Almost Mortal

by Chris Leibig

  Sam put the photographs back in the envelope, stood, and placed it on top of a row of books on his bookshelf. He then picked up the manuscript, shifting gears like he did when a judge called the next case. The mystery man had upped the ante during Sam’s last reading by admitting to murdering a sailor, apparently based on a paranoid delusion. He also claimed he might be inherently evil, like a demon or something.

  Sam had once hired a psychologist, Dr. Thomas, a fair-minded man, for a sentencing hearing to evaluate his client’s hostility. Millie Turnbull had been convicted of threatening to bomb city hall, a felony, despite the fact that she was a bi-polar homeless woman who never would have actually done anything. The point Sam tried to make through Dr. Thomas was that Millie’s threats, many of which were not only outlandish but also impossible, did not support that she was actually dangerous. Millie had variously declared her intentions to bomb the Pentagon, assassinate the president, and rent a boat to rescue the terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.

  While the jury had failed to acquit her by reason of insanity, Sam had still hoped Judge Bass would see that the more bizarre the claims, the less danger Millie actually posed. The prosecutor—Sparf, as a matter of fact—made the opposite point and made it well in his bratty, nasal, hall monitor sort of way. Sam could still see the argument in his head. Judge Bass’s eyes had focused softly on Sam’s while Sparf spoke. A compassionate and wise look, an I want to help you but you know why I can’t sort of look. Sparf had gone on and on.

  “With all due respect to Dr. Thomas, I can’t imagine you will bet lives in this community on his opinion, Judge. And it is just an opinion. Do I believe Millicent Turnbull is a serious threat to rescue the prisoners in Cuba? No. But let’s not be silly here. The fact that she wishes to do so makes her extraordinarily dangerous to the men, women, and children of Bennet. Kill the president? No. Shove a commuter in front of a Metro train? Maybe. Blow up the Pentagon? Ridiculous. Stab some poor sleeping homeless person? Definitely. You won’t bet lives on Dr. Thomas, Your Honor. You won’t bet lives on Mr. Young’s compassion for this woman. We’ll all be safer with her in prison, including her.”

  Bass still held Sam’s eyes when Sparf finished. Sam had known then it was over. Sitting rigidly, awaiting Bass’s decision, Sparf brushed his right shoulder as if flicking an annoying piece of lint from one’s coat. Bass sentenced Millie to the recommended five years in prison. He had not wanted to do it. But he’d had to.

  So once again Sam pondered the relation between crazy talk and dangerous actions. Did his mystery man’s extreme claims of special powers suggest that he was not the serial killer, or that he was?

  Sam dialed Camille, who answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, boss,” she said.

  “Major development.”

  “Is it him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How sure are you?”

  Sam hesitated before answering. The science itself was obviously not conclusive enough for court. But the confessions. The ten matching alleles. The coincidence was too great.

  “I’m sure. My friend gave me two days to decide what to do, but she never would have if she knew about the confessions. I’m thinking we may have to report this sooner. Like maybe tonight. The police have way more tools than us to find the guy.”

  “I know, I know. There can be no more victims. But give me the two days to discuss it with Andrada, to figure some things out. I won’t let any harm come to him. We’ll end the murders and protect—”

  “Camille—”

  “Two days, Sam. Please.”

  They hung on the phone in silence for a moment as Sam searched for the right words to tell her it was too risky to wait two full days during which another murder could happen.

  “Okay. Two days.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SAM LEANED BACK INTO the chair on his balcony holding the unread pages of the journal. Two days? Easy enough. But he had been here before. In the position of having made an agreement that sounded, even seemed, wise and decisive at the time—but was, indeed, foolish. A dodge of the primary issue. Which, in this instance, was the need to control the client and do some damage control. By giving Camille two days before reporting what they knew, he had, in a sense, sold her out. No one would understand that decision later. And if someone else was killed. Well never mind.

  JANUARY 15, 1958

  Our ship chugs along, sometimes with the coast in sight, sometimes not. Paul and I, for the first time in his life, have begun to spend substantial time apart, exploring the ship and its inhabitants in our own ways. Paul is enamored with the vast upper deck, where the sailors jump about. For me, below deck, with its twisting passageways and odd personas, is the way of it. For I am learning that my real interest lies not in interpreting the mysteries of the outer world but the less-charted universe inside human souls.

  Di Giorgio is a middle-aged art dealer who has quit his life in Buenos Aires to devote himself to the class struggle that will liberate South America. He is Italian by birth, Latin American by passion. Yesterday was the first I heard the term Latin American. Di Giorgio, who goes by no other name, has begun to educate me about the class struggle and the political identity of South and Central America versus that of the imperialists to our north. I drink with him as he lectures. He becomes increasingly passionate as he drinks, and I am thus able to prod and pry my way through his mind quite freely. He believes what he believes, or wants to believe it so badly the result is the same.

  It is quite educational. My personal conflicts have thus far been small—like myself versus Miguel or Aguilar. The type of struggle that dominates Di Giorgio’s thinking—politics—strikes me as terribly mundane. To my natural way of thinking, a political battle is much like a war between opposing ant colonies as a flood approaches to wash them all away.

  We discussed colonialism. England, Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the Belgian Congo, slavery, the American Civil War, and the Monroe Doctrine. Di Giorgio is no professor. He simplifies the topics to an almost moronic level. Di Giorgio’s central truth is that the evil, white capitalists from Europe and America oppress the valiant, earthy, brown-skinned southerners—a conflict which will culminate in a worldwide war that will set things right. His personal concept of right involves extensive brutal retaliation against the soon-to-be-defeated white capitalists.

  Di Giorgio has served time in prison for a crime he says he did not commit (a lie). He suffered greatly there, though he did put his artistic abilities to good use by becoming a skilled tattooist. His flabby forearms tell the tale of his boredom over the course of his seven-year sentence. He tattooed my thigh with a graceful brown doe, looking at her observer just so—just enough for one to know she understands. It is the deer I feel Salome could have been—quick, bounding, untouched among the trees, outrunning the demons in a dark German forest.

  Di Giorgio has fallen madly in love with me, and I have no problem with allowing him his needs. The depth of his passion whenever he touches me is interesting and, indeed, sad. Such loneliness. I don’t mind the attention, but the truth of it is, I feel a deep longing for appreciation, not of me as I appear, but as I really am.

  Di Giorgio plans to disembark in Cuba and join a band of fighters in the southern mountains to take part in the revolution against the capitalist government. He speaks of the Sierra Maestra, the 26th of July Movement, and of our countryman Ernesto “Che” Guevara. When he speaks of Che, his drunken eyes fill with water and his hands shake, both tightly gripping his glass as he leans forward in his seat. I find it interesting, this worship of one human by another.

  •••

  JANUARY 21, 1958

  The port at Santiago de Cuba hums with a busier but somehow less dramatic form of commerce than Buenos Aires. The town is the second biggest collection of people I have ever seen, and it has its own unique screech of humanity, unlike that which bounced through the streets of Palermo. I shut out the noise and gripped Paul’s hand tightly as we disembarked with
our mostly empty suitcases.

  Di Giorgio followed close behind me, not likely to touch me openly, but keeping me well within his sight. As we approached the port, I had cut a deal with the man. An odd decision, no doubt, but Paul and I have very little money and no plan to get to America. Being foreigners in Cuba, our prospects are even dimmer than they were the day we rolled into Buenos Aires on our motorbike. We simply need a benefactor. In exchange for some money, provisions, and some clothes, Di Giorgio asks only my companionship—and that I accompany him on his sojourn into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to join the revolution. The idea is revoltingly silly, bereft of even an answer as to why the revolutionaries would want a middle-aged foreigner to join them. But seeing no direct path to America before me, I agreed. Plainly, if Di Giorgio lives, I may eventually gain what fortune he has. If he dies, well, he dies.

  Di Giorgio huffed impatiently while I watched all of La Liberación’s passengers leave the ship. As I suspected, Van Zyl was not among them. Perhaps he got off quickly, before we did. Or maybe he hid onboard. As in Buenos Aires, the police scanned the departing passengers for clues about a murder and found none.

  We followed behind Di Giorgio while he made his secret arrangements in Santiago de Cuba. It is obvious that Fidel Castro’s revolution is a unique human event. Anyone in Santiago who whispers his name betrays a deep inner belief that he and his fighters in the mountains will succeed. I must admit, I find this a bit exciting.

  Di Giorgio bought backpacks and rifles for Paul and me. At my request, he also bought me a long, shiny, leather-handled knife with a sheath. He tried to teach us to hold and aim the guns in our motel room the night before our adventure began, and we tried to appear interested in his lesson. The guns are easy to understand, and they bore me. I did, however, after Paul and Di Giorgio fell asleep in our small room, practice jabs and various twists with my new knife. There is something about the knife that captures my imagination. It’s like an elegant extension to my fist. I also practiced jabs and punches without the knife, dodging and weaving about the room like a prizefighter with a dangerous secret weapon.

  We hiked through the humidity for an entire day, higher and higher into the mountains with each sweaty hour. Di Giorgio breathed hard, talked little, and stopped often. Paul and I, both strong for our ages at eleven and sixteen, breathed easily as we glided through the thinning jungle. By now I can read Di Giorgio like a newspaper, so I knew that the extent of his plan to rendezvous with the revolutionaries was simply to keep walking until they found us.

  We were thus captured by a group of three young bearded men. Their lack of skepticism of us, their casual manner, and their bold maneuvers through the jungle bespoke an easy confidence. A sense, one might say, of inevitable victory. Impressive people, but not kindred spirits of mine. Their minds spin political mantras, not the answers to my greater mystery.

  But victory is far from inevitable for these fighters, a fact that became apparent when we marched into the rebels’ ramshackle basecamp in time to see a young captain scolding a group of quivering revolutionaries. He screamed in their ears and smacked them across their faces. He brought one to the ground with a sudden kick to the groin. I glanced at Paul. No matter what happens, just do what I do.

  Our guides, faces down, showed no reaction to the captain’s tantrum and marched us past the incident to a clearing in the jungle that would serve as our sleeping quarters. This evening we ate in a big circle with a group of other recruits and Di Giorgio. Di Giorgio, too excited to eat or even go looking for liquor, told me that the screaming comandante was Che Guevara.

  I have never felt this sense of excitement, of humans bonding themselves together for a dangerous but important cause. I cannot say I care about the politics of it. It’s the complexity of the intertwining souls that has captured my attention. They are going to have to kill to pursue their cause, and yet none of them seems cruel or evil. I feel I will be able to sleep tonight without hours of that horrid cringe I feel inside when I think of Salome or Ortiz. Ortiz’s wife remains in my mind, but somehow I can hope that she would understand if she knew the truth. The Great One’s religions promise redemption and forgiveness. Maybe if I live right, that covenant will extend to me.

  •••

  Sam awoke in his chair with the manuscript on his lap. The first thing his eyes registered was the empty vodka bottle on the coffee table. His head throbbed. He did a double take on his phone. Three in the afternoon? Was that even possible? No calls answered or made since the one with Camille. Why, then, did he feel like he had spoken to her since then? Maybe it was a dream. He felt a sick level of stress. The hangover. The Ripper issue. And to top it all off, Cornelius Pritchard’s preliminary hearing the next day. Acorn, a client he was supposed to be representing, deserved his best efforts. He breathed deeply. For today, screw the Ripper, Church of the Holy Angels, and even Camille. Today, he would do his job. He stood up and headed for the shower. The jail. Then the office. No side work.

  That evening, police reports and witness statements memorized, Sam struggled with how he would end his cross-examination of Tamika Bradshaw, the woman accusing Acorn of rape. The known facts of the case unfortunately carried several standard indicia of reliability that tended to support Tamika’s story that Acorn had raped her.

  One, she reported the alleged crime to the police relatively quickly. Two, an examination conducted hours afterwards established that Tamika had fresh vaginal abrasions consistent with rough sex. Three, at the time of his arrest, about an hour after the alleged offense, Acorn had a hand-shaped bruise on the side of his face consistent with Tamika’s statement that she had slapped Acorn while he was raping her. Four, Acorn was drunk at the time of his arrest, which corroborated Tamika’s statement that he was drunk when he assaulted her. And, perhaps most troubling to Sam, he could not discern a plausible motive for her to fabricate the offense.

  She had known Acorn from the neighborhood for years, and even Acorn agreed she had never shown any animosity towards him. The standard reasons women make up rape allegations also did not seem to apply. Acorn had no money to extort through a bogus lawsuit. By his own account, he had not scorned her in any discernible way. Acorn’s version of events, communicated privately only to Sam, was that he had been sleeping with Tamika for months. Her sudden decision to make up such a monstrous, life-altering lie made no sense.

  Sam stood, arms folded, on his fire escape. Ten o’clock at night. Acorn’s hearing was at nine the next day. He needed something else. Tomorrow would be the only chance to have Tamika on the stand before the trial, the main opportunity to persuade the prosecutor not to go forward with the case.

  Sam quickly descended his apartment stairs, jumped into the Escalade, and took off towards the projects. Canal Street. Tamika’s address. He wasn’t sure why he was going there. She had already twice refused to speak with his office investigator, and banging on her door after ten o’clock the night before court would be viewed as blatant intimidation. Nevertheless, Sam eased the Escalade into a spot in front of her apartment. He lit a cigarette and watched. His phone showed that Juliana had called six times in the last few hours. He thought about calling her back, but he didn’t want to hear it just then, her worries about the forty-eight hours. He needed to focus on Acorn.

  There had to be something else.

  CHAPTER 15

  SAM’S THOUGHTS WERE CLEAR on the way to court Monday morning. He had prepared his cross-examination of Cornelius’s accuser long into the night without one drink. He picked up his phone and saw that Juliana had called twice already that morning. Instead of calling her back right away, he hit a different preprogrammed number.

  “Hello.” Dr. Thomas answered his cell in his usual manner, sounding as if he had been disturbed from some sort of intense psychological treatise.

  “Hey, Mike; Sam Young.”

  “Sam! Hey there.” Thomas’s voice became friendly. Sam knew he was one of Thomas’s favorite lawyers. He always had the nuttiest cases
and kept Thomas in the courtroom just enough to feel that he was part of the action.

  “I got something for you,” Sam said. “Call it an evaluation, but no court.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Sam walked quickly towards the garage elevator. It was almost nine.

  “No time. I’ll e-mail some journal entries over later and we can talk. Bottom line though: I want you to read what I send you and tell me if they could have been written by the Rosslyn Ripper.”

  Thomas paused. “Sure, Sam.” A subdued chuckle. “Your cases are never boring.”

  “And, Mike, this is serious attorney-client privilege. E-mail me your confidentiality pledge. With three unsolved murders, the lid on this has to be very, very tight.”

  “Whatever you need. But you said three. Haven’t you seen the news?”

  Sam did a quick Google search on his phone. Rosslyn Ripper Strikes Again.

  Forty-one-year-old website developer Zebulon Lucas. Worked in the tech section at the United States Postal Service. Cause of death was a broken neck, but unlike the other victims, his face and head had not been mutilated. He had been found on the grass in a park in a residential neighborhood early yesterday evening, across the street from the D-Day Memorial. Sam knew the neighborhood well and could picture the towering mansion-like row houses. Very close to where the other victims had been found, but not on federal property. But a man? It broke a distinct pattern, to be sure. A copycat? The police would have thought of that. A quote from Chief O’Malley’s early-morning press conference closed out the article.

  “We are aggressively pursuing DNA testing as we vet suspects. But based on the location of the body, the injuries sustained, and information we are choosing not to release, we believe the same perpetrator who killed the three women committed this murder. We’re quite sure of it. Period.”