True Crime (23 page)

Frank didn’t answer right away. He watched the door. “That stuff he was saying. About how he didn’t care about anything. About right and wrong or …” He looked up at her, gave a brief, nervous, uncomfortable smile. “Must be kind of an empty life, it seems like,” he said.

Bonnie studied her husband’s face. She felt she didn’t understand what he was trying to tell her. It was something. Not about the reporter. About something else. She could see it in his eyes, but she didn’t understand. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess he didn’t seem like a very nice person, now that you mention it.”

Her husband looked at the door again, looked at it in that same way. That frowning, dreamy stare.

“I almost think …” he said, after a long pause. “I almost think I’d rather be in here like I am than out there, living like that.”

Bonnie, in her strange state of mind, had the saddest sensation when he spoke these words. It was almost as if she heard him saying two different things at the same time. It was almost as if she heard him saying the thing that he had said—and the exact opposite thing as well.

A little cry of pity broke from her and she stepped to
him quickly. She put her arms around him and pressed his head against her.

“I love you so much,” she said. “Don’t forget that. Think about that the whole time and it’ll be all right.”

Even as she held him, Frank kept looking past her, past her hands, looking at the door through which I’d left. Bonnie wished she had been struck dead before she ever let herself weaken in front of him.

The phone rang on Benson’s desk. She felt Frank tense in her arms, against her breast. She held on to him. The duty officer continued typing a moment.

“That’ll be Weiss,” Frank said quietly.

She pressed her cheek against his hair. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered. She shut her eyes tight as her tears started again.

The phone kept ringing. Benson stopped typing and grabbed it.

“It’ll be about the governor now,” Frank said dully. “It’ll be about the governor truning us down.”

“I love you, I love you,” said Bonnie, crying. “Just think about that, and it’ll be all right.”

Benson listened at the phone for a second. Then, with a sigh, he pushed to his feet.

“Frank,” he called out, as he came walking across the cell again. “It’s your attorney. Calling from Jeff City.”

I
drove away from the prison slowly at first. Through the white flats, toward the white horizon, the white buildings fading away in the rear-view. Holding the wheel, I slumped against the seat, my body sagging. The vinyl scorched my back until my shirt clung to me. The airless interior made my head feel as if it were floating. I felt exhausted.

I lit a cigarette and took a long drag. I listened to the Tempo’s spark plugs pop, its fan belt whining. I stared through the windshield at the empty sky.
Do you believe us …? I bought a bottle of A-1 Sauce … He knows … Jesus Christ our Lord … She backed into the other side of me … Where were you …? She didn’t have a clear view.… All this time … Do you believe us
 …
?
The voices of the last hour buzzed and danced and swirled in my mind: gnats in a sunset breeze. One rising to the top and then another, one buzzing at my ear and then the next, all whirring, droning, gossiping together, insistent and insensible.
Do you believe us …? A-1 Sauce … He knows …

I laughed, once, wearily, in the steaming car. I laughed a mushroom of cigarette smoke at the windshield. What a thing, I thought. What a crazy thing. I could hardly believe it was really happening. But it was. It really was. They were actually going to kill that man. In eight … I glanced at the dashboard clock—it was five minutes to five—in seven
hours. That man—Beachum—that hapless son-of-a-bitch. He had gone to the store one day for a bottle of steak sauce and now they were going to tie him down and inject him with poison by due process of law. I laughed again. I shook my head. What a nightmare. What a crazy thing.

A line of sweat dripped onto my glasses, trickled down over them, streaked the lens. I pulled them off and wiped them quickly on my pants leg, the road a blur, the empty terrain a blur.
Where were you …? She didn’t have a clear view.… All this time … Do you believe us
…? I put the glasses back on and peered out along the line of the Tempo’s hood toward that fearless horizon.
They’re actually going to kill him
, I thought.
And I’m going to know about it. I’m going to know
.

Talk about a nightmare.
That
was a nightmare: I was going to know. Frank Beachum was going innocent to his death, and I was going to be aware of it every second. I was aware of it now, before it happened. I was going to be aware of it all day long. When they strapped him down and slipped the needle in his vein, I would be aware of it, still aware. And I would wake up tomorrow morning, and the day after that, and the day after that, aware. He was innocent. I would know, I would still know.

Christ, I thought, slumped in my car seat, sagging. Christ, why should I? Why should I know? Nancy Larson had explained why she hadn’t heard the gunshot. Dale Porterhouse had stated firmly that he’d had a clear view, potato chips or not. The condemned man had protested his innocence, sure, but condemned men lie, that’s all they do. I had no proof of anything. I shouldn’t have known anything. Another man wouldn’t have known anything. No one had known anything for six long years.

But I did. I knew.

I knew more than Frank Beachum’s innocence too. Now, as the voices of the hour fell into place, I even knew
how Amy Wilson had been murdered and why. I knew exactly what had happened to her on that Independence Day when Frank had gone to the store for his wife. I knew. And I would know. All day, and tomorrow, and every day after that.

I planted the cigarette in the side of my mouth. A shudder crawled over my shoulders.
Jesus Christ our Lord … A-1 Sauce … She backed into the other side of me … Where were you all this time?
I chuckled silently around the filter. What a thing, I thought. What a crazy thing.

With a tired groan, I straightened in my seat, rubbing my sweaty shoulder blades against the vinyl. An hour’s drive back to the city now, I thought. Then it would be six, and there would be six hours left. So it was all really going to happen. No one could stop it. There wasn’t anywhere near enough time to stop it. When I thought about it logically, there wasn’t even any good reason to try. I wasn’t going to succeed. I wasn’t going to be a hero to my son. I wasn’t going to save my marriage or my job. At best, over the long haul, I might get a magazine article out of it. Maybe even a book. Do the talk show circuit, if anyone cared. Make some cash. I couldn’t think of a single, solitary logical reason to try to do anything more than that.

And, of course, I knew that I had to anyway. I had to try to stop it from happening. Now, today. Even though I couldn’t, I had to try. Sure, I knew that. I just couldn’t think of a reason, that’s all. I had to try because … I had to. That was it. Those are the rules; I don’t make them. Once you know, you can’t stop knowing, and you have to try. Those are the rules.

What a thing, I thought. What a crazy thing.

I plucked the cigarette out of my mouth and tossed it through the car window to the road. I laughed again.

“Shit,” I said.

And the Tempo’s tires squealed as I jammed my foot down on the gas.

I
lit another cigarette as the six o’clock news came on. I sat in my car, parked at the curb in front of the municipal court building. The long summer day was still full bright, the heat still filled the car like stagnant water. The western sun came hard down Market Street, throwing the gables and spires of City Hall into looming shadow in front of me. The light glared through my windshield, making me squint, making my face feel sticky and damp. I smoked, my elbow on the open window’s frame.

Outside, the traffic on Market was fast and steady and loud. When the light on the corner changed and the cars stopped, the cicadas in the trees along the sidewalk crackled above the idling engines, their voices growing stronger as the evening drew on. All the while, the man on the radio news seemed to gabble shrilly at me from a distance, like Tom Thumb stuck in a tin can.

I waited, looking up the long steps to the columned arch above the courthouse door. The building peered back down at me, an Attic block of white stone, imperious and grand.

The Beachum story came on about four minutes into the broadcast. They were leading with it on the local news.

“The governor met about an hour ago with lawyers for Frank Beachum, the St. Louis man condemned to die tonight for shooting a pregnant convenience store worker to death six years ago …”

I touched the filter of the cigarette to my lips as the voice of a lawyer came on the air. I looked up at the courthouse with unfocused eyes. I thought about Bonnie Beachum, clutching the cage bars, screaming through them at me.
Where were you all this time?

“We have told the governor that, um, a grave injustice is about to be done here and, uh, we’ve made our case to him,” the attorney said from inside the tin can. You could hear the lassitude in his voice, even from here. You could tell the governor hadn’t gone for it.

“Earlier today,” the newscaster went on, “the governor also met with the murder victim’s father and mother, who urged him not to grant Beachum a pardon. Governor’s aide Harry Mancuso spoke to us after that meeting …”

“This administration is determined to be tough on crime,” said governor’s aide Harry Mancuso, “and we’re determined to see justice done for the family of Amy Wilson and for the people of this state.”

I whiffled like a horse and popped the radio off as the broadcast moved on to other stories. That pretty much took care of that, I thought. Whether I got to Lowenstein or not, whether he called the governor for me or not, my only chance of turning the statehouse around was if I found some lunatic still dripping with Amy Wilson’s blood after six years and screaming,
I’m the guy, I’m really the guy
at the top of his …

I sat up in the driver’s seat as the glass door of the courthouse swung open. Through the car’s side window, I saw Wally Cartwright holding the door with a mighty hand. Cecilia Nussbaum walked out under his arm.

The two started down the stairs together. Nussbaum was the circuit attorney, a small, ugly woman in her late forties. She had a big fleshy beezer sticking out of a face that looked like a collection of frowns all glued on top of each other. She wore a drab brown dress set off by a length of gold chain
around her neck. Cartwright towered over her, a block of cement on legs with the tiny eyes of a blackbird poking out of his cinderblock head. In his concrete gray suit, he looked like a building only bigger. He was the assistant CA who’d handled the Beachum case. He had to lean way over to talk to Nussbaum as they started together down the long stone stairway.

Tossing my cigarette, I got out of my car in a hurry. Came around the front, the traffic whipping by to the side of me. I heard Nussbaum’s thick, heavy heels clomp-clomping on the stone as I climbed the courthouse steps to meet her. I heard Wally’s deep voice as he murmured down into her ear. I couldn’t make out the words above the noise of the traffic.

I stood in front of them on the steps. Nussbaum stopped as she raised her eyes and saw me. Cartwright stopped when she stopped and looked down at me from his height. He sneered.

“I smell shit,” he said. He had a rolling baritone with a country twang in it. I grinned up at him stupidly. I wondered if Patricia had been right this morning when she said that stuff about my problems with authority. In any case, it was now pretty clear I should’ve left Cartwright’s secretary alone.

“Hi, Wally,” I said.

“This is not a good time, Everett,” said Cecilia Nussbaum. Her voice was deeper than Cartwright’s. It was toneless and gravelly. “We’re in a hurry.”

She came down another step as if to walk through me.

“Wait,” I said, “this is urgent.”

Cartwright’s hand cranked out and took hold of my shoulder. Big hand. Large, large hand. “It’s not a good time,” he rumbled. He shoved me. I staggered a step to the side.

I thought I saw Cecilia Nussbaum smile a little to herself as she started past me.

“Cecilia, I’m telling you,” I said.

Cartwright leaned around in back of her and poked a sausagy finger hard into my chest. “Look …”

“Oh bullshit.” I knocked the finger off. I snarled into his blackbird eyes. “You’re a fucking circuit attorney, I’m a reporter,” I said. “You wanna hit me or you wanna keep your job?”

The ape had been working himself up to a pretty good sadistic grin, but it faltered at that. I straightened my shirt-front.

“What do you think this is, a fucking movie?” I muttered. “Hit me and I’ll sue your fucking head off.”

The CA was now on the step below me, but she paused there and, judging by the heave of her shoulders, she sighed. She glanced back around at Cartwright.

“Why don’t you get the car, Wally,” she croaked.

“Yeah, why don’t you get the car, Wally,” I said angrily.

He hovered in front of me another moment. Not a pretty sight, a hovering cinderblock. Sneering, hovering. Then he straightened away from me. He waggled the big finger at me.

“We could meet in private, you know,” he said. “Just the two of us.”

“Oh, great idea,” I said. “I’ll take it under advisement. My people’ll call your people. What do you think, I’m an idiot? Fuck you,” I called, because he was already stomping on down the stone steps, boom, boom, boom, like some monster returning to the deep.

“New York asshole,” he rumbled as he sank away.

I rubbed the place on my chest where he’d poked me. I came down the step to stand next to Cecilia.

“Great staff choice, Cecilia,” I said. “The guy’s a walking paperweight.”

“What do you want, Everett?” she said in her dead, froggy voice.

“A walking doorstop,” I muttered.