Capital Crimes

by Jonathan Kellerman

  That threw Lamar. “Thank God, he is, Tristan.” Wondering for a split second what Baker would have said if he’d been the one asked. Then, getting back in detective mode and hoping his answer and a subsequent smile would spur some resentment, jealousy, whatever, make the boy blurt it all out and they’d be finished.

  When Tristan’s attention returned to the floor, Lamar said, “My dad’s a great guy, real healthy for his age.”

  Tristan looked up again. Smiled faintly, as if he’d just received good news. “I’m happy for you, sir. My dad’s dead and I’m still trying to figure that out. He loved my music. We were going to collaborate.”

  “We’re talking about Jack Jeffries.” Asking one of those obvious questions you had to ask, in order to keep a clear chain of information.

  “Jack was my true father,” said Tristan. “Biologically and spiritually. I loved Lloyd, too. Until a few years ago, I thought he was my true father. Even when I learned that wasn’t true, I never said anything to Lloyd because Lloyd was a good man and he’d always been good to me.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  Tristan patted his chest. “I guess I always knew in my heart. The way Mom always talked about Jack. More than it just being the good old days. And how she never did it around Dad. Lloyd. Then, when I got bigger, seeing Jack’s pictures, friends would show them to me. Everyone kept saying it.”

  “Saying what?”

  “We were clones. Not that popular opinion means anything. Sometimes, just the opposite. I didn’t really want to believe it. Lloyd was good to me. But…”

  “The evidence was too strong,” said Lamar.

  Tristan nodded. “Also, it…verified stuff I’d always felt.” Another pat. “Deep inside. Lloyd was a good man, but—no buts, he was a good, good man. He died, too.”

  “You’ve had a lot of loss, son,” said Baker.

  “It’s like everything exploded inward,” said Tristan. “I guess that’s imploded. Implosion.”

  Enunciating the word, as if performing at a spelling bee.

  “Implosion,” said Baker.

  “It was like—everything!” Tristan looked up again. Looked at both detectives. “That’s why I considered it.”

  “Considered what, son?”

  “Jumping in.”

  “Into the Cumberland?”

  Another weak smile. “Like that old folk song.”

  “Which one?”

  “‘Goodnight Irene.’”

  “Great song. Leadbelly,” said Baker, and Lamar almost got a stiff neck from not swiveling toward his partner.

  The boy didn’t answer.

  Baker said, “Yeah, that’s a great old song. The way that lyric just hits you, like it’s not really part of the rest of the song, then boom.”

  Silence.

  Baker said, “‘Sometimes I have a great notion to jump in the river and drown.’ Ol’ Leadbelly killed a man, spent time in prison, that’s where he wrote it and—”

  “‘Midnight Special.’”

  “You like the old ones, son.”

  “I like everything good.”

  “Makes sense,” said Baker. “So there you were, imploding. I got to tell you, things go a certain way, it’s easy to see how someone could feel that way, just take a few steps…”

  Tristan didn’t react.

  Baker said, “Guilt can make a person feel that way.”

  Tristan retorted, “Or just plain life going to shit.” He dropped his head, pressed his cheeks with his palms.

  Baker said, “Son, you’re obviously a smart guy so I won’t insult your intelligence by spinning a lot of theories. But the fact is: confession can be good for the soul.”

  “I know,” said Tristan. “That’s why I told you.”

  “Told us what?”

  “I was thinking of doing it. The river. Did Mom send you? All the way from Kentucky?”

  “Send us for what?”

  “To stop me.”

  Baker rubbed his bare head. “You’re thinking we picked you up for attempted suicide.”

  “Mom said if I ever did it again, she’d have me arrested.”

  “Again,” said Lamar.

  “I tried twice before,” said Tristan. “Not the river, pills. Her Prozac. I’m not sure it was really serious…the first time. It was probably one of those…a cry for help, to use a cliché.”

  “Your mama’s pills.”

  “She had her purse open. I needed some cash and she’s cool with me just taking whatever money I needed. She left the pills in a vial on top of her wallet. I was just hungry for sleep, you know?”

  “When was this, son?”

  “You keep calling me ‘son.’” The boy smiled. “Nashville PD’s babysitting me. Amazing what money can buy.”

  “You think we’re doing this for your mama?” said Lamar.

  Tristan smirked and now they could see the spoiled rich kid in him. “Everyone knows the eleventh commandment.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

  “Tristan,” said Baker, “let me give you some education: we are not here to babysit you or to prevent you from doing whatever you want to do to yourself. Though we think that would be pretty stupid—jumping into those muddy waters. We have not talked to your mama since we interviewed her yesterday at your house and she led us to believe you were in Rhode Island.”

  Tristan stared at him. “Then, what?”

  “You are being questioned regarding the murder of Jack Jeffries.”

  Tristan gaped. Sat up straight. “You think—oh, man, that’s ridiculous; that is so psychotic ridiculous.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I loved Jack.”

  “Your new dad.”

  “My always dad, we were…,” said Tristan. He shook his head. Clean blond hair billowed, fell back into place.

  “You were what?”

  “Reuniting. I mean, he felt it and I was starting to feel it—the bond. But we both knew it takes time. That’s why he came to Nashville.”

  “To bond.”

  “To meet me.”

  “First time?” said Lamar.

  Nod.

  “You get together?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So when’d you give him your song—‘Music City Breakdown’?”

  “I mailed it to him. Five Oh Two Beverly Crest Ridge, Beverly Hills 90210.”

  “How long ago?”

  “A month. I mailed him a bunch of lyrics.”

  “Before that, did you exchange letters?”

  “We e-mailed. We’ve been doing it for six months; you can check my computer, I’ve saved everything between us.”

  “Why’d you send him ‘Breakdown’ using snail mail?”

  “I wanted him to have something…something he could touch. It was part of a whole notebook I sent him, all my lyrics. Jack liked four of them, the rest he said were too shapeless—that was the way he put it. But those four had potential to be songs if they ‘grew up.’ He said he’d help me grow them up. He said we should concentrate on ‘Breakdown’ because even though it needed work, it was the best. Then, if it…I was thinking about moving to LA, maybe getting into a creative writing program at UCLA or something.”

  “You and Jack making plans.”

  Long silence. Then Tristan shook his head. “Jack didn’t know about that. We were concentrating on ‘Breakdown.’”

  “To grow it up.”

  “We were supposed to do it before the concert—he was playing a concert at the Songbird. If it came together, he was going to sing it and then call me up on stage and introduce me as the writer. And maybe more.”

  “His son.”

  Slow, tortured nod. “Now she ruined it.”

  “Who?” said Baker.

  Silence.

  “No theories, son?”

  “No offense,” said the boy, “but that makes me feel worse, not better, sir. Hearing you call me ‘son.’”

  “Apologies,
” said Baker. “Who ruined things for you?”

  No answer.

  Baker said, “She as in…”

  “Mom.”

  “You think she killed Jack?”

  “I don’t see her actually stabbing someone, too messy.”

  “What, then?”

  “She’d hire someone. Maybe some Lexington bad dude; she’s got all sorts of people working on the farm. I hate that place.”

  “Don’t like horses?”

  “Don’t like horseshit and all the racism that’s part of the whole scene.”

  “Some Lexington bad dude,” said Baker. “What reason would your mama have to kill Jack?”

  “To prevent me from entering his world. That’s what she called it—his world, like it was some Hades thing, some nether-hell of deep, dark iniquity. All those years, she’s been bragging about knowing Jack, how she used to hang with all those rock stars.”

  “Not in front of Lloyd, though.”

  “Sometimes, if she was drinking.”

  “Did it bother him?”

  “He’d smile and go back to his paper.”

  “Easygoing sort,” said Lamar.

  “That,” said Tristan, “and he had all his girlfriends.”

  His smile was weary. “It was what you might call a free environment, sir. Until I wanted to invent my own brand of freedom. Mom wasn’t pleased.”

  “The music scene,” said Lamar.

  “She calls it the lowest of the low.”

  Lamar quelled another urge to look at Baker. “You really think she’d murder a man to stop him from being a bad influence on you?”

  “She went to warn him off,” said Tristan.

  “When?”

  “The night he flew into Nashville. At least, that’s what she told me she was going to do. Drove straight to where I was supposed to meet him. Told me to forget about going there, you stay away unless you want an ugly scene you’ll never forget.”

  “Go where?”

  “The place Jack was gonna be. Someplace on First, where there’s no other clubs.”

  “The T House.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were supposed to meet up with Jack there.”

  “Yes, sir. He called me that night, said he was going there, I should bring the extra verses I was working on—for ‘Breakdown’—and he was going to check them out. Then I was going to drive him back to the hotel and we were going to pull an all-nighter so the song would be in shape to sing at the concert.”

  “But Mom warned you off and you didn’t go.”

  “I called Jack and asked what to do about it. He told me to be cool, he’d calm her down, and we would meet up.”

  “How’d you feel about all that?”

  “Angry as hell, but Jack promised me we’d get together with enough time before the concert.”

  “The concert was important.”

  “He was going to bring me up on stage.”

  “Where’d you go instead of to the T House?”

  “Nowhere,” said the boy. “I stayed home and worked on ‘Breakdown.’ I fell asleep, maybe at three, four, I don’t know, it was at my desk. Then I got up and worked some more. Check my computer logs, when I write something, I record the time.”

  “Why?”

  “To preserve it. Preserve everything about the process. You can have my computer, if you want to prove it. It’s on the backseat of my car.”

  “You seem real anxious for us to get hold of your computer.”

  “Anything about me is going to be on my hard drive.”

  Lamar said, “We find your computer was used at a certain time, doesn’t tell us who used it.”

  The boy scowled. “Well, it was me—ask Amelia, our maid. I was in all night and never left.”

  “How’d you end up at the river?”

  “I went there after I found out what happened.” Tristan’s eyelids swelled as if allergic to remembering. “It was like a big hand entered here and ripped me.” Knuckling his solar plexus.

  “What time?”

  “Seven, nine, in the afternoon, I don’t know. I just drove like I was in a dream.”

  “Where?”

  “Up and down the highway, all over.”

  “Which highway?”

  “The I-Forty.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “No, it was just trees—I drove to the old prison, down west, where they film movies? There were these—with the white-striped blue pants? I guess they’re minimum-security prisoners, they’re always walking around, cleaning up.”

  “Sounds like you go there a lot.”

  “It’s quiet,” said Tristan. “Helps me think. I was there that morning. Parked on top of the hill and looked down at all those dirty gray walls and one of them saw me. He had a rake, was raking leaves. He saw me and waved, I waved back. I sat there a little more, drove back to the city, parked near the river, sat in an empty building and…that’s what I was doing when the cops found me.”

  “Thinking about killing yourself.”

  “I probably wouldn’t do it.”

  “Probably?”

  “It would be selfish, right? Like her.”

  “Your mama.”

  “She hated Jack,” said the boy. “Told me so, when she was screaming no way I was going to meet him, she’d make a scene.”

  “Why’d she hate him?”

  “For leaving her in the first place, then for coming back when she didn’t want him to.”

  “She was married to Lloyd when she conceived you.”

  “But things weren’t going so well,” said the boy. “Least that’s what she told me. She was bored and thinking of leaving Lloyd. My mom used to be Jack’s main groupie, she made like it was more, but that’s what it sounded like to me. Then he dumped her and they didn’t see each other for a long time. Then, she was visiting a friend in LA, looked him up. They hooked up for a couple of days. After she found out she was pregnant, she called him about it but he didn’t answer. So she went back to Lloyd and forgot about Jack.”

  “And now he was coming back,” said Baker. “And being a bad influence on you. You really think she’d have killed him over that?”

  “You don’t know her, sir. She sets her mind to something, she’s not going to be convinced otherwise. She’s got all sorts of people working the farm. Lots of trash.” Some animation had spread across Tristan’s face. “You don’t believe me because she’s rich and cultured.”

  “Well,” said Baker, “if we had some evidence.”

  “If she didn’t do it, who did?”

  Baker sat back, placed his hands behind his head. “As a matter of fact, son, we’ve been thinking about you.”

  The boy shot to his feet. Big boy, all those muscles. His jaw was tight and his hands were clenched. “I told you! That’s fucking insane! Meeting Jack was the coolest thing in my life, I was going to go to LA!”

  “Your plan, not his.”

  “He would’ve been into it!”

  The detectives remained in their seats. Tristan glared down at them.

  Lamar said, “Sit back down, son.”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  Lamar rose to his full height. Tristan was unused to looking up at anyone. He flinched.

  “Please sit down, Tristan.”

  The boy obeyed. “I’m really a suspect?”

  “You’re what we call a person of interest.”

  “That’s crazy. Fucking crazy. Why would I kill someone I loved?”

  Baker said, “Maybe he changed his mind about singing your song.”

  “He didn’t,” said Tristan. “But even if he did, that’s no reason to kill someone.”

  “People get killed for all sorts of reasons.”

  “Not by sane people—anyway, it never happened, he loved my songs. Read my e-mails, everything’s positive, everything’s cool—my laptop’s in the back of my car, it’s out of power but you can recharge it. My passwords DDPOET. Short for Dead Poet.”

&n
bsp; “We’ll do that,” said Baker. “But no matter what your e-mail says, it doesn’t mean that Jack didn’t change his mind and decide not to sing your song.”

  Lamar said, “People change their mind all the time. And Jack was real moody.”

  “He wasn’t moody with me,” said Tristan. “I was important to him. Not like the others.”

  “What others?”

  “All those loser trailer trash women claiming they had his kids, sending him pictures of their loser kids. And stuff—songs, CDs he never listened to. I was the only one he was sure of. Because he liked my songs and because he remembered the exact day it happened.”

  “The day you were conceived?” Baker asked.

  “He told you about it?” Lamar questioned.

  “It’s in one of the e-mails—if you ever get around to reading the computer. He even forwarded an e-mail she wrote him five years ago, when he was thinking of coming out to see me. She told him that she didn’t want to risk losing Lloyd and that I would never accept him because I was close to Lloyd. That unless he wanted to destroy her and me and everything she’d built with Lloyd, he needed to stay away. And he agreed. For my sake. It’s all in there. And he saved it for years.”

  Lamar said, “Mom didn’t want to risk losing Lloyd.”

  The kid smirked again. “Didn’t want to risk what Lloyd gave her. Eleventh commandment.”

  “Jack had money, too,” said Baker.

  “Not as much as Lloyd. Money has always been her first and only love.”

  “You have strong feelings about your mama.”

  “I love her,” said Tristan, “but I know what she is. You need to talk to her. I’ll give you her number in Kentucky. I know she’s there, even though she didn’t tell me she was headed there.”

  “How would you know?”

  “She always goes to the horses when she’s disgusted with me. Horses don’t talk back and if you put the time into them, you can eventually break ’em.”

  They retrieved an IBM ThinkPad from the backseat of the VW, booted it up, spent an hour with Tristan’s old mail and sent mail. A tech ran a basic scan of the boy’s Internet history.

  “Weird,” said the tech.

  “What is?”

  “Just music stuff—downloads, articles, tons of it. No porn at all. This must be the first teenage boy in the history of the cyber-age who doesn’t use his laptop as a stroke-book.”