Authors: Michael Connelly
“Mr. McEvoy?”
I looked around and then realized the voice had come in over the earpiece.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“This is Christian DuChateau in Atlanta. I’m producing today’s show and I want to thank you for getting up so early to be
on. We’ll go over everything when we get you into the studio in a few minutes. But did you need to speak with me before that?”
“Yes, just hold on a second.”
I walked out of the greenroom and into the hallway, closing the door behind me.
“I just wanted to make sure you’ve got somebody good on the beeper,” I said in a low voice.
“I don’t understand,” DuChateau said. “What do you mean by ‘beeper’?”
“I don’t know what exactly it’s called, but you should know that Alonzo Winslow may only be sixteen years old but he pretty
much uses the word
motherfucker
about as often as you use the word
the
.”
There was silence in response but not for too long.
“I understand,” DuChateau said. “Thank you for the heads-up. We try to conduct pre-interviews with our guests but sometimes
there isn’t time. Is his lawyer there yet?”
“No.”
“We can’t seem to locate him and he isn’t answering his cell. I was hoping he might be able to, uh, control his client.”
“Well, at the moment, he isn’t here. And you have to understand something, Christian. This kid didn’t commit that murder but
that doesn’t mean he’s this innocent young child, if you know what I mean. He’s a gangbanger. He’s a Crip and right now he’s
turning the greenroom blue. He’s got his blue jeans, his blue plaid shirt, and at the moment he’s wearing a blue do-rag.”
There was no hesitation on the phone this time.
“Okay, I’ll take care of this,” the producer said. “If things fall out, are you willing to go on alone? The segment is eight
minutes with a video report on the case in the middle. After you subtract the video and your intro, it’s about four and a
half to five minutes of airtime with our show host here in Atlanta. I don’t think you’ll be asked anything you haven’t already
been asked about the case.”
“Whatever you need. I’m good to go.”
“Okay, I’ll get back to you.”
DuChateau clicked off and I went back to the greenroom. I sat on a sofa against the wall opposite Alonzo and his mother/grandmother.
I engaged him in no conversation but eventually he tried to engage me.
“You say you started this whole thing up?”
I nodded.
“Yes, after your—after Wanda called me and told me you didn’t do it.”
“How come? No white man ever give a motherfucking shit about me ’fore this.”
I shrugged.
“It was just part of my job. Wanda said the police had it wrong and so I looked into it. I found the other case like yours
and put it all together.”
Alonzo nodded thoughtfully.
“You gonna make a million dollah?”
“What?”
“They pay you to be here? They ain’t pay me. I ask for a few dollars for my time but they don’t gimme a motherfuckin’ cent,
no.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the news. They don’t usually pay.”
“They makin’ money off him,” Wanda chimed in. “Why not pay the boy?”
I shrugged again.
“Well, you could ask them again, I guess,” I offered.
“A’ight, I think I’m gonna ask ’em when we doin’ the interview on live TV. What the muthafucka gonna say then, huh?”
I just nodded. I don’t think Alonzo realized his mike was on and somebody down the hall or in Atlanta was probably listening
to what he was saying. A minute after he voiced his plan the door opened and the technician came back into the greenroom and
fetched me. As we walked out, Alonzo called after us.
“Hey, where you goin’, now? When I get on the TV?”
The tech didn’t answer. As we walked down the hall I looked at him. He looked worried.
“You the one who has to tell him he’s not going on?”
He nodded.
“And all I can say is that I’m glad they put him through the metal detector in the lobby—and, don’t worry, I did check to
make sure.”
I smiled and said good luck.
I
t was almost sunrise. Carver could see the jagged line of light just beginning to etch the silhouette of the mountain chain.
It was beautiful. He sat on a large rock and watched the light show as Stone labored in front of him. His young acolyte was
working hard with the shovel and was down to the cold, hard earth that lies beneath the soft top of loose soil and sand.
“Freddy,” Carver said calmly. “I want you to tell me again.”
“I’ve already told you!”
“Then tell me again. I need to know exactly what was said because I need to know exactly the extent of the damage.”
“There is no damage. Nothing!”
“Tell me again.”
“Jesus!”
He drove the point of the shovel angrily down into the hole, the impact on rock and sand producing a sharp sound that echoed
across the empty landscape. Carver looked around again to make sure they were alone. In the distance to the west, the lights
of Mesa and Scottsdale looked like a brush fire spreading out of control. He reached behind his back and gripped the gun.
He thought about it, then decided to wait. Freddy could still be useful. Carver would just teach him a lesson this time instead.
“Tell me again,” Carver repeated.
“I just told him that he was lucky, all right?” Stone said. “That’s all. And I tried to find out who the bitch was that was
waiting for him in his room. The one that fucked the whole thing up.”
“What else?”
“That was it. I told him that someday I would get his gun back to him, that I would personally deliver it.”
Carver nodded. So far Stone had said the same thing each time he had recounted the conversation with McEvoy.
“Okay, and what did he say to you?”
“I told you, he didn’t say much of anything. I think he was scared shitless.”
“I don’t believe you, Freddy.”
“Well, that’s the—oh, there is one thing he said.”
Carver tried to remain calm.
“What?”
“He knows about our thing.”
“What thing?”
“About the irons. That thing.”
Carver tried to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“How does he know? You told him?”
“No, I didn’t tell him shit. He knew. He just knew somehow.”
“What did he know?”
“He said the name he was going to give us was the—”
“He said ‘us’? He knows there are two of us?”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. He never said that. He doesn’t know that. He said the name he was going to put in the paper for
me, because he thought it was only me, was Iron Maiden. That was what they were going to call us—I mean, me. He was just trying
to get me mad, I think.”
Carver thought for a moment. McEvoy knew more than he should know. He must have had help. It was more than access to information.
He had insight and knowledge, and that made Carver think about the woman who had been in the room, waiting. The woman who
saved McEvoy’s life. Carver now thought he might know who she was.
“Is this deep enough or not?” Stone said.
Carver put his thoughts aside and got up. He stepped over to the grave and pointed his flashlight down.
“Yes, Freddy, that will be fine. Put the dog in first.”
Carver turned his back while Stone reached over to pick up the little dog’s body.
“Gently, Freddy.”
He hated having to kill the dog. She had done nothing wrong. She was just collateral damage.
“Okay.”
Carver turned. The dog was in the hole.
“Now him.”
McGinnis’s body was on the ground by the end of the grave. Stone reached forward and grabbed the ankles and started backing
up in the grave, pulling the body into it. The shovel was leaning against the far wall of the excavation. Carver grabbed the
handle and pulled it out as Stone moved back.
Stone walked the body in. McGinnis’s shoulders and head dropped down the three feet with a dull thud. While Stone was still
stooped forward holding the ankles, Carver swung the shovel and slammed the heel of it down between the younger man’s shoulder
blades.
The air blasted out of Stone’s lungs and he fell forward in the grave, landing face-to-face with McGinnis. Carver quickly
straddled the grave and pushed the point of the tool into the back of Stone’s neck.
“Take a good look, Freddy,” he said. “I had you dig this one deeper so I could put you in it on top of him.”
“Please…”
“You broke the rules. I did
not
tell you to call McEvoy. I did
not
tell you to engage him in conversation. I
told
you to follow my instructions.”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again. Please.”
“I could make sure it doesn’t happen again right now.”
“No, please. I’ll make up for it. I won’t—”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, but I—”
“I said shut up and listen!”
“Okay.”
“Are you listening?”
Stone nodded, his face just inches from the lifeless eyes of Declan McGinnis.
“Do you remember where you were when I found you?”
Stone dutifully nodded.
“You were going to that dark place to face endless days of torment. But I saved you. I gave you a new name, I gave you a new
life. I gave you the opportunity to escape from that and to join me in embracing the desires we share. I taught you the way
and I only asked one thing in return. Do you remember what that was?”
“You said it was a partnership but not an equal partnership. I was the student and you were the teacher. I must do as you
say.”
Carver pushed the steel point deeper into Stone’s neck.
“And yet here we are. And you have failed me.”
“I won’t let it happen again. Please.”
Carver looked up from the grave and at the ridgeline. The jagged lines were cut more sharply now as the sky drew orange light.
They had to finish up here quickly.
“Freddy, you have that wrong.
I
won’t let it happen again.”
“Let me do something. Let me make it up.”
“You’ll get that chance.”
He pulled the shovel back and stepped off the grave.
“Bury them now.”
Stone turned and looked up tentatively, fear still in his eyes. Carver held the shovel out to him. Stone got up and took it.
Carver reached behind his back and pulled out the gun. With great delight he watched Stone’s eyes go wide. But then he pulled
the handkerchief from his front pocket and started wiping the weapon clean of all fingerprints. When he was finished he dropped
it into the grave by McGinnis’s feet. He wasn’t worried about Stone making a grab for it. Freddy was totally under his command
and control.
“I am sorry, Freddy, but whatever we do about McEvoy, we won’t be returning his gun to him. It’s too risky to keep it around.”
“Whatever you say.”
Exactly, Carver thought.
“Hurry now,” he said. “We’re losing the dark.”
Stone quickly started shoveling dirt and sand back into the hole.
A
s I should have expected, my segment on the morning show did not come up until the second hour. For forty-five minutes I sat
in a small, dark studio and waited while watching the first half of the show on the camera monitor. It included a feature
on Eric Clapton and Crossroads, the addiction recovery center he created in the Caribbean. The segment ended with concert
footage of Clapton performing a bluesy, soulful version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” that was wonderfully moving and hopeful
in relation to the piece but truncated by a cut to a commercial.
During the break I got the one-minute warning and soon I was on live coast-to-coast and beyond. The show host in Atlanta threw
me softball questions that I answered with an enthusiasm that falsely suggested I had never heard them before and that the
story had not been playing for three days already in the
Times
. When I was finished and the program moved on to the next story, Christian DuChateau told me over the earpiece that I was
free to go and that he owed me a favor for saving the show from the near disaster that was Alonzo Winslow. He told me that
the limo would take me wherever I needed to go.
“Christian, would you mind if I used him to make one stop along the way? It won’t take long.”
“Not at all. I have somebody else taking Alonzo home, so you can use the car the rest of the morning if you need it. Like
I said, I owe you one.”
That worked for me. I made a quick stop in the greenroom to grab another cup of coffee and found Alonzo and Wanda still there.
They seemed to still be waiting for someone to take them to the studio to be interviewed. No one had told them yet that they
had been canceled and they seemed too naive to realize it.
I decided not to be the bearer of bad news. I told them good-bye and gave them each a card with my cell phone number on it.
“Hey, I see you on the TV,” Alonzo said, nodding to the flat-screen on the wall. “You cool, muthafucka. I get my turn now.”
“Thanks, Alonzo. You take care.”
“I’ll take care as soon as somebody give me a million dollahs.”
I nodded, grabbed another doughnut to go with my coffee and headed out of the room, leaving Alonzo waiting for a million dollars
that wasn’t going to come.
Once in the car, I told the driver about the stop I needed to make and he said he had already been told to go where I directed.
We pulled into my driveway at twenty minutes after seven. I sat in the car, looking at the house for almost a minute before
getting the courage to get out and go in.
I unlocked the front door and entered, stepping on three days of mail that had been pushed through the slot. Neither rain
nor snow nor yellow crime scene tape had stopped my mailman from his appointed rounds. I looked quickly through all the envelopes
and found that two of my new credit cards had come in. I put these envelopes in my back pocket and left the rest on the floor.
Crime scene debris was littered throughout the house. Black fingerprint dust seemed to be on every surface. There were also
empty tape dispensers and discarded rubber gloves all over the floor. It didn’t appear that the investigators and technicians
gave one thought to who would be returning to the house after they were gone.