Penance (28 page)

I
F YOU STOOD
on your toes, you could see the black roof of the Ramsey County morgue across the river from where Joseph Sherman fell; you could follow the meat wagon as it climbed Hill Street to Kellogg Boulevard, took the Wabasha Bridge across the Mississippi River and turned into Harriet Island where Sherman lay facedown on the dry earth.

A tip was called into 911 about 2
A.M.
The tipster, a man who suffered from a sudden, unexplained bout of amnesia when asked his name, said he and his girlfriend had discovered a body below the cliffs across the river from downtown St. Paul. A car was quickly dispatched, an officer located Sherman’s body and the mechanism that is a homicide investigation was shoved into gear.

By the time I arrived the machine was humming along. The techs were already at work. One of them used a can of white spray paint to circle a .9 mm-casing found several feet from the body. Another took photographs; a strobe flashed like lightning across the graying sky, illuminating Sherman’s shattered skull and the dark liquid running from his nose.

A large-caliber bullet had made a dime-sized entrance wound in the roof of Sherman’s mouth and destroyed his brain before leaving a baseball-sized hole in the back of his head. A .9mm Beretta was clasped tightly in his right hand. His left hand was between his knees, the palm turned outward. There were bloodstains on the front and back of Sherman’s red-and-white shirt and jeans. His shoes were splattered with mud.

“Well, that’s that,” Casper said. “Suicide.”

“Give me a light here,” I requested, bending close to the body, looking hard at Sherman’s wrists. I found contusions on both of them, just below the worn cuffs of his shirt.

“See it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” McGaney replied.

“What? What are you looking at?” Casper stammered.

I left the scene and moved to a bench about three hundred yards away to watch as the rising sun turned the city from gray to gold. McGaney joined me some time later and together we followed a taconite barge as it drifted lazily past, following the river to St. Louis or Kansas City or New Orleans or a hundred other places we would rather have been. Finally, McGaney said, “Talk to me.” And I did. I told him I had met Sherman at Le Chateau. I told him what he said to me and what I thought of his words. I told him Sherman had been carrying a Taurus.

“Are you sure?” McGaney asked. “They’re very similar in appearance, a Taurus and a Beretta.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

We were soon joined by Casper, who seemed puzzled. “I just spoke to the lieutenant,” he told McGaney. “I told her we identified the body. I told her it looked like a suicide.” Casper shook his head.

“What did she say?” McGaney prompted.

“She said to be sure.”

“Good idea,” McGaney told him.

“It’s suicide,” Casper insisted. “Isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” McGaney said.

“What ‘maybe’? What did you see that I didn’t?”

“Start with the gun,” McGaney told him. “He was still holding it; a man who shoots himself usually isn’t able to do that.”

“Cadaveric spasm,” Casper protested. “I’ve seen suicides who go into spontaneous rigor mortis, who grip the gun so tight it leaves an impression in their hand. Haven’t you?”

“I suppose,” McGaney said.

“Yeah,” Casper grunted, waiting for more. “Yeah,” he repeated when none came.

“Look at his wrists, goddamn it!” I shouted.

“What about ’em?”

“The marks on his wrists,” McGaney answered.

“Yeah?”

“They’re the same marks handcuffs leave when you struggle against them.”

“Hold the phone,
hold the phone,”
Casper demanded. “Are you saying he was murdered? By a cop?”

“Don’t jump to so many conclusions,” McGaney told Casper.

“Anyone can get handcuffs,” I said.

“Are you saying a cop did this?”

“Keep your voice down,” McGaney warned.

“Are you saying a cop did this?” Casper whispered.

“Maybe,” McGaney answered.

Casper pondered the possibility with great solemnity, weighing it carefully, considering its consequences to the department, to himself, and said, “No. It’s a suicide. No doubt about it. Suicide. The sonuvabitch killed two people, knew he was going down for it, couldn’t bear to go back to prison and did himself. I’ll bet a month’s pay that the gun he used was the same one that killed Brown and the Lamb girl.”

“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t,” I said, but Casper wasn’t listening.

“Suicide. That’s what I’m going to say in my report; you can say what you like.”

I’d heard enough. I walked slowly back toward my Monza. If it came to it, Casper would be some defense attorney’s best friend.

“Hey, where are you going?” Casper wanted to know. “The lieutenant said she wants to talk to you.”

“She knows where to find me,” I shouted over my shoulder and kept walking.

I sat in the car, listening to the engine idle. The cops couldn’t find Sherman; I probably couldn’t have found him even if I had looked hard. So, how had the killer? Maybe the killer hadn’t. Maybe Sherman found the killer. I had a thought. I shut down the Monza and went looking for McGaney. I found him standing just inside the yellow tape imprinted
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.
The ambulance jockeys had loaded Sherman onto a gurney.

“Just one second?” I asked, gesturing at the corpse. McGaney nodded and I asked the jocks to unzip the black vinyl bag. I checked Sherman’s wrists again. And smiled.

“What?” McGaney asked.

“His shirt,” I answered. “It’s old.”

It was still early, but I swung over to Heather Schrotenboer’s apartment, anyway—I had things to do and I wanted to get her off my plate. I found her sitting on the stoop in front of her apartment building, cradling a coffee mug in her hands. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” she said. “The weatherman said it would get up to seventy-five degrees. Not many days like this left before winter.”

“Do you have the money?”

“Nope,” she said.

I didn’t have time for this. “Good luck to you,” I said.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“I won’t.”

I found a telephone that you can dial from your car in the parking lot of a minimart two blocks away. I called Randy.

“Heather Schrotenboer,” I said and gave him the address. “One thing, though,” I told him. “I will be very, Very, VERY displeased if anything nasty should befall her.”

The halfway house hadn’t changed much since I had been there last. Its concrete steps were still crumbling, it still needed paint and J. T. was still on the porch looking as surly as ever. Only this time he made no attempt to punch me out.

“I’d like to see Elliot Seeley,” I told him.

“Hey, Elliot, some guy to see ya!” he shouted through the screen door without moving.

“Thanks,” I said.

A moment later Seeley appeared. “Mr. Taylor, isn’t it?”

“I have a couple of quick questions and then I’m out of here,” I assured him.

“All right.”

“When Sherman left last Saturday, what was he wearing?”

Seeley shrugged. “Sports jacket, shirt, black slacks …”

“What color shirt?”

“White. Cotton, I think. Why?”

Seeley had described what Sherman was wearing when I met him at Le Chateau. But not what he was wearing when he died.

“Did he take clothes with him?”

“Saturday? No, of course not.”

“Have you seen him since Saturday?”

“No, as I keep telling the police …”

“Could he have come back without your knowledge, come back for some of his belongings?”

“No. But he could afford to buy new ones.”

“Maybe not. If his money was in a bank …”

“It was.”

“… he might have been too frightened to go near it. He would only have the money he had on him.”

“He was flashing a pretty big wad,” Seeley told me. “Maybe a thousand.”

Six hundred fifty of which he spent on a gun. “Thank you,” I said and headed back toward my car.

“Pussy,” J. T. called as I walked away. I ignored him.

Dot Ladner was not happy to see me.

“I want to see the locker where you kept Sherman’s belongings,” I said. When Dot didn’t respond quickly enough to suit me, I started toward the basement. She followed after me. We stopped in front of the wooden locker with
BUILDING
stenciled across the front. I pulled on the lock. It was still secure, but the base plate wasn’t. The screws had been removed. I pulled on the handle. The door swung open easily and smoothly, taking the lock with it. I stepped inside, yanked the string that operated the overhead light and found assorted pieces of furniture, most of them stacked on top of one another. Everything was covered with dust—everything except a large carton. I opened it; it was filled with clothes. The top layer had been tossed in anywhichway, without consideration for wrinkles, yet the clothes on the bottom of the carton were neatly folded. In between I found a wrinkled white cotton shirt. The shirt smelled of body odor. I left the clothes where I found them, closed the carton and then the door, and warned Dot to leave things just as they were.

I had Cynthia’s office telephone number but not her address, and the news I had to give her you give in person—whether you want to or not. I found her firm in the phone book. Hers was an understated ad. It said simply: Grey & Associates, Attorneys at Law and listed her address, suite and telephone number. No punctuation. The ad on the facing page, however, had enough punctuation for a dozen law firms:

ACCUSED OF A CRIME?

DON’T TAKE IT LYING DOWN!

CALL TOM CROWDER!

FREE CONSULTATION! ANY TIME! ANY DAY!

Experienced Criminal Defense Lawyers!

DRUNK DRIVING—DRUG CHARGES

SEX CRIMES—ASSAULTS

MISDEMEANORS—GROSS MISDEMEANORS

FELONIES OF ALL KINDS!

“
We’re in Your Corner Fighting for You!”

Certainly inspired me to trust.

So many of the lawyers I’ve worked with over the years are pompous, self-absorbed, litigation-happy nitwits who do little more than clog the system with niggling actions in a never-ending search for the mother lode—a deep, deep pocket that’s held in low regard by a jury. They’re not attorneys, they’re prospectors: They measure success not in cases won or lost, nor in justice served, but rather in the amount of damages awarded, in billable hours, in nuggets of gold. Even then I wouldn’t mind so much except that there are so damn many of them and so comparatively few legitimate cases. As a result, lawyers are forced to create work for themselves by encouraging ordinary citizens to litigate over every little thing. This fosters an environment in which people take no responsibility for their own actions, where every problem or slight—real or imagined—can be blamed on a second party or a third or a fourth, who often is required to pay and pay big.

I have a grudging respect for criminal attorneys, even those who have attempted to make me look silly on the witness stand. And I give little credence to critics, who, in their anger and frustration, often accuse them of corrupting the law, of using obscure technicalities and loopholes to pluck hardened thieves, rapists and murderers out of prison so they can pillage the nearest day-care center. Criminal attorneys, after all, are doing a job necessary to the survival of our civilization—they are providing equal representation under the law. If that means defending loathsome scum as if their own lives depended on it, well, that’s certainly what I would expect from my attorney. As for civil lawyers, it’s like they all took ancillary courses while studying the law: Litigation 101—How To Get Rich by Accident.

Cynthia Grey had offices in one of the oldest buildings in downtown St. Paul, a former convent remodeled to serve lawyers, accountants, advertising agencies and other small businesses. Its six floors were all adorned with marble ceilings, huge windows and hardwood—plenty of hardwood—most of it carved, projecting an image of permanence and style. The conference rooms, with their fireplaces and grand pianos, polished chandeliers and book-lined walls, only enhanced the image.

“Grey & Associates” was actually just Cynthia, two legal secretaries and two freelance attorneys who occasionally helped out when the workload got too heavy for Cynthia to carry. The secretary who greeted me at the door was obviously not pleased to see me—just drop in, unannounced, without an appointment, without even calling first? What was I thinking? She was ultracool, ultramodern, with sharp features and black hair that fell to the middle of her back. She wore a teal silk blouse. At least I think it was silk. It was shiny, anyway. She did remarkable things for the blouse; the designer would have been pleased. I shouldn’t have stared but how often do you see teal?

As I was appraising her, she was appraising me, though with a lot less appreciation. She made one pass over my white Nikes, blue jeans, Irish tweed jacket and white shirt and probably decided I was a high school teacher accused of molesting a student.
SEX CRIMES—ASSAULTS—FELONIES OF EVERY KIND
.

“May I help you, sir?” she asked, clearly hoping I would say no and leave.

“I would like to see Miss Grey, please.”

“May I say who is calling?” I gave her my name. She repeated it into her intercom like it was a disease that required treatment with penicillin. When Cynthia emerged from her office and hugged me, she pretended not to see.

“What’s her story?” I asked Cynthia when we were safely inside with the door closed.

“She thinks most men are sexist pigs.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Did you stare at her chest?”

“Well, I, you know …”

“So, go back out and tell her that it’s not true, that most men aren’t sexist pigs.”

“Pass.”

“Uh-huh.”

After we sat down, Cynthia told me, “I’m actually very glad to see you.”

“Even if I am a sexist pig?”

“We’ll have to work on that. Anyway, let me tell you what happened. A man came into my office this morning, wants to take action against his former employer for age discrimination. What happened was, he became a grandfather for the first time; he was pretty excited about it. A couple of days after the child was born, he cruised the office showing pictures, telling everyone the boy was named after him. He showed the picture to his boss. The boss says, ‘I didn’t realize you were that old.’ The next day, the boss takes him aside. My client thinks he’s about to get a bonus, maybe even a raise. After all, he was the firm’s sales manager and in the previous nine months had quadrupled the office’s sales volume. But instead of the bonus, he was fired. His boss said the decision was ‘based on the numbers,’ that the office ‘simply wasn’t doing well.’ My client, who is fifty-eight, was then replaced by a man in his early thirties, a man my client had trained.”