Ehrengraf for the Defense (21 page)

“You can’t have everything,” Ehrengraf said.
“Wiping his prints off the horse would seem to be one of the few
intelligent things Mr. Braden managed. But they can make a good
case against him without it. Of course much depends on his choice
of an attorney.”

“Maybe he’ll call you,” Starkey said with a
wink. “But I guess that wouldn’t do him any good, seeing as you
only represent the innocent. What I hear, he’s fixing to put
together a Proud Crowd of his own. Figure they’ll get him off?”

“It may be difficult to convict him,”
Ehrengraf allowed, “but he’s already been tried and found guilty in
the court of public opinion.”

“The league suspended him, and of course he’s
off the Mastodons’ roster. But what’s really amazing is the way
everybody’s turned around as far as I’m concerned. Before, I was a
man who got away with killing two women, but they could live with
that as long as I could put it all together on the field. Then I
killed a third woman, and they flat out hated me, and then it turns
out I
didn’t
kill Claureen, I was an innocent man framed for
it, and they did a full-scale turnaround, and the talk is maybe I
really
was
innocent those other two times, just the way the
two juries decided I was. All of a sudden there’s a whole lot of
people telling each other the system works and feeling real good
about it.”

“As well they might,” said Ehrengraf.

“They cheer you when you catch a pass,”
Starkey said philosophically, “and they boo you when you drop one.
Except for you, Mr. Ehrengraf, there wasn’t a person around who
believed I didn’t do it. But you did, and you figured out how the
evidence showed Claureen’s death was accidental. Low blood sugar,
too much exercise, and she got dizzy and fell and pulled the horse
down on top of her.”

“Yes.”

“And then you figured out they’d never buy
that, true or false. So you dug deeper.”

“It was the only chance,” Ehrengraf said
modestly.

“And they might not buy that Claureen killed
herself by accident, but they loved the idea that she was cheating
on me and Clete killed her so I’d be nailed for it.”

“The Ehrengraf reverse.”

“How’s that?”

“The Ehrengraf reverse. When the evidence is
all running one way, you hand off the ball and sweep around the
other end.” He spread his hands. “And streak down the sideline and
into the end zone.”

“Touchdown,” Starkey said. “We win, and
Braden’s the goat and I’m the hero.”

“As you clearly were on Sunday.”

“I guess I had a pretty decent game.”

“Eight pass receptions, almost two hundred
yards rushing—yes, I’d say you had a good game.”

“Say, were those seats okay?”

“Row M on the fifty-yard line? They were the
best seats in the stadium.”

“It was a beautiful day for it, too, wasn’t
it? And I couldn’t do a thing wrong. Oh, next week I’ll probably
fumble three times and run into my own blockers a lot, but I’ll
have this one to remember.”

Ehrengraf took the game ball in his hands.
“And so will I,” he said.

“Well, I wanted you to have a souvenir. And
the bonus, well, I got more money coming in these days than I ever
figured to see. Every time the phone rings it’s another product
endorsement coming my way, and I don’t have to wait too long
between rings, either. Hey, speaking of the reverse, how’d you like
the one we ran Sunday?”

“Beautiful,” Ehrengraf said fervently. “A
work of art.”

“You know, I was thinking of you when they
called it in the huddle. Fact, when the defense was on the field I
asked the coach if we couldn’t run that play. Would have served me
right if I’d been dumped for a loss, but that’s not what
happened.”

“You gained forty yards,” Ehrengraf said,
“and if that one man hadn’t missed a downfield block, you’d have
had another touchdown.”

“Well, it’s a pretty play,” Blaine Starkey
said. “There’s really nothing like the reverse.”

The End

“
Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.

He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

—
William Shakespeare

Ehrengraf, his mind abuzz with uplifting
thoughts, left his car at the curb and walked the length of the
flagstone path to Millard Ravenstock’s imposing front door. There
was a large bronze door-knocker in the shape of an elephant’s head,
and one could lift and lower the animal’s hinged proboscis to
summon the occupants.

Or, as an alternative, one could ring the
doorbell by pressing the recessed mother-of-pearl button. Ehrengraf
fingered the knot in his tie, with its alternating half-inch
stripes of scarlet and Prussian blue, and brushed a speck of lint
from the lapel of his gray flannel suit. Only then, having given
both choices due consideration, did he touch the elephant’s trunk,
before opting instead for the bell-push.

Moments later he was in a paneled library,
seated in a leather club chair, with a cup of coffee at hand. He
hadn’t managed more than two sips of the coffee before Millard
Ravenstock joined him.

“Mr. Ehrengraf,” the man said, giving the
honorific just enough emphasis to suggest how rarely he employed
it. Ehrengraf could believe it; this was a man who would call most
people by their surnames, as if all the world’s inhabitants were
members of his household staff.

“Mr. Ravenstock,” said Ehrengraf, with an
inflection that was similar but not identical.

“It was good of you to come to see me. In
ordinary circumstances I’d have called at your offices, but—”

A shrug and a smile served to complete the
sentence.

In ordinary circumstances, Ehrengraf thought,
the man would not have come to Ehrengraf’s office, because there’d
have been no need for their paths to cross. Had Millard Ravenstock
not found himself a person of interest in a murder investigation,
he’d have had no reason to summon Ehrengraf, or Ehrengraf any
reason to come to the imposing Nottingham Terrace residence.

Ehrengraf simply observed that the
circumstances were not ordinary.

“Indeed they are not,” said Ravenstock. His
chalk-striped navy suit was clearly the work of a custom tailor,
who’d shown skill in flattering his client’s physique. Ravenstock
was an imposing figure of a man, stout enough to draw a physician’s
perfunctory warnings about cholesterol and type-two diabetes, but
still well on the right side of the current national standard for
obesity. Ehrengraf, who maintained an ideal weight with no
discernible effort, rather agreed with Shakespeare’s Caesar, liking
to have men about him who were fat.

“‘Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep
a-nights.’”

“I beg your pardon?”

Had he spoken aloud? Ehrengraf smiled, and
waved a dismissive hand. “Perhaps,” he said, “we should consider
the matter that concerns us.”

“Tegrum Bogue,” Ravenstock said, pronouncing
the name with distaste. “What kind of a name is Tegrum Bogue?”

“A distinctive one,” Ehrengraf suggested.

“Distinctive if not distinguished. I’ve no
quarrel with the surname. One assumes it came down to him from the
man who provided half his DNA. But why would anyone name a child
Tegrum? With all the combinations of letters available, why pick
those six and arrange them in that order?” He frowned. “Never mind,
I’m wandering off-topic. What does his name matter? What’s relevant
is that I’m about to be charged with his murder.”

“They allege that you shot him.”

“And the allegation is entirely true,”
Ravenstock said. “I don’t suppose you like to hear me admit as
much, Mr. Ehrengraf. But it’s pointless for me to deny it, because
it’s the plain and simple truth.”

Ehrengraf, whose free time was largely
devoted to the reading of poetry, moved from Shakespeare to Oscar
Wilde, who had pointed out that the truth was rarely plain, and
never simple. But he kept himself from quoting aloud.

“It was self-defense,” Ravenstock said. “The
man was hanging around my property and behaving suspiciously. I
confronted him. He responded in a menacing fashion. I urged him to
depart. He attacked me. Then and only then did I draw my pistol and
shoot him dead.”

“Ah,” said Ehrengraf.

“It was quite clear that I was blameless,”
Ravenstock said. His high forehead was dry, but he drew a
handkerchief and mopped it just the same. “The police questioned
me, as they were unquestionably right to do, and released me, and
one detective said offhand that I’d done the right thing. I
consulted with my attorney, and he said he doubted charges would be
brought, but that if they were he was confident of a verdict of
justifiable homicide.”

“And then things began to go wrong.”

“Horribly wrong, Mr. Ehrengraf. But you
probably know the circumstances as well as I do.”

“I try to keep up,” Ehrengraf allowed. “But
let me confirm a few facts. You’re a member of the Nottingham
Vigilance Committee.”

“The name’s unfortunate,” Ravenstock said.
“It simply identifies the group as what it is, designed to keep a
watchful eye over our neighborhood. This is an affluent area, and
right across the street is Delaware Park. That’s one of the best
things about living here, but it’s not an unmixed blessing.”

“Few blessings are,” said Ehrengraf.

“I’ll have to think about that. But the
park—it’s beautiful, it’s convenient, and at the same time people
lurk there, some of them criminous, some of them emotionally
disturbed, and all of them just a stone’s throw from our
houses.”

There was a remark that was trying to occur
to Ehrengraf, something about glass houses, but he left it
unsaid.

“Police protection is good here,” Ravenstock
continued, “but there’s a definite need for a neighborhood watch
group. Vigilance—well, you hear that and you think
vigilante
, don’t you?”

“One does. This Mr. Bogue—”

“Tegrum Bogue.”

“Tegrum Bogue. You’d had confrontations with
him before.”

“I’d seen him on my property once or twice,”
Ravenstock said, “and warned him off.”

“You’d called in reports of his suspicious
behavior to the police.”

“A couple of times, yes.”

“And on the night in question,” Ehrengraf
said, “he was not actually on your property. He was, as I
understand it, two doors away.”

“In front of the Gissling home. Heading north
toward Meadow Road, there’s this house, and then the Robert
Townsend house, and then Madge and Bernard Gissling’s. So that
would be two doors away.”

“And when you shot him, he fell dead on the
Gisslings’ lawn.”

“They’d just resodded.”

“That very day?”

“No, a month ago. Why?”

Ehrengraf smiled, a maneuver that had served
him well over the years. “Mr. Bogue—that would be Tegrum Bogue—was
unarmed.”

“He had a knife in his pocket.”

“An inch-long penknife, wasn’t it? Attached
to his key ring?”

“I couldn’t say, sir. I never saw the knife.
The police report mentioned it. It was only an inch long?”

“Apparently.”

“It doesn’t sound terribly formidable, does
it? But Bogue’s was a menacing presence without a weapon in
evidence. He was young and tall and vigorous and muscular and
wild-eyed, and he uttered threats and put his hands on me and
pushed me and struck me.”

“You were armed.”

“An automatic pistol, made by Gunnar &
Swick. Their Kestrel model. It’s registered, and I’m licensed to
carry it.”

“You drew your weapon.”

“I did. I thought the sight of it might stop
Bogue in his tracks.”

“But it didn’t.”

“He laughed,” Ravenstock recalled, “and said
he’d take it away from me, and would stick it—well, you can imagine
where he threatened to stick it.”

Ehrengraf, who could actually imagine several
possible destinations for the Kestrel, simply nodded.

“And he rushed at me, and I might have been
holding a water pistol for all the respect he showed it.”

“You fired it.”

“I was taught never to show a gun unless I
was prepared to use it.”

“Five times.”

“I was taught to keep on firing until one’s
gun was empty. Actually the Kestrel’s clip holds nine cartridges,
but five seemed sufficient.”

“‘To make assurance doubly sure,’” Ehrengraf
said. “Stopping at five does show restraint.”

“Well.”

“And yet,” Ehrengraf said, “the traditional
argument that the gun simply went off of its own accord comes a
cropper, doesn’t it? It’s a rare weapon that fires itself five
times in rapid succession. As a member of the Nottingham
Vigilantes—”

“The Vigilance Committee.”

“Yes, of course. In that capacity, weren’t
you supposed to report Bogue’s presence to the police rather than
confront him?”

Ravenstock came as close to hanging his head
as his character would allow. “I never thought to make the
call.”

“The heat of the moment,” Ehrengraf
suggested.

“Just that. I acted precipitously.”

“A Mrs. Kling was across the street, walking
her Gordon setter. She told police the two of you were arguing, and
it seemed to be about someone’s wife.”

“He made remarks about my wife,” Ravenstock
said. “Brutish remarks, designed to provoke me. About what he
intended to do to and with her, after he’d taken the gun away from
me and put it, well—”

“Indeed.”

“What’s worse, Mr. Ehrengraf, is the campaign
of late to canonize Tegrum Bogue. Have you seen the picture his
family released to the press? He doesn’t look very menacing, does
it?”

“Only if one finds choirboys
threatening.”

“It was taken nine years ago,” Ravenstock
said, “when young Bogue was a first-form student at the Nichols
School. Since then he shot up eight inches and put on forty or
fifty pounds. I assure you, the cherub in the photo bears no
resemblance to the hulking savage who attacked me steps from my own
home.”