Gravewriter (30 page)

He was to face cross-examination from Dillingham, and news of that political spectacle had filled the gallery with reporters, who days ago could not have been forced, bribed, or tricked into caring about Peter Shadd and his trial. With the reporters sat political operatives and old hacks, who had not yet committed to any gubernatorial campaign. The clash between Dillingham and Pastor Guy was like a public audition. The victor would have the better choice of hacks.

Once the pastor was in place at the witness stand, the judge reminded him, “You are still under oath.”

“Those in service of the Word are under the oath of truth at all times, Your Honor,” the pastor said with a friendly smile.

The judge asked Martin Smothers, “Anything more in direct examination?”

Billy clenched his fists. How would Martin expose the pastor?

Martin half-stood. “Nothing further.” He sat.

What the—

Billy tried to catch Martin's eye. The defense lawyer turned a page in his legal pad and made some casual scribbles. Billy stared through Martin's skull, demanding by way of telepathy that Martin look up. Had he gone chicken after Billy and Mia dropped him off? Had it been a mistake to trust him? To give him the photo … and the head?

Dillingham pushed slowly from the table. His chair scraped on the floor. Reporters in the gallery pressed their ballpoints to paper in anticipation. There was melodrama in the stilted way Dillingham rose to his feet. He stood without notes before a bare wooden table so shiny that he could have shaved in front of it, and then he greeted the witness. “Good morning, pastor.”

“Mr. Dillingham,” the pastor replied as a greeting.

“How well did you know Garrett Nickel?”

The question seemed to strike the pastor like a gust of wind, pushing him against the back of his seat. He leaned forward again. “Can't say
well
,” he responded.

“What
can
you say?”

“Um, I don't—” He glanced to the reporters in the gallery, seemed to find his voice, and announced with confidence, “I ministered to every man in that cell block. That's why I was called to testify.”

“How much time did you spend alone with Garrett Nickel?”

The pastor huffed. “I don't see what that has to do with the matter at hand. Are you going to ask me about Peter Shadd?”

“How was your relationship with Garrett Nickel?”

“I tried to be his spiritual mentor, but—uh, uh—he was a hard case.”

“Are you running for governor?”

Reporters shot one another urgent glances and scribbled madly.

The judge cleared his throat and held out a hand to stop the testimony. He asked, “Any objection, Mr. Smothers?”

“No, sir,” Martin said without looking up.

The pastor stared, slack-jawed, at Martin for a moment, then shut his trap, glared at Dillingham, and crossed his arms. “Is that what this is about?” he asked. “Fine, then, yes, I'm running, Mr. Dillingham. Are you?”

The prosecutor plowed ahead: “Do you have any children?”

The pastor's lips bent into an ironic smile. “Every person who finds their path through my preaching is my child,” he said. “But I have none of the biological kind.”

Dillingham leaned forward and pressed his fists onto the prosecutor's table. “Have you ever
fathered
any children?”

“No,—”

Pastor Guy froze. In an instant, he paled, then licked his lips and blinked with his whole face.

He suspects Dillingham knows the truth,
Billy thought.

The pastor looked to a man in the gallery, a brooding young guy Billy had
seen
in the courtroom before but had never
noticed.
The young guy's face showed anger and worry. He gave the pastor the most minuscule shrug. Billy looked around—had anybody else seen the shrug?

“No,” the pastor repeated. “I'm married to my Bible.”

Dillingham rubbed his hand lightly over the glossy table. He asked firmly, “Did you ever give Garrett Nickel cocaine?”

“What?”

Pastor Guy looked to Martin, perhaps for an objection. The defense lawyer seemed engrossed in his notes.

Dillingham waited for the answer.

“That's ridiculous,” the pastor charged. “How dare you?”

“It's a yes or no question,” Dillingham said.

“No—certainly not!”

Dillingham suddenly thundered in a voice booming in echo: “Because his Bible is in evidence and our tests show cocaine!”

The pastor shrank from him. “I don't know anything about that.”

“You gave him that Bible.”

“I gave them all Bibles.” Pastor Guy glanced helplessly to the judge.

“Did you know the man who called himself
J.R
.? The man Garrett Nickel killed and beheaded in the boathouse on the night he escaped? Did you know that man?”

The pastor raised an arm, as if to ward off Dillingham's attacks. He said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

Seething, the prosecutor demanded through gritted teeth, “Was that man your son?”

Reporters gasped.

“This attack,” the pastor wheezed, “on my character!”

“Was he blackmailing you?”

“Whom do you mean?”

“Was he threatening to expose himself as your bastard son—”

“Absurd!”

“—whom you abandoned to poverty and homelessness, while you grew rich telling others how they ought to live,” Dillingham shouted. “Did you see him as a threat to your dreams of political power?”

The pastor glared at Dillingham and then looked past him, again to the man in the gallery.

Dillingham didn't wait for the answer. He badgered: “Did you persuade Garrett Nickel to use his underworld contacts to track this man down? Did you help Garrett Nickel escape from prison, in exchange for killing this man—in exchange for
killing your son?”

“What the f—” exclaimed a reporter in the gallery. He caught himself before the word was out, and quietly apologized. Nobody blamed him.

The courtroom fell silent. Nobody dared flinch.

The pastor looked around. Everyone else looked at him. He
tugged on his jacket, cleared his throat. “All of this,” he shouted desperately to the corners of the room, “is a lie!”

He let the words echo and fade.

“A despicable lie,” the pastor roared, “perpetrated by my political opponent, who has just proven by these attacks that he is unfit for public office.” He stabbed his finger toward Dillingham. “People warned me that politics is nasty, but I never expected
this.”

The pastor rose in his chair. He cheeks reddened.

“These lies will backfire upon you,” the pastor swore. “These reporters, in the back of the room—they've heard it. They'll write about this
mockery.
The entire state will see you're unfit to be governor.” He fiddled with his bow tie. “You'll see.”

Dillingham nodded to a man in the gallery.

The man stood at attention. He wore a white knit shirt and white pants.

The prosecutor gestured to the man. “This is Michael,” he explained in an introduction. “He's a DNA specialist at the Department of Health. He can clear up this controversy.”

“Your Honor,” the pastor pleaded.

“The paternity test is not painful,” Dillingham insisted. “All you need do is swipe a cotton swab inside your cheek to provide the sample.”

The pastor combed his hands through sweat-matted hair. “I'll not participate in this political game,” he said.

“Your Honor,” Dillingham said pleasantly, “I have two motions to file. The first is a motion to dismiss the murder charge against Mr. Shadd, due to new evidence—pending the results of my second motion.”

“Mm-hm,” the judge said. “Go on.”

“The second is a motion to compel Abraham Guy to provide DNA for testing.”

“Goddamn!” The pastor cried toward the gallery. “Victor! Help me! Help me!”

A sheriff appeared at the pastor's side. The pastor fell back onto his chair, seemingly in a daze.

The pastor's brooding accomplice in the gallery rose to leave, but he walked into a hand the size of an oven mitt, belonging to a bodybuilder in a sheriff's uniform. “You'll be staying,” the sheriff told him.

The reporters had behaved long enough; they couldn't stand it anymore.

“Pastor Guy!” one yelled. “Did you do it?”

“Will you submit to the test?”

“How did you help them escape?”

Others shouted questions at Dillingham, at Martin Smothers, at Peter Shadd.

The judge pounded the gavel, but to no effect. Sheriff's deputies plunged into the gallery to restore order, while pleading for help on their radios.

Martin Smothers ignored the chaos. He shook hands with Peter, shot a glance to the jury box, met eyes with Billy, looked away, and flashed a covert thumbs-up.

B
illy sensed Mia next to him at the monkey cage. For a minute, she said nothing. They watched a dozen cotton-top tamarin, which were inside a glass case the size of a two-story elevator shaft. The little primates, with dark faces and Einstein's haircut, hurled themselves in perpetual motion, bouncing from shelves to the branches of an artificial tree, then to the floor, and then to the shelves again.

“I haven't been to the zoo in years,” Mia said. She held a bag under Billy's nose. “Licorice? It's old. I got it from a machine.”

Billy took a piece of candy and kept watch on the monkeys. “I'm trying to learn the rules of this game they're playing,” he told her. “Notice the guys on the shelf—I think they're on the bench until somebody fouls out. It seems the premise of the game is that these little guys hurl themselves at one another, one at a time. The target monkey must jump out of the way before somebody crashes into him.

“Look—there!” he said, pointing. “It looks choreographed, but I can't figure out how they know whose turn it is.”

She laughed, and warned him, “Don't bet on a game until you know the rules.”

They watched the bouncing monkeys for a few minutes and ate licorice.

Mia said finally, “I read that Peter Shadd got three extra years for his escape.”

Billy shrugged. “He deserved that much—but he still might have a life someday.”

“Pastor Guy and his assistant, Victor Henshaw, won't be so lucky.”

“Not after four murders,” he agreed.

“My police sources tell me the pastor is blaming Victor for the murders of Alec Black and that ex-con, Franklin Flagg—who turned up in the morgue as a former John Doe who was practically atomized by a high-speed train in South County.”

“Victor must have been monitoring the trial and hadn't liked how it was going,” Billy said.

“The pastor has offered to testify against Victor, but that won't help him much,” she said. “Henshaw is blaming Pastor Guy for arranging the murder of J.R., and then double-crossing Garrett Nickel and shooting him in the back.”

“Nice couple of guys, eh? No wonder they went into politics together.”

“Mmm,” she agreed. “Did you call Martin Smothers back?”

Billy tore off a chunk of licorice. “Yeah, he offered me a job,” he said. “Is this candy stale?”

“A job?” she squealed.

“Investigator,” he confirmed. “I'd have to wait six months before taking it, so it wouldn't look suspicious after the trial, but it's an interesting offer.”

“What did you tell him?”

“To ask again in six months.”

They watched the monkeys in silence for another minute.

She asked him, “Do you still wonder if a woman can love two men?”

He looked at her. She stared back with a narrow-eyed seriousness that surprised him. “Is that why you wanted to meet today?”

She reached up and stroked his face. Then she took four sheets of white paper, folded into quarters, from her purse. “I got this for you,” she said. “You're not going to like it.”

Billy laughed. “Then what kind of gift is that?”

She lifted her chin. A sparkle of light descended the ladder of rings in her ear. “A police accident report—an original.”

Billy's hand drew over his heart. “Angie?” he whispered.

“It's the proof you wanted.”

He could barely speak. “What does it prove?”

She tucked the papers into his waistband and then slid a hand over his chest and behind his head. She told him, “It proves that two men can love the same woman.” She pulled Billy within range, kissed him briefly. Then she left him there, alone.

He parked the van at the bottom of the hill, at a streetlight still burning after dawn. The night had been cloudy, and the air had stayed warm. Billy sweat into his shirt as he hiked the hill leading toward Charlie Maddox's house.

Two cars passed. He did not try to hide from them.

Billy lost himself in the tap of his own feet on the concrete. He wondered about fate. Was it destiny that he had been called for the jury? That he had met Mia in a boathouse? He pushed logic to its limit: What if Pastor Guy had never shot Garrett Nickel? Would Billy have ever confirmed the truth?

Maddox's house was a cream Tudor, with a front yard of cedar
chips and pachysandra. The kitchen light was on.
Good,
Billy thought,
he's home and I won't have to wait.

Suddenly, a little black car flew past Billy, bounced onto the sidewalk, and scraped to a stop.

What the hell—

A big-shouldered man in a cabdriver's cap exploded from the car, coming at Billy.

He's the one following me.

Billy stepped back. “Who the hell—”

Whack!

Billy clutched his jaw and went down like a corpse.

The man threw his cap to the ground. Billy covered up for a beating.

But the man only reached down and patted his shoulder. “Forgive me, my son.”