Diehl, William - Show of Evil (7 page)

'See you in court.'

On the way out, he picked up the downstairs phone and dialled
Stenner's car phone.

Stenner answered on the first ring. 'Where are you? I'm parked in
front. Been calling you for fifteen minutes.'

'Pick me up on the Estes-Rockwell corner of Indian Bounty Park,'
Vail said.

When Vail and Stenner arrived at Butterfly's, Naomi Chance and
Dermott Flaherty were already there, immersed in the morning papers.
Naomi looked disapprovingly at Vail as he sat down.

'Didn't get too close to your razor this morning,' she commented.

He couldn't think of an appropriate answer, so he said nothing.
Instead he turned to Butterfly, who loomed over the table staring down
at him.

'Two poached, sausage, white toast,' he said.

'Poached,' she snarled. 'God!' And slouched away.

'And that suit -' Naomi began.

'I don't want to hear about my suit or shaving or anything else,'
Vail said.

'You can grab a quick shave in your private bath,' Naomi said.

'Screw my private bath. It's not a bathroom, it's an afterthought.
They put a sink and a shower in a broom closet and called it a
bathroom.'

'It's convenient.'

'It's the size of the can in an airliner.'

'There's a clean shirt and a tie in one of your file cabinets and
your grey pinstripe is in the closet, take you fifteen minutes before
you go down to court,' Naomi said, scanning the front page of
USA
Today
.

'What is it with everybody today?' Vail grumbled. 'I'm not posing
for
GQ
, you know. Why don't you pick on Flaherty? He wears
that same black suit every day.'

'I have four black suits,' Flaherty said without looking up from his
paper. 'I don't wear the same one every day.'

'Don't you find it a little bizarre that he dresses like Johnny Cash
every day '
Vail said. 'Why don't you pick on
him?'

Stenner said, 'I think some variety might be in order.'

'I'm comfortable in black,' Flaherty said, ending the conversation.

Further discussion was cut short by the arrival of Okie Okimoto, who
looked smug and important as he approached the table. He was carrying
his briefcase.

Butterfly frowned at him. 'We don't serve sushi in here,' she
growled.

'I have no desire to eat here, Madame Butterfly. Hopefully I can
survive a cup of coffee.'

'Smartass,' she muttered, and dragged her feet into the kitchen.

Okimoto sat down at the round table, opened his case, and took out a
file folder.

'I have here the report on the famous landfill kill,' he said,
almost with a snicker. 'Or perhaps I should say
infamous
landfill kill.'

'What's so funny?' Stenner asked.

'All the fuss,' he said. 'Where's Harvey? I want him to hear this
from my own two lips.'

'Must've overslept,' Naomi said.

'Hmm. Perhaps I should wait.'

'I don't think so,' said Vail. 'You've gone this far, you better
finish.'

'Okay. I'll skip the anatomical details and the long medical terms
for now and just give you the essence,' Okimoto said, opening the
folder. 'By the way, Eckling doesn't have this yet. I assume you will
be discreet with the information for at least an hour.'

'Sure. Just get on with it,' Vail answered.

'They froze to death,' Okimoto said with a smile.

'What!' Flaherty said, finally looking up from his paper.

A deadly quiet fell over the table as Stenner, Vail, Flaherty, and
Naomi stared at Okimoto, waiting for the details of his surprising
announcement.

'Well, the two males froze to death and the woman suffocated,' he
said to the stunned group.

'Froze to death?' Stenner repeated.

'You want my expert opinion?' said Okimoto. 'I think what happened
was, they crawled into a Dempsey Dumpster somewhere, probably burrowed
under the junk to keep warm - this was several weeks ago, early to mid
January, we had a helluva freeze for about two weeks right after New
Year's if you'll remember - and by morning two of them were dead and
the woman was too weak to move. They pick up the Dumpster, haul it out
to the landfill, and unloaded it. The woman suffocated in the garbage,
probably after she was in the dump.'

'Good God!' Flaherty said.

'So we don't have a homicide, we have a homeless tragedy?' said Vail.

'Yeah,' Okimoto said, snickering. 'So much for Harvey's murder
theory.'

Then he leaned his elbows on the table. 'Know what I think? I think
maybe this happens a lot. Probably other bodies out there, but I'm not
going to mention it to anybody. They'll be out there digging up the
whole damn landfill.'

'They froze to death,' Stenner said half aloud and shaking his head.
'Harvey's going to be crushed.'

'I hear he was on the computer network tracking down missing persons
from all over the state,' Okimoto said, and started to laugh. He
finished his coffee. 'Tell you what, tell Harvey the murder weapon was
a refrigerator.' Then he left, still chuckling to himself.

'Harvey finally blew one,' Flaherty said, turning back to his paper.
'Him and his intuition.'

'He's usually right,' said Naomi. 'Give the devil his due.'

'Yeah, but he kind of rubs it in, don't you think?' Flaherty said.
'Anybody else notice that, that he kind of rubs our noses in it because
we don't remember some oddball bit of information like the day John
Dillinger was killed, something like that. Hell, John Dillinger was
killed thirty years before I was born.'

'July twenty-second, 1934,' said Naomi. 'In front of the old
Biograph Theatre. Actually, it's not too far from here.' She smiled at
Flaherty's surprised look and added with a wink, 'It's part of our
local history, darling, don't feel bad.'

When they got to the office, Parver was already there, pacing back
and forth at the rear of the big room, drinking a cup of coffee and
psyching herself up.

'Ready for battle?' Vail called to her as he entered his office and
peeled off his jacket and tie.

She nodded and kept pacing.

'What's your plan?'

'No bail. Go to the grand jury as soon as possible.'

'She's gonna fight you,' Vail said.

'Well, we'll just have to kick ass,' Parver answered, still pacing.

Vail smiled. 'That's my girl,' he said.

Naomi took a clean shirt out of a drawer and handed it and his suit
to Vail.

'There isn't room in here for me and my clothes,' he griped, and
pulled the door shut behind him.

'Twenty minutes,' Naomi called out, and went to her desk.

Fifteen minutes later Parver and Vail bumped into Harvey St Claire,
who was getting off the lift as they were leaving. He seemed either
tired or deep in thought.

'Missed you at breakfast, Harve,' Vail said.

'May I talk to you for a minute?' St Claire answered, his tone more
serious than usual.

'I have to go down to the Stoddard bail hearing with Shana. Then
lunch with Rainey. Can it wait until this afternoon?'

'Uh, yeah, sure.'

'Incidentally, Okie was at Butterfly's this morning acting the fool.
The bodies in the landfill? Three homeless people
got in a Dumpster and froze to death. Well, actually one of them
suffocated. Anyway, you can forget working the network and get back to
business.'

He and Parver headed for the lifts.

'Ohhhh, I don't think so,' St Claire drawled half aloud as he
watched them leave.

Two guards led Edith Stoddard down a long, dismal hallway towards
the back stairs to courtroom 3 on the second floor. Her hands were
shackled behind her, but Venable had convinced the jailers not to
shackle her legs by embarrassing them.

'This is a fifty-three-year-old woman,' she said. 'You think she's
going to outrun you two and make a dash for the border?'

As they approached the door to the stairwell, a TV team from Channel
7 burst through the back door with lights blazing and microphone ready.
Edith Stoddard cried out and lowered her face in alarm.

'Damn them,' Venable snapped, and glowered at the two jailers. It
was an old media trick, slipping the security men ten bucks apiece to
tell them where and when they could get a shot at the defendant. She
rushed Stoddard along, but the TV crew caught them at the door. Venable
opened it and urged Stoddard through, followed by the guards. Then she
stood in the doorway. Questions came at her in a jumble.

'When did you take on the case?'

'Did Edith Stoddard call you?'

'Are you going for reduced bail?'

'Is it true that she's already confessed?'

And on and on. Venable finally held up a hand, and when that didn't
quiet them, she raised her voice and bellowed, 'Listen!' She waited
until they shut up. 'I will answer no questions. This is a bail
hearing. If you want to know what's going on, go upstairs to the court
like everyone else. Other than that, no comment. And I'll have no
comment after the hearing, either. Is that clear?'

She stepped inside the stairwell and slammed the door in their
faces. The stairwell smelled of Lysol, an odour that sickened Venable.
Why
is it all of the nastier public buildings smell of Lysol? Perhaps my
reaction to it is psychosomatic
.

'Please, please

They were at Sundance, a two-storey-high atrium covered with
skylights to give the illusion of being outside when the weather was
inclement or just too damn cold, as it was on this blustrey February
day. The glass partitions covering the large plaza could be opened with
the press of a button in the manager's office, weather permitting. It
was a popular lunchtime place for downtown workers, serving the best
hot dogs east of the Mississippi and mountainous salads for
vegetarians. It was located behind one of the city's largest
bookstores, and its old-fashioned wrought-iron tables were usually
filled by noon with bookworms who bought novels or periodicals and read
through lunch in the sunlit piazza.

'You really know how to entertain, Marty,' Paul Rainey said as he
doctored two hot dogs with sauerkraut, relish, mustard, ketchup, and
onions. He looked down at Parver. 'Does he always entertain this
lavishly, Shana?'

'It's all I can afford on the assistant DA's salary,' Vail answered.

'Who're you kidding?' Rainey said. 'You made enough before you took
that job to live on the tenderlion forever. I'll bet you've got the
first dime you ever made. Hell, you don't own a car and you dress like
a damn ragamuffin. Did you know the Lawyers Club was thinking of taking
up a collection to buy you a new suit?'

'This
is
a new suit,' Vail answered a bit firmly.

'Cotton and wool. Off the rack. Two hundred tops. You know how much
this outfit cost me? Two thou. Barneys.'

Vail bit into his frankfurter and chewed in silence for a minute,
then said casually, 'That's more than you're going to make off James
Darby.'

Rainey looked up and rolled his eyes. 'Oh, hell, not even gonna wait
until we finish this elabourate spread, are ya?' He sighed. 'Okay,
Counsellors, what're we doing here?'

'You and I go back almost twenty years, right, Paul?'

'I've never counted.'

'I've seen it from both sides of the street.'

'Forget the endorsements and make your point,' Rainey said.

'Your boy Darby is guilty as sin.'

'Uh.-uh. You gonna take that to the grand jury? That Darby is
guilty as sin? I don't think so. And that's all you've got. Look, I
don't like him any more than you do, but that doesn't make him a wife
killer. So he's a putz. Half the world is a putz.'

'Paul, I'm telling you this guy carefully planned and killed his
wife in cold blood. And he did it for the two worst reasons: money and
a stripper with a fancy ass and 40-D cup.'

'C'mon, Marty, you fried everybody who screws around on his wife
they'd only be ten men left on the planet.'

'The jury'll be back in an hour on this one.'

'What's the matter, you can't wait for the trial?' Rainey said with
a laugh. 'You want to try him here over lunch? Maybe we should call
over a waiter to act as judge.'

'I'm here in the interest of justice and saving the taxpayers'
money,' Vail said calmly.

'Of course you are.'

'Listen a minute. Where we stand in this investigation, we have
Darby saying he came in the house, his wife popped three shots at him,
he shot her with a shotgun, she knocked one in the ceiling, and he
finished the job with the head shot. Isn't that Darby's story?'

'It's what happened.'

'Well, think about that for a minute. Three shots from a .38, a
shotgun blast, another .38, another shotgun blast.'

Vail opened his briefcase and took out a small tape recorder. It
contained an enhanced reproduction just of Stenner's replay of the
shots as Mrs Shunderson said they occurred, with the shotgun blast
first. He plugged a set of headphones into the machine and handed it to
Rainey.

'Listen to this,' Vail said. He waited until Rainey had the
headphones adjusted and then pressed the play button. They watched as
Rainey listened. He took off the 'phones and handed it back to Vail.

'So? Somebody shooting a gun.'

'It's clear that the first shot came from the shotgun,' Vail said.

'Is that what we're here about? This dummied-up tape. What kinda
scam are you trying to pull, Martin?'

'I'll tell you right now, Paul, I have an unimpeachable witness
who'll
testify that the tape is accurate,' said Vail.

'So what,' Rainey said, obviously getting annoyed.

'So your guy's been lying to you, which is understandable,
considering he killed his wife in cold blood. Point is, he hasn't been
level with you. You're flying blind at this point and he's navigating
you right into a mountain.'

'Where are you going with this, Marty?'