew Teobaldo Villanueva's nuts off.' Say, 'Yes, I shot Jesse Ortega's head clean off and then did the same to Mario Carrera.' Say, 'Yes, I torched Primo Manriquez 'cause he burned Daddy to a crisp."

  Shaw winced at Sliran's insensitivity.

  "Say, 'Then I put a few holes in Enrico Esteban.' See how easy that is?" Sliran smiled. "There, now you try it."

  Macklin sighed and stood up. "Bye."

  Sliran pushed him back down in his seat.

  "You're not going anywhere, Macky boy."

  Shaw clicked off the speaker and turned his back to the window. "Okay, I saw the show. Now what?" He said hoarsely.

  "What do you think, Ron, about Macklin?" Lieu tilted the chair back against the wall.

  Shaw folded his arms over his chest. "Don't play games with me, Lieutenant."

  Lieu smiled. "Please, Ron, don't get hostile. I know Macklin is your friend. That's why I need your help. You know him better than anyone. Do you think he's Mr. Jury?"

  "Brett Macklin is like my brother," Shaw said softly.

  Lieu shrugged. "That's not what I'm asking."

  Shaw turned around and looked at Macklin again, sitting stoically in his chair and facing the mirror. As long as Shaw could remember, he and Macklin had been the closest of friends. Nothing had ever changed that. Not until now.

  Shaw couldn't deny there had been a change in Macklin. He had seen it happen in the courtroom. Macklin was impossible to reach. He had grown into himself. Shaw was hurt and concerned that Macklin didn't come to him to work out his grief over his father's murder. The Brett Macklin Shaw knew would have.

  Shaw remembered when Macklin's marriage dissolved, the long hours he spent talking with his distraught and bitter friend. They had healed that wound together. His father's death had to be devastating, the release of the accused killers even more painful. Had these two forces, Shaw asked himself, combined to change Brett Macklin? To change him into a killer?

  It was a thought Shaw tried to ignore. One by one he had watched the Bounty Hunters turn up dead. Each time he had tried to kid himself into believing Brett Macklin couldn't possibly be pulling the trigger. Yet . . . The detective in Shaw told him Macklin was the obvious, most likely killer.

  Emotionally, it was impossible for Shaw to accept.

  Shaw had lied to himself during those long sleepless nights since the trial. He'd told himself some warped, justice-seeking citizen had chosen the Macklin case as his first vigilante cause. He'd told himself it could be a rival gang destroying their enemy. After a while it seemed that any possibility, even aliens from outer space using the gang for target practice, seemed more reasonable than Brett Macklin being the killer.

  Both Shaw and Brett and been raised under JD Macklin's watchful eye. He had instilled them both with a deep respect for the law. Yes, he taught them, the law is sometimes blind. Sometimes the innocent are punished and the guilty set free. Those inequitabilities are a rarity. By and large, the law afforded justice and peace.

  It was JD Macklin's example, his total devotion to the cliché of law and order and justice for all, that led Shaw to police work.

  Macklin's love for his father, Shaw believed, would stop him from playing judge, jury, and executioner.

  But in that courtroom, Shaw had seen something roll over and die inside Brett Macklin. In the passing of a second, the closeness he felt towards his friend had disappeared.

  Shaw hesitated, staring at Macklin through the glass. The man Sliran was questioning didn't look like the man Shaw had grown up with. The face was changed. Harder, angular, lined, the eyes reflecting a joyless rigidity.

  The face of a killer?

  "Yes," Shaw whispered, turning to face Lieu again. "Yes, I think he could be."

  "So do I. That's why I want you to help Sliran on this."

  "That's ridiculous," Shaw snapped. "First of all, you already have him—you don't need me. Secondly, I can't put my friend away. I just can't do it."

  Lieu stood up and squeezed Shaw's shoulder. "Ronny, we're friends. If you don't clear this thing up for yourself, it will eat away at you for the rest of your career. The self-doubt, the fear that you let Macklin get away with it, will devastate you. And we really don't have Macklin. He'll be out of here in the morning."

  Lieu walked towards the door. "He may be innocent. We have nothing on him, nothing that will hold up in court, anyway. Gut feelings aren't enough to convict a man, I'm afraid." He smiled. "The case file is under the chair. Take a look at it."

  Lieu left the room. Shaw stared at the door for a few moments, glanced at Macklin in the interrogation room, and then reached under Lieu's chair, pulled out the file, and sat down to read it.

  Fifteen minutes later Shaw had read through the file. He waited until Sliran had finished his questioning and had "skull face" lead Macklin to his cell before he emerged from the observation room.

  Shaw found Sliran standing in the hallway, cursing at the coffee machine.

  "Eh, Shaw, how's it going?" Sliran kicked the machine, his back to Shaw.

  "Life could be better. I'm back on active status," Shaw replied, approaching Sliran.

  Sliran pressed the "coffee" button again. "Great." He gave the machine another kick.

&n
bsp; "And I'm working on the Mr. Jury case." Shaw punched the side of the machine and then nudged the front with his shoulder. A cup fell into the slot and coffee poured into it. "Cream?"

  "Sure," snapped Sliran.

  Shaw punched the machine just below the selection buttons. Cream dribbled into the paper cup.

  Sliran reached for the coffee. "Well, there isn't anything to work on. You buddy has got a lifetime lease on a federal apartment." Sliran started down the hall.

  Shaw smiled grimly, falling into step beside him.

  "Don't kid yourself, Neal, Mack will be out of here"—Shaw glanced quickly at his watch—"if he can get hold of a lawyer, oh, by about three o'clock tomorrow afternoon."

  "Maybe."

  "No maybe about it, Sliran. You don't have a damn thing on him."

  Sliran stopped. "Why the hell are you on this case? This guy is your little buddy. You'd love to let him skip out the door and blow away a few more punks, huh?"

  "Give me a break," Shaw groaned. "You know as well as I do you have nothing. Not a shred of solid evidence. Why didn't you have him tailed after the first killing? Why didn't you warn the gang members or at least have them watched? For Christ's sake, Sliran, that's the most obvious thing to do. Everything we've got now is circumstantial. There's nothing to build a case around.

  "We're going to have a hard time proving Brett Macklin is Mr. Jury, and all thanks to your stupidity." And what about me? Am I murderer for not stopping Mack?

  "I'll prove it," Sliran said. "With or without you, Shaw. Preferably without." He pushed Shaw aside and stomped down the hallway.

  # # # # # #

  The cell door closed behind Brett Macklin. He stood still for a moment, his back to the door, the sound of the lock clicking into place still echoing in his head.

  The charge is murder, Macky boy.

  Macklin knew his lawyer would arrange his release by tomorrow evening. He knew Sliran had nothing to hold him on. He knew he would never have to pay for his crimes.