The day Walter Ketchum showed up in court to testify, he didn’t avoid looking at his son. He didn’t swear at him. He didn’t spit at his feet. He strode right up to him, embraced him, and cackled that he hadn’t had such a good laugh in years as when he heard what his son’s defense strategy was going to be.
“It was goddamn brilliant!” Walter said. “Take the spooks’ own favorite lament — Wasn’t my fault, Your Honor, I was
deprived
— and turn it right around on them.” When Walter had told all his old retired cop buddies of this ploy, he informed his son, two of them had laughed so hard they’d given themselves hernias.
Then Walter took the stand and didn’t hesitate in painting himself as the redneck racist his son said he was. He was shameless in laying out his prejudices for the world to see. Ron had a hard time not squirming as he listened to his father testify.
But he knew how effective the old man had been when Marcus Martin said he had no questions for the witness. After finishing his testimony, Ron’s father stopped him in the corridor outside the courtroom.
“Ronny, I was happy to get up there for you today,” Walter Ketchum said. “I know you’ve hated me for a long time now, and maybe from your point of view, you’ve had reason. But this trial of yours brings up an interesting point, one maybe you never thought about. That is: If you
really
got twisted around because you had a racist for an old man … maybe I did, too.”
Then his father kissed Ron on the cheek and left.
Four days later he suffered a stroke that almost killed him.
“Your voice sounds better, Dad,” Ron said, “like you’re getting stronger.”
“That’s Esther’s doing. Makes me do my therapy every goddamn day, whether I want to or not. I get more exercise now than when I was a cop, kicking ass and taking names. You want the truth, I think she just likes to torture me. Get back at whitey every chance she can.”
In the background, Ron heard Esther Gadwell, the African American LPN who took care of his father, tell Walter to watch his old fool white trash mouth or she’d show him what it really meant to put a hurt on somebody.
“Esther, says hello,” his father told Ron.
“Tell Esther I hope she’s fine, too. What’s up, Dad?”
There was a pause before his father spoke. “Ronny, I’m not trying to stick my nose in here … but how’s that case of yours coming?”
“We’re working it. Making some headway. But you know how it is. I can’t go into details. For all I know, the press or the feds may have my line tapped.”
Walter Ketchum snorted. “Press! There was some faggot here today from one of those New York tabloid rags trying to get me to dump some dirt on you. If I still had two good legs under me, I’d have kicked his ass all the way around the block.”
Having been ministered to by a black woman the past three years, Walter Ketchum had come to make the reluctant admission that a dark skin wasn’t
always
the sign of either a criminal mentality or natural rhythm. But he was completely hopeless when it came to homosexuals. He would never allow a gay person near him, so he’d never get to see gays as human beings.
“Is that what you called about, Dad?” Ron was getting tired.
“No. I called because I have to spend so much time sitting on my ass, and I’ve used most of it the past few days staring at the picture of that boy nailed to the tree in your town.”
“And?”
“And I think it would be a mistake on your part to think this was a racial thing.”
Which was just what Ron had told Oliver. But hearing the same thing from his father made him get his back up.
“Why wouldn’t it be a racial thing?”
“Why? Because it’s too … shit, I’ve been trying to think of the word … I know! What it is, it’s too
artistic.”
“Artistic?”
“Yeah, for a redneck. A kill all the niggers moron is gonna nail a guy to a tree? Make him look like Christ in blackface. It’s too precious.”
“I hate to sound like an echo, Dad, but precious? Nails?”
“Look, Ronny, I’m telling you. I study this picture in the paper, what I see is a painting. I don’t see a redneck murder. Sure, somebody obviously hated this poor joker, but it was for personal reasons.”
“Dad, everything we’ve turned up on Isaac Cardwell says if he’d been any holier he’d have been able to multiply loaves and fishes. Nobody had any personal reason to hate this guy.”
Unless it was Jimmy Thunder, but Ron couldn’t share that thought with his father.
The old man showed he was still capable of surprising Ron. He backed off. “Okay, so maybe you’ve got some facts I don’t know about or you can’t talk about. But just believe me on this one thing: The Klan, Nazi skinheads or any other of those pus-brains, they’d killed this Cardwell, you’d have found him tied to that tree or hanging from it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Hey, I’m the expert, remember? That’s why you had me testify in court.”
Ron couldn’t argue with that, so he simply told his father goodnight.
Chapter 29
Tuesday
Ron and Oliver got together that morning in the chief’s office. They exchanged the information they’d gleaned they day before. They agreed that some facts fit neatly with each other, and they agreed that the “white” man Pastor Brantley thought he saw at the back of St. Mark’s almost certainly was their killer, but they debated who that white man might be or even if he was white at all.
“Okay,” Ron said, “we’re splitting hairs here. We both like the guy at the back of the church. We both agree that he’s fair-skinned. So whatever the hell racial category society assigns this bastard is really beside the point. Agreed?”
Oliver nodded.
“So, I’ll tell you my idea and you tell me yours. Fair?”
“Fair.”
“What Ms. Royce and Ms. Chenier told me was that Jimmy Thunder’s got himself a case of the financial shorts.”
“You trust them?”
“Not at all. But then Art Gilbert, the landscaper, tells me he overhears this character Didi DuPree talking to Thunder about money laundering. This I believe. Because what reason would Gilbert have to lie about it?”
The deputy chief was stuck for an answer to rebut that one.
“And,” Ron continued, “Caz Stanley found out Jimmy Thunder, Didi DuPree and Deacon Meeker were all at Huntsville together. And DuPree and Meeker are cousins.”
Oliver started flicking the top of his cigarette lighter. Ron was half-tempted to tell him to give in and go outside for a smoke. But he maintained his focus.
“Now, what would Thunder want with anything as heavy as money-laundering if his own perfectly legit operation was rolling right along raking in bundles of cash? That wouldn’t make sense.”
“Maybe DuPree came to Thunder instead of the other way around,” Oliver suggested. “Told the man I’ve got a business proposition for you here that you accept or else.”
Ron gave the idea a long moment’s thought. “That doesn’t quite work for me. Thunder went both straight and big-time after getting out of the joint. A lowlife, even one as scary as this DuPree is supposed to be, tries to muscle a citizen with money, he’s taking an awful risk. A rich citizen comes to us, saying he fears for his life from some scumbag, he knows he’s going to get deluxe service. All the stops will be pulled out to send the scumbag right back to stir, if we don’t cool his action permanently. And I think a guy who’s got away clean with killing as many people as DuPree supposedly has would be too slick to force his way in where the risks would be so high.”
“So you like Thunder inviting the devil in?”
Ron smiled. “Yeah, nice turn of phrase. I think DuPree was brought in through his cousin, the deacon. Let’s say Jimmy Thunder’s TVQ ratings have slipped for whatever reason, and his take is down. He starts to see the beginning of the end. He’d already lost his place in the high life once, he damn sure doesn’t want to lose it again. Hell, he’s only lived up here on the top of the mountain for a few years.
“So, he says to the deacon, go ask your cousin Didi if he’d like to have me wash some money for those folks he knows with all that cash on their hands.”
“A drug connection?”
“Could be drugs. But, hell, people are making fortunes smuggling immigrants and even goddamn
Freon
into the country these days. So who knows about that? But we know that he got a positive response, from what Art Gilbert told me. And we also know that Thunder got cold feet.
“Now, looking at Didi’s sheet, he doesn’t strike me as the type who just shrugs off getting jerked around … but he can’t kill Thunder. That would defeat his purpose. Without the reverend, there’s no way to make the money laundering scheme work. So what’s DuPree going to do?
“He kills Thunder’s son as an example. He figures losing an estranged kid won’t mean that much to Jimmy. But by crucifying Isaac he sends a very specific message to the other man of the cloth: Play ball, or you get nailed to the next tree.”
All of that played for Oliver, but he still had a question. “This DuPree is light enough to be mistaken for a white man?”
“Sergeant Stanley came up with his picture. Got it from the Texas prison authorities. I found it on my desk when I walked in this morning.” Ron flipped the photo of the man to Oliver. “You tell me if a half blind pastor looking across a dimly lit church couldn’t think this guy was white?”
Oliver looked at the picture and nodded. “Yeah, he could pass for white.”
“So why do you like this Ring character so much?” the chief asked.
The deputy chief laughed mirthlessly. “Probably shouldn’t say so, but one of the reasons I like him is I’d really like to stomp the sucker flat into the ground.”
“You know, Oliver, I couldn’t get away with saying that about a black guy.”
“You could if it was just the two of us, and the black guy was as big an asshole as Ring.”
“But you’ve got other reasons, right?”
“Yeah. The man was right out front that the whole purpose of his book is to destroy Jimmy Thunder. In fact, the fucker was tickled about it. But the stuff he has on Thunder, at least what he told me, it isn’t all that bad. Not by today’s standards. He beat his wife and ran out on his child. That’s shameful, except how many times have we heard it before, and how much sense of moral outrage does anybody have left these days, anyway? The worst thing Ring brought up was when Thunder killed that Braddock kid who played QB for New York. But he did his time for that, and everybody already knows about it.
“So I was asking myself, ‘What if Ring has himself a book contract and no book to go with it?’ At least no book that’s going to sell worth a damn. Seems to me he’d be in some serious shit. But then the last thing he tells me is, wouldn’t it be just great for him and his book if Jimmy Thunder did his kid?”
“We all know the answer to that,” Ron said.
“Right. So I ask myself, could this prick have given himself the great ending his book needs by doing Isaac Cardwell and hoping we pin it on Jimmy? Even if we don’t, he can write that we should have.”
The chief nodded. “Yeah, I can see that, just taking your word for the kind of jerk Ring is. But Thunder’s still a real possibility. Say that Isaac found out about the deal his father and Didi had cooking and made a threat to his father to expose it. Tell Jimmy Thunder that he was going to tell Ring everything. That made Jimmy hesitant to go forward with the money laundering. Which fits with Art Gilbert overhearing DuPree’s threats. Add DuPree’s threat to Jimmy deciding he wants to keep living the good life. What’s Jimmy’s only choice? He tells DuPree to take care of Isaac and save his reputation, and he’ll go along with the deal.”
“Now, you’ve got two ways of putting DuPree in the church.”
“And you’ve got one way for Ring,” the chief said. “But we know my guy’s got a rap sheet, and we don’t know if your guy does.”
“I’ll find out,” Oliver said. “My money says he does.”
“No bet,” Ron replied.
Ron knew that he had to find Didi DuPree soon to keep working his angles on the killing. That was assuming the man was still in town. Ron hadn’t served in the army during the Vietnam War, but he’d met plenty of older guys who had. He knew what di-di meant in Vietnamese:
Get outta Dodge.
Even if the man had left town, though, DuPree’s cousin, Deacon Meeker, was still nesting under Jimmy Thunder’s roof. Ron might have to have a heart to heart with the deacon. Come to that, maybe he should have another little talk with the good reverend himself. Rattle the man’s cage a little harder this time.
Ron drove over to Thunder’s estate and pulled up at the entrance. He pushed the button on the intercom.
“Who is it?” came the gruff tones of Deacon Meeker.
“Chief Ketchum. I’ve come to talk to you. Let me in.”
There was a long moment of silence and then, “Just wait right where you are.”
Neither Meeker’s tone nor his message was at all accommodating, but there was a tone in the man’s voice, almost a cockiness, that made Ron think it would be in his own interest to show some patience. He sat and looked out at the grounds, at Art Gilbert’s handiwork. The man had more than a green thumb, he had a serious gift.
Ron wondered how much Gilbert would charge to replant his windowboxes.
It took six minutes by the chief’s watch before a golf cart pulled up to the other side of the gate. Deacon Meeker was driving. But Ron’s focus was on the passenger. He had a hard time not grinding his teeth when he recognized Marcus Martin.
Ron got out of his Explorer as Martin stepped from the cart.
“Do you have a warrant to enter this property?” Martin asked from the other side of the gate, not bothering to address Ron by name or rank.
“No.”
“Then you can’t come in.”
“I don’t necessarily want to come in. I’d just like to talk with the deacon there.”
Deacon Meeker smirked at the chief.
Marcus Martin said, “As of now, I represent Reverend Thunder and everyone in his employ. I’m authorized to tell you that none of my clients will be speaking to the police. Not unless they are legally compelled to do so, and then only through me.”
“Somebody worried about something?” Ron asked.
“With certain people there is always reason to worry.”
“You making this about me, Marcus?”
“It’s well known you have a certain history.”
Ron looked over the lawyer’s shoulder and saw two figures step out from behind a stand of trees. Jimmy Thunder and Ben Dexter. Martin followed Ron’s gaze, then he looked back at the chief.
“How’s it feel to be on the outside looking in, Ketchum?”
“Like I’ve already got you surrounded, Marcus.”
The lawyer didn’t like the crack, but Ron was already turning his back on him as he headed back to his unit with a wave of his hand. “Thanks for the advice, Counselor. Next time I come, I’ll bring warrants: search, arrest, whatever I need.”
“Hey, wiseass,” Martin hissed.
Ron stopped and turned. “Now, Marcus, that remark was positively uncivil.”
“You think you’re something, don’t you? You were lucky those other times. Lucky I didn’t peel the lily-white skin right off your ass.”
The chief looked at his lifelong nemesis for a silent five count. He wouldn’t put it past the asshole to be wearing a wire. Just hoping to record something he could use against Ron. So the chief decided on an indirect approach.
“You want to play some ball, Marcus?” Ron asked. “I’ve got a key to the gym at the rec center. We’ll play a little midnight basketball, just you and me. You look like you’ve pudged up a bit, but maybe you’ve still got it, huh? We’ll play one on one to twenty-one — or until whoever’s left standing. Whaddya say?”
Hate came off Marcus Martin in waves.
“Come on, Counselor,” Ron taunted. “You’re letting down your side. After all, you called it, I’m white. You afraid to play basketball with a white guy?”
The lawyer started shaking so hard Deacon Meeker looked worried. Ron himself wondered, in a detached way, if Marcus was going to have a seizure. Fine with him if he did.
It was downright risky for Ron to bait a black man even obliquely, especially if he was wearing a wire. But he hated Marcus Martin, had hated him since the first time they’d met, and he wasn’t going to hold back now, whatever the risk.
“Pussy,” Ron said with contempt. Then he corrected himself. “Oops, sorry. That was sexist. And besides I just met a woman who could whip your ass on the court. What I should have said was: chickenshit.”
Maybe it wasn’t smart to be so blunt but, brother, was it satisfying. If he ever had to own up to his words in court, it would be worth it. Of course, now that he thought about it, recording a person without his prior knowledge and consent was a crime in California. That thought gave Ron a wonderful feeling of license about what he’d said.
He turned his back on the lawyer again and had the door of his patrol unit open before Marcus Martin found his voice. “You know why I’m here, you cocksucker?”
“Racial solidarity and a big fee?” Ron opined, looking at Martin once more.
“I’m here because Special Agent Francis Horgan, head of the FBI office in San Francisco, said a prominent member of the local African American community might need his civil rights protected. You be real careful about any warrant you obtain. Ain’t just us niggers you got to worry about. Cut just one little corner and the federal government will be breathing down that red neck of yours again.”
“Score one for you, Marcus,” Ron said, keeping a lid on his temper. “Give me a call at headquarters if you change your mind about playing ball.”