Simple (34 page)

“So there are bets going down,” said one of the newcomers—the big bald guy. “I put money on you, Cal.”

“About tomorrow?” Sidney asked. “When he comes back whipped? What kind of odds are those? Everybody knows what's going to happen. He's just fucking stupid, making an ass of himself.”

Cal felt his face flush—would he always be thought stupid?

In a tone of clarifying, the big bald guy said, “The bets are about whether he's a brother. I decided it's true.”

“You want to claim him?”

“I think he was telling the truth is what I'm saying. We have our network out there, looking into it.”

Cal kept eating—forced himself to swallow. He understood that the bald man and his companion looked more favorably on him because of the chess game. He also understood that they would be careful not to pull Sidney down publicly. It was interesting. He thought if he stayed in prison forever he would like to be a whatever, counselor, liaison, whatever job there was that figured out the dynamics.

“Well, it doesn't matter,” Cal said, “what color I am. I'm the color you see. But I had a real good grandmother. She was dark-skinned and she came from slaves.”

“I don't care about that,” Sidney said. “You can be green. You're going to be dead soon. I mean it.”

Cal wondered if he could possibly live through whatever Sidney did to him.

“What do you think of that?”

Cal shrugged. “Time to be with my grandma,” he said.

ELEVEN

TUESDAY, AUGUST 25

SOME HEARINGS
started on time and some started late. This one was late because the eight-thirty case had started late and gone overtime. There were, apparently, complications. Christie waited in the hallway where he had waited multiple times in the past. He didn't see Cassie Price's family, but he understood they were there, waiting in one of the empty rooms so they didn't have to face reporters or Cal's mother. The printed page on the courtroom door was interesting:
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA VS. HATHAWAY, LORD PRESIDING.

If only.

Magistrate Lord was going to ask why it wasn't Coleson and McGranahan in court. Christie would have to do his word magic. He scanned the group of people gathered. Elinor Price. He nodded to her, then went to her and said a few words of polite greeting. He wanted to comfort her, but in this setting, no, he needed to hold himself apart. When the DA, James Ray, arrived, Christie and he sat on a bench as far from the others as they could.

“Sorry I wasn't able to take your call earlier,” Ray said. “Is there something new?”

“There are some new items I can't give away inside.” He nodded toward the two reporters he knew and the other person he didn't know, the nervous-looking fellow with a laptop. “The evidence continues to point away from Hathaway. If his counsel is any good at all, the charge won't stick down the line. So far as I'm concerned it's still an open investigation. Our job is to get Lord to understand.”

“Small matter of the confession.”

“You got it.”

“I thought defense was leaning toward mentally incompetent.”

“Before they met him, they had their minds made up. But he doesn't come across as incompetent. He's careful in his speech, deliberate, but he seems to be picking up flow, less self-conscious, as he gets used to us. Unfortunately or fortunately—however you see it—he's coming across as sane.”

“So. Okay. I'm going to ask for an extension. I'll just say we don't have enough at this time and the investigation is ongoing.”

Christie said, “And you'll have me agreeing.”

Suddenly an officer opened the door to the courtroom, and another appeared with a wand to scan the participants. In seconds, as if a bell had gone off somewhere, everybody was in line, and that included the whole of the Price family, who materialized out of nowhere. Everybody in line submitted to open purses, open briefcases, and the wand. In seven minutes they were all inside.

On the left sat the family and the one reporter fellow—no, he wasn't a reporter. Christie watched him. He was too pleading when he talked to the Prices, shifty-eyed, up to something. On the right were the mother, Elinor, and a woman who appeared to be a friend holding on to her elbow. The actual reporters took seats in the back on the right. Christie, then the DA, then the defense council, then Cal lined up in their places at the front like two teams supposed to do combat. Cal wore his prison reds, letters splashed across his back.

Lord looked back and forth to each of them for a while before he said, “Let the proceedings begin.”

Jim Ray began. “I would like to ask for an extension. This case has not produced the conclusive evidence that would be necessary to continue.”

The magistrate rifled through notes he had. “It was my understanding that you had a confession.” He looked back and forth from one side to the other.

The defense attorney, Gerald Foote, said, “Your Honor. The confession was brief and partial. The suspect felt a great deal of pressure, and he was exhausted with the long day of having found the body and making himself available to police for extended questioning.”

“He retracts the confession?”

“Yes, he does.”

A quiet cry of “Oh, no” came from the Price family. Christie turned to see it was the daughter next in age to Cassie.

James Ray gave her a gesture of prayerful hands that suggested she be quiet, a gesture that meant, “Please wait until I can talk to you.”

“Is there a videotape of the confession?” Lord asked.

“There is. It shows clearly that the accused was exhausted. When the detectives asked him if the gloves used in the homicide were his, he said yes. He interpreted the detectives' words to mean that he had had a blackout and had used them without knowing it. Cal Price had blackouts in his past as a result of a bad beating at his grade school.”

“In the past means what?”

“Until he was almost twenty.”

“How old is he now?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Nothing since?”

“No. In his fatigue, he let himself be persuaded he had blacked out again. When he was rested, he indicated that he saw no reason to believe the blackouts had returned. He had a friendly work-oriented relationship with the deceased. He was doing work on her house.” Gerald Foote fiddled with his glasses, then took them off. His eyes were soft, worried.

Lord made an odd, humming sound. “Do you have any evidence that this crime was done by someone else?” Lord asked Christie.

“We are in the process of establishing another suspect. Evidence at the scene suggests premeditation. And the labs identify the perpetrator as right-handed. All tests show the accused is left-handed. There are other pieces of evidence being accumulated—phone calls and things of that nature that suggest we look at other suspects.”

“Plural?”

“Probably not, but it's difficult to say right now.”

Lord's eyes drifted over to Elinor Hathaway and back. He sighed and fiddled with the papers before him. “Do you determine the suspect to be a flight risk? I want to hear from each of you.”

“No,” said each one in turn.

“He has a stable family?”

Gerald Foote answered. “His mother is in the courtroom. She is his only family.”

“He has a job?”

“He's a private contractor.”

“She has a job?”

Christie could tell by the way the magistrate asked the question that he already knew the answer.

“She—I believe she works for Senator Connolly.”

Christie thought, I know what's coming. This is amazing. The wheels of justice might grind slowly, as the saying goes. And the pathways to justice are circuitous much of the time. But this—

“Are you requesting a reduced bond?” Lord prompted the defense council.

“Yes, Your Honor, we are.”

The magistrate looked through his papers again and stacked them. He studied the face of Cal Hathaway, who stood straighter than Christie expected and looked more worried than frightened.

“I'm ruling for a ten percent bond in good faith. And house arrest. No window to go to work—the job is too unpredictable. I will mandate psychological testing and sleep-study testing, and I will approve a window for those things.”

Gavel down.

Christie was astounded. Nobody got out after making a confession. Well, maybe twice in his whole career, and those were minor cases. As glad as he felt for Cal and his mother, who wept openly, he was sorry for the Price family, who had come expecting closure. They were having a hard time.

Christie watched as the man with the laptop approached the family, tucking the computer in his shoulder carrier. He told them he was writing a book about Cassie. Christie followed behind as they started out the courtroom. “Who is the other suspect?” the man whispered to the sisters, who were huddled together.

“Leave us alone,” Cassie's father said. “Get out. Vultures. Vultures.”

The young man withdrew with his hands up, then got out his cell phone and walked down the hallway talking hurriedly.

Christie wanted to follow, but he was interrupted.

“Commander?” He turned back to James Ray, who said, “I knew from the start it was something big. The way you jumped on it. Who are you looking at for this? I have to know.”

At that point Elinor, exiting the courtroom with Gerald Foote, raised a hand to Christie. “Thank you. Thank you.”

He gave her a quick nod. Right now the wheels of justice were turning in Cal's favor. Anything could happen. He turned back to Ray. “Would you be too surprised if I said I have to look at Connolly and his group? I'm sorting information.”

James Ray shook his head, but his eyes were wide.

Christie'd started all this by muscling in on the case. He was about to ruin a political career and a reputation. He hoped to hell he was right.

*   *   *

ELINOR HAD WANTED
to cross the barrier to touch her son, but the guards whisked him away. Gerald Foote had followed a few steps behind those officers, saying something to Cal, but then he came back to Elinor. Her friend Olive, a woman who felt like a twin except that she was dark and Elinor was light, held on to her elbow as Foote then ushered them out of the courtroom and as they passed Christie.

Foote now explained the next steps. “You got reduced bond. That means you'll have to come up with fifty thousand.”

“I have it in a retirement account. How do I get it out?”

“Could be cash. But it could be your property, too. If you owned a house or if your son did…?”

“We both do. We both own.”

“Excuse me,” Foote said, a hand to his forehead. “I didn't think I was going to get my way. I'm still adjusting. Do you owe much on your house?”

“It's paid off.”

“Excellent. We need to get its assessed value.”

“Sixty-five thousand. That's the tax assessment.”

“You are home free.”

“I have to sell it?”

“No, no, just put it up. Let's go meet with your son and then with a bondsman.”

If Olive let go, Elinor felt she would collapse. “This is good,” Olive was saying. “This is real good.”

“How long does this take?” Elinor asked, expecting the answer to be “a week.”

Instead, Foote said, “If everything goes smoothly, we'll have him out today.”

“What did you do? How did you do it?”

“I don't know for sure,” he said vaguely. “I … we had a good deal of cooperation from the prosecution, but I think there must be an angel I don't know about.”

Elinor studied him. She tried to guess who the angel was.

*   *   *

TODD, KNOWING THERE
was a hearing on Tuesday, kept himself busy working from his home while he waited for word. He wandered from kitchen to living room, one or another phone to his ear. He found that gossiping about the judges from Luzerne County continued to be a good icebreaker—he'd make a few jokes, and, like a comic, count his laughs.

When he was sure his contact was having a good time, he got the subject around to money for Connolly. “Let's think Labor Day picnic.”

“People are going to be away.”

“Don't give up before you try it. Start asking around, man. People like free food. Feed them and they'll cough up something.”

When his phone buzzed, interrupting, and he saw it was Haigh, he said, “I have to take this.”

A second later, he listened to Haigh saying, “Cal Hathaway is out of jail.”

He heard the words and had to separate them and put them back together. “How did that happen? They don't believe he's innocent, do they?”

“I should have sent somebody other than Walter. He's excitable. He can miss details. But what he's sure of is that the police are looking at somebody else. Phone calls are a part of that.”

Phones, phones. He was thinking.

“Walter says everybody who was there was surprised by the magistrate. It's house arrest. Reduced bond. The guy isn't off their charts, but he's fading from their view.”

“I see.”

“You have an idea?”

“I have a fix. Don't worry.”

“You'd better tell me what you're—”

“Don't worry. I've got it. I promise.”

He pressed the
END
button. His hand was shaking. He'd sounded good. He could do that—hearty voice, confident manner. If he hadn't learned anything else in twenty years, he had learned how to produce that voice, and even Haigh calmed when he heard the take-charge attitude.

His fingers fiddled with the phone again. He called Freddie's number.

“What is it?” she answered. “I'm tiling a floor. I can't let the grout sit for—”

“Okay, I'll call you back sometime.”

“What is it?”

“I don't know. I felt like calling.”