Show of Evil

Eighteen

They were at Sundance, a two-storey-high atrium covered with skylights to give the illusion of being outside when the weather was inclement or just too damn cold, as it was on this blustrey February day. The glass partitions covering the large plaza could be opened with the press of a button in the manager's office, weather permitting. It was a popular lunchtime place for downtown workers, serving the best hot dogs east of the Mississippi and mountainous salads for vegetarians. It was located behind one of the city's largest bookstores, and its old-fashioned wrought-iron tables were usually filled by noon with bookworms who bought novels or periodicals and read through lunch in the sunlit piazza.

'You really know how to entertain, Marty,' Paul Rainey said as he doctored two hot dogs with sauerkraut, relish, mustard, ketchup, and onions. He looked down at Parver. 'Does he always entertain this lavishly, Shana?'

'It's all I can afford on the assistant DA's salary,' Vail answered.

'Who're you kidding?' Rainey said. 'You made enough before you took that job to live on the tenderlion forever. I'll bet you've got the first dime you ever made. Hell, you don't own a car and you dress like a damn ragamuffin. Did you know the Lawyers Club was thinking of taking up a collection to buy you a new suit?'

'This is a new suit,' Vail answered a bit firmly.

'Cotton and wool. Off the rack. Two hundred tops. You know how much this outfit cost me? Two thou. Barneys.'

Vail bit into his frankfurter and chewed in silence for a minute, then said casually, 'That's more than you're going to make off James Darby.'

Rainey looked up and rolled his eyes. 'Oh, hell, not even gonna wait until we finish this elabourate spread, are ya?' He sighed. 'Okay, Counsellors, what're we doing here?'

'You and I go back almost twenty years, right, Paul?'

'I've never counted.'

'I've seen it from both sides of the street.'

'Forget the endorsements and make your point,' Rainey said.

'Your boy Darby is guilty as sin.'

'Uh.-uh. You gonna take that to the grand jury? That Darby is guilty as sin? I don't think so. And that's all you've got. Look, I don't like him any more than you do, but that doesn't make him a wife killer. So he's a putz. Half the world is a putz.'

'Paul, I'm telling you this guy carefully planned and killed his wife in cold blood. And he did it for the two worst reasons: money and a stripper with a fancy ass and 40-D cup.'

'C'mon, Marty, you fried everybody who screws around on his wife they'd only be ten men left on the planet.'

'The jury'll be back in an hour on this one.'

'What's the matter, you can't wait for the trial?' Rainey said with a laugh. 'You want to try him here over lunch? Maybe we should call over a waiter to act as judge.'

'I'm here in the interest of justice and saving the taxpayers' money,' Vail said calmly.

'Of course you are.'

'Listen a minute. Where we stand in this investigation, we have Darby saying he came in the house, his wife popped three shots at him, he shot her with a shotgun, she knocked one in the ceiling, and he finished the job with the head shot. Isn't that Darby's story?'

'It's what happened.'

'Well, think about that for a minute. Three shots from a .38, a shotgun blast, another .38, another shotgun blast.'

Vail opened his briefcase and took out a small tape recorder. It contained an enhanced reproduction just of Stenner's replay of the shots as Mrs Shunderson said they occurred, with the shotgun blast first. He plugged a set of headphones into the machine and handed it to Rainey.

'Listen to this,' Vail said. He waited until Rainey had the headphones adjusted and then pressed the play button. They watched as Rainey listened. He took off the 'phones and handed it back to Vail.

'So? Somebody shooting a gun.'

'It's clear that the first shot came from the shotgun,' Vail said.

'Is that what we're here about? This dummied-up tape. What kinda scam are you trying to pull, Martin?'

'I'll tell you right now, Paul, I have an unimpeachable witness who'll testify that the tape is accurate,' said Vail.

'So what,' Rainey said, obviously getting annoyed.

'So your guy's been lying to you, which is understandable, considering he killed his wife in cold blood. Point is, he hasn't been level with you. You're flying blind at this point and he's navigating you right into a mountain.'

'Where are you going with this, Marty?'

'I'm offering you a deal, Paul. We'll let him plead to second-degree murder. He gets twenty years without parole. I'm offering you twenty years and he's out. He'll be fifty-something and broke, but he'll be out. I think society will be happy with that arrangement.'

'You're crazier than a Christmas mouse, you know that?'

'I know you, Paul. I know you believe that Darby's innocent and it happened the way he said it happened. But I hate to see you get conned by your own client. Listen to the tape again.'

'I don't have to listen to the tape again. I heard the tape. It doesn't mean a damn thing.'

'It means Darby came into his house, walked over to his wife, who was watching TV, and shot her in the head. Then he put the .38 in her hand, fired four shots - one into the ceiling - and then backed off and shot her in the side with the shotgun. And it also means it was premeditated. Malice aforethought. The whole magilla.'

'If you're so damn sure you got him, you wouldn't be offering me a deal. I know you. You'd take me to the limit.'

'Look, I don't have the staff or the time for depositions and tracking down witnesses and pretrial and trial and then your appeal and on and on. I've got a desk full of cases and now I have to handle Jack's business, too. We settle this, I save the taxpayers a couple hundred thousand bucks, I save myself a lot of aggravation, you save face, and your client stays alive.'

Vail took out the warrant, laid it on the table and slid it in front of Paul Rainey.

'I'll serve this on you if you'll accept it. You can bring him in by, say, eight tonight?' he said.

Rainey opened the warrant for first-degree murder on Darby. He looked up at Vail with surprise, then looked back down at the warrant. His jaw began to spasm as his anger rose.

'I can't believe you're pulling this stunt,' he said finally.

'There's another thing,' Vail said. 'He's dead broke, I talked to Tom Smoot at New York Life last night. They're freezing the insurance funds pending the resolution of this case.'

'Never miss a trick, do you?' Rainey said, and there was ire in every word. 'Know what I think? I think you're giving up an awful lot of information, that's what I think.'

'There's a lot more,' Parver said softly.

'Oh?'

'Well, there's the slip with the phone number on it. We think the phone number beside the phone was written by Darby to make it appear as though his wife called Palmer. I don't think Poppy Palmer ever talked to Ramona Darby.'

'You've had more than one shot at the Palmer woman,' said Rainey. 'You can't prove any of this. It's all conjecture. You want to talk to her again? Go ahead, be my guest.'

'We'd like to, Paul, if we could find her,' Shana Parver said in a matter-of-fact tone.

'What the hell're you talking about?'

'Poppy Palmer flew the coop,' Vail said.

Rainey's gaze jumped back and forth between Vail and Parver.

'She called her boss yesterday, about two hours after Shana questioned Darby about the slip with her phone number on it. She told him her sister was dying down in Texarkana and she had to go immediately. Her sister lives in California and is in perfect health. She hasn't heard from Poppy Palmer in five years.'

Rainey, a very shrewd lawyer, leaned back in his chair and studied Vail's face, then he looked at Parver. His eyes narrowed, but he kept quiet. At this point, he knew he would learn more by keeping his mouth shut.

'We are going to issue a subpoena on Palmer and I'm seriously considering taking out a warrant against her for perjury,' Vail said. 'She made the statement about her phone call from Ramona Darby under oath. We contend she's lying - there never was a phone call. Then I intend to go to the FBI and swear out a warrant against her for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.'

Rainey fell deep into thought. He drummed his fingertips on the table but still maintained his silence.

'You're already in, Paul. You want to go pro bono from here on, representing a killer in a case you can't win? You owe it to yourself, your peace of mind, to get the truth out of him. Explain the options. Either he takes twenty years, no parole, or he goes to death row and gets fried - or spends the rest of his life staring down the hall at the chair, waiting to.'

'You want me to sell out my client because he can't pay,' Rainey said with an edge.

'Not at all. What I'm saying, Paul, is you need to satisfy yourself about this. Then consider all the angles and do the best thing for you and your client. Either he pleads to second-degree and takes his medicine or he goes down for murder one. It's up to you. In your hands. Just one thing - if he turns rabbit, he'll never make the county line.'

Rainey slumped back in the chair. He stared at Vail, at the warrant, then back at Vail.

'He'll say he was confused,' Rainey said. 'He walked in, she was aiming the gun at him, he cut loose with the shotgun -'

Parver cut him off. 'It's the head shot,' he said. 'That's what's going to get him in the end. Do you really think any jury's going to believe she kept blazing away at him with a hole the size of Rhode Island in her side? The head shot had to be the first shot. Listen to the tape.'

'The hell with the goddamn tape. The tape doesn't mean shit and you know it!'

'You're an old hand at getting to the truth, Paul,' said Vail. 'If he sticks to his story' - he tapped the tape recorder - 'he's lying to you.'

Rainey took a sip of water, tapped his lips with his napkin, and dropped it on the table. He toyed with the warrant, sliding it around on the tabletop with his fingertips.

'We're playing straight up with you, Paul,' said Vail. 'I could've had the sheriff pick him up last night and he'd be sitting in the cooler right now.'

Rainey pocketed the warrant and got up.

'I'll be in touch,' he said. Then he leaned over the table and, with a smile, said very softly in Vail's ear, 'I've been in this game ten years longer than you and this is the first time a DA ever offered me a deal before he even arrested my client.'

'It's the times,' Vail said, smiling back. 'Everybody's in a hurry these days.'

'There's something not right about this,' Rainey said with a scowl.

'Yeah, your client, that's what's not right about it,' Parver said.

'I was having a pretty good day until now. You two're a real item. Buy a guy lunch, then do your best to make him lose it.'

Rainey left the table. Parver didn't say anything. She looked down at the tablecloth, moved her water glass around on it.

'Okay, what's bothering you?' Vail asked.

'Nothing.'

'Uh-huh. C'mon, spit it out.'

'Why let Darby off the hook? I mean, why even offer a plea bargain? We can take this guy, Martin. We can take him all the way, I know we can.'

'All you have is an elderly woman who heard the shots. Paul Rainey'll chew her up and spit her out. We have no backup on Mrs Shunderson and Poppy Palmer powdered on us and we haven't a clue where she is. Suppose you get a soft jury? Darby could walk. Or maybe get voluntary manslaughter, in which case he'd be back on the street in three, four years. This way, if Rainey bites, we take Darby out for twenty years.'

'I still think I can win this case.'

'You did win, Shana. Putting Darby away for twenty years without parole, that's as sweet a deal as we can ask for. Look, you just came off a case, you've got the Stoddard thing to deal with, and by tomorrow you'll probably have two more on your desk. Forget Darby, we've got him. Let's hope Rainey sees through him.'

'We just gave Rainey our whole case!' she said. 'And why didn't we let the sheriff arrest that punk?'

'We didn't give him a damn thing he wouldn't get the first day of discovery. And giving him the option to bring his man in shows good faith on our part.'

'Think the money'll have an effect on him?'

'It's a wild card. He took Darby at his word, which is natural, any lawyer will give his client the benefit of the doubt. Now he's faced with the possibility his client conned him from the front end. Paul Rainey doesn't want to feel he's been suckered by a client he doesn't even like. If he's convinced Darby lied to him, then he's faced with either defending a man he knows is guilty and not getting paid for it or getting him the best deal he can.'

'I don't think he'll buy it,' she said.

'Maybe. What really got to him, what got his attention, was Poppy Palmer running. That and the warrant. My guess is, he'll come back with a counter-offer.'

'And…?'

'We made him the best offer we're going to. If Rainey doesn't take it, Darby's all yours.'

'Good!' Parver said staunchly. 'I hope Rainey thumbs his nose at us. It will serve him right.'

'If he does, we better find Poppy Palmer,' Vail said. 'She'll put the nail in his coffin.'