Ascension Day (57 page)

And so Jac was startled, falling back a step, when a shot sounded – only realizing that it was a warning shot as he looked back and saw the patrolman lowering his gun from the air to point straight at him.

A moment’s nervous Mexican standoff, Jac praying that he wouldn’t risk a shot with the traffic passing in between – though maybe he would if there was a long, clear break – but then a large truck flashed between them, breaking the spell.

Jac darted into the next lane, letting one car pass, but then had to pause for a second, feigning like a matador as the next car approached faster than he’d timed, another car alongside in the fast lane swinging wide of Jac at the last second, blaring its horn.

Jac scurried across the last lane and leapt the side barrier. Rows of concrete and steel stanchions ahead, supporting the motorway above. Heavier shadows between them.

Jac weaved between the stanchions, trying to make best use of the shadows to lose himself as quickly as possible from view, glancing in between at the patrolmen across the highway: the one who’d fired was peering hard, trying to follow where he’d gone, his partner now on the radio, the second car pulling away, possibly to swing onto the highway further along.

Jac hoped by then he’d be long gone. Another busy four-laner thirty yards away, a ramp to one side swinging up to one of the highways above, another ramp on the far side of the stanchions. A choice of escape routes for once.

But in that moment, above the dull drone and swish of traffic from above, Jac thought he could hear other sirens: three or four, maybe more. He looked around frantically, caught a glimpse of two squad cars in the distance on the highway he’d just crossed, heading fast his way. But the directions of the sirens on the tangle of roads above were harder to place.

Jac ran for the closest ramp; he needed to get out of sight quickly from the highway behind.

More sirens. It sounded as if half the city’s police were hunting him down. Jac had given up on judging direction; they seemed to swirl and echo from all around as he started up the ramp.

Another sound also reached him then, a shudder running through him as he paused mid-step to make sure: the rapid thud-thud of a helicopter winging through the night sky. Jac looked up, but couldn’t see its lights yet; whether because of the clouds, the partial cover of the overhead highway, or it was still too far away, he wasn’t sure.

But he knew with certainty that it would be upon him any second. Jac’s eyes darted desperately: if he continued up the ramp, he’d be more visible from above, but if he headed back down, the two police cars bearing down on the highway behind would see him.

Sweat beads massed on his forehead, mixing with the raindrops, chest heaving as he gasped like a dying frog into the night air. He felt completely worn, exhausted, the sirens echoing and spinning in his head making him feel dizzy, unsteady; his legs trembling so hard that they felt about to buckle at any second. It would have been so easy, welcome surrender, just to lift his hands to the helicopter searchlight or first police car to arrive – he couldn’t go on much further in any case – but instead, as the lights of a car heading up the ramp hit him, he lifted one hand to that, trying to flag it down. It went past.

Sirens moving closer, one on the highway above now sounding no more than fifty yards away. Jac flagged more frantically. A camper van and a car not far behind went past too, the car beeping as Jac took a step in front of it.

Jac could now see the helicopter searchlight as it broke through the clouds: about sixty yards to his right, moving methodically forward with tight sweeps. And the closest siren above now sounded only twenty yards away.

It started raining more heavily then, and Jac mouthed one last silent prayer into the sodden, misty night air as the scream of the sirens and the thud-thud of the helicopter closed in all around him, becoming all-consuming. And as the next two cars on the ramp also swept past him without stopping – the beam of the helicopter searchlight now circling in to within thirty yards – Jac felt any remaining hope slip away.

31

May, 1992
.

At first, Adelay Roche wasn’t too concerned about the direction of the police investigation. The account of a robbery gone wrong seemed to have been accepted, the crime-scene evidence supported that, and so Lieutenant Coyne was trawling for suspects almost exclusively in that area: house robbers with violent past form.

But every now and then there’d be a quick aside, a question thrown in out of the blue amongst the standard question line – as if slipped in like that the lieutenant thought he might not notice – that made Roche start to worry that Coyne was having increasing doubts about the robbery-gone-wrong theory. Was starting to fish closer to home.

   The eye-witness had thankfully been distant enough to not be too precise; though perhaps if they got Nel-M in a line-up, it would be a different matter. And over that final shot to the head Roche had vented more than a few choice words at Nel-M.

Roche was convinced it was the one detail that didn’t sit comfortably with Coyne. And if he kept digging, he might unearth more inconsistencies, things he wasn’t happy with.

Roche phoned to check how much Coyne might have been raking around in the background; after all, it might just be his own empty paranoia.

Pretty much the same routine each time: ‘Lieutenant Coyne said that he’d be in touch with you about my wife’s investigation. I wondered if he’s made contact yet?’ The concerned husband checking on police progress; he’d started to get more on Coyne’s back, so his following-up wouldn’t look unusual. ‘Oh right…
right
.’

Roche was alarmed at the extent of Coyne’s background calls. He’d been busy. Very busy. Coyne obviously hadn’t found anything yet, otherwise he’d have been on his doorstep with handcuffs and a caution; but as the asides and questions started to become more frequent, Roche worried that soon Coyne might stumble on something.

They needed to get Coyne back on track with the robbery gone wrong theory, stop his focus shifting, and soon after Roche struck on the idea of putting someone else in the frame; sufficiently roped and tied that Coyne would stop looking elsewhere. The only thing he could think of that with certainty would head Coyne off at the pass. Stop everything dead.

House robbers and the city’s low-lives were more Nel-M’s territory, and within a week he’d put together a potential list for Roche.

Larry Durrant was initially way down the list, mainly because his past form hadn’t been that violent, the most serious a pistol-whipping ‘in the course of’. But the details about his car accident and selective amnesia moved him higher. His scheduled recovered memory sessions with a psychiatrist, Leonard Truelle, higher still. By the time they’d dug down and uncovered Truelle’s drinking and gambling problems, and his heavy book-debt to a street loan shark, Raoul Ferrer, Durrant was top of the list.

There was only one thing left to find out: whether Truelle, with the bait set how they planned, would go for it?

The first news bulletin complete with Jac’s photo went out on a local TV station, WWL, at 11.45 p.m.

Derminget asked if they could delay to another bulletin in half an hour or an hour, but was told that was the last news bulletin of the day.

‘It’s either then, or wait until seven-thirty a.m. tomorrow.’

Immediacy, Derminget was convinced, was the main key to McElroy’s lawyer being able to talk him in. A bulletin the next morning lacked immediate threat, gave McElroy too long to dwell on it.

So Derminget decided to mislead Langfranc that, along with the APB, he’d hold fire with the news bulletin for half an hour – though he did keep to his promise about the APB. One out of two, at least, and at first the late-night bulletin would probably only draw the attention of a few bleary-eyed bar-flies – it would take more than half an hour in any case for any worthwhile calls to come in.

But the desk clerk at the Palmetto motel recognized the photo straightaway and dialled 911 while the tail-end of the bulletin was still on screen: ‘
…a lawyer with local firm, Payne, Beaton & Sawyer, Mr McElroy has been in the news recently for
other
reasons: his plea petition handling of Libreville death row inmate, Lawrence Durrant, whose execution is scheduled for ten days time
.’

Derminget was notified of the call only minutes after putting the phone down from his last-shot warning call to Langfranc. Derminget paused only fleetingly before giving the nod to dispatch the closest squad cars. If McElroy’s reaction to Langfranc’s warning call was to flee, he’d never forgive himself – or more to the point, Captain Broughlan, head of the station house, would never forgive him – for letting the opportunity to grab McElroy slip from his grasp.

Two squad cars arrived at the Palmetto motel within only eight minutes. Impressive. But that was the last thing to go right.

Captain Broughlan scanned down the catalogue of disasters filed in Derminget’s report at first light the next morning, the sharp glint in his eyes only softened by a teasing leer of disbelief as he finished and looked across at Derminget.

‘So, you had half the Eighth and First tight on his ass, a chopper too – and he disappeared right under your noses?’ Broughlan threw up invisible dust with one hand. ‘Thin air.’

‘Yeah.’

‘And no sign of him since? Nothing from any other calls in?’

‘No, none that have panned out.’ Derminget nodded dolefully. His bloodhound eyes, quite sexy to women when he eyed them broodingly across a late-night cocktail bar, now morose and defeated, looked pathetic. ‘He obviously got in a car passing on the interchange.’

‘Obviously.’ Broughlan smiled tightly. ‘Busy that time of night?’

‘Busy enough. We’re not going to be able to narrow down to anything useful from nearby cams. Our only hope is that whoever picked him up will catch a later news bulletin and phone in. There’s a lot of coverage right now.’

‘Yeah, Jem, lot of coverage,’ Broughlan echoed, his tone suddenly harder, warier. ‘And the reason for that is it’s a big event. Would have been anyways with a lawyer on the run for murder – but the fact that it’s Larry Durrant’s lawyer, with only days now till his execution, has shot the story into the stratosphere.’ Broughlan held his palms out. ‘So, as you say, a lot of coverage to help us succeed – but also a lot of eyes watching for if we don’t.’ Broughlan tilted his swivel chair back a fraction, but his eyes stayed keenly, sharply on Derminget. ‘And with half of New Orleans watching on the outcome – we can’t afford to fail, Jem. That’s simply not an option. Find Jac McElroy, and find him quick.’

Clive Beaton didn’t see the 11.45 p.m. bulletin, but he received a call minutes later from Tom Payne relating the bombshell news.

The minute he put down the phone from Payne, he called John Langfranc at home.

Langfranc didn’t hold anything back – little point, with an ongoing investigation most of it would soon be out in the open – but most importantly, it was the only way to get across to Beaton the main details of why Jac thought he’d been set up.

‘That as may be,’ Beaton said curtly. ‘But until such time as the police adopt that stance, he’s a fugitive. And so for now that’s how this firm must deal with him.’

‘I see.’ Langfranc had expected little else. Beaton distancing the firm as quickly as possible. ‘Are you saying also that you don’t want me to continue representing Jac McElroy or his girlfriend?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. That whole business of you knowing the gun was being hidden could get awkward. It’s one thing knowing after the event, but
during
– the cry could come up of withholding. And without that – McElroy calling you in the process of that action – you’ve got no rationale for him running off. One of the main defence pillars collapses.’  

‘I understand. Okay.’ Resignation in Langfranc’s voice, but he held back from outright dissention; Beaton had a point. ‘And what about Durrant? It’s his BOP hearing tomorrow. Do you want me to go along?’