The Wrong Man (8 page)

“How’m I doing so far?” I asked.

“In your mind?”

“We can start there, sure.”

“You’re doing great,” she said. “You’re charming and insightful and oh-so-confident.”

“Don’t forget I rescued you, too.”

“How could I?”

I gestured to the chair. “Have a drink with me.”

She paused, the mirth disappearing from her eyes. “I did want to thank you.”

“There’ll be plenty of time to do that between sips. I’ll even let you buy, if that’ll make you feel better about it.”

“But you’re making it hard. To thank you.”

“I’m rough around the edges to mask my sensitive, vulnerable side.”

“You’re also married,” she said. She nodded in the direction of my left hand resting on the bar. “No ring tonight, though.”

She was right, you could still see the pale outline on my ring finger. I finally took the ring off a few months ago, but I guess the impression hadn’t yet worn off.

“Then I guess you better be on your way,” I said.

The bartender put down a Stoli next to the wineglass. I turned away from the lady and went to work on the drink. A few minutes passed and she didn’t move.

“It was nice of you to help me the other night,” she finally said.

“Think nothing of it.”

“I’m not used to people trying to help me.”

I didn’t answer. I drained the Stoli and felt the effect immediately.

“You’re not married, are you? I was wrong about that.”

I put down my glass. “I’m not married anymore.”

“You have a pen?”

Did I have a pen? No, I didn’t. But the bartender did, along with another glass of Stoli for me.

She handed me a slip of paper. It had the word “Tori” and a phone number.

“If you want to call me sometime,” she said.

“Good to know,” I said, but Tori was already headed for the door.

The room they let us use at the Boyd Center reminded me of a large playroom for children. There were stations for board games and a sitting area around a television and a desk with chairs. The walls were painted with that same orange color, and the carpeting on the floor was thick, if a little dingy. Not the traditional setting for an attorney-client visit, but budgets were tight, and this was also the room for family visits.

Tom Stoller was in limbo. He needed serious psychological assistance from the state, but he wasn’t getting it, because this was the same “state” that appeared in the caption
State v. Thomas Stoller
, the same “state” that wanted to put Tom in prison for life, the same “state” that didn’t want to concede that Tom suffered a mental defect at the time of the shooting—or at all, for that matter.

I sat across the room and observed Tom with Shauna. They weren’t discussing the case. They weren’t probing his troubled mind. They were playing checkers. I’d brought Shauna along today because she was good with people, far more adept than I at establishing bonds and adjusting to the nuances of interpersonal relationships.

Sitting across from Shauna, a checkerboard between them, Tom showed the same tremors I’d seen every time I visited. His tongue was peeking in and out of his mouth. His eyes were blinking rapidly. His fingers wiggled constantly. Side effects, Dr. Baraniq had said, of the antipsychotic medication. Tom appeared to be contemplating his next move in
the board game, but for all I knew he was in a faraway place, envisioning himself as Sir Lancelot to Shauna’s Guinevere.

You’d think that his mere presence at Boyd was an acknowledgment of Tom’s mental illness, but it wasn’t. The state wasn’t stupid. Boyd housed all kinds of people who presented problems to jailhouses, ranging from patients with communicable diseases, such as HIV, to notorious individuals deserving of segregation, such as gang leaders or police officers, to those with your basic “behavioral” problems.

Tom Stoller fell into the last category. He wasn’t mentally ill. He was a “behavioral” problem. Yeah. Sure. Once they convicted him, he’d go to a penitentiary and receive somewhat decent psychological services. But for now, especially with an insanity defense looming, the state wouldn’t treat him as anything but a problem inmate who could be kept compliant if they drugged him up.

Tom double-jumped two of Shauna’s checkers. “Ooh, I was hoping you wouldn’t do that,” she groaned.

Tom looked up at her and stared, expressionless, in the inappropriate way of a child. Even when Shauna smiled and broke eye contact, as would any adult, he held his stare on her.

Shauna dutifully jumped one of Tom’s checkers. “Take
that
,” she said.

“I had girlfriends,” Tom said. I almost jumped out of my chair. It was the first time Tom had ever volunteered anything personal.

“I’ll
bet
you did.” Shauna winked at him. Bless her heart, she likewise recognized the significance of the moment but played the whole thing casually.

Tom stared back down at the checkerboard, and Shauna snuck a peek in my direction. Before too much time had passed, and the moment was entirely lost, she said, “Was there one in particular? Usually there’s one special one.”

“Jenny. Jenny, but she didn’t want to…” Tom dropped his head and started mumbling.

Shauna waited for a moment. “She didn’t want—”

“I can’t think of the name of the movie.” Tom shook his head harshly, like he was removing cobwebs. “In Somalia. She didn’t like it.”

“The mov—”

“It made her sad. She didn’t like… suffering.”

I knew what he meant. It was a graphically violent film about the American Special Forces operation in Mogadishu that went south and got a bunch of our elite soldiers killed.

“Black Hawk Down,”
I said, from across the room.

Tom whipped his head around at me. With one violent thrust, he jumped up and backhanded the checkerboard clear across the room. Instinctively, Shauna pushed her chair backward, and I got to my feet. I raised my hand toward the security camera to indicate we didn’t want or need intervention by the Corrections guards.

Tom stood, frozen, his gaze lost somewhere in a memory. He slowly turned and walked over to the corner, where he took a seat and sat silently, stoic except for the familiar tremors. Shauna and I looked at each other, speechless.

“She didn’t want me to fight,” he finally whispered.

The Starboard Room in the city’s Maritime Club was at full capacity over lunch, thirty tables with eight guests at each, as the U.S. Secretary of Labor droned on about reform of collective-bargaining laws and diverse workplaces in the “New America.”

New America is right, thought Randall Manning, president, CEO, and sole shareholder of Global Harvest International, a privately held company located eighty miles south of the city. Normally he wouldn’t give the time of day to a speech on the topic of diversity, of all things, but he needed to be in town on other business and welcomed the excuse. And he couldn’t deny enjoying the prestige of the invitation, a seat among the elite. He could allow himself that much; he hadn’t experienced a great deal of enjoyment in his life of late.

As the labor secretary continued through his speech, Manning leaned over to the man sitting next to him, his lawyer, Bruce McCabe. “Where,” he said in a controlled whisper, “is Stanley?”

Stanley Keane, he meant, the owner of SK Tool and Supply, located in the small downstate town of Weston.

“Don’t see him,” said McCabe. McCabe, a principal at the law firm of Dembrow, Lane, and McCabe, was outside counsel to Global Harvest.

Manning put his hand on the back of McCabe’s chair and spoke into his ear. “Stanley needs to be here,” he said. “He needs to be seen here.”

“He understands that.”

“Does he, Bruce? It was your job to make sure he understood.”

“He’ll show up,” McCabe insisted.

He never did. When the speech and luncheon ended, Randall Manning mingled with other business executives. He shook their hands and listened to their stories and told some of his own. He laughed at their jokes and told some of his own. He waited in line for a photograph with the labor secretary and swallowed his loathing and forced a smile on his face for the photographer.

When it was over, Manning had his driver take him to the Gold Coast Athletic Club, where he met the president of a pharmaceutical company—one of Global Harvest’s biggest clients—for a game of squash. At five o’clock, he met a local alderman and a state senator for drinks to discuss a tax-incentive proposal for a freight yard that Global Harvest was considering building inside the city limits. At seven o’clock, he had a steak at one of the city’s best joints, enjoying a view of the river in the process.

At nine o’clock, he returned to his hotel. He took the elevator up to his room, changed his overcoat from a charcoal one to a beige one, donned a fedora hat, and took the elevator back down to the fourth floor, a transitional floor that allowed him to access a different bank of elevators that, in turn, allowed him to exit the hotel onto a cross street, different from the one he’d taken to enter the hotel. He never broke stride into a waiting town car and settled in for the drive.

They drove to a town called Overton Ridge, several miles outside the city limits to the south and west. The car passed the Good Shepherd Methodist Church on the corner of Wadsworth and Pickens, bearing a small magnetic sign that read: W
HOSOEVER SHALL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE
L
ORD SHALL BE SAVED
.

The car stopped in an alley behind the church, where two large, armed men stood by the back door. They showed Randall Manning down a set of stairs to the basement, then to a back room.

When that door opened, six men stood at once. They included Manning’s lawyer, Bruce McCabe. They included Stanley Keane of SK Tool and Supply, who hadn’t made it to the luncheon today.

On Manning’s motion, the six men took their seats at a long rectangular table. At one end, where a seat remained vacant for Manning, was a. 38 revolver. Manning picked it up and pointed it at the man sitting immediately to his right.

“Are you prepared to give your life for the cause?” he asked.

“I am,” said the man, young and powerful like a football player in his prime, with a severe haircut and militant eyes. “I understand that the cause is greater than the individual. I understand that sacrificing this life for the cause will open up a new and richer life in the hereafter. I understand that—”

“Good.” Manning lowered the weapon to his side and walked around the table to Stanley Keane’s spot. “And you, Stanley?”

Stanley shrunk amid the scrutiny. “I am,” he said. “I understand that the cause is—”

“Enough,” said Manning. He positioned the revolver against Stanley’s left ear. “Did we not agree that it was necessary for you to attend the luncheon today?”

“We did, sir.”

“But you did not.”

“It was a scheduling issue, sir—”

“A scheduling issue? We have to cover our tracks, Brother Stanley, if you hadn’t noticed. If anyone is wondering why I’m here in the city today, I can point to the lunch with the labor secretary, I can point to a meeting I had with elected officials, I can point to a game of squash with a pharmaceutical company president who is a valued client. You, Stanley? What can you show?”

Manning cocked the weapon, and Stanley broke into a series of apologies. “I got a late start and I wouldn’t have made more than the last few minutes, sir, and by then—”

“Stanley,” Manning said with an icy calm. “We have a unique opportunity here, do we not?”

“We do, sir. We have an opportunity to return this—”

“And this opportunity is made particularly unique by the standing of the members of our Circle, true?”

“Yes, sir.” Sweat trickled down Stanley’s cheek.

“And keeping up appearances is paramount, yes?”

“Paramount, sir.”

“If we travel to a meeting of the Circle, we do so at the risk of calling attention to ourselves, do we not?”

“Yes—”

“And as I’m standing here at this moment, Brother Stanley, I am aware of no particular cover story for why you are here. If anyone were to inquire.
Because you missed the luncheon.
”

“I apologize, sir. I have no excuse.”

Manning braced himself, and thus Stanley did as well. The entire room did.

Then Manning uncocked his weapon and held it at his side. “We are close, brothers. The closer we get to our goal, the higher the risks, the graver the danger.” He moved around the table to his rightful place at the head. “We have survived many challenges. We are so close now. Now is not the time to let down. Now is the time to recommit.

“Brothers, have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” they replied in unison.

“Very good.” Manning took a seat and bowed his head. “Now, we pray.”

“So he shoots Kathy Rubinkowski, he walks over to her dead body and he steals her purse, cell phone, and necklace.” Shauna tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “How is that consistent with PTSD? He’s reliving a moment in Iraq, he shoots her, and then he
robs
her?”

Lying flat on the couch in the corner of my office, I threw my football up in the air and caught it coming back at my face. “I saw a movie once where a soldier stole a cigar out of the pocket of the dead enemy soldier. The spoils of war, I guess.”

“I guess. It takes a little sympathy out of your sympathy argument, though.”

“Don’t forget, Tom apologized to her.”

“Yeah, that’s great. ‘Sorry I shot you, really I am, but as long as I’m here, no sense in letting all that money in your purse go to waste.’ That’s a real crowd-pleaser, kid.”

She winked at me. Shauna was my best friend. She was my lifeline. It wasn’t so long ago that she pulled my head out of my ass and forced me to share office space with her. I was on track to throw my legal career into the dumpster after I lost my wife and daughter. I’ll always wonder what I would have done for a living. Maybe an astronaut. The rodeo circuit would have been cool. Though I’ve never ridden a horse, much less a bronco.

I continued my one-man game of toss. “It’s worse than that. It’s not even impulsive. Tom didn’t have any blood on him. Right? That’s what the
police report said. And you saw that pool of blood around the victim’s body.”