The Accused and the Damned: Book Three, the Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 3) (5 page)

Spencer was in his office at seven the next morning. Ross met him there. The cop looked like he’d logged three hours of sleep. Spencer, on the other hand, had gotten his usual five. He rarely slept more than that these days with his reflux.

“Well,” Spencer said. “I haven’t heard from anybody yet.”

“You will.” Ross sat down. “He finally lawyered up.”

“Green?”

Ross nodded. “But he didn’t use his call on Green. He used it on Giles Tyson.”

Spencer finished his first cup of coffee and went for his second. He refilled his mug and offered one to Ross.

“Trying to quit.”

Spencer shrugged and came back to the desk. “Your expert medical opinion: is Anson cracked?”

Ross squinted. “He’s lucid. He believes what he’s saying, or he’s a better actor than Daniel Day-Lewis.”

“Fuck.” Spencer fished out a cigarette. “And that fits with no premeditation. Sounds like the guy just had a break from reality and killed his wife. Or, killed his wife and checked out. I don’t like either scenario.”

Ross squirmed in his chair, decided to sit on his words.

Spencer indulged the cop. He was a good guy after all. “Councilman Towson is out for blood. You and I are in the same boat here. If we don’t deliver Anson’s head on a fucking platter, it won’t bode well for us. And believe me, Towson won’t be happy unless we get a life sentence.”

“He doesn’t want the death penalty?”

“Of course he does. But he’s on shaky ground and it’s an election year. He won’t come out and say that.”

“Okay, then.” Ross stood. “The report’s filed. Our guy has lawyered up. What are you going to do?”

Spencer took a long drag on his cigarette, felt the delicious poison enter his lungs. “Charge him now. Not much on the docket and I can get this expedited. Not even Green will buy this line of defense. He’ll push Anson to take a deal. Problem is we can’t offer anything less than life with the Councilman involved. So we’re looking at a trial. He’d plead Monday, get a month of discovery at most, then the big show. Trial could start three weeks from Monday. Anson Ketcher will be convicted before Labor Day. Everybody can drink to his life sentence on the long weekend, the son of a bitch.”

Before eight AM, Anson was booked and processed. They took his watch, wallet, belt, and cell phone. Asked for his keys but Anson didn’t have them. They checked his pockets to make sure. He had nothing else on his person. Then he was given the standard-issue jumpsuit and moved to a holding cell.             

* * * *

Councilman Bennett Towson wore a charcoal grey sweater over black chinos and stood in front of his three-story house. It was unusually cold for an August morning. His breath came out in foggy gasps.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic loss.” For once, he didn’t have to work up his emotions to play to the crowd of reporters on his lawn. “There are no words to describe a father’s feelings under these circumstances. My little girl is…gone. The District Attorney and local law enforcement are hard at work, and I commend them for their professionalism. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be with my family and I’d appreciate it if you could respect our privacy during this awful time.”

The politician turned and was halfway in his door when a reporter in the front of the crowd raised her voice above the others. “Councilman, do you think your son-in-law was responsible or involved in the death of your daughter?”

Towson hesitated the required political second before answering, so his true feelings didn’t surface. “I myself don’t have all the information that the police and the DA have, so I can’t comment yet. But I applaud the tireless efforts of the prosecutor and local law enforcement. These people are the glue that holds our community together.”

The politician went back inside and shut the door. His wife stood, teary-eyed and hugging herself, in the foyer next to the double staircase. He wrapped her in a hug.

“Spencer better fucking nail this guy, or I’ll find a way to kill him myself,” the Councilman said.

Eddie turned the shower off and heard the phone ringing. He wrapped a towel around his waist and left wet footprints on the carpet as he hurried to answer it.

He didn’t recognize the number. “Eddie McCloskey.”

“Edward, old friend. I need your help.”

The voice was familiar but it took Eddie a moment to place it. “…Giles Tyson… how the hell are you?”

“Not good, Edward.”

“I gathered that, since you’re calling me.”

“How soon can you get here?”

“Upstate New York?” Eddie thought about it. “I need to eat something, pack, then drive. Seven hours.”

“Could you get here any sooner?”

“Faster than light travel hasn’t been invented yet. And I don’t own a DeLorean.”

“Please hurry. I hate to call in a favor like this but I need your help. It’s—”

“I know. It’s about that guy that claimed a ghost killed his wife.”

If Giles was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Yes. Anson will be convicted, unless you help him.”

Eddie laughed. “Guess there’s a first time for everything.”

* * * *

Eddie had read about it online when it first came to light. Some clown from upstate New York had been arrested following his wife’s murder and told police that a ghost had done the deed. Eddie would have forgotten all about it but for the fact that said clown’s friend was referenced in the article: Giles Tyson.

Eddie got his things together quickly and jumped in the car.

During the drive, Giles gave Eddie the background on the situation, the deceased, and the accused. It took three hours. They hung up and Eddie still had another two plus hours to drive. All told he traveled two-hundred and seventy miles by the time he exited I-87. He’d been to Giles’s house once before years ago and the terrain was still familiar to him. He followed his GPS and drove another thirty minutes through beautiful country.

Another town, another state, another job. He’d pushed hard the last eight months and had hustled six ways to Sunday to get his business up and running. A couple of months of smooth sailing, but now the bills were piling up.

Not good.

He was experiencing an acute case of Good Samaritan remorse and now questioned his decision to forego payment from the Chins a few weeks ago. The two hundred bucks from the last job would have at least covered travel expenses and food for a couple days. And now here he was, racking up the mileage, paying New York tolls, on what would probably be another charity job that offered the added bonus of endangering his professional reputation. All because he owed Giles Tyson a favor.

Eddie knew enough about himself to know he had to learn a lot more about business.

But Eddie had developed the good habit of repaying old debts, both financial and moral. And he reminded himself that it was another job. He’d worked steadily for seven months, which was saying something.

New town to explore, different mentality. He could add this experience to that ever-expanding autobiography. It would broaden him, stretch him.

The fields zipped past and the cows and horses couldn’t be bothered to turn around and watch him as he drove by. He’d call Giles’s town backwoods but that would sound derogatory. These people might not have had the culture of the hipsters strutting around the theater district in the Big Apple, but they had their own mores. Their own unique collective spin on the world and politics and customs.

The three Cs on the radio. Country, classic rock, Christian. Some crossover between the three, but nothing else. Eddie wasn’t religious. He didn’t believe in the all-powerful invisible man in the sky even though he’d experienced the paranormal. He didn’t mind other people being religious. So long as they weren’t flying planes into buildings or telling him what to do in his bedroom or blatantly ignoring the fossil record.

To his right, the trees broke and an old cast iron fence began. Eddie slowed and in the mid afternoon sun could make out the scores of tombstones, standing up like crooked rows of teeth that had never been braced. Many of them old, weather-worn, made illegible by time. This cemetery reminded him of the place his parents had been laid to rest over twenty years ago. The grounds consisted of a big, sweeping plain surrounded by forest off a quiet road. Big woods all around where a guy could get lost for days.

The cemetery gate was open. It looked like it had been left open fifty years ago and like you’d never get it shut now, not even with Schwarzenegger spotting you.

Eddie steered between the two gargoyled pillars and followed the main artery, driving slowly through the cemetery. They weren’t planting anybody today. In the distance, he could make out Giles’s home.

The deeper he went, the more recent the markers were. Private mausoleums popped up with family names displayed in proud Roman font. Eddie felt what he always felt inside a graveyard: isolation. The dead might be laid to rest in neat little rows next to one another, their graves decorated by floral arrangements and expensive stones, but they were all alone, rotting away in their coffins in the earth.

Giles’s house grew in Eddie’s windshield.

Giles had led a unique childhood. The son of the local caretaker, he’d grown up surrounded by dead people which in turn had sparked and fueled his interest in the paranormal. In the summers, he’d camped out not in the woods, but among the tombstones. His father, a reserved and aloof man, had not discouraged this. Giles had never spoken of his mother, but Eddie knew the woman had left when Giles was just a boy. As a teen, Giles took on the unpopular role of guardian, chasing away his fellow classmates who’d snuck into the cemetery to smoke up or vandalize.

Giles and his father had always lived on the grounds, but Giles lived no caretaker’s modest existence. After his father died at an early age, Giles inherited the house. There was no mortgage to pay, only the taxes. As Giles grew a lucrative paranormal business and made his book deals, he’d slowly expanded his home, installing an addition, a guest house and a pool. The result was a sprawling house that impressed but defied order and logic. From one side, it appeared more compound than home while from the other side, it looked like a country estate out of an Austen novel.

Eddie parked in front of the three-car garage next to a luxury class SUV that looked like it had come from the future and was so expensive it probably cost money just sitting there. It had vanity plates:

ESKWIRE

That would be the lawyer’s car.

The garage bays were all open, and Eddie saw Giles’s own SUV and hybrid.

Eddie got out of the car and stretched his legs. Followed the terra cotta steps that wrapped around the house and led to the entrance. A gargoyle knocker gave him the evil eye from the front door. Eddie opted for the doorbell. It rang loud and clear. He heard the methodical ticking of a grandfather clock in the foyer.

Giles opened the door. His hair was long and slicked back and he wore a day’s worth of stubble.

“Thank God you’re here, Edward.”

They did the man-hug and Eddie stepped out of the August humidity inside to the coolness of the AC. Giles’s house reminded him of Orson Welles’s in Citizen Kane. It was old, ornate, overly-furnished, heavily carpeted, heavily tapestried, and there were a lot expensive knick-knacks. Portraits on the walls with eyes that seemed to follow you. More gargoyles carved on the top of a mirrored bureau.

It was like Giles was going for the haunted house look.

The house was also a maze. It was a shame Giles had no children to play hide-and-seek with. Eddie lost his sense of place after the fourth turn, and they still hadn’t arrived in the den. Eddie thought of DC and that old bullshit urban legend about how the nation’s capitol was purposely designed to be confusing as a means of discouraging or thwarting an attack on the Federal government.

“I should have brought my GPS. I’ll need it to find the bathroom,” Eddie said.

Giles didn’t laugh but nodded his appreciation of the joke.

They made a final turn and Eddie stepped into the den. Cigar smoke hung in the air, and a squat, heavy-set man stood at the other end of the room. He’d been admiring some painting on the wall and turned with great ceremony to face Eddie and Giles.

He was seventy if he was a day.

“Counselor,” Giles said, “I’d like to introduce you to my good friend, Edward McCloskey.”

“Mr. McCloskey.” The lawyer’s voice rattled like an old engine trying to turn over. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Denard Green.”

Eddie shook the man’s pudgy, soft hand. “Likewise. Call me Eddie.”

The lawyer smiled, and Eddie could see the truth behind that smile. Already the man had classified him as unprofessional, possibly a liability. Lawyers were usually good at judging people, but they always got Eddie wrong because he didn’t fit any pre-defined stereotype. He was uneducated but intelligent. He was an ex-con but a business owner. That was fine with Eddie, though. He preferred to be underestimated.

Giles gestured toward the ashtray and sleeve of stogies sitting on the purely ornamental desk. “Smoke, Edward? They’re Cubans.”

“No thanks.”

The room was designed to impress. Which meant it didn’t impress Eddie. There was a pool table with leather pockets in the corner that looked as new as the lawyer’s SUV outside. A stuffed bear’s head in the corner, the mouth frozen perpetually in mid-roar. A dead owl, paused in flight, over the door. A rifle case affixed to the wall. Book shelves filled with old, dusty, expensive looking volumes, like Giles had robbed a Victorian home in England.

“Nice pad,” Eddie said. “Tim always loved this place.”

Giles smiled as if he didn’t expect Eddie to get the house. “It keeps the rain off my head.”

Green picked up a highball glass and swirled the brown liquid inside before sipping from it. Eddie waited for somebody to say something.

Giles finally did.

“We need your help, Edward. A good friend of mine has been charged with murder.”

“Interesting defense he’s got going.” Eddie looked at the lawyer. “Think you can make it fly in Court?”

Green grunted. “I’ve been a defense attorney for forty-five years. In that time, I’ve used every argument at my disposal. You’d be amazed at what I’ve been successful with. But this one…” He shook his head, took another sip of his drink. “This one I don’t know about. No Court has ever recognized a paranormal defense before. It will come down largely to the expert testimony we offer.”

Eddie felt the weight of the room on him. The lawyer approached him.

“If the jury believes you then maybe, just maybe, they’ll believe my client.”

“No pressure, right?”

The lawyer didn’t smile. Didn’t even blink. Then the lawyer looked past Eddie at Giles, his eyes full of judgment.

“Let’s talk about the elephants in the room,” Eddie said. “Why not go for insanity? This paranormal defense has about as much chance as a blind man at a poker table.”

“Anson refuses.” Green shook his head. “And he’s not crazy.”

Eddie shrugged. “Okay. Why not plead this down?”

Green said, “He told me if I tried to plead this down he’ll fire me and rep himself. That would be even worse for him.”

“You’re a lawyer. Why not just lean on him? You’ve had almost two weeks to convince him otherwise.”

“He’s the worst kind of client, Eddie. He thinks he’s innocent.”

“Is he?”

Green grunted. Giles watched both of them over the rim of his glass.

Eddie smiled. “So he’s holding you emotionally hostage. You must be related.”

Green took a long pull from his cigar. “That boy is my grand-nephew and goddamnit I’m going to represent him to the best of my abilities.”

“I’m not judging, just asking. And the Courts are all over the place about the paranormal.”

The lawyer and Giles exchanged a look. Eddie smiled. He loved showing people how wrong they were about him.

“Some lady claiming to be a psychic sued a construction company after a beam fell and hit her on the head. She claimed she’d lost her psychic abilities following the accident and in addition to the usual claim for pain and suffering and medical expenses she tried to recover lost future earnings for her psychic business. The Court wouldn’t allow it.”

Green smoked his cigar and Giles gave the lawyer an
I told you so
smile.

Eddie continued. “My favorite is Stambovsky v. Ackley. New York case too, that limited the principle of buyer beware. Poor Jeffrey Stambovsky bought a house that the Ackleys forgot to tell him was haunted. The paranormal claims were probably bullshit, but the Court didn’t care. The Ackleys had advertised that the house was haunted, so this was local knowledge that diminished the value of the property. Stambovsky wasn’t from the area and had no way of knowing, short of the Ackleys telling him. The Court ruled that the house was legally haunted, a fact that should have been disclosed to the buyer during negotiations.”

The lawyer reappraised Eddie.

Eddie said, “I read a lot.”

Green grunted. “There’s no precedent in New York criminal law for what we’re doing. If this were a civil trial, you wouldn’t get anywhere near the witness stand but since we’re talking about a man’s life and liberty, the Court won’t exclude your testimony.”