A Murder of Justice

THIRTEEN

Frank pulled off Florida Avenue at Tenth Street. In the middle of the third block, he turned into a lot full of cars and pickups in various stages of tear-down or build-up. A cinder-block building squatted on the back half of the lot. An ancient coat of white paint had been beaten threadbare by the weather, and you could barely read “Savoy” in an orange Coca-Cola script above the entrance.

The garage had the rich, organic man-smell of automobiles: grease mixed with motor oil, laced with slivers of solvent and brake fluid. From a hidden boom box Eric Clapton competed with the pneumatic hammering of impact wrenches. Frank found Jose in the last bay, head under an open hood, body bent over the front fender, peering into the engine compartment of a dark green convertible and in deep discussion with a mechanic beside him.

Frank and Jose had found the ’65 Mustang in a Maryland barn after six months of weekend hunting. The top and upholstery had rotted, and generations of chickens had deposited layers of droppings on the paint. But the body hadn’t rusted, and the frame had lined up true. And there were the plusses: 83,000 honest miles, no power-anything, a heavy-duty sports suspension, and a 271-horse V-8 harnessed to a Borg-Warner four-speed transmission.

“Getting rid of spare change?” Frank asked.

Jose backed out from under the hood.

“The Josephus Phelps foreign aid plan,” he said, putting a hand on the mechanic’s shoulder. A stocky dark-haired man straightened and showed a mouth full of white, even teeth.

“Meet Gustavo Montoya. I’m putting his kids through college.”

Montoya winked at Frank. “Just my daughter at Harvard.” He turned to Jose. “I have ready for you this afternoon. Six-thirty maximo?”

Jose nodded. “Bueno.” He stood back and surveyed the car. “And they say houses are a money pit.”

Frank let his eyes run along the Mustang’s lines. “That’s a classic. Classics are supposed to do that.”

“You want a share of a classic?” Jose asked.

“I’ll pass.”

They left the garage and walked toward the car.

“I missed the late news last night… the interview?… the congressman?”

It took a moment to register.

“Oh…” Jose said, “the congressman… Richie Rich… hundred-dollar haircut, designer glasses with those little lenses.”

“He say anything?”

“How he was outraged. How his subcommittee’s going to get to the truth…” Jose sniffed. “The usual political shit.”

Frank unlocked the car and opened his door. “You ready for more?” He asked across the top of the car to Jose.

“More what?”

“The usual political shit.”

Chair cocked back, his feet on Frank’s desk, Leon Janowitz was drinking coffee and reading the Gentry case file.

“Make yourself at home, Leon,” Frank said.

Janowitz looked up and smiled. He swung his feet off the desk and levered forward in the chair. “I heard I’m working with you guys.”

“Jose and I decided to do our part, keeping kids off the street.”

Janowitz looked wounded. “I turn thirty next month.”

Frank gestured to the coffeemaker. “Making coffee’s my job.”

“Mine is…?”

“You,” Jose said, “are our one-man task force.”

“I’m honored.”

“What do you know about the Gentry case?” Frank asked.

Janowitz tapped the file. “That Milton fucked it up and you guys got it on your plate.”

“What’s this ‘you guys’ shit?” Jose asked.

“We guys,” Frank corrected. “We guys got Gentry and Skeeter.” He pointed to the Gentry file. “Get into that. Deep as you can.”

“And don’t talk to Milton before you talk to us,” Jose added.

“Why’s that?”

Jose held up a finger. “One, because I said so, young man, and two”-he held up a second finger-“because like you say, Milt fucked it up. No sense you startin’ from where Milt is… or was. Better you start from your present state of ignorance.”

Janowitz nodded. “Okay.” He drained his coffee, got up, and tucked the Gentry file under his arm. “You guys going to the press conference?”

Jose frowned and looked at Frank, who shrugged.

“Yeah,” Janowitz said, “about the Gentry case. The mayor, Chief Day, and Emerson… front steps.”

In the street, TV relay masts towered over mobile control vans. Headquarters doors opened. Three men clustered around microphones, with Mayor Tompkins, neat and bowtie precise, in the middle.

“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Jose whispered.

He and Frank slipped through the crowd to get closer. Tompkins drew an index card from his pocket. Cameras clicked.

“I have a short statement. I’ll be followed by Chief Day and then by Captain Emerson of Homicide.” Tompkins paused and took a deep breath. “Yesterday, I learned that mistakes were made in the closing of a particularly tragic homicide case-”

“ ‘Mistakes were made,’ ” Jose echoed. “They just happen. Nobody does anything.”

“Bureaucratic immaculate conception,” Frank whispered back.

“Accordingly,” Tompkins was winding up, “we are reopening the investigation of Mr. Kevin Walker Gentry’s homicide.” The mayor stowed the index card in his pocket and turned to his right. “Chief Day?”

Noah Day, a big, hulking man, scowled as though, somewhere in front of him, the killer hid among the reporters and cameramen.

“Ladies and gentlemen”-his voice sounded like granite boulders grinding together. “I have some background information for you…”

He cranked up what department insiders dubbed “Noah’s Numerical Fog Machine”-an avalanche, a flood, a veritable tsunami of statistics and data. A rapid-fire chatter of numbers on everything that could be counted that had anything to do with crime and punishment.

Jose let the numbers flow through part of his consciousness while he thought about Skeeter Hodges, then found himself thinking about Edward Teasdale. Then he worked on making the connection back. Something, perhaps the inflection in Day’s recitation, made him break off.

“… but numbers don’t tell the whole story,” Day was saying as Jose surfaced and the meeting with Teasdale faded.

Day powered into his standard closing. “And performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” Like a bull eyeing a matador, he swung his big head back and forth, wanting to make certain the small brains in front of him had absorbed his wisdom.

Apparently satisfied, he stepped back, and Emerson came front and center.

“As Chief Day said”-Emerson smiled-“the performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” He shot a suck-up glance toward Day, then looked out over the reporters. “Open for questions,” he announced.

The gabbling and hand thrusting reminded Frank of third-graders trying to get the teacher’s attention.

Emerson pointed into the crowd. “Ms. Lewis?”

Lewis went straight for the throat. “Two years ago, you held a press conference. You told us Zelmer Austin had killed Mr. Gentry. Are you telling us today that he didn’t?”

Emerson pursed his lips and worked his jaw muscles. “That’s not being said,” he replied, erecting the passive-voice fortress of a seasoned bureaucratic warrior. “What’s being said is that there is insufficient evidence to identify Austin as the killer.” Emerson’s eyes darted, searching for an escape route.

Like an intercepting hockey goalie, Lewis angled herself back into Emerson’s line of sight.

“So you had evidence once… now you don’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

Emerson looked around desperately. No raised hands. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched him squirm.

“Is that what you’re saying?” Lewis persisted.

Emerson coughed, started to bring his hand up to his tightly knotted necktie, then, apparently thinking better of it, dropped the hand. “There,” he began slowly, “have been changes in… ah… the… um… evidentiary base.”

“The evidentiary base?” Lewis repeated scornfully before she sprang the trap. “Isn’t it a fact that you solved the Gentry case by a bureaucratic dodge? That you relied primarily on the testimony of an informant, and that then, on the basis of that testimony, you declared Austin the killer and the case closed?” She paused just long enough to gather momentum and not long enough to let Emerson reclaim the floor. She delivered high and hard. “And haven’t you found that the weapon that was used to kill Skeeter Hodges was also used to kill Gentry?”

Emerson searched the chief’s face, then the mayor’s. Their blank expressions offered no refuge.

He knows she has the goods, Frank thought. He tries to dodge now, and the shit will get even deeper.

Emerson took a deep breath. “That has been found to be the case.”

“And so Zelmer Austin didn’t kill Kevin Gentry.”

Emerson held up his hands in a “Halt there” gesture. “It may be that renewed efforts as described by Mayor Tompkins and Chief Day will produce proof that Austin was indeed the killer,” he said. Then, quickly moving his head up as if to see farther back into the ring of reporters, he found a raised hand. “Next question? Yes? Hugh Worsham?”

“Oh, shit,” Jose breathed.

Worsham, who made a living out of anarchy, confusion, and the failures of others, stood almost within arm’s length of the two detectives.

“What”-Worsham chopped out a histrionic pause-“what are you, Captain Emerson, going to do about this imbroglio?”

Emerson winced. “Ah… Hugh… would you care to rephrase that?”

Worsham rolled his eyes and heaved a suffering sigh-I have to put up with such fools. “What, Captain Emerson, are you doing to make certain something like this doesn’t happen again?”

Emerson decided to play. “Certain, Hugh? We can’t be certain of achieving perfection, as much as we try.” Emerson shot a sly smile at the mayor and Chief Day. “But we can reduce the probability of such errors.”

“How?” Worsham followed up.

“One step we’ve already taken. I’ve ordered a thorough internal review of our evidence-handling process. And to ensure this is an unprejudiced review, I am suspending the person who has been responsible for that process.”

“This person have a name, Captain?”

Emerson paused. Frank thought he saw Emerson’s eyes graze those of Chief Day. Emerson returned to Worsham.

“Yes, Hugh. He is the head of our forensic analysis. Dr. Renfro Calkins.”