At the Edge (14 page)

“I'm trying to find out how the guy who killed Gregory Johnson got off.”

The waitress returned with his order—steak, a baked potato, and some wilted green beans. Charlie waited until she had left again before he said, “Are you sure you don't want to talk to your mother about that? After all, she—”

“My dad said you'd be a good person to talk to. He said it was your case.”

“I got the call, yeah.”

“I heard there was an eyewitness.”

“The brother,” Charlie Hart said. “He was twelve when it happened, thirteen by the time the case went to trial. The officers on the scene said the kid was in shock when they got there. White as a ghost, trembling all over. Poor kid. I think about him every now and then—I wonder how he and his parents are doing. You lose a child like that family did, and it can tear the family apart. I've seen it happen.”

“What I don't understand is, the brother—”

“David,” Charlie Hart said. “The brother's name was David.”

“He saw what happened. He was right there. He described the person who did it. And you arrested someone who matched that description, didn't you?”

“Yeah, the kid gave us a description—after he could talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, the kid was in shock. At first he didn't say a word. Just kept shaking and crying. Even his dad couldn't calm him down. But eventually he pulled himself together and told us what had happened—well, enough that we could make some sense of it. The kid was numb. Some things he remembered clear as a bell. Other things ...” Charlie Hart shrugged. “It's tough enough when something like that happens. But when it's a kid?” He shook his head. “He gave us a description. And once he started, he didn't seem to be able to stop. He kept saying the same thing over and over. The description matched up with a guy my partner knew from before he transferred to Homicide—a small-time crook who lived in the neighborhood.”

“Eddy Leonard.”

Charlie Hart nodded. “We showed the kid a photo array. By then he'd clammed up again. He took it really hard. Well, who wouldn't, especially at that age? The kid was clinging to his dad's hand the whole time. But he picked out Leonard. Said he was the guy. We showed the pictures around, and a couple of other people picked out Leonard. They said they'd seen him in the vicinity before the shooting. Leonard had a record, so we picked him up. He didn't have an alibi. We asked him if he'd agree to be in a lineup, mostly to see how he'd react, if he'd ask for a lawyer, who would for sure object. Suspects have the right to refuse lineups. But Leonard said, sure, he'd do it. He didn't even want to consult a lawyer.”

I stared at him. Even I knew enough to be surprised at that.

“Why would he agree to be in a lineup if he didn't have to—especially if he did it?”

Charlie Hart just shrugged. “You never know. Some of the guys we pick up—a depressingly large number of them—aren't too bright. A lot of them act against their own best interests. Don't ask me why. He agreed, and the kid identified him. Said he was positive Leonard was the guy who killed his little brother. He was unshakable. He kept going over the details.” Charlie dug in his jacket pocket for a notebook and flipped it open. “I went back into my files,” he said. “The boy described the shooter as having dark eyes, a long, thin nose, ears that stuck out a little, shaggy brown hair, small mouth, with a scar on his chin. Said it over and over, like he was afraid he was going to forget. The description matched Eddy Leonard. And the kid picked Leonard out—twice.”

“So why wasn't Leonard convicted?”

“Well, for one thing,” Charlie Hart said with a wry smile, “he had a good lawyer. And I guess, as a result of her cross-examination, the jury had its doubts. After all, we had absolutely no physical evidence to tie Leonard to the scene. Never found the gun. There were no fingerprints, no usable footwear impressions, no blood on any clothes of Leonard's that we found, no gunshot residue. Your mother also introduced Leonard's criminal record. Leonard had been arrested and convicted maybe half a dozen times, but he'd never used a gun—any weapon, for that matter. He'd never stolen a car. He was strictly burglaries, nothing violent, nothing confrontational. Your mother called a couple of cops who knew Leonard. She called some of his friends. They all made the same point. Put that together with the cross-examination of the brother, and your mom handed the jury reasonable doubt. The kid admitted that he'd been focused on his brother. The gun he described was a lot bigger than the gun that was used to shoot the little boy—but that's understandable. Most people come face-to-face with a bad guy and a loaded weapon, they focus on that weapon. And to a kid, it must have looked as big as a cannon.”

That's what James had said.

“The kid also got all mixed up when he was asked how he knew Leonard was the guy. He said Leonard was wearing a blue plaid shirt when he saw him. That didn't match what we got from the two witnesses who had seen Leonard in the area. But it did match what Leonard was wearing during the lineup. Your mother argued that maybe the kid picked out Leonard in the lineup because he felt he had to pick someone, even though he was told that the person who did it wasn't necessarily in the lineup. We tell everyone that. We don't want people to guess.” Charlie Hart shook his head. “The kid was terrified. We had to reassure him over and over that the people in the lineup wouldn't be able to see him. Even so, he was shaking all over. I felt sorry for him. I felt even sorrier for the way it turned out—I'm not criticizing your mom, Robyn. She was doing her job, and she did it well.” He sounded exactly like my dad. “But in the end, all we had was a shaky eyewitness ID, which the judge had to caution the jury about—faulty eyewitness identification is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions.” So my dad had said. “And, like I said, we had no physical evidence, no corroborating witnesses, nothing like that.”

“But you said two people had seen Leonard in the area.”

“They did,” Charlie Hart said. “But they saw him before the shooting. No one except that kid saw Leonard pull the trigger. No one else was anywhere near the car when it happened.” He shook his head. “I felt sorry for him even before the trial. It's hard enough to see something like that happen. But with a dad like that ...”

“What do you mean?”

“When I talked to him—the father—he said he'd heard shots. He said as soon as he realized what they were and where they had come from, all he could think about was his son.”

“You mean, his sons.”

Charlie Hart shook his head. “He said son.” I frowned. “I know,” he said. “It sounded strange to me too. But that's what he said. I found out later that the older boy is the
step
son.” He sighed. “What can I say? Some guys are like that—it's the blood tie that matters to them. They can never truly accept another man's son as their own.”

“But he stood by his stepson the whole time, didn't he?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Did you ask him about what he saw?”

“What do you mean?”

“On his way to the alley, he saw Leonard, too, didn't he? He saw someone hurrying away from the scene. He said he wished he'd taken a closer look.” Which just proves how chaotic everything was. He'd heard something, but he'd been so focused on Greg that he hadn't taken a good look at the man who was running from where his son was.

Charlie Hart looked quizzically at me.

“I don't recall anything like that,” he said. “Where did you hear it?”

I was pretty sure that's what James had told me. His father had seen a man hurrying away from the alley while everyone else was moving toward it. Surely James wasn't mistaken about that. Or was he? After all, he'd made a mistake about what Leonard was wearing that night.

“I thought that's what happened,” I said.

“If it had, I would know,” Charlie Hart said. “It was my case. I don't remember the father saying he saw Leonard. Where are you getting your information?”

“I thought I heard it somewhere.” I changed the subject. “Did Eddy Leonard have a family?” I was thinking about the threats that James told me Leonard had made.

Charlie Hart looked surprised at the question. “He had a wife and daughter. But, the way I heard it, the wife left him while he was in pre-trial custody. Took the little girl with her. Leonard took that hard. I don't know if he ever managed to track them down. The father told me that Leonard threatened his son, David, after the trial. Said Leonard blamed him for busting up his family. Apparently Leonard called the Johnson home a couple of times after that and made some more threats.”

“Did the police do anything?”

“We had a talk with Leonard. We warned him that if he kept it up, he would be charged. He was really broken up. He said his missed his little girl. It was probably better for everyone when the Johnsons moved out of town.” Charlie Hart eyed me speculatively. “I can't tell who you remind me of more, Robyn—your mother or your father. You ever thought of joining the force?”

  .    .    .

Someone knocked on my father's door just as I was getting ready to go to school the next day.

“Get that, will you, Robbie?” my dad called from his office.

I got up off the couch where I was sorting through what I needed for the day and went to answer the door.

It was Nick. He looked uncomfortable.

“Is your dad here?”

I glanced back at my dad's office.

“He's on the phone,” I said. “You want to wait for him?”

“No, it's okay,” Nick said. “Can you just give him this for me?” He handed me an envelope.

“What is it?”

“It's for your dad,” he said brusquely. Then he relented. “It's my notice.”

“Notice?”

“That I'm moving.”

My stomach did a lurch. “Moving?” I thought about Danny. Nick had said that her dad had built up a successful business, just like my dad had. I wondered if he owned a building too. “Where to?”

“I haven't figured that out yet.”

He was moving, but he hadn't figured it out where he was going to live? Was he that desperate to get away from me?

“You need someplace to stay, Nick.”

“Danny's parents are going to let me crash in their basement until I can make other arrangements. I put it in writing for your dad, you know, so it's official. He'll probably want to rent out the place to someone else.”

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that he was leaving. Or that he was going to be living in Danny's house.

“And Robyn?”

I looked up into his purple-blue eyes.

“Say you look out the window and you see a guy humming while he's walking down the street. He looks like he's on top of the world. How do you know whether he's happy because he's about to marry the woman of his dreams or relieved because he just killed his worst enemy?” He didn't wait for an answer. “You don't,” he said, “unless you saw what happened before or what happened after. You don't even know for sure if he's really happy at all. Maybe he's just trying to convince everyone that he is. You can say he seemed happy, and sure, that would be right as far as it went. But what you saw was only a little piece of it—that doesn't tell you the whole story.”

“Nick, I—”

“Tell your dad I'll be gone at the end of the month.”

“But that's next week!”

“Yeah.”

“Nick, about James—”

“I wish you happiness, Robyn. I do. You deserve a guy like James. He sounds nice. Reliable. And, like you said, you and he have a lot in common, just like Danny and me.”

Danny again. My heart sank.

“I gotta go,” he said.

I watched him walk down the stairs. He didn't turn back, not even once. After his footsteps had faded into nothingness, I closed the door and looked down at the envelope he had given me. This was it. After all the ups and downs we'd had over the past year, this was really it. Nick was leaving my life forever. I felt empty inside.

“Did I hear Nick?” my dad said. He was pulling on a jacket as he came out of his office, but he stopped when he saw my face. “Is everything okay, Robbie?”

“Yeah.” I had to swallow hard to keep the quaver out of my voice and the tears out of my eyes. “Nick said to give you this.”

I handed him the envelope. My dad barely glanced at it. “Is it important? Because I'm running late.”

He began to study me closely.

“Are you sure you're okay, Robbie?”

“I'm fine.”

“Problems with Nick?”

That did it. Tears trickled down my cheeks.

“He's moving out, Dad.”

“Is that what this envelope is about?”

I nodded.

“I'm sorry, Robbie. What happened?”

“He met someone else—an old friend.” More tears dribbled down my face. My dad put his arm around my shoulder.

“I wish I could stay, Robbie,” he said. “But this job—”

“It's okay, Dad.”

He kissed me on the forehead. “I won't be home until late. I have to be at the warehouse. We'll talk first thing tomorrow, I promise. I'll take you to breakfast, and you can tell me everything.”

“I'm supposed to be going up north,” I said. Now it was the last thing I wanted to do. “But I think I'll stay home.”

“Maybe you should go, Robbie. Keep busy. Have some fun. Talk things over with Morgan. It might help.”

Maybe he was right.

“Are you all going to Morgan's place?”

I shook my head.

“We're going to James's place. It's in Harris.”

My dad smiled. “It's that time of year,” he said. “Fall fair season.” A dreamy expression came into his eyes. “Your mother and I used to drive up north every year to see the leaves change and visit the fall fairs. There's nothing like the woods in autumn, with all those leaves on the ground.” I wondered how he would react to the possibility that my mother was moving clear across the country. He sighed. “Go with your friends. Have a good time. Let them cheer you up, Robbie. We'll talk when you get back.”