Blood of Angels (8 page)

“Like lie to protect someone from the death penalty?” I ask.

Carl stares down at the FBI report. “It's fair to say that when Fiona Towns is motivated to raise a ruckus, she doesn't mind breaking a law or two to make her point. For her, this might be nothing more than jury nullification. A simple case of O. J.”

“Carl's right,” Rayburn says. “The evidence in this case speaks for itself. Against it, the defense has one thing.” He points to Town's picture. “Her.” He looks up at me. “She's toast,” he says. “As of this moment, this trial is no longer about Moses Bol. It's about
her.
“I want to know what she has for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I want to know what kind of gas she puts in her car. I want to know
everything.
”

I nod. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” he answers. “Watch that Sudanese kid, too. As far as this office is concerned, we've got a killer on the street.”

THE WEEKEND COMES
, and I miss Jazz like hell. This is her third year for soccer camp, a ritzy operation held down in Sewanee, on the campus of the University of the South. It costs a fortune, not that this bothers Sarandokos. But at fifteen hundred bucks, I hope they serve the kids shrimp cocktails before their filet mignon. At least soccer camp gives me an idea for Jazz's birthday present, and it's something Sarandokos can't buy at any price. Last year I was the coach for Jazz's soccer team, and Sarandokos had the grace not to come to a single game. There are a hundred good memories, even though the team only finished a little above five hundred. I want to freeze that last spring, the way she laughed and tried her hardest and forgot about the game fifteen minutes after it was over. She was still a little girl, and if she knew she was the best-dressed girl on the team off the field, she didn't show it. Her birthday present will be a scrapbook of photographs from the season. I put it together over the weekend, and Sunday evening I put the book in a box and wrap it with a note:
For you, Jazz. Mia Hamm better watch out.

Father-daughter scrapbooks are not on the minds of people in the Nation over the weekend, however. Paul Landmeyer's assessment that things are getting tense there proves on the money. There are a couple of small incidents on Sunday, and by Monday morning, the Nation is alive. Well-used cars with dented fenders are circling Tennessee Village, hunting Bol, or if he's not handy, anyone else tall, black, and foreign. Always easy to rile, the Nationites have taken this one personally. Tamra Hartlett was raped and killed in her own home. There needs to be justice. This news comes to me courtesy of Josh Ritchie, one of six full-time investigators for the DA's office. Josh moved down from Wisconsin a few years ago, mostly to do more investigating and less freezing his ass off five months a year. He's got tousled, blond hair, a slim, athletic body, and although he's thirty-one years old, with the right clothes he can pass for anything from twenty to forty. He walks in first thing in the morning and plops in a chair, looking tired. He's wearing flared jeans, a red-and-black-striped dress shirt, untucked, and square-toe loafers without socks. He sets an opened can of Red Bull on my desk.

“What was it, business or pleasure?” I ask, smiling.

“Work, this time,” he says. He turns his baseball cap around backward and leans back. “What you got for me?”

I push Town's mug photograph and address across the table. “Fiona Towns,” I say. “She's the pastor of Downtown Presbyterian Church. Let me know what she does with her life.”

Josh picks up the photograph. “We're surveilling preachers now?”

“She's a material witness in a murder-rape,” I say. “So, yeah. I want to be informed. Daily check-ins, at least.”

“Nice eyes. I like green.”

“Not to touch, Josh.”

Josh laughs. “Haven't crossed that line yet, chief.” He looks at the photograph. “What was the murder?”

I pull out photographs of Tamra Hartlett and Moses Bol. “The guy is African, named Bol. He killed the woman.”

Josh looks up. “This is the guy everybody wants over at the Nation.”

“You heard something?”

“There's already been a skirmish or two over this. Word is, if Bol walks, they'll take matters into their own hands.”

Beautiful. Things aren't complicated enough, without a little vigilante justice on our hands.
“Trust me, if Bol walks, it'll only be from the showers to his cell in Riverbend prison,” I say. “Which is where you come in. Bol and Hartlett were seen arguing several times during the week before the murder. Problem is, we don't know what about. Your job is to answer that question.”

Josh puts the pictures in his pocket. “You got it, chief.”

With Josh dispatched, I dig into the paperwork to put a wire on the phone where Moses Bol's roommates are still living, which, thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States, is far from automatic, even when someone is accused of murder-rape. I run the paper by Rayburn before I send it over to Judge Ginder, just to get the DA's perspective on it. I've got an hour left before lunch, so I spend it preparing for the pretrial conference Stillman scheduled with Tamra Hartlett's father, mother, and boyfriend for tomorrow. Just before noon, I go by Carl's office, which Carl has spent the day emptying. It's Monday, which means a ritual lunch with Carl, me, and Paul Landmeyer, the chief of Police Forensics.

Carl has another week at work, but he's a lame duck, with no new cases. The more he gets his housekeeping taken care of, the cleaner his escape will be on the last day. He looks up when I enter, annoyed, then relaxes when he recognizes me. “I thought it was more good-byes,” he says, grimacing. “It's been like a funeral in here today. Secretaries blubbering, lots of ‘you lucky bastard' speeches. Makes me want to puke.”

“It's only going to get worse,” I say, grinning. I point to the few remaining boxes of books stacked on the floor. “What are you going to do with those?”

He picks up a thick crimson volume and reads the spine. “
Criminal Practice and Procedure,
” he says. “I could bequeath it to a law library in Guam. Better yet, start fires with it. Seven hundred pages, say ten pages a fire. Ought to last me a couple of winters, easy.”

I watch him replace the book, looking as bowed down as I've ever seen him. He's been like a father to me, only better, because he doesn't carry the psychological trauma of my real father's death. And as with a real father, watching him retire gives me a glimpse at my own ending: thirty-one years of hard work, packed up into boxes, then carried off as though they had never happened. I blink, then look out the window. Carl, as senior prosecutor, has a prime office overlooking the Cumberland. It's the de facto viewing location for the big fireworks displays over the water on Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and New Year's Eve. With Carl's retirement, the office is mine, if I want it, which I'm not sure I do. There's something eerie about displacing him physically, as well as in the hierarchy of the office. I only have a few more days to decide; other, less conflicted prosecutors are eager to take my place if I don't stake my claim. “So how does it feel?” I ask.

He stands and walks to the large picture window that makes up the back wall of the office. “It feels like I'll see this view a few more times,” he answers, his voice quiet. “A few more walks through the front door. A few more trips to the courthouse.”

“You going down there every day?”

He nods. “Call it habit. I just don't want to stop.”

I smile. “You could always change sides,” I say. “No age limit on that.”

“Thirty-one years of putting them away, I'd feel like a traitor. Anyway, I'd just end up kicking your ass in court, and I don't think I could take that.”

I laugh out loud. “You ready to head to the Saucer? We're a little early, but what the hell.”

“Yeah. God knows, I've got nothing to do here.”

“I'm going to invite Stillman.”

Carl raises an eyebrow. “He's not as big a prick as you think, by the way.”

“Glad to hear it, since he's my new partner. But I'm inviting him to spend time with you, not me.”

“Because?”

“Because I've got a week left for you to rub off on him. You better work fast.”

Finally, a real smile breaks out on Carl's face, which is when I realize that's all I wanted to see. He isn't kidding when he calls the DA's office his family; he never married, eventually outlived his parents, as well as one of two sisters. He knows how to do one thing in life—fight like hell to put away bad people—and it's hard to picture him in some retirement home making friends. He'd sit there at dinner listening to how somebody was the top salesman for the Aetna company or something, and he'd want to jump out a window. I'll be there for him then, if I'm still standing. But for now, I just want to see him smile. “Let's go, old man,” I say. “We'll make Stillman buy.”

 

WE ROLL DOWN THE HALL
and pick up Stillman, who looks like he's just won the lottery when we invite him to lunch. Fifteen minutes later the three of us pile out of Carl's Buick and walk into the Saucer, a vast, informal club with tatty couches for seating, air the approximate color of cigarette smoke, and after 8:00, music provided by any one of the thousand desperate country music wannabes floating around Nashville. Stillman looks around like he doesn't want to sit his two-hundred-dollar slacks on any of the nappy couches, and Carl rolls his eyes. He points to the bar, which is fifty feet of polished hardwood. “You see that, son?” he says. Stillman nods. “Behind that bar is a row of eighty-three taps.
Eighty-three.
Each one pours a different kind of heaven into a glass. Ambers, ales, pilsners. Beer as dark and thick as sludge, as light and sweet as honey. Those taps are a ticket to the four corners of the world. Japan. Germany. And, thanks to the late, great Ronald Reagan and his victory over the evil empire, Russia, Poland, and the Czech Republic.” He smiles reverently. “Not to forget the mother country.”

“Ireland,” I say. “I'm the Irish one, but Becker wants to convert.”

“I'm a Miller Lite man,” Stillman says, looking around the club.

Carl looks struck. “Good Christ, Stillman. We found you just in time.” He puts his hand on Stillman's shoulder. “I trust your charge cards are all in working order.” Stillman gives a worried look—the revolving bill for the CEO-level clothes he's wearing is probably floating through his mind—and mutters something unintelligible.

“Junior prosecutors always buy,” I say. “It's how we keep smart young guys like you from leaving. After you buy drinks for a few years, it finally gets to be your turn. You can't afford to leave all that money on the table.”

“Precisely,” Carl says. We sit on a couple of couches facing each other, Carl and me on one side, Stillman on the other. A gorgeous waitress wearing a breast-defining T-shirt walks up to take our order. I order a Paulaner Hefe-Weizen—which gets Carl's approving nod—and Carl orders a little number called a Ratsherrn Trunk, a beer so sharp and pungent just hearing him order it makes my eyes water. Stillman flashes his TV smile at the waitress but doesn't get to open his mouth. “Young Stillman will have a Boundary Bay,” Carl says. “We'll start him on the West Coast, and work our way east.” Carl smiles at the waitress. “Three corned beef and ryes, please. And we'll be running a bit of a tab today, dear,” he says. “Stillman will give you his card.”

Stillman pulls out a Visa with as much aplomb as he can manage, but he watches it disappear into the smoky distance like a best friend marching off to war. As much as I enjoy seeing him squirm, I put him out of his misery. “Don't panic, Stillman,” I say. “One beer's the limit at lunch. You'll get out of here alive.”

Stillman exhales slightly, and we settle in, Carl filling his space on the sofa so comfortably it's hard to imagine him more at home where he actually lives. The one-beer rule is only a lunchtime thing; after hours he's always been a heavy drinker, but at least he's positively religious about taking taxis home. He's never been less than razor sharp the next morning, either, which is testimony either to his constitution or to his alcohol tolerance after thirty years' practice. I watch him quietly, wondering what he'll do other than drink when he retires in a few days. Drinking has been social for Carl, it's been a hobby, and, above all, it's been something he's done expertly, with élan and good humor. His love for the color and taste of fine beer has always had a powerful counterbalance in his life, namely, his even greater love for the law. With that removed, I wonder what will happen. He fits so comfortably in his seat now, I can imagine him receding farther and farther into the upholstery, until he vanishes completely, a perpetual buzz of forgetfulness flowing through his veins. God knows he hates to go home if there's friendly conversation and good beer to be found. To wit, he raises his pint and gives his usual toast: “Gentlemen, here's to men with nothing to do but save the world.”

“Saving the world,” I say, sipping my Paulaner. The gold slips down my throat, the perfect blend of bite and comfort.

Stillman tastes his beer, looks pleasantly surprised, and takes a bigger sip.

Carl leans back in the couch, the back of which comes up to the top of his shoulders. “Here's Paul,” he says, nodding. “Late, as usual.”

Paul Landmeyer, the third part of our usual threesome, is a brilliant, humorous man, with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, and has written papers for the
Journal of Police Forensics.
When he's not picking evidence apart for the police, he's grinding through the teenage years of his kid, a fourteen-year-old boy whose idea of accomplishment is mastering a new skateboard trick. Paul is thirty-eight, with a scholarly look: brown, thick hair, glasses, and deep, thoughtful eyes. He shakes hands with me and Carl, and I introduce him to Stillman. Paul looks at Stillman awhile, a thin smile on his lips. He orders iced tea and a sandwich, sits back, and says, “Stillman. Yeah, that was the name I heard.”

Stillman looks up, surprised. “You heard my name?”

Paul nods. “I just got back from a thing out at the Nation. You and your partner are a major topic of conversation out there.”

He looks up. “Us?”

Paul smiles. “You're the two guys who let that Sudanese guy out on bail, aren't you?”

Stillman stares. “Yeah. I mean, Thomas…yeah.”

“And he's accused of raping and murdering a white girl from the Nation, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there ya go.”

Stillman's TV smile vanishes. “Am I supposed to be freaked out about this or what?”

I shrug. “You work for the Justice Department, so they hated you already, Stillman. They just didn't know your name yet.”