The Simple Truth (15 page)

“Holy shit, I can’t believe this.”

“I know.”

“All of this happened today?”

“Well, I told you about Rider coming in earlier, but yes, all of these events happened just now.”

“Why the hell did you let him in to see Harms?”

“If I didn’t, don’t you think he would’ve gotten more suspicious? After reading what Harms had written in his damn letter to the Court, what choice did I have?”

“You should have taken care of the sonofabitch before this. You’ve had twenty-five years to do it, Frank.”

“That was the plan twenty-five years ago, to kill him,”
Rayfield fired back.
“And look what happened. Tremaine and I have spent half our lives watching over his ass.”

“You two aren’t exactly doing it for free. What’s your little nest egg up to so far? A million? Retirement’s going to be awfully nice. But it won’t be, for any of us, if this gets out.”

“It’s not like I haven’t tried to kill the guy. Hell, Tremaine tried to do him today in the infirmary, but damn, it’s like the guy’s got a sixth sense. Rufus Harms is as mean as a snake when his back’s against the wall. The guards will only go so far and we’ve got people looking over our shoulder, surprise inspections, the damn ACLU. The bastard just won’t die. Why don’t you come down here and try?”

“All right, all right, there’s no use us arguing about it. You’re sure we were all named in the letter? How is that possible? He didn’t even know who I was.”

Rayfield didn’t hesitate. The person he was speaking with had
not
been named in Rufus’s letter, but Rayfield wasn’t going to tell him that. Everybody was on the hook for this one.
“How should I know? He’s had twenty-five years to think about it.”

“So how did he get the letter out?”

“That blows my mind. The guard saw the damn thing. It was his last will and testament, that was it.”

“But he got it out somehow.”

“Sam Rider is involved. That’s for sure. He brought a radio with him and the noise messed up the bug we installed, so I couldn’t hear what they said to each other. That should’ve told me something was up.”

“I never trusted that guy. Except for Rider’s insanity BS, Harms would’ve been dead a long time ago, courtesy of the Army.”

“The second letter we found in Fiske’s briefcase had been done on a typewriter. There were no initials at the bottom, you know, like when it’s typed by a personal secretary, so Rider probably did it himself. They were both original documents, by the way.”

“Dammit, why now? After all this time?”

“Harms received a letter from the Army. He referenced it in the paper he filed. Maybe that jogged his memory. I can tell you that up to now he either didn’t remember what happened, or he’s been keeping it inside for the last twenty-five years.”

“Why would he do that? And why in the hell would the Army be sending him anything after all this time?”

“I don’t know,”
Rayfield said nervously. He actually did know. The reason had been referenced in Rufus’s court petition. But Rayfield was going to keep that card hidden for now.

“And of course you don’t have this mysterious letter from the Army, do you?”

“No. I mean, not yet.”

“It must be in his cell, although I can’t imagine how it slipped through.”
The voice was again accusatory.

“Sometimes I think the guy’s a magician,”
said Rayfield.

“Has he had any other visitors?”

“Just his brother, Josh Harms. He comes about once a month.”

“And what about Rufus?”

“Looks like he’s just about bought it. Stroke or heart attack. Even if he makes it, he probably won’t be the same.”

“Where is he?”

“En route to the hospital in Roanoke.”

“Why the hell did you let him out?”

“The doc ordered it. He has an obligation to save the man’s life, prisoner or not. If I overruled him, don’t you think it would raise suspicion?”

“Well, keep on top of it, and pray his heart blows up. And if it doesn’t, make it.”

“Come on, who’d believe him?”

“You might be surprised. This Michael Fiske? He’s the only other one who knows, besides Rider?”

“That’s right. At least I think so. He came here to check out Harms’s story. Didn’t tell anybody — at least that’s what he told Harms. We caught a big break there,”
Rayfield said.
“I gave him the song and dance about Harms being a chronic jailhouse lawyer. I think he bought it. We got leverage because he could get in big trouble for being here. I don’t think he’s going to let the appeal go through.”

The voice on the other end went up a few decibels.
“Are you nuts? Fiske isn’t going to have a choice in the matter.”

“He’s a Supreme Court clerk, for chrissakes. I heard him tell Harms.”

“I know that. I damn well know that. But let me tell you exactly what you’re going to do. You’re going to take care of Fiske and Rider. And you’re going to do it pronto.”

Rayfield paled.
“You want me to kill a Supreme Court clerk and a local lawyer? Come on, they don’t have any proof of this. They can’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what was in the letter from the Army. You don’t know what new information Fiske or Rider might have found out in the interim. And Rider’s been practicing law for thirty years. He wouldn’t have filed something he thought was frivolous, not with the damn Supreme Court. And maybe you’re not aware of this, but Supreme Court clerks aren’t exactly dummies. Fiske didn’t drive all the way down there because he thought Harms was a lunatic. From what you told me, the contents of the letters were very specific on what happened in that stockade.”

“They were,”
Rayfield conceded.

“So there you are. But that’s not the biggest hole in all this. Remember, Harms
isn’t
a jailhouse lawyer. He’s never filed anything else in court. If Fiske checks out your claim, he’ll find out you lied. And when Fiske does that — and I have to believe he will — then everything blows up.”

“It’s not like I had a lot of time to think up a plan,”
Ray-field said hotly.

“I’m not saying otherwise. But by lying to him, you just made him a big liability. And we have yet another problem.”

“What’s that?”

“Everything Harms said in his appeal happens to be true. Did you forget that? The truth is funny. You start looking here and there and all of a sudden the wall of lies starts to topple over. Guess where it’s going to land? Do you really want to take that chance? Because when that wall comes down, the only place you’re going to be retiring to is Fort Jackson. And this time on the other side of the prison cell door. That sound good to you, Frank?”

Rayfield took a weary breath and checked his watch.

“Shit, I’d take Nam over this any day.”

“I guess we all got a little too comfortable. Well, it’s time to earn your money, Frank. You and Tremaine just get it done. And while you’re taking care of business, remember this: We all either survive this together, or we all go down together.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, after his debriefing by Rayfield’s assistant, Michael left the prison building and walked in the light rain to his car. What a sucker he’d been. He felt like tearing up the appeal papers, but he wouldn’t. Maybe he’d put them back into the process. Still, he felt sorry for Rufus Harms. All those years in prison had taken their toll. As Michael pulled out of the parking lot, he had no way of knowing that most of his radiator fluid had been collected in a bucket and poured into the nearby woods.

Five minutes later he looked on in dismay as the steam poured out from the hood of his car. He got out, gingerly raised the hood and then jumped back as a cloud of steam momentarily engulfed him. Swearing angrily, he looked around: not a car or human in sight. He thought for a moment. He could walk back to the prison, use the phone and call a towing service. As if on cue, the rain picked up in intensity.

As he looked up ahead of him, his spirits brightened. A van was approaching from the direction of the prison. He waved his arms to flag it down. As he did so he looked back at the car, steam still pouring out. Funny — he had just had it serviced in preparation for the trip. As he looked back at the van, his heart started to beat rapidly. He looked around, and then turned and sprinted away from the van. It sped up and quickly overtook him, blocking his way. He was about to race into the woods when the window came down and a gun was pointed at him.

“Get in,”
Victor Tremaine ordered.

It was Saturday afternoon when Sara Evans drove to Michael’s apartment and looked at the cars parked on the street. His Honda wasn’t there. He had called in sick on Friday, something she had never known him to do before. She had called his apartment, but he hadn’t answered the phone. She parked, went in the building and knocked on his door. There was no answer. She didn’t have a key. She went around to the rear of the building and climbed up the fire escape. She looked in the window of his small kitchen. Nothing. She tried the door, but it was locked. She drove back to the Court, her worries increased tenfold. Michael was not sick, she knew that. All this had something to do with the papers she had seen in his briefcase, she was sure of it. She silently prayed that he was not in over his head. That he was safe, and would be back to work on Monday.

She went back to work for the rest of the day and then had a late dinner with some of the other clerks at a restaurant near Union Station. They all wanted to talk shop, except for Sara. Usually a devoted fan of this ritual, she simply could not get into the conversations. At one point she wanted to run screaming from the room, sick of the endless strategizing, predictions, case selections, the subtlest nuances analyzed to death; mushroom clouds from mere mushrooms.

Later that night she lingered on the rear deck of her home. Then she made up her mind and took her boat out for a late-night sail on the river. She counted the stars, made funny pictures from them in her mind. She thought of Michael’s offer of marriage and the reasons she had refused it. Her colleagues would be amazed that she had. It would be a brilliant match, they would say. They would have a wonderful, dynamic life together, with the almost absolute certainty that their children would be highly intelligent, ambitious and athletically gifted. Sara herself had been a scholarship lacrosse player in college, although Michael was the better athlete of the two.

She wondered whom he would ultimately marry. Or if he even would. Her rejection might cause him to remain a bachelor the rest of his life. As she sailed along, she had to smile. She was giving herself far too much credit. In a year’s time, Michael would be off doing something incredibly fantastic. She would be lucky if he even remembered who she was five years from now.

As she docked her boat and wrapped the sails, she stopped for a moment to catch one last breeze off the water before she headed back to the house. Barely a twenty-minute non-rush-hour trip due north would deliver her to the most powerful city on earth, to her place with the most awe-inspiring legal minds of her time. And yet all she really wanted to do right now was snuggle under her blanket with the lights off and pretend she never had to go back there. Reasonably ambitious all her life, she suddenly had no drive to accomplish anything else of note in her professional life.

It was like she had used up all her energy in getting to this point. Marriage and being a mom? Was that what she wanted? She had no siblings and had been pretty spoiled growing up. She wasn’t used to being around kids all that much, but something pulled at her in this direction. Something very strong. But even so, she wasn’t sure. And shouldn’t she be by now?

As she went inside, undressed and climbed into bed, she realized that having a family required one thing to start: finding someone to love. She had just turned down one opportunity to do so with a truly exceptional man. Would another chance come along? Did she want a man in her life right now? Still, sometimes one shot was all you got. One shot. That was her last thought before falling asleep.

It was Monday and John Fiske sat at his desk, digesting yet another arrest report on one of his clients. By now he was extremely adept at this process. He was only halfway through the report and he could already tell the sort of deal the guy could expect to get. Well, it was nice being good at something.

The knock on his office door startled him. His right hand slid open the top drawer of his desk. Inside was a 9mm, a leftover from his cop days. His clientele were not the most trustworthy. So while he would represent them zealously, he was not naive enough to turn his back on them either. Some of his clients had shown up at his door drugged or drunk, with a grudge against him for some perceived wrong. Thus, his spirits were lifted considerably by the feel of hard steel against his palm.

“Come on in, door’s unlocked.”

The uniformed police officer who stepped through the doorway brought a smile to Fiske’s lips, and he closed his desk drawer.
“Hey, Billy, how you doing?”

“I’ve been better, John,”
Officer Billy Hawkins said.

As Hawkins came forward and sat down, Fiske saw the multicolored bruises on his friend’s face.
“What the hell happened to you?”

Hawkins touched one of the bruises.
“Guy went nuts at a bar the other night, popped me a couple of good ones.”
He added quickly,
“That’s not why I’m here, John.”

Fiske knew Hawkins to be a good-natured sort who didn’t let the constant pressures of his job overwhelm him. He was always as reliable and serious about his job as he was casual and friendly off duty.

Hawkins glanced nervously at Fiske.

“It’s not anything with Bonnie or the kids, is it?”
Fiske asked.