“My illusions don’t generally involve the state attorney,” I said.
“Well, then,” Brian said. “It seems unlikely that a mere detective would lean on the state attorney. But I suppose stranger things have happened.”
“I’m sure they have,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s what happened.” Brian glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. “Not even a unibrowed mental-midget thug like Anderson would try to intimidate the state attorney,” I said. “But…”
I thought about it: A hardworking and honest whistleblower brings the SA’s office a documented report of authentic malfeasance, malpractice, and malingering. And the SA’s office does not, as one might expect, give said whistleblower a manly handshake and heartfelt thanks and then leap into indignant action against the heinous perpetrator. Instead, they tell Vince to go away and leave them alone—to play, if you will, in the traffic. On the face of it, it ran somewhat contrary to our general expectations of what a prosecutor’s office should do. But, of course, as I knew all too well, nothing at all in our justice system is actually about what it is
supposed
to be about. I suppose the same might be said of most things in life; when is the last time you met a waiter who is actually a
waiter
and not a frustrated actor/writer/dancer killing time until lightning strikes? But, of course, with Justice, where so many shattered lives hang in the balance, the stakes are much higher, and one really does hope for better.
Ah, well. Hope is for people who can’t see the Truth. As it happened, in this one instance, I thought I saw Truth. “Aha,” I said. “If that doesn’t sound too corny?”
“No more corny than ‘go play in the traffic,’ ” Brian said. “So tell me.”
“In the first place,” I said, “my case is a very public national black eye for the department.”
“International,” Brian said. “It was all over the news in Mexico, too.”
“So they need to have it solved,” I said. “And they need to have it done by convicting someone like me.”
“Well, then,” Brian said. “Who better than you yourself?”
“None other,” I said. “But there’s more. Imagine you are a lawyer.”
“Please,” Brian said with a very real shudder. “I have some standards.”
“And now imagine that one of your clients—or many of them—have been convicted on evidence supplied by Detective Anderson.”
“Oh,” Brian said.
“Yes,” I said. “When you learn that Anderson has doctored evidence once—”
“Then you can easily persuade a judge he doctored evidence
twice,
” Brian said.
I nodded. “Or more. Maybe every time, in every single case. And Detective Anderson has a rather large caseload,” I said. “Most of the detectives do.”
“And suddenly the streets are flooded with released felons,” Brian said.
“Right,” I said. “Which many people would prefer to avoid.”
“Ah, well,” Brian said happily. “We live in wicked times.”
“Very busy times, too,” I said. “And suddenly every conviction of the last five years is overturned. And?” Now it was my turn to pause dramatically.
“Oh, dear, there’s
more
?” Brian said in mock horror.
“Just this,” I said. “The state attorney is
elected
in Florida.”
“Oh, bravo!” Brian said with real good cheer. “What wonderful stupidity!”
“It is, isn’t it?” I said. “The quality of mercy is not strained—but it
is
handed out by someone who got the job by pandering to the lowest possible common denominator.”
“And they must present an impressive record of convictions to get
re
elected,” Brian said.
“Yup.”
“And so the picture is complete,” he said. He steered us up the on-ramp and onto I-95 south.
“Very nearly,” I said.
“Great heavens, there’s
more
?” said Brian with mock horror.
“Quite possibly,” I said.
“Do tell.”
“Well,” I said slowly, “just speculation here, but if it was
me
…?”
“Oh, dear,” Brian said. For the first time he frowned. “Poor dear Vince—surely they wouldn’t?”
I shrugged. “As I said. Speculation. They might not actually
kill
him.”
“But in any case,” Brian said, “disgrace, dishonor, discredit, and dismissal.”
“Almost certainly,” I said.
“And that we cannot allow,” Brian said. “Since he is our hole card, and we need him alive, well, and highly credible.”
I looked at my brother with some fondness. He had cut right to the very practical chase, without dithering around about friendship, gratitude, or honor. It was nice to be around somebody who thought so much like me. “Precisely,” I said.
“If some dreadful accident happened to Anderson…?” he suggested.
“I admit it’s tempting,” I said. “But it would look a little too convenient for me.”
“You would have a wonderful alibi,” he said, a little too seductively, I thought. “No one could ever pin it on you.”
I shook my head. “Deborah would know,” I said. “She has already hinted that she might rat me out someday.”
“Mmm,” he said, and I knew what he would suggest before he ever said it. “There could be
two
dreadful accidents….”
I opened my mouth to tell him to forget it, drop it, put the thought permanently out of his mind. Not Deborah, never my sister, no matter what might happen. It was out of the question, off the menu, not remotely a possibility—and I paused, closed my mouth, and pondered. It had been pure unthinking reflex to deny the merest thought of Accidenting Deborah, and like so many reflexive denials, it did not truly bear the weight of logical thought. I would never have considered it before, even for a moment; family loyalty and obligation, all drilled into me by Harry and so many years of acceptance and practice, made it impossible. Deborah was unthinkably untouchable. She was Home and Hearth, Kith and Kin, as much a part of me as my arm.
But now?
Now, after she had so thoroughly disdained, dismissed, and disowned me? So very completely rejected Me and all I am? Was it really unthinkable to send Debs away on the Long Dark Journey
now,
when she had already suggested that she did not find it at all unthinkable to do exactly that to Me?
I felt a small, sly, slithering purr from deep inside, where the Passenger napped, nestled in webs and shadows, and I heard it whisper to me what I realized I already knew.
It was not unthinkable, not at all. It was, in fact, suddenly very thinkable.
More: It could even be painted with a light patina of true justice, in a sort of Old Testament way. Debs was willing to see me dead—didn’t it make perfect, eye-for-an-eye sense for me to see her dead first?
I remembered her words:
never really my brother
. They still stung, and I felt a slow-burning anger smoldering at the outer edges of my Harry-built propriety. I was never really her brother? Fine. That meant that
she
was never really my sister. We were now and forevermore unsibling, unfamily, unrelated.
And
that
meant…
I became aware that Brian was humming happily, so very far off-key that I could not even recognize the melody. He would be just as happy, and perhaps much happier, if I gave him permission to do away with Debs. He didn’t understand my past objections, and certainly felt no hesitation himself. After all, he had never thought he was related to Deborah; that had been my tragic fallacy. And even though he was no more capable of human feelings than any other reptile, it was Brian who had come to my aid, after Debs had refused with great self-righteous loathing. The Great Illusion of my bond with Deborah had been exposed, rejected, flung from the fracas at the first real trial. And instead, blood had proved true after all.
And yet…
I still found it very hard to picture the world without Debs.
Brian had stopped humming, and I looked at him. He looked back, his terrible fake smile in place. “Well, brother?” he said. “Today’s special? Two for the price of one?”
I could not hold his gaze. I looked away out the window. “Not yet,” I said.
“All righty, then,” he said, and I could hear disappointment in his voice. But he drove on, and I continued to look out the window. I buried myself in dark musings, and didn’t really see any of the scenery, even as we approached my house and it got more and more familiar. Neither of us spoke again until, some twenty minutes later, Brian did.
“We’re here,” he said, slowing the car. And then he said, “Uh-oh,” and I looked out the window. He was driving us slowly past my house, the home where I had lived with Rita for such a long time. And right in front of the house, another car was already parked.
A police car.
A
s I may have mentioned, Brian had a very real aversion to police in any form at all, and he had no intention of pausing to chat with the two cops we could see in the cruiser. They glanced up at us, just doing their job and checking out the traffic, looking bored but still prepared to spring out of the car and open fire if we should suddenly unlimber a howitzer, or try to sell them drugs. But Brian very coolly smiled and nodded and continued his slow cruise past the house, pointing at a neighboring house in a very good imitation of the House Gawker’s Crawl, a South Florida custom that involves driving around at a maddeningly sluggish pace while staring at houses that may someday be for sale. It was a perfect disguise, and the cops gave us no more than a glance before turning back to their conversation, no doubt involving either sports or sex.
But it was, after all, my house, and it contained most of my earthly possessions. I wanted to get inside, if only for a change of clothing. “Circle the block,” I said to Brian. “Let me out up at the corner and I’ll walk back.”
Brian gave me a concerned look. “Is that really a good idea?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s my house.”
“Apparently it’s also a crime scene,” Brian said.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “Detective Anderson has stolen my house.”
“Well,” he said lightly, “as I said, there is a hotel room waiting for you.”
I shook my head, suddenly feeling stubborn. “It’s my house,” I said. “I have to try.”
Brian sighed theatrically. “Very well,” he said. “But it seems like an awful risk, less than an hour out of jail.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said, although in truth I was not nearly as optimistic as I sounded. So far Anderson and the mighty Juggernaut of Justice that he represented had had their way with me, and there was no reason to think things would change now, merely because I was represented by Frank Kraunauer. But one can do no more than try one’s best in this Vale of Tears, and so I climbed out of Brian’s car absolutely brimming with synthetic hope, a cheery fake smile painted on my lips. I stuck my head back inside and said, “Go up to the strip mall on the corner. I’ll walk up when I’m done.”
Brian ducked down and looked at me searchingly, as if afraid he might never see me again. “If you’re not there in half an hour, I’m calling Kraunauer,” he said.
“Forty-five minutes,” I said. “If I get in, I want a shower.”
He looked at me a little longer, then shook his head. “This is a very bad idea,” he said. I closed the door, and he drove slowly away, up toward Dixie Highway.
I understood Brian’s worry. It was perfectly natural caution on the part of somebody who preferred the sort of entertainment he liked. He had always seen cops as the Enemy, a rival predator in the food chain to be avoided whenever possible. But even though I shared his distinctive tastes, I had no inbred aversion to blue uniforms. My unique upbringing and career path had made me familiar with cops, and I understood them as much as I understood any human.
So I walked right up to the patrol car, phony smile still on my face, and tapped on the glass.
Two heads swiveled toward me in perfect unison, and two sets of cold eyes, one blue and one brown, looked me over with unblinking readiness.
I mimed rolling down the window, and after another moment of staring, the owner of the brown eyes, closest to me, rolled down the window. “Can I help you, sir,” the officer said, making
help
sound as threatening as possible. I let my smile broaden just a little, but the officer didn’t seem impressed. He was thin, about forty, with olive skin and short black hair, and his partner, who was much younger and very pale, with blond hair that was Marine Corps short, leaned over to watch me.
“Yes, I hope so,” I said. “Um, this is my house here? And I was hoping I could get in and get a few things…?”
Neither one of them offered any encouragement, not even a blink. “What kind of things,” Brown Eyes said. It sounded more like an accusation than a question.
“Change of clothes?” I said hopefully. “Maybe a toothbrush?”
At long last, Brown Eyes blinked, but it didn’t soften him up noticeably. “The house is sealed,” he said. “Nobody in, nobody out.”
“Just for a minute?” I pleaded. “You could come and watch me.”
“I said
no,
” Brown Eyes said, and he was sliding down the scale now, from cold to positively hostile.
And even though I had absolutely no hope that it would change their minds, I couldn’t stop myself from saying, in a kind of desperate, pathetic whine, “But it’s my house.”
“It was your house,” Blue Eyes said. “It’s evidence now.”
“We know who you are,” Brown Eyes said, openly angry now. “You’re the fucking psycho that killed Jackie Forrest.”
“And Robert Chase,” Blue Eyes chimed in.
“You made us all look like assholes,” Brown Eyes said. “The whole fucking force—you know that?”
A very great number of wonderfully clever replies flitted into my brain, like,
Oh, no, you already did,
or
Maybe, but you sure helped,
or even
It wasn’t that hard
. And under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have hesitated to let one slip. But looking into the patrol car at Brown Eyes, I realized that there was a very good chance my lighthearted good humor would slide off ears that seemed to be fastened on a little too tightly—Brown Eyes looked altogether too tightly wrapped all over, in fact, to see any fun anywhere in a world that contained me, so I let the bon mot wither unspoken.
“You’re supposed to be in lockup,” Brown Eyes went on. “What the hell are you doing out?”
“We better call it in,” Blue Eyes said.
“I was released this morning,” I said quickly. “All perfectly legal.” I thought about trying a reassuring smile, but decided it was a bad idea. Blue Eyes was already on the radio, and his partner was opening the door of the car and getting out to face me with the full majesty of the law and barely controlled fury. The effect was spoiled just a bit because Brown Eyes was only about five-foot-four, but he did what he could to make himself taller with his anger.
“Assume the position,” he said, jerking his head at the side of the car. I opened my mouth to protest that I had done nothing to give him any cause, and as I did his hand drifted down toward his pistol. I closed my mouth and assumed the position.
I grew up around cops, and spent my whole career among them, and I know perfectly well how to assume the position. I have to say I did it rather well. But Brown Eyes kicked my feet farther apart anyway, hard, and shoved me against the car, clearly hoping that I would bump my head. Considering his mood, it might not have been wise to disappoint him, but it was, after all, my face, and so I risked it and caught myself with my hands.
He frisked me quickly and thoroughly, “accidentally” hurting me wherever possible, and then pulled my hands roughly behind me and snapped on the cuffs. He pulled them much too tight, naturally. I expected it after the rest of his performance, but there wasn’t a great deal I could do about it. And then, keeping one hand on me, he opened the back door of the squad car.
I knew what was coming, of course. He was going to push me into the backseat, pausing along the way to “accidentally” slam my forehead into the roof of the car, and I prepared myself to dodge it if I could. But happily for me, before he could shove, his partner called to him.
“Ramirez, hold it,” Blue Eyes said.
Ramirez paused, and then grabbed my wrist and yanked my arms upward. It hurt. “Lemme put him in the car,” he said.
“Ramirez!” Blue Eyes said. “Dispatch says to let him go.”
Ramirez tightened his grip on me. “He’s resisting arrest,” he said through clenched teeth.
“No, I’m not,” I said. And it was true; if I was resisting anything at all, it was circulation. My hands were already turning purple from the tight cuffs.
But Ramirez was locked into Full Bully Mode, and he clearly didn’t care. He pushed on me, bumping me into the car. “Your word against mine,” he hissed.
“Come on, Julio, he’s not arrested,” Blue Eyes said. “Come on, you gotta let him go. Julio, for shit’s sake, come on.”
There was a pause that seemed quite long to me, and then I heard a noise that sounded like steam blasting out of a radiator, which I hoped was Ramirez deciding he really did have to let me go.
It was. He dropped my arms abruptly, and a moment later he unlocked the cuffs. I turned around and looked at him. He was clearly waiting for me to scurry timidly away, and thinking about some ominous parting line to make my heart quail within me, and probably hoping he could stick out his foot and trip me as I went by. He was also standing much too close, a standard ploy of bullies. Maybe he hoped I wouldn’t notice at that distance how short he was. But I did notice, just as I had also noticed all his stupid, petty attempts to intimidate me, cause me pain, and otherwise kill the song in my heart. It wasn’t necessary—in theory, it also wasn’t legal. And I was, after all, innocent. His bullying had irked me. So instead of scurrying, I stepped a little closer to him—not close enough to give him a reason to open fire, but just enough to remind him that I was much taller, and force him to bend his neck a little more to look up at me.
“Julio Ramirez,” I said, nodding briefly to show I would remember. “You will be hearing from my attorney.” I paused long enough to let him begin a sneer, and then said, “His name is Frank Kraunauer.”
I knew, of course, that Kraunauer’s name was heap big magic; at its merest mention judges bowed and juries swooned. I had been hoping it might have some small effect on Ramirez, and I was immediately rewarded by a reaction that exceeded my hopes and was very gratifying to watch. He actually turned pale, and then he took a step backward. “I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“Your word against mine,” I said. I let it sink in for a moment, and then I gave him a big smile. “And Frank Kraunauer’s.”
He blinked rapidly, and then his hand began to drift down toward his gun belt.
“Shit, Julio, would you get in the car?” Blue Eyes called.
Ramirez shook himself. “Psycho asshole,” he said. And then he climbed into the car and slammed the door.
It was a small victory, especially compared to the loss of a shower and a change into clothing without dried blood on it. But it was still a victory, and I hadn’t had many of those lately. In any case, it was a great deal better than collecting a few facial bruises and a ride down to headquarters in chains. So I put on a confident face, turned around, and headed back up the street, to the strip mall where Brian waited.
I walked briskly: in part because it went with my confident face, but also because I wanted some distance between me and the squad car, just in case Ramirez changed his mind and decided to snap and go medieval on me anyway. Even so, it was a little more than ten minutes before I finally turned the corner and walked the last half block to the parking lot of the strip mall. The day had grown much warmer, and I worked up a nice sweat, which made me regret even more that I hadn’t gotten my shower and some fresh clothing. But at least Brian was right there, pulled up in front of a mattress store, with his engine idling. He saw me coming, took in my sweaty face and unchanged clothes, and nodded, a phony sympathetic smile on his face.
I walked around his car and climbed in on the passenger side. “Well,” he said in greeting, “may I take it that things did not go as you hoped?”
“Indeed you may,” I said. I held up my wrists, which were visibly chafed and red from the handcuffs. “Somewhat less than optimal.”
“At least you can be grateful,” Brian said, “that I am not the type who insists on saying,
told you so
.”
“Didn’t you just say it?” I asked him.
“Nobody’s perfect,” he said, and put the car in gear. “What now?”
I sighed, suddenly feeling very weary of it all. The excitement of my new freedom, and the adrenaline of my encounter with Ramirez had faded. I just felt numb, tired, sick of the monstrous injustice piled at my door—and still angry that my own door was closed to me. I had no idea what to do next. I had thought ahead only as far as a shower in my own snug little shower stall, and some clean, fresh clothing. But now? “I don’t know,” I said, and the weariness showed in my voice. “I suppose it’s time for the hotel. But I don’t have any clean clothes, or…” I sighed again. “I don’t know.”
“Well, then,” Brian said, suddenly switching to a take-charge voice. “We can get you checked in anytime; that’s easy enough. But you should be presentable first.” He nodded at the knees of my pants. The dried blood was still there, quite visible. “We can’t have you wandering around looking like that.” He shook his head with an expression of distaste. “Nasty stuff. It just won’t do. People would talk.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “So what do we do?”
Brian smiled and put the car in gear. “There’s a very ancient and wise saying of our people,” he said. “When in doubt, go shopping.”
It didn’t seem that wise to me. If I followed it literally, I would be spending all my time at the mall nowadays. But in this case, I supposed he was right. So I held up one weary finger in a valiant attempt at enthusiasm, and said, “Charge.”
Brian nodded. “Better than cash,” he said.