Thicker Than Water (3 page)

There were only two women in the lobby when Louis got out of the elevator. One was an old blue-hair with a grandkid in tow. The other was a black woman in a dark red suit carrying a slim briefcase. Her eyes immediately lasered onto Louis and she came forward.

“You're Louis Kincaid?”

“Yes, and you are—?”

“What was your business with my client?” she asked.

“His son wants to hire me—”

Her brows knitted. “Ronnie? Ronnie hired you to do what?”

“I'm a private invest—”

“What?”

“I—”

“He hired a PI? Damn it!”

Louis glanced at Zach behind the glass; he was watching intently. Louis knew he had keyed the mike so he could hear every word.

“Look,” Louis said, holding up a hand, “maybe we should—”

“I can't believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I told him to stay out of this, to keep his damn mouth shut.” Her dark eyes shot suddenly to Louis's face. “What did my client tell you?”

“Nothing. Look, lady—”

“Nothing he told you can be used against him—”

“Hold it, I'm not even sure I'm going—”

“How much is he paying you?”

“How much is he paying
you?”
Louis shot back.

She pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Nothing. I'm his public defender.”

Louis gave her a wry smile. Her expression remained icy.

“Let's start over,” Louis said. He held out his hand. “Louis Kincaid.”

She hesitated, then gave him a curt handshake. “Susan Outlaw. Now what exactly did my client tell you?”

Louis looked again at Zach. His face was practically pressed against the plexiglass.

Louis glanced at her. “Why don't we go somewhere where we can talk in private?” he said.

She looked at the slim watch on her wrist. Louis could tell she was mulling something over. What? Whether he was going to waste her time? Shit, what was it with lawyers? They all thought they were the only ones with schedules to keep. Not that he had anywhere else to go today, except to see Mobley, and he wasn't in any hurry to do that.

“All right. Let's go,” she said, pivoting to the door.

“Yes, ma'am,” Louis said.

She led Louis to a wood-and-fern bar near the courthouse called The Guilty Party. Susan left to make a call. Louis waited, stirring three packets of sugar into his coffee. He glanced around the cramped room. It was packed with blue-suited lawyers and grim civilians wearing jury buttons.

When she came back to the table, she sat down with an irritated sigh and took a quick drink of her coffee.

“Problem back at the office?” Louis asked politely.

“Look, Mr. Kincaid, I don't have time to sit around in cafes sipping cappucinos.”

“It's just bad bar coffee.”

“Let's just get to the point,” she said. “What did Jack Cade tell you?”

Louis sat back in his chair. “Not much. That he didn't kill Spencer Duvall.”

“Anything else?”

“That he didn't rape and kill that girl twenty years ago either.”

She was sitting with her back to the window and he couldn't make out much of her features in the glare of the sun—except for her frown. That he could see clearly.

“Why would you ask him about that?” she asked.

“The man was convicted. Why wouldn't I?”

“It's totally irrelevant. Surely, even a PI can see that.”

He let the barb go. “Curiosity then, I guess.”

She was squinting at him, like she thought he was crazy. She started to say something but was interrupted by her beeper going off. With an impatient sigh, she grabbed it. Her expression changed as she read the number, her mouth dropping open slightly. In the back light, Louis couldn't tell if she was upset or just surprised.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, rising quickly.

Louis watched as she went to the pay phone again. She punched in a number and with a look at Louis, turned her back. A minute later she was back.

“I'm sorry—” she began.

“Would you mind moving your chair?” Louis asked.

She looked at him. “What?”

He pointed at the window. “The glare from the window. I like to see who I'm talking to.”

She craned her neck to look at the window then back at Louis. When she shifted her chair into the shadows Louis could see that something had changed, like a mask had slipped, leaving her face unprotected.

Back in the police station lobby, she had seemed older, pushing forty or so. But he could see now she was probably younger, with one of those hard-to-guess faces that some women were blessed with. Smooth skin maybe a half-shade darker than his own tan, a round face with a high forehead, generous mouth and eyes the shape and color of toasted almonds. Her hair . . . maybe that was what made her look older. It was black with brown streaks, swept up in one of those hard French twisty things, but with pieces of it falling out the back, like she hadn't had a lot of time to work on it that morning.

Susan Outlaw . . . shit, what a name for a defense attorney.

“I'm sorry for the interruption,” she began again.

“Boss got you on a short leash?”

“No, it was my son. Or his principal rather.”

She seemed distracted. Louis started to ask if the kid was in trouble at school, but something in her expression told him not to. He remembered suddenly the time his foster mother Frances had been summoned to school when he was in the sixth grade. A kid had called him an orphan and Louis had taken a swing at him with a geography book, splitting his lip. Later that night, as Louis picked at his dinner, Phillip spoke to him quietly but firmly.

You didn't even know what the word ‘orphan' meant, Louis. Next time, make sure you know what you're fighting for. Learn to use your brains, not your fists.

And Frances:
I don't know, Phil, sometimes a good punch in the mouth is more effective
.

“Now look, Mr. Kincaid,” Susan said, drawing him back.

“Louis. It's Louis, okay?”

She stared at him. He had the feeling he wasn't going to be invited to call her Susan any time soon. He glanced at the gold band on her left hand and found himself wondering what Mr. Outlaw called her. Somehow she didn't look like she'd answer to Sue or Susie.

“I've had two days—just two days—to get up to speed on Jack Cade's case,” she said. “I can't be wasting time worrying about you or anyone else getting in my way.”

“Getting in your way?” Louis said. “I would think you'd welcome the help.”

“I don't need help,” she said evenly.

“I never saw a public defender that didn't need help.”

She was staring at him again, daggers this time, like she was sizing him up—age, experience—and finding him lacking. It irritated the hell out of him, but he wasn't about to take the bait.

“How long have you been in the PI business?” she asked finally.

“Almost a year,” he said.

She gave a short scornful laugh, reaching in her briefcase for something.

“I was a cop before this,” he said. Probably too quickly.

She froze, then slowly shook her head. “I should have known,” she said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It's written all over you.”

“Bullshit.” Now he was getting pissed.

She waved a hand of dismissal. “The walk, the talk. The eyes. Yeah, especially your eyes.”

She snapped the briefcase closed and he realized she was getting ready to leave. He didn't want her to leave; he needed her to tell him things about Jack Cade. Like a good reason why he should take his case.

“Do you think your client is innocent?” Louis asked.

Susan was half out of the chair and she leveled her eyes at him and slowly sat back down.

“Lawyers have to believe their clients,” she said.

“No they don't. They just have to believe in the law.”

“Now you're sounding like a lawyer,” she said.

He thought about telling her that he was pre-law in college, but there was no way it wouldn't sound like chest-beating at this point.

“But you're a cop, with a cop brain,” she added. She rose, smoothing back the wayward strand of hair again. She was standing in that back light again and he had to squint to look up at her. She was tall, maybe five-nine, with a generous body that he suspected she thought boxy dark suits could hide.

“Which means what?” he asked.

“Which means that you think if he is arrested he must surely be guilty. And like the rest of the scum who make cops' lives miserable, he should probably rot in hell.”

“I haven't even decided to take this case,” he said.

She slipped the strap of her purse over the shoulder of her red suit. “Well, I can't stop Ronnie Cade from hiring you,” she said. “Just don't get in my way.”

She turned, her heels clicking on the terrazzo floor as she headed out the door. He picked up the mug and took a drink, grimacing at the taste of the muddy coffee.

It hit him then that she was right.

His first impression of Jack Cade had been that he was probably guilty. Not just of the rape and murder of the girl twenty years ago but also of shooting Spencer Duvall.

He had been a cop for only three years, but it had left its mark, making him turn a deaf ear to the protests of dirtbags as he shoved them into the backs of patrol cars. They were thieves, druggies, wife-beaters and murderers. The harmless ones were liars who cut corners, and the worst ones were sociopaths who cut their evil swathes through other people's lives. But they were all dirtbags who broke the law and still got a good night's sleep afterward. And yeah, every single one of them was innocent.

Other people, civilians, didn't see it the way cops did. Neither did people like Susan Outlaw. She was an attorney. No, a
defense
attorney, who had to see the world and its lowlifes in a different light just so she could collect a paycheck and pay her rent. He had always wondered how defense lawyers did it. What, did they count leeches to get to sleep at night?

The walk, the talk. The eyes. Yeah, especially your eyes.

Louis took another drink of coffee.

Okay, so he still had cop eyes.

But he wasn't a cop any more.

He glanced at his watch. Shit. It was twelve-thirty. He was supposed to meet Mobley at O'Sullivan's. A ripple of laughter drew his attention to a nearby table, where a clot of men in suits were huddled over beers, sleek briefcases sitting at their feet like obedient pet dogs. Lawyers.

Louis shook his head. It hit him in that second: If he took Jack Cade's case, he would have to go over to the other side for the first time in his life.

Maybe that was why he hadn't slept last night.

He tossed some bills on the table and left.

He walked the four blocks to O'Sullivan's. The old bar was a stone's throw from the police station and walking distance from the sheriff 's office, an easy stop for deputies after shifts.

Louis eased inside, blinking to adjust to the darkness. He had been in the bar a few times before, when he first arrived in Fort Myers. He had come hoping to find some conversation and a sense of camaraderie. And at first, when he was riding the wave of the serial killer case, he had found acceptance among the cops.

But his stature had faded quickly when the
News-Press
had run a follow-up profile on him. In the article, the whole Michigan thing had come out and suddenly conversation in O'Sullivan's wasn't so friendly. Zach back at the sheriff's office was the exception; most the cops were like Deputy Lovett in the elevator, treating him like he didn't exist.

Louis scanned the crowd for Mobley. He spotted him leaning over the jukebox. Mobley's blond hair was wind-blown, his tan face glowing blue in the jukebox lights. He was off-duty, wearing a white polo shirt and creased black trousers that looked like they had been req'd from the uniform room at the sheriff's office.

Louis moved through the crowd toward him. Mobley glanced at him, then looked away.

“I expected you a half-hour ago,” Mobley said.

“Got tied up.”

Mobley fed a dollar bill into the jukebox and started punching numbers.

“What's your interest in Cade?” he asked without looking up.

“His kid, Ronnie, wants to hire me.”

Mobley's finger paused over a button, then he poked at it hard. “Didn't think the Cades had any money.”

Louis didn't reply. Mobley picked up his beer off the top of the jukebox and started back to his table, nodding at Louis to follow. The table in the back was cluttered with empty beer bottles, crumpled napkins and ashtrays brimming with butts. The two cops sitting there looked up at Louis, then their eyes slid to Mobley.

“Since when did this table go civilian, Sheriff?” one asked.

“Since I said so. Take a piss break, guys.”

The men ambled off toward the pool table. Mobley motioned for Louis to sit down.

“What do you drink?” Mobley asked.

“Heineken.”

Mobley went to the bar and returned with two beers. He slid in the booth across from Louis and finished off his first beer in one long drink then reached for the fresh one.

“What's this about, Sheriff?” Louis asked. “You going to bust my chops just because I saw Cade?”

“There's a lot of interest in this case, from Tallahassee on down. Sandusky wants to know who the players are, that's all.” Mobley eyed him over the lip of the bottle. “Are you a player?”

Louis hesitated. He didn't like Lance Mobley. Worse, he didn't respect him. The guy was a political animal who ran his department like a personal fiefdom. Louis was tempted to use this Cade thing just to piss him off.

“It sounds like you're circling the wagons, Sheriff.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? You don't
know
if you're working for Cade?”

Louis took a drink of beer.

Mobley sat back, laying his arm across the back of the booth. “Have you done any homework on this yet, Kincaid?”

“Not much.”

“Well, let me give you a quick history lesson then,” Mobley said. “Jack Cade raped and murdered a girl named Kitty Jagger back in 1966. They had him dead to rights. His slimeball lawyer, the late Spencer Duvall, managed to finagle a plea bargain for him for manslaughter.”

Louis remained silent.

Mobley shook his head. “The asshole should've fried to a crisp for what he did to that girl. Instead, he gets a lousy twenty years. A fucking gift. Then what does he do? Gets out and one week later shoots the goddamn lawyer who saved his ass in the first place.”

“He says he didn't do it.”

“Yeah, he said that twenty years ago, too, but he took the plea quick enough.”

“What do you have on him?”

“His lawyer has all that. Talk to her,” Mobley said.

“I'd rather hear it from you.”

A slow grin came over Mobley's face. “So you've met Susan Outlaw.”

“Yeah, this afternoon.”

“We don't like her much around here, you know.”

“She's just doing her job,” Louis said.

Mobley's smile faded. “Yeah, I suppose. But no one's going to plead Cade down this time. Not even by a day. He's going to fry this time.”

Louis leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “What do you have?”

“Why should I give you anything?”

“Professional courtesy?”

“You're not a professional. You don't have a badge. You don't even have that PI license yet.”

“Look, I know you don't like me—”

“Most the guys in here don't like you.”

“That shouldn't change how you do your job, Sheriff,” Louis said.

Mobley leaned back in the booth again, considering him carefully. Louis took advantage of the pause.

“All right, just tell me what I'm up against,” he said.

Mobley glanced around the bar, then he let out a long, beer-scented sigh. “We got witnesses who heard him threaten Duvall the morning of the murder. We got a witness who says he saw Cade that night hanging around the building. We got his prints on Duvall's desk.”

“He doesn't deny being in the office. He had an appointment.”

“We also found his prints on the credenza
behind
Duvall's desk.”

“What about other prints?”

“Hundreds. Other lawyers, the secretary and the partner, the wife. But no one suspicious.”

Louis picked up his beer.

“Plus,” Mobley added, “we got one of his Raiford buddies telling us Cade bragged about how he was going to get back at Duvall when he got out.”

“Did Cade offer an alibi?” Louis asked.

“Yeah, a real dandy. He and his kid were home watching TV.”

Louis took a drink, averting his eyes.

Mobley leaned forward. “You know what you're really up against, Kincaid? The dirtbag factor. Jack Cade was, is, and always will be a dirtbag. He killed once and he did it again. People can't get beyond that. And our esteemed prosecutor, Vern Sandusky, knows it. He's on his white horse, making up for the shitty system that let Cade off so light twenty years ago.”

Louis picked up the napkin and wiped the condensation off the side of the Heineken bottle. “Sounds like a slam-dunk.”

“That's for sure.”

Louis stood up slowly. “Thanks for the info.”

“Don't get yourself dirty with this, Kincaid.”

Louis paused, looking down at Mobley. He could see the Busch logo in his pupils.

“You looking for more clippings for your scrapbook, Kincaid, is that it?” Mobley said. “Well, you might get some more headlines working this case, but you're not going to win any popularity contests defending that asshole.”

“I'm not out to win anything, Sheriff.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, picking up his beer.

Louis started away.

“Get your fucking PI license, Kincaid,” Mobley called out, loud enough for the whole bar to hear.

 

 

The rain was moving in. Louis could see it, advancing across the gulf like a pale gray scrim falling across a stage. When it reached shore, it brought a cool breeze that wafted through the screens and set the auger shell wind chimes clicking like old bones.

Louis had been watching a small brown lizard do pushups on the screen, and as the rain hit, it sent the lizard scurrying for cover. Issy launched herself at the screen after it.

“Hey, knock it off,” Louis yelled at the cat. But both creatures had disappeared.

Louis stared dismally at the sagging screen. It had torn free of the wood frame in the corner. He debated whether to go in and get a knife and try to poke it back in, but he knew Issy would just tear it up again.

Damn Pierre.
The little weasel landlord expected him to act as a security guard for a break in the rent, but the damn cottage was falling apart and he wouldn't repair a friggin' thing.

The rain was picking up force, pounding on the roof now. Louis's eyes drifted upward. If this kept up, he would have to move the bed again.

With a sigh, he put on his glasses and turned his attention back to the newspaper clippings he had just started reading.

After leaving Mobley, he had gone to the public library and pulled copies of everything to do with the Duvall murder case. It wasn't much, but he needed to get the basic facts and there was no way he was going to get his hands on any police files. Neither Mobley or Susan Outlaw were going to help that account.

He turned his attention back to the
News-Press
articles. Spencer Duvall's body had been found by his secretary, Eleanor Silvestri, when she came to work at eight
A.M.
the next morning. According to the medical examiner, Duvall had been shot once in the head, the time of death estimated around nine-thirty
P.M.
Duvall and his secretary had been alone in the office, working late, but she left at about nine. Jack Cade had visited Duvall's office earlier in the day and been overheard making threats to the attorney.

Louis moved on to the most recent article about Cade's arraignment. He paused, seeing Susan Outlaw's name. She said she would not seek a change of venue, even given Cade's history. “What happened twenty years ago has no bearing whatsoever on my client's current legal situation,” she was quoted as saying.

Man, was this woman naive or just plain dumb?

There were other older articles about Spencer Duvall, including a feature that detailed his rise to one of the state's highest-profile criminal lawyers, with an estimated net worth of 5.3 million. His professional style had earned him the nickname The Tortoise. He was plodding and thorough—and he never lost.

Finally, there was an old copy of
Gulfshore Life.
It was a heavy glossy that advertised itself as “The Magazine of Southwest Florida” but was more a bible of the good life, stuffed with ads for art galleries, plastic surgeons and financial advisers.

The magazine had an article about a renovation at the Thomas Edison House, led by the historical society. The Duvalls were mentioned as the project's leading contributor, coughing up a cool quarter mil.

The librarian had also marked another page in the back. It was a society column called
The Circuit,
and it took Louis a minute to find the Duvalls in one of the color group photographs. It was one of those typical society snaps, a line-em-up-shoot-em-down, with the subjects posed, champagne glasses in hand, faces frozen in smiles.

It was a Christmas party of some kind, and there were eight people in the photograph, all in gowns and tuxes. He picked out Candace Duvall in the front—small, tanned and attractive with blond hair sleekly upswept, a big toothy smile, dressed in strapless red with diamonds at her neck and ears. Spencer Duvall towered at her side, a good-looking man of about forty-five, with thinning sandy hair over a wide forehead and intelligent dark eyes behind stylish wire-rimmed glasses. In contrast to his wife, he was somber, unsmiling. He looked more like a befuddled physics professor than a dogged defense attorney.

Louis set the articles aside and looked out to the gulf. The rain was letting up, the afternoon sun slanting low through a slit in the gray clouds. The odor of low tide hung in the air, that familiar brew of kelp, brine and rotting things.

Why was he doing this? He didn't want this case. Why was he even reading these damn articles?

He felt something touch his bare ankles and looked down to see Issy staring up at him.

“What?” he said.

The cat didn't move.

“Food? Is that it?” He pushed himself out of the chair and the cat followed him into the kitchen. He shook some Tender Vittles into a bowl on the floor. He leaned against the sink, thinking of Ronnie Cade, about what he had said about losing his father for twenty years.

Shit, at least Jack Cade was still alive.

The dampness was creeping through the cabin. Louis rubbed his hands over the thin cotton of his T-shirt. He went into the bedroom to get a sweatshirt.

At the dresser, he rummaged through the drawers until he found an old University of Michigan sweatshirt. He pulled it on. He was about to close the drawer when he paused.

The manila envelope was tucked under some old shirts. He had forgotten that he had put it there.

He pulled it out and undid the clasp. He upended the contents onto the top of the dresser. There were only a handful of photographs, a couple from college, a few of Phillip and Frances Lawrence, one of Bessie, the old woman who had rented him a room in Black Pool, Mississippi. A faded portrait of his mother when she was eighteen, a snapshot of his sister, Yolanda, and another of his brother, Robert.

Then, he found it. A small square in black and white, its edges pinked in the old style of the fifties. A white man, standing on a porch, wearing overalls and a straw hat that shielded his face. The image was blurred slightly, like the man had been moving just as the picture was snapped.

He hadn't looked at the photograph in a long time, so long in fact that he half-expected the man in the picture to age. But he never did. He was always exactly the same.

Louis stared at his father, his thumb rubbing the slick surface.

Then he gathered up the photos and put them away. Going back to the kitchen, he scanned the counter and spotted the business card laying next to the phone.

He picked up the phone and dialed Ronnie Cade's number.