The Philadelphia Quarry (12 page)

“What happened,” Marcus says, “is he and your other so-called friends sold your ass out.”

Slade shrugs.

“We were kids. Cops came after me like they did him, I’d have done the same thing.”

I can tell that Marcus, who is the type to redress old wrongs instead of forgiving them, isn’t exactly buying this.

Slade says the plan was for his old buddy Bump Freeman, whom he hadn’t seen since Bump was helping send him to prison, to come by, and they’d go catch up.

“I knew he’d be by about two, so I just set the alarm for one thirty. Then I sat on the front steps and waited.”

According to Slade, Bump had picked up a couple of 40s, and they went down to the dock. They sat in the car, sipping malt liquor and looking out at the river with the car’s heat going, and they caught up.

“Did anybody see you?” Marcus asks him.

“Naw. Man, it was freezing out there. Nobody to see us.”

“Bump never visited your ass in prison?”

Slade shakes his head.

“He said he was too ashamed.”

“Hell,” Marcus mutters, “he should’ve been.”

On the way back, Slade wanted some cigarettes. He went in and Bump stayed in the car.

“We were back to my momma’s house by four thirty, at the latest. I swear.”

Swear all you want, I’m thinking.

“Did anybody see you get out of Bump’s car and go inside?” Marcus asks him.

Slade shakes his head again.

“I don’t think so.”

Alicia Parker Simpson was shot around five fifteen. That time of morning, you could get there from Philomena’s house in fifteen minutes, maybe ten. Even if Richard Slade did what he said he did, up to the time he came back with his Kools from the Kwik-Mart, he had time to go out again, either by himself or with the ever-helpful Bump, and wait for his accuser. Maybe Bump had visited him in prison after all. Maybe he was helping to settle an old score, make up for not being there twenty-eight years ago.

And about the only person who can even begin to vouch for Slade, it appears, is the redoubtable Bump Freeman.

Where, Marcus asks him, does Bump live?

Slade tells him that he lives “somewhere over by the school,” which turns out to be about two blocks away.

“So you went back inside when you got back?”

“Yeah. I was beat. I went straight to bed.”

I’ve got a question of my own.

“What about the guy who came by to see you that morning? Your momma said some guy who was at Greensville with you stopped by.”

He looks surprised.

“Oh,” he says, “you mean Shooter Sheets. Yeah, he wanted to wish me good luck, on getting out and all.”

Shooter Sheets, Slade explains, had gotten out of prison a couple of years ago and was working as an auto mechanic now.

I ask him why he was called Shooter, and he just looks at me like I’m the biggest dumb-ass in the world.

“So,” Marcus says, “you went out in the middle of the night and got yourself a screen test at the Kwik-Mart, and nobody saw you come or go, other than some damn Indian clerk, and you spent time earlier in the day with an ex-con named Shooter.”

“I know how it looks,” Slade says. “But can’t you find Bump? He’ll vouch for what I said.”

I know what Marcus Green is thinking. Even if the upstanding Mr. Freeman is willing to go against form and step up for his old friend, who’s going to believe him? I’m hoping that, when Bump Freeman got home at the alleged hour of four thirty or so, he woke somebody up.

And what was to keep Richard Slade from heading back out again, or getting into somebody else’s car? Maybe he just let Bump do it, or maybe this guy Shooter.

Any way you look at it, there’s not a lot of positive takeaway from having the whole world find out that you lied about where you were on the night that the woman you had every reason to hate was murdered.

I’ve listened to a lot of con jobs by cons, ex- and otherwise. If you’re on the cops beat, sometimes they fixate on the guy who wrote all those bad things about them. And then, when they’re convicted, they try to stay in touch, as if a few bylines have bonded our asses for life.

It’s funny, but they don’t ever seem resentful. In most cases, they just seem to want to convince you that they didn’t do it, even after the police and the judge and jury and everyone else, myself included, is sure of the opposite.

It is always, I learned early on, wise not to respond to the eight-page, handwritten jailhouse letters. These guys have a lot of time on their hands, and they’re looking for a Best Friend Forever on the outside. Then, when they get out, they can look you up, which is not a thing you might necessarily want to happen.

Richard Slade never did that. Other than the occasional letter from his mother, he was out of sight, out of mind. And yet, he kind of won me over in the ten days since he was released. Until today, he seemed like the closest thing to an innocent victim I’ve seen go through our penal system—a guy who was locked away for damn near half his life and then harbored no grudges when he got out, just wanted to sit on a front porch with no bars on it and savor freedom.

Well, I’ve been done in by gut feelings before.

As we’re leaving, Slade puts his hand on my arm.

“Help me,” is all he says.

I tell him I’ll see what I can do. The way he looks at me, I can tell that he sees what a lost cause I think he is. I look away.

On the way out, Marcus Green doesn’t say much.

I try to crack the silence a little as we’re walking down the steps.

“So, do you think he did it?”

He stops and turns to me.

“If I did,” he says, “I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you about it. He’s my client.”

“But you told him that if he wasn’t telling the truth, he’d have to get another lawyer.”

Marcus frowns and then nods.

“Yeah. I said that.”

“And you didn’t drop him.”

Marcus starts walking away. With all the street noise, I barely hear him say, “Not yet.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he newsroom is humming when I get there, or as close to humming as it gets without typewriter keys as background music. Sarah looks up when I walk by.

“Some story, huh?” she says.

“Yeah. Where’s Baer?”

She motions toward Wheelie’s office. I see the back of Baer’s head, nodding up and down like a Bobblehead doll. Whatever Wheelie’s telling him, he seems to be in complete agreement.

Then I notice another head, to the left of Baer’s and much less animated. I take a few steps over and see that our publisher has graced us with his ghostly presence.

Wheelie and Grubby. Grubby doesn’t descend into the newsroom except on rare occasions. I’m guessing that the latest bombshell in the Alicia Simpson story has led to some cages being rattled. Maybe even Grubby’s cage.

I slip away to get a cup of coffee before anyone sees me, in case they want to invite me to the party. Wheelie’s office gets awfully small when there are more than two people in there, especially if one of them is the publisher.

When I come back, Grubby’s gone back upstairs and Baer’s been freed.

I’m checking with the cops to see what mayhem has occurred during the past fourteen hours when I feel Baer’s presence. He likes to hover, and he’s been known to read what’s on other people’s screens, like a runner on second stealing signs from the catcher. I have an urge to brush him back.

“Willie,” he says when I reluctantly hang up. “Can you help me? Nobody knows more about this than you do.”

One of Baer’s strong points, and one that might eventually earn him a job in Washington or New York, or at least Atlanta or Philadelphia, is that he can lick ass when the occasion calls for it. If you’ve been around him long, you know that it’s only temporary. You know that, if the situation were reversed, he wouldn’t piss on you to douse the flames if you were on fire. But, it works, for a while.

Baer can’t get anyone to talk to him. After TV was fed the news that Richard Slade was out and about in the wee hours before the murder, the cops stopped talking. I know for a fact that Marcus Green isn’t talking to Baer, as a small favor to me that I’m sure I’ll be repaying with twenty percent interest, compounded weekly, and he sure as hell isn’t letting his client speak to him. I’m pretty sure that Philomena Slade would kick his ass around the block a time or two if he showed up in her neighborhood, just because he was from the paper.

“I’ll make you a deal,” I tell him after he’s made his pitch.

Baer, I am sure, has complete and unfettered access to Lewis Witt, and probably to brother Wesley, too. Not even the intervention of Clara Westbrook can get me so far up that road.

“You’re going to go see Lewis Witt, right?”

“Well, yeah. Matter of fact, I’m going over there this afternoon.”

“Take me with you.”

Baer is stumped. He doesn’t want me to weasel back into this story that’s been dropped into his lap.

He frowns and then realizes he doesn’t know what the tit for his tat is.

“What do I get?”

“I’ll get you an interview with Philomena Slade.”

I doubt this is possible, but I’m pretty sure Baer doesn’t know whether he can get me past the front door at the Witts’ abode, either. We’re just two guys holding low-card pairs and bluffing. He’s got to get something from the other side to go with everything the Witts are more than eager to tell him. I really, really want to talk to Lewis Witt.

“Aren’t you supposed to be off this story?”

“I just need to scratch an itch,” I tell him.

He thinks about it and then shrugs.

“OK with me. I don’t know if she’ll let you in, though.”

I tell him I’ll count on his boyish charm.

“But I really need to talk to Mrs. Slade.”

I nod my head.

We’re off an hour later, after I’ve done a couple of shorts on people who were only robbed and shot but not killed. We wouldn’t even put the robbery bit in the paper, but it was VCU students, forced to relinquish their cellphones and cash at gunpoint. Crime against middle-class kids, probably white, will always sell papers. I think about Andi, walking all over the Fan in the dead of night, probably talking on the phone or texting, not paying attention.

I tell Sally that I’ll be back in time to check on any late-night misdeeds among the populace.

The sun is threatening to set on us by the time we get to the Witts’ place. Baer rings the doorbell. They’re expecting him, but certainly not me. I’m hoping maybe Lewis Witt has put some of her animosity toward me on the back burner. When we’re shown in, the look in her eyes tells me I’m mistaken.

“What is he doing here?” she asks Baer.

I tell her that today’s events have made me think twice about Richard Slade. What I say has enough truth in it that I don’t blush saying it.

“Well,” she says, “I hope you know now what kind of animal the criminal justice system has turned loose on us. A little late, though.”

I swallow and nod.

She stands back, silently accepting my non-apology and not bothering to ask why it takes two reporters to interview her.

She stops after a few steps.

“Is your, ah, ex-wife still defending that bastard?”

I tell her that she was helping Marcus Green, but that she’s having second thoughts now.

Lewis Witt’s nose wrinkles at the mention of Marcus.

“I should hope so,” she says.

There’s no one else visible, although I can hear music somewhere in the recesses of the Witt home, which seems about four times too big for the three people living there now.

Baer tells Lewis that we’re just trying to get the story straight, that we want to do a piece on the Simpson family and its impact on Richmond through the years.

The Simpson family’s impact on Richmond, as far as I can learn, is to have made as much money as possible getting suckers like me hooked on nicotine, then giving some of it back to the symphony and the fine arts museum. But Lewis seems to be more or less buying Baer’s explanation for our presence, and she spends a couple of hours regaling us with more family history than anyone should be expected to endure. I get through it by drinking three cups of coffee and asking an occasional question of my own, and finally we get to 1983 and the Philadelphia Quarry.

Baer asks most of the questions. Lewis was twenty-two, just graduated from college, when it happened.

“I was down in Atlanta, interning there for a PR firm, trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life,” she says.

“Daddy called me and said something had happened to Alicia. I didn’t really hear the whole story until I got back, and then Momma had to tell me.”

She abruptly quit her job, such as it was, and returned home.

“They needed me,” she says. “And Wes sure as hell wasn’t any help.”

Baer and I have to agree that whatever she says about Wesley’s disappearance after “the incident” can only be used for background.

He could hardly have picked a worse time to disappear, everyone agreed.

“Daddy was not that inclined to look for him, but Momma and I persuaded him to hire a detective. It was sometime in October before he showed up in Nevada. We never did find out what happened to the car.”

“Where’s he staying now?” I ask. As with my other questions, she looks at Baer when she answers.

“He’s got a place in the Museum District, but we’re letting him stay at my parents’ home, for now.”

The way she says “for now” makes it quite clear that it is a markedly different time span than “forever.”

Baer asks her if we can speak with Wesley. She says she doesn’t think that would be a good idea, that Alicia’s death has hit him very hard.

I’m thinking, Wes is forty-six years old. Surely he can make his own decisions.

But I bite my tongue and then ask her if Alicia had ever talked about that night.

“If she did,” Lewis Witt says, giving Baer the laser death stare she means for me, “I certainly wouldn’t share that with you. We are not the kind of people to air our dirty laundry.”

No doubt Giles Whitehurst has assured her that no one from the paper will be asking any rude questions.

I shut up before I get both me and Baer thrown out. Carl Witt comes in. From the look on his wife’s face, he wasn’t supposed to do that. He offers us drinks and we decline. We play a little verbal badminton for a few more minutes, and it’s time to go.