Gravewriter (24 page)

“Hey fellas,” Billy whispered grimly to the ants. “I think I saw a Snickers bar a few feet down that way.”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Mia asked.

“I'm trying to con some ants, but they're not falling for it.”

“They've seen your type before.”

Billy grabbed the sneakers and the fabric, wrestled them from the hole, and shook them. Ants dropped, their hard little bodies sounding like soft rain. They went berserk—this really was the end of their world. Probing beneath the clothing, Billy found a thick book, crusted with dried blood, a knife tucked in it like a bookmark. He gathered all the items from the hole and backed all the way down the crawl space. He tumbled out with an
“Ahhhh.”

The jumpsuit had dried in the rectangular shape of the hole. Mia snatched it from Billy and pulled it back into shape. Nearly the whole thing had been stained with blood.

“Jesus, what a mess,” Billy said.

Above the chest pocket a stencil read:

Rhode Island Department of Corrections

NICKEL
, Garrett

Black ants crawled over the jumpsuit.

“The son of a bitch killed J.R.,” Mia said softly, as if awed.

Billy stood behind her. He imagined his finger lightly tracing the bump of her spine on the back of her neck. She turned around.

“No skull,” Billy blurted.

“Huh?”

“No place to hide a human skull in there that I could see.”

“The bastard stole his head?”

Billy brushed ants off his chest and then examined the book. It
was four inches by six, two inches thick, and bound in faux leather. He turned it over.

Gold lettering said simply Holy Bible.

Billy opened the front cover. “It's the King James Version,” he said. “Stamped by a prison Bible-studies group.”

“Not the kind of reading you'd want after stealing somebody's head,” Mia said.

The eight-inch hunting knife with a green rubber handle had been stuck in the Second Book of Kings. The blade was jagged and sharp, frightening even at rest in a Bible. Without touching the knife, Billy read one verse aloud.

“ ‘And he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord.' ”

“For sure,” Mia said.

Billy closed the book. “The clothes and the Bible came from the prison,” he said. “Whoever helped Garrett Nickel with the getaway car must have left him this knife.”

“How does this affect the trial?”

Billy thought about it. “It proves that Nickel and Peter Shadd were both in this place on the same night,” he said. “They must have come together. That's bad for Shadd. It means he was probably here when Nickel killed J.R.”

Maybe the rest of the jury is right.… Maybe Shadd is another Garrett Nickel, just in more sympathetic packaging

“Couldn't Shadd have shot Nickel by the river and then wandered here by chance?” she asked.

“Possible, but I don't like the coincidence.”

“We should call the cops,” Mia urged.

Billy grimaced. After ten years betting with bookies, he had gotten used to avoiding the cops. “I can't,” Billy said. “I'm a juror and I'm defying a court order to stay ignorant about the case except for what happens in court. If I get thrown off the jury, then Peter Shadd gets convicted in five minutes. I can't let that happen while I still have
doubt.” He drummed his fingers on Garrett Nickel's Bible.
“You
call the cops … tell them you were here, doing your job, and you stumbled onto this stuff. They'll have no choice but to accept the story if you stick with it.”

She looked down to her black canvas sneakers. “I can't,” she said.

“You can be totally believable,” he encouraged.

“I won't lie to the police. I can't, Billy—my stepdad … he was chief of detectives. Retired now, but still in touch with his guys.”

“Ah,” Billy said as he fought the crazy urge to run. So that was how she got access to police computers. He thought about the secrets he had shared with her. He drummed his fingers on the Bible again. He regretted he hadn't yet told Mia about his dreams. He wanted to share himself with her, but he could not tell her now.

A cop's daughter?

“We can't just hide this stuff again,” she said. “We solved an open murder case. The killer is dead—but so what? Somebody out there might care about J.R. They'll want to know who murdered him. Somebody besides me.”

Billy thought for a minute. “There's one person I trust—though he's not going to like it.”

T
he box from FedEx on Martin's desk was wrapped tighter than King Tut.

Martin sawed at the box with a metal ruler. His attention was on the radio. Pastor Abraham Guy was getting close to announcing his candidacy for governor on Galaxy AM:

“… The lack of morals among those who have run our state the last few generations has left Rhode Island in a precarious position. State services are being cut because of declining revenue. Why is revenue declining? Because business doesn't want to be here. They don't want to move their operations, and their high-paying jobs, to a medieval BACKWATER where the local politicians expect to be GREASED for every building permit they issue, or every sewer tiein they allow.…”

“He's in top form today,” Carol said. She jotted down the pastor's quotes in shorthand, in case he mentioned anything inflammatory about criminal justice.

Martin twirled the box, looking for a weakness to exploit with the
edge of the ruler. The package, a littler bigger than a shoe box, was light and made no noise when he shook it. As a defense lawyer for the poor, the deranged, and the despised, Martin got a lot of weird mail, mostly incomprehensible letters scrawled in near madness with a leaky ballpoint. But this package, which had been express-shipped from across the city, intrigued him. The return address was simply “J.R.”

That was what the headless bum in the old boathouse had called himself.

Martin was an expert in that unsolved murder. He had battled ferociously in pretrial motions to forbid any mention of the mutilated body at Peter Shadd's trial. If Dillingham wasn't going to charge Peter with killing J.R.—and he couldn't because of a lack of evidence-then Martin had to be sure the state couldn't use the body to poison the jury against Peter. Winning that motion had been a great victory, though Martin had begun to think it might have been the high-water mark of the defense.

On paper, it might have seemed that the trial was going well—the prosecution had rested, with no direct evidence having been presented that would link Peter to the shooting of Garrett Nickel, and Martin had undercut Larry Home, the star witness of the state's circumstantial case. But jury trials are more than logic on paper. Martin sensed the jury slipping from his reach. He had lost his best juror to a leap from a parking garage. Those who remained would never agree to acquit Peter Shadd. The best Martin could do was persuade one or two to hold out against the majority and force a mistrial. A do-over.

“… What this state needs is a return to the principles of morality on which it was founded,” the voice on the radio raged. “It needs leadership that is not afraid to shine the light of truth into the dark corners of political sleaze, which for generations has dragged our state down and slowed our progress. Our state symbol, the anchor
on our state flag, should not stand for the terrible weight of corruption.…”

“It's getting riskier every day to put him on the stand,” Martin said.

“Then don't.”

“I have no choice, especially now that Franklin Flagg has disappeared.”

“You still have the assault report Flagg filed against Garrett Nickel.”

“There's not much emotion in a piece of paper. I wanted Flagg on the stand so the jury could feel the fear Nickel inspired.”

“So what about the pastor?”

“He's the only character witness I've got,” Martin said. “He's a big name—something to get those brain-dead jurors to perk up and listen.” Martin stabbed the corner of the box and chewed his bottom lip. “I'm down by three runs in the bottom of the ninth—I've got to swing for the fences.”

“But you'd still be down by two.”

“It's a metaphor.”

“Shouldn't you work the count? Get a few men on base and extend the inning? Make Dillingham go deep into his bull pen?”

“My perfectly fine metaphor assumes the bases are loaded.”

“With two outs, a double to the gap would score three,” Carol said. “It's better to play for the tie at home and then win in extra innings.”

Martin sighed. “There's only one out.”

“All the more reason to work the count.”

“Do you enjoy torturing me?” he asked. “When do I ever torture you?”

“Every week in my paycheck.” She laughed.

“Got a goddamn answer for everything,” Martin mumbled, shooting her a smile and a sly glance.

He wormed the ruler through the tape and slit open one side of the box.

“My hope,” he said, abandoning his metaphor, “is that Pastor Guy doesn't care what I ask him—that he just wants to get the better of Dillingham. I'll get him to say that Peter was the most respectful, courteous, nonthreatening student of the Bible you'd ever wanna see. Then for the pastor, the cross-examination with Dillingham can be the first debate of the campaign.”

“… The entrenched politicians of this state are part of a dysfunctional political family of hacks, retreads, and wanna-bes, each of whom got where he is today because he happened to be related to some other hack, retread, or wanna-be. Political hacks breed like germs, and it's time this state elected somebody with the guts to disinfect the culture.…”

“I suppose he'll be running as the outsider,” Martin deadpanned. He slit more tape, pulled open the box, and recoiled as if it had been electrified.

“Jesus, Mary, and the junk man!” he yelled.

Carol bolted up.

“Ants!” Martin said.

“Oh, you wuss.”

“What the hell—

Martin pulled out an orange prison jumpsuit stained with blood. He read the name printed above the pocket and then set the item on his desk. He took blood-encrusted sneakers from the box, one Holy Bible, and one hunting knife with a vicious serrated blade.

“What's all this?” Carol asked in a whisper.

“No note, no nothing,” Martin said.

He checked the return address on the box again.

“Oh shit,” he said, suddenly understanding. He thought for a moment, then said, “Get Dillingham on the phone. He'll need to test DNA on this stuff and compare it to what they have on J.R., the bum in the boathouse.”

Carol dialed. “What should I tell him?”

Martin blew twenty black ants off his desk blotter.

“Tell him that Garrett Nickel cut J.R.'s fucking head off.” He sighed and added ruefully, “All that work to keep the body out of the trial, and now
this.
It puts Peter and Garrett in the boathouse that same night. We need to change strategy—Peter has to explain this to the jury. But first he's got to explain it to me.”

P
eter lay faceup on the concrete floor, his bent legs on the lower bunk, as if to do sit-ups. Martin nodded to the guard. He grimaced when the door boomed shut.

Peter barely glanced at him. The young convict locked his fingers behind his head and stared at a ceiling so brown with nicotine, you could have scraped off a pinch to put between your cheek and gum.

“We're losing,” Martin said.

“You did good with Home.”

“You're going to have to testify.”

Peter shot him a hard glance but said nothing.

Martin folded himself on the floor, grunting all the way down, lay on his back, and put his feet up, as Peter had done. The floor smelled like mildew. “This would be more comfortable if I get you transferred to a padded room.”

“The floor is good for my back,” Peter said.

“You're too young for back problems.” Hmmm, Peter was right: It
did
feel good on the back.

Peter rubbed his palm on his face, as if wiping tears Martin could
not see. “Sleep on a one-inch mattress every night and then tell me about back problems.”

“Nobody can find Flagg.”

“You check the shelters?”

“Without Flagg, we've got nobody else to help paint Garrett Nickel as a monster who intimidated you into joining the escape,” Martin said. “That was our strategy, Peter. You were the patsy; he was the ringleader. You didn't want to break out, but what choice did you have once threatened by the Nickel-Plated Outlaw?

After a few moments of silence, Peter said, “Are we really losing?”

“Our best juror killed himself. One of our witnesses has vanished. Ninety percent of the jury hates you, me, or the both of us. Your Bible-study teacher is running for governor against the prosecutor, which means calling him as a character witness is playing Russian roulette with a machine gun. My pretrial strategy is in tatters, and I'm yanking out what little hair I've got. So—fuck, yes!—I'd say we're losing.”

Martin paused, let the bitterness drain from his tone. He needed Peter's cooperation to save him, and he needed some truth. “I busted my ass to exclude any mention of the headless bum in the boathouse from your trial,” he said calmly.

“I was so fucked-up that night—I didn't even know that guy was up there.”

“I've gotten some anonymous information that suggests Garrett Nickel killed that guy, the night you were there.”

Peter gave a tiny shrug.

“You told me that after you left Home on the island, you bought a needle and some smack on some street corner you can't remember and then shot up in an alley you couldn't recognize.”

“That's what I said.”

“And that you wandered in a haze and then stumbled into the boathouse at random.”