Proof of Intent (37 page)

JoEllen's gaze flicked toward me, then back to Stash's face. “More like two and a half,” she said.

“But closer to two feet than three.”

She shrugged. “As you say, by a hair.”

Stash nodded, looking satisfied, then released the catch on the tape measure. It went zippppp back into the tape case.

“Last question, Ms. Flynn. Why do people choke up on a bat anyway?”

JoEllen Flynn looked at me helplessly. “It swings easier.”

“It swings easier.”

“Swings easier.”

Stash took the bokken back, choked up on it about six inches, swatted once at the air. “You're right. Swings nice and easy.”

That night after trial recessed for the evening, I told Lisa that we were going to have to put Miles on the stand. We were sitting around the office eating what must have been our two hundredth pizza of the past two months.

“Right now we barely have a theory for this case,” I said. “It's all very well to stand up in front of a jury and say, ‘Well, maybe it was a police conspiracy, maybe he was framed by somebody, maybe it was a burglar, gee, we just don't know.' But if you really want reasonable doubt, you want a bad guy, a genuinely plausible alternative suspect. And right now, we don't have one.”

“So how does Miles on the stand help us with that?”

I breathed out heavily. “I've got to get him to talk about Blair. It's the only hope we have.”

“He won't do it,” she said. “You know he won't.”

“It's all we've got.”

“We've got Blair,” she said. “If we can find him.”

“Forget about Blair,” I said sharply.

She looked at me strangely. “What?” she said. I hadn't told her about my little meeting in the office with Blair the other night. The way I looked at it, the less she had to worry about, the better.

“I've got to prepare for tomorrow,” I said. “I don't have time to try finding him.”

“I'll go,” she said.

“Absolutely not. I need you here.”

“I just need to lay a little of that famous Sloan charm on him,” she said, picking up my car keys. “Don't worry, Dad, I can turn him around, I promise you.”

Then she plunged a folded piece of pizza into her face, stood up, and headed for the door, sauce dripping down the side of her chin.

“Lisa, dammit!” I yelled. “Bring back those keys.”

“UHMMmmmhuh-huh,” she said. Then she was gone.

I jumped up to go after her, but tripped over the pizza box and went down on both knees into a large deep dish supreme. By the time I'd gotten to the door, the taillights of my Chrysler were already heading up the road.

I started shivering when I came back inside and couldn't stop for almost an hour. I turned the heat up, which made the room hotter but did nothing to get rid of my memory of Blair Dane's cold eyes, or the dead quality of his voice.

I woke up in my office the next morning at around six and looked outside. My car was not in its space. I called my home number, but nobody answered. I felt a nervous tickle again.
It would be fine
, I told myself. She wouldn't be able to find him, so she'd come home with her tail between her legs. Hell, she was probably driving over to the office right now.

I tried to think about what was in front of me for the day. Worst-case scenario, I had to be ready to close before lunch. I started going over the questions I'd need to ask Miles.

By seven o'clock I was getting antsy: I still hadn't heard from Lisa, still didn't know where my car was.

My house is only about six blocks from the office, so I hiked over, grabbing a bag of doughnuts from the bakery at the IGA on the way. When I got to the house, there was no car. Inside, no coffee made, no messages on the phone, no evidence that Lisa had slept in her bed. Now I really
was
getting nervous.

I looked at the clock. Seven-thirty-five. I was due in court at nine, so I called for a cab. I had to spell my name three times to the cab dispatcher. He was Indian or Pakistani, and I only understood about one word in three that he said. After I hung up the phone, I started pacing around the room, going over my closing in my mind. Problem was, I had to prepare two different arguments. One was the Blair-did-it speech. The other was the mushy reasonable doubt speech. I was feeling dreadfully, woefully underprepared.

I got so absorbed in my speech that when I looked at the clock again I was surprised to see that it was eight-seventeen. The cab still hadn't arrived. My house was about a ten-minute drive from the courthouse. Plus I had to drop by the office. Call it fifteen minutes.

I picked up the phone to dial the cab company, but the line seemed dead when I held it up to my ear.

“Hello?” a puzzled-sounding voice said after a moment.

“Lisa,” I said. “Thank God. Where are you?”

“Outside Saginaw.”

“Saginaw!” Saginaw was almost two hours away. “What are you doing there?”

“Long story. Anyway, I think I got Blair. He's been crashing with some jailhouse buddy.”

“You
think
?”

“He's here, okay? I'm with him. I think I can get him to testify.”

“Leave him be. It's too dangerous.”

“I got to go before he skips on me.” She sounded harried and strung out. I was worried that she had been drinking—though it may have just been the fatigue in her voice.

“I can't put him on the stand if you're in Saginaw.”

“Then stall. Either we'll be there or . . . Oh shit!”

The phone went dead in my ear. I looked at the clock. Eight-twenty-one. My heart was beating like a trip-hammer. If the cab didn't get here soon, I'd be late.

I called the cab company. “Sloan,” I said. “Charley Sloan. Where's my cab?”

“Who?”

Why oh why oh why had I not taken three hours out of my day at some point in the past two months to buy Lisa a car? We had talked about doing it every other day, but then something else always seemed to come up.

It took another five minutes to impress on the Indian cab dispatcher the urgency of my situation. Finally, he assured me that a cab would be there in three minutes. Or maybe five. “But eight minutes, tops, my friend! Or nine! Absolute tops, nine! Or twelve!”

I slammed the phone down before his numbers got any higher.

The cab arrived fifteen minutes later, belching blue smoke. According to my calculations, if everything went perfectly, I'd be strolling into court at precisely one minute before nine.

About halfway to my office, the ancient cab's engine gave out and the cab settled on the side of the road. The driver began talking in excited Hindi or Bengali or Urdu on his radio.

“How long?” I said.

“Relax, my friend.” He turned and gave me a big smile. “The cavalry is on the way.”

“How long?”

He shrugged, easily. “Oh, certainly no more than an hour.”

I dug my cell phone out of my briefcase. The battery, of course, was dead.

“How pleased I am that you have condescended to join us, Mr. Sloan.” Judge Evola's toothy smile was as cold as my fingers. The jury was already seated, the Court TV camera running, everybody looking ready for a hanging. I'd hitchhiked, grabbed a ride from a kid in a VW bug with a broken window and no heat. It was almost ten o'clock, and I was so cold I couldn't feel my fingers.

“My deepest apologies to the court,” I said. “I had car trouble and a broken cell phone, then the—”

Evola interrupted me with a wave of his big hand. “Well I hope the cat didn't eat your next witness.” Laughter from the jury box. I looked over at the jury. They were glaring at me. It was written all over their faces: I was the scumbag lawyer holding things up while his guilty client sat there trying to look innocent. I got the feeling that unless I did something awfully dramatic, Miles Dane was going down.

Other than Blair Dane there was only one more witness on my list. The one witness I had prayed I wouldn't have to use.

“Your Honor, if I could beg the court's indulgence, I'd like just the briefest of moments to confer with my client.”

“No doubt you would. That privilege, however, is reserved for those who arrive on time to this court. Call your next witness, Mr. Sloan.”

Notwithstanding the judge's instructions, I leaned over and whispered to Miles, “It's your call. Are you willing to roll the dice on reasonable doubt?”

Miles knew what the score was. We'd discussed the pros and cons of his testimony several times. What I had said to him was that he would only testify if it seemed that the jury would really have to stretch to find reasonable doubt.

Miles stared bleakly in front of him. “I don't feel like rolling the dice on reasonable doubt right now,” he said finally.

“I have to warn you,” I whispered, “this won't be pretty.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning, if you go up there, you're putting yourself in my hands. You just have to trust that I have your best interests at heart.”

He stared straight ahead for a long time, his fingers gripping the table like someone was about to drag him away to his death. “Do it,” he said finally.

“Whatever it takes?”

“Whatever it takes.”

This wasn't a clear license to introduce Blair, but it gave me room to do what I needed to do. “Your Honor,” I said in my courtroom voice, “the defense calls Miles Dane.”

The journalists in the back of the room all stirred. This was it, the money shot, the part they'd all been waiting for.

Miles walked slowly to the stand. He looked small, tired, drawn, old. Not the romantic figure he used to cut. No black clothes, no cowboy boots, no shoulder holster. His white shirt was too big around the neck, and his blue suit hung a little low in the cuff. He looked like an accountant who was coming due for retirement. The only thing left was those haunted gray eyes.

I walked into the middle of the room, waited until every eye was on me. I could feel the Court TV camera focused on my back. I paused for a moment. My heart had been beating wildly, but now, suddenly I felt calm and strong, as though all the energy of those thousands and thousands of eyeballs had just been sucked into my chest, filling me with certainty and power.

“Mr. Dane,” I said. My voice was loud, slow, grave, strong. “You are a liar. Aren't you?”

Miles's eyes widened. I don't know what he expected me to say, but it damn sure wasn't that.

His mouth opened and closed.

“I mean seriously,” I said. I put my hand in my pocket, strolled toward him, eased my tone into a conversational gear. “Come on. 'Fess up. You're a big fat stinking liar, am I right?”

“What?” He had finally managed to find a voice.

“Your story. The mysterious and nefarious cat burglar sneaks into your office . . .” I widened my eyes comically and wiggled my fingers in the air. “. . . and he steals this stick and then silently creams your wife for fifteen minutes and then jumps nimbly out the second-floor window without leaving so much as a dent in the ground? Give me a break. It's the most cockamamie bunch of baloney I've ever heard in my life. Wouldn't you agree?”

He stared at me. Judge Evola stared at me. The jury stared. Even Stash Olesky was surprised—and he knew I didn't mind throwing a curveball when I was behind in the count.

I strolled over to the clerk's seat, picked up State's Exhibit 37, that black piece of wood carved in the shape of a samurai sword, walked down the center aisle between the pews until I reached the back of the room. The camera panned as I walked, and everybody in the room turned their heads as I walked past them.

Everybody in the room except one: Sitting on a chair next to the door was a man who appeared to be asleep. He wore a green Starter jacket, jeans, and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap pulled down low over his face. “Hey!” I said. “Are we boring you?”

The man didn't stir.

“Wake up!” I poked him with the murder weapon.

No answer.

My face gave the impression that the sleeping man had really pissed me off. I rared back, then swung the murder weapon, smashing the man in the head with the stick. The stick made a resounding whack, and the man's hat flew through the air. People gasped.

It was a dummy, of course, leaned up against the wall by the kid who'd given me the ride in his VW. I'd given him twenty bucks for his trouble. But still, for a second there, it had looked pretty real.

I whacked the dummy savagely again. The sound resounded through the room. Then again, then again. The poor fellow slipped over sideways, fell on the floor. I kept whacking him until Judge Evola came out of his shock and began beating his gavel on the bench.

“Congratulations, Mr. Sloan,” Judge Evola shouted, his voice barely audible above the sound of the stick. “You've just earned yourself a one-thousand-dollar fine for that performance.”

I kept smashing away until Evola sicced the bailiff on me. The bailiff—a big corn-fed guy with a tricked-out .45 auto on his hip and a look in his eye like he'd just love an excuse to knock a couple of my teeth out—didn't have much trouble restraining me. And honestly, I didn't fight all that hard. By then Evola was shouting something about jail time.

“Let's have a recess,” Evola said, when things had finally quieted down.

He cleared the courtroom.

“I'm making a point, a permissible demonstration,” I said.

“And I'm making you pay the treasurer of Kerry County a thousand dollars for making a joke out of this courtroom. A thousand dollars
and
a week in the county lockup. And if you think I'm letting you get a mistrial for this stunt, you're dreaming, Sloan.” He put his hand over the microphone, and whispered, “Now step your ass back.”