Dead River (39 page)

“Okay, son, if you’re just going to sit there—”

Suddenly Sikes’s eyes shifted and locked onto Harley’s, but there was still a disconnect in those bottomless, brown, dilated pupils.

“Do you read the Bible, Mr. Buckwald?” Sikes asked, speaking deliberately, his tone deep and far away.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, do you?”

Harley figured Sikes was at least interacting with him, so he might as well humor his client with a response. “Sure I do, but I haven’t for a while.”

Sikes formed a partial lopsided smile, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. “I thought so. You’re too busy with your business of legal matters. Preoccupied with gaining capital and thoughts of how you and your family are perceived in this wretched society of power-hungry and self-serving pathetic excuses that we call humans.”

Harley backed his chair up with a push off the table. Its legs let out a painful shrill as they scraped along the concrete floor. “Good God, son, what’s gotten into you?”

Sikes shot straight up from his chair and rattled his cuffed hands, jerking the steel chain each time to its fullest extent, the padlock cracking down hard on the steel table. “John, chapter eight, verse thirty-four!” he shouted, his eyes now bulging and burning red. “He who sins is the servant of sin!”

Harley jumped to his feet, an involuntary reaction from the surging adrenaline in his veins. His chair toppled, and with one step backward he tripped over the legs. He went sprawling face down, his chin scraping the hard concrete floor.

“What the hell’s with you?” Harley groaned as he picked himself up from the floor.

“Me?” Sikes let out a dire laugh. “No, the question is: what shall be done with the miscreants on earth, the fornicators, the strumpets, the unpure?” he said, tapping out each word with his fingers on the metal table.

Harley checked his chin with his hand and came away with blood. He fished for the handkerchief stuffed in his back pocket and dabbed at what felt like a half-inch gash.

“Remember asking me about Gabriel?” Sikes asked.

Harley moved with caution toward the table but didn’t answer. It was then he saw the blood spurting from Sikes’s index finger.

“So now it’s you who doesn’t want to talk. Okay, then I will. Gabriel’s everywhere and can do whatever he wants, anytime he desires.”

Harley snatched up the papers from the table and quickly stuffed them into his briefcase. He snapped the latches shut and backed away. “What in God’s name have I done?” he whispered.

“What was that, Mr. Buckwald?” Sikes demanded. “I couldn’t hear what you said.”

Harley turned toward the door and didn’t look back.

 85

A WEEK AFTER Thanksgiving the law offices of Buckwald, Allison, and Crumley received the phone call Harley had anticipated. A meeting was scheduled with Harley and Owen Jacobson the following morning at nine in Judge Vetter’s chambers at the justice center in Viera.

After Maureen delivered the message, she gently closed Harley’s office door. He eased back in his doughy-soft leather chair, reeling in anticipated glory and conjuring up thoughts of Mr. Slick’s twisted-up face as the Honorable Warren Vetter warned of mistrials and missed political opportunities.

But just five minutes before, Harley had sat in a sickening state of moral ineptitude that had been building up over the past several days. He couldn’t shake the chilling memory of Sikes’s crazed, almost demonic, outbursts from the previous week. It was as if he had faced a beast, something not of human form or character. The thoughts of Sikes’s protuberant, burning red eyes as he ranted and raved haunted Harley in his conscious hours as well as in his dreams.

But not after Maureen delivered the message. The news of the impending meeting with Mr. Slick and Judge Vetter seemed to wash away any fears and doubts, like a biopsy report reading benign.

Harley knew the relationship between Vetter and Jacobson would set the tone of the meeting. On one hand, Vetter had to follow protocol, but at the same time he didn’t want to shed unfavorable light on his friend. This was especially relevant since it appeared that Jacobson would soon be running for state attorney general. So Vetter would handle the situation with kid gloves and try to minimize any negative impact on Mr. Slick. Harley was ready for tomorrow. He’d been ready for some time.

Friday morning was cold for central Florida. When Harley started his drive from Orlando it was forty-three degrees. But for him the cool air was refreshing. He was fifteen minutes early. The judge’s secretary had Harley take a seat in the waiting area, offering him a cup of coffee. He politely declined, not wanting to exceed his two-cups-a-day limit.

It was five minutes after nine when the judge’s secretary came back for Harley. She knocked twice on the towering solid walnut door, opened it, and showed Harley into the large office. Much to his surprise, Owen Jacobson was already seated. Both Vetter and Jacobson stood and shook Harley’s hand. Mr. Slick’s eyes met Harley’s coldly, and his handshake was quick and without form. Harley always despised shaking hands with Jacobson. It was much like holding a wet washcloth. Harley never thought much of a man who didn’t have a steelworker’s handshake. He sat in the chair next to Jacobson in front of the judge’s large mahogany desk.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Vetter said distantly. “We all know why we’re here, but let me briefly state what’s going on, for the record.”

Harley watched the judge as he adjusted his reading glasses, lowering them on the crook of his nose so he could pore over the documents scattered on his desk. Vetter fumbled through them for several moments then looked up at Harley.

“Mr. Buckwald has filed two motions with the court on behalf of his client, Mr. David Allen Sikes. The first for suppression of evidence, and the second to dismiss the two charges against Mr. Sikes.”

Harley glanced to his right and caught a glimpse of Jacobson. He sat frozen in his chair staring fiercely at Harley. Vetter stopped to clear his throat with a series of deep guttural grunts and snorts.

Harley took advantage of the pause in the judge’s delivery.

“Yes, sir,” Harley piped up. “First of all, we feel the evidence involving the hair samples should be inadmissible because of the problems that have been discovered at the FDLE lab where the analysis was supposed to be performed.”

“I understand, Mr. Buckwald,” Vetter shot back, followed by one last grunt. “But thus far the purported scandal is based on the claims of a known drug dealer.”

Harley caught Jacobson out of the corner of his eye before replying. Mr. Slick had been suspiciously silent. The prosecutor sat in his chair and continued staring at Harley, his face fixed like a stone statue.

Harley looked back at the judge. In defense of the motion to suppress the laboratory analysis report, that was obviously falsified, Harley knew he had to play this cat-and-mouse game. It always boils down to a big game, he thought.

“Sir, drug dealer or not, Garrett Townsend is a credible witness that can testify against Sam Weber. Weber told Townsend in the bar that night he falsified the lab report. And not just the lab report in question here. Weber has doctored other records since he’s been employed at the FDLE lab.”

Harley figured Vetter and Jacobson both knew he had used Tannenbaum to break the scandal, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it, except give him a difficult time with the two motions he had filed.

“Mr. Buckwald, it seems like you know quite a bit about the details of this alleged scandal,” Vetter said, as he again adjusted the thin wire-frame glasses perched on his thin nose.

“Yes, sir, I do. It’s my responsibility to know as much as possible to properly defend my client.”

“All right, if you would, tell us more,” Vetter said wearily.

Every nerve ending in Harley’s body was tingling. He knew this meant that Vetter and Mr. Slick were on a fishing expedition. They wanted to know everything Harley knew. It was that simple. If Harley could convince Vetter this was not a salvageable situation for Jacobson, the judge would ultimately lean in favor of having the prosecution drop the charges against his client. But Mr. Slick had a different agenda—he wanted details to possibly find holes and try to salvage his case. Harley was confident of this—he knew Jacobson too well.

Harley paused a moment for one final mental rehearsal. There would be no condescension, no rubbing the mess in their faces. In fact, his ploy was to make it look like he was doing them a favor. But there wouldn’t be too much information divulged either, just enough to crumble the walls of the prosecution’s case and send Mr. Slick on his way to Tallahassee.

“Well, sir, apparently Sam Weber has a history of falsifying reports. It all started when he was employed by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s forensic lab before moving to Florida. They were so backlogged in LA, the lab examiners started falsifying reports to quickly clear the stacks off their desks.”

“So why wasn’t he caught up in the LA scandal?” Vetter asked impatiently.

“Because he left before the scandal was uncovered,” Harley replied quickly. “They were probably more concerned with cleaning up the mess in the lab than chasing down someone across the country. The main point is he’s used to operating this way.” Harley leaned forward in his chair, only inches from Vetter’s desk. “Sir, I don’t want this scandal to escalate into something ugly anymore than you or our respected state attorney does.”

“Okay, here’s what I need,” Vetter said with a heavy sigh. “I want you, Mr. Jacobson, to depose both Mr. Garrett Townsend and Mr. Sam Weber, and I want the two depositions on my desk no later than Tuesday morning.”

“I request that I be present for both depositions, Your Honor,” Harley said.

“There’s no reason why you can’t be, Mr. Buckwald. Yes.”

“May I speak, Your Honor?” Jacobson asked.

“What is it, Mr. Jacobson?”

“With all due respect, sir, I’m trying to determine the relevance of deposing these two men. This will certainly delay the grand jury hearing and—”

Mr. Slick speaks, Harley thought.

Vetter’s face quickly boiled up to a rich crimson hue. He waved his hand in front of his face. “Mr. Jacobson, stop right there. I told you what I wanted.” The judge inspected his wristwatch. “I suggest you recall the conversation we had about twenty-five minutes ago.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Jacobson submitted.

Harley was certain the discussion the two men had before he entered the judge’s chambers was along the lines of Vetter warning Jacobson of the possible backlash this case could have on his political future.

“Okay, unless you are notified otherwise, we’ll meet here in my chambers next Tuesday at one.”

Harley stood and faced Jacobson, who was already on his feet. He extended his hand, but Jacobson refused it. Mr. Slick just stood there, cords protruding from his neck and a network of veins forming a complicated roadmap on his forehead. This is priceless, Harley thought, this is truly priceless.

 86

VALERIE WAS DRAWN closer to her Valium, more and more Dawn hung out with her friends in Cocoa Beach who weren’t attending college, and Adam had become a solid marksman. Since picking up his Glock ten days ago at the R & R Gun Rack, he had missed only one day at the indoor range. But his continued absence from home and work had contributed to the growing wall between him and Valerie.

While Harley sat in Vetter’s chambers that Friday morning, Adam fired round after round into dark silhouetted targets of a human form on heavy tagboard paper. As he progressed through successive magazines loaded with fat, shiny, brass .45 bullets, two gaping holes were torn into the head and chest areas of the human shape on the target. The screaming lead ripped away at the thick paper that hung from an overhead wire about thirty feet away from where he stood. The targets were his report cards, showing continued improvement.

Adam set his sights on the chasm in the center of the chest of the silhouette and squeezed off the last round in his Glock. No paper snapped as the bullet whizzed through the middle of the opening. Ten-ring. A dull thud signaled the end of the bullet’s trajectory down range. He tested the barrel of the pistol, feeling the heat course over his fingers, and then sat it on the carpeted ledge to his right, the barrel facing down range. The smell of gun powder that lingered in the air was becoming almost intoxicating for him.