The Case Against William (34 page)

"Billie
Jean—"

"I'm
banging on your door, Frank."

"You're
my only son. I love you. I would trade places with you if I could. I would
stand trial for you, I would go to prison for you, I'd take that needle for
you. I would do that for you. But I can't. Son, once you stand up in open
court and tell the world that you killed Dee Dee Dunston—"

"I
have to do that?"

"Yes.
You do. Pleading guilty means just that—standing up in court and confessing
guilt. You have to say, 'Yes, I killed Dee Dee Dunston.' And once you say
those words, William, your life will never be the same. You will always be a
confessed killer. You can never recover from that. No one will believe that
you pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty."

"You
said so yourself, prisons are full of innocent people. I don't want to be one
of them."

"You're
innocent, William. I know that. I believe you. Fight. Don't quit."

"But
Scotty says I'll be out in two years at the most. I'll be free."

"Son,
if you confess to killing Dee Dee, you'll never be free. You will always be in
that prison."

"But
Scotty believes—"

"Does
he believe you're innocent?"

"No."

"I
do."

"Why?"

"Because
you're my son. Because you're part of me. Because I raised you from the day
you were born. Because I know you don't have it in you to hurt someone."

"But
my agent says I can still play ball when I get out."

"William,
this isn't about playing football."

"That's
my life."

"No.
Proving your innocence is your life."

"How?
How do I prove I'm innocent? All the evidence says I'm guilty. Hell, I can't
even remember that day. Maybe I am guilty."

"No,
you're not. You could never hurt someone. You're big and you're strong, but
your heart is soft and gentle. That hasn't changed, William."

"I
don't know."

"William,
please believe in justice. Believe in yourself. Believe in me."

"Have
you been drinking again?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because
you fired me."

"I'm
sorry."

"I
can stop again. Just don't plead."

His
son slumped in his chair. His jaws clenched. He was fighting his emotions.
He lost. And then Frank lost. He wanted to embrace his son. Hold him. Make
things right. He wanted to wrap his arms around his boy again. William put
his massive palm against the glass on his side. Frank matched his hand to his
son's.

"Save
me, Dad."

Billie Jean wiped her eyes. Maybe there was hope for William
Tucker after all.

"We're
back on the case," his father said.

"Not
until he fires Scotty Raines."

"He
will. We've just got to find the killer before next Monday."

"Not
much time."

They
exited the jail and drove to her townhouse in north Austin. They ate dinner
and drank iced tea. After dinner they sat on her back balcony with the lights
of the downtown skyline sparkling in the distance and the three-hundred-foot
tall UT clock tower bathed in orange light. They talked about their children
and their mistaken marriages, the choices they had made in life and the choices
they wished they had made. Billie Jean got up for a tea refill but stopped. She
bent down and kissed Frank.

"Open
the door, Frank."

Come
to find out, he didn't need Viagra.

"We're
missing something," Frank said.

He
had gone to bed the night before craving a drink and had woken that morning
craving a drink. He drank coffee instead. A lot of coffee.

"What?"

"I
don't know. But it's like the photo on the phone—it's right there in front of
us, in plain sight. We're just not seeing it."

Billie Jean
had driven Frank back to Rockport and stayed over. They spent the day going
over their trial strategy.

"We
can explain her phone number and photo to the jury—"

"If
the jurors aren't old-timers," Billie Jean said.

"So
in jury selection, we go for the youngest in the pool."

"I've
never picked a jury."

"I
have. You look in their eyes. If they look back, you take them. If they look
away, you don't."

"Why?"

"Because
they've already made up their minds. They think he's guilty."

"What
about the surveillance tape? He got in late enough to have killed her."

"Hundreds
of men were on Sixth Street that night. Any of them could have seen Dee Dee in
her cheerleader outfit."

"But
none of their blood was on her body."

"How
the hell did you let this happen, Dwayne?"

Dwayne
Gentry, former top homicide cop on the Houston Police Department and renowned
interrogator of bad guys, stood in the small wooden shack that served as the
operations headquarters for the mini-storage facility and suffered
interrogation at the hands of Bob, the proprietor. They were studying the
surveillance camera tape the day the three punks broke into a unit. On the
screen, the camera caught the punks climbing over the perimeter fence,
crowbarring storage unit number 124, and stuffing their backpacks with stolen
contraband.

"Those
little pricks were brazen, to try that in the middle of the day."

"
Try?
They did it." Bob shook his head. "You left for lunch, didn't you?
They had you under surveillance, saw you leave, and then made their move.
Isn't that what happened, Dwayne?"

"No,
it ain't what happened. I was here the whole morning."

Bob
pointed at the screen. "They breached the perimeter fence at
twelve-thirty-five
P.M.
, made
entry into the subject unit at twelve-forty-five
P.M.
, and escaped back over the fence at one
P.M.
The video don't lie,
Dwayne."

"Yeah,
it does. When they took off with the contraband, it was straight-up noon. I
checked my watch."

Bob
frowned. "But the tape says one."

"The
tape's
wrong. It was an hour earlier."

"An
hour earlier?" Bob snorted like a feral hog. "Aw, shit, I know what
happened. Robbie didn't turn the clock back on the camera when we came off
daylight savings time. Spring forward, fall back. The little dope."

Robbie
was Bob's son. He was a little dope.

"Okay,
they breached at eleven-thirty-five. You were still on site. Not your fault,
Dwayne. What I need to do, see, is electrify the fence, maybe two-twenty
volts. Those little fuckers try to breach my fence again, they'll be in for a
little shock."

Bob
thought that was funny.

Chico
Duran laughed. "I shit you not, man, she took a picture of her privates
and texted it to her boyfriend. He probably put it on his Facebook page, now
half the world's seen her pussy."

Keith,
the nineteen-year-old delivery boy with tattoos and piercings all over his
body, shrugged. "I do that all the time."

"Post
photos of girls' privates on your Facebook page?"

"Get
photos of girls' privates."

"They
sext you?"

"Yep."

"Who?"

"Every
girl I know."

"Why?"

"It's
social media, man. You take self-photos and share yourself with the
world."

"Why?"

"Why
not?"

Chico
shook his head. "By the time I was your age, I was already conning people
out of their credit card numbers. Kids today, you're spoiled, got no ambition,
bunch of narcissistic little bastards spending your time taking photos of
yourself, as if anyone gives a shit."

Chuck
Miller blew his whistle.

"Offsides
on black. Five yards."

"Shithead!"
a parent screamed.

Chuck
picked up the ball and stepped off five yards. He was about to blow the
whistle to restart the game when one of the players said, "He's bleeding
again."

"Who?"

"Georgie."

"Shit,
he might be one of them bleeders."

"You're
not supposed to say 'shit' at peewee games. We're little kids."

"Your
fucking parents do."

"Just
our fucking dads."

Chuck
called a bodily fluids timeout and sent Georgie to the sideline. He took a
good long swallow of his Gatorade-and-vodka sports drink. That same thought—
blood
—tried
to take form in his brain again, but he still could not put the thought into a
complete sentence, or even a recognizable phrase.

There
was something about the blood.

"Harold
went ethical on you, Scotty. It happens."

"Not
very often."

"Nope.
But Harold's always had an ethical streak in him."

Dick
Dorkin downed his drink. He and Scotty Raines were having drinks at the
Capitol Club, the favorite watering hole for state politicos and judges and the
lawyers who financed their careers.

"So
is the boy taking the plea bargain or not?"

"He'll
take it. Frank came in yesterday and got him all fired up to fight the
charges, but I brought him back down to earth with my 'come to Jesus' speech.
He'll plead."

"Come
to Jesus?"

"If
he doesn't plead, he's gonna come to Jesus."

Dick
laughed. "Still, I'm not sure I wouldn't be happier if he didn't plead.
I wanted that death sentence so bad I could smell his flesh burning."

"A
few drinks and you wax nostalgic, Dick. What do you want more—revenge on Frank
Tucker or the Governor's Mansion?"

"It's
a closer call than you might think."

"Jesus,
Dick, this isn't personal. This is business."

"Maybe
to you. But me, I'd like to stare at Frank Tucker while they empty that
syringe into his boy's arm."

William
Tucker's six-foot-five-inch, two-hundred-thirty-five-pound body lay curled up
on the cold concrete floor of his cell. He wanted to die. He wanted to close
his eyes and die. The tears poured out of his eyes and the snot out of his
nose. His massive body shook uncontrollably. He was big, strong, and fast,
but he never felt so small, so weak, and so slow in his life. He always knew
where life was taking him; now he felt lost.

"Help
me, God."

"Ain't
no God in here," the gangbanger next door said in his soft whisper.
"You in hell now, William Tucker."

If
he went to trial and lost, he'd get the death penalty. If he pleaded out, he
would always be a convicted killer.

"Please,
God. Save me."

The
gangbanger sighed. "Man, you got it bad, William. Think God gonna come
down here and pluck your white ass outta this jail, 'cause you His special
child, like your mama told you since the day you popped out between her legs.
Think He gonna come down here and save you. Shit, man, God ain't got no time
for that."

William
cried harder.

"Mm,
mm, mm. Big boy crying now. Wishing this ain't his destiny. Wishing God had
gave him a better life, hadn't put him on this path from birth. I said them
same prayers, I wished the same thing. All my life, I wish I had a better
life. Some folks, they born into heaven. Us, we was born into hell."

William
swiped snot from his face and said, "I estranged myself from my
father."

"Uh-huh,
my daddy a stranger to me, too. I always wonder, what if my mama had of
married my daddy, made us a regular family like that Bill Cosby
show on TV. Wonder if I would be in this cell today, if that happened? Maybe
me and my daddy, we'd of throwed a football in the backyard and talked about
being a man 'stead of a criminal. Maybe we'd of had a real home, sit around a
table and eat food with my family, and everyone ain't saying 'fuck this' and
'fuck that' instead we be sayin' grace before eating instead of 'pass the
fuckin' steak sauce,' you know what I mean? You know I ain't never done that
in my whole life, eat food with my family, say grace at the dinner table. My
homies in the gang, they was my family. We want something to eat, we go to
fuckin' McD's, get a Big Mac and fries, the double order, drink malt liquor
when I was eight years old. You ever wonder what that kind of childhood be
like, to have Bill Cosby be your daddy?"

"I
know what it's like."

"You
know someone live like that?"

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"Me."

"Say
what?"

"That
was my childhood."

"Wait.
You saying you lived like that, like that Bill Cosby show?"

"Yeah."

"You
had a daddy at home? You eat food with your family? You say grace at the
dinner table? You throwed the ball in the backyard?"

"Yeah."

"Then
how the fuck you end up in that cell?"

His
voice rose, almost as if he were mad at William.

"I
thought you was like me, with a fucked-up life. That why you in here. But you
sayin' you had all that, a mama and a daddy and dinner at a goddamn table every
fuckin' night of your life and you fuckin' end up in here? I dream of that
life, but all I got was a fucked life, drugs and guns and gangbangers. You
born in heaven but you put yourself in hell? What the fuck wrong with you,
boy? I didn't choose to be here. It ain't my fault I'm here. I didn't kill
that cop—my destiny did!"

He
was almost screaming now.

"You
the luckiest motherfucker ever live! You got a fuckin' mama and a daddy! You
got a fuckin' family! You got a fuckin' dinner table with real fuckin' food!
You stupid fuckin' white boy! I hope you fuckin' die!"

His
voice cracked, as if he might be crying, too.

"I
don't want to talk to you no more, William Tucker."

The
young men's soft sobs were the only sounds of the solitary cellblock that
night.

At
five the next morning, William Tucker's court-appointed public defender woke to
her cell phone ringing. She slapped her hand around in the dark until she
found her purse. She dug inside and grasped the phone. She answered.