Ascension Day

29

The first to arrive on the scene, six minutes after Mrs Orwin’s call, were two patrolmen from the Eighth District, who immediately radioed in for what else they’d need: forensics, homicide, and a meat wagon. They knocked on Mrs Orwin’s door first because she’d made the call but, with their talking and the harsh static from their communicators, Alaysha’s door opened seconds after, and, quickly sensing some unease between the two parties, the officers took one each for questioning — Mrs Orwin hastily ushering her officer in and closing her door behind him.

Two more patrolmen arrived minutes later and, having conferred with their colleagues, one yellow-taped the downstairs entrance before joining his side-kick in roaming and checking for tell-tale clues, though at all times two-yards clear of the body; the hallowed forensics-only zone.

Questioning was basic at that point, setting the general scene, which was all dutifully relayed to Lieutenant Jerome Derminget, a bloodhound-eyed homicide detective with wavy, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair, when he arrived on the scene eighteen minutes later.

Derminget looked like the type that Alaysha would have liked under different circumstances. While his eyes looked tired, as if he read police reports or books late into the night, at the same time they appeared warm, understanding. Though that part also unsettled Alaysha; they looked like they might easily strip away her defences, get to the truth.

Derminget spent the first ten minutes questioning Mrs Orwin, and had been little more than that time with Alaysha when his station house called to inform him that they had Miss Reyner’s lawyer on the line, a certain John Langfranc, ‘And he insists on being present for any official questioning of his client.’

Derminget skewed his mouth. He didn’t like the sound of the girl’s story one bit: the shooter that nobody else had seen, appearing magically and firing just seconds after them closing the door, at the end of a big argument to boot; an eye-witness that saw both the argument and then her and her boyfriend over the body, and, to cap it all, her boyfriend, having apparently run off in pursuit of the killer, for some inexplicable reason hadn’t yet returned. It sounded like a fairy story, but Derminget had so far only been filling in background, hadn’t yet got to the harder-assed questions that might put her account to the acid-test. And the involvement of a lawyer so early rang instant alarm-bells, stank of barricades being quickly, desperately put up. If he didn’t get to those questions before her lawyer showed, her story would probably forever get stuck in la-la land. He saw his escape route in official.

‘Tell our lawyer friend that we’re still on the scene, and so we’re not even sure at this stage if there will be any official questioning of Miss Reyner. But if that is to take place, that’ll be at the station house later tonight; about which, of course, he’ll be duly informed beforehand.’

‘One minute.’ The female duty officer broke off and he could hear other voices in the background — obviously they had the lawyer on another line — before her voice came back. ‘He says he’s a friend and so he’d like to be there in any case, for moral support. He’s on his way.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ Fuck it. Fuck it! Derminget had drifted into the hallway as he’d taken the call and kept his voice low so that the girl wouldn’t overhear. He gave his best smile and soft-eyed look as he turned back in through the doorway. ‘Now, where were we?’ Maybe only ten or twelve minutes before her lawyer arrived, he’d better make the most of it.

Two hours. That’s when Jac had arranged to speak with Langfranc again when hopefully he’d be back from seeing Alaysha and the police. Another phone booth call, Langfranc advised, ‘Because we don’t want anything possibly later being traced to your cell-phone.’

After the change of shirt, Jac had instinctively headed away from the French Quarter — less people, less police. But as another police car drifted by him on Baronne Street, he felt immediately uncomfortable, vulnerable. They didn’t see him or even slow as they passed, but he was struck with the feeling that he was the only person there to draw their eye, and if one of them had looked his way, he’d have frozen or panicked in that gaze, the look in his own eyes instantly giving the game away.

He turned back towards the French Quarter. He felt in no mood to be around people, let alone crowds, but they’d at least offer some cover, distraction; to any passing police, he’d be harder to pick out amongst a milling throng.

He drifted along with the tourists and local out-on-the-towners on Bourbon Street, then turned into Bienville Street and found a bar after forty yards that looked busy and noisy enough to hopefully get lost in.

Jac ordered a Coors at the bar, then found a table deep towards the back where he was hardly visible from the street, let alone noticeable.

As Jac took the first sips of beer, he pictured again hearing the gun going off, those last footsteps on the stairs as he opened the door, Gerry’s body on the floor with part of his skull blown away, Mrs Orwin screaming, You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him! Fourth or fifth time he’d run the sequence through for anything he might have missed, along now with how Alaysha might be coping with the police, how she’d explain the same sequence of events? Would Langfranc have arrived yet to be able to draw their fire?

Jac sipped anxiously at his beer. His running off wouldn’t have helped — more possible suspicion and less back-up, Alaysha left to fend on her own — but with Alaysha’s gun still there, it would have been far worse. Alaysha would instantly have been prime suspect with himself as accomplice. Only with the weapon gone did they have a chance of getting away with the story that someone else had shot Gerry.

Between the crowd at the bar and milling by the entrance, Jac caught glimpses of the street outside as he drank, and over the next half hour he saw a couple of police cars passing: the normal French Quarter patrols, he wasn’t unduly worried. But when a police car stopped almost directly opposite and a patrolman got out and headed across the road, Jac’s nerves immediately tensed, his grip on his beer bottle tightening. He watched like a hawk through the revellers — past two twenty-somethings hugging and back-slapping like they hadn’t seen each in years, past a girl half doubling over and cackling like a witch at the joke of one of her two friends — as the policeman went slightly to one side, a door or two away.

Jac didn’t take his eyes off the entrance or fully ease his breath until two minutes later when he saw the policeman head away again; suddenly conscious of a few people at the bar looking his way curiously, Jac only then aware how hard his eyes had been burning through them, a trickle of sweat on his brow, his hand starting to shake on his beer bottle.

And in turn, with those stares, Jac suddenly realized how alone he was, separate from them all. A day ago, even a few hours ago, he’d have enjoyed the ambience, smiled at the bonhomie around him, felt the beer chill and mellow him, finger-tapped to the beat of the music: Lynryd Skynryd’s ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was playing, and people had started to sway and foot-tap, one couple even attempting a close-clinches jive. But Jac felt cut off from it all, as if he was a world away, the throbbing beat simply fuelling the pounding of his heart and pulse, a nerve jumping in time with it just below his earlobe — one solid, deafening drumbeat that screamed, get out, get out!.. you don’t belong here…

Jac quickly knocked back the rest of his beer and stood up, started making his way back through the heaving, milling mass. The bar had become a lot busier in the past half hour, and Jac had to push and sidle his way through, the atmosphere suddenly hot, oppressive, the feeling that they were all closing in on him — we saw the way you looked at that policeman, and we’re going to keep you here until they come back for you — Jac knocking the arm of a satin-shirted young guy with a pony-tail and almost spilling his drink as he leant back into Jac. ‘Sorry… sorry…’ Jac sweating now, heart pounding, breath short as he burst through the last of the bar crowd and back out onto the street.

But the throbbing, swirling echo of the music and people still seemed to churn through Jac’s head as he paced along Bienville Street, crossing Bourbon this time… a police siren a block away suddenly screaming along with it so that he felt in that instant dizzy, his legs weak; the feeling that he might have to start fleeing again, but now had no strength left.

The siren faded after a moment, and he eased out his breath again, raising his hand to a cab as he saw it crossing on Dauphine Street.

‘Yeah? Where to?’

Jac had to think for a second. His mum’s place would now probably be too risky. ‘Mid-City, on the way to the airport. One of the motels around Tulane Avenue.’ He could make his call to John Langfranc from there and, as one of the city’s most faceless, transient-client hotel areas, it would hopefully be ideal for laying low for a while.

As they turned onto Canal Street, the driver asked, ‘You know which one?’

‘No. Haven’t booked one yet. Got any recommendations?’

As the driver threw up the pros and cons of a couple of motels he knew there, Jac was hardly listening, the throbbing beat, voices and sirens still ringing in his head, get away… get away… and even when the taxi driver had stopped speaking and a motel had been decided upon, it was still there for a while, until finally — Jac closing his eyes and taking slow, even breaths in the back of the taxi as the city receded behind him — it was just the sound of his own heartbeat and thrum of the taxi wheels on the road.

Steady rhythmic beat. Though now it was more from Jac’s fingers drumming by the phone than his heartbeat. The only sound — apart from the traffic passing a block away on Tulane Avenue, heavily muted through the thick glazing of his second-floor motel window — as Jac made his call to John Langfranc.

When Jac had first called, after the agreed two hours, there’d been no answer — then successively after five minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes. Still no answer, his finger-tapping by the phone heavier and more impatient each time. Now again after another three minutes. It answered late, at the start of the fifth ring, Langfranc slightly breathless.

‘I just got back in this second,’ he said to Jac’s Where the hell had he been?

‘I’ve been going crazy here… didn’t know what to think,’ Jac said. ‘What might be happening?’

‘I know… I know. It got a lot more complicated while I was there, unfortunately. You see, the thing is — ’

‘How was Alaysha?’ Jac was only half paying attention to Langfranc; his emotions so pent-up that all he could think of were the questions that had burned through his mind the past two hours. ‘How did she cope with the police questioning?’

‘She coped fine, Jac. But — ’

‘And had she said the right things before you got there, so that you were able to cover the bases okay?’

‘Yes, she’d covered well, hadn’t… but… but they found the gun, Jac.’ Langfranc blurted it out mid-sentence, as if afraid that if he got stuck in question-answer mode, he might never get the words out. Langfranc let his breath out heavily. ‘That’s our main problem now.’

‘But how? I hid it over half a mile away, and I — ’

‘You were seen burying it, Jac. A neighbour a couple of doors away, apparently.’

‘Oh God. God.’ Jac felt as if a trapdoor had opened beneath him, but it was Alaysha he saw tumbling into the abyss, her reaching one hand up desperately. Her gun. Her prints on it. He shuddered, his voice shaky, quavering. ‘How on earth is Alaysha bearing up with that news? I… I should be with her now.’ He realized something else too in that second. ‘And now I’ve made things far worse for her… trying to get rid of the gun. Made her look guiltier still.’

‘Jac, the problem is, it’s — ’

‘Jeezus… I’ve made a right pig’s ear of everything, I’ve — ’

Jac was wrapped up in his own thoughts again, only half listening as Langfranc tried to broach the subject delicately, gently, soften the blow; but, in the end, as if the only way to get the words across, they came out sharply, a hatchet swipe:

‘Jac! They’re not Alaysha’s prints they’ve found on that gun — they’re yours!’

Jac felt the words hit, but they didn’t sink home, as if Langfranc had said them to someone else. Then, hesitantly, ‘That’s… that’s not possible. I… I never touched the gun with my hands.’

‘The prints are there, Jac… they’re there. No question.’

And as it did finally sink in, Jac felt himself falling again, as if Langfranc’s words had held him in mid-air for a moment, suspended in disbelief, and now that the totality of the set-up dawned on him, he was in freefall again: Alaysha’s gun, his fingerprints on it — he should have deduced earlier that if they’d gone to the trouble of lifting it from her apartment, that’s what they’d do; after all, a part of him had questioned all along that he was meant to be the main target. The letter and restraining order, the argument, Mrs Orwin seeing him over the body, ‘You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him!’ And now, as if he wasn’t roped and tied enough, him fleeing and trying to dispose of the gun. He’d provided the final ribbon on top himself.

‘Uuuhhh.’ All Jac could manage; a half-grunt, half-wheeze as he felt all the air shunted out of him with the terrible realization. After a moment, ‘You… you know it’s all a set-up, don’t you?’ But Jac’s tone carried strong hesitance, doubt, as if with the sheer weight of evidence, even John Langfranc might have trouble believing it.

‘Yeah, I know.’ Though there was a slight pause, and the tone was that of reluctant concession. ‘But, like I said before, Jac — that’s only because I know you. With everyone else, it’s going to be tough. With the way everything’s stacked against you — a real mountain climb to try and convince them.’

‘What can we do?’ Yet even as Jac said it, with the hopelessness of the situation, it sounded rhetorical; Langfranc was a lawyer, not Houdini.

Langfranc took a fresh breath. ‘The first thing is — you’ve got to give yourself up to the police, Jac. Give them your side of things to back up Alaysha’s account. That’s the start point.’

But as Langfranc said it, Jac’s first thought was Durrant. After all, Durrant’s fate had been the main purpose of the set-up: to get him off the scene. ‘Will I get bail?’

‘I don’t know, Jac. I’ll try, obviously. But running off with the gun and hiding it hasn’t helped. And your work-visa situation, too, is going to make it tricky — the fact that you’re not an American citizen. DA will protest like all hell that you could flee.’

Jac had worked with Langfranc long enough to read a ‘No’; Langfranc just didn’t want to come flat out and say it. Like everything else so far and no doubt from here on in, he’d be let down softly, in stages.

Only eleven days left now until Durrant’s execution. ‘I just can’t leave Durrant hanging now, John. Not when I’m so close.’

‘Durrant?’ Langfranc’s voice was incredulous, cracking slightly. ‘You won’t be able to do anything to help him now, Jac. You’ll be lucky to save yourself from sharing the cell right next to him, way things stand now.’

‘I can’t come in, if I’m not going to get bail — don’t you see? He’ll be dead before half this is sorted out — if it ever is.’

‘It’s not just the bail, Jac.’ Langfranc’s voice was stretched; the tone Jac had heard him adopt with difficult clients. ‘Beaton’s going to drop you from the firm quicker than a hot potato soon as he gets wind of all this. You won’t be able to represent Durrant in any case.’

Jac heard Langfranc, but another part of his brain quickly rejected it; the part in denial, still stuck on everything he had planned before it had happened. ‘There’s the BOP hearing tomorrow, and I’ve got that psychiatrist, Ormdern, visiting Durrant a few hours after. I’ve got to be there for those. And, don’t you see — that’s why they’ve done this now. They’ve heard about Ormdern’s visit, and are worried that I might be getting too close.’

‘You can’t be there, Jac. I can’t say it plainer than that.’ Tired, worn tone; shifted deftly from ‘difficult clients’ to ‘insane’. ‘And who the hell are they?’

‘Roche and his henchman, guy called Nelson Malley. Remember, I told you the other day about him following me — the photos that Bob Stratton took?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I remember now.’ Langfranc rubbed his forehead. The Durrant case had gone through so many hurdles that, with his own heavy caseload, at times Langfranc found it difficult to keep track.

Jac continued, ‘I’m convinced they’re behind this now. And, in turn, I’m more convinced than ever that they somehow set Larry Durrant up. That’s the link between the two, right there, don’t you see? The perfect set-up.’

Part of Jac’s thinking came across as totally rational, Langfranc considered; the other part now firing on odd cylinders at wild tangents, totally irrational.

‘Perhaps that’s something you could share with Lieutenant Derminget when you see him,’ Langfranc said, still trying desperately to reel Jac in. Appeal to the rational side. ‘Feed him everything you’ve got. Hopefully save your neck and Durrant’s at the same time.’

Silence from Jac for a moment, as if he was seriously contemplating it, before exhaling tiredly. ‘No, no… it wouldn’t work. There’s still too much for me to piece together — and this Lieutenant Whatever is not going to do all that for me. And I can’t do it while I’m locked up. I need to be out there.’

Langfranc lost his last shred of patience then. ‘Jac, Jac! You’re just not thinking straight! Any minute now there’s going to be an all-points out for you, and you won’t even be able to go to your local seven-eleven without being arrested — let alone walk into a maximum security penitentiary to see Durrant. So how the hell are you going to be able to help him then?’

‘I don’t know, I… I…’ Jac could feel the options — practically feel the cell walls — closing in on him as Langfranc spoke. ‘I need time to think. Get my head clear.’

‘That’s the other problem, Jac — we don’t have much time.’

‘How long?’

‘Derminget originally gave me an hour to talk you in, Jac. But then when the lab came back with the news that it was your prints on the gun, all bets were suddenly off, and — ’

‘How long?’

‘He cut it to half-an-hour, Jac.’ Langfranc sighed heavily. ‘And I’ve used fifteen minutes of that getting back home. He phoned about the prints as I was pulling up outside. And, of course, the six or eight minutes we’ve now been talking. He’s expecting me to literally call right back after talking to you — he wants to know whether you’re coming in, or whether he’s got to set the dogs loose. Put out an APB and feed your photo to local news stations and newspapers.’

‘Photo?’ Barely a gasp. A cramp in his chest made it suddenly hard to breathe.

‘Yeah. They dug one out when they searched your apartment.’

Jac closed his eyes, the continuing freefall now making him feel dizzy, as if he’d lost all orientation of where he was. Closing in. Spending that very night in a cell? It seemed ludicrous, unreal. Though at least from visiting Durrant, he thought sourly, he now knew what that might be like; and the many more nights that would no doubt follow. An icy chill ran down Jac’s spine, though his skin felt hot, clammy, the motel room walls suddenly pressing in; the same hot-flushed claustrophobia that had gripped him when he’d first walked Libreville’s corridors. And now only minutes to make up his mind. Jac swallowed hard, his throat suddenly tight, his voice strained.

‘I… I hear what you’re saying, John, loud and clear. But I just can’t be locked up for the next eleven days — can’t you see that,? Isn’t there some sort of deal that can be cut?’

‘Deal, Jac?’ Langfranc exclaimed, breathless disbelief. ‘I was lucky to get even this from Derminget — the chance to be able to talk to you first. If he’d got his way, he’d have-’

‘One minute, John,’ Jac cut in as a knock came on his door. Holding the receiver away, he called out, ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Sorry to trouble you, Mr… Mr Teale.’ Desk clerk. Jac had paid cash and signed in as Archie Teale. ‘But I was wondering if you could tell me if you want a paper tomorrow morning, or coffee or tea brought up — because your door-handle card’s not here.’

‘I’ll mark it and put it out later,’ Jac shouted. Jac brought the receiver back to continue with John Langfranc, but he could tell that the desk clerk was still there, as if waiting on something else. And, as Jac listened more intently, the hairs rose on the back of his neck as he heard other muted, mumbling voices in the background. Jac kept his voice low to Langfranc: ‘Are you sure this detective said he’d wait until you’d spoken to him?’

‘Sure as can be, Jac.’ But at the back of Langfranc’s mind something niggled uneasily from Derminget’s mention of hopefully catching a late news bulletin, ‘If McElroy wasn’t going to come in’. ‘Why? What’s happening?’

‘I’m not sure, I — ’

A heavier rapping came then, a booming voice in its wake. ‘Police, Mr Teale. NOPD. We need to clarify something with you, sir.’

Jac’s stomach leapt into his throat. He found it hard to swallow, his voice croaky as he shouted, ‘One minute!’ Then, to Langfranc, an under-the-breath hiss. ‘This doesn’t look to me like he’s waiting!’

‘Shiiit! Swear on my life, Jac — he promised. But look, now that they’re there — just stay calm, do what they say. Don’t do anything rash. And don’t say too much.’ Langfranc’s words urged calm, but his staccato delivery screamed panic. ‘Before you’ve even drawn breath at the station house, I’ll be right there to cover the bases.’

Jac’s whole body started to shake, and he only half-heard Langfranc’s words beyond a sudden buzzing in his head. Closing in. His eyes darted frantically between the door and the window.

‘I’m sorry, John, I — ’

The door ram hit then, seeming to make the whole room shudder, and Jac dropped the phone and leapt back a yard with the jolt, as if the ram had hit him directly.

Langfranc at his end hearing the sudden bang and clatter as the receiver hit the table. ‘Jac!.. Jac!’

Jac ran to the window, opened it, looked out. A thin ledge just below the window and further along a flat roof a floor below. But could he cling to the ledge for that seven feet to then be able to make the jump down? And could he make that ten foot jump?

The second ram strike came then, splitting some of the wood on the door frame. Jac slid out the window onto the narrow ledge, swaying nervously after a couple of steps and drawing blood from his fingernails as he clung desperately to the building, fearing with the sudden dizzying blood-rush to his head that he was going to fall. He took a long breath and opened his eyes again, starting to edge along the narrow ledge more rapidly, knowing the room door would burst open any second.

At his end, John Langfranc heard two more door-ram hits before the last of the frame splintered and the door flew off and thudded to the floor. The room was suddenly filled with confused voices and rapid, trampling footsteps, before one voice cut through the rest: ‘Here… over here!’ Then after a moment another voice, more urgent, shouting: ‘Hey… hey! Stop!’ Then, seconds later, the sound of a gunshot.