Raising Cain (27 page)

“No big deal,” the judge said. “Let him have a few free days before you bury him.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you.”

“I’ve mellowed.”

“I can tell.”

Rollie took a sip of liquor. “What else is on your mind tonight?”

“We need to talk about trial scheduling. How much time have they given you?”

Rollie’s stomach quivered. “No time limit; I’m in for the duration.”

“So you’re not going to rush the case through?”

“Hadn’t planned on it.”

King pulled a day-planner out of his pocket. “How are you fixed for January eighth through the thirtieth?”

Rollie smiled. “Fine with me.”

“Can you set it then?”

“If it’s okay with Lawson.”

“And if it’s not?”

“We’ll have to find another date.”

King dropped his calendar book on the desk. “You’re really playing this straight, aren’t you? Right down the line.”

Rollie rolled his giant body forward and plunked his feet on the ground. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’ve gotten damn independent in your old age. You sound like a real judge.”

“Told you I’d mellowed,” Rollie said.

“I seem to remember a day when Kent King suggested a trial date and Rollie Ransome approved it without hesitation, a day when
Ransome asked King for a favor or two—”

“Stop right there,” Rollie interjected. “They weren’t
favors
.”

“Really? What would
you
call them?”

The judge hesitated. “Accommodations to the court.”

“
Accommodations
?” King laughed. “Setting you up with my secretary was a hell of an accommodation.”

“That was personal.”

“While I was tryin’ a murder case before you? Get real, Rollie.”

Ransome began to respond but restrained himself. King was hitting some sensitive spots in his judicial past. “So what do you
want, Kent? You want to make a stink over a friggin’ trial date?”

“I wouldn’t mind getting January,” King answered.

“And that’s
it
?”

King fell silent. The real reason he came by was to check out the second item on his list, the exculpatory materials in his
file he didn’t want Lawson to see. Would Rollie side with his position or not? Judging by the responses so far, it didn’t
look good.

“What else did you want to discuss?”

King stood up. “Nothing.”

“Don’t get bent out of shape, Kent. We’re in a fishbowl here. Everyone is watching. I’ve gotta play it straight.”

“I understand,” King replied. In point of fact, he
did
understand. Rollie would give the case law a fair reading and ignore the old-boy protocol. That meant that Gardner might
get a look at his file. And that could never be.

Jennifer sat in the end booth at Russel’s Deli sipping a milkshake. It was early evening, and she felt like she had just wandered
into a cyclone. Gardner had assigned her the task of outlining defense options, so she’d been buried in the law library stacks
all day. It was foreign territory, and they were lost. She and Gardner were prosecution experts who knew the ins and outs
of building a case against someone. But they didn’t know beans about how to tear one apart.

Jennifer sipped a mouthful of chocolate. It numbed her lips and sent a chill into her brain. The legal research had helped
her escape the funk she’d been in since Gardner had announced his resignation. Logically, she’d accepted the change. His friend
was in trouble and needed help; Jennifer could go along with that. But emotionally, she was irritated. Gardner had risked
everything for Brownie on a moment’s notice. And that left
her
future on hold.

Jennifer swallowed more shake, opened her notebook, and reviewed her outline. The defense options were listed in order. The
client either
did
it
or he
didn’t
. If he
did
it
, there were a slew of mitigating defenses at his disposal: accident, mistake, self-preservation, duress, insanity, diminished
mental capacity. But these were all premised on the fact that the client was guilty of the act. It was much more difficult
to allege the client
didn’t
do it. The defense menu was more limited: alibi, physical incapacity, or scientific impossibility. And the only sure way
to prove the client
didn’t
do it was to prove that someone else
did
.

Jennifer closed her eyes and remembered how Gardner helped her set strategy in her first murder case. She was going to fly
solo, and Gardner was getting her up for the trial.

“I won’t be there,” he had said, “so you have to rely on yourself. And the best way to do that is to plan
now
for any eventuality. Psych out the opposition. Think like they would. Play devil’s advocate, and come up with objections
to your own evidence. Then prepare counter-arguments. In other words, pretry the case. That way you’ll always have an answer.
And if they throw in something you didn’t anticipate, just wing it.”

Jennifer opened her eyes. This situation was unprecedented. They could anticipate King’s moves because they’d been there.
But they lacked any moves of their own. Unless they solved the case and caught the killer, they’d have to wing it. Brownie
would have to choose a defense. And his choices were inadequate, to say the least.

Katanga picked up the phone in his apartment and dialed his mother’s number. He’d been working the streets all day, and he’d
just opened his mail. One of his letters contained a surprise.

“Mama?”

“Paulie?”

“Yeah. Sorry to call so late. You okay?”

“I was just gettin’ ready for bed.”

“Why’d you do it, Mama?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

“What?”

Katanga removed a check from the letter his mother had just sent. It was written to Paul Brown in the amount of ten thousand
dollars. “The money came today. What’s this about?”

“Thought you might need some cash,” Althea replied. “I know how hard it must be down there.”

“I’m gettin’ by. You shouldn’t have done it.” Katanga paused. “Where’d you get it, anyway?”

“The railroad cashed Daddy’s pension and mailed me a great big check. I thought you could use some of it.”

“I’m sending it back.”

“No.”

“Yes, Mama. I don’t want it. The money belongs to you.”

“I’ve got all I need. Please keep it, son.”

“Can’t do that.” He slid the check into the envelope.

“Please, Paulie.”

“Can’t, Mama, and that’s it. “ Katanga hesitated. “Uh, how’s…”

“Joseph?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He’s out of jail. Mr. Lawson put up every cent he had to bail him out.”

“Heard he got hurt,” Katanga said.

“He was in a fight, but he’s going to be all right. I wish you’d talk to him. He needs you.”

“Sounds like he’s got some high-priced help now,” Katanga replied, “some fancy white bread on his table.”

“Don’t speak that way, son. Gardner Lawson is a fine man.”

“Yeah. Heard he kicked one of our people in the teeth. Blocktown’s only lawyer.”

“It was for the best. Mr. Lawson knows how to deal with the prosecutor better than Willie Stanton.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“But Joseph still needs you.
Anything
you can do. Call him, talk to him….”

Katanga moved the phone away from his ear. Big brother cop was against the wall. He’d spent his life shoving other people
there. But this time
he
was facing the firing squad. And that was something he had to do alone.

Gardner, Jennifer, and Granville sat around the kitchen table at the town house. Files and books were stacked everywhere,
and they were all hard at work. Gardner and Jennifer were planning trial strategy, and Granville was studying for a vocabulary
test.

“What’s
merge
?” the boy asked.

Gardner glanced up. Granville was eyeing the back of a flash card.

“What do you think it is?”

Granville crinkled his nose. “Dunno.”

“Think,” Gardner said. “When a car goes onto the interstate it…”

“Crashes?”

Gardner tapped him playfully. “Gran! A car
merges
with the traffic. That’s what the highway sign says. What does it mean?”

“Goes
in
?”

“Close. Try again.”

“Goes
together
?”

“Closer.”

Granville did not reply.

“How about joins or blends together?”

Granville flipped the card. “You’re right!”

“Now do the next one on your own.” Gardner turned back to a file labeled “DEFENSES.”

“That’s the whole lot,” Jennifer said. She’d just briefed him on their range of choices. “We either go the
did do it
with an explanation route, or the
did not do it
route. That’s it, end of list.”

Gardner turned to page two. “Brownie says he didn’t do it.”

“So why is he acting this way?”

“Maybe he’s protecting someone.”

“Who?”

“The killer.”

Jennifer glanced at Granville’s head behind a card. “So he
knows
who did it.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“
Revise
,” Granville said suddenly.

“Use your cards,” Gardner told him.

“Re-
vise
,” Granville repeated.

“
Cards
.”

“He’s not going to tell us what he knows?” Jennifer asked.

“Apparently not.”

“Revise means
change
,” Jennifer whispered to Granville. He smiled and wrote it down. “So we’re in trouble right from the start.”

“We can’t defend him in the blind,” Gardner said. “We need his support, his full cooperation.”

“So what’s the next step?”

Gardner stroked his son’s back. “Try again tomorrow. We sit him down and go through it again. Maybe he’ll soften.”

“And the defense? What are we going to do about that?”

Gardner exhaled loudly. “
That
depends on Brownie.”

Kent King and Lin Song stood by the power station fence. It was a damp and dreary autumn day punctuated by showers and patches
of fog. He wore a trenchcoat, and she was covered by a poncho. They shared an umbrella and huddled together against the chill
as raindrops pattered on the silent trees. They, too, were preparing for trial, putting a face on the words in their investigative
reports. King had done it many times as a defense lawyer, but never as a prosecutor.

“So that’s where he died.” Lin pointed, looking through the wire at the gray high-voltage cabinet.

“Old Sparky,” King joked.

Lin looked at the heavy padlock on the metal gate. “How’d he get in?”

King fingered the lock and let it drop back against the fence. “This wasn’t here. Power company put it on ‘after the fact.’
“

“What
was
here?”

King shrugged. “Don’t know. It wasn’t in any of the original police reports. No one noticed at the time.”

Lin seemed disturbed by that. She frowned deeply.

“It doesn’t matter. Brown removed whatever lock there was.”

“So where is it now?”

King looked into the forest. The trees extended to the horizon. “Out there,” he said.

“So he removed the lock, or whatever it was, put it in his pocket, and later discarded it.”

“Who cares? The rest of the evidence makes that little detail irrelevant.”

“He threw it away in the woods,” Lin continued.

“Yeah. So what?”

“And he took it off while holding his prisoner under guard, preparing to hitch him to the grid.”

King looked his assistant in the eye. “We’re here to assess the proof we
have
. Why are you nitpicking?”

Lin gazed back steadily. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“What?”

“How, exactly, Brown was able to pull it off. By himself. At night. With a locked gate and an uncooperative prisoner.”

“That may
never
be answered,” King argued. “We have motive, opportunity, fingerprints, the victim’s shoes, witnesses….”

“You’re still thinking like a defense attorney,” Lin replied. “You’re used to feeding the jury contradictions and hoping they
will raise reasonable doubt. Now you have to come at it from another direction. You have to be specific. The jury’s going
to want to know exactly
how
it happened. And you have to be prepared to tell them. We have to give the jury a schematic to go with the circumstantial
proof. Remember, no one actually saw Brownie handcuff Ruth to the grid. We have to walk it through and be comfortable with
how it all went down. Then we can lay it out for the jury.”

King smiled. “This is a new experience. I’d rather destroy logic than build it.Why don’t we start again? How do you think
he pulled it off?”

“That’s the
problem
,” Lin replied. “I’ve been going over and over it, and it doesn’t piece together.”

“Try this on,” King suggested. “Brown stops the car, interrogates Ruth about his father’s death, takes him into custody, puts
the cuffs on him, holds him at gunpoint, drives to the park, walks him up the trail, busts off the lock, and shoves him into
the sparkler machine. How’s that?”

Lin shook her head. “No.”

“No? Why not? It’s a logical theory.”

“How did Ruth’s car get over here?”

“Brown drove it. He made the stop, but he took Ruth’s car instead of the police vehicle. And the rest of the story plays out
the same. We found Brown’s fingerprint on the car, remember?”

“On the outside of the passenger side,” Lin replied.

“So?”

“So who drove the car?”

King blinked. “Ruth drove while Brown held him at gunpoint, directed him to the park, et cetera, et cetera.”

“So he left the police van on the road, drove ten miles in the victim’s car, parked and locked it, leaving his fingerprints
on it, walked another mile, electrocuted Ruth, and somehow made it back to his van, all in one night.”

King drew a lungful of air. “He was under stress, duress, whatever you want to call it. He was grief-stricken about his old
man, and obsessed with Ruth. People in that condition do amazing things. “