A Clean Kill (11 page)

“Yeah. I knew that much. What I’m looking for is someone who has collected data on juror illness rates that can be tied to specific law firms, and, obviously, I was hoping you’re that person.”

She nodded and dropped her eyes to her desk. “Let me think about that for a minute.”

So I did.

Dr. Cantil glanced around her office as thoughts rolled through her mind, and I watched her do it. I think it was a satisfying exercise for both of us. Finally, she said, “That presents an interesting puzzle. I don’t have data broken down by law firm. But, for every trial
in my database, I do have fields for the principal attorneys on the cases. Originally, I put attorneys in the database in case I needed to contact someone to learn more about a given jury. But …” She stopped talking and looked at the corner of the ceiling for a few seconds. “I might be able to get something from Martindale-Hubbell,” referring to the national directory of attorneys. She stopped again and shook her head as if dismissing the idea. “Does the state bar association publish any kind of directory listing attorneys under the firms they work for?”

“Sure. They publish a directory every year, broken down three or four different ways. Alphabetically, by geographic region, by firm. I can get you a copy.”

“No. The hard copy won’t do it. I’m trying to figure out how to tease my research for the data you want without wasting
my
time and costing
you
a fortune. What I need is a CD-ROM or a Zip disk with the law-firm directory on it. If the bar association publishes the directory, they’ll have the disk they sent to the typesetter. If I can get a copy of that disk, I could write a simple search-and-compare program to match the trial attorneys in my database with their firms in the directory—that’s why I need the information on disk. Then I’d be able to pull juror illness rates by attorney. Of course, I’d have to go back and, ah …” She was thinking.

I waited. She didn’t say anything else, so I did. “But, after you do all that, you’ll be able to determine whether it appears that Russell and Wagler has been manipulating their juries. Is that what you’re saying?”

She nodded. “More or less. Assuming that, if they’ve done it, they’ve done it more than two times. At least,
it’s theoretically possible to determine whether the rate of juror disability on their cases is outside the range of naturally occurring events. But are you seriously claiming that this firm is … what? Poisoning people or bribing them or something?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

She paused. “What happened to your head?” Dr. Cantil was looking at the network of cuts on my forehead. The real-world psychologist was overtaking the abstract researcher, and she may have been wondering if she was sitting across from a head-trauma case gone goofy.

I debated how much to tell her. If I told her everything—including the attempt on my life, the stacked sculpture in my living room, and the dead squirrel on my hood—she might throw me out of her office and call the guys with butterfly nets. But if I wasn’t forthcoming, I could be putting her in real danger with no warning about what she was getting into.

“I was in a wreck. Someone tampered with my Jeep, and I think the same person who caused the wreck has been watching me. You should know—before you agree to help—that I think the wreck and the surveillance have something to do with this case.”

The professor squinted her eyes. “You do know, Mr. McInnes, that you sound a bit crazy.”

“That was blunt.”

She smiled. “I’m a psychologist. I know crazy when I hear it.”

“Do I look crazy?”

“You don’t look like a homeless schizophrenic, if that’s what you mean. You look like a cute, successful attorney who’s probably used to getting his way. But
delusional psychosis is a chemical imbalance in the brain. You could look perfectly normal and still be, as we say in the profession, crazy as a loon.”

“You think I’m delusional?”

“No. But I do think I’m going to check you out before I spend my Christmas break doing research for you.”

I was beginning to like Dr. Kai-Li Cantil. “You want some references?”

Dr. Cantil pursed her lips and shook her chin at me. “I’ve been doing research on Alabama juries for four years now. Talking to lawyers and judges all over the state. Don’t worry, Mr. McInnes. I’ll find out about you.”

I looked into those intelligent green eyes, and I believed her. And that made me feel strangely unsettled.

With forty-five minutes to kill before my pictures were promised to be ready, I found a sandwich shop called Over the Hump, where I ordered the speciality of the house—a Hump, of course—some chips, and a Coke. There were a half-dozen high school kids out and about on Christmas break, hanging out in the sandwich shop, smoking cigarettes and playing video games beneath the mounted head of an African water buffalo.

Too much dinging and clanging. Too much juvenile bravado. I loaded back into the Expedition with my lunch and drove to the arboretum next to the university president’s mansion. I sat on a small, arched bridge, with my feet dangling over a stream, and ate. It was cold but quiet. And it was beautiful. Beautiful day. Beautiful landscape. Nice memories. Sixteen years
earlier, on a warm spring night, I had passed an amazing, slightly inebriated midnight hour on that bridge with a little Chi Omega named Cheryl Lansing.

I found myself humming as I ate.

At 1:30, I found a trash can for my sack and cup and napkins and climbed back onto the chilled seats of the Expedition. Ten minutes later, I presented a claim stub to a pale-skinned, long-necked photographer type behind the counter at Tiger Tooth Photo. And he looked at me as though he couldn’t fathom why I’d do something so embarrassingly stupid.

I nodded at the stub. “You said the pictures would be ready at one-thirty.”

He sighed. “And they were.”

“Well, could I have them please?”

He shook his head. Clearly, I was a moron. “They’ve already been picked up,
sir
.”

Something started to claw at my stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“Cindy, the girl you sent in to get them. She came in five minutes after you did and said you needed the prints in a hurry and she was supposed to wait. We gave ’em to her before one o’clock. If you’ll just check with her …”

The tiny, instinctual thorns that had prickled my nerves since I awoke that morning in Montgomery thickened into a sinuous vine that squeezed some soft and vital organ just above my stomach. I said, “I don’t know anybody in Auburn named Cindy, and I didn’t send anybody in here to pick up my pictures.”

The clerk’s veneer of superiority faded. “She knew your name, uh …”

“Who is she? You said her name like you know her.”

He stuttered a little now when he talked. “I, uh, don’t, uh, want to get anybody in trouble. Listen, uh, let me give you a coupon for free develop …”

“Who is Cindy?”

“Uh, listen. Why don’t I …”

Someone was getting farther and farther away with my hard-won pictures of the Cajun while this idiot was trying to give me a coupon for free film. I walked around the counter and stood toe to toe with the slight, pale-skinned clerk.

“Sir,” he said, “you’re not allowed back here.”

“Tell me who Cindy is and where I can find her.”

“Why don’t you let me go see Cindy myself, sir. I’m sure …”

I did not have time for this. The clerk needed motivation, and I knew I was going to have to do something unattractive to provide it. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t tell me where to find her, right now, I’m going to hit you in the stomach so hard you’ll vomit now and every time you eat for the next two days.”

“You can’t just …”

“There’s nobody here but you and me. Like I said, I’m sorry, but I need those pictures. And you warning somebody who stole my prints that I want them back is not my idea of helping.” I grabbed the front of his shirt in my left hand and lifted him onto his toes. I wanted to scare the little bastard enough so that I wouldn’t have to actually hit him. Next to losing the pictures of the man who’d tried to kill me, the last thing I wanted just then was to beat on some pencil-necked kid making minimum wage in a photography store.

I spun him and pressed his back against the wall. The kid’s shirttail had come out when I grabbed him, and
his milk-pale stomach quivered in anticipation of what would probably be the first serious punch of his young life.

I glared into his eyes. I was trying for menacing. “Where the hell is Cindy?”

He blinked hard at tears. “Stop. I’ll tell you. Please, stop.”

I pulled him away from the wall, but kept his shirt gathered in my fist.

He stammered. “Cindy works at the pizza place. She said you had lunch there.”

“Has Cindy got red hair?”

He nodded his head up and down. “That’s her. Dark red hair. Good-looking. She’s got your pictures.”

I let go of his shirt and walked back around the counter and headed out. At the door, I turned and came back. The poor guy was shaking. I put a fifty-dollar bill on the counter and said, “Sorry.” It didn’t fix anything, and it made me feel even more like the miserable, bullying SOB that I was.
Good move
—humiliate a guy and then take away any chance for him to reimagine the encounter as a confrontation of equals by apologizing for humiliating him. That skinny kid was going to hate me for a long, long time.

Just outside the door, I started running. The pitiful kid I had just terrorized was almost certainly phoning a young waitress named Cindy to warn her that a maniac was on his way to see her. I had to get there fast.

It’s hard to outrun a push-button phone.

As I charged through the door of the pizza place, I saw the vague brunette waitress holding a headset to her ear. Her head snapped up. Her eyes were wide. She screamed one word. “Willie!”

I held up my palms. “It’s all right. I just need to talk to …”

The kitchen door swung open, and Willie stepped into the dining room. He was a short black man, maybe fifty years old, and he had a kinked spray of gray and black whiskers on his chin. He wore all white—shirt, pants, and full apron with pizza stains.

Willie walked quickly through the restaurant and stopped between me and the waitress behind the counter. He put his fists on his hips, and I could see work-hardened muscles and tendons rolling beneath the dark skin on his arms. The whites of Willie’s eyes
seemed stained with tea, the way some people’s eyes look when they’re almost pure African.

I spoke to him now. “I’m not looking for trouble. I just need to talk with Cindy.”

The brunette waitress had her hand cupped over the phone’s mouthpiece. She looked up and said, “Don’t let him in, Willie.”

Willie nodded at me. “Just go on outta here. No need for trouble.”

“I’m not looking for trouble. One of your waitresses, a girl named Cindy, picked up some pictures of mine down at the photo shop by mistake. I just need to talk with her.”

“I said just go on. You ain’t talkin’ to nobody here.”

The waitress had hung up the phone. She was watching. I said, “I told you I’m not looking for trouble. But I’m not leaving without talking to Cindy.”

Willie nodded. “You figure you gonna come through me?”

“If I have to.”

He nodded again. “Maybe. Maybe not.” I don’t think I was scaring him. “But Cindy ain’t here, so I don’t guess we’re gonna find out.”

“She was here just before lunch.” I pointed. “She brought me a cup of coffee at that table right there.”

“She’s gone home for Christmas.”

I looked at him.

“The
man
, he come in this morning and give her a three-hundred-dollar tip. It was enough for a plane ticket home. She’s gone.”

I asked, “How long?” then hesitated. Willie had said
the man
. It was an outdated expression, but then Willie was a little outdated himself. “Are you saying a cop
came in here and paid Cindy three hundred dollars to steal my pictures?”

“I ain’t saying nothin’ about
stealing
. But, yeah, man said he was a state cop. Plainclothes with a badge. So you ain’t got no reason to be bothering Cindy or anybody else in here.”

The brunette waitress yelled out. “Don’t tell him anything else, Willie.”

I looked back at Willie. “You let these college girls tell you what to do?”

He shook his head. “My place.”

“Then tell me what this plainclothes cop looked like, and I’ll be gone.”

Willie grinned big, showing a front crown rimmed in gold. “You be goin’ anyhow. Look behind you.”

I heard the door open and turned around. There in the doorway was my quivering friend from the photo shop. He was standing between two uniformed cops, and he was pointing an accusing finger in my direction.

The photo shop kid and I had been hanging out in Auburn Police Headquarters for three hours. He bitched to everyone who’d listen. I sat in a chain-link cage and meditated on the criminal direction my life had taken of late.

Municipal court was in session. If it was like most college towns, the weekend judge would be a local attorney who filled in on Saturdays to give the regular jurist a break from sentencing fraternity boys to community service. I was not looking forward to this. Lawyers are not amused by other lawyers who degrade
their profession by beating shop clerks about the head and shoulders.

For most of the afternoon now, the kid had waited in a metal chair by the sergeant’s desk, reading magazines, fidgeting, and generally exuding an air of injury. I waited in my cage. At 4:43
P.M.
, a bailiff opened the chain-link gate that separated criminals like me from polite society and led me through the building to a hallway outside the courtroom. Inside, I could hear a rasping baritone lamenting the wasted lives of old drunks and young. Finally, I was marched into court to face my accuser.

The judge was old. He wore thick glasses with black, World War II–era frames, and he would have had a crew cut if there had been any hair left on top to stand up. He knew I was a lawyer. Even before he’d heard any testimony, I was instructed to be ashamed of myself.