Supreme Justice (16 page)

As they walked to the car, Rogers posed the obvious question. “Was Brooks ambidextrous?”

“Not if the police reports are to be believed.”

“Then why was the gun in his
right
hand when he shot the Justice?”

Reeder stopped, and she stopped and faced him. A cool breeze was at his back and warm sun was on his face.

He said, “Who says
Brooks
shot the Justice?”

“Well, we’ve assumed from the start . . . oh shit. We
assumed
.”

“We’ve assumed that Brooks is the shooter because the gun showed up there, but what if Brooks and Granger weren’t under those ski masks? And who was driving the getaway car outside the Verdict? Marvin? Or somebody else entirely?”

“That’s a lot of questions,” she said, looking as stunned as a freshly clubbed baby seal.

He grinned at her. “Isn’t it though?”

“Maybe we need to talk to Granger and Marvin, like, right away.”

“No maybe about it.”

In separate interview rooms at the Fairfax County Detention Center, Rogers sat down with Tom Marvin while Reeder arranged an audience with Charlie Granger.

But when Granger saw Reeder already seated at the table, the prisoner froze—right arm in a cast, no cuffs, his orange jumpsuit looking lived-in.

The guard nudged Granger into the room, but the prisoner protested. “Hey, I got
nothin’
to say to this clown. Not without my lawyer, I don’t.”

The guard closed the door in Granger’s face.

“I want my lawyer!” Granger yelled, pounding on the door with his good hand.

“You don’t need him,” Reeder said.

Granger kept his back to the seated Reeder, facing the door. “I got nothing to say to you.”

“Will you answer one question?”

Silence.

“Was Butch Brooks ambidextrous?”

That turned Granger around. “What the fuck?”

“Ambidextrous—was your buddy Butch ambidextrous? You know what that
means,
right?”

Granger sneered. “Yes, I know what it means, and maybe when it come to jerkin’ off he was, but otherwise no. He was
left
-handed. He drove one-handed like that.”

“Oh, was he a driver? Decent wheelman?”

“He was a hell of a wheelman. Why?” His curiosity aroused, Granger shuffled over and took the chair across from Reeder. “Go ahead. Ask another.”

“You really
weren’t
at the Verdict Monday night, were you, Charlie?”

“What the hell have I been
tellin’
you, you and everybody, includin’ my goddamn lawyer. No, no,
no,
I wasn’t fucking at the Verdict Monday night. I was with my mom, helping her out.”

“Like a good son.”

“Like a very goddamn good son.”

“You know something, Charlie?”

“What?”

“I think maybe you were.”

Reeder got up and walked out, leaving Granger sitting there like everybody else in his card game disappeared.

In the hallway, Rogers came up to Reeder.

“Anything?” he asked.

She nodded, smiling like she had a secret but couldn’t keep it. “Our friend Marvin? He’s scared of somebody.”

“He tell you that?”

“No. I
read
him. I’ve been hanging around with you, remember? Marvin isn’t talking to anybody about anything. Very scared, our boy Marvin. How about Granger?”

“Well, he didn’t want to talk at first. He did confirm that Brooks wasn’t ambidextrous.”

“Are you sure Granger doesn’t think that means a land-and-water animal?”

“No. He knows the definition, all right. Butch Brooks was left-handed.”

She thought about that. “So . . . does that mean Brooks didn’t kill Venter?”

“It means Brooks didn’t pull the trigger. Granger says Brooks was a wheelman—maybe Butchie was at the curb in the getaway vehicle.”

She was frowning. “Then how did the gun get in Butch’s house?”

“Maybe they passed weapons around in that robbery ring. Or possibly it was provided by whoever Marvin’s afraid of. It’s a conspiracy and we’re dealing with the flunky side of things, remember.”

She thought about that, then said, “Remind me what color Granger’s eyes are.”

“Blue.”

“So
Granger
could have been the shooter.”

“Could be.”

She gave him the tiniest of smiles. “But you don’t think so.”

Reeder sighed. “He wasn’t the guy wielding the Glock in any of the out-of-state robberies. And Butch’s fingerprints are on the pistol. Is there any reason that Butch Brooks might have used his right hand, when he was a leftie?”

She shook her head. “Not that I can think of.”

“Makes even less sense when you read Butch’s rap sheet.”

“Oh?”

“The late Butch Brooks had brown eyes.”

She held up her hands in surrender. “Hold on. Why would this sophisticated conspiracy you keep talking about enlist these known repeater criminals to do their dirty work, and then not use them to
do
their damn dirty work!”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he said.

“Don’t start that again,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But goddamnit—you’re right.”

They walked to the Ford. Time to call it a day, and Reeder could only wonder if they’d taken as many steps forward as they had back.

“Beware how you take hope from another human being.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Section 5, Grave 7004, Arlington National Cemetery.

SIXTEEN

Amy Reeder lay in a fetal ball on her sofa, a couch cushion hugged tight to her chest as if a life preserver. Which seemed appropriate, since she was drowning in a sea of her own tears. That the cushion smelled of Bobby’s shampoo was at once solace and torture. She inhaled deeply from it, and then the tears started again.

Damnit,
she thought,
why am I not cried out yet?

Her eyes were red, dry, and itchy, which was what bawling for the better part of two hours got you. But at least the tears weren’t coming as hard now—this was just residual overflow, trailing down her cheeks, an accompaniment to the gnawing ache in her belly.

Tonight should have been special. She’d had no confidence she wouldn’t screw it up, but never
dreamed
she’d make so spectacular a botch of it. This was to have been the first night of several in her extended birthday celebration, which would include going away for the weekend to (finally) consummate the Amy/Bobby relationship. But after much toss and turning and soul-searching, she’d come to the reluctant conclusion that it just . . . wasn’t . . .
time
. . . yet.

Over the past several days, both on the phone and in person, she had tried to tell him. She just could never find the way in. Finally, she’d been left with tonight as the only real option—after all, you didn’t go off with a guy for the weekend and suddenly announce you want separate rooms as you pull up at the hotel.

Despite his casual style, Bobby was unfailingly prompt, and tonight was no exception. He arrived for dinner, right at seven, a small bouquet of yellow and white flowers in hand. They kissed at the door and went to the kitchen for her to put the flowers in water.

She had dressed up a little tonight—a short black skirt and matching jacket over a retro tee with Taylor Swift on it. Bobby was strictly a jeans and T-shirt type, which was fine by her. She was more interested in the warmth of his personality and the sharpness of his intellect than in the brand of his sweater or slacks.

Likewise, he had never seemed mainly interested in just her body—and he’d always been understanding about the old-fashioned sexual morality she clung to.

As he watched her at the sink, he said, “Smells great.”

“Flowers or the food?”

“Food. Flowers, too, I guess. And you. You, uh . . . look fantastic by the way. Maybe you should wear skirts more often. Let those nice legs show.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, a little embarrassed.

Okay, so he wasn’t
not
interested in her body.

That was nothing new—she’d been hit on as early as junior high and knew she could attract males, and Bobby was nothing if not one of those. But knowing that so many guys couldn’t see past her good looks had made her cautious, even gun-shy, about their intentions.

Bobby’s intentions seemed clear. They had been a couple since October and still hadn’t slept together half a year later—if having sex with her was his only goal, he’d have split before Christmas, right?

She handed him the flowers in a little vase. “Put these on the table, would you? And I’ll serve you up.”

“You got it,” he said, taking the flowers into the little dining room.

Bobby was a vegetarian, so she’d made spaghetti with marinara (she had made and frozen some meatballs for herself, to go with the big batch of sauce she made up). She was no great shakes as a cook, but her mom had taught her a few things, and her dad kept her bank account flush, so she could always afford good ingredients. Still, she rarely cooked for Bobby and was anxious. They started with a tossed salad, the dressing purchased from a restaurant they both adored.

Through the meal, conversation typically covered how their respective days had gone—they didn’t share any classes, and he was a poli sci major and she was undeclared, so that took a while. She looked for an opening to discuss her decision with him, but it just wasn’t there. He did say, “And she can
cook
!
” Which was a relief, if an overstatement.

He helped with the dishes and talked about some problems his folks were having—like her parents, his were divorced. Along the way, he said something that made her tummy clench.

“Do you suppose,” he said, wiping a plate, “that our parents were once normal humans who got along like we do, only to have work and kids and all of that derail them?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I do remember my parents loving each other. Being cozy and walking arm-in-arm and that.”

“When was this?”

“Well, I don’t remember noticing that kind of lovey-dovey thing after grade school. My father worked weird hours and he was kind of . . .”

“Remote?”

She sighed, nodded. “Yeah, and he could be spooky.”

“How so?”

“He could just . . .
look
at you and know what you were thinking. But you could never tell what
he
was thinking. Drives my mother crazy.”

He nodded. “Passive-aggressive. My old man’s like that.”

“No, it’s not that, exactly. It’s
similar
. . . but it’s not that.”

When the dishes were put away, they moved to the sofa. She put some music on, a romantic ballad channel on iTunes Radio. This might be asking for trouble, but evenings they often sat there, sometimes semireclined there, making out. As usual, the apartment was mostly dark, and they were in each other’s arms almost at once.

They had done a lot of things on that sofa, including her satisfying him with her hand and even her mouth, but they always stopped short of intercourse. At one point, months ago, he pressed her on it. Not physically—that wasn’t his way. He wanted to talk it out. That was one of Bobby’s few failings: He was under the impression you could deal with emotions intellectually.

He said, “We’ve established you’re not a virgin.”

“That’s right. I’m not.”

“And you’re . . . obviously not shy.”

The “obviously” referred to the fact that Bobby’s pants were around his ankles.

“Not shy.”

“Then what is it?”

“Pull your pants up and I’ll tell you.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

But he did.

And she did, telling him how her best friend, Kathy, in high school got pregnant and had an abortion from some sketchy pseudo doc and died horribly. Since then, Amy hadn’t had sex, and she’d only been with two guys before that, anyway. She was on the pill, but she knew that wasn’t infallible. Mostly she just liked having her periods regulated.

“We’ll be together,” she’d assured him.

“On our wedding night, you mean?”

“That sounds a little sarcastic for a marriage proposal.”

“It wasn’t a marriage proposal. It
is
sarcasm.”

She had pulled away and started to cry, which she hated, but thoughts of Kathy did that to her, and then she apologized, and he apologized, and she said for now they could “fool around” but that was all, and he said fine, fine, he would follow her lead.

Since then, whatever sexual fun and games they’d had never quite reached intercourse, unless dry humping counted. Lately, though, marriage talk for real had kicked in, and she was starting to think, to
really
think, that Bobby was who she’d wind up with in life.

And this had led to the planned weekend getaway with Bobby, to celebrate her nineteenth birthday. Just the kind of milestone to get rid of this millstone.

Funny how her father, usually so good at figuring people out, completely missed the boat on Bobby, disliking him for no specific reason beyond not wanting to share his little girl with another male. She had long ago given up on trying to convince Daddy that Bobby really was wonderful. Sooner or later, her dad would come to see that for himself.

On the sofa, she was naked to the waist and he was kissing her breasts. She had unzipped him and was working him, slowly. Under the skirt, Bobby’s hand was traveling up her thigh and then her warmth was in his hand, his fingers probing. His lips left her breasts and found her mouth, and his tongue explored even as his fingers did the same.

Between heavy breaths, he said, “Hell . . . with . . . the weekend . . . we’ve
decided,
haven’t we? . . . Why wait . . . a few . . . frickin’ . . .
days
?
. . . Let’s
do
it . . . Sweetheart, we
have
to
do
it . . .”

She let go of him and pushed him away. “No. No. No!”

She pulled her T-shirt back on, and he looked at her in pain, his passion sticking out. “What?”

“You
know
I’ll do anything but that.”

“Sweetie, I’ve been so patient . . .”

“You have. You
have
. I need a little more time. Just a little more time.”

“But your birthday trip . . .”

“Not then, either. No. We can have fun, but . . . no.”

His eyes went all deer-in-the-headlights. “What
happened
?
”

She shrugged, arms folded over her breasts. “I thought about it, and it’s not right yet . . . I . . . I have to be
sure
.”

“You have to be sure? You’re not sure about
us
?
”

“I am, but . . .”

“But you’re not.”

Clumsily, comically, he put his wilting self away, zipped up, stood, and gathered what little dignity was available.

“Well,” he said, clearly wounded, “I guess this is better than hearing about it in the hotel lobby. Thanks for that consideration, anyway.”

She gazed earnestly up at him. “Bobby . . . I was going to tell you tonight. I was just . . . waiting for the right time.”

“Fuck
!
”
He almost screamed the word. He gestured to the sofa, where they’d already done things illegal in several states. “In the middle of
that
? That’s
the right time? I’ve been patient, Amy, but really . . . this is
crazy
. This is ridiculous. We’re grown-ass adults.”

“Please, Bobby . . .”

“Please?”

“I’m just . . . not . . .
ready.
”

He pressed his hands to his head as if his skull were about to explode and maybe he could somehow hold the pieces together. He took in a long breath, then let it out, his expression pained.

He said, “Amy, I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. I’m committed to you, but it’s pretty obvious you’re not committed to me. And it just . . . just hurts too much to be around you.”

“Bobby . . .” She smiled up at him lamely and patted the sofa. “Please. I’ll take care of you.”

Anger flared in his eyes. “I don’t want to be bought off, Amy. I want to take care of you, and I want you to take care of me, and I’m not talking about sex, not at all . . . Please. No calls. No texts.
I
have to work this out now. Myself.”

He headed to the door and she flew off the sofa, but he was already well down the stairs to the street. She followed anyway.

From the doorway, she called, “Bobby . . .
Bobby
!
”

He didn’t look back.

When he was gone, she did two things: She moved the vase of yellow and white flowers to a place in her little living room where she could see them, and she returned to the sofa, where she’d been crying ever since.

It wasn’t that she didn’t
want
to make love to him. She wanted that very much. The time just wasn’t quite right, was it? And look how
mad
he’d gotten tonight. What if she got pregnant and instead of taking her in his arms, he just got pissed and stormed off, and then she would be a mother whose child had no father, or maybe she’d wind up dead and bleeding like Kathy . . .

She sat up, hugged her legs to her, rocking.

Were they broken up?

He had left so abruptly, but he did say he was going to try to work it out. She thought of the crazy old movie:
So you’re tellin’ me there’s a chance . . .

If they were broken up, they’d ended with a whimper, not a bang, and when the joke of that came to her, she began to laugh, a harsh laugh more like a cough, summoning still more tears.

Then the realization came:
She didn’t want to lose him.

Something in the dark part of her mind said,
Oh, so you’re
ready
, are you? To buy him back with sex?

But that wasn’t it, was it? What she knew was that she loved him. He was worth taking the risk, and anyway, the “risk” was really just some stupid psychological barrier she’d built up—the odds of pregnancy with birth control were minuscule, and, besides, Bobby would stand by her. She knew that.

She would text him, no matter what he said. She would call him, too. She would keep it up till he gave in. She could fix this—she knew she could, because she
was
ready. Robert Landon was who she wanted to be with. Maybe spend her life with.

If only she could get him to listen.

She sent a text: SORRY. SECOND CHANCE?

She left a voice mail: “I’m wrong, you’re right—can we please still do the weekend? Can you forgive me and can we please, please,
please
celebrate my birthday together?”

She went back to the sofa, cell in hand, waiting. Shaking—one moment confident he’d call, the next certain he wouldn’t, and back and forth and back and forth . . .

Then came a knock at the door.

She grinned, sucked in breath, tossed the pillow aside, and went to answer it.

But when she did, it wasn’t Bobby.