Silent Son (28 page)

Suddenly she noticed the small figure in the doorway. “Granny!” she called.

But the boy turned and ran back upstairs.

“We’re going away!” rang in his ears like a refrain. He ran back to the TV room and curled up on the couch in the fetal position.
“We’re going away! Going away!”

His memory seemed to have begun with that phrase. Mom looking down into his bed one night and telling him, “We’re going away.”
The words were bad. They went away, and Dad didn’t come with them. Mom cried all the time, and he had nothing to do but watch
TV. And when they came home, Dad wasn’t there anymore.

Carole ran to the upstairs room and lifted Granville to a seated position. “Granny…” she said softly.

It was the same words, the same look. And it was all bad. “I don’t want to, Mom,” he said.

“What?”

“I said I don’t want to.”

“Granny,” she consoled, hugging him but not responding.

“No, Mom!” He tried to wiggle out of her grasp.

“Stop it, Granny,” she said sharply.

“No!” He kept wiggling.

“Granny!” Carole finally got his small body still, and she hugged him with a powerful grip.

“Mom,” he moaned, his voice cracking into a whine.

Carole’s eyes filled with tears. This was going to be tough, but there was no other way. They had to go away as far as they
could. Away from the killers, and Gardner, and the
case.

After a while Granville calmed down and Carole went downstairs. Granville rolled over, put his face against the couch, and
whispered a single word: “Dad.”

Joel Jacobs was in Kent King’s private office. It was late in the evening, and the two men were alone. King leaned back in
his chair and put his feet up on the desk. He was dressed in shorts and a knit shirt. Jacobs was casual also. He wore a lime
green golf ensemble.

“We’re gonna do this together, or we’re gonna have trouble,” King said. “Coordinate and cooperate.”

Jacobs smiled. “What makes you think I can’t handle my case alone?”

King sat forward and placed his elbows where his feet had been. “They’re gonna try to tie our guys together. Whatever your
guy did is gonna be attributed to mine, and vice versa.”

“So we sever the trials and take them one at a time,” Jacobs replied.

“Or we hold them together and knock the bottom out with one blow,” King countered.

Jacobs looked his fellow defense attorney in the eye. The report on King that Udek had shown him was glowing. The man was
a maniac in the courtroom. A history of devious procedural maneuverings had marked King as a master of deception. Jacobs knew
he had to be careful. “Give me your client’s version, and I’ll consider it,” the New Yorker finally said.

King smiled. “Okay, but you give me yours first.” In truth, as Gardner had said in the bond hearing, it was a conflict of
interest for the men to even talk. As codefendants in a murder case, either could turn against the other at any time and make
a deal for leniency with the state. If that was done, the other would go down for the count. Any information passing between
them could sow the seeds of their own destruction.

Jacobs returned King’s cynical smile. “Maybe it’s better if we keep our respective client’s business to ourselves and find
some common ground to plow.”

King nodded. Neither man was going to tell the other any lawyer-client secrets. “Looks like a one-witness case all the way,”
King said.

“The kid,” Jacobs replied.

King nodded again. “Uh-huh.”

“What do you have on him?” Jacobs asked.

King broke into a smile. “I don’t think he’s gonna be here for trial.” He knew that the boy was in Baltimore with his mother.

“Sure about that?” Jacobs inquired.

“That’s how it’s shapin’ up. Without his testimony, they don’t have a case against anyone!”

Joel crossed his leg at the knee. “You have any contingency plans if your prediction fails to materialize?”

King reached into his desk and pulled out a stack of legal papers. “In a case involving juvenile witnesses, it’s a good idea
to have them tested by a shrink.” King handed the papers to Jacobs. “This set of motions has knocked more than one rug-rat
out of the box.”

Jacobs scanned the motions. “So we get him examined? What does that do?” He knew the answer, but he was playing dumb. Working
on King’s ego. Softening him up.

“By the time the shrink is done, we’ll have five conflicting versions of the story. He’ll never even get to the jury.”

Jacobs smiled. “That sounds promising. What other little gems do you have hidden in there?” Jacobs jerked his chin toward
the desk drawer.

King pulled out another set of papers. “Motions to suppress. Discovery. Qualification of juvenile witnesses. Enough paperwork
to choke Lawson to death.”

Jacobs took the second set of papers and examined them. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“Be my guest,” King said cordially. “You can give me something later, if you have a chance.”

Jacobs frowned. “Such as?”

“Dunno,” King replied. “Maybe if your snoop finds something that’s helpful.”

Joel tried to smile, but it didn’t come. King knew about Udek. It was supposed to be a secret, but King knew. Jacobs wondered
what else the crafty attorney was hiding.

It was 10:00
A.M
. and the prosecution team was conferencing in the library of the State’s Attorney’s office. Gardner presided at the blackboard
in shirt sleeves. There were dark purple circles under his eyes.

Jennifer and Brownie sat at the large oak table in the center of the room. She looked tired also, but her glasses screened
the redness under her eyelids. Only Brownie looked fresh. In a crisp dark blue uniform, he was alert and restless. They had
a lot of ground to cover, and he was anxious to get to it.

“Have you read my reports?” Brownie asked, assembling a stack of police files in front of him.

Gardner picked up a piece of chalk. “Everything you’ve submitted so far.” He turned to the blackboard and wrote the name MILLER
on the left side, at the top.

“What do you think?” Brownie continued.

Gardner walked to the other side of the board and wrote STARKE. “What am I supposed to think?” Gardner said wearily. “You’ve
got a lot of facts, but they don’t fit together…”

Brownie could sense the frustration in Gardner’s voice. The detective had worked the case to the core, and only stirred up
unconnected pieces.

“I have to admit I was wrong about the botched robbery theory,” Gardner went on. “There’s no question in my mind now that
this thing revolves around money. Big money.” He moved to the center of the blackboard and wrote ADDIE BOWERS, HENRY BOWERS,
and PURVIS BOWERS at the top. Then he drew a line and wrote MONEY underneath. “This thing was triggered by greed. Somebody
had it. Somebody wanted it. And somebody took it. It’s that simple.”

Jennifer smiled. Gardner was fashioning his theme. To him, every case had a theme. And that produced a plot to lay before
the jury like the story line in a thriller. Jurors needed to know that events happened as the result of some master plan.
If you never told them the why behind the evidence, they got confused. And jury confusion was tantamount to reasonable doubt.

“So we need to know those facts,” Gardner reiterated. “Who had it? Who wanted it? And who took it?”

“Number one is simple,” Brownie said. “Henry Bowers. He had it in the safe deposit boxes.”

Gardner nodded and wrote DEPOSIT BOXES under Henry’s name.

“And then it went to Purvis after Henry died,” Jennifer added.

Gardner drew a line from the word BOXES to the space under Purvis Bowers’ name. “Okay. Where do I go from here?” Gardner said,
his chalk poised. He looked at Brownie.

The detective shrugged. “Don’t know yet,” he said softly.

“It would be nice if I could get from
here
to
here”
Gardner said suddenly, dragging the chalk over to the MILLER side. “Or here.” He wrote the name KING beside MILLER. The prosecutor
looked at Brownie again. “I
have
to know where the money went if we’re gonna prove a plot.”

“I’m working on it,” Brownie answered. “But you’ve got to remember that we’ve never actually put any money in the boxes in
the first place. We just assumed it was there…”

Brownie made a note on his pad. That aspect of the case had dogged him from the beginning. Henry having big money did not
make sense. He lived poor his whole life. But he sure as hell kept
something
in the boxes. And it was valuable enough to kill for.

“So we track down the money and it doesn’t lead to Miller,” Jennifer piped up. “What then?”

Gardner turned. “It
will
lead to him. Or someone near him. Why else would he kill three people?”

The room went silent as the team pondered that question.

“Okay,” Gardner finally said. “Now that we know what we can’t prove, let’s take a look at what we
can.”
He turned back to the board and drew a line that connected MILLER and STARKE. “We can put these two together at the school
prior to the first murder.” He wrote RALPH LAMBERT under MILLER and in parentheses WORK CREW. “We can put them together on
the day of the murders, near the scene of the crime.”

Under MILLER he wrote J. DOREY and in parentheses RED TRUCK. Then he wrote J. DOREY under STARKE and next to the name: ID.
“What else do we have?” Gardner looked at Brownie, then at Jennifer.

“The tattoo,” Brownie barked. “Identification of Roscoe’s tattoo.”

Gardner’s eyes saddened as the words were spoken. He winced and wrote GRANVILLE in giant letters in the center of the board.
Then he drew a line to MILLER and wrote TATTOO ID underneath.

“What else?” Gardner said, backing away from the board.

Again, there was silence in the room. No other evidence came to mind. There had been no confessions. No accusations by one
defendant against the other. No murder weapon. No forensics at the crime scene except the dragging foot marks that had alerted
Brownie to Roscoe in the first place.

“The shell at Purvis’s,” Brownie answered, “had Roscoe’s print on it…”

“A partial,” Gardner said. “It won’t get to the jury.”

“What about the shell they put in the mailbox?” Jennifer asked. “It was the same kind that killed Purvis.”

Gardner laid down his chalk. “It was clean. Right, Brownie?”

The detective nodded.

“We may be able to get it into evidence, but it still doesn’t prove a thing. We
have
to tie it to one of these two, and we can’t thus far.”

Gardner stared at the board. This was it. Their whole case. A tenuous, speculative, circumstantial conglomeration of nothing.
They’d hoped to turn Starke against Miller and learn some answers, but he’d clammed up. And Roscoe had been uncooperative
from the beginning.

Gardner picked up his chalk again and walked to the right side of the board. Without saying anything he wrote in a vertical
column:

SCHOOL
WEAPON
MONEY
MOTIVE

“Better add ‘phone call,’” Brownie said to his back.

“Huh?” Gardner asked.

“If you’re listing the blanks we gotta fill,” Brownie replied, “add in the phone call that Henry made to Starke. That’s as
much of a question mark as the others.”

Gardner mumbled okay and added it to the list. Then he backed off and studied it.

“What about ‘shooter’?” Jennifer asked suddenly. The assumption from day one had been that Roscoe had been the shooter and
Starke had been the tagalong. But now they had the look-alike issue to deal with. And the paste-on tattoos in IV’s safe now
made Granville’s drawings suspect. It was possible, but not probable, that Starke pulled the trigger.

Gardner nodded and wrote SHOOTER on the board.

The room fell silent again as they contemplated the list, until slowly all eyes came to rest on the name in the middle.

GRANVILLE

Gardner turned and crossed his arms. “We have to use him,” he said sadly.
“Have
to, or we’ve got no case.”

Jennifer and Brownie glanced at the board, then turned to Gardner. They could see it. As clearly as the chalk lines against
the black slate. Without Granville, they had nothing. Even if Brownie filled in the other blanks it was not going to be enough.

Gardner pulled a sheet of paper out of his case file and shot it across the table. “This went out this afternoon.”

Jennifer gasped when she saw the material witness summons for Granville. Gardner had not told her about it.

“Gard,” she whispered. “Are you sure about this?”

Brownie leaned over her shoulder and read the document. This was a major development. “Taking your own son into custody…”
he said in a low voice. “Man…”

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Gardner said gravely, “and it has to be done.”

Brownie and Jennifer looked at each other with alarm. “Can’t you reason with Carole?” Brownie asked. “Get her to cooperate?”

Gardner shook his head no.

“Maybe we can find what we need so we won’t have to use him,” Jennifer suggested.

Gardner shook his head again. “I don’t think so. If we haven’t found it by now, we’re not going to. Face it, Gran-ville’s
the only hope…”

“But bringing him in on a warrant…” Jennifer persisted.

“There’s no other way,” Gardner said sadly. “God, I wish there was, but I know Carole. She’s not going to let me near him.”

Brownie stood up. “Please, Gard, don’t do it. Recall the damn summons. I’ll fill the blanks. Just give me some more time…”

“No,” Gardner said. “It’s too late.”

Brownie gathered his things and prepared to leave. “I’m gonna get what you need. I swear…” Then he left the room, shaking
his head.

After Brownie left, Jennifer approached Gardner. “You know it’s not worth it,” she said softly.

Gardner eyed her sullenly.

“Nothing’s worth putting your own family through hell.”

“Family,” Gardner said. “That includes you.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got to do it, Jen. Got to…”

“No you don’t,” Jennifer replied, putting her arms around him. Then she clamped his face against her chest and stifled his
words.