A Clean Kill (30 page)

After three phone calls the night Zion Thibbodeaux was arrested, I met Sullivan Walker in his Mobile office the next morning at seven. Sully and I were at police headquarters thirty minutes later. They let me see Zybo at 9:20, which was a few minutes after ADA Foxglove had finished rubbing my nose in the mess he thought I’d made of things.

Zybo was already in the little prisoner/attorney room when I stepped inside. His head was bowed over a small, square table made of gray metal. His hands were cuffed in front and locked to a thick chain around his waist.

I pulled out the only other chair and sat across from him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He didn’t look up. Over his head, names and initials had been scratched into a dirty wall covered in chipped paint that, in one corner, bore the imprint of some difficult prisoner’s front teeth.

“Have you said anything to them?”

He wagged his lowered head from side to side.

“Nothing?”

He mumbled. “Not even my name.”

This was not the man I’d feared for weeks. “What’s the matter? What’d they do to you?”

He looked up. His dark eyes were flat, almost lifeless. “Nothin’.” He looked around. “I hate dese fuggin places.”

I nodded. Zion Thibbodeaux’s medical career had ended in a place much like this one. “Maybe we can do something about that. Look, the DA knows about Russell and Wagler. About the jury tampering. Looks like the investigation into Chris Galerina’s death turned up something.”

I had his attention now. “Dat why dey want me?”

“Yeah, I told you the Mobile cops got a call from Montgomery about a Louisiana hit man. Looks like they figured out who that was.”

A faint spark moved behind his pupils. “Wouldn’t have if you hadn’ had me arrested after we tied up on de beach.”

“Listen. We didn’t ‘tie up.’ You followed me
and
harassed me
and
tried to slice my face open with a knife.” I paused. “The way I look at it, the cops know who you are because you tried to kill me on the beach. And I have trouble feeling a lot of responsibility for that.” I felt the anger again just talking about it, and I found myself yelling at my sort-of client.

A guard stuck his head inside. “Everything all right in here?”

I turned. “Fine. Just explaining life.”

“Yeah,” he said, “well, do it quieter.” He closed the door.

Some silence settled between us. Zybo spoke first. “It’s de way I live. Maybe I picked it. Maybe it picked me. I deal with it.” He rolled his shoulders and sat up straight. He seemed to be all the way with me again. “So. De cops dey tink dey got sometin’ on Russell and Wagler. What ’bout de judge?”

I smiled. “Smart boy. That’s exactly what you’ve got that they don’t. Also, you need to realize that, once the DA starts in on the law firm, they’re going to start yelling your name, blaming everything on you.” I stopped and waited for him to speak. He didn’t. “Anyway, if we come forward first, I think we can make Wagler admit that you were just hired to make people sick—not to kill them.”

“Dat’ll help dem too.”

I nodded. “Right. They just hired you to make a few jurors sick. That way, they’re not accessories to murder.”

“What ’bout de Baneberry woman?”

“Did you kill her?”

“Hell, no. I tol you.” He looked down again. “Damnit!”

“Well, I guess I don’t have much choice but to believe you. And—whether I believe you or not—if you can give the cops enough hard information on Savin and his ties to Russell and Wagler, I think the DA’s going to be willing to go along with Jim Baneberry claiming his wife died as a result of medical malpractice. Basically, I’m thinking the DA’s going to take a statewide jury-rigging case over a possible, probably unprovable, death by poisoning. One is better press and better politics.
And
I’m thinking Jim Baneberry is going to believe the story that puts money in his pocket. Malpractice does that. Murder doesn’t.” I paused to let Zybo absorb what he’d heard. But I didn’t want him thinking too long. I wasn’t sure that I believed all of it myself. “You don’t know everything, but there are a lot of complicating circumstances surrounding Kate Baneberry’s death. And, Zybo, we’d be talking about immunity for all acts committed in connection with this case. That would include Mrs. Baneberry.”

“What ’bout Savin’s boys?”

“No. Not them.”

He shrugged. “Can’ have everyting.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. We may get nothing. But I’ve got something to sweeten the deal a little.” He raised his eyebrows. “Dr. Cantil—the Chinese psychologist?”

He nodded. “She’s got this study she did. She can show—without any doubt at all—that Russell and Wagler has been fixing jury trials.”

“Good. But why she gonna use it to help me?”

“She’s not,” I said. “She’s going to use it to help herself and maybe me. After the other night, neither she nor I are ever going to be safe until Judge Luther Savin is behind bars or dead.
And
I’ll never practice law anywhere ever again until Savin is ruined.”

Zybo nodded. He started to say something and stopped. Seconds passed. He tried again. “What now?”

“It’s your turn.”

“To do what?”

“You’re too smart to’ve worked for people like these and not have figured out some way to protect yourself.” I stood up. I had too much energy to sit. “I want to make a deal with the DA. I get my license back. You get a reduced sentence. Maybe even immunity.”

His eyes bounced around the room. “Screw reduced sentence. I ain’t doin’ anyting without immunity.” He looked around. “I’m tellin’ you. I can’ stand dese fuggin places.”

“You got something that’s worth immunity?”

Zybo sat up straight. For the first time that morning, he looked like the same scary bastard who’d been ruining my life for a month. “Dey want de judge? I can give ’em de judge.”

“How fast can you get the information here?”

“Make de deal,” he said. “I get it here fast. Jus’ make de deal.”

An hour later, Zybo was ushered back into the room. This time ADA Buddy Foxglove had joined us in the tiny room.

I nodded at Foxglove. “Zybo. The DA says he needs to see what you’ve got.”

“Hell, no. He see what I got, why he need to make a deal?”

Foxglove said, “Fine,” and walked out.

I spent another hour cajoling Zybo. While I was at it, my lawyer, Sully, stroked the DA. A few minutes past eleven that morning, we had a meeting of the minds. Zybo gave me a website address, a list of exceedingly strange instructions, and a string of mixed letters and numbers to use as a password.

“Tell ’em. If dey try to print it, de site it’ll shut down. De password it’ll change. Look, don’ print. You got it?”

I said, “You’re kidding.”

He didn’t answer. I guess he wasn’t. Two guards escorted the Cajun back to his cell.

All the government computers had firewalls designed to keep our law enforcement officials out of the porno sites. We couldn’t raise Zybo’s site on Foxglove’s computer. Ditto for his secretary’s unit.

We stood around. Foxglove mumbled under his breath. I asked, “You got anybody who investigates Internet crime?”

The DA cussed. He banged open a door and jogged down the hallway. We followed him to Vice, where he butted some clerk out of the way and logged on to a computer labeled F
OR
V
ICE
U
SE
O
NLY
, which struck me as something that could, without fear of contradiction, be printed on most computers with Internet access.

In the address window, he typed Zybo’s World Wide Web address. Detailed specs for an old Luxman stereo receiver filled the screen.

Foxglove said, “Okay, what now?”

I reviewed Zybo’s instructions. “Count down to the twentieth word.”

“Count the title?”

“Beats me.”

Foxglove used the cursor to jump from word to word. The clerk and Sully stood behind him. Their lips moved as the cursor bounced along the lines of text. He said, “harmonic.”

“Click it.”

He did. A picture of the receiver’s innards popped up. I said, “Find something labeled ‘THD Switch’ and click on that.”

It took a while. When he had it, a one-line text box popped up on screen. I said, “Type in what I tell you,” and read off the jumbled password Zybo had given me.

And there it was: S
ERVICES
P
ERFORMED FOR
J
UDGE
L
UTHER
S
AVIN
.

There were dates, names, payments, and contacts at Russell & Wagler, as well as jobs for firms in Birmingham and Huntsville. Foxglove used the arrows on the right of the screen to scroll down through what looked like twenty or thirty pages of data.

Foxglove said, “Jeez,” and moved the cursor up to the print icon.

Sully and I yelled almost in unison, “No!”

The befuddled clerk said, “What? What’s wrong?”

Foxglove said, “Bullshit. I’m printing this out.” He clicked on print. The screen disappeared into a swirl, like water spinning down a drain, and filled again with
a picture of two women. They were naked and engaged in a private recreational activity. We could only see one of their faces. Foxglove cussed.

I wanted to say, “I told you so,” but kept quiet. The prosecutor at the keyboard was red-faced. We gave him some time.

Finally he said, “Now what?”

“Do we have a deal?”

“Not unless we can get this back and print it.”

I stepped around to the other side of the computer to face him. “You screwed it up. And you’re saying, because it’s screwed up now, we don’t have a deal?”

Sully put his hand on my shoulder. “Tom.”

Foxglove leaned back in the clerk’s chair and exhaled loudly. “Fine. I fucked up. Now what do we do about it? I gotta have this stuff
and
it’s gotta check out before your guy walks. It’s that simple.”

I said, “Let me go talk to him.”

Zybo smiled. “I knew somebody’d do it. What a dumbass.”

“Congratulations. What do we do now?”

“He gonna give me de immunity?”

“If they can verify any of the stuff on your site. Enough of it to nail the judge and Wagler. Then, yeah, you’re going to walk away from this, Zybo.”

I could almost feel the tension leaving the man across from me. He said, “I need a piece of paper and a calculator.”

I reached into my briefcase and put what he needed on the table.

As Zybo worked, he explained. “De password it
only works once. It gets generated new each time with a formula. Letters represent numbers. I gotta transpose ’em, run de formula with de old password, and get de new string. Den I advance by two each number dat used to be a letter and make dat new number a letter.”

“Thanks for clearing that up.”

He punched and scribbled. “Jus’ like a spreadsheet. Change one value and it roll throughout the cells, changin’ all de other values.”

“Yeah. That’s really fascinating. You know we’ve got to let him make copies this time.”

The Cajun dropped his pencil on the table and shoved the paper with the new password at me. “Okay. Here’s what you do. Go ’bout halfway down de report to a place where you see a bold ‘P’ off by itself …”

I started taking notes.

I stood beside a conference table strewn with printouts. Kai-Li’s jury research was stacked neatly in one corner.

“Well?”

Sully was smiling. Foxglove wasn’t. The sourpuss spoke first. “Looks like we’ve got most of the top partners at Russell and Wagler, as well as Luther Savin and maybe half a dozen other lawyers around the state.” He looked up at Sully. “I know you’re grinning because you got your client off, but this is not a happy day.”

I said, “Crooked lawyers are still crooks.”

He just nodded, stood up, and left the room.

Sully pushed back from the table and stretched. “He won’t let Zybo out until he gets something to verify all this. I guess you need to tell Zybo that.”

“How long before they execute search warrants?”

Sully stood and walked around the table. “They don’t share stuff like that with civilians, but my guess is Foxglove is applying for warrants as we speak. As connected as Savin is, they won’t wait to execute on them.”

“Tonight?”

“Probably. Look. Go talk with your client, or whatever he is. Tell him what’s going on, and let’s get the hell out of here.” He glanced around the room. “This fucking place is depressing.”

Sully and I had hit the Bienville Club to celebrate. Now, as we drove across steely saltwater flats toward Point Clear, I melted into the seat. Good scotch flowed through my veins. Relief flowed over my brain and swept down my body like a woman’s touch, soothing aches and pains and smoothing tense muscles.

It was only midafternoon.

Sully broke the silence. “You drunk?”

“Nope. Just relaxed for the first time in God knows when.”

Up on the right, two old men fished from a flat-bottom boat. I pointed. One of them was reeling in a fish. “Those same two guys were out there fishing a few days ago when I came this way. Looks like they caught something.”

Sully smiled. As we got closer, the one whose line was empty stood and leaned out over the gunwale. He held a net ready for his friend’s fish. Something round
and dark came up out of the water. Suddenly, the man with the net straightened up and snatched his head to the side. Dropping the net, the old man pulled a knife from his trousers, unfolded the blade, and sliced through the line.