Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  ‘He and the prosecutor and the judge and the jurors? They all wanted and needed it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All of them.’

  He just waited.

  ‘It was their job to figure it out,’ I said.

  ‘Second,’ he said, ‘what if Higby is innocent? What if Josh Skooner really did have a gun and shot at him?’

  I laughed at that. ‘Higby executed that kid. He makes his own rules. He kills when he wants to. That’s what he tried to do to me.’

  Dr Patel folded his fingers and said, ‘You seem pretty sure of yourself. Are you the police now? Are you the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury? Are you the law?’

  ‘Don’t screw with me,’ I said.

  ‘Do you just want him to be guilty? Do you need it?’

  I stood up. ‘I’ve had enough,’ I said.

  ‘I agree,’ he said.

  I went to the door.

  He said, ‘True freedom is also only possible for those who avoid imposing arbitrary laws on others.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said, and I went out.

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ he called out.

  I stopped by the DMV on my way to the Justice Now Initiative. After I waited forty-five minutes for my turn, the clerk said I needed to come back with a birth certificate or a passport and also tax records, pay stubs, and utility bills showing where I lived.

  ‘What if I don’t have any of that?’ I asked.

  The clerk looked impatient. ‘You just landed on the planet?’

  ‘More or less,’ I said.

  As I climbed the stairs to the JNI, I thought that even after a warden pops the lock on your cage, the hallway to the front door stretches a hundred miles and looks like a rat maze. In the office, Hank was talking to Jane about paperwork that might compel Kim Jenkins to testify in Thomas LaFlora’s next hearing. And Thelma was tapping on her computer keyboard.

  I put the keys to her Nissan on her desk and picked up her phone. I dialed my brother and, when he answered, asked if he still had papers from Dad’s house.

  ‘Boxes of them,’ he said. ‘Why? Do you want part of what I sold it for?’

  ‘I need—’

  ‘Because your half went to legal fees.’

  ‘I had a public defender and volunteer aid,’ I said. ‘You never paid for a lawyer. You never even—’

  He hung up.

  I dialed again.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘I need my birth certificate. That’s all. You can keep the money from the house. I just want to get a driver’s license.’

  He went silent for a moment. Then, ‘I’ll look.’

  I said, ‘Look soon, OK?’

  ‘We’re cool, then?’ he said.

  ‘When have we ever been cool?’

  ‘About the money? For Dad’s house?’

  ‘Sure, Jared, we’re cool.’

  ‘Because the money’s gone,’ he said.

  ‘Just the birth certificate.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I hung up. Hank was going on and on about writs and subpoenas.

  So I said, ‘I thought we wanted Kim Jenkins to testify voluntarily.’

  He looked at me irritably. ‘We do. But we’ll compel her if we need to.’

  ‘We did a lot of compelling for you,’ Jane said.

  ‘We’re ready to do more,’ Hank said. ‘We’ll make the state pay for the time it took from you.’

  ‘But you need to do something to help your cause,’ Jane said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘You need to stay out of trouble,’ she said. ‘Avoid messes. Some people still think you belong in prison. They’ll refuse to pay you what’s due to you if they can. You’ve got to be a poster boy for innocence. If you need to fight, then fight for others who are innocent. Stay clean.’

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ I asked.

  Hank took a folded-out newspaper from his desktop and tossed it to me. My picture stared back at me. It was the shot that the photographer took yesterday afternoon on Higby’s driveway. The caption said, Released Convict Confronts Accused Officer. The article under the photo said little more than the caption. Recently released death row inmate Franklin ‘Franky’ Dast visited homicide detective Bill Higby, whose testimony helped convict him and who now faces second-degree murder charges. A heated exchange followed – the subject unknown.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘People are watching,’ Jane said. ‘A lot of them are undecided about you. The governor and others who control the bank accounts will listen to them. Avoid unnecessary entanglements. Live your life, but live it clean.’

  Dr Patel had just told me to stop fearing the law. Now Jane and Hank were telling me to be careful who I talked to. ‘Got it,’ I said.

  Jane gave me a tight-lipped smile.

  I turned to Thelma, looking for a friend.

  She shook her head and said, ‘Never lie to me again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too many men in my life have lied,’ she said. ‘I won’t tolerate it. If you say you want to borrow my car to go on a date, then go on a date.’

  ‘I did. I went—’

  ‘Right,’ Hank said. ‘Who are you dating? Higby’s wife?’

  ‘Where did you take this date?’ Thelma asked.

  If I told them that Cynthia and I froze ourselves half to death in a cold-storage warehouse, they would laugh at me. ‘We hung out,’ I said. ‘That’s all. We hung out.’

  Hank just turned to his computer, Thelma started working on her keyboard again, and, after shaking her head at me, Jane asked me to run to the FedEx shop to pick up an order.

  So I went back down the stairs. Two blocks away, the woman at the FedEx counter handed me a mailing tube, and when I took it back to the office, Hank popped the top and unrolled a poster-size picture of Thomas LaFlora’s face – a recent shot of him, with a couple of days of beard stubble and eyes that I recognized from every long-term death row inmate I’d known.

  Thelma taped the poster to the back of the office door. It would stare at us as we worked.

  ‘The man of the hour,’ Hank said. ‘We do these when a case is heating up so that we stay focused on a flesh-and-blood person. We don’t focus on the Bill Higbys of the world. We don’t focus on ourselves. We focus on the man whose life is on the line.’

  I asked, ‘Did you also have a poster of me?’

  ‘Sure,’ Jane said. ‘We still have it – in the cabinet, along with posters of eight other men. Would you like it?’

  I was already spending enough time gazing at myself. ‘I think I’ll hang out in the cabinet with the other guys,’ I said.

  That afternoon, the thunderstorms came early, and the bus back to the Cardinal Motel moved through a sheathing downpour, gusts slapping the glass and metal. I planned to change clothes and head to the Regency Cineplex. A quick check on Thelma’s computer had told me that the AMC had scheduled a three-day run of Home Alone in the Afternoon Kids Classics Series. If I never got past the concession stand, I would also be happy.

  But when I ran across Philips Highway from the bus stop, a woman was standing under the concrete overhang outside my room. She had olive skin and a black ponytail. Even in the July heat, she wore heavy cotton pants and solid shoes. That made her a cop.

  She stepped out into the downpour. ‘Franklin Dast?’ she said.

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘I have a message for you,’ she said.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘The message is simple. If you step on Bill Higby’s property again—’

  ‘I upset him that much?’ I said. ‘What does he have to fear from me?’

  ‘He’ll protect what’s his. Stay away from his house.’

  Thunder rolled across the sky.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s all I came to tell you,’ she said. ‘Ignore me, and whatever happens to you is your own fault.’ She started across the parking lot toward a black Mercury Grand
Marquis.

  ‘I get it,’ I called after her. ‘I’ve been helping out at the Justice Now Initiative, and whenever they start worrying about me, they give me a little job to do. File papers. Run an errand. Make phone calls. It’s like that for you too, right? Higby is worried. So he sends you out here.’

  The woman turned and came back. She said, ‘You don’t get it at all. You crawl out of the ground like a locust, and you want to stretch your wings – you want to make some noise. But if you do, someone will stomp on you.’ She was wearing heavy black shoes. Police issue. Good for stomping. But she started toward the car again.

  I asked, ‘Did he really ever think I killed the Bronson boys? Does he really still think so?’

  Once more, she stared at me, the rain smearing her face. She said, ‘That night on Monument Road, you might have had a friend with you. Your friend might have raped the younger boy. But your blood was still on the engine. Your fingerprints were everywhere. You haven’t proved your innocence. You’ve only managed to give a judge some doubts. But the fact is you’re out of prison now. So, does it matter what Detective Higby thinks?’

  I said, ‘I really think he murdered Josh Skooner. No justifiable force.’

  She said. ‘From all I’ve heard, you’re a pretty smart guy. But this time you’re wrong.’

  I went inside and stripped off my wet clothes. Outside, the rain drummed against the pavement and the hoods and roofs of cars. I punched the wallboard by the bed, bloodying my knuckles. Then I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. As I stood under the hot stream, my anger at Bill Higby blossomed again. Why had he blamed me for the deaths of the Bronson boys? Why did he call me evil and act like a god who would destroy all he hated? And why did I let him cling to my thoughts? Why did he stick in my throat like the taste of vomit, like a pinched nerve that kept me from crying for help? Why did he rage after me when I got out of jail – a cancer in my mind – and then send a messenger to warn me away from him?

  A man like that deserved to suffer.

  Who was I to say so?

  Was I the police now? The prosecutor, the judge, and the jury? Was I the law?

  Sure. I could be all of that.

  When I got out of the shower, my knuckles were throbbing. I dried myself, then wrapped my hand in a cold wet towel. As I worked my hand through the sleeve of my T-shirt, someone knocked on the door.

  Maybe the woman had come back to threaten me again.

  Maybe Higby had come to threaten me himself.

  I yanked the door open.

  The reporter who’d taken my picture outside of Higby’s house – accompanied now by another man, with a camcorder perched on his shoulder – stood on the walkway. The reporter smiled, which meant that the camcorder was already running, and said, ‘Just a few questions.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ I said, and closed the door. He knocked and I yanked it open again. I asked, ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Public records,’ he said. ‘You’re everywhere.’

  ‘If I’m on any lists,’ I said, ‘Higby put me on them. He’s a liar and a criminal. He manipulates the system. He kills young men like Josh Skooner. He tried to kill me. He seems to get off on it. I can’t explain it any other way. And then he hides behind the law. He’s a coward.’

  The reporter smiled bigger. I’d given him what he’d come for. Then he looked at me, straight-faced. ‘Will the legal process treat Detective Higby as it has treated you?’

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘Did the State Attorney even consider capital murder charges against him? He shot an unarmed kid eight times. Eight. That’s not second degree. Then a judge let him out on his own recognizance—’

  The reporter asked, ‘What did the two of you discuss at his house yesterday?’

  But I kept going. ‘What kind of legal team will the police union put together for him? How hard do you think the prosecutor will try to convict? Who will be on the jury?’

  The reporter nodded, and, as he asked his next questions, I realized how fast even a sympathetic listener could turn against me. ‘What happened to your hand? Did you punch someone?’

  Jane had called me the smartest client the JNI ever represented, but I knew that, at core, I would always be my dad’s senseless son who opened the door when he should leave it shut. ‘Household accident,’ I said.

  When the reporter and his video man climbed into their van and drove away, I stood in the doorway and watched the rain. Before I could slow my racing thoughts, my brother’s SUV pulled into the parking lot and slid into the spot outside my door. Jared got out, gazed at the sky, and shouldered past me into my room. He shook the rain from his arms, went into the bathroom to check his hair, and came back. ‘You waiting at the door for me?’ he said.

  ‘I was heading out.’

  ‘Just couldn’t decide how to get your body out of the doorway, huh?’ he said. He looked at my bare feet. ‘Couldn’t figure out how to put your shoes on either?’

  I shut the door. ‘Checking if it still was raining.’

  ‘It is.’ He dug into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and fingered through the leather folds. ‘This afternoon, a friend showed me your picture in the paper. Making a house call to the cop who arrested you is a little fucked up, if you don’t mind my saying.’ He found what he was looking for – a laminated card, which he flipped toward me. It landed on the carpet. It was my old social security card. ‘I figured you might need it for your license.’

  ‘You also find my birth certificate?’

  ‘Sure.’ He dug into his pocket again. ‘What were you doing at the cop’s house?’

  Getting myself in trouble, I thought. ‘I’m working as an investigator for the Justice Now Initiative,’ I said, as if that answered the question.

  ‘An investigator?’ He grinned, doubtfully. ‘Let’s see the badge.’

  ‘They pay me to investigate. That’s all.’

  ‘Unless you get an ID, you’re not an investigator,’ he said. ‘You’re the guy who runs the copy machine and makes coffee. They have you doing the errands?’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’

  ‘They’re humoring you,’ he said.

  I looked past him at the dent I’d put in the wall. I could hit him too. But I said, ‘What did you ever do with Dad’s car?’

  ‘Still have it in my garage. No one would buy it. When they arrested you, the cops cut up the seats and tore out the interior lining looking for evidence.’

  ‘Why did you keep it?’

  ‘I figured someday it might be worth something.’

  I thought about that. ‘You mean after my execution?’

  ‘Some collectors like that kind of thing. I looked into it.’

  ‘I want the car.’

  He laughed. ‘I haven’t started the engine in seven years. The gas has probably turned into varnish.’

  ‘We’ll get a siphon,’ I said. ‘We’ll get a new battery.’

  He shook his head. ‘Engine’s probably fried.’

  We drove to Walmart and then to his house. Hours later, under the bright lights in his garage, as the rain fell outside, I turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught, coughed, and died.

  I tried again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Hah,’ Jared said.

  I turned the key. The engine caught, sputtered, coughed, and caught. I gave it gas. It died.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Jared said. ‘Let’s go to a bar. I’ll get you laid.’

  I turned the key again. The engine caught, and I shoved the accelerator to the floor. For a moment, the engine made no sound. Then an oily black wad shot from the tailpipe. The engine roared.

  THIRTEEN

  The next morning, Jane, Hank, and I went back to Callahan to talk with Kim Jenkins. Channel 4 had aired my interview from the Cardinal Motel on the eleven o’clock news, and when I walked into the JNI office, everyone stared at me as if shocked I had the guts to come back after disregarding the slam-down they’d given me the day before.

  Jane rub
bed her chin and said, ‘Be careful.’

  Hank shook his head and said, ‘I’d thought more highly of you.’

  Thelma gave me a glimmer of a smile. ‘You’re burning it high, aren’t you?’

  ‘To get a driver’s license, I need a letter saying I work here,’ I told Jane. ‘It needs to include the address of the Cardinal Motel.’

  When we knocked on Kim Jenkins’s door, a square-jawed, athletic man in his fifties answered. The rain had stopped in the early morning hours, and now the July sun beat against our backs. Jane and Hank introduced themselves, and the man said his name was Randall Haussen – Kim Jenkins’s husband. Last time we came, Kim Jenkins had worried about telling him about her past. But Haussen looked like he could take it.

  Jane asked if we could speak with his wife, and when she came, he stood beside her with an arm draped over her shoulder. Kim Jenkins seemed terrified. Her husband, though, showed no surprise when Hank told her that the JNI was filing papers requiring her to testify at an appellate court hearing.

  ‘Of course, we’d prefer that you testify of your own accord,’ Hank said. ‘That would serve Thomas LaFlora’s interests best – and yours.’ He implied that we had evidence showing that she’d perjured herself in the first trial.

  Jane touched my arm and spoke to the husband. ‘This is Franky Dast. He also was on death row. The courage of a couple of expert witnesses set him free. We’re asking your wife to show such courage. We’re asking you to support her.’

  The husband’s voice was deep and loving. He said, ‘I support Kim in any decision she makes. A hundred percent.’ But I realized he was digging his fingers into her shoulder.

  Hank and Jane seemed only to hear his words. They smiled at Kim Jenkins expectantly.

  She forced a smile too. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. She glanced at her husband for approval, but he kept digging.

  Hank shook hands with both of them. Then the husband shook Jane’s hand. He reached for mine, but I turned and went to the car.

  As we drove back toward the city, Jane turned to me and said, ‘Great work.’ As if I’d done more than wag my tail when she patted me on the head.

  ‘The husband took that well,’ Hank said.

  I said, ‘He already knew we were coming.’