Ride the Lightning (6 page)

“How many shots did you hear?”

“Four, plus one when the car sped toward the corner. I knew they were shots immediately; I spent three years as a nurse in Southeast Asia and I recognize gunfire.”

“And did you see the man’s face?”

She sat down with an exaggerated, incongruous primness on a dainty chair facing the sofa and nodded. “Got a glimpse. What I saw mostly, though, was the top of his head. Mass of wavy dark brown or black hair. Parted in the middle, I think. He was a slender little bastard, but sort of wiry, strong-looking. Remember, though, I had to take all this in within about four seconds.”

“But you picked Curtis Colt out of a police lineup.”

She shrugged. “When I saw him standing there, it just hit me that he was the man. You want a drink, Mr. Nudger?”

“No, thanks.” A scrawny yellow cat strutted into the room, angled over, and rubbed against Nudger’s leg. Nudger was mildly surprised; the apartment smelled nothing like cat; it had in fact a faint lilac scent.

Edna Fine clucked her tongue at the cat and patted a hand on her bony thigh. The cat took two smooth leaps and was curled in her lap. “Matilda’s hungry,” she said.

Nudger wasn’t surprised that the cat’s name was Matilda. It was exactly the sort of name a lonely spinster would choose for a pet. At least that was consistent with his initial impression of Edna Fine, with the face and mannerisms she’d worn when she greeted him. “What did you see after the car drove away?” he asked.

“Just before it turned the corner, I saw Colt’s arm come out the window and he fired a shot behind him.” She twisted her body awkwardly to the left to mimic the action. Then she began absently stroking Matilda. “After that, I noticed a woman on the sidewalk just up the street from the liquor store. She was walking an ugly little brown dog on a leash. Langeneckert turned out to be her name—the woman’s, not the dog’s. Then two men came out of the store and looked up the street this way, in the direction the car had gone, and one of them ran back inside. That’s when I turned away from the window and dialed nine-eleven for the police.”

“Did anyone shout or say anything?”

“I think Mrs. Langeneckert yelled something as the car drove away, but I can’t be sure. This apartment’s almost soundproof. It’s air-conditioned; the front windows don’t even open.”

Another cat, this one a big black-and-white tom with a pointy face, sauntered into the room, rubbed against Edna Fine’s ankle, then stretched out at her feet.

“This is Artemas,” she said. “He’s part Abyssinian.”

“Are there any others?” Nudger asked, wondering if Artemas was an Abyssinian name as well as Greek.

“Only Artemas and Matilda.” She spoke of her pets as if they were her children—the old-maid characteristic of misplaced maternal affection. Or maybe she simply loved animals.

“Did you go downstairs after you called the police?” Nudger asked.

“No, I went back to the window and watched everything from there. A small crowd had gathered by that time. Within a few minutes the police and an ambulance arrived.”

Nudger got up and walked across soft carpet to the living room window overlooking Gravois Avenue. It afforded an uncluttered view of the liquor store.

Olson’s Liquor Emporium had a narrow front with two small display windows, but the building was long, with several high, grilled windows running along the side that Nudger could see. There were some red-lettered sale posters in the display windows, and a
CLOSED
sign was hanging crookedly in the window of the door. A man in a pale suit walked past the front of the store, got into a parked car, and drove away. Nudger had barely been able to make out his features.

The street was four lanes here, so the angle wasn’t bad, but the distance was farther than Nudger had assumed. Edna Fine had the longest view of all the eyewitnesses, yet she seemed the one most likely to give an accurate account.

Nudger turned from his view of the dusk-shadowed street. “Is there any doubt in your mind that the man you saw was Colt?”

“Not much, Mr. Nudger.”

“But some.”

“There’s a particle of doubt in my mind about almost everything. But I guess I’d give my deposition the same way today. Lawyers have a way of putting questions, don’t they?”

“They do,” Nudger agreed. “That’s how innocent people get convicted sometimes.”

“Sometimes, Mr. Nudger, but not this time. I don’t believe in capital punishment; I’ve seen how any kind of killing usually begets more killing. But I still think Curtis Colt’s guilty. And the law is . . .”

“The law,” Nudger finished for her.

She nodded sternly, and magically the earthy reasonableness that made her likable disappeared. She became a self-righteous, worn woman who was sending a young man for a ride on the lightning. What a Jekyll and Hyde witness she would have made on the stand. “That’s right, Mr. Nudger. And the law must have its due.” She dumped Matilda onto the floor and stood up, tall, wise justice in a black dress. So unlike her other self. Her real self?

Matilda dejectedly left the room, then Artemas stretched, switched his tail, and followed.

Nudger knew it was time for him to leave, too.

He drove out to where Candy Ann Adams worked as a waitress at the Right Steer Steakhouse on Watson Road.

After pushing through plastic swinging doors manufactured to resemble Western saloon doors, he made his way through a modern glass door, then along a narrow railed area where customers were lined up and herded past the desserts, drinks, and cashier, and then were set out to graze at the salad bar in the middle of the Old West decor.

The manager, a young guy wearing a cheap straw ten-gallon hat and a cowboy shirt with “Trail Boss” embroidered over the pocket, told Nudger that Candy Ann had left just fifteen minutes ago because she wasn’t feeling well. Nudger thanked him kindly, wishing he had a ten-gallon hat of his own to tip.

Leaving the warmth and slightly nauseating burned-steak smell of the Right Steer, he drove to Placid Grove Trailer Park.

The lights were burning in Candy Ann’s trailer. Nudger pulled the Volkswagen up close to the metal wall near her door and turned off the sputtering engine. A lacy curtain parted in one of the windows.

She was standing holding the trailer door open when he unfolded up out of the car.

“C’mon in, Mr. Nudger. You learn anything?”

“Nothing you’ll want to hear,” he told her.

The light from the trailer’s interior shone through her thin discount-store skirt, silhouetting her slender legs. Apparently she’d just finished washing her hair; there was a blue towel wound turban-style on her head. The top-heavy bulk of the wrapped towel made her body appear even thinner and somehow sensually awkward.

She stood aside as Nudger stepped up into the trailer and edged around her. She smelled like perfumed, soapy shampoo. It reminded him of how his former wife Eileen had smelled immediately after a shower. Still, he liked that scent.

Nudger sat in the vinyl chair again, and she settled into a corner of the undersized sofa, as she had the first night he’d been here; these things took on a certain convention. There was a jelly-jar glass half full of a clear liquid on the small table by the sofa. Nudger picked up another scent now. Alcohol. High-proof gin.

“I been drinking, Mr. Nudger,” Candy Ann admitted. “Not much. Just enough to ease my headache some, and my worry about Curtis.”

“I’m not going to be able to offer much comfort,” Nudger told her. “I talked to the witnesses, and all of them stick to their stories.” He told her the details of the conversations.

As she sat listening, she unwound the towel and began to rub her incredibly tangled wet blond hair, sending glistening clear water droplets flying. Her little-girl features were drawn into a pained and contemplative expression that made Nudger want to put his arm around her as a father might and pat her shoulder, assure her that everything would work out okay eventually, lie and lie and lie.

What he said was, “It only takes two witnesses to convict, Candy Ann. In this case there are four. And they’re all solid. None of them is at all in doubt about his or her identification of Curtis Colt as the killer.”

Candy Ann continued rubbing the rough towel on her scalp violently, as if she were determined to buff her hair from her head. Or her worries from her mind.

Nudger leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and looked squarely at her. “I have to be honest; it’s time you should face the fact that Colt is guilty and you’re wasting your money on my services.”

She stopped rubbing her wet hair, gazed at him with her pale blue eyes from beneath the folds of the damp towel. “All them witnesses know what’s going to happen to Curtis,” she said. “They’d never want to live with the notion they might have made a mistake, killed an innocent man, so they’ve got themselves convinced that they’re positive it was Curtis they seen in that liquor store. They gotta be positive if they want to sleep at night.”

“Your observation on human psychology is sound,” Nudger said, “but I don’t think it will help us. The witnesses were just as certain at the trial. I took the time to read the court transcript; the jury had no choice but to find Colt guilty, and the evidence hasn’t changed. Nothing has changed, Candy Ann. . . .”

“That Randy Gantner, I think he’d just as soon see Curtis dead, knowing Curtis might do something even from prison to stop him from pestering me.”

“Gantner pestered you?” Nudger sat back and felt warm vinyl attach itself to his perspiring back through his shirt. “How could he know where you live? How could he even know you exist?”

Candy Ann lowered her eyes. “I told him, I’m afraid. It was before I hired you; I thought maybe I could talk to them witnesses myself, get them to see Curtis’ innocence, his goodness. Gantner’s the only one I seen. After him, I knew how hopeless it was for me and that I needed the help of an expert.” She looked up and smiled. “That’s when I called you, Mr. Nudger.”

“So Gantner found out where you lived.”

“I ain’t sure he knows where I live, but he came by the Right Steer a few times. He . . . made advances.”

“That sounds like something out of the nineteenth century,” Nudger said.

“Huh?”

“Never mind. What kind of advances?”

“Improper.”

“Oh, I’m sure. But was the implication that if you slept with him he might change his story about Curtis?”

“No, he never came right out and said that.” She rubbed her nose vertically with the palm of her hand, as a child might, and looked pensive. “Tell you the truth, Mr. Nudger, though I shouldn’t say it—if it would really save Curtis’ life, I’d even sleep with that Gantner. Would in a minute.”

“I don’t think it would make much difference,” Nudger said. “And I don’t think Curtis would approve.”

“You’re probably right about both those things.”

Nudger shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry, but the evidence looks exactly the same as it did at the time of the trial.”

Candy Ann drew her bare feet up off the floor and hugged her knees to her chest with both arms as if she were crazy about her legs. It was almost a gesture of unconscious, undeveloped sexuality, the sort of thing you might see in a ten-year-old. Her little-girl posture matched her little-girl faith in her lover’s innocence. She believed the white knight must arrive at any moment and snatch handsome Curtis Colt from the electrical jaws of death. She believed hard, this child-woman. Nudger could almost hear his armor clank when he walked.

She wanted him to believe just as hard. “I see you need to be convinced of Curtis’ innocence,” she said wistfully. There was no doubt he’d forced her into some kind of a corner with his lack of faith and his disheartening report of unshakable witnesses. “If you come by here at midnight, Mr. Nudger, I’ll convince you.”

“Can’t we make it earlier?” Nudger said. “My old car turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

She smiled slowly, her slightly protruding teeth separating her lips. “I seen cars was lemons, Mr. Nudger, but never pumpkins.”

“How do you intend to prove Colt’s innocence?”

“I can’t say. You’ll understand why later tonight.”

“But why do we have to wait until midnight?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

Nudger looked at the waiflike creature curled in the corner of the sofa. He felt as if they were playing a childhood guessing game while Curtis Colt waited his turn in the electric chair. Nudger had never seen an execution; he’d heard it took longer than most people thought for the condemned to die. There were spasms, wisps of smoke, the scent of charred flesh.

His stomach actually twitched. How did he ever get pulled into this case? How did he get pulled into this odd occupation? But he knew how. It had something to do with unpaid bills. And with other kinds of obligations. With not being able to walk away like a sane man. He’d be there at midnight.

“Can’t we do this now with twenty questions?” he asked, trying one more time to get to bed early tonight.

Candy Ann shook her head. More drops of water flew, playing bright tricks with the lamplight. For a moment there was magic in the trailer. “No, Mr. Nudger. Sorry.”

Nudger sighed and stood up, feeling as if he were about to bump his head on the low ceiling even though he was barely six feet tall. “All right, Candy Ann, we’ll do it your way.”

She smiled again, as if thanking him, as if he’d had a choice.

“Make sure you’re on time tonight, Mr. Nudger,” she called as he went out the door. “It’s important.”

Nudger wondered at the different worlds people lived in, while the real world had its way with them.

He didn’t notice the car following him as he turned the Volkswagen out of the trailer park.

VI
I

udger drove to his office to wait for midnight. He checked his phone-answering machine again. Another call from Eileen, who demanded in her no-nonsense voice that he call her back as soon as possible. He reached for the phone, almost lifted the receiver, then slowly drew his hand back and settled down in his swivel chair, which gave a soft little squeal, as if assuring him he’d been wise not to call. He didn’t feel like talking to Eileen right now. Ever again, actually.