Last Man Standing (16 page)

There had been some question as to whether Free would be tried in federal or state courts. While it was believed that the
school was targeted because it was a cutting-edge magnet school for integration and enhancement of race relations, and Free’s
racist views were well known, it still would have been hard to prove, Leadbetter recognized. To start with, the three people
killed—the two teachers and the young boy—were white, and thus prosecuting Free under a federal hate crime statute looked
relatively weak. And while technically Free could have been charged with assaults on federal officers, it seemed the best
shot was to make things simple and try him in state court and seek the death penalty for the multiple murders. The result
was not one any of them had intended.

“No, Judge,” replied the marshal, snapping Leadbetter out of his reminiscing. The marshal had been looking out for Leadbetter
for a while now and they had quickly established a good rapport. “If you ask me, that man’s plan is to head to Mexico and
then on to South America. Hook up with some Nazis, people of his own kind.”

“Well, I hope they get him and put him right back where he belongs,” said Leadbetter.

“Oh, they probably will. Feds are on it and they sure got the resources.”

“I wanted that bastard to get the death penalty. That’s what he deserved.” It was one of the few regrets that Leadbetter had
as a circuit court judge. But Free’s defense counsel had, of course, raised the issue of insanity and even tiptoed along the
fringe of alleging a claim of brainwashing by the “cult,” as he had described the organization Free belonged to. The attorney
was just doing his job, and in the minds of the prosecution, it apparently had raised just enough doubt about the odds of
a solid conviction that they had struck a deal with Free’s counsel before the jury had come back in. Instead of a potential
death penalty, Free had gotten twenty to life with the possibility, however slight, that he might someday be paroled. Leadbetter
hadn’t agreed with the deal, yet he really had no choice but to sign off on it. The media had taken an informal poll of the
jury later. Free had the real last laugh then. All jury members would have voted for conviction and all would have recommended
the death penalty. The press had had a field day with that one. Everyone had ended up with egg on his face. Free had been
transferred, for a variety of reasons, to a maximum security prison in the Midwest. That was the place he had escaped from.

Leadbetter looked over at his briefcase. Folded neatly inside was a copy of his beloved
New York Times.
Leadbetter had been born and attended school in New York City before heading south and settling in Richmond. The transplanted
Yankee loved his new home, but each evening when he got home, exactly one hour was spent reading the
Times.
It had been his habit for all his years on the bench and his copy was specially delivered to the courthouse before he left
each day. It was one of the few acts of relaxation the man was able to enjoy anymore.

As the marshal drove out of the court’s garage, his phone rang and the answered it. “What’s that? Yes, sir, Judge. Yes, sir,
I’ll tell him.” He put the phone down and said, “That was Judge Mackey. He said to tell you to look at the last inside page
of the front section of the
Times
if you want to see something really amazing.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No, sir, just that you were to look and then to call him right back.”

Leadbetter glanced at the paper, his curiosity running high. Mackey was a good friend and his intellectual interests ran similar
to Leadbetter’s. If Mackey thought something fascinating, probably so would he. They were stopped at a light now. That was
good because Leadbetter couldn’t read in a moving car without getting violently ill. He pulled the paper out, but it was too
dark to see in the car. He reached over and turned on the reading light switch and opened the paper.

The annoyed marshal looked back and said, “Judge, I told you not to be turning that light on. It makes you a durn sitting
duck—”

The tinkle of glass stopped the marshal cold, that and the sight of Judge Louis Leadbetter toppling facedown onto his precious
New York Times,
its pages now soiled with his blood.

K
evin Westbrook’s mother, Web learned, was probably dead, though no one could tell him for sure. She had disappeared years
before. A meth and crack addict, she had most likely ended her life with the prick of a dirty needle or snort of impure powder.
The identity of Kevin’s father was unknown. Apparently these were not unusual gaps in personal history in the world where
Kevin Westbrook dwelled. Web drove down to a section of Anacostia even the cops avoided, to a crummy, falling-down duplex
amid others just like it where Kevin reportedly lived with a hodgepodge of second cousins, great-aunts, distant, kind of,
sort of uncles or step brother-in-laws. Web wasn’t really clear on the boy’s living situation and, apparently, neither was
anyone else. It was the new and improved American nuclear family. The area looked like a reactor had been hemorrhaging nearby
for a few decades. Apparently, no flowers or trees could grow here; the grass in the small yards was a sickly yellow; even
the dogs and cats in the street looked ready to keel over. Every person, place and thing looked totally used up.

Inside, the duplex was a dump. From outdoors the stench of rotting garbage was overpowering, and indoors there were offensive
odors heightened even more by the close quarters. This lethal combination hit Web so hard when he walked through the doorway,
he thought he might end up kissing the floor. Lord, he’d take tear gas over this homemade toxin any day.

The people who sat across from him didn’t look unduly worried that Kevin was not among them. Maybe the child routinely disappeared
after a shootout of staggering proportions. A sulky young man sat on the couch. “We already talked to the cops,” he said,
more spitting the words at Web than saying them.

“Just following up,” said Web, who didn’t want to think about what Bates would do to him if he found out Web was nosing around
on his own. Well, he owed it to Riner and the other guys, to hell with official Bureau policy. Still, the butterflies were
numerous and reproducing freely in his belly.

“Shut your mouth, Jerome,” said the grandma-type who sat next to Jerome. She had silver hair, big glasses, an enormous bosom
and a no-bullshit attitude. She had not given Web her name and he had not pushed it; it was in the FBI file no doubt, but
he had tracked it down from other sources. She was as large as a small car and looked like she could take Jerome, no problem.
Hell, it looked like she could take
Web,
no problem. She had asked to see Web’s badge and credentials twice before unchaining the door. “I don’t like letting people
I don’t know into my house,” she explained. “Police or otherwise. This area ain’t been safe for as long as I can remember.
And that’s from
both
sides of the table.” She said this with raised eyebrows and a knowing look that penetrated right to Web’s federal law enforcement
soul.

I really don’t want to be here,
Web wanted to tell her,
particularly since I’m holding my breath so I won’t puke.
When Web sat down he could see between the wide cracks in the floorboards all the way down to the hard clay the house was
built on. This place must be toasty warm in the winter, he thought. It was about sixty-five outside right now and it felt
like thirty inside. There was no comforting sound of a furnace going and no smells of good food simmering in Grandma’s nice
kitchen. In one corner of the room was a pile of diet Pepsi cans. Somebody was watching her weight. Yet next to that was a
mound of McDonald’s trash. Probably Jerome’s, thought Web. He looked like a Big Mac and fries kind of guy. “I can understand
that,” said Web. “Have you lived here long?”

Jerome simply snorted while Granny looked down at her clasped hands. She said, “Three months. Other place we were in, we’d
been there a long time. Had it fixed up nice.”

“But then they decided we made too much money to be living in such a nice place, and they kicked us out,” added Jerome angrily.
“Just kicked us out.”

“Nobody said life was fair, Jerome,” she told him. She looked around the filthy place and drew in a heavy breath that seemed
to drain all of Web’s hope away. “We gonna fix this place up too. It’ll be fine.” She didn’t sound too sure, Web noted.

“Have the police made any progress on Kevin’s disappearance?”

“Why don’t you go ask them?” asked Grandma. “Because they ain’t telling us nothing ’bout poor Kevin.”

“
They
lost his ass,” said Jerome as he slid farther down into the mound of sagging, heavily stained cushions that passed for a
couch. Web couldn’t even tell if there was a frame left. The ceiling was split open in three different spots that Web could
see and it sagged down so far you almost didn’t need stairs to get to the second floor, you could just reach and pull yourself
up. The walls had black mold growing over them, and there was probably lead paint in there as well. And no doubt asbestos
clung around the pipes. There was rodent excrement everywhere, and Web would have bet a thousand bucks that termites had eaten
most of the wood in the place, which was probably why it had that little lean to the left he had observed as he had come up
the front sidewalk. The building inspectors must have just written off this whole area, or else they were drinking coffee
somewhere and laughing their butts off.

“Do you have a picture of Kevin?”

“Course we do, gave one to the police,” said Grandma.

“Got another?”

“Hey, we ain’t got to keep giving you stuff,” snarled Jerome.

Web leaned forward and let the grip of his pistol show very prominently. “Yes, Jerome, you do. And if you don’t lose the attitude,
I’ll just haul your ass downtown and we can go over your record for any outstanding warrants that’ll put your little butt
away for a while, unless you want to try and bullshit me and claim you’ve never been arrested, slick.”

Jerome looked away and muttered, “Shit.”

“Shut up, Jerome,” said Grandma. “You just shut your damn mouth.”

There you go, Granny,
Web thought.

She pulled out a little wallet and lifted out a photo. She handed it across to Web, and when she did, her fingers started
to tremble a little and her voice caught in her throat, but then she straightened everything out. “That’s my last picture
of Kevin. Please don’t lose it.”

“I’ll take good care of it. You’ll get it back.”

Web glanced down at the photo. It was Kevin. At least the Kevin Web had saved in the alley. So the kid Cortez and Romano had
babysat was somebody else who had lied and said he was Kevin Westbrook. That took some planning, but it also would have to
have been on the fly. And yet for what purpose?

“You said you gave the police a photo of Kevin?”

Grandma nodded. “He’s a good boy. He goes to school, you know, most every day he does. A special school because he’s a real
special little boy,” she added proudly.

Down here, Web knew, going to school was an accomplishment to tout, perhaps second only to surviving the night.

“I’m sure he is a good boy.” He looked over at wild-eyed, felony-in-waiting Jerome.
You were a good boy too once, weren’t you, Jerome?
“Were they uniformed police?”

Jerome stood. “What, you think that we’re stupid? They was FBI, man, just like you.”

“Sit down, Jerome,” said Web.

“Sit down, Jerome,” said Grandma, and Jerome sat.

Web thought rapidly. So if the Bureau had a photo of Kevin, then they had to know that they’d had the wrong boy, however briefly,
in custody. Or did they? Romano had been clueless about there being two boys. He had just described him as a black kid. What
if that was the entire official report? If the fake Kevin Westbrook had disappeared before Bates and the others got on the
scene, then all they’d know was a black kid around ten years old named Kevin Westbrook who lived at such-and-such address
near the alley was missing. They’d come here and talk to the family, get a picture, like they had done, and go about their
investigation. It’s not like they’d for sure go ask Romano and Cortez for a positive ID, especially if they had no reason
to suspect a switch. And Ken McCarthy had said the snipers hadn’t gotten a look at the real Kevin when Charlie Team had passed
him on the way in. Perhaps only Web knew about the deception.

Web looked around, and for the sake of the grandmother, or whatever her relation to Kevin was, he tried hard not to show his
disgust. “Did Kevin actually live here?” Bates had said Kevin’s home life was miserable and that he probably avoided it when
he could, which would explain why he’d been out alone in the middle of the night instead of here in bed. The physical surroundings
truly were awful, but probably no worse than many of the other homes down here. Poverty and crime were everywhere and the
marks they left were in no way pretty. Yet Granny seemed solid as a rock. A good person, and it seemed like she genuinely
cared for Kevin. Why would he avoid her?

Granny and Jerome exchanged a glance. “Most of the time,” said Granny.

“Where would he live other times?”

Neither of them said a word. He watched as Granny looked at her very substantial lap and Jerome closed his eyes and swayed
his head, apparently to some bitchin’ music in his head.

“I understand Kevin has a brother. Does Kevin live with him
sometimes
?”

Jerome’s eyes popped open and Granny stopped looking at her lap. In fact, from the expressions on their faces it was as though
Web were pointing a gun at them and had just told the pair to kiss their respective butts good-bye.

“Don’t know him, never seen him,” said Grandma quickly as she sat there rocking back and forth like something suddenly was
hurting her. She didn’t look like she could take anybody right now. She looked like an old woman scared out of her wits.