Deborah Holt called late on the third afternoon.
‘What did you find out?’ I asked.
‘You asshole,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Meet me at the Bay Street Café,’ she said.
An hour later, I did.
She was sitting at a table when I came in, and she said, ‘Where the hell did you get that bullet?’
‘What did you find out about it?’ I asked.
‘You know what I found out. I ran it through the Ballistic Information Network. The marks on it match the bullets from the Bronson boys. Also the marks on the bullets from Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit.’
I shook my head. ‘At my trial, the ballistics expert said the bullets matched the gun I had in my trunk.’
‘How close?’
‘He said seventy percent. And a margin of error.’
‘This one is ninety-eight percent. Where did you get it?’
So I told her about my visit to the Skooners’ house. I told her about Andrew Skooner giving me the bullet and his vow never to name his father to the police or a jury.
Her face looked flushed. ‘The bullet is still it, though,’ she said. ‘It’s enough.’
‘No. Think of what the judge will say. Think of the defense. Unless Andrew Skooner testifies that he gave me the bullet, all we have is my story. A lot of people still think I killed the Bronsons. So, now I give you a bullet that matches the ones in the killings even better than the tests of the gun from my trunk. It makes me look guilty, and it makes my story about the Skooners look like a lie. We need the gun,’ I said. ‘Or we need Andrew Skooner to talk.’
She thought about it. ‘I’ll get Andrew Skooner.’
‘How do you plan to do that?’
‘I’ll say it’s time for this to stop.’
‘It won’t work,’ I said.
‘Then I’ll crush him.’
THIRTY-TWO
But when Deborah Holt went to the Skooners’ house to talk to Andrew, no one answered the door. She tried twice more and then persuaded a court clerk to ask the judge – casually – about his son. Word came back that Andrew had returned to Cornell for his senior year. Holt booked a flight to upstate New York and went to the apartment Andrew was renting with three friends. The friends said that, despite promises, Andrew hadn’t arrived. She waited twenty-four hours and flew back. Two days later, the judge filed a missing person report for his son. According to the report, Andrew disappeared from the house more than a week earlier – before he gave me the bullet. No one had accused the judge of anything, but he was already screwing with the timeline.
The next day, when I returned to the Cardinal Motel after visiting Lynn Pritchard, Holt was waiting for me in the parking lot. I climbed out of my car and into hers.
‘We need to find the gun,’ she said. ‘Andrew Skooner has gone rabbit. Or else the judge has put him somewhere we can’t find him. When you talked with Andrew, did he have any idea where the judge might be keeping the weapon?’
‘He just said his father had it. Before Josh died, the judge kept it somewhere his sons could get to it – probably in the house. But I think Andrew would have given it to me along with the bullet if he could have. So the judge has hidden it somewhere Andrew doesn’t know about or can’t reach.’
‘He wants quick access to it,’ she said. ‘He should have dumped it a long time ago – after killing the Bronson boys. But he must get off on using it. He even kept it after Josh died. Then he killed Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit with it. He keeps it close.’
‘So, it’s at the courthouse,’ I said. ‘Or in his car. Or he’s carrying it. Or he has it somewhere else we don’t know about.’
‘Where?’ she said.
‘Did you search the office?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Nothing there.’
‘So, it’s in his car, or he’s carrying it.’
‘Or it’s somewhere else.’
‘Where?’ I said.
‘We need to go into the places where he might have it.’ She gave me a long look. ‘You could do that.’
I shook my head. ‘Get a warrant.’
‘You’re kidding, right? I ask for a warrant, and you know what they do? They call Skooner and say, We’ve got a detective asking to search your car and house. Should we let her? And Skooner says, Why, certainly. I have nothing to hide. And by the time we look at his house and car, he’s right. He has nothing to hide because he’s hidden it somewhere else.’
‘I’m not searching for it,’ I said.
‘We need the gun,’ she said.
‘Yeah, you said.’ I started to get out of the car.
But she said, ‘I hate to do this, but I’ve got another question. What do you know about Randall Haussen?’
Higby had already hit me with that question, so I’d prepared for it. ‘What’s to know? Jane Foley and Hank Cury at the JNI thought he might be involved in the killings that got Thomas LaFlora executed. LaFlora’s dead now, so even if Haussen was involved, no one will admit the mistake.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And Haussen would know that too. He’s safe now. And he has a house and a business to take care of. So why doesn’t he come out of hiding?’
‘You would have to ask him.’
‘I wish I could,’ she said. ‘An interesting thing that Bill Higby pointed out to me – the last witness report has you climbing into a car with him.’
I thought she must see that I was faking it. ‘Who was the witness?’
‘That’s what makes it especially interesting. The call was anonymous, and the phone was disposable, but we got the number and worked out that the caller bought the phone locally. While I was in New York, I had one of our new detectives go to the store. They had video of the purchase.’
‘You recognized the buyer?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘It was Eric Skooner.’
I caught my breath. ‘First,’ I said, ‘that would mean that the judge was outside the motel, watching me.’
‘And that should scare the hell out of you,’ she said.
‘But second,’ I said, ‘you know he’s a liar. So why believe him if he says I was with Haussen?’
‘I doubt every word he says. But that doesn’t mean he lied about you and Haussen. He took a risk calling this in. He must have seen a big payoff.’
‘I don’t know what that would have been.’
‘Maybe he could take you off the street the way he did Higby,’ she said. ‘If he’s as sick-headed as he seems to be, he probably would have preferred to kill you, but you’re big news since you got out of jail. If he saw a good opportunity, he might want to point out one of your bad mistakes and avoid the risk of all the publicity that would come if you died.’
‘Or maybe he’s telling lies about me, the way he did with Higby. Maybe he’s trying to set me up.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I have enough worries with my own life without wasting my time with Haussen,’ I said.
‘I would think so,’ she said. ‘But I’ve talked with your old bosses at the JNI. I heard about you bringing him back from Atlanta.’
She was dancing me into a corner. ‘What are you accusing me of?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she said. ‘As far as I know, Haussen is just missing, and we have an unreliable report that you were with him. I’m just asking you questions.’
‘Well, don’t ask them,’ I said.
‘There’s one other way to get Skooner,’ she said. ‘Other than finding his gun.’
‘What? Have Higby grab him by the throat?’
She said, ‘We could catch him doing it again.’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Do you have any boys you want raped, bitten, and murdered?’
‘I can think of only one person who interests the judge enough for him to do that right now.’
For a moment I thought she must mean Lynn Pritchard. But I’d left her out of our conversations. Besides, Holt had never mentioned her. ‘Me?’
&n
bsp; ‘You’ve unsettled him,’ she said. ‘He killed Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit because you rocked him out of complacency with all of your running around and questioning people. Wherever Andrew Skooner is, he’s there because you were pressuring the judge. And the night that the judge saw you with Haussen—’
I started to object, but she waved me quiet.
‘That night, the judge was coming to kill you or to see what it would take to do it. You know it’s true. He wouldn’t have hung out in your neighborhood unless he had business to do. You were that business. Whatever you were doing with Haussen, that man saved your life. You’ve pushed the judge, and he’s reacting. Push him harder, and he’ll come after you again. But this time we’ll be waiting.’
‘You want me to set myself up for him?’
‘I want you to make yourself irresistible to him. Break into his home when he’s at the courthouse,’ she said. ‘If you find the gun, take it, and that’s all you’ll need to do. We’ll fingerprint it and trace it. If that doesn’t put it in the judge’s hands, we’ll find another way to put it there. But if you can’t find the gun, let him know you were there. Piss on his couch. Piss on his bed. Sign your name. Make him mad.’
‘What if I say no?’
‘First, the judge will probably come after you anyway. You’ve already pushed him hard. Second, he will get away with it. When he’s done things his own way, no one has been able to stop him.’
‘Why can’t a cop break in to search for the gun?’
‘A hundred good reasons,’ she said, ‘but mostly the judge needs to know it was you. The house has a new security system, inside and out. We can take care of the outside, so that you don’t set off alarms when you go in. But there’s a camera in the front hall and another on the stairway. You need to be on the cameras. No one else can be.’
‘Why won’t the judge just take the video to the cops?’
‘Do you really think there’s any chance of that?’ she said.
‘No.’ I had to admit it. ‘If he sees me in his house, he’ll want to tear me apart.’
That afternoon, instead of keeping my appointment with Dr Patel, I drove to Lynn Pritchard’s house. Her husband had gone shopping for new hunting boots and a fleece jacket. He would leave for New Hampshire that evening. She set her babies on their bellies on the living room rug and sat down with them.
She said, ‘The man called again last night. Twice.’
‘Was it the judge?’
She held her palm to one of her daughters the way you do to an anxious dog that might either sniff or bite you. The baby gripped a finger with her whole hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. Really tired. He said he could hardly wait to see me. He said he would come by.’
‘Your husband was here?’
‘I guess,’ she said. ‘He slept through the first call. He woke when the phone rang again. I told him no one was on the other end.’ She drew her finger from the baby’s hand, touched it to her lipstick, and then touched the smeared fingertip to the baby’s tiny lips.
‘Just hold on for another day or two,’ I said. ‘I’ll get him.’
‘No, you won’t. He’ll do the same things to you that he did to my brother and Duane.’
‘He won’t hurt you, and he won’t hurt me.’
‘You’re sweet to say that,’ she said.
‘Hold on for a couple of days. If I don’t get him, then you should hide until someone else catches him.’
‘No one will catch him.’ She got up from the rug and came to me. She touched her lipstick again. I thought for a moment that she would dab my lips with her finger, as she’d dabbed her baby’s. I thought that, worn down by fear, she might even ask me to climb the stairs with her to her bed. But she just said, ‘You should run. That would be the smart thing to do.’
I picked up Cynthia from the Cineplex at eight. After we ate dinner at Woody’s Bar-B-Q, I told her I felt ill and needed to take her home. She eyed me as if she knew that I’d signed on for another ride that I should stay off. As I drove out Atlantic Boulevard and then south toward her house, she sat with her hands folded in her lap and, before getting out of the car, asked, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I wish I knew,’ I said.
She stared at me. I’d come to love those hard eyes. She said, ‘See you tomorrow?’
‘I need a couple of days,’ I said.
She said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, I need to do it with you.’
‘I know.’
‘Then, why not?’
I wanted her with me always. I forced a smile. ‘I’ve only got one ticket.’
‘You’re a fool,’ she said.
‘I know.’
We sat on her driveway, and the night was all around us. She said, ‘Don’t hurt yourself again.’
‘I won’t.’
‘If someone else hurts you, I won’t forgive you.’
That night, I went to bed early and slept badly, waking up every twenty or thirty minutes. At midnight, I got up, shaking and nauseous. Outside on the parking lot, three men were arguing loudly. Somewhere, a room or two away, a woman was laughing. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I stood in the stream until the water subdued the anxiety and I no longer felt like retching.
When I came out, I turned on the TV to knock down the noises of my neighbors. I lay on my bed and watched Nightline and then Family Guy and King of the Hill. I turned on TMZ and got the latest on people whose lives held little interest for me. At four thirty, I started flipping between Action News and First Coast News and learned that I would have sunny and hot weather when I burglarized Judge Skooner’s house. They had no stories on Higby’s legal troubles or the murders of Rick Melsyn and Darrell Nesbit or the execution of Thomas LaFlora or the disappearance of Randall Haussen. Those men were last week’s news. At six, I changed the channel again. Caillou was starting on PBS – an episode in which the kid catches chickenpox – and in my exhaustion I felt tears in my eyes. I turned off the TV, did fifty sit-ups, and got back into the shower.
Holt showed up at seven along with four plainclothes cops and explained where she would post them so they could watch my room after I came back from the judge’s house. She took a bag from her trunk and we went into my room. She gave me a GPS tracker and told me to strap it to my ankle. She gave me a phone that she’d already keyed in to one she would carry and said, ‘For if you need me. This way, no one will trace calls to our regular phones. Use it if you’ve got an emergency or need us to come in and take you out.’
She gave me an adjustable crescent wrench and a flathead screwdriver. ‘Some thieves carry fancy tool kits,’ she said. ‘Most keep it simple. Let’s keep it simple here. The dirtier the entry, the better. It will anger the judge. But make it quick. Get in and get out.’
‘How about a gun?’ I had the pistol under the front seat of my car, and I planned to keep it with me. But I wanted to know her thoughts on the matter.
‘You’ll be safer without a weapon,’ she said. ‘He could turn it against you.’
I said, ‘In other words, you won’t give me anything to protect myself?’
‘We’ll have armed officers watching you. When the judge comes, we’ll have him covered.’
‘You won’t give me a gun?’
‘No, we won’t.’
‘Fine,’ I said.
She looked skeptical, but said, ‘I’m glad you feel that way.’ She gave me a shoulder pack for the wrench and screwdriver and anything I needed to carry from the house. ‘Be smart,’ she said. ‘We’re breaking about twenty laws and a thousand rules. The guys we’ve got doing this will save your life, but if you screw up, they’ll deny they ever knew about it. Every man for himself.’
‘How about you? Will you deny me?’
‘Just be smart,’ she said.
At ten, another cop called Holt and said the judge had arrived at the courthouse and started a hearing. So I drove from the Cardinal Motel toward his house. The morning sky was hot an
d cloudless. Rush-hour traffic had cleared, and I crossed the city faster than I wanted to.
As I turned from Henley Road on to Byron, I passed a man in a black Chevy Impala. According to Holt, a black Tahoe would be parked up the street on the other side of the judge’s house. If anyone approached, the men would contact her, and she would call me and tell me to run.
I pulled into the Skooners’ driveway. As I got out, a locust was whining in one of the hedges, and, far off, in another yard, a lawnmower hummed. I glanced next door. Higby stood on his front porch.
His eyes had always accused me. His presence made me want to turn around and call off the break-in. I wondered then if he and Holt had set a trap for me. I wondered if they would get me inside the judge’s house and spring the steel jaws. I wondered if my release from prison and my struggle toward freedom were only a dream that would end when I broke through the judge’s door and stepped into the front hall.
I flipped my middle finger at Higby and went to the door. A security camera that the technicians had installed to point at the front porch hung broken. I stepped on the pieces of glass and plastic and ground them into the brick.
I rang the doorbell – just in case.
No one came.
I rang it again.
Then I kicked the door.
It was solid.
I kicked a second time.
It was still solid.
I looked across the yard at Higby, and he shook his head.
So I went to work on the door with the screwdriver, hacking and gouging the wood around the lock. After a couple of minutes, I’d dug through a layer of plywood into a hollow core. I pried and twisted, spraying the porch with splinters and shards of wood. The dirtier the entry, the better. The muscle and mental work felt good. Better than taking out the eye of the man who attacked me in prison.
I jammed the screwdriver through the plywood on the inside of the door and turned the shaft, widening a hole. Then I punched at the hole with the head of the crescent wrench. Soon, I’d widened it enough to stick my hand through and open the lock.
I stepped inside, closed the door, and went down the cool, dark hall to the sunroom where Andrew Skooner had given me the bullet. I knocked over a wicker recliner and a wrought-iron table. I went to the cabinet, opened the bottom drawer, and poured it on to the floor. There were pieces from a Monopoly game, two packs of playing cards, and a bunch of dusty checkers. There were paperclips, a bottle of Elmer’s glue, and a hundred other pieces of junk. But no gun. I pulled out the other three drawers and emptied them on to the floor. More junk. No gun. I tipped over the cabinet, then went to one of the broad windows and looked out over the pool, the lawn, and the dock. The sky above Black Creek remained cloudless, and heat radiated from the glass. If I tapped on the window with the crescent wrench, it would shatter, and the heat would rush in.
Monument Road Page 26
