The Judgment (20 page)

There was really nothing to do but go back to Kerry County Police Headquarters, where Sam Evans had been kept overnight in one of the basement holding cells, and explain the situation to him. Just how much of it he would understand was anybody’s guess. And when they took him into Interrogation Room Three again, I ought to be there with him.

It was such a short drive over there that I was tempted to leave the car and walk. But the light snow that had fallen the night before—less than an inch—had barely begun to melt, and I’d neglected to wear my galoshes. It was a cold, clammy morning, with no sun in sight. All this, admittedly not much, was enough to quell my momentary impulse to exercise. No wonder I was getting so soft around the middle.

I jumped into the car and moved it from one parking lot to another about a block and a half away. I looked forward to seeing Sue with some degree of dread. Tramping over to the department entrance and up the steps, I thought about her and what we had, almost in the past tense. It seemed to me there was very little chance of putting things back together again. What I had said to her the night before had been right. It was certain we would eventually find ourselves in opposition, so perhaps it was better that it happened sooner than later. Nevertheless, I should have fought clear of this one. Stash himself said she’d gotten too close to it.

I wasn’t quite prepared for what awaited me inside the door. There was a small crowd around Tony Makarides’s
desk. Stash Olesky was there and Bud Billings, as well as a fellow in his twenties I recognized as a reporter for the Port Huron
Times-Herald.
But old man Evans was there, too, angry and loud, in that rasping voice of his. A uniform cop was on his way over to quiet him down. But the real surprise was that right there, in the middle of it all, looking befuddled by all the fuss, was young Sam Evans.

Stash grabbed me the moment I stepped inside and pulled me away from the door. “Get rid of this guy, will you, Charley?” Meaning the immensely convivial Delbert Evans, of course. “The kid from the
Times-Herald
is taking all this down.” And it was true enough: The reporter had his notebook out and his ballpoint going as he looked up and down from the pad to the man who was doing all the talking.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

“They found another body, a boy this time, been out all night on Beulah Road.” Stash’s face was fixed in a painful grimace.

“Around Hub City?”

“More or less. Sue’s gone out there. Report didn’t come in until about fifteen minutes ago. For some reason everyone drove right on by this time.” He was agitated and miserable. “Where were you? I called your office as soon as I heard.”

“I was trying to get a
Habeas Corpus
past Judge Brown.”

“You won’t need one now. Your boy’s been checked out of here. Musta been some old beer cans and a bunch of pizza crusts underneath that tarp in his car. Now, if we could just get him and that father of his to leave.”

The cop had Delbert by the elbow and was pushing him toward the door, and the reporter was trailing along. So was Sam. It was going pretty well until old man Evans happened to turn and see me. He jerked away from the cop and came at me like a pit bull.

“And you!” he sneered. “You were useless, worse than useless. You and the cops cooked up that phony deal keepin’
Sam in jail, didn’tcha? Didn’tcha?” He had his finger in my face, jabbing it toward me. I thought for a moment he might poke it up my nose.

“Mr. Evans,” I said, “that doesn’t deserve an answer.”

“Listen to him, so high and mighty!” He was talking to the reporter. Then back at me: “I’ll tell you what, Mr. High-and-Mighty, you’re fired! Just try and get another nickel out of me. I’ll get back the money I gave you already, some way or other I will, I swear.”

The cop, who had kept the door open, managed to pull him through it. Sam and the reporter followed. A collective sigh passed through the room.

“Jesus!” Tony Makarides groaned. “What a dirtbag.”

“He was carrying on like that for about five minutes before you got here,” Stash said to me. “He showed up just about the moment we brought his son up for release. Said he wanted to talk to him, and all of a sudden there he was.”

“Charges dropped.”

“Of course.”

It was good for Sam, naturally, that the charges were dropped, and I must say I had a small twinge of guilt that at no point did I honestly believe in his innocence. Nor did I fully believe in his guilt, for that matter. I’d been going back and forth on it, but at certain points I had to admit that he really did look good for it.

But now that a third victim had been discovered, it was getting even more horrific. Three small children murdered. It was baffling, and with Sam Evans clearly out of the picture, the horror was growing. If he wasn’t the lunatic responsible for these grisly crimes, who was?

As I thought about that, I almost forgot that Stash was standing right next to me, and I couldn’t help but put it to him.

I gave him a close look. “Were those eggs you had for breakfast scrambled or once over easy? You seem to have a little left on your face.”

“Don’t rub it in. Remember who I work for.”

“For what it’s worth, Judge Brown called your little ploy the fanciest bit of flummery he’d seen for a while—and I’m quoting him.” I took a step or two toward the door when someone called my name.

It was Bud Billings, beckoning me over. I gave a nod and followed as he led me through the front office and down the hall to the detectives’ room. What did he have in mind? He wasn’t telling.

He sat down and nodded at an empty chair. There was no one else there. They were all probably out on Beulah Road. Bud had been left to pick up the pieces after the mess that had been made by Sam Evans’s arrest and release.

“This is all off the record, okay, Charley?”

“Okay with me.”

“I don’t know how close you looked at that booking sheet, but I’m down there as arresting officer.”

“All right, so what?”

“Am I looking at a false arrest suit?”

“I don’t think you’ve got too many worries there, Bud.”

“I mean, it was all Stash’s idea. He cooked it up, and I went along with it.”

“It was a holding charge. Personally, I think it was a little too tricky, but it’s not like the kid was booked for homicide. I watched the
Mark Evola Show
on the eleven o’clock news, and he didn’t mention Sam Evans by name. If he had, you’d all be in real trouble.”

He nodded, concerned but somewhat relieved. “You’re not going to put any ideas in the old man’s head, are you?”

“Are you serious? You must have heard what he said to me. He fired me. Not that there’d be any more business between us. Not that I’d take him on again. I wouldn’t. Put any ideas into his head? Come on, Bud, what kind of ambulance chaser do you think I am, anyway?”

“Sorry, Charley.” He really looked contrite.

“Now, I don’t guarantee that he won’t come up with the idea on his own. And there are other lawyers in Kerry County, one of whom might be foolish enough to take him
on, but not me. I will tell you this, though, before I came over here, I stopped in at the courthouse and tried to get Judge Brown to sign off on a
Habeas Corpus
, and he wouldn’t do it, not until the medical examiner’s report was in, specifying homicide. He thought enough of the hold charge to let it stand.” I paused to let that sink in, then added, “No, Bud, I really don’t think you’ve got much to worry about.”

He nodded. “Okay,” he said, “thanks.”

I stood up, ready to go. “Don’t mention it,” I said.

“Just one more thing, Charley.” He leaned back and fixed me with a stare. “Did old man Evans have anything to say to you about the murders? I mean, either the Quigley girl or the one before it?”

Cops. They know the rules, but they like to push you. “You know the answer to that, Bud. Even if he did fire me, that still comes under the heading of privileged information and client confidentiality.”

“Yeah, well, the kid did see somebody out there that night. I’m sure of that, and I’m pretty sure he recognized whoever he saw. It could have been his father. There was a case a couple of years back that—”

“I’ve heard about it. All right, if this is really off the record, I’ll tell you this. Delbert Evans didn’t have a damned thing to say about those kids out in the snow. He just wanted his son back.”

When I got back to the office, Mrs. Fenton was on the phone. Her manner was distant, professional, almost cold. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be on the other end of the line.

“No, let me assure you, sir, it is
not
out of line, as you put it. Strict records were kept. We conduct things in a completely professional manner here.”

She raised her eyes to me and gave them a roll.

“You may complain to them, if you like,” she said. “Let me advise you, though, to put it in writing. A telephone call will not do. You have the address? Good. Please be
more respectful to the Bar Association than you have been to me.”

And with that, she slammed down the receiver.

“Ernie Barker got his bill,” she announced.

I laughed. I probably shouldn’t have. She was in no mood for a joke. “So Two-Gun Ernie finally appreciates the seriousness of his offense. Good. Some people you can only impress by biting them in the wallet.”

“You wouldn’t laugh if you’d heard what I had to listen to the last few minutes.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fenton. Really I am.”

Apparently, she was willing to be mollified. She pursed her lips expressively and handed over a small stack of telephone messages—only about three or four.

“Mrs. Kelman in this bunch?” I asked.

“I talked to her. She’s coming in at eleven-thirty.”

“Did she say she wanted to go ahead and file?”

“Nothing at all. Just that she was coming in. She was kind of short with me on the phone.”

“Better print out five copies of her papers with today’s date. If she was going to stall again, she wouldn’t have made an appointment, I suppose.”

I started into my inner office, the phone slips in my hand but my mind on the scene down at County Police Headquarters. That reminded me. I turned back at the door.

“Oh, Mrs. Fenton, I think you’ll be glad to know that I was just fired by Delbert Evans.”

“He fired you? You should have fired him.”

“You’re probably right.”

I eased the door shut behind me and sat down at my desk. I had a notion to send her over to the library to dig out the newspaper accounts of the Evans family’s difficulties with the law a few years back. It probably wouldn’t have made the Detroit papers, but the Port Huron
Times-Herald
would have covered it. It could wait, it was just curiosity on my part. An ugly business, though. If I’d
known about it, I would certainly have gotten rid of him the moment I found him in my office.

There were two surprises waiting for me among my messages. The first was from Sue asking me to call her as soon as I came in. She’d called just before I arrived, and what seemed most odd, the number she had left was the one at her apartment. I grabbed the phone and punched in the digits I knew by heart.

When she answered, I could tell she had been crying.

“What is it, Sue? This message you left seems sort of urgent.”

“Yeah,” she said bleakly, “well, I guess it was. I feel sort of desperate.”

“Why? Tell me.”

“Oh, Charley, there’s been another child murdered. The body was found out on Beulah Road. Same condition, same—”

“I heard about it,” I said.

“Oh, sure, you must have been at the station this morning.” She took a deep breath. “Sam Evans was released.”

“I know. But tell me about you.”

“I just lost it out there completely. I got hysterical. I couldn’t stop crying, then I—I guess I started screaming. I really don’t remember that part so well, though. When they got me quieted down, the captain said I was impeding the investigation and sent me home. Told me I should take a couple of days off. I tried to argue with him—you know, assured him I’d be all right, all that—but he said it was an order. So here I am.”

“I’m sorry it happened, but I’m certainly not surprised, kiddo. The last one was too much for me. I told you about that.”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to be tougher than you are. I’m a cop.”

“Cops have their breaking points, too. Or so I’ve heard.”

“Yeah, I suppose. But…”

“But what, Sue?”

“Uh, I was going to lie down for a while.”

“Best idea I’ve heard for a while.”

“I was wondering, could we have dinner together tonight?” Then she added, “My treat.” That meant at her house.

“Sure, of course. When do you want me to come by?”

“Any time after seven. Say seven-thirty?”

“That’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Okay, good-bye—oh, and Charley?”

“Yes, Sue?”

“Thanks for calling me kiddo.”

I translated the conversation I’d just had with Sue into emotional language that a dunce like me could understand and respond to. Let’s see, what she seemed to be saying was something like this: Charley, I’m in deep shit with this case, in over my head. I may even have hurt my career out there on Beulah Road. I’d like your help in this, or if you haven’t much of that to give, any advice you have to offer, but certainly your comfort—I could certainly use some of the old Charley Sloan magic.

Yes, something like that. How could I refuse her invitation?

The next couple of calls were strictly routine: a request for an appointment to draw up a will, a real-estate closing. But the last message gave me an even bigger jolt than the one from Sue. It was a call from Mark Conroy that had come in about an hour ago. I didn’t recognize the number he had left, but I punched it in on the receiver and waited it out through three rings. Conroy picked up with a simple “Hello?”

“You called?” I didn’t identify myself.

There was a pause. Maybe he was gathering strength to say something he wasn’t sure he wanted to say. Maybe he was just looking for the right words. When he came out with it at last, what he said was quite simple: “I’d like us to talk.”