Racing the Devil (6 page)

I forced a smile. “I remember.”

He stole a glance at my attorney, then turned his attention back to me. “Let me get this straight. What you’re saying is, this stranger you picked up in a bar had sex with you so she could steal your DNA and plant it at a murder scene?”

“I know it sounds implausible, but . . .”

“Implausible? Son, it sounds like a bad detective movie.”

“Detective . . .” Aaron’s tone held a warning.

Frank sighed and scraped his chair away from the table. “You know, Mac, I never believed any of the things they said about you, how you were feeding information to that reporter you were humping. I always stood up for you.”

“I know you did, and I appreciate that.”

“I wish to God I could believe you now.”

I looked down at my hands and forced the words from my tightening throat. “Frank, you know I’m not stupid. If I’d killed the girl, why would I have left all that evidence around? Let me ask you something. Where did you get my fingerprints?”

“You know I’m not at liberty—”

“A pair of wineglasses, maybe? Am I right?”

“Of course you’re right. But you could be right because you were there.”

“You don’t have to say anything else,” said Aaron. “In fact, I advise you not to.”

I ignored him and responded to Frank’s hypothesis. “No. Because that’s what was missing from the motel room. Were there traces of drugs in either glass?”

“We’re still waiting for the report to come back. Why? Did you drug her?”

“No, but she might have drugged me. In fact, I want a blood test and a urinalysis. As soon as possible, in case it’s Rohypnol.” Also known as ‘roofies,’ the date rape drug Rohypnol left traces in the bloodstream for up to forty-eight hours and in the urine for up to seventy-two.

“You’ll get ‘em, but I don’t need to tell you a prosecutor will just say you drugged yourself after you killed her.”

“Piece of the puzzle, as you always say. What about the bottle? Any prints there?”

“No prints on the bottle.”

“Why would I remember to wipe the bottle and not the glasses? And what about the rest of the motel room? Were my prints found anywhere else?”

“No,” he conceded.

“And the lineup. What happened with the lineup?” I’d been sure the clerk at the motel would clear me.

“Inconclusive. The man she saw had a beard and a mustache, but you could have pulled that off with stage makeup. You did it in vice often enough. Besides, with the Palm Pilot, the prints, the serology report, ballistics—we know the bullet that killed her came from your Glock—we didn’t need much more.” He raked his fingers through his silvering hair. “What I want to know is, why pose her like that? I know you’ve been through a lot lately, but she was your lover, for God’s sake. Why not leave her a little dignity?”

Aaron gave me a warning look. “I really have to recommend you not say anything more.”

“I didn’t pose her, Frank. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t fucking
know
her.”

He leaned forward and studied my face. Then he heaved himself out of his chair and turned away. “There’s something else, too.”

He tossed a manila folder onto the table in front of me.

“What’s this?”

“You tell me.”

I opened the folder, and a slender, pubescent girl with long pale hair and a pensive expression stared up at me from a glossy color photograph. I recognized her from the morning paper as Katrina Hartwell, the murdered woman’s daughter. The girl was naked, except for a gold crucifix and a pair of absurdly high heels. One hand clutched at a bit of white cloth that was probably a handkerchief.

“Kiddie porn?” I closed the folder without looking any further. My mouth tasted sour. “You’re not serious.”

“Found ‘em in your truck, right under the driver’s seat, along with traces of semen. Also from someone who’s AB negative. You want to explain that?”

My head was reeling as if I’d just been struck with a two-by-four. “Frank, you know I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .”

“Don’t say anything else,” Aaron said to me. “Not another word.”

“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Frank said. “This is going to hurt you. And the tape. That’s going to hurt, too.”

“I never called her.” My voice sounded dull, as if it came from somewhere far away. “I don’t know whose voice is on that tape, but it’s not mine.”

For a moment, his gray gaze held mine. Then his shoulders sagged and the lines of his face went slack with disappointment. In his eyes, I saw what he couldn’t say:
I loved you like a son
.

“It’s not mine, Frank,” I repeated.

He ran his hands over his face and said, “The voice recognition boys say it is.”

FRANK CAMPANELLA HAD WORKED
for the Metro Nashville police force for thirty years. Twenty of those years had been spent solving homicides. For seven of those, he’d been my partner, my mentor, and my friend.

We’d spent many a weekend in his basement sipping ice cold Heinekens and building terrain for his Lionel electric trains: mountains carved from foam and flocked with green, weathered wooden trestles spanning lakes of blue acrylic, forests made of plastic armatures and dried moss, long stone fences made of sealed and painted Cap’n Crunch. Miniature people waited forever for their trains, reading tiny newspapers, clutching tiny suitcases.

We’d been to NASCAR races together and fished from his old dock, and the day a suspect named Caleb Wilford rammed a titanium-tipped arrow into my chest, it was Frank who put him down with a bullet to the head, then held a towel to my seeping wound until the paramedics came.

It had taken a lot to convince Frank I was guilty. I tried to feel angry about it, but all I could summon up was a heavy sadness that made me think of
The Crucible
and poor old Giles Corey being pressed with stones.

I sipped at the coffee he’d brought me and waited to be taken to Night Court, trying not to think about reasonable doubt and how a judge who knew a hell of a lot less about me than Frank did was about to decide whether or not the evidence against me was compelling.

I’d been through the routine a thousand times, but never from this side of things. Mug shots, fingerprinting, the strip search and cursory shower with the dour guard watching, the orange jumpsuit, being led to Night Court in cuffs. I saw the necessity, but I couldn’t say I liked it. I felt embarrassed and ashamed, a little less than human, even though I knew I hadn’t done what they’d accused me of.

I used my one phone call to tell my brother, Randall, where I was and what had happened. By the time I got to Night Court, which in Nashville operates twenty-four/seven, he was sitting in the gallery with his wife, Wendy, and their teenaged children. Caitlin, at thirteen, wore a flowered sundress that showed off her blond hair and her summer tan. She looked fresh and young and out of place. Seeing her, I felt old.

Josh, fifteen, sat slumped beside his mother, his face powdered pale, his pouting lips outlined and painted black. His long straight hair, which should have been the same light buckskin as his father’s and my own, had also been dyed black. When had the sensitive, creative kid I’d taught to play guitar become this sullen boy in whiteface? Even with the distance of the courtroom between us, I could feel Randall’s seething embarrassment.

I forced my thoughts back to the courtroom, where there were six other cases before mine. None involved homicide. Then the charges against me were read in a monotonous voice that barely penetrated the numbness in my brain. “Possession of child pornography,” I heard, and “Murder in the First Degree.” Some half-cognizant portion of my mind understood that they could go for the death penalty.

I hoped there were enough discrepancies in the crime scene to indicate the murder had been a crime of passion, but I was concerned about the bearded man the receptionist had seen. A disguise could be seen as proof of premeditation. On the other hand, if I were going to a rendezvous with a married woman, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that I might wear a disguise as a matter of course.

Yeah. Right.

I refused to think about the other charge. It bothered me more to think I was suspected of child porn than of murder.

The Judicial Commissioner set bail at two million dollars.

The pronouncement was like a fist to the gut. I guess I was lucky he’d set bail at all. But I would have to come up with ten percent plus twenty-five dollars, if I could even convince a bail bondsman to take a chance on me, and two hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money.

A lot of money I didn’t have.

If I had somehow managed to come up with the cash, and if I could find a bail bondsman willing to guarantee me for two million dollars if I skipped, I could have walked out of the courtroom a relatively free man. Since I didn’t have it, the Judicial Commissioner set a date for jail docket, and a balding man whose swollen belly strained at the buttons of his uniform led me out of the courtroom through a side door.

Before the door shut behind me, I heard Randall’s voice call after me. “Don’t worry, Little Buddy. We’ll get you out real soon.”

I
SHOULD HAVE KNOWN
what was coming next.

The only thing worse than being an ex-cop in jail is being a suspected child molester in jail.

By the time I realized I was being taken to the common dormitory and not the private cell they usually reserved for high-risk types, I was already there.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” I started, though I didn’t want to come right out and tell him why I needed protection from the general population. Not there in front of a bunch of guys who would want to skin me and make gloves from my hide.

“Sure, buddy.” The guard, whose nametag read
Hal Meacham
, swung the cell door open. “That’s what they all say.”

“Look, can we just—?”

He fingered his baton. “You can just get your sorry ass in there, is what we can do. Hey, fellas, guess what’s for dinner. Chicken hawk.”

At the name, slang for pedophile, every head in the cell turned to face me. For a moment, I knew what a fox must feel like just before the hounds tear it apart.

Meacham gave a hard shove to the center of my back, and I stumbled inside.

The door clanged shut behind me, and I backed up against it and looked around.

“Hey,” drawled one of my cellmates, a potbellied good ol’ boy with a ruddy complexion made ruddier by a web of broken capillaries.

Shelly, I remembered, my heart sinking. Ryfert Shelly. I could see in his face that he remembered me too.

“I know that boy,” said Shelly. “That boy’s a cop.”

A smaller man who looked to be in his fifties swaggered closer. He smelled of old beer and stale cigarettes, and when he spoke, his breath was foul and fetid with decay. I reckoned he would be toothless in a couple of years. “A cop
and
a chicken hawk?” He poked me in the chest with one bony finger. “That so?”

“No.”

“He’s lyin’, Fish. I remember him. He busted me and Roley once.”

Fish blinked once, slow and somehow menacing. “I don’t like liars, boy.”

“I’m not a cop anymore.”

“Mm.” Fish gave his companions an exaggerated wink. “You know what they say. Once a cop, always a cop.”

A Latino with a pencil-thin mustache glowered at me. “And once a
cabron
, always a
cabron
.”

Fish grinned broadly. “You know what I think? I think we ought to give our new friend a proper welcome. How about it, pretty boy? You up for a blanket party?”

“Nah.” I’d heard of blanket parties, but I had no desire to experience one. “I’m all partied out.”

“Tough shit. I’m givin’ you a personal invitation.” He laughed and walked back to his bunk.

The Latino leaned in and whispered, “Everybody got to sleep sometime. You better sleep with one eye open,
malparido
.”

For the rest of the day, they pointedly ignored me. I knew the reprieve was temporary, but took the time to stake out a bunk and familiarize myself with my surroundings.

The cell was dank and crowded with a metal sink and toilet, and a concrete tank in the center of the floor for the drunks to throw up in. The stained mattresses stank of urine. Above one of the bunks, someone had scrawled,
For a good time, call Martha Stewart
.

I sat cross-legged on my bunk and tried to sort out who was who and who fell where in the pecking order.

In addition to Shelly and Fish, whose real name was James Roy Breem, my cellmates were a penny ante crackhead by the name of Tyrone Majors, a career thug named LeQuintus, and the Latino, a chop shop mechanic named Jorge Ramirez. LeQuintus, in for assault with a deadly weapon, looked like he could have taken the top three places in a Musclemania competition all by himself.

Shelly and Breem were also in for assault. They’d beaten up a black man with a chain, and it was clear that by the time I joined this happy little family, there had been more than a little friction and a few blows passed between the white boys and the black boys in this cell.

It must have been a relief for them to discover a common enemy who just happened to be me.

That night, lying on the too-thin, lumpy mattress, I fought to keep my eyes from closing. It wasn’t hard at first. Anxiety and adrenaline kept me awake, with some help from the bare light bulb in the hallway that shone in my eyes. But as the night wore on, anxiety gave way to exhaustion. My eyelids fluttered, snapped open, closed. I jerked myself awake, swung my legs over the edge of the bunk, and listened to the snores and heavy breathing of my cellmates.