Oregon Hill (8 page)

I know where Peachy lives. Actually, I’ve had breakfast there a couple of times, years ago, when I was still doing politics and she was doing what I’m doing now. She sees it’s me at the door and lets me in, looking both ways to make sure no one else sees me. I don’t think she cares about the man-in-the-house part of it. She just doesn’t want anyone to know she hangs out with reporters.

She has the day off, and I’m lucky to have found her in. She’s obviously getting ready for a big evening, dressing to the nines, with her dress, nails and shoes matching. African-American women have it all over their pale counterparts there, if you ask me. But I’m just stereotyping.

She offers me a Miller High Life, and I want to take her up on it, but one beer tends to lead to another, and there is a story to write. She takes one for herself, twisting the cap off, and we sit down.

“You’re pretty sure this guy Fell did it?” I ask.

She takes a long swig. The bottle’s almost half-empty. I’m suddenly very thirsty.

“Oh, yeah. They got the videotape, at the dorm, and they got witnesses at that place, The Three Chimps . . .”

“Monkeys.”

“Yeah. Whatever. Anyhow, people saw them have some kind of fight, saw her slap him, saw her leave. Saw him leave not long after.”

She takes another drink and the bottle’s mostly empty.

“And you heard about the confession, right? The guy leading the interrogation said he confessed, but just to him, and when his partner came back, the perp said he never said any such thing—but there was a signed piece of paper there, with his John Henry on it.”

Peachy and I know there are confessions and then there are confessions. There’s the guy who turns himself in, crying like a baby, and says he did it. And there’s the guy who comes out of a small room with a couple of cops after having his memory jogged for a few hours.

Peachy is quiet for a few seconds.

“Who did he allegedly confess to?”

“Well,” she says, “you’re not hearing this from me . . .”

Which is always a hopeful lead-in.

The interrogation was done by David Shiflett and another cop, named Walker. Peachy knows Walker, and he told her they kept Fell for about six hours, somehow convincing him that he didn’t need a lawyer, that if he wanted a lawyer, then it was really going to get serious. Like it wasn’t already.

“Walker said Shiflett told him to leave for a few minutes, and when he came back, the perp was crying, and Shiflett said he’d confessed, but Fell said he hadn’t. They looked at the tape, and it looks like the guy is nodding his head when Shiflett asks him if he did it, but you don’t hear him say the words. When Walker comes back in, the guy says Shiflett made him sign the confession. That’s when he finally demanded a lawyer.”

Peachy says she’s sure that Martin Fell did it.

“I mean, what are the odds? It’s always the pissed-off boyfriend, right?”

Usually is, I admit, but it isn’t going to be exactly airtight if all this was done before they let Fell have a lawyer.

“There was one thing, though,” Peachy says. “Some of the time, it wasn’t taped. They said the videotape ran out or something, and there was a gap in there.”

“So, just Shiflett and Fell and Walker, no tape?”

“Not even Walker. The part with no tape was when Walker had left the room.”

I tell Peachy about Martin Fell’s mother.

“Yeah, she said the same thing down at the station, but she’s his mother. Can’t trust mothers.”

“Did anybody believe her?”

Peachy hesitates. She gets another High Life. I look away and try to think of other things.

“I saw that tape,” she says. “I was sitting next to Andrea Parsons, who’s got almost twenty years in, one of the oldest gals on the force. And we looked at each other, didn’t say anything, but I know she was thinking what I was thinking.”

“Which was?”

“She seemed real. I haven’t been doing this shit long enough to know, but neither one of us thought she was acting like some white-trash momma-ho trying to get her little criminal-ass son off by lying through her teeth.”

“So,” I ask, “you might not have the right guy?”

“Well, I think we have the right guy. I mean, he’s this squirrelly little fucker whose hobby is picking up eighteen-year-olds who don’t know any better, and he was there. Usually, that means he did it.”

“Usually,” I say. We talk for a few more minutes, about people she knew at the paper and about the sorry state of print journalism.

“You picked a good time to jump off,” I tell her.

She doesn’t deny it, just asks, “What about you?”

“Too old to jump. I’m going down with the ship.”

“Well,” she says, “maybe somebody’ll toss you a life jacket.”

Back at the paper, I get with Baer, who’s already written about half the story. It’ll run Sunday, and I’m supposed to supply all the gory details I’ve been able to dig up. I give Baer some of the stuff I got from Stephanie the suitemate, trying to ensure that he gets nothing that will besmirch a dead girl’s reputation. It has always been my policy that there should be a higher journalism standard than “The dead can’t sue.”

This has gotten me in hot water before, and could be the reason I’m back on night cops, the beat of my youth, after about twenty years covering the state legislature.

About three years ago, we got a new executive editor, who took a more proactive view of the news than had previously been practiced around here. In other words, he wanted us to get off our asses and go after stories a little harder than was our habit.

There was a former lieutenant governor of our state who was dying of AIDS. Pretty much everyone knew it, but the new EE wanted it in print. I didn’t think that was necessary and told him so. When I refused to sneak into his hospital room during his last week on Earth, they found someone else who would. There’s always someone who will. Then, I refused to have any part in the seamy postmortem, where the guy’s whole life was sold in the Sunday paper for a buck seventy-five. And, voilà, I’m back on the prestigious night police beat. I am lucky, as Jackson and others never hesitate to remind me, to have a job at all.

So I tell Jackson to just make it a single byline, all Baer’s; but I also warn him that I might have “something else” on the story for the Sunday paper.

“Something else,” he repeats, and I can tell he’s a little concerned about what “something else” might be. I have a bad habit of not wanting to tell editors about a story before I write it. I think I’m afraid I’ll talk it to death, or maybe it’s just that they’ll be more impressed if I don’t tell them the punch line ahead of time.

I tell him I still have to nail down some details, and he tells me that Wheelie is definitely going to want to know what “something else” is before it sees the light of day.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be sure he sees it first, even if he has to put down his bourbon and water tomorrow afternoon and come into the office on a Saturday for a change.”

Jackson sighs.

I call Kate. Surprisingly, she answers. She probably put somebody else on hold.

“Do you think,” I ask her, “that I could talk with your client? Sooner the better.”

I don’t even know for sure that Martin Fell is her client but, as I suspected, she’s on the case. She’s already called a couple of the partners. The BB&B boys aren’t happy, but she’s built up a few bonus points and is going to defend what appears to be the indefensible. Kate always had a soft spot for the downtrodden. I’m proof of that, even if it didn’t last forever. What does?

She says she thinks she can get me in to see him early tomorrow morning, with the condition that I can only use what he says for background.

I agree right away. She seems surprised, even though we both know that’s the only way it can be done. Maybe it’s because when we were married, especially toward the end, we didn’t agree on much of anything.

I work until sometime after midnight, when Sarah Good-night comes by and tells me a few of the reporters are going over to Penny Lane. Normally, I’d try to find an excuse not to come along, but I’m feeling particularly virtuous, on account of turning down not one but two High Lifes at Peachy’s earlier.

It’s a habit, one I haven’t broken and probably won’t. Do something good and then reward yourself by doing something twice as bad.

I tell Sally where I’ll be and that I’ll have my cell phone on. She frowns but doesn’t say anything discouraging.

CHAPTER FIVE

Saturday

T
he digital clock reads 10:07, which gives me most of an hour to get up, be presentable enough for the city jail, and get down there.

I make a pass at the shower, dry off my large, shiny head, put on clean undershorts and T-shirt, then put the T-shirt back on right-side out. The clothes I wore last night are lying beside the bed, and they pass the smell test.

I’m thinking maybe I didn’t act as badly as I feared last night until I put my left foot inside one of my Docksiders, and it feels squishy. And then I realized it smells gag-reflex bad. I pick up the shoes and run over to the sink, where I wash them out as best I can.

I turn around, and Custalow is standing there, not revealing any amusement or judgment that might be in that inscrutable head of his.

“How,” I ask him, not really wanting to know, “did I get puke in my shoes?”

I guess you need to know: like Mr. Bojangles, I drinks a bit.