False Witness (24 page)

“All right, then.” Horvath escorted them to the door. “See ya.”

As they left the office and entered the alley, Sam was sure he could hear the clink of glass through Stampede Security’s open window, and the sound of liquid being poured.

#

“Well,
he
was a real spitfire.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Tess said mildly as they emerged from the alley onto the streets of Chinatown. “He might not win Miss Congeniality, but he gave us something we can use.
And
he’s not going to rat us out, which I think we can both agree is a very good thing.”

She looked ridiculously cool in her silk blouse and knee-length skirt, as if she had a force field to protect her from the hammering sun. Sam, who looked as rumpled and wilted as he felt, wondered how she did it.

They ducked into a little café to escape the heat in actual air conditioning. Sam ordered an iced coffee while Tess ordered hot green tea.

“Hot tea on a day like today?”

“Don’t you know that hot drinks cool you down?”

A sarcastic retort came to mind, but Sam held his tongue. He was sweating, she wasn’t – who was he to argue? They sat in silence as they waited for their drinks, basking in the A/C. They had both taken the week off, which was fine with Bob Shippobotham; news took a vacation in the summer, just like everyone else. Tess’s coverage of the mayoral race wouldn’t heat up until the end of August, and the crime beat had been quiet as a corpse lately. Except, of course, for Tom Ferbey’s corpse; it seemed to have quite a lot to say these days.

Even the so-called tip Darcy Flowers had given him about Hodge’s days being numbered turned out to be a bust. Sam thought either the cop or his “inside guy” had been full of shit; maybe both. The “hit” turned out to be nothing more than a prison brawl. Sure, it had left Billy Trinh dead, but Trinh was no media darling. Hodge’s death would have been front page; Trinh’s barely warranted the second page of the local news section. Sam figured Trinh’s killer had been a nobody trying to make a name for himself inside by taking on two big guns, and ended up in a coma for his troubles. Whatever the case was, Hodge was still alive and well. The story was nothing more than a brief interview with the Badlands’ official spokesman – which was standard operating procedure when it came to almost all incidents within its walls – and some background about the Hodge case. Ten inches of copy, which took him less than an hour to research and write. As far as he knew, only a couple of the wire affiliates had even picked up the story.

Sam wondered if he should swallow his pride and try to patch things up with Flowers. The big cop was actually a pretty decent guy, all things considered, and he was far and away the best source Sam had going. At the very least, he could call up Flowers and tell him he owed him, Sam, lunch to make up for the wild goose chase.

Tess snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. “Jesus, where do you go when you blank out like that?” she said with an exasperated smile.

“Hey,
somebody’s
gotta do the thinking around here.”

She flicked his ear with a middle finger. “Drink your coffee, smartass, it’s getting warm.”

He took a slurp, savoring the frigid feel of it in his mouth and throat: the sweet, the bitter, the creamy. Hot or cold, it didn’t matter; coffee was proof that God loved us and wanted us to be happy.

Tess held her steaming cup in both hands. “Curioser and curioser,” she said between sips. “This definitely confirms that something stinks in the Hodge case, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it means. What possible reason could Tom have had to not punch his clock? If he was trying to pull a fast one, I can’t believe he was dumb enough to write in his log book and yet not perform the actual procedure that proves he patrolled the Highland yard. Especially for only two hours. Like Horvath said, it was a firing offense.”

“And he couldn’t afford to lose his job,” said Sam. “We have to assume that something kept Tom from making those rounds. But what? And, like you said, why did he bother to keep the written log if he wasn’t going to back it up?”

They drank in silence for a handful of moments, Sam chewing his straw while Tess blew on her tea. Finally, Sam put the straw back in his cup and looked at her. “It has to have something to do with those missing two hours.”

“Agreed, but what?”

“What would prevent you from doing something that was critical to your paycheck? Assuming you were married with a family.”

“Sure, rub it in,” Tess said with faux scorn. “I don’t know. It would have to be pretty dire circumstances, I suppose.”

“I can’t think of any circumstance that would keep me from doing my job, unless it was something physical, like an injury. Or somebody barring the door at the office.”

Tess snorted a sudden laugh. “I just pictured Shippy standing in the doorway of the Chronicle, yelling ‘
No work for you
!’ like the Soup Nazi.”

Sam didn’t hear the joke; he was back inside his head. “Something could have physically kept Tom away from the clock keys, but if that was the case, why would he bother writing in the log? He could have just explained to Horvath that he wasn’t able to get to the keys.”

“An injury, maybe?”

Sam shook his head. “Nothing came out about any injuries during the trial. I would have heard. Besides, that doesn’t explain fudging the log book.”

“What would make someone like Tom Ferbey, who by all accounts was a simple, honest guy, lie about something like that?” Sam knew the answer, but wanted to see if Tess would come to the same conclusion.

After a moment, she snapped her fingers. “Someone forced him to!”

“Exactly.”

“Which means . . . ”

“Which means someone else was at the Highland facility that night. And we can assume that hypothetical someone was there from seven o’clock until nine, when Tom was murdered.”

Tess was as animated now as Sam had ever seen her. Her green eyes were sparkling. “And we can assume that whoever it was kept Tom from making his last two rounds, and threatened to do something drastic if Tom didn’t fill in the log books. The person wouldn’t have known about the watchman’s clock; I mean,
we
didn’t know what one even was until twenty minutes ago.”

Sam nodded. “Good point. So let’s say there was someone there with a weapon. Let’s say it was Rufus Hodge.” He made a face. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would Hodge murder Tom and blow millions of dollars worth of meth sky high in front of a witness, if he’d already been there for two hours?”

“And what was he doing
during
those two hours when he had Tom under his thumb?”

Sam sighed. The ice in his coffee was almost gone now, giving it a watery taste. He slurped it until it was gone, vacuuming the bottom of the cup with his straw:
schlooooooorp
.

Tess frowned. “Nice. What’re you, twelve?”

“Why, you some kind of pedophile?”

She kicked him under the table. “Smarten up, this is serious. I mean, the more we talk about this, the weirder it gets. Don’t you think?”

Sam looked her in the eye. “No weirder than a break-in at the Watergate Hotel bringing down a presidency.”

She sighed. “I suppose.”

“And we haven’t even got to the weirdest part yet.”

“Which is?”

“The fact that someone called Dunn that night – during the time Tom was theoretically being threatened – pretending to be Tom, telling Dunn to come to the Highlands yard because something was going down. Someone who had already called him several times.”

Tess put her head in her hands. “I think I’m getting a migraine.”

“If that’s the case, I better not say what I’m thinking, because it’s so far down the rabbit hole we may not find our way back out.”

Now it was her turn to look at
him
with those eyes that were as green as the package for the tea she was drinking on that blazing summer afternoon. “Oh, hell,” she said. “Go for it. In for a penny of crazy, in for a pound.”

Sam leaned in close, his voice dropping to just above a whisper. “A big part of me doesn’t want to say this out loud, but I just can’t get it out of my head: Why didn’t the shooter fire at Dunn after he killed Tom? Why let a witness live? I think maybe someone
wanted
Dunn there that night, so he could see Tom get killed.”

“Let’s say you’re right. Why? What would be the point?”

“I’ll tell you, but I want you to hear me out before you say anything. Can you do that?”

Tess scrunched her face and flipped him the bird.

“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Sam glanced around the room to see if anyone could overhear. The only other people in the café were an elderly couple sitting near the front window, reading Chinese newspapers and steadfastly ignoring each other. He looked back at Tess. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible – just
possible
, mind you – that Rufus Hodge might have been framed.”

She stared at him for a moment with eyebrows raised.
I gotta hand it to her
, he thought.
She’s keeping her promise not to say anything, but she’s still telling me I’m a lunatic.
“I warned you,” he said. “I know how that sounds, but I’m serious. I covered every minute of Hodge’s trial. No one outside of the police and the prosecutor’s office knows more about that trial than me. And, to be honest, the more we talk about this, the more I have to admit something to myself.”

Tess cocked her head. “What’s that?”

“Look, I know we journalists like to think we’re impartial, that we’re open minded and don’t go into things with preconceived ideas. Professional detachment and all that, right?”

“Of course.”

“I think that’s bullshit.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he silenced her with a hand. “Or maybe it’s just me, I don’t know. But if I’m being painfully honest here, I believed Hodge was guilty the minute I laid eyes on him. I mean, he is one mean-looking, surly, ugly motherfucker.”

“So what if you formed an opinion? You weren’t on the jury; there
was
no jury. And I don’t remember ever reading any kind of bias in your reporting. Your stories were excellent.”

Sam gave her a crooked smile. “Really?
Excellent
?”

Tess rolled her eyes. “
Yes
. Jesus, you can be needy sometimes. Now get to the point.”

“The point is that I was convinced of Hodge’s guilt, and I think that caused me to overlook some things that struck me as odd during the trial.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that Leslie Singer’s entire case only had one piece of physical evidence: a grainy still photo of Tom Ferbey’s shooter, blown up from a single frame from Dunn’s camera. It looks like Hodge if you squint, but it’s hardly high-definition.”

“True,” said Tess. “But Alex testified that he saw Hodge turn and run after he shot Tom.”

“He saw the
shooter
turn and run. He was only as close to the action as the camera’s lens. What if he just assumed it was Hodge because Hodge ended up being the suspect?”

Tess frowned. “I don’t believe it, Sam. I don’t know what your problem is with Alex, but he’s a smart guy. I can’t see him being manipulated by anyone. And he wouldn’t lie.”

“First of all, I may think Dunn is an asshole, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect his abilities. Or his intelligence. Second, there have been plenty of studies that prove people are open to suggestion when it comes to memory. You can ask ten people to describe the same guy who passed by each of them, and you’ll get ten different descriptions. And an alarming number of those people will remember details that didn’t exist when they’re prompted by someone asking questions, the way lawyers do. Like they’ll suddenly remember his sunglasses when asked ‘What color were his sunglasses?’ even though the person wasn’t wearing any.”

“Yes, I know that. I was pre-law before I switched to journalism.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Really? I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, mister,” she said with her go-to-hell smile, refilling her cup from the little china pot. “Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say that’s true. So Alex didn’t get a good look at the shooter. There was still Richie Duff’s testimony.”

“That’s another thing that raised a red flag for me,” said Sam. “Originally, he says Hodge was with him the night of the murder, then he flip-flops. What if his original story was the real one?”

“He changed his testimony to avoid perjury charges.”

“Ask yourself this: who would you rather have gunning for you, the Wild Roses or the justice system?”

Tess sipped her tea, thinking it over. “Okay. But that doesn’t make any sense, either. By changing his story, he was basically signing his own death warrant. Especially since he said Hodge paid him to lie on the stand. If that was a lie, that means Hodge didn’t even pay him. What motive would he have to change his story?”

“Let’s add that to the ‘curioser’ pile for now,” said Sam. He was chewing his beleaguered straw again. “We also need to remember that this was a judge-only trial with Gregory ‘Let Em Walk’ Larocque, who’s notorious for ruling against any prosecutor who doesn’t present an air-tight case. Defense lawyers have been known to have spontaneous orgasms when they learn they’ve drawn him for their trial. And yet he gives Hodge life in prison,
the same day that he convicts him
, no less. And no one argues with him.”

“Diane Manning argued with him. In the media, at least. It was in your story that day.”

“That’s another thing. Manning griped after the trial that the case against Hodge was built on ‘pillars of sand,’ and that she was going to appeal immediately. And yet, as of yesterday, she hadn’t filed anything with the appellate court. Don’t ask me why. At the very least, I’m sure she’d agree that there’s something rotten in Denmark, even if she doesn’t know exactly what.”

Tess hunched back in her chair with her tea in both hands, sipping in silence for several long moments. Finally, she leaned forward and put her cup on the table. She reached out and yanked the decimated straw from between Sam’s teeth. “
Enough
,” she said.