The Shadow Man (32 page)

‘This area is closed, Old-Timer,’ one of them said with the arrogance of youth.

‘Who’s in charge?’ Winter demanded sharply.

‘Detective’s in charge. Who wants to know?’ the patrolman replied with an edge.

Winter wanted to reach out and shove the younger man aside, but hesitated, and in that second heard a voice that seemed to be familiar:

‘I am, Mr Winter.’

He looked past the young patrolman’s shoulder and saw Walter Robinson slowly rising from the blond sand beach. Robinson gestured at the patrolman. ‘Let him come over.’

Simon Winter stepped across the sand. Walter Robinson did not offer his hand, but said instead: ‘I thought you would be here. If not, I would have found you.’

‘Why is that?’ Winter asked.

The young detective didn’t reply, except to ask a question. ‘You knew Mr Silver?’

‘Yes.’

‘And Sophie Millstein as well.’

‘That is obvious, Detective.’

Robinson grasped Winter by the elbow and led him to where a crime scene technician was taking a few pictures.

The technician looked up at Robinson. ‘Come on, Walt. Let me bag this shit and let’s get back to real work.’

Walter Robinson shook his head.

‘All right, Mr Winter,’ he said quietly. ‘You were a detective once. What do you see?’

The technician overheard this question and interrupted with his own answer: ‘Walter, come on. How obvious can things be? Old man wants to end it all, comes on down here at night, no one around, folds up his clothing nice and neat and heads into the surf. Body will turn up in a couple of days up the beach a few miles or wherever the currents wanna dump it. Should be calling the Coast Guard to keep an eye out’

Robinson glared at the technician. ‘That’s what you see,’ he said coldly. ‘I’m interested in what this gentleman sees.’

Winter was studying the beach carefully. He saw Irving Silver’s clothes, folded just as the technician said, prepared like a man afraid of making a mess in death.

‘The wallet was right on top?’

‘Yes,’ Robinson said.

‘Anything on the beach?’

‘Not that we can find.’

‘No note?’

‘No.’

‘Have you examined the clothing?’

‘Just in its current position.’

Winter knelt down beside the clothes. ‘May I?’ he asked.

Robinson squatted beside him. He held up a plastic evidence bag. ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

There was a straw porkpie hat. Simon Winter picked it up and turned it over. He saw the initials I.S. scratched into the dark-stained sweatband. He pointed at these to Robinson, then dropped the hat into an evidence bag. Then he picked up a floral-print polyester shirt. The flowers were greens and blues and vinelike, entwined in design, making the pattern a maze of variegated shapes and colors. He started to pass the fabric beneath his eyes slowly, feeling it between two fingers, until he reached the collar, and there he stopped. He could feel his heart suddenly accelerate, and for a moment he felt dizzy.

‘There,’ he said quietly, almost a whisper.

Robinson leaned over and touched the fabric where Winter was pointing. He picked up the shirt and held it up into the fading light, squinting as he examined the texture.

The young detective nodded, letting out a long hiss of breath. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I think you’re maybe right.’

Winter stood up and looked out to sea. Each wave seemed to reach up and catch a piece of the fast-dropping night, then thrust the darkness up onto the shoreline.

‘It’s blood,’ Winter said. ‘Irving Silver’s blood.’

‘There’s not much,’ Robinson acknowledged slowly. ‘It could be nothing more than a shaving cut.’ Then he turned to the technician. ‘Collect all this stuff carefully.’ He waved at the uniformed officers. ‘I want this whole area taped off. It might be a homicide scene.’

Simon Winter remained silent for a moment, watching the ocean, feeling the onshore breeze start to dwindle, making space for the oppressive summer night.

‘He’s not there,’ he said softly.

‘Who isn’t there?’ Walter Robinson asked.

‘Irving Silver.’ Winter raised a hand and stretched it toward the ocean. ‘That is what it is supposed to seem like.

That he’s out there drowned and disappeared. Swallowed up. But he isn’t.’

‘Where is he, then?’ the young detective asked.

‘Somewhere else. Somewhere distant and lost. Out in the Everglades maybe.’

‘A body one place. Clothing here?’

‘Correct.’

Walter Robinson whistled softly and stared out at the ocean as well. ‘That would be clever. It would really screw us up.’ He hesitated, then added: ‘I think you may be right.’

Winter turned then, and looked at the young detective. ‘You said you were going to find me. Why?’

‘Because,’ Walter Robinson replied slowly, ‘I have lately become interested in history.’

There was a pay telephone across from the nurse’s station inside the locked ward at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and Espy Martinez paused there. She quickly dialed the number of the Miami Beach Homicide Unit. For the third time that afternoon she was forced to leave a message for Walter Robinson. She hung up the receiver with an irritated snap to her wrist, banging it down. Then she took a deep breath and eyed the corridor that led to Leroy Jefferson’s room.

She wondered for an instant whether she was closer to the truth or about to lose sight of it completely. Then she paced down the hallway, listening to the smacking sound her heels made against the polished linoleum floor. Someone was crying in one of the rooms she passed, but she could not see who it was. The sound of sobbing, however, seemed to keep cadence with her quick-march down the corridor.

The prison guard on duty at the wire-mesh gate was an older man. She recognized him from a half-dozen courtrooms. He had a brushy crew-cut gray shock of hair and thick forearms adorned with intricate tattoos. He gave her a little wave and a crooked smile as she approached.

‘Hi, Mike,’ she said. ‘This must be easier than hauling

guys back and forth between the jail and the Justice Building.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘all I got to do here is make sure I don’t catch something, and sit around reading the paper.’

‘Any good news?’

‘Never is.’

‘Feeling okay?’

‘Sure am.’

‘Then sounds to me like you’ve got easy duty.’

‘You got that right, Miss Martinez.’

‘Is Alter here?’

‘Just a couple of minutes ago. Went in with the doctor.’

She started to sign in on a log sheet attached to a clipboard when the guard whispered, ‘I think poor Leroy’s having a bit of trouble with the pain today, you know, counselor? He’s been on that buzzer to the nurse’s station all morning. I think maybe you shooting up his leg and him not being allowed no crack pipe, well, maybe it’s made him a tad tense, if you catch my drift, Miss Martinez.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said, nodding.

The guard grinned. ‘I mean, he might be just a little bit rocky today. You might squeeze him a little bit, if you get the chance, know what I mean?’

Espy Martinez managed to smile, despite the feeling that it was going to be herself that was squeezed, not Leroy Jefferson. She put her index finger to her temple, making a small salute. Prison guards, she thought, know everything and have a remarkable ability to sense the direction of any wind that blows through the justice system.

As she pushed her way into the hospital room, she heard

the sound of retching, and then a long, complaining,

Sheeit.’ She summoned a wry, mocking, inquisitive look

and stepped into the room. She immediately looked at

Leroy Jefferson, his leg still immobilized in traction,

struggling to sit up in bed. As he turned to face her, she saw a thin line of perspiration gathered at his forehead. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips.

‘Not feeling too good, huh, Mr Jefferson?’

The accused man scowled, then he bent over and spat into a bedside wastebasket.

‘Bitch that shot me,’ he said beneath his breath.

‘He’s okay,’ Thomas Alter said quickly, rising from a steel folding chair. ‘Isn’t that right, Doctor?’

A young white-jacketed physician was standing beside Jefferson. He nodded. ‘The discomfort is normal.’

‘Normal, shit,’ Jefferson said. ‘I wanna another shot.’

The doctor glanced at his watch, then down at his chart, and shook his head. ‘Nope. Not for at least ninety minutes. Maybe two hours.’ He said this coldly, without feeling. As he spoke, Martinez saw a wave of hurt and nausea wash over Jefferson’s face. He started to bend toward the side of the bed and the wastebasket, then managed to stop, pushing himself back hard, as if tired. ‘Ain’t got nothin’ left in me,’ he whispered. An intravenous tube running from a stanchion down into his arm rattled. Martinez looked away for a moment, absorbing the stark surroundings in the small room. White walls. A gray steel grate over a dirt-streaked window, so that even the day’s sunshine seemed smudged as it crept into the room. A single, utilitarian bed, and bedside table. A paper cup and a cheap plastic jug for water. As bleak as the jail cell that awaited him barely a block away.

Alter looked irritatedly at the young physician, who replaced the chart at the bottom of the bed. ‘I think he could use something,’ the attorney said.

The doctor looked up. ‘You’re the lawyer, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘Well, stick to the fucking law, then,’ he said quietly. The

doctor looked over at Espy Martinez. ‘My brother-in-law’s a cop,’ he said. He jerked a thumb toward Leroy Jefferson. ‘He’s okay. His leg hurts like hell, and he’s in withdrawal. So he’s feeling mighty sick, and every time he makes a move for that wastebasket, it must feel like someone’s sticking a knife in that knee and twisting it around. But it isn’t anything that will kill him. It just isn’t making him happy. Making him happy isn’t exactly my job. Keeping him alive was.’ The doctor slid past her and out the door.

Leroy Jefferson’s hands were clenched tight, into balls. ‘I ain’t never gonna walk right again ‘cause of you,’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘Breaks my heart,’ she replied. ‘I told you to freeze. And instead you tried to shoot me. Screw you.’

Leroy Jefferson scowled again, and started to speak, but was cut off by Thomas Alter.

‘That’s not the purpose of this meeting,’ the public defender said.

‘That’s right,’ Martinez said. ‘The purpose of this meeting is to determine whether or not I think this defendant has the capacity somewhere within him to tell the truth, which, right now, I seriously doubt.’

Alter waved his arm dramatically, like some overwrought actor on a dinner theater stage. ‘Then get out. Take him to trial. Do what you want, but you won’t get his help, and it sure looks to me like you’re going to need it.’

Espy Martinez managed to grip hold of herself, and spoke quietly. ‘Look, the lie detector test is persuasive, but not conclusive.’

‘You gonna put an innocent man in jail?’ Leroy Jefferson demanded. She ignored him.

‘What about the fingerprint?’ Alter asked. ‘How’re you going to get around that?’

She didn’t answer this, but instead said, ‘So maybe it wasn’t his hands around Sophie’s throat. But there’s clear-cut evidence he was in Sophie’s room, and that he stole items. So, perhaps he had an accomplice. Perhaps there were two of them there that night. That still makes him guilty of felony murder.’ She looked over at Jefferson. ‘Penalty for felony murder in this state, in case you weren’t aware, is the chair.’

‘Shit,’ Jefferson said. ‘Didn’t kill nobody and didn’t have nobody with me.’

Alter glared at his client and said, ‘Just shut up and let me and the prosecutor talk. What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that before I go any further, I want to know what you mean by help. Give me some proffer of your client’s evidence.’

‘Not without a guarantee.’

‘What sort of guarantee?’

‘That he gets a deal. No prison time.’

‘Forget it.’

‘Then go screw yourself. Find that old woman’s killer without him.’

‘That’s what we’ll do.’

‘Sure you will. Good luck. You got any idea who left that partial on her throat?’

‘I’m not answering that sort of question.’

‘I didn’t think you did,’ Alter said, smiling, relaxing. He turned to Leroy Jefferson. ‘You just keep your mouth shut, Leroy. Dealing with the state is just the same as waiting for that shot of painkiller. It hurts. You feel sick. But eventually they come to you. And then everything is all right.’

Jefferson seemed gray and pale. He nodded. ‘I saw him,’ he said.

‘Saw who?’ Martinez asked quickly.

‘I said keep your mouth shut!’ Alter shouted.

Leroy Jefferson leaned back on a pillow. A single rivulet of perspiration ran down his cheek, but he grinned at Espy Martinez.

‘Gonna need me,’ he said. ‘Ain’t gonna find no killer, ‘less I show you who. I saw him good. I saw him kill that old lady.’

Martinez clenched her own teeth together. ‘You know I’ve filed enough charges against you to keep you up in Raiford Prison for a thousand years. Ten thousand years. Forever. Until you shrivel up and rot away. And that’s where you’re gonna be.’

Jefferson just shook his head and repeated: ‘Gonna need old Leroy. You go ask that detective, he tell you.’

Martinez looked over at Alter.

The public defender shrugged. ‘What can I say, Espy? He’s telling you the way it is.’

‘Really? Why is it that I don’t find it easy to believe Mr Jefferson? Maybe because he’s a strung-out, lying—’

‘You’re going to have to believe him, Espy, because he was the one that was there.’

‘Yeah, him and one of his junkie buddies. The only deal I’D cut will be to life in prison. He gets to save his sorry ass by testifying against whatever low-life friend of his killed Sophie Millstein.’

‘Weren’t no friend, I tol’ you,’ Jefferson said, smugness penetrating through the pain. ‘Were a white guy. An old white guy.’

Thomas Alter smiled again. ‘I think we’ve helped Miss Martinez out quite enough already.’

‘You’re saying that…’