A Clean Kill (20 page)

Through the white haze of manufactured steam, I could see the judge bobbing his round head up and down. “Damn right you would! And here’s the kicker—nobody gets hurt.”

The judge’s skin had grown progressively redder in the searing heat, and his white beard and horned eyebrows stood out in stark contrast to the shiny flush that enveloped him.

Now, his voice rose and took on a slight echo in the tiny room. “
You
win. Your poor, injured schmuck of a
client
wins. And the corporate bad guys get what they have coming. And you get all this because one or two obstinate jurors get nothing more dangerous than a well-timed stomach bug or a case of the trots.” He held his palms in the air. An overhead bulb caught the ruby and momentarily threw crimson patterns on the tiled floor between us. “That’s it. The juror standing between you and the truth gets excused from jury duty due to illness, and someone—an alternate with better sense—takes her place.”

I leaned forward and propped my elbows on my knees. “But who makes them sick? Is it this Zybo, this Zion Thibbodeaux, from Louisiana?”

When I mentioned the Cajun’s name, Judge Savin wrinkled his forehead in puzzlement and swayed his whiskered jowls from side to side as if trying to make sense of nonsense.

I marched ahead. You never know if someone will answer a question until you ask it. “And, obviously, jury deliberations are private. How would you know whose soup to cough in?”

The judge leaned forward again, mirroring my posture, and rubbed his meaty palms together. “Hard to say, Tom. I’m really talking about a hypothetical situation here. Heck, Tom, this isn’t even my area. I’m a criminal judge.”

Judge Savin paused.

I wondered if he’d caught the double meaning in his words and stumbled. But his round, flushed, politician’s face revealed nothing but total concentration on his subject.

He went on. “
All
I’m doing here, Tom, is proposing an
idea
—a, ah,
fiction
—to get you to examine your actions from a different perspective.”

“Well, you’re definitely getting me thinking, judge.”

“Good. Good. While you’re at it, consider this: With this alternate, hypothetical path to justice, if you will, no one
ever
dies. Not by design. Not by error. It
cannot
happen.”

And that, I realized, was the crux of it.
That
was the central message of Judge Savin’s sermon.
No one dies. Not by our hand
. We both sat still. Soft lines of perspiration traced fine lines across the bare skin of my chest and legs—tickling like the touch of an insect’s legs.

I decided to ask a practical question. “By any chance, is part of this thinking I’m doing going to help me keep my license to practice law?”

The judge hoisted his girth off the bench and flashed a practiced smile. “You never can tell, Tom. You never can tell. Could do that
and more
. You try cases before juries, don’t you, Tom?” Then he opened the door and walked out, trailing a swirling train of steam in his wake.

And now I’d said the magic words:
Will this help me keep my license?
My host’s work was done. He’d made his point about Kate Baneberry’s death. I’d gotten the hint about how to hang on to my law practice and maybe even join the poison-a-juror club to boot.

He was gone; so I sat and thought. It’s what he wanted me to do. Some things were making sense. Some weren’t. Just like real life.

I breathed in thick lungfuls of heat, and the dark bruise Zybo had punched into my chest pinched and throbbed with each expansion. I held up my palm and blew steam at it to feel the burn.

When I finally stood and crossed the tiled floor, young Billy Savin’s face greeted me through the tiny, double-glass window in the insulated door. He was wearing a demonic grin and holding the door closed. Billy had watched too much bad TV. I reached over to the left and pushed the round red
help
button. The club had followed the common practice of installing one—like the ones you see in garage elevators—to assist older members who sometimes have a tendency to stroke out in the sauna.

Then, resting on the assumption that I had summoned someone from somewhere, I sat back down to sweat some more. Maybe thirty seconds passed before the deep voice of Harvey, the doorman, echoed through the locker room. He was yelling at Billy.

“Heah, now! Young man! What you think you’re doin’ there?”

“I’m Judge Savin’s guest.”

The waiter didn’t look as though he believed me. “Judge Savin has left the club,
sir
.”

“Thanks.” I tried smiling. “But I’m still here, and I’d like some coffee, please.”

The waiter smiled, but he didn’t mean it. He went to get coffee.

I was alone.

The judge had disappeared immediately after our semi-naked conversation, taking Chuck with him. Then, when Harvey freed me from steamy incarceration, Billy Savin had run like a kid caught smoking in the boys’ room.

Now the waiter appeared and placed a cup and
saucer on my table. He added my own little stainless steel coffee pot. I had planned to order a late lunch—something expensive—and charge it to the judge, but just then Dr. Laurel Adderson walked in and sat down across the table from me.

She smiled. “What can I do for you?”

I tried to read her. “What do you mean?”

“Luther Savin told me you were looking for me.”

A faint bulb warmed a corner of my brain. “That’s interesting. Is
Luther
a friend of yours?”

A light blush crept up the powdered cheeks of fifty-ish, unflappable Dr. Adderson. “Why, yes. I … I’ve known Luther Savin for years.”

“Is he staying with you while he’s down here?”

Now her eyebrows arched, and the old Dr. Adderson reappeared. “I can’t see where that’s any of your business. Luther said you wanted to see me. Please get to the point, Tom.”

“We’re at the point, Laurel. We were at the point as soon as you walked in.”

“You may still need to see that psychiatrist, Tom.” Laurel Adderson pushed back from the table, but as she stood, curiosity got the better of her. “So, what
is
the point I made by walking into my own club’s dining room?”

I was growing angry, and I wasn’t precisely sure why. “He’s everywhere. That’s the point, Laurel. Your friend, Judge Luther Savin, is everywhere. And there’s nowhere for me to turn that he hasn’t gotten to ahead of me. That’s what your friend
used
you to convey.”

Dr. Adderson’s cheeks blushed a deeper red. “I think you may be crazy, Tom. I really do.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s sure starting to look that way.”

Close now to the shortest day of the year, I drove through a deepening lavender dusk from Daphne to Point Clear. Inside the beach house, Sheri had lit the tree and lit herself a little with a “holiday cocktail”—something in a mug with steam that smelled of rum and cloves. Kai-Li was holed up in my study, staring intently into some corner of the Internet.

Being the host, I wandered into the kitchen with the vague idea of whipping up something for dinner. I opened the refrigerator. Nothing volunteered to be eaten. I closed it again, found a mug, and poured myself a little holiday cocktail of my own from a boiler on the stovetop where Sheri had concocted the stuff. The first two sips were good—the heat helped, and the spices screwed up the muscles at the points of my jaw—but that was enough. The drain got a holiday cocktail. I poured some scotch over ice and ordered a pizza.

As I wandered through the living room, Sheri looked up from a Stephen King novel to say hello.

“I ordered pizza.”

She smiled. “Sounds good.”

I was almost out of the room when I decided to open my mouth. “Sheri?”

She looked up, her eyebrows raised in an open and helpful way.

The club chair next to the sofa was empty. I sat in it. “Mind if I ask you a few questions. Some … some personal information?”

Sheri marked her page with the dust cover and dropped the book on the cushion next to her hip. “Shoot.”

“Did you get along with your mother and father?”

Her medium brown eyes scanned the room and came to rest on a charcoal seascape over the fireplace. “As well as most people get along with their parents, I guess. When I was little, I thought they were the most perfect people on earth. When I was a teenager, I decided they were idiots. Starting in college, I concluded they were probably somewhere in the middle with the rest of us.”

“Nice noncommital answer.”

She shrugged.

I took in a mouthful of scotch and swallowed hard. “What’d they think of your relationship with Bobbi?”

Sheri’s cheeks and forehead, even her neck, blushed red. “What’s that supposed to mean? What’d Mom and Dad think of their lesbo daughter? Is that what you’re asking me?”

The question was on the table. Nothing to be gained by taking it back now. “I guess it is.”

My client turned on the hateful smile I’d seen in my office. “Are you telling me that’s relevant to the case?”

My fingers were numb from the ice. I switched the tumbler to my left hand and swirled the whiskey so I’d have something to look at besides an angry houseguest. “Could be.”

“Look at me, Tom.”

I met her eyes.

“I am
not
sleeping with Bobbi.”

I nodded. I didn’t believe her, and I was pretty sure it showed.

Sheri’s angry grin faded. She picked up the lukewarm remnants of her own drink, killed it, and cleared her throat before speaking. “I’ve known Bobbi all my life. Her father wasn’t there much when she was growing up, and he tended to be a bastard when he was. My father wasn’t like that. Bobbi figures all men are evil. I don’t.” She tried to take another pull on her toddy and found it empty. “I really don’t know if Bobbi likes women so much as she hates men. Maybe she’s in love with me. I don’t know about that either. But it’s not like that, and she knows it’s not ever
going
to be like that.”

I nodded and got to my feet. All I could think to say was, “Sorry. I’m trying to figure some things out.”

She pushed forward onto the edge of the sofa. “You do believe me, don’t you, Tom?”

And I realized that I did. “You haven’t lied to me yet.”

My bland young client smiled wanly, picked up her mug, and went in search of alcohol. I went in search of Kai-Li.

Across the room, the study door was open. And, through the doorway, Kai-Li looked much like she had the first time I’d seen her. She wasn’t sitting on the floor, but she did have her head bowed over the laptop on my desk, holding her head in her hands and gently massaging her temples.

I interrupted. “What are you working on?”

She glanced up with an expression devoid of comprehension. Kai-Li rubbed at her eyes and stretched her arms over her head, cocking her jaw to the side and shuddering a little. I was beginning to believe the professor’s depth of concentration approached another state of consciousness.

“Thomas.”

That
, I thought,
is new
.

She smiled. “How was your meeting with Judge Savin?”

“Threatening, informative, vague. Pick one.” “I need details.”

I gave her the three-minute version. She asked some questions I didn’t have answers to.

I asked, “Are you doing anything that can’t be interrupted?”

“No.” She pushed away from my desk and stretched again. “Just running searches on Judge Savin and Zion Thibbodeaux.”

“Find anything?”

She shrugged. “Everything and nothing. Like most public officials, the judge’s name brought up reams of news articles, campaign stuff, important legal decisions
he’d penned. Mr. Thibbodeaux’s activities, on the other hand, have not penetrated the World Wide Web.”

I walked around the desk. “Let me try something.”

Kai-Li got out of the desk chair and propped her right buttock on the edge of the desk as I took her place. All she said was, “What?”

“Tummy bugs and backdoor trots.”

She laughed. “Sounds like cockney.”

I clicked on favorites and went to Yahoo! In the search box, I typed
Black Angel of Death
and hit enter. Kai-Li scanned the screen over my shoulder. She didn’t ask questions or wonder out loud or even fidget. She sat and concentrated on the listings.

A small, unpolished nail bumped the screen. “Try that one.”

I clicked on
serialkiller.com.
As the site opened, the pumping rhythm of a heartbeat pulsed through the speaker. Black-and-white mug shots filled the screen. The rush of labored, obscene-caller breathing and the muffled footfalls of someone running on pavement mixed with the thumping heartbeat. I turned off the speaker.

A graphic designed to look like blood on concrete spelled out: W
ELCOME TO
S
ERIAL
K
ILLER.COM
—H
OME OF THE
W
ORLD’S
B
EST
.

As the page loaded, Kai-Li pointed again. “Oh, my Lord. Look at that. There’s a place to order mug shot trading cards. Who would want …” Her voice trailed off.

“I don’t think I want to know. Look.” I pointed to a link at the bottom of the page: E
XTREME
T
ORTURE AND
S
ADISM—
A
DULTS
O
NLY
. In the search box at the top of
the page, I repeated my query. Seconds passed. “Slow,” I said.