Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones (38 page)

"Jake, don't interrupt me!" Socolow stood and paced to a window overlooking the Miami River. "I said,
technically
it's a jury question. That doesn't mean the state wants it to go to a jury. We'll be in front of the grand jury this afternoon and we'll have an indictment for first-degree murder against Lawrence Schein by dinnertime, maybe another against Guy Bernhardt for conspiracy. It'd be pretty damn embarrassing if we charged a man with murder the same day a jury convicted someone else of the crime. I'm not sure what killed Harry Bernhardt. Maybe your client did it; maybe Schein did it; maybe God said it was time. But I know this. There's a difference between moral culpability and legal culpability. This young woman's been victimized by her brother and her doctor. I'm not going to add to it."

Socolow turned back to us. I thought he was looking at me, but he gave Chrissy a rueful smile. "The state does not oppose the entry of a judgment of acquittal."

"Motion granted," Judge Stanger said, happy to close another case. "The defendant is forthwith discharged. Bond is released. Ms. Bernhardt, the clerk will return any possessions that may have been seized by the state." The judge looked at me and grabbed the bottle of whiskey. "Anything further? I think I see a special setting on my calendar with a Mr. Daniel."

"Judge, I'd just like to say one thing," I told His Honor— lawyer-speak for intending to say several things. "I've known Abe Socolow for a lot of years, and he's busted my chops more times than I can remember, but he's always been honorable, and today . . . well, today, it just reaffirms my faith in Abe the man. The system doesn't always work. Hell, it doesn't usually work. But Abe is living proof that if you care more about justice than merely winning—"

"Shove it, Jake!" Socolow was turning red, embarrassed to be considered a human being instead of a coldhearted prosecutor. "Next time you come in here with one of your typical lowlifes, I'll kick your ass from here to Sopchoppy."

"I love you, too, Abe."

Charlie Riggs was cutting the heads off a mess of mullet, slicing down the backbone and through the ribs. He removed the gizzard and liver, scraped away the gray membrane of the stomach cavity, then used a garden hose to rinse away the blood. He moved quickly and efficiently. No wasted motions with the knife.

"You've done this before," I said.

"Twenty thousand autopsies is pretty good practice for cleaning fish," he replied.

He laid open half a dozen corpses and slid them into the bottom tray of Granny's smoker, a homemade contraption that looked like a little shingled house on top of a fifty-five-gallon steel drum.

"Aren't you going to scale them?" I asked.

"Not for smoking, Jake. The scales and skin insulate against the heat."

Charlie asked me to get the melted butter and a paintbrush, so I headed into the kitchen where Granny was making a strawberry pie. As usual, Kip was watching TV in the Florida room.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
, about a smart-ass kid playing hooky. I could hear Kip talking back to the tube, saying Matthew Broderick's lines. " 'They bought it. Incredible. One of the worst performances of my career and they never doubted it for a second. How could I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like today?'"

I made a mental note to check on Kip's number of sick days.

"So where is she?" Granny asked. "Can't have a celebration without the guest of honor."

"Said she had a stop to make and would be along later, Granny."

"That poor child. She's not healthy, Jake. Dark circles under her eyes, looking so sad today, even after you won. And I swear, she's skinnier every day. Just skin and bones."

"Flesh and bones," I said, absentmindedly.

"What's that?"

The phone rang before I could answer her. I walked into the front hallway. The phone was an old black model with a rotary dial. When Kip first saw it, he laughed and asked if Granny had stolen the props from
Dial M for Murder
. But it wasn't Grace Kelly on the phone. It was Abe Socolow.

"Where's your client, Jake?"

"Right about now, I'd say she's on Useless One, headed down here. Granny's throwing a party. You want to come?"

"That would be inappropriate."

Inappropriate
. A perfect Socolow word. Though it was after six P.M., I knew old Abe still had his suit coat on, his tie knotted snugly at the neck.

"Jake, I think you ought to keep a close watch on her for a few days."

"I intend to. Maybe for more than that." There was an uncomfortable silence. "What is it, Abe?"

"Maybe nothing. People get strung out in trial, I can understand that. But your client caused a big stir in the clerk's office when she got her stuff back. I wasn't there, but the head clerk said she was pretty near hysterical when they couldn't find the evidence file. It was still up in the courtroom, so it took a few minutes, and your client cussed up a blue streak, started crying and shaking, that sort of thing. Finally, they gave her the box, and she was rooting around in it, frantic like. She tore through all the exhibits, the medical records, her papers, the dress she wore the night of the shooting, the purse, everything. Then she ran out of there with just one thing."

"What, Abe?"

"Exhibit three, Jake. She took the gun."

I raced north on U.S. 1 from Islamorada. She would have been headed south from Miami. The farm in Homestead was closer to her.

I prayed I wasn't too late.

I was doing eighty, occasionally ninety, passing RVs on the two-lane road, staying in the passing lane where the road widened every few miles. Flying past the shell shops, convenience stores, and telephone poles topped with osprey nests. The Olds 442 had stiff springs and a rear stabilizer bar, a 400-cubic-inch V8 throwing off 350 horsepower, and shitty brakes for a muscle car. It didn't matter. I wasn't going to slow down until I got there.

The top was down, and the wind tore at my face, bringing tears to my eyes. At least I told myself it was the wind.

I stayed on the highway, ignoring the Card Sound bridge, and slid onto a gravel road just before the turnpike entrance south of Homestead. The engine was roaring, the tires kicking up a tornado of dust as I pulled into Bernhardt Farms just after seven o'clock.

As soon as the engine died, I heard the sweeping whoosh of the irrigation towers in the field behind the farmhouse. But no other sound. The house was dark. A Land Rover and two Jeep

Wranglers were parked in the driveway. So was Chrissy's Mustang convertible, the hood still warm.

The front door of the house was cracked open, and I headed inside. Down a darkened corridor, past the kitchen, through the living room, down another corridor. A light shone through an open doorway from a room at the rear of the house, the side facing the mango fields. I walked toward the light and I heard her voice.

". . . going to kill you," Chrissy Bernhardt said.

A man's gravelly laugh. "Don't think so."

I walked through the open door. Same varnished pine walls. Same boar's head on one wall, a rack of antlers on another. The jalousie windows were open; the paddle fan whirred overhead. Chrissy stood to one side, ten feet from me, another ten feet from Guy Bernhardt, who sat on a leather chair.

She was holding the Beretta 950 in a shaky hand. Her hair was a mess of tangles, her dress wrinkled, and her eyes puffy. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Guy Bernhardt was holding a bourbon in one hand, a 12-gauge shotgun cradled across his knee with the other. The barrel was pointed at Chrissy's midsection.

"Glad you're here, Lassiter," he said, without taking his eyes off his half sister.

"I want both of you to put down your guns," I said. "You first, Guy."

He laughed again. "Me first? With this homicidal maniac pointing a gun at me? I don't care if you did get her off. She shot Pop,
tried
to kill him, even if someone else finished the job."

"You're going to take the fall for that," I said.

"No way, Lassiter. I had nothing to do with it. How was I to know crazy old Larry Schein was a killer? Twice, in fact."

"Bullshit! You put him up to it, first with Chrissy, then you told him to get his ass to the hospital and finish the job."

"Prove it! You think I'll crack like that fruity shrink?"

"I remember everything now, Guy," Chrissy said. "Every detail, the way your voice sounded, the smell of your breath, the pain, the nightmares. Over and over again." She sobbed. "I'm going to kill you."

"No, Chrissy!" I shouted, taking a step toward her.

"Stay back, Jake!" She wheeled the gun toward me.

I stopped, and she swung the gun back toward Guy.

"As I recall," Guy said, "Sis is not a very good shot. And that peashooter holds what, twenty-two shorts? Whadaya think, Lassiter, should I let her get off the first one like the good guy in a western?"

"You're not a good guy. You're a bucket of slime."

"Or should I just splatter her guts on the wall? I've got a right to defend myself, and I've got my witness. This deranged woman shows up at my house, waving a gun, threatening to kill me. I know her propensity for violence. What's a man to do?"

"You kill her, you'd better kill me, too," I said.

His eyes flicked toward me. "Ah, chivalry. Chrissy, here's a man who didn't run out on you. That's a first, isn't it? You see, Lassiter, Sis has trouble holding on to men. Freaks out sooner or later, and they take off. Pop always thought she was high strung. But we know the truth, don't we Sis? You're wacko."

"You ruined my life," she said, eyes filling with tears.

"You had every break, so don't blame me," he said bitterly.

"I don't get it, Bernhardt," I said. "Why'd you set her up? Hadn't you done enough to her?"

"Fuck you! You don't know how it was. You don't know how Pop spoiled her. Nothing was too good for little Chrissy. And her mother was even worse. I was a barnyard animal to Missus hoity-toity Emily Castleberry Bernhardt. While she was having high tea, I was up to my ass in manure. But Pop's the one I couldn't forgive. His only son, his own blood, and he treated the migrant workers better than me. My hands would bleed from cutting cane, while darling Sis was on the beach with her rich friends, making fun of me."

"I never made fun of you. Never."

"Shut up! Pop tried to make it up to me later. Brought me into the business. What else was he going to do with it? But I always remembered. Every insult. Every abuse. And I'd already made Chrissy pay, hadn't I, Sis?"

"Why did you kill him?" Chrissy cried. "You would have gotten the money anyway."

"Pop couldn't see the future with his bifocals. I gave him the facts. The well fields are running dry, and there's no other answer but to desalinate. I'm building the biggest reverse-osmosis plant in the country. Hell, with advanced membrane technology, I can turn brackish water into drinking water cheaper than a conventional system, and I can sell it for whatever I want. If you're dying of thirst, Lassiter, how much will you pay for a glass of water?"

"That's why you're dumping all the water into the bay," I said. "You're trying to dry up the South Dade wells."

"Supply and demand, Lassiter."

"Daddy never would have gone along with it," Chrissy said.

Guy barked a laugh. "You're right. The damn fool wouldn't. Didn't think it was right to get rich selling water. Be like some Arab sheik, he said, only worse, selling water to his fellowman. Quoted Isaiah to me: 'Every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye and eat.' That old hypocrite. I told him I knew my Bible, too. What about Proverbs? 'Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.' "

Still pointing the shotgun at Chrissy, he sipped at his bourbon and said, "I've had my secret bread, haven't I, Sis? Now it's time for stolen waters. Hell, it's all free, seven hundred feet down. All the water you want. And I can turn it into dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars."

"What about the brine?" I asked. "What do you do with millions of pounds of salt laced with mercury, arsenic, and heavy-metal ions?"

"I'll be a son of a bitch," Guy said. "You've been doing your homework. We could use deep well injection, but it's expensive as hell. We could dump it in the ocean, but the EPA would be all over us. Or we could buy every politician in Tallahassee and just dump the stuff."

"Where?"

"Limestone quarries, swamps, anywhere."

"That's crazy. It would pollute the groundwater."

"So then they'd need us pulling up water from the Floridan Aquifer even more than before, wouldn't they? A nice symmetry there, don't you think?"

"You're out of your mind," I said. "You'll never get away with it."

"Oh, we'll make some show of lining the dumps, do some solar evaporation, play around with some new techniques to keep the boys at DERM happy. But if I were you, I wouldn't want to drink any well water in the county once we get started."

"You're nothing like Daddy," Chrissy said. "He was a good man." Shakily she raised the gun, then steadied it with both hands.

Guy's drink crashed to the floor and he raised the shotgun until it was pointed at Chrissy's head. "You're a witness, Lassiter. She's gonna shoot me!"

"No!" I shouted.

Neither said a word.

Total silence except for the whir of the paddle fan and the whoosh of the irrigation towers in the fields.

Chrissy's hand shook.

A sly grin spread across Guy's face. "Sis, you may be crazy, but you're still the best piece of ass I ever had. Tight and juicy."

"You bastard!" she cried.

The gun danced in her hand as she sobbed.