A Very Simple Crime (10 page)

“At the Hendrix Institute.”

“Where your son stays?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hewitt, but I’m a busy man. I don’t see the point to this. Am I under some sort of suspicion?”

“Well, actually, Mr. Lee, there have been some irregularities in the case. Certain inconsistencies.”

“Inconsistencies?”

“I don’t believe your son killed your wife.”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t. And because of this I’m going to have to verify your whereabouts that weekend. And I’m going to have to speak to Violet Perkins.”

“I see. Perhaps I should call my brother.”

“Perhaps you should.”

 

 

In the lobby of the Lawson Building, Leo stepped off the elevator and lit a cigar. When he looked up, he saw a painting of Rachel’s father, Benjamin Lawson. It was a massive oil on canvas framed in pewter. His date of birth and date of death were inscribed on a bronze plaque under the portrait.

Adam parked his car in the macadam lot of the Hendrix Institute. He walked alone under the sodium arc lights. Inside, he tried to remain matter-of-fact with the desk nurse. He didn’t want to betray his urgency. He had foreseen no reason to contact Violet after their last weekend together, and now found that he couldn’t locate her. Apparently, she didn’t want to be located.

“I’m really sorry, Mr. Lee.”

“Perhaps she quit.”

“It’s possible, but I’ve been here seven years and I’ve never heard of her. I make out the schedules.”

“And Violet is a somewhat unusual name. You’d remember a name like Violet.”

“Yes, I’d remember. I’m sorry.”

Cigar smoke, thick and acrid, floated from the open window of Leo’s pickup truck. He watched Adam leave the building and drive away.

 

 

The next day, Adam met Monty for lunch. They took their sandwiches from the greasy-haired man behind the deli counter. All the tables were jammed full with the lunch hour crowd. The two brothers stood at the counter and ate. Monty wolfed his down and talked around the food in his mouth.

“He’s a loser. He just wants to make himself look good.”

“He keeps calling me. He came to my office.”

“He’s a kiss-ass. When I couldn’t get down there that night, he says, ‘Oh, Mr. Lee, I’d be happy to go make sure your brother’s all right.’ Now he’s just trying to impress his boss, whom, by the way, I’ve fucked.”

Adam wrapped his half-eaten sandwich in a napkin and tossed it in the trash.

“He says I need an alibi for that weekend. That there are inconsistencies.”

“Inconsistencies? Inconsistencies? That fat bald fuck. Look, I’ll call up Paula, maybe let her suck my dick, give her a good fuck. She’ll tell the loser, this Leo, to drown his sorrows in a glass of . . . Slim Fast, and leave you the fuck alone. Trust me. I’ll take care of you.”

Monty popped the last of the sandwich into his mouth, finishing it in one huge bite.

Leo waited outside the courtroom and wished for a cigar. He hated being down here. People still recognized him from before. Other lawyers. Within his profession, and to some degree outside it, he was infamous. And down here, around the criminal courts, his presence was apt to draw stares. He might as well have a placard around his neck—
I’m the man who set a child killer free.
And as much as he hated being down here, this was where he wanted to be. This was where he knew he could soar. If he could somehow parlay this Lee thing into a second chance, he wasn’t going to waste it. He knew it would be his only chance. And he knew there was something there. Something wrong. And if he could convince Paula, and Paula could convince Bob . . .

A man reading from a legal pad slowed down as he passed by Leo and looked him over.

“Got a problem, buddy?”

The man looked away and continued on his way across the lobby. Leo stared after the man and thought back to the kinder, gentler days when sand-filled ashtrays dotted this lobby. A cigar would be nice right about now.

The doors of the courtroom swung open and a crowd of people exited the courtroom and filled up the lobby. Among them, he spotted Paula heading briskly toward the elevators.

“Paula!”

Leo ran to catch up with her and followed a few steps behind her.

“Leo! Find anything on the grassy knoll?”

“Well, nothing to speak of.”

“Speak of it.”

“Well, like you said, the kid did the same thing five years ago. I call him a kid, but have you seen him? He’s a bruiser. Anyway, they put him away after he cracks Mom’s head open the first time. Then a year later he kills another mentally retarded man in the hospital arguing over socks. Called it an accident. So they put him in this Hendrix Institute, private, high dollar, and strictly for the hard-core types. Are you with me?”

Paula quickened the pace a little to try to get to an open elevator before it closed. “Keep going.”

“And so here we are now and the husband decides it’s time for a little home visit about the same time he decides to go away with Princess Di for a romantic weekend getaway.” He followed Paula onto the crowded elevator.

“They let the kid out? With a history like that?”

“Like I said. Private. High dollar. Albert has never been charged with a crime.”

“And Princess Di?”

“She’s some kind of nurse at the institute. Very discreet, huh? So Mom’s at home with the Incredible Hulk and Daddy’s in the mountains getting his candle waxed, and then uh-oh, the kid cracks Mom in the head again. Only this time she’s dead.”

“And what you’re trying to say is?”

Leo waited until the elevator stopped. They got off and headed for Paula’s office.

“I don’t think Junior iced Mom.”

“Because . .

“Number one, the murderer’s left-handed, the kid’s right. Number two, we got blood splatters on the drapes, on the walls, the place looks like
Helter Skelter
and there’s not a drop on the kid.”

“You know, I saw the pictures. It wasn’t
that
bad.”

“But still.”

Paula opened her office with a key. She tossed the keys on top of the coffeemaker, plopped into her chair, kicked off her shoes, and propped her legs on the desk.

“The father probably cleaned the kid up before you got there. He might have found the sight of his child covered with his wife’s blood somewhat disturbing. I think you’re seeing something because you want to see something.”

“I talked to the husband. He smells guilty.”

“Okay. He smells guilty. I’m going to need a little more than that. A jury will, too. The kid’s fingerprints are still all over the ashtray, right? The ashtray with half of Rachel Lee’s scalp stuck in the grooves.”

“‘Hey Junior, hold this ashtray for Daddy.’ The kid is retarded, don’t forget. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to frame him.”

“Think about it, Leo. There’s no motive. No why. Why? That’s what I’m not seeing. If you could give me a why, I might be able to buy into some of this other stuff. He’s not even in line for the inheritance. The wife left it all to the son. The insurance on her wouldn’t even move the decimal point in this guy’s checkbook.”

Paula opened her top desk drawer and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and an ashtray. Leo leaned across the desk, lighted her cigarette, then fired up his cigar.

“Like old times, huh, Paula?”

“Sure. I remember.”

“Working late, excited about a case, smoking like maniacs. We used to work good together.”

“You taught me a lot. I haven’t forgotten. You taught me to look out for myself. And that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Look, I want to see something good happen for you. I do. But I don’t think this is the one. It all comes back to the why. You can’t convince a jury without the why. ‘He did it, oh yes, he definitely did it. Why? Well, I’m not sure why, but—?’”

“Okay, I get the point. All right, let’s say, what if—now I’m not saying anything, but what if
she
was having an affair?”

“The woman hadn’t set foot out of her house in three years.”

“The postman always rings twice.”

“He’d have to ring more than that before this psycho would answer the door.”

Paula pulled a thick folder from a drawer and tossed it across the desk to Leo.

“Have you read her file? Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia. Taking Valium and Prozac by the handful.”

Leo picked up the file. The significance of her giving it to him was not lost on him.
She’s giving it to me
, he thought.
The case. This is my case. She’s not just letting me stick my nose in to get a little whiff of what it used to be like, she’s giving it to me.

“Take it home, read it over. You’ll see you’re just jumping at shadows. The woman makes Boo Radley look like an extrovert.”

Boo Radley. Who had they used to call Boo Radley? It was right there. It was . . . the Conners woman.

“Crazier than Carolyn Conners?”

“Carolyn Conners?”

“Like you forgot.”

Neither of them had mentioned the Guaraldi case in front of the other since Leo had been back with the DA’s office. But there it was. As he had hoped, Paula acted nonchalant, and he knew everything would be okay.

“Oh. Carolyn Conners. I’d have to say that this woman could have probably given Carolyn Conners a run for her money. Psychotically speaking, that is.”

“Not a very nice way to speak of the dead, but maybe you have something.”

“What?”

“Psycho. I’m not saying anything, but maybe she was so crazy, maybe he knew she’d never give him a divorce. Maybe he was afraid of her.”

“
I’d
be scared of her. Tell me more.”

“Maybe he knew she’d never let him leave. Maybe there was only one way for him to get his life back.”

“Kill her.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“This is good. This I can see. This is motive. But we can’t convict someone because they’re left-handed or because they smell guilty. We’ll need evidence. Hard evidence. A fingerprint. Bloodstains. Skin traces under the nails.”

“How about a witness?”

“A witness would be good. Have you got one?”

Leo opened his mouth to speak, but Paula cut him off.

“I know. You’re not saying anything.”

Monty lifted his head from between Paula’s parted legs. He gauged the level of ecstasy in her glazed-over eyes, decided he could do better, and began to use his teeth. Her back began to arch, and she grabbed his head roughly with her hands, pushed his face deeper into her. She cried out, and Monty knew that he had succeeded.

Later, he lit a cigarette for each of them and put the ashtray on his chest for her to use.

“Adam asked me to talk to you about Leo.”

“Leo’s harmless. I’m just giving the dog a bone.”

“Adam seems nervous.”

“You want Leo gone? He’s gone. Believe me, I have him on a very short leash. I was just letting him play lawyer, for old times’ sake. You have no idea how embarrassing it is to see him groveling. Pathetic.”

“No, let him play. I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Adam’s not acting right. He’s changed somehow. Frankly, I’d like to know what he’s been up to. I mean, I don’t think he had anything to do with Rachel’s death, but I would be very interested to know what kind of trash Leo can dig up. I wouldn’t mind knowing for myself who he was with that weekend.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“You want to drag your brother into it, that’s fine by me. I’ll be just as happy to talk to him. But I gotta tell you, it’s just gonna make you look that much more suspicious.”

“Suspicious? I’ve done nothing wrong! You know that.”

“Look, we can play it any way you want to, Mr. Lee, I’m just trying to give you a break.”

“Harassing me at my office is your idea of giving me a break? This is turning into a nightmare and you are the bogeyman.”

“Look, I said from the beginning I was gonna have to talk to her. You assured me it wouldn’t be a problem. It was gonna just be between us. Well, it’s been two weeks since your wife died and still no Violet Perkins.”

“I don’t know why she hasn’t contacted you. She assured me she would.”

“Why don’t you give me her number? I’ll call her.”

“I told you, she calls me. She doesn’t have a phone.”

“Look, I think we both know Violet Perkins doesn’t exist. At least that’s the way it’s starting to look. I’ve located four Violet Perkinses in the metro area, and I’ve talked to all of them except one. Two of them were grade school students, another was living in a nursing home, and the last one has been dead for seven months. The Hendrix Institute denies any knowledge of her. In fact, only one person can claim to have seen her—you.”