Rough Justice (17 page)

Christopher took another sip of beer. He found the whole notion of a conjugal visit distasteful, like the jurors were animals. Like the wives were mares in season, being brought to a stallion, coaxed into trailers for the trip to be covered. And the male jurors acted like animals all day the day of a conjugal visit. They didn’t pay attention in court, shifting in their chairs and checking their watches. They reminded Christopher of stallions restless at the first hint of spring; throwing their heads back, prancing around the pasture. Even geldings got frisky come April and wouldn’t stand still for shoeing.

Christopher rested the beer bottle on his thigh, making a wet ring on his heavyweight jeans. The TV came on in the next room, and a woman’s laughter floated through the thin walls. Oh, man. Here we go again. It was Isaiah Fellers and his fiancée. Every conjugal visit for two months, Christopher would hear them talking and giggling, then the TV would blast and the headboard bang against the wall. The ruckus would rattle the flower picture over his bed, and Christopher would retreat to the bathroom to hide from the noise.

“Don’t move!” a man in the dinosaur movie said through the wall. Then came the moaning of Isaiah’s fiancée.

Christopher took another swig of beer and closed his eyes to the sounds. He thought love was better than that. He liked horses and their ways, but he wasn’t an animal. Lainie never understood that. She used to whisper things in bed she thought would arouse him, but he wanted her to be above that. She was his wife. Then six months ago, Lainie had found another man and left the house. Didn’t take anything, not even the curling iron she used on her bangs every day. He knew she’d come back someday, at least for the curling iron. She was real picky about her bangs.

“REEEAAAHHH!” somebody bellowed on the other side of the wall, and Christopher wasn’t sure if it was the dinosaur or the woman until it ended in “BBAAABBBEEE.” Christopher shook his head in wonder. No woman had ever made a sound like that with him. Either he hadn’t been with enough women, or none had loved him that much.

Christopher thought of Mrs. Wahlbaum. She always smelled nice on visit day and seemed more alert. He’d met her husband, Abe, a tall, thin man with gray hair. Mrs. Wahlbaum held her husband’s hand when she introduced him to Christopher; she was happy just to stand next to him. Christopher wondered if a woman would ever feel that way about him.

“RRRREEEHHHHHOOOO!” somebody shouted, and Christopher gave up trying to screen it out. He got up with his Rolling Rock, went into the bathroom, and flicked on the fan to mask the noise. The fan whirred to life, and Christopher sat on the tub’s edge in the dark. He closed his eyes and soon Marta’s face floated up to him out of the darkness. She was standing at his side, and Christopher imagined himself introducing her to someone, like Mrs. Wahlbaum did her husband. Marta’s face would light up when she looked at him. Even her blue eyes would smile. It was plain to see that she adored him.

“RRRIING!” came a sound, barely audible over the whirring of the fan. Must be the movie. Christopher shook it off. “RRRIIIINNNG!” it sounded again, and he realized it was the telephone. Who could be calling? He left the bathroom and hurried to the phone. “Yup,” Christopher said into the pink receiver.

“This is the sheriff downstairs. Your wife is here to see you.”

Christopher was struck dumb Lainie? Why had she come? She’d never come before. Only one of two things Lainie could have wanted from him, since he didn’t have the curling iron. Either she wanted to get back together or she wanted to get a divorce.

“Should I send her up?”

“No. I mean, sure. Thanks.”

Christopher hung up the phone and caught sight of himself in the mirror over the dresser. He didn’t look surprised at all, he was good at not showing his feelings. Lainie used to complain about it, but there was nothing he could do. It was just the way Christopher was. It was his nature.

Christopher finger-combed his thick, dark hair with his fingers and checked his beard for crumbs. He smoothed down his flannel shirt and tucked it into his jeans. He didn’t look half bad. He’d noticed one of the jurors, Megan, looking at him from time to time. He patted his stomach, still trim. Take it or leave it, Lainie. There was a knock at the door and he hustled to open it.

“Special delivery for Mr. Graham,” said the uniformed sheriff. He grinned as he stepped aside.

“Hi, honey,” said the woman standing there, who looked a lot like Lainie. She had hair like Lainie and clothes like Lainie, but she wasn’t Lainie. “It’s been a while, Christopher,” the woman said softly.

Christopher looked at her eyes. They were clear blue and smiled up at him from the doorway. He’d know those eyes anywhere. “It sure has,” he replied without hesitation.

“And away we go,” said the sheriff, who did a Jackie Gleason out the door and left Christopher alone.

With Marta.

T
he blizzard blew, but Judy stood on the snowy stoop and knocked on the door of a rundown brick rowhouse catty-corner to the Twenty-fifth Street Bridge. Judy knew somebody was home because she could hear voices inside, and light shone through a ripped paper shade. She craned her neck to peek though the tear and almost fell off the stoop. She knocked again. No answer.

Standing on the sidewalk, Mary spotted a moving shadow on the paper shade. “Somebody’s in there,” she said, from a snowdrift on the sidewalk.

“Hello?” Judy knocked again. “Hello?”

The associates waited but nothing happened. Snow fell in gusts. The neighborhood was dark and quiet. Three houses so far, and no one was answering. The wind whistled down the street, buffeting Mary’s face and sending frosty tendrils twirling toward her. Her cheeks were frozen and her nose leaked like a preschooler’s. Her fingers were so numb she couldn’t keep the poles and skis together.

Judy pounded on the door again. “Hello? Please come to the door. It’ll just take a minute.” Still no answer. She turned away and tramped down the steps. “What do you think, Mare?”

“I think we keep at it.”

“Why won’t they answer?”

“Because it’s a snowstorm? Because it’s late? Because you’re a lawyer? I don’t know for sure.”

“Am I scary-looking?”

Mary appraised her. A yellow knit ski hat, fringe of wet blond bangs, canary parka, and snowpants. “No, you look like a banana.”

“Maybe I need a new rap. Begging isn’t working. You got any ideas?”

“How about ‘Prize Patrol!’”

“You’re no help.” Judy turned and lumbered through the snow to the next house. Mary followed, hoisting the slippery skis and poles up. A ski slid down into the snow, and Mary bent over to retrieve it. It was maddening trying to keep the skis in order. They were the wire hangers of sports equipment.

Judy climbed the stoop of the next house, 412. The two front windows had a brown curtain in them. She knocked on the front door, and a kid’s face popped up under the hem of the curtain. A small, black boy with a smooth head. Judy waved at him, and he waved back.

Mary watched from the sidewalk as Judy waved at the boy again and he waved back again. It was cute, but it wasn’t progress. “Jude, you know sign language for ‘open the door’?”

“Can you open the door a minute?” Judy called out, knocking, but the curtain dropped and the boy vanished.

Damn,
Mary thought, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her borrowed parka. Suddenly the door opened a crack and a woman stood there in jeans and a sweatshirt, with her hand shielding her face against the blowing snow. The little boy hugged her knee and buried his face in her thigh.

“Excuse me,” Judy said, “I hate to bother you. Did you know Heb Darnton or Eb Darning, the homeless man who was killed here last spring, under the bridge?”

“No, I didn’t know him,” said the woman irritably, from behind her hand.

“Well, maybe you can help me anyway. My name is Judy Carrier and I’m trying to find out about Heb. Did anybody around here know him? This is where he hung out. This corner, this street.”

Mary remained eye level with the boy, who smiled at her shyly. She waved at him, and he waved back, his palm half hidden behind his mother’s leg. “Momma, I want to go out and play,” he said in a robust voice, but his mother found his shoulder with her hand and patted him.

“I don’t know the man,” the mother answered.

“Do you know anybody who did?” Judy asked.

The woman shook her head. “Listen, it’s cold. I got to go now, I’m losin’ heat with the door open.”

“Momma?” shouted the boy, but the front door shut quickly and was locked, then bolted.

Judy sighed and trudged back down the stairs. “Well, it wasn’t a total waste of time.”

“Yes it was,” Mary said. She picked up the skis from the snow, where they had fallen like pickup sticks.

“No, it wasn’t. That little boy liked you. You made a friend.”

“Kids hate me, and I don’t need a friend. I need to know who Eb Darning is.”

“You can always use a friend, Mare.”

“Oh, please. Help with the goddamn skis, would you, California?”

Judy helped gather the skis, and the two women went from house to house in the blizzard, down the streets they thought the homeless man had frequented, checking the neighborhood around the crumbling bridge. Only a handful of people answered their doors, and none of them said they knew Heb Darnton or Eb Darning. The lawyers circled the block and ended up, discouraged, in the middle of the street they had started on. The storm had worsened and Judy’s feet had grown cold even in the insulated ski boots. Her ankles were soaked because there’d been only one pair of gaiters and she’d lent them to Mary. “Even I have to admit this is not going well,” Judy said.

“We can’t just give up.”

“We won’t, but maybe there’s another lead we can follow.”

“I don’t know any, do you?”

Judy thought a minute. “Maybe we could go to Green Street, where Darning used to live. Try to find some people who knew him before he became homeless. Green Street is right in town, in Fairmount, on the other side of the Free Library.”

Mary’s mouth dropped open and snow blew inside. “That’s on the other side of town. You want me to ski
back
across town,
past
your apartment,
all
the way to Green Street?”

“We can stop at my apartment. Get some hot chocolate.”

“Who are you channeling? My face is about to fall off. My contacts are frozen. The only part of me that’s dry are my ankles and that’s because of those plastic things you gave me.”

“The gaiters.”

“Whatever. We can’t do it, Judy. We’ll be Popsicles. Twin pops. The kind that are supposed to break down the middle and never do.”

“What?”

“Forget it.” Mary squinted against the snow. “It wasn’t a bad idea, though. Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

Mary’s heart sank. She scanned the rowhouses facing the storm like a stone wall. Some of the neighbors had talked to her in the spring, but that was then. Now they were a lot less friendly, maybe because the whole city thought Steere was about to walk. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to let it go. Her role in letting a murderer go free weighed too heavily, and she didn’t need more guilt.

Mary’s gaze moved down the street, where some kids played in the pool of brightness cast by the streetlight. One kid flapped his arms to make a snow angel and two others wrestled in the snow, dark figures tumbling over one another like fairies in the night. They’d made a hill by packing the snow on one of the stoops and were sledding down the makeshift mountain on a piece of cardboard. One of the kids, the smallest, wasn’t playing. He was standing off to the side, facing them. Facing Mary. It was dark, but his tiny shadow fit the little boy from the house.

“Judy, it’s the kid!” Mary said, her heart leaping up. She dropped the skis with a clatter and hurried down the street, her legs churning in the deep snow. She slowed as she reached the boy, then stopped and waved. He waved back. He couldn’t have been four years old. “My name is Mary” she told him. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer. He held his arms stiff at his sides in a hand-me-down parka and black gloves. His knit Eagles cap was stretched out of shape and floppy at its peak.

“Do you have a name?”

Still no answer.

Mary tried to think of what to say next. She was never good with kids, but her husband had been. He’d taught school and wanted a passel. She tried to think of what Mike would have done, but it had been so long since she’d heard his voice in her head. Judy caught up with her, lugging their skis and poles.

“What
she
got?” the boy asked loudly, pointing to the skis. He had a big voice for such a little kid.

“They’re skis,” Mary answered.

“Skis?” he said, testing the word.

“Right, skis. You can play with them in the snow.” Mary saw interest sparkle in his large, round eyes and wanted to get through to him. But she needed help from somebody who was better with kids. “Judy, skis are fun, right? A lot of fun. They’re like toys.”

“No, they’re not.” Judy frowned under her hat. “They’re serious equipment. They’re not toys.”

Mary wanted to throttle her. “Don’t be so technical.” She grabbed a maroon ski from Judy’s hand and held it in front of the boy. “See? You want to touch it?”

Startled, the boy edged away.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Judy said. She wrenched the ski from Mary’s hand. “Skis are cool. Watch this.” The boy’s dark eyes followed her as she turned the ski over, set it down on the snow, and gave it a push. It glided to the boy like a model sailboat in a fountain, and he looked down at it and grinned. “Cool, huh?” Judy said, and looked back over her shoulder. “Why am I doing this, Mare?”

“Because I think our friend likes to play outside,” Mary said, her gaze on the boy. “I bet he plays outside all the time and I bet he makes lots of friends.”

Judy smiled, catching on. “I bet you’re right, Mare.” She eased slowly onto her haunches, eye level with the boy, and Mary stood behind her, watching his reaction. They were concentrating so intently on the child that they didn’t notice the white Grand Cherokee coming slowly around the corner and rumbling toward them in the snow. The driver of the Cherokee was Penny Jones and he was heading straight for the women, his hunting rifle under the front seat.