Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  “I work for Kevin's lawyer,” said Jane. “But we don't have to tell your mother that right now if you don't want her to worry.” Or, thought Jane, if you don't want her to yell at you for hanging around with a bunch of lowlifes. “I'd like to keep you out of it. But I need your help.”

  “What do you want me to do?” said Dorothy, sounding wary.

  “Tell me what happened. Tell me the truth.”

  She sighed a big sigh, then launched into it. “Kevin asked us to wait for him around the corner. He said he was going to buy some Percodan. That he had a fake prescription for Percodan. We waited, then we heard the shots, and Sean took off. That's all I know. The whole thing about me and Sean being involved in any armed robbery is totally stupid.” She dismissed the whole affair with a wave of her hand.

  Dorothy obviously wasn't interested in the story she told. It meant nothing to her. The fact that Betty Cox died that day hadn't penetrated any corner of her soul. Either she was a cold-blooded psychopath, or she didn't really know what happened. Or she was protecting Sean. She had blazed through that story quickly, almost as if by rote.

  Now Dorothy changed tack and got on to what really interested her. “I haven't seen Sean for a long time,” she said. “Do you think he's really in college like his dad says?” She looked up at Jane with a hungry look. Jane wondered if she hadn't just made a big mistake telling Dorothy who she was.

  Chapter 7

  On the drive out to the Monroe State Reformatory, Calvin told Jane about his interview with Mr. Cox. “And so,” he summed up, “the guy says he doesn't want either of us to bother him. You can't hardly blame him.”

  “What did you tell him about me?” asked Jane. She was leaning back in the passenger seat watching the suburbs and pretty wooded areas—clumps of alders and firs—from below partly closed eyelids. She looked lazy and contented. Calvin felt the little rush he sometimes felt when heading out on a road trip, even though Monroe was only an hour or so out of Seattle.

  “I told him your name. But I said you were a friend of the family.” Calvin didn't add that he'd said that to establish some distance between Jane and himself. He remembered in a sort of bemused way that he'd been embarrassed and vaguely irritated with her up there in the pharmacist's apartment.

  Now, driving through the countryside with her at his side, he wondered why he'd been so irritated. He turned and looked at her profile—a nice straight nose, he thought, and he realized he hadn't seen her from this angle before.

  “But don't worry,” he said, in a manner that was purposely offhand and casual. “We don't really need Mr. Cox. I got a source working on getting us that police report.”

  Jane turned and smiled at him, a nice big grateful smile. “Fantastic,” she said.

  Once they got to Monroe, Calvin reflected that it didn't really look so grim, at least not from the outside. With its brick facade and white columns, sitting on a hill with sweeping green lawns and trees in front, it looked kind of like an old-fashioned high school. Until you noticed that the scale was all wrong. The building was a lot bigger than most high schools and the windows were a lot smaller than most windows.

  He drove up the hill and looked at Jane. She didn't seem nervous. A lot of people got nervous just at the idea of visiting a prison.

  “It doesn't look so bad,” she said. “But I guess it's pretty horrible. I mean I guess they all terrorize one another in there, right?”

  “That's the kind of guys they are,” he said. “There's no way I can think of where you get a bunch of mean sons of bitches together and expect them all to treat one another like gentlemen. It's medium security, so it's not nearly as bad as Walla Walla, though.”

  “Will they search us?”

  “They run us through the metal detector. It's pretty sensitive. They tell me an underwire bra will kick it off.” His gaze drifted involuntarily over to her chest for a second as he said the last.

  Jane was looking at her chest too, as if trying to remember what her underwear was like. She was wearing a white blouse and a black knit skirt. “I thought they used plastic nowadays. If bells go off, will some burly matron strip search me?”

  “They'll keep at it until they figure out what's setting off the machine. They might figure you for one of those crazed women who fall in love with cons. I had a client like that once. An ex-nun. These guys like to have some one on the outside to run errands for them and send them money, and I guess the women like the idea of knowing where the guy is all the time. Anyway, I told them you were my investigator, and they didn't pursue it further, thank God. Just let me do all the talking.”

  “I don't think my penchant for unsuitable men extends to the incarcerated,” she said. “Do they wear denim uniforms?”

  “No. They wear regular stuff in here. They look like a bunch of convenience store clerks or rock band roadies, and they can be pleasant enough. Especially to women. But most of them belong here.”

  “Including Kevin?”

  “Including Kevin. I wish I could tell you different.”

  “I don't want to get his hopes up,” said Jane.

  “I don't want to get your hopes up,” said Calvin. “One of the reasons I said I'd take you here is so you can't accuse me of leading you on with what I consider a very dubious proposition. A look at Kevin might be a good reality check.”

  They parked and went inside and upstairs, where they stashed everything—car keys, pocket change, Jane's purse—in a tiny locker, and went through the metal detector. Calvin had to go back and remove his belt and shoes, but Jane made it through. Then they heard metal clang behind them, spent a moment between two locked doors, emerged into the cafeteria, had their hands stamped (“Like a high school dance,” said Jane, intrigued) and went into the small client-attorney room. More clanging metal signaled Kevin's arrival by a separate door.

  The prisoner scraped a chair across the floor, and sat down looking at both of them from behind a screen of long blond hair. He leaned back in his chair with his chin slightly raised, like a troublemaker in the back row of a high school classroom. Calvin watched Jane check the details—a tight yellow T-shirt, a pair of newish-looking jeans, scruffy tennis shoes.

  Calvin introduced her perfunctorily. “This is my assistant,” said Calvin, not bothering to give her name. Next thing he knew, Kevin would be calling her collect. Kevin stared at Jane with interest. She smiled a businesslike smile and crossed her legs. Kevin watched her cross them. She seemed to notice but she didn't act uncomfortable, gazing back at him without revealing any emotion.

  Kevin Shea had been working out since Calvin had seen him last. Once a skinny kid with a caved-in chest, he now looked like a giant torso with a little head on top and a couple of barrels for arms. Sitting here in the attorney's room, Kevin didn't seem to know where to put those new arms. They were propped in his lap at awkward angles like a couple of foreign objects.

  Those massive arms were also sporting a complicated canvas of Escher-like tattoos—surreal landscapes incorporating some hearts and flowers and skulls, all in slate blue. Kevin had apparently fit right in to prison culture.

  “Don't go below the wrists with those tattoos,” Calvin said, pointing to Kevin's hands as he sat down in the beat-up wooden chair. “That way, if you're sorry later, you can wear long-sleeved shirts. You know, you might get a straight job or something someday.”

  Kevin looked blank.

  “Seriously,” said Calvin. “Most people regret it later.”

  Kevin shrugged, and Calvin wondered why he was bothering. It now occurred to him Kevin Shea looked stoned, not an un usual state for inmates here.

  “How's it going?” Calvin said.

  Kevin shrugged again. “I keep busy. I'm in anger management and leather tooling.”

  “What about that prayer group?”

  “I kind of got out of that. I'm going to get my GED, though. A lot of these guys in here are pretty dumb, but I think I'll get my GED.”

  “Listen,” said Calvin. “I'll
get right to the point, but I don't want to get your hopes up. We've been doing a little checking into your case.”

  Now Kevin looked wary, and as if he were trying to get his wits about him and maintain them. “Yeah?”

  “Seems like there might have been a witness to that holdup attempt. We're trying to find them. The fact is, no one actually saw you kill anybody.”

  “I don't think I did kill anybody,” said Kevin.

  “That's not what you said last time,” said Calvin.

  “I know. 'Cause I didn't remember. And those prayer guys got me all messed up there for a while. They made you feel better if you'd fucked up big-time, so you could feel real bad about it, and impress God. Course, it's better to be in here on murder than on something like a skin beef or something, you know?”

  Calvin cringed at the prison term for a sex offender. He was glad he didn't do too much criminal work. It was the class of people you met.

  Kevin's glassy-eyed stare drifted around the interview room. “But now I figure if I did kill someone, I would have remembered. I would have remembered the sound of the gun or something, wouldn't I have?”

  “I don't know,” said Calvin. “I came to find out if you had any thoughts on the matter.”

  “What kind of a witness?” said Kevin.

  “I don't know. You tell me,” said Calvin.

  “Seems like there might have been.” Kevin looked thoughtful. “Shit, a witness, and nobody found 'em. The cops didn't. You didn't. I'm rotting in here and no one found that witness.” Kevin managed to look indignant.

  “Well it would have helped if you'd told us about a witness,” said Calvin, trying not to sound too peevish.

  “Would it be like a man. Or like a woman?” said Kevin thoughtfully.

  “Like one or the other, I imagine,” said Calvin. “Or maybe even an actual man or woman.” It wasn't necessary to keep sarcasm out of your voice when you were talking to this jerk, he thought.

  “Does Mom know about this?” said Kevin.

  Calvin nodded.

  “Do you talk to her? Think she could send me some shoes? I want Nikes. Air Jordans with the pump. High tops.”

  “I'll mention it.”

  “Tell her I'm making her a wallet.”

  Calvin nodded. “Okay, you're making her a wallet. Aren't you going to ask why we think there was a witness?”

  Kevin frowned and his eyes came momentarily into focus. “Come to think of it, I think there was someone there.”

  “Oh really?” said Calvin. It was amazing how these guys seized on whatever they could and managed to convince themselves that they were somehow the victim of a terrible injustice. He'd seen it time and time again. The self-righteous protestations of innocence; the slow, steady twisting of the facts in their minds until they were right and everyone else was wrong.

  Kevin smiled and managed to look like a charming little kid. “Pretty stupid of me to hold up the place with someone in there like that, huh? I was pretty messed up.” After a pause, he added, “But, there coulda been someone there, now that I think about it. Maybe reading a magazine or something.”

  Calvin looked over at Jane. He expected her to lean forward. To burst out that he was on the right track, to give him some clues so he could fabricate a story. She just blinked slowly.

  But later, in the car, she grabbed his sleeve. “You heard him. He said a magazine. It's there somewhere in his subconscious. I know it! Can't we hypnotize him or something?”

  “No,” said Calvin. “We can't do anything like that. It'll just cause problems for us in court. The guy's mind is fried. He's a terrible witness. He doesn't know what happened.”

  “But he said that about the magazine,” said Jane. “Didn't that give you a thrill?” She was bouncing in her seat.

  “Hell, maybe he noticed the magazine in that photograph like juror number ten did, and some little synapses in his brain clicked in. I noticed you stayed calm in there when he came up with the word 'magazine.'”

  She stopped bouncing. “I didn't want to give him false hope, like I said. And I didn't want to encourage him to make something up.”

  “Which he would. He's completely unreliable. A shifty little con artist. If you want to get him out of there—”

  “Before he tattoos his hands,” said Jane thoughtfully.

  “—then you'll have to prove he's innocent.”

  “I need to find the witness,” said Jane.

  Calvin felt a stab of guilt. He was leading her on. She was seizing at Kevin's ramblings, and she'd knock herself out trying to make a case out of nothing. She seemed cool and self-possessed and capable, but every once in a while it occurred to Calvin that someone should take care of her.

  But he suppressed that thought right away. She'd taken pretty good care of herself until now. He didn't want to get suckered into worrying about her. “Are you going to buy me lunch?” he said.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning, Jane slept in, then forced herself up, into the shower, into clothes. So far, she had nothing on the day's agenda other than returning her tapes. If she had died during the night, she mused, the only way anyone would ever know is when the Algerian from Ace Video came breaking down the door looking for Philadelphia Story.

  Everything was on hold until Calvin told her what the police report said. She made herself a cup of tea and stood at the kitchen window, looking out at the garden. It was raining steadily, the steady rhythm of raindrops on leaves making that familiar sound of her childhood.

  Funny, when she'd lived in warm places, like the South of France, the sound and smell and feel of occasional rain made her nostalgic for home. Now that she was back here she found it depressing.

  The phone rang. She went into the hall to answer it, noting how the gloom from outside seemed to penetrate all the rooms of the house.

  It was Calvin Mason. “Hi!” he said cheerfully. “I got the name of that dentist for you. It was all in the police report. One of your more thorough examples, thank God. The guy's name was Carlisle. William James Carlisle. A dentist like I said. Here's his address.”

  Jane felt a shot of adrenaline at the name Carlisle—the same name that appeared on baby Charlie's birth certificate in the space marked FATHER. Mrs. Shea had said rotten kids like hers stole from their parents' friends sometimes. She'd wondered if she could somehow track down Sean through the dentist.

  But she hadn't expected this. Just like Kevin, Sean had stolen from his parents. But presumably he'd made it look like a regular burglary. A little slicker than Kevin's rough stuff, twisting his poor mother's arm to get her bank machine code. Although Sean could be a nephew or something, she supposed.

  “Wow,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “And that's not all,” said Calvin, sounding very proud of himself. “I found something else in the police report. Well, actually, it was in the detective's notes. The name on that prescription label juror number ten thinks will lead us to a missing witness.”

  “Terrific,” said Jane.

  “The customer's name was Jennifer Gilbert.” He gave her an address in the University District.

  “Fantastic,” said Jane.

  “That ought to get you started,” he said.

  Jane began to tell him she'd already started. In fact, it almost looked as if she'd wrapped it up. She'd found Sean and Dorothy, and almost tied the gun to Sean. If Jennifer Gilbert was able to cast any doubt on the prosecution's version, there might be a chance to clear Kevin. She thought of him up at Monroe, carefully lacing together a wallet.

  But she decided to wait until after she talked to Jennifer Gilbert to report on her progress. Then she might be able to bring Calvin a nice, neat package. And if he could go anywhere with it, and get Kevin out of Monroe, she could present the board with a nice, neat package. A hopeless case, an injustice remedied. What could be a more appropriate endeavor for a nonprofit detective than saving some poor guy from the penitentiary who couldn't afford decent investigative help to get himself cle
ared of a false charge?

  She wondered if Kevin had to be actually innocent to satisfy the board. What if she was able to get him a new trial that hinged on reasonable doubt? Jane didn't know what it took to get a new trial. In the movies, it always seemed to happen quickly, the great wheels of injustice coming to a screeching halt, then cranking into reverse. Something told her that in real life it wouldn't be quite so simple.

  But she was getting ahead of herself. What she had to do now was find Jennifer Gilbert. It wasn't too hard. She was right there in the phone book. Under initial J, at the same address Calvin had found for her. Which probably meant she was single.