Key Witness (14 page)

Dwayne reached up and flipped through the channels (there was no remote control; such loose objects that could be used as weapons were verboten) until he came to one that had a local newscast in progress.

A woman field reporter was standing in the alley where Paula’s body had been found. She was looking into the camera, talking to the anchors back at the station. Behind her there was a flurry of police activity.

“As you can see, Don and Lisa, the police are pulling out all the stops,” the newscaster said, indicating the officers and detectives milling in a clusterfuck behind her. “The city is in an absolute panic over this latest killing because, as you noted, this victim doesn’t fit the profile of the previous seven, although the method that was used clearly points to the Alley Slasher.”

A police detective, his ID hanging from a chain around his neck, walked into the picture and stood next to the reporter.

“Joining me is Detective Dudley Marlow, who has been one of the lead detectives on this series of murders. What can you tell us about this one, Detective?”

“The victim has been identified as Paula Briggs,” Marlow said. “She was last seen by two friends leaving the club here to get some air. That was the last anyone saw of her until the body was found this morning.”

“Is this case the work of the Alley Slasher?” the reporter asked.

“Yes. There’s no question.”

A second detective came up and whispered in Marlow’s ear.

“I have to get back there,” Marlow told the reporter. He walked away.

A snapshot of Paula came up on the screen. She was smiling, posing for the camera. It looked like it was taken at a family barbecue, or on a hike. The newscaster spoke over the freeze-frame of the photo. “Paula Briggs was an employee of Marcus Meat Packing, and had been divorced for a year. Her ex-husband was unavailable for comment, but he is not a suspect. What we do know, which the police have conclusively established, is that she was not a prostitute. She had no criminal record, not even an outstanding traffic ticket.”

Paula’s picture was faded out, and the newscaster reappeared on the screen.

“This latest murder, the first one by the so-called Alley Slasher in five months, escalates these killings into another sphere.”

One of the anchor’s voices, a man’s, spoke over the screen. “Is it possible that the killer mistook her for a prostitute?” he asked. “What was she wearing?”

“It’s possible, yes,” the field woman answered. “She was wearing an attractive dress. But if every woman who is dressed nicely, or even provocatively, is now fair game, that makes two-thirds of the women in this city eligible victims, and that’s what has the authorities so concerned.” She struck a serious pose. “From live at the murder site, back to you.”

Marvin had been staring at the screen. “I know where that is,” he said. “Where that lady was killed.”

Dwayne turned to him. “How’s that?”

“My old job was in that neighborhood,” Marvin explained. “Shit, that store I tried to rob was only about two blocks away. I had to pass by that alley earlier that night to get to it.”

Dwayne’s curiosity was piqued. “You happen to see her?” he asked.

Marvin shook his head forcefully. “Fuck, no. I didn’t see her. I didn’t see nobody. I wasn’t paying no attention to no bitches, I had a job of work to do.”

That was a lie. He had seen one woman—the good-looking older bitch who had caught him checking out her car in the parking lot, the same parking lot where the murder took place.

He wasn’t about to cop to that, though. Anyway, the woman he’d seen was white; the murdered one was black.

He was in enough trouble as it was. He wasn’t about to admit that he knew anything about any murders that everyone in the city was all crazy about.

W
YATT SAT IN WALCOTT’S
office, recounting the events of his first day on the job. Josephine had joined them.

“Sounds like you had a busy day,” Walcott commented dryly. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Wyatt answered. “I hate to admit that I have anything about the law to learn, but I do. Certainly this stuff. It’s definitely a different life.”

“I’ve been doing this over twenty years,” Walcott said, “and I learn new things every case.” He turned to Josephine. “How did he do?”

“He did fine.” She smiled at Wyatt.

Wyatt picked up Marvin’s file. “This armed robbery. There’s something about it that doesn’t seem right to me.”

“You said he admitted to it.”

“Yes, but—”

“Where are your extenuating circumstances?” Walcott interrupted.

“His age. It’s his first adult offense. And he did get shot in the backside.”

“Yes, that is something.” Walcott paused.

“The other cases you’ve given me are cut-and-dried,” Wyatt continued, pressing the issue. “I’d like to look deeper into this one.”

Walcott nodded. “Okay. See if there’s anything to bargain with. You’ll help him out, won’t you,” he said to Josephine.

“I’ll be glad to,” she replied, smiling at Wyatt again.

Walcott stood, shook Wyatt’s hand. “Welcome to the jungle.”

M
ICHAELA HAD GONE TO
Burger King and then the library to study with some friends, so Wyatt and Moira had dinner alone. It was a casual meal—Cloris, their longtime housekeeper, who did most of the cooking, had been given the night off, so Moira had prepared a simple dinner herself—grilled swordfish, baked potatoes, salad, a decent bottle of wine.

They hadn’t talked about his first day on the new job. He’d come home, had a quick Scotch, and taken a shower. Then he’d sat alone in his study for half an hour, outlining his thoughts in preparation for this defense in front of him, the kid who had bungled a robbery so badly that he’d gotten himself shot in the ass. He’d stayed in the fading light, doodling free-form on a legal pad, until Moira stuck her head in and announced that dinner was on the table.

They sat across the rough-hewn pine dining table from each other. Two candles threw off soft diffuse light. Breaking the ice as she poured herself a small glass of wine, Moira asked in a calm, deliberate voice, “So how did it go?”

“It was a whole other world from anything I’ve known or lived in years.”

She took a bite of swordfish. A little dry—she’d left it on the grill about a minute too long. Next time she’d do better.

“You read about this stuff in the paper, see it on the tube—the news, I mean, not those lawyer dramas, although you see it on them, too. …” He forked in a mouthful of fish, chewed, swallowed. He could have been eating anything; it didn’t matter, he wasn’t tasting it. He was somewhere else.

Moira felt a pang, a little pinging in her chest. It was a simple meal, but she’d put some time into it.

“… but to be in it, it’s really different, it’s hovering, like being in a bazaar in Pakistan or something. All these people, talking a bunch of different languages.” A gulp of wine, another hearty bite. He looked down at the plate. “This is good. Where did Cloris come up with”—he pointed to the dill butter, sitting in a little silver butter dish in the center of the table, halfway between them—“this?” He took another bite, this time chewing more slowly, with enjoyment and awareness. “Cloris didn’t cook this, did she? You did.”

She nodded. The pinging stopped.

He smiled at her, continuing where he’d left off. “So anyway, I felt—not like a real lawyer, I am a real lawyer, I’m as real a lawyer as you can find—engaged. That’s the word.”

“What did you do, exactly?”

“I plea-bargained a man down from multiple counts of grand theft to a single charge of possession of stolen goods. Instead of doing three years to five in state prison, minimum, I got him six months on the county farm.” He beamed, flush with the memory of his first successful venture in his newly chosen arena.

Moira frowned. “Is that good? Wasn’t the man guilty?”

“As hell!”

“Then why is that good?”

He stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“This man you defended …” She backed up, to make sure her thought process was clear. “What did he steal?”

“A bunch of purses from the lockers of the women’s gym he works at.”

“Purses?”

He nodded. “Credit cards, cash, driver’s licenses, God knows what. It was a goodly haul—he didn’t deal in halves.”

“What if one of the wallets had been mine?” she asked after a moment’s hesitation. “Or your daughter’s?”

“It would’ve been lousy,” he admitted, “but the stuff was recovered, and we are insured, like those women were. It’s the price you pay for living in the end of the twentieth century, unless you want to move to North Dakota or wherever.” He went at the meal with gusto: the work he had done today had created quite an appetite.

She laid her knife and fork on her plate—her own appetite had vanished. “He had their driver’s licenses. He knew where they lived.”

“I guess he did. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“He could have broken into their houses. He could have hurt them. Or even killed them. Like what happened next door,” she said with agitation.

He hesitated in midbite, looked at her across the table. “Isn’t that pushing it a little, honey?”

The pinging in her chest started up again. “Another woman was murdered downtown, a couple nights ago,” she told him. “Did you know that?”

“Of course I knew.” He’d read about it in the paper, seen a few clips on television, heard fragments of excited conversation. It hadn’t registered as much as it normally might have—he was too wired with his own new stuff.

“This woman that was murdered,” she continued. “What if that had happened to her?”

“What if what happened?”

“Some creep had stolen her wallet and found out where she lived and stalked her and killed her.”

“I don’t think it happened that way, Moira,” he answered. He put his utensils down, too.

“It could have,” she retaliated. “The point is—”

“The point is you don’t think I should have defended this scumbag. Is that the point?”

She looked at him. Where were they, all of a sudden?

“Is that the point?” he asked her again. He brought his voice down several notches in volume.

“You said he was guilty,” she managed to answer.

“Does that mean he doesn’t deserve a defense?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Only innocent people should be defended?”

She kept quiet.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell in advance,” he reminded her.

She stood. “Let’s not anymore, okay?” Her knees were shaking. She pressed them together.

“Babe, I’m not—”

“Let’s not.” She started to clear the table. He took her wrist, firmly but gently.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked. “What did I do wrong?”

She put the dishes down. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“You know what.”

“This kind of law?”

She sat down in the chair next to his. “Somebody out there is killing women, Wyatt. In this city.”

“I know that. I told you, I saw the story.”

“Maybe it’s someone who knows them.”

He shook his head. “They were prostitutes, that was the only thing any of them had in common.”

“How do you know that? Anyway, that isn’t true. They all knew this man, whoever he was that murdered them.”

“Not necessarily.” He didn’t like the direction this conversation was taking. “The killer might have taken them completely by surprise.”

“But he
might
have known them,” she came back. “Or where they lived. Like this man you defended so well today.”

He asked again: “Are you saying I shouldn’t have defended him?”

“There are a lot of lawyers out there, you’ve said that yourself, they’re reproducing like rabbits, that’s your exact quote. It could have been me that was murdered, or Michaela, who is out there”—she pointed toward the window behind her—“in the dark. Right now.”

He sat in the pool house, his legal pad on his lap. The trombone rested on its stand. He hadn’t played it today, not one note.

Their conversation, discussion, argument—call it what you will—was still in his head. What could she want from him?

Was it the race thing? Moira came from a wealthy, conservative environment. When they had been young, the two of them starting out dating, she had gone to jazz clubs with him. It was exciting, foreign, strange to her, but she’d never developed the feeling for it that he had.

They hadn’t gone to a jazz club together for decades.

Wyatt had always had an affinity for the black world. It came from his love of jazz, that was obvious. That love had led him to look at things with an open eye, which turned out to be a good thing, he’d always thought. Integration for him wasn’t cerebral and abstract, it was essential and visceral. In a closed-off society, the way things were going today, he would have been denied that which he loved the most—the music. When he was young, in college and law school, he would go to jazz bars in black neighborhoods. Sometimes he’d be the only white person in the club, but he never felt uncomfortable or threatened.

He hadn’t been to that kind of jazz club in years. He wasn’t sure he’d be comfortable doing that anymore.

He picked up his trombone and sprayed some water on the slide. “Blue Bells of Scotland” was on the music stand, but he didn’t feel like playing that kind of music tonight. Instead, he put a CD on the player, the Thelonius Monk quintet, an old Blue Note recording. As the master and his group swung into “Straight, No Chaser” he joined in, for the moment leaving the cares of the world behind.

T
HE JAILHOUSE DOCTOR, A
genial hack, made his rounds in the morning. He was a private physician who couldn’t sustain a normal practice if it was handed to him on a silver platter, so he worked on contract to the city and various insurance companies, drank his lunch, and was useless for the rest of the day.

He peeled Marvin’s bandages off and peered at his backside. “You’re healing up fine,” he pronounced after giving the wounds a cursory glance. “We’ll be able to send you into the general population tomorrow.” He took Marvin’s temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, scribbled some indecipherable notes on the chart at the foot of the bed, and promptly left, leaving the rebandaging to the staff, which was Dwayne again.