Ride the Lightning (18 page)
Read Ride the Lightning Online
Authors: John Lutz
The day after the murder, a man named Leonard, whom Candy Ann had seen a few times with Curtis, came to her and told her that Curtis was innocent, and that he wanted her to stay away from the authorities. As far as the law was concerned, she didn’t exist, and Curtis wouldn’t tell them about her. He wanted her to know he loved her, and he wanted to keep her clean, Leonard had said. How Leonard had gotten this message from Curtis he didn’t say. But he knew things about Curtis. And about Candy Ann. The message was for real.
Candy Ann had stayed away from the law, waiting for the trial, then suffering through it and reading about its outcome. After Curtis had been sentenced to death, she didn’t know what to do. She searched for Curtis’ partner Tom, looked for him so diligently and persistently that finally, probably to keep her from drawing attention to him, Tom came to her.
It was Tom who told her what really happened that night, that Curtis and he had been miles away from the liquor store when the old woman was killed. Curtis had never told her Tom’s real name (here Siberling did look dubious, but Candy Ann didn’t catch it) and she’d never asked Tom. It was something you didn’t ask a man like Tom. Tom was scared; he didn’t want to join Curtis on Death Row. So he told Candy Ann to continue to lie low, and that he’d check in with her every once in a while by phone to see how she was doing. Then he gave her some money, half of the loot he and Curtis had accumulated from their night of crime, and went back into hiding.
Candy Ann, knowing Curtis’ innocence, couldn’t let things lie. She decided to talk to some of the witnesses, who
had
to be wrong about what had happened at the liquor store, to try to get them to reconsider their testimony. But after talking to Randy Gantner, she knew she wouldn’t be very effective, so she decided to hire a professional. A private investigator. Nudger.
It was Mr. Nudger, she said, who had talked her into finally telling her story, the true story, in a last attempt to save Curtis’ life.
When Candy Ann was finished talking, Siberling leaned back in his chair. He looked thoughtful in the way of a man contemplating a just-dealt poker hand. Nudger could see he was pleased by her statement. It smacked of truth.
“That was fine, hon,” Siberling said, reaching across the table and patting her arm.
Doreen looked at Nudger, her expression blank. The young paralegal was gaping at Siberling reverently, as he had been occasionally since he’d entered the conference room. He looked like the kind of boy Candy Ann should be dating instead of sitting here taking a desperate chance on the truth about a hard-edged holdup artist.
Nudger thought Siberling would question Candy Ann extensively, but he didn’t. He merely asked some questions that cleared up any possible language problems in her statement, then questioned her in a way that emphasized pertinent details.
Siberling thanked Candy Ann, who sat back and looked pale and mentally drained. “You did fine,” he told her. “You just relax now. Can I get you anything to drink?”
She shook her head no, staring down wearily at her hands folded on the table.
Nudger’s turn. He told his story simply and to the point, including his visit with Curtis Colt on Death Row.
When he was finished his throat was dry, but he got no offer of something to drink.
Siberling nodded to Mrs. Kraft and Jason. Jason smiled nervously, looked long and hard at Candy Ann as if that was what he’d wanted to do since he walked in there, then left the conference room.
“Mrs. Kraft has an appointment to keep,” Siberling said, “but Doreen can transcribe the statements while we wait. Then the signatures can be notarized. Ordinarily we could take care of most of that tomorrow, but we don’t have time to spare. We have to think of Curtis.”
Candy Ann made big eyes at him and smiled. Thinking of Curtis was all she’d been doing lately. It was nice to find someone who shared her obsession.
When Doreen got up to leave with Mrs. Kraft, to begin her word processing and copying, she surprised Nudger. She smiled genuinely and brushed her fingertips lightly across Candy Ann’s shoulders in sympathy. Nudger and Siberling exchanged glances; Candy Ann should have testified, all right.
Siberling excused himself for a few minutes and left the room.
Candy Ann stared across the table at Nudger. The blue draperies and carpet made her eyes seem younger and a deeper blue, almost violet. For an instant she was twelve years old. She looked like a little girl at a kitchen table way too large for her, waiting for vegetables she didn’t like but would dutifully eat.
When she spoke, the words caught in her throat. “It keeps going around in my mind, Mr. Nudger, how if they do go ahead and . . . do what they’re planning to Curtis, I’ll have nobody then.”
Nudger didn’t know what to say. He mumbled, “Don’t you have family?”
She shook her head. “An uncle in Tennessee, but I ain’t seen him in over twenty years. I heard he took too much to drink. That’s what killed my daddy, drink.”
“It’s like that in some families,” Nudger said.
A faintly puzzled expression pulled at her features. She frowned. “It all didn’t seem real until lately. I mean, it didn’t seem Curtis was really going to be gone.”
Nudger managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
It felt stiff; if he listened closely, he might hear his face bend. “Maybe he won’t be executed. Maybe what we’re doing will help.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “Lord, I hope so.” Nudger didn’t think it was merely an expression; it sounded like a prayer from the heart.
Siberling returned with three cups of coffee on a tray with cream and sugar. “It’ll be a while,” he said, setting the tray on the table near Candy Ann. Steam rose from the cups, visible against the blue draperies.
The three last friends of Curtis Colt sat in the quiet conference room and sipped coffee and waited for Doreen to finish preparing the depositions.
After a little more than an hour had passed, Doreen stuck her head into the conference room and asked to see Candy Ann so she could read and sign the transcript of her statement.
When she’d gone, Siberling poured his fourth cup of coffee and grimaced at the stuff’s cumulative bitterness. He glanced at the door Candy Ann had just closed behind her. “Country,” he said, “but very nice. Sexy. Nothing like that where Colt’s going.”
“You really don’t have much hope for Colt, do you?” Nudger said.
Siberling had removed his coat. Now he unbuttoned his vest and loosened his tie. “I never told you I did hold out much hope. But the law’s unpredictable. It can be twisted like soft putty. So we use the machinery that might just twist it in the right direction, until there’s no more fuel to keep the gears turning. We see what happens.”
“And when the machinery stops?”
“Someone says, ‘Won’t you please have a seat, Mr. Colt.’ ” Siberling smiled humorlessly. “We’re among the last civilized nations in the Western world to execute people, but we do it with style: the last meal, the priest, the media’s graphic descriptions of the death throes.”
“When will we stop it?” Nudger asked.
Siberling looked curiously at him. “I’m not sure if we should.”
Nudger stood up and stretched, keeping his silence. He didn’t feel like getting into a philosophical discussion on capital punishment. Not with a lawyer. Especially one like Siberling.
Siberling kicked softly at the thick briefcase by his chair. “The last-minute appeal to the governor,” he said, sounding as bitter as the coffee tasted. “The fox appealing to the hound.”
“And not a hound known for the quality of mercy,” Nudger said.
The door opened and Candy Ann came back into the room. She seemed relieved, as if now that she’d signed her name to something, she’d taken a positive step that might lead to Curtis Colt’s survival.
“That Miss Doreen wants you to sign your statement,” she said to Nudger.
She stepped back out into the hall, as if she didn’t want to be alone with Siberling. Maybe she was more observant than she seemed. Siberling followed her.
While she and Siberling watched, Nudger read over his statement and signed it. The witnesses’ signatures were already affixed. Doreen was the notary public. She used a bulky silver seal to notarize the signatures, then signed her own name. There. All proper and official.
“I’d suggest we have a drink and talk,” Siberling said, tapping the edges of the papers in line, “but I’m going to be working late on this tonight.” He touched Candy Ann’s slender shoulder with a confident lightness and familiarity, as if she were rare and delicate and only he knew how to handle her. “You just try not to worry, you hear?” Why, he was a little bit country himself, with his libido stirred by Candy Ann.
She nodded, absorbing the sympathy like a sponge with sex appeal. Doreen and Nudger looked silently at each other. Doreen wasn’t the airhead Siberling thought, if he really
did
think that.
“Time for us to head for the barn,” Nudger said amiably, with just a trace of a drawl, and guided Candy Ann from the office.
As the door swung closed behind them, he heard Siberling say softly to Doreen, “Barn?”
Nudger thought of going back and telling the little lawyer “heading for the barn” was just an expression, country slang for going home. Then he decided to let Siberling live with his imagination.
It wasn’t quite dark outside, and it was still hot. A sunset raged like low fire between the buildings to the west. To the east, dusk was settling over the city like lowering, heavy soot from thousands of chimneys. Traffic was thin on Central now, and about every other car had its lights on. The late workers were on their way home from their offices. When the stores closed in a few hours, Clayton would be almost deserted.
“Do you want that drink?” Nudger offered, when he and Candy Ann had gotten in the Volkswagen. “Don’t be ashamed if you need it. What you just did wasn’t easy.”
She hesitated, then aimed those doll’s blue eyes at him and nodded.
“I need it,” she said.
XXI
I
hey’d stopped at the bar of a Hunan restaurant on Brentwood and each had two drinks. Nudger drank beer. Candy Ann sipped at tall Tom Collinses and fin
ished them off with deceptive ease.
At first she’d been silent, pensive. But by the second drink she became talkative. She talked about Curtis Colt and nothing else. Nudger got tired of her trying to wheedle some sort of affirmation out of him that there really was a way to save Curtis from Saturday’s appointment with high-voltage death. It hurt him to look into the blue agony of her wide eyes; he wished he could help her, help Curtis Colt, but he couldn’t.
When he drove her home and was parked in front of her trailer, she asked if he wanted to come in for another drink. From a more worldly woman Nudger would have suspected the invitation was a come-on, but Candy Ann might only have served him lemonade, maybe with gin in it, and more talk about Curtis.
He declined politely, waited until she was safely inside
with a light on, then put the VW into gear and drove down Tranquillity Lane and out of the trailer park.
The night was finally cool. He drove fast with the win
dows down, listening to the rhythmic boom of air pressure in the back of the car and to some B. B. King blues on the radio.
All that electric-guitar-backed energy blaring from the speaker made Nudger realize he was tired.
Fifteen minutes after he’d let himself into his apartment on Sutton, the phone rang.
It was Harold Benedict. “Nudger,” he said, “I need to talk to you about that insurance job.”
“Calvin Smith? He of the bad back?”
“That’s the one.”
“Weren’t the photographs okay?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. It’s something else. Something altogether different. There might be another hitch in denying the claim.”
Benedict sounded not quite himself. “What do you mean?” Nudger asked. “It seemed locked up to me. The guy did everything but an Olympic gymnastic routine right there in his driveway, and you’ve got it all in graphic detail, in living, incriminating color.”
“It isn’t the photographs, Nudger. We need to meet and talk about this case. I’m near your place now.”
Nudger looked around his unkempt apartment. It needed vacuuming. Needed shoveling. Then he considered how the office looked. He said, “Why don’t you come on over?”
“No,” Benedict said hastily. “Better if we meet somewhere. I’m at the Steak ’n’ Shake restaurant on Manchester. The one in Maplewood. Can you meet me here?”
“In fifteen minutes,” Nudger said, and hung up.
Steak ’n’ Shake had been on Manchester in Maplewood for as long as Nudger could remember. It was part of a chain that years ago had specialized in curb service to teenagers, a place where they could show off their cars while attractive waitresses in unisex black-and-white uniforms glided over with trays of hamburgers and french fries, then retreated to their station, full well knowing they were being inspected by the customers. Tradition had fallen, and now the restaurant catered to an older crowd and no longer offered curb service.
When Nudger entered through the glass double doors, he saw Benedict seated at a back booth. There were about a dozen other customers scattered around the place, most of them at the counter up front. It was a diverse bunch. There were two bearded bikers in leather jackets at the counter, a young couple with a baby in a front booth, two elderly well-dressed women in another booth, not far from three thirtyish guys quaffing Cokes and wearing service-station shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Over in a corner some teenagers were chewing with their mouths open and giggling. Benedict, short, balding, wearing a white shirt and striped tie, rounded out the group nicely. Or did Nudger round it out, the fortyish guy in the rumpled sport jacket and a day’s dusting of whiskers?
Benedict was having chili mac and a Coke. When he peered up at Nudger over the dark rims of his thick glasses, he stopped chewing, swallowed, and stood up halfway. His white paper napkin slid from his lap onto the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice. A slight breeze caught it and wrapped it around his ankle, so lightly that he didn’t feel it.
They shook hands and Nudger sat down across the table from him.
“This is good stuff,” Benedict commented, settling back down and motioning toward the chili mac. He took another generous forkful.
A waitress who walked as if she had an ingrown toenail limped over to the table, and Nudger ordered a vanilla milk shake.
Sore foot or not, it didn’t take her long to fill his order. When the shake had arrived, Nudger ate the cherry off the top and asked Benedict what was the problem with the Calvin Smith insurance case.
“Nothing,” Benedict said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He took a sip of Coke. “That’s not really what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Nudger felt a vague uneasiness. He looked out the window, across the street, at a used-car lot that was closed and dark. The dull headlights of the front row of cars stared back dispassionately at him. A few of the chrome grilles were smiling.
“I didn’t want to tell you the truth when I called,” Benedict said, “because your phone might be tapped.”
“Why would anyone want to tap my phone?” Nudger asked, remembering some of his recent conversations with Claudia. Nobody’s business, those. Then he remembered that Edna Fine’s phone had been tapped.
“I’ve heard rumors that concern you,” Benedict told him, putting down his fork. “You’re trying to muck up the works in the Curtis Colt execution.”
“That’s no rumor,” Nudger said. “It’s a fact, and no secret.”
Benedict waved a smooth hand. A diamond ring picked up the overhead fluorescent light and glinted. “No, no. What I’ve heard—and don’t repeat me—is that someone high in state government is displeased by your enthusiastic pursuit of clemency for Colt.”
Nudger sat back, his fingertips caressing the cold curve of the milk-shake glass. The coolness from the damp glass seemed to run up his arm and throughout his body.
“Scott Scalla?” he said.
Benedict shrugged. “I don’t know. More likely someone in his administration whose political wagon is hitched to Scalla’s rising star.” He forked in more chili mac. “Politics, Nudger, make more difference in people’s lives than they imagine.”
“Someone’s been trying to warn me off the case in very physical terms,” Nudger said, “completely ignoring Roberts’ Rules of Order.”
Benedict nodded. “I know.”
“The governor,” Nudger said, shaking his head, “the governor of Missouri wouldn’t hire muscle.”
“Probably not,” Benedict said wryly, “considering he has the Highway Patrol at his disposal. The thing is, if you do manage to come up with something that delays the execution, that will look bad for Scalla, because Curtis Colt is his project. And if they do go ahead and execute Colt on schedule, and
then
it turns out you’ve found evidence of his innocence, that’s catastrophic for Scalla. He will have personally railroaded an innocent man to his death in order to get elected. There aren’t a lot of repeat votes in that.”
“But what if Colt really is innocent?”
“At this point,” Benedict said, “that’s almost irrelevant to any one other than Colt.”
“And my client,” Nudger pointed out.
“Yes,” Benedict agreed sadly, “your client.”
Nudger sucked milk shake up through his straw and thought about what Benedict had told him. If it was true, Nudger had gone beyond stirring up hornet nests and had antagonized a den of bears. That was scary. On the other hand, some pieces here didn’t quite fit.
“I think one or more of the witnesses is trying to scare me off the case,” he said. “One of them, a guy named Gantner, was seen with the strong-arm type who kicked me around my office.”
“Isn’t Gantner the witness who works for Kalas Construction?”
Nudger nodded.
“Kalas Construction does a lot of state highway work, Nudger.” Benedict raised his eyebrows above the dark frames of his glasses.
So there it was, a possible connection between Scalla and Gantner. Possible.
“I want to stress,” Benedict said, “that what I’ve told you is only rumor. A friend of a friend in Jefferson City passed it on. Maybe it’s the sort of story that would naturally grow out of the fact that Scalla is so eager to see Colt burn. I don’t know. I thought you should be told, though. It might put things in a different light for you.” He wielded his fork quickly and nimbly and finished off his chili mac.
A different light. Maybe that was the idea. Maybe someone had deliberately started the rumor to scare Nudger away from the Colt case. They would know they could get the story of the state’s displeasure to Nudger through Benedict. Nudger did work for Benedict; they were friends of a sort. If someone in Jefferson City wanted to get something like this to Nudger’s ear, Benedict would be the perfect conduit.
“Possibly you’re being used,” Nudger said.
Benedict finished his Coke, making a rattling, slurping noise with the straw. He knew what Nudger meant. “I’ve thought of that. You could be right. On the other hand, I felt it my duty as a business associate—well, as a friend—to tell you what I heard. It
might
be true, like anything else in this world.”
“Anything else?” the waitress asked, startling Nudger. She was standing just behind his left shoulder, leaning close.
“Nothing, thanks,” Nudger said. Benedict shook his head no and smiled at her. She left their check on the table and limped away.
Nudger knew Benedict had taken a risk for him. “I appreciate your telling me this,” he said. “You
are
a friend. A good one.”
Benedict looked momentarily embarrassed. He was used to being accused of maliciousness, deviousness, irrelevance, incompetence, and ambulance chasing; compliments were rare in his line of work. Possibly he didn’t like them, maybe even considered them an indication of weakness.
As Benedict reached for the check, Nudger snatched it out from beneath his hand. Benedict, back in character, didn’t object.
He and Hammersmith were eating well off Nudger lately.
On the drive back to his apartment, Nudger found himself glancing into his rearview mirror. A large car with a weak, yellowish right headlight stayed close behind him for a while, but continued down Manchester when he made a right turn on Sutton.
What Benedict had said bothered Nudger, about how whether Colt was innocent now mattered only to Colt. It wasn’t quite true, but it was true enough to be disturbing. It seemed that justice itself had become irrelevant. Only Candy Ann, Siberling, and Nudger wanted Colt to be innocent.
Nothing else Benedict had said might be true. Possibly it was all rumor, and not even deliberately begun. It might be only coincidence that Randy Gantner worked for a construction company that did state highway work. And not such a coincidence at that; how many big construction companies, or large Missouri companies in whatever business, didn’t somewhere along the line do work directly or indirectly for the state?
