Authors: John Gilstrap
So, Bobby, how's that murder rap thing going?
Just fine, thanks. They still haven't caught me. Think I should use a driver or a three wood?
Jesus Christ, what had he gotten himself into?
Bobby handed his business card to the prune-faced receptionist as she rested her phone on the cradle. "I need to speak with-"
The phone rang and the receptionist raised a finger for silence. "Donnelly, Wall, and Bevis." Then, three seconds later: "Just a moment, I'll check to see if he's in." She punched a button, passed the call to someone else, and then looked up at Bobby. He saw her eyes focus on his bruised eye, but she was way too practiced at her job to say anything.
"I need to see Barbara Dettrick right away."
Something in his manner put her on edge. "Is she expecting you?"
"Just tell her who it is, and tell her it's an emergency."
The phone rang again, and as the woman moved to answer, Bobby reached through the window and covered her hand with his. "It's an emergency, ma'am."
The receptionist looked for a fleeting moment as if she was considering filing assault charges, but the expression faded as he withdrew his hand. Looking straight at him, she picked up the receiver on the third ring. "Donnelly, Wall, and Bevis. Hold please."
She punched three buttons this time and after a short pause looked at his business card and said, "I have a Robert Martin here to see Ms. Dettrick. He says it's an emergency ... I don't know . . . Okay, I'll tell him." When she looked up again, she told Bobby, "She'll be with you in ten minutes."
It turned out to be more like twenty. He helped himself to a squeaky, button-studded, faux-leather chair that could have been fashioned from wrought iron. As tacky as it was, he imagined how palatial this would all seem a year from now, after he'd had a few months of prison time under his belt. By then, a nervous wait in a reception room might be the highlight-the pinnacle-of his day. Hell, for all he knew, this very moment might be as good as it would get for a very, very long time.
God help me.
The lobby door opened, and Barbara Dettrick stepped out to greet her client. "I'm sorry, Bobby, but I was in the middle of a conference call and couldn't get away." She stepped forward and thrust out her hand. An avid golfer and outdoor enthusiast, Barbara looked taller than her rightful five feet ten and never failed to be in good humor. "Nice to see you-My God, what happened?" She reached out to touch his bruise, but he shrank away.
"Can you come with me for a minute?"
She looked confused. "Come with you? Where are you going?" He hooked her in his right arm and guided her toward the front door. "I'll explain in the car. Fact is, I've got things to do, I'm running out of time, and since you're going to send me a bill anyway, what difference does it make where we meet?"
Looking thoroughly confused, Barbara allowed herself to be led out into the parking lot, and from there into the front seat of Bobby's Explorer. "Where are we going?"
Bobby climbed in behind the steering wheel and started the engine. "We're going shopping."
"Shopping? Bobby, what's happening?" Bobby smiled. "I'm on a really tight leash, okay? Just let me talk, and I think everything will fall into place for you."
Barbara shook her head, waiting for the words to make sense. "My secretary told me that this was an-"
"An emergency; yes, it is. But I'm not supposed to be meeting with you. So, I've got to work fast to complete the shopping I used as the ruse to get me out here. Understand?" "Not a word."
Bobby took a deep breath and held it. Of course she didn't understand. He didn't understand all of it himself. He started twice to form the words he needed to speak, but both times they refused to come out. Finally, he defaulted to the direct approach.
"I'm in serious trouble, Barbara. I broke the law, but haven't been caught yet. Yet being the operative word here."
Barbara's eyebrows came together to form a single line. "What are we talking here? DWI?"
Another deep breath. "Kidnapping, I think."
Barbara's face sort of expanded, her eyebrows launching up, while her jaw dropped. "Excuse me? Kidnapping? You're kidding, right?"
He pulled out into traffic and headed for the Kmart Plaza. "And maybe murder."
The silence that followed made him turn his head to check if she was still there.
"Jesus, Bobby."
He nodded. Well said. "You want to hear the details?"
"Holy shit." Clearly, this was her first capital case of the day. Of all the people in the world that Barbara Dettrick could reasonably have expected to see walking through her door, Bobby Martin wasn't even on the list. Mr. Conservative; Mr. Cross-Only-at-the-Corner. This was the same Bobby Martin who had gone on endlessly in college berating bottom-feeding defence lawyers and using her desire to become one as evidence that she had no moral center.
No, she didn't want to hear the details, but clearly she was about to. She surrendered to the inevitable. "Okay, sure. Let me hear it."
"Attorney-client privilege applies, right?"
Barbara nodded. "Don't worry about that. You are innocent, aren't you?"
He responded with a look.
"Oh, shit."
"I'm not guilty, either," Bobby said quickly, and he dove into the details of last nights encounter in the woods. He did his best to leave nothing out, and when he got carried away with the emotion of it all, and the facts started to jumble, Barbara slowed him down and asked a few probing questions.
"I don't know where I made the biggest mistake," Bobby concluded, "but now I'm stuck with this little kid in my house, and I don't know what to do with him. If I turn him in to the cops, I'm confessing to the murder. If I keep him-well, hell, we all know I can't do that. So what do I do?"
Barbara Dettrick had been a hair-twister for as long as Bobby had known her-ever since third grade-and now, as they sat in the Kmart parking lot discussing matters of life and death, she worried the strand in front of her left ear into an unruly spike that no longer joined the rest of her coiffeur. They were quiet for a long time as she thought things through. Finally, when she spoke, Bobby thought he noted a hint of dread in her eyes.
"How likely do you think it is that this guy you shot was going to do you harm?"
"Well, looking back on it, I really don't know." "Don't look back on it, then," she snapped. The sudden appearance of anger startled him. "Tell me about when it was all happening. How fearful were you of him harming you or Susan?"
Bobby had seen enough lawyer shows on television to know that there was only one right answer here, but he wanted to make sure that it was also the truth. At a time like this, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was lie to his lawyer.
"I think I was dead certain at the time. Once he heard the boy making noise, something changed in him."
"So he lunged first?" Barbara prompted.
"Well, you see, that's where-" Her eyes flashed, and Bobby cut the words short. "Yes." Her head nodded almost imperceptibly. "Yes, he definitely lunged first."
"So you had no choice but to defend yourself?" "Right." Bobby was getting the hang of this now. "Right, after he moved toward me, I moved toward him with the club."
"And what do you think would have happened if you hadn't wrestled the gun from him and killed him?"
Bobby thought again before answering. "He would have killed me. And he would have killed the others, too."
Barbara nodded more enthusiastically. "That's good. That's the basis for a solid case of self-defence. And I assume that Susan witnessed all of this?"
Bobby's shoulders sagged. "Well, that's where-"
"Because it would be enormously helpful to your case if she was a witness. That way, it wouldn't just be your word against the remains of a dead cop."
Bobby held her gaze, trying his best to understand exactly what she wasn't saying to him. "I'll talk to Susan," he said finally. "I'll find out what she saw."
"Good. Let's just hope she saw the same events that you did. What about the gun? Do you still have it?"
"No, I stopped on a bridge on the way home and dumped it into the river. I wiped it clean first, and I'm pretty sure no one saw me. You know, I almost got caught with it that one time and-"
"That's okay, Bobby," Barbara interrupted. "Just give me a second here."
They sat for a long time there in the Explorer, each of them lost in a flood of thoughts. "Do you think that we could carry this on in the store?" Bobby said finally. "I'm supposed to be picking up supplies for the baby, and if I'm not back soon, Susan will worry."
Barbara nodded, but then scowled. Something wasn't right here. "You said that Susan didn't know you were here."
Bobby nodded. "Yeah, that's what I said. She doesn't know that I'm talking to you. I don't want her to know."
"Why?"
Another deep sigh, and suddenly Bobby's emotions were like an open wound, raw and weepy. "She, uh, she's sort of bonded with this baby." His voice was barely a whisper.
"Well, why wouldn't she? I mean under the circumstances-"
"It's not like you're thinking, okay? She thinks that God sent us this baby. To be ours to raise."
"Come again?"
"We've had a few miscarriages over the last couple of years," he explained softly, "and you know about Steven. It was looking like we'd never be able to have kids. That's really why we were out there camping in the first place. We wanted to get things right in our heads, you know? Anyway, when we were down there on the rocks, we said a prayer together. We said a lot of prayers together. Hell, I even wished on a star. We prayed, we cried, and then there he was. Now Susan thinks it's a kind of predestination."
When he looked over to Barbara for an answer, she just looked away, twisting her hair and staring at the glove box.
Bobby didn't want silence right now, so he kept going. "I've got to be honest with you, Barb. In the past-what is it, twelve hours?-I've wondered myself if she isn't right. They say that God works in mysterious ways. Who's to say this isn't one of them?"
Barbara nodded, clearly overwhelmed by it all. "They also say, 'Be careful what you wish for." A beat, and then she was all lawyer again. "I assume you're looking for some legal advice here, right?"
"Of course."
"Okay, then, let's deal with the murder first." Bobby recoiled at the word, and she grew still more serious. "I'm sorry, but you know that's what people are going to assume when they find this body. From that point on, they'll do their best to identify who the killer is. Your challenge, then-" Something in Bobby's expression made her stop. "What?"
"I don't think it's a huge stretch for them to figure out who did the killing. When I was unloading the car this morning, I noticed that our camping permit was missing. I think it probably got torn off sometime last night."
Barbara's eyes grew even larger. "What are you telling me?"
Bobby couldn't look at her as he confessed to the ultimate in stupidity. "I think it's probably up there at the murder scene."
"Oh, my God," Barbara breathed. "How did that happen?"
Bobby laughed. "How did it happen? Well, I promise I didn't pull it off and leave it there on purpose. I guess it just came off. Maybe during the fight, I don't know. It's only a piece of paper held on with a wire."
"And it's got your name and address on it?"
"You betcha."
"God, Bobby."
"That's why I'm here, Barb! I told you this was an emergency. Any second now, somebody's going to show up at my door with a pair of handcuffs, and I need to know what to do."
Barbara turned suddenly pale, and her eyes looked sad. "I don't know what to tell you. It's too early to panic, though. It'll take time for someone to discover the body, and maybe-"
This time, Bobby paled.
"What?" Her expression said she was waiting for him to drop another bomb.
He cleared his voice and tried not to look stupid. "I, uh, I called the police on our way out of the park this morning. They found the body a long time ago. Maybe before we even got home."
The attorney looked as if she'd been slapped. "Are you crazy?"
"Excuse the hell out of me! I'm happy to say I don't have a whole lot of practice at this stuff, Barb. I knew that running would make us look guilty as hell, and I thought that by reporting it myself, my shit wouldn't "That's okay, Bobby," Barbara interrupted. "Just give me a second here."
They sat for a long time there in the Explorer, each of them lost in a flood of thoughts. "Do you think that we could carry this on in the store?" Bobby said finally. "I'm supposed to be picking up supplies for the baby, and if I'm not back soon, Susan will worry."
Barbara nodded, but then scowled. Something wasn't right here. "You said that Susan didn't know you were here."
Bobby nodded. "Yeah, that's what I said. She doesn't know that I'm talking to you. I don't want her to know."
"Why?"
Another deep sigh, and suddenly Bobby's emotions were like an open wound, raw and weepy. "She, uh, she's sort of bonded with this baby." His voice was barely a whisper.