Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 77, No. 4. Whole No. 451, March 25, 1981

A Matter of Conscience by Gary Alexander

An unusual story about an unusual detective... Meet David Clay of the Public Defender’s Office (Juvenile Division) in the case of a tragic, brutal triple murder. Dave Clay had his orders: Go through the motions; go by the book, but don’t make waves. The question was: could a conscientious public defender like Dave Clay follow such orders?...

Children do have some rights in this country, but most of the legal ones protect only the child’s physical well-being. One cannot, for example, mug one’s child too often, too severely, too conspicuously. One cannot deprive one’s child of adequate nourishment either. A parent accused of such crimes can be and is occasionally prosecuted in a court of law.

Unfortunately, tragically, parents who subject their child to more subtle forms of deprivation will seldom be held accountable. A child unloved has no legal redress. The sheriff will not intervene, nor will a social worker.

Only when this emotional barrenness erupts into violence does the System step in, as it did last Thursday night when Peter Callison, Junior was arrested for the murder of his mother, father, and sister.

It was unusual for the Public Defender’s Office to be assigned the defense of a millionaire. Peter Callison, Junior, age fifteen, was heir to an estate worth millions, but Peter was a minor, so the funds were frozen. In effect, he was a pauper.

On Monday morning Alvin Harris called me in and handed me the Callison file.

“Dave, as of now you are my Chief Deputy, Juvenile Division.”

We are a small office in a medium-sized town: Harris and three underlings, including myself. Harris has been here for twenty years, in charge for the last twelve. He is hopelessly addicted to the security of civil service. We peons are typical of the Deputy Defenders whom Alvin has had over the years. We signed on at low pay, partly for the experience, partly to purge the idealism from our systems before moving on to the big bucks.

“How long have we had a Juvenile Division, Alvin?”

Harris glanced at his watch. “About five minutes. I’ll call somebody to have it lettered on your door if you’d like.”

I gave him a wide-eyed expression of mock gratitude. He was doing this to me for two reasons. He personally loathed any case that smacked of controversy or sensationalism. He also loathed any deputy who was overly questioning or argumentative toward him. I fit snugly in the latter category.

“Looks to me like a walk-through, Dave,” he went on. “Open and shut. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Friday. You’ll argue that he shouldn’t be tried as an adult. You’ll lose, of course. Then you’ll defend him in Superior Court, going with the incompetency angle. From what I know of the kid so far, you might be solid in that area.”

I paged through the file. On top were photos of the three victims — Peter’s mother, father, and sister. All had gunshot wounds in their heads and elsewhere. Seems that the neighbors heard the shots. At first they dismissed them as backfires, but there were too many, so they called the police. The officers found the bodies on the living-room floor within feet of one another. Peter Callison, Junior was located upstairs in his room, reading. He claimed he hadn’t heard anything because his stereo was playing. There was no sign of forcible entry and every door and window in the house was locked. The boy was impassive, even when escorted downstairs past the victims. One officer had made reference to “ice water in his veins”; hyperbole wasn’t normally found in official investigative reports.

“The weapon?” I asked.

“A Smith and Wesson .38. It’s a huge house and it’s landscaped like a jungle. They’re still looking for it.”

“Eight shots altogether, I see. Which means he reloaded before finishing the job.”

Harris raised his eyebrows. “Very good, Clay. Sweet kid, isn’t he?”

“Why us?” I asked. “No close relatives?”

Harris shook his head. “No living grandparents. Mrs. Callison was an only child. Peter Senior has one brother five years older. His name is Paul and he lives in Portland. He’s been checked out. He seems as poor as these people were flush. Evidently alienated from them too. Essentially, he told the detectives to go to hell.”

I saw relief in Harris’ eyes when I stood up with the file. “So you’re asking me to go through the motions?”

Harris sighed. “I want the appearance of a good fight, Dave, even though it’s hopeless. The media is going to be living with this one and I don’t want any trouble. They haven’t had anything so juicy since the kickbacks in the Assessor’s Office. Go by the book and please don’t make waves. I’ve already ordered a psychiatric evaluation, so half of your work’s already done. Good luck.”

I left, knowing who I was really defending: Alvin Harris, his reputation and august office.

I drove out to the Callison home, which was part of an exclusive suburban development. The area was new money, ostentatious money. Most of the houses were Twenty-first Century Gothics, ultra contemporary, with hardly a right angle in sight. The Callison residence was atop a hill, at the end of a cul-de-sac. It afforded a grand view of the city. Obviously, Peter Senior, as owner of Callison Air Freight, held his own in the neighborhood.

The place was still crawling with detectives, presumably in search of the weapon. The captain in charge gave me permission to go inside and look around, with a warning not to touch anything. They always say that, so I don’t.

The foyer led directly to a huge, sunken living room. The large patches of bloodstain would never come out of that lush beige carpet. The images in those grisly photos projected themselves onto the spots. I shuddered, absolutely certain that when I left the Public Defender’s Office, criminal law would not be my specialty.

I climbed a sweeping staircase, looking for Peter Junior’s room. The first room past the landing was some sort of den, although it had more the appearance of a sports hall of fame — plaques, trophies, photographs, and framed certificates cluttered the shelving and walnut paneling.

The memorabilia provided a brief family history. Peter Senior had been a football star at Stanford during the early fifties. The pictures of him in a menacing lineman’s stance depicted a large determined man. More recent photos proved him only slightly heavier and every bit as physically imposing. He had played no-handicap golf and was a terror on local squash courts.

Mollie, his wife, struck me as being classically Nordic, very athletic, yet lovely and feminine. All the hardware on the shelves confirmed that she had been a formidable tennis opponent.

Julie, the daughter, a junior at Radcliffe, was new money in pursuit of old, chasing it on horseback. A clipping described her as an Olympic hopeful in dressage.

Peter Junior, the surviving Callison, was notably absent in this shrine. I scanned everything twice, just to be sure. Nothing, not even a Little League certificate, the kind everyone receives whether they ever get off the bench or not.

His room was at the end of the hall. The detectives had it pretty well torn apart, so I couldn’t determine if he was tidy or if he was an average teenager in that respect.

The walls were plastered with posters of aircraft, rockets, and robots that had starred in science-fiction movies. Model airplanes hung willy-nilly from the ceiling. The bedroom was decorated to the gills, but every single piece was inanimate — machines, past, present, and future. If the boy had had contact with another human being in his life, there was no evidence of that in his room.

I almost walked out before I noticed it. On the top of a bookcase, stuffed behind a plastic ICBM, was an old black-and-white photograph in an upright frame. A smiling man in flight gear sat on the wing of a Korean War vintage jet. At first glance I thought it was Peter’s father, but I studied it more closely and saw that it wasn’t. There was a definite resemblance but the man was smaller and his eyes weren’t carnivorous.

I wasn’t entirely a bad boy. The captain had ordered me to touch nothing. I touched only one item, the photo, which I stuffed inside my shirt.

I made arrangements to visit Peter Callison, Junior at the Juvenile Detention Center. After all, if I was to go through the motions, I should go through the motions.

Alvin Harris intercepted me on the way out of the office.

“The shrink saw him this morning,” he said. “So did the prosecution’s. We should have a written report before Friday’s hearing. What are you going to talk to the kid about?”

“The customary attorney-client stuff,” I said with a shrug. “I’ll play it by ear.”

“Nothing fancy, okay? Just feel him out and explain the situation. I’ve had media people in and out all day. Just don’t do anything that would embarrass me, okay?”

The best method of breaking loose from Alvin when he’s in one of his uptight moods is to act smart. He’d rather walk away than deal with it.

“After I give him his hacksaw-layer cake we’ll have a harmless little chat. That’s all.”

I strode out, enjoying the after-image of Harris’ face. It was a haunted, totally exhausted expression, the kind you see on marathon runners at the end of the race.

As I headed for the Juvenile Detention Center I digested the few facts I had gleaned from the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office earlier. We usually get along with them because our clients and their crimes are mostly minor league, so nobody’s career is on the line. Of course the Callison case was different. Peter Senior was a leading citizen and our fair city had not been subjected to a triple murder for many a year.

The Chief Criminal Deputy assigned the case to himself. Scuttlebutt around town had him running for the top job this fall. He needed an adult trial, a conviction, and consecutive life sentences. He couldn’t ask for the death penalty for a fifteen-year-old. An incompetency ruling would not enhance his reputation; an acquittal would destroy it.

He had placed himself in a box and the tension showed. He gave me ten minutes, lukewarm coffee, and Peter Junior’s school records, including sketchy interviews with teachers and fellow students.

Peter attended a public high school, had an IQ of 153, and a C-minus grade average. He participated in no activities. He had no real friends. His teachers characterized him as quiet and obedient. His peers pegged him as weird. A loner.

Our Juvenile Detention Center was frayed around the edges and chronically understaffed, but they tried. I’d been there before on behalf of runaways who had got into mischief. Today, as then, the noise was random and continuous. It was not a happy place.

I was taken to the isolation wing, where the heavy felonies and drug overdoses were housed. The cells were small and padded. Most of the kids were kept at the other end in Army-style barracks.

I asked the counselor a stupid question. “Is Callison isolated for security reasons or has he been disruptive?”

The counselor smiled tolerantly. “Everyone here should behave so well, but he’s not here for stealing hubcaps, you know.”

A police officer sat outside Peter Junior’s door. I wasn’t sure if he was there to keep Callison in or reporters out. He let me in and locked the door.

Somehow I wasn’t surprised by Peter’s appearance. He had a pasty complexion, was short for his age, slender, and almost feminine. He was no chip off the old block.

“Dave Clay,” I said. “From the Public Defender’s Office. If it’s all right with you, we’ll be going into your hearing together.”

He got up from his bunk, nodded politely, and offered a limp handshake. His eyes struck me immediately. They were merely optical instruments, with no emotional backlighting. He gestured for me to take a seat on the bunk, as if one businessman were inviting another into his office to discuss routine matters. Peter was fifteen going on fifty. I didn’t need professional training to determine that the boy was a psychological cripple of some sort.

I explained the procedure to him, outlining the possibilities he might have to face.

Then I trotted out the clichés used in the movies to delineate attorney-client relationships, emphasizing confidentiality and the need for absolute frankness between us.

He replied with a patronizing smirk. I deserved it since I had patronized him, but I hate that response from anyone, let alone a fifteen-year-old.

“Did you do it or didn’t you?” I asked bluntly.

Peter shrugged. “Maybe, but not that I recall. They say I did, so I could’ve blacked out or something.”

“They haven’t found the gun yet,” I said. “Let’s say you did do it and don’t remember. Where might you hide something you don’t want discovered? Do you have a special hiding place for things?”

“Dirty books and stuff like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Nope. I don’t think Mom ever cared enough to snoop.”

“I doubt that very much,” I said.

Another patronizing smirk. Again I was repaid in kind.

I tried the shock method. “Peter, I want you to realize that the death penalty is back on the books in this state. We have to help each other.”

He nodded and said, “It’s the electric chair, isn’t it? I was curious about that. Do they do it with high voltage or is it the amps? I’ve experimented with electric motors on my model planes, but they’re really too heavy for the power they put out and—”

I interrupted with a reference to the psychiatrists who had seen him, risking total loss of rapport. People are quite sensitive when their innermost feelings are probed. They don’t want to admit that they’re walking around with a head full of stripped gears. I told him that the ability to stand trial is a subjective thing and that he’d best plant both feet on the floor and level with me.

He was amused rather than offended. “Those doctors were nice guys. It was stimulating.”

Stimulating!

“What did you talk about?”

“Mom, Dad, and Sis, mainly. They wanted to know how we got along.”

“How did you?”

He patted an empty pocket on his coveralls. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Very sensible. Oh, we got along fine. My parents had obligations toward me. Food, clothing, shelter, education. You know. They took care of all that. My obligation was to behave, attend school regularly, and make a bed. We all did our jobs.”

It was early June and Peter’s cell was sweltering. My arms were moonscapes of goose pimples. I wished I’d brought a sweater.

“I was impressed with your den. A vigorous family.”

Peter chuckled. “Oh, the Holy Room? I guess I didn’t fill up much space in there.”

I thought of Peter Senior, of his athletic prowess, of the business he had built. I doubted if he had had much truck with losers, with noncompetitive types. To have a weak son, a product of his seed, must have been intolerable.

“I imagine you and your father shared a common interest in aviation. His business. What I saw in your room.”

The smirk tilted higher. “Are you kidding? Dad didn’t fly. He didn’t even like to get on an airliner. He knew how to make money and there’s lots of money in air cargo, you know.”

I took the photo I had lifted from his room and gave it to him. “I had to remove it from the frame. Even so, it’s still considered contraband here, but I thought you would like to have it.”

Peter flushed. I had rung an emotional bell, but most of the emotion stayed beneath the surface.

“I appreciate this, Mr. Clay.”

“It’s Dave. Anyone you know?”

“Sure, Uncle Paul.”

“Your father’s brother who lives in Portland?”

“Yeah. It’s an old picture of him but my favorite. That’s his F-86. Did you know he shot down four MiGs? Got two in one day. One more and he’d have been an Ace, but they strafed his runway. His unit was being scrambled and while he was running out to his ship, he caught some bullets in a leg, so he got shipped home.”

“Sounds like a helluva guy. Did you see much of him?”

Peter didn’t answer for nearly a minute. The temperature in the room dropped another ten degrees.

He said finally, “I’m getting kind of tired. Can we do this some other time?”

“Friday’s closing in on us, Peter.”

He shrugged once more. “You know where I’ll be.”

Psychiatric evaluations frequently coincide with the wishes of the side ordering them. You can expect to enter court knowing that the bad guys have an opinion one-hundred-and-eighty degrees out of phase with your own.

If you’re defending, your client will be as lucid as a cantaloupe. If you’re prosecuting, he’ll be normal but antisocial to an extreme. Like Heinrich Himmler.

Occasionally the opposing doctors take umbrage at the remarks of the other. Old grievances may appear. The attorneys, bless their evil minds, exploit these differences. We sometimes reach the threshold of threats and counterthreats, of possible slander charges, of complaints filed with whatever professional societies the doctors are members of. In a dull, protracted murder trial where the evidence is inconclusive and the witnesses numerous, such fireworks are about all that keep any of us awake.

I had written off the hearing. It was a leadpipe cinch that Peter Junior was going to be remanded to Superior Court to stand trial as an adult. My only hope was testimony from our psychiatrist. I wasn’t happy with the prospect of the kid whiling away the years with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, munching tranquilizers six times a day; but if he went to the state pen the old hands would scoop him up in five minutes.

I don’t have to tell you why. He’d be Queen of the Hop.

In his office Dr. Pelfrey, our guy, ruined my whole day. He said, “He’s a textbook sociopath. Dissertations have been written with less material than he alone provides.”

“I don’t seem to have Webster with me.”

“A psychopath and a sociopath are similar. They manifest their needs, their whims, with an utter lack of concern for any other creature on this planet. Say a sociopath is in a bar and runs out of money; though he would prefer to stay and drink more, he’ll excuse himself, hurry out and stick up a gas station. If it happens that the attendant recognizes him and the sociopath knows he is recognized, he may put a bullet in the attendant’s head. He’s aware that what he’s doing is wrong. There’s no confusion, no departure from reality. He wants something, he gets it. So sorry about the flotsam left in his wake.

“The psychotic personality differs. He has a nodding acquaintance with reality, but when his mind is made up on something, Nellie bar the door. To use a technical term, he’s a brick short of a load. He wanders between Earth and a parallel universe.”

“Aside from what’s in your report, what can you tell me about Peter? Did he do it?”

Dr. Pelfrey’s hands flew up in mock surrender. “If he confessed, I can’t say. We’re in the doctor-patient realm there.”

Alvin Harris, to his credit, instructed me not to waltz with Pelfrey. Our office did ten grand a year with him.

“Hippocrates won’t roll over in his grave if you give me a teensy-weensy clue, Dr. Pelfrey,” I said. “I have to go in there Friday like a Super Bowl coach with twenty-five of my best players out with knee injuries. Alvin got next year’s budget last week. He says it’s brutal. We’ll have to shut down the office coffee pot. Among other cutbacks. We can be coy if you like. You know, is it larger than a breadbox and so forth. You pick the format. So long as the information emerges.”

Dr. Pelfrey slammed his palms down on his polished rosewood. He took a deep breath and glared at me. “I can read between the lines. Get out your bamboo splints because it ain’t no free lunch! Clay, hell, you should pay him my fee. I stumbled out of there and he knew more about me than I did about him. I haven’t a glimmer!”

Alvin Harris cried out in imagined pain, then laid his head on his desk and buried it with his arms. By and by he sat up, saying, “You want to plead that little squirrel not guilty? Clay, the house was sealed, the alarm system was functioning!”

I’d picked up one of Peter’s mannerisms. I shrugged and offered a tight smile. I sure as hell didn’t have anything else going on this case. “Have they found the gun yet?” I asked.

“It’ll turn up. The damn thing isn’t biodegradable, you know. But that’s the least of your problems. What you have to do is get over to what’s-his-name, the Chief Criminal Deputy, and extend a formality. He’s not gonna fry the kid. Even if he wanted to, his campaign manager wouldn’t let him. If you want to be a hero, maybe you can get concurrent terms instead of consecutive. The kid will be up for parole before all his hair has fallen out. By then no one will care.

“Do something, for Pete’s sake, and make it positive. That guy from Channel Three was over about an hour ago, the one who does those editorials on how the pollution from the chemical plant affects us. He was trailing this dame from the network who was mumbling about doing a documentary. Clay, get the kid in there Friday, tell him to behave himself, and maybe we can lighten the problem for him a tad.”

Alvin wasn’t in an ideal frame of mind for a debate, but I felt I had to present the facts, or the lack of them.

“No gun. No powder burns. No nothing. He was just there.”

“Circumstantial evidence isn’t bad in this one,” Harris fired back. “They don’t have to have a smoking pistol here.”

“Whatever. I have my doubts. You know he’ll be handed over Friday. You also know that if Pelfrey says he’s competent, their guy will too. What you’re saying is for me to make a deal with the P.A.’s office and trade a plea so Peter has to spend only fifty years in the can instead of a hundred.”

“I’m telling you to be reasonable. If we had anything to go on, I’d say fight. But we don’t.”

“Yes, we do,” I said. “The boy is, uh, strange, but I’m not entirely convinced he’s a killer.”

Alvin closed his eyes and moaned. I got out of his office before he opened them again.

Thursday was on me in what seemed like a hurry. I’d planned to see Peter in the afternoon and outline my strategy. I stopped over at the Chief Criminal Deputy’s, hinting that I was in a flexible mood, then asking if the investigation had turned up the gun or any other information.

He shook his head and served me another cup of lukewarm coffee. He began discussing concurrent sentences when I told him that he needed a new coffee pot and that I was going to let a jury decide this one. I’m not certain which assertion he thought was so hilarious because I left his office without further conversation.

I had some time to kill so I called the business editor of one of the newspapers to learn more about Callison Air Freight. Undoubtedly the police had covered this territory by now and if a skeleton had fallen out of a corporate closet, our office would have been notified, so my efforts were in the realm of idle curiosity.

The editor had done an article on Callison Air Freight a month ago when they won a contract that connected them to Malaysia and Singapore. Callison was financially healthy, he said, and growing like a weed.

I wondered if he knew who the other corporate officers were and who besides Peter Senior owned large blocks of Callison stock. He didn’t, but he gave me a number to call at the capital.

The woman I talked to worked in the Secretary of State’s office, in the department that processed corporation charters. She couldn’t tell me much except the date of incorporation, the names of the officers, and the changes to the charter that had taken place over the years.

She may have told me a great deal more than she realized.

Peter and I small-talked for a while, then I told him what I wanted to do. He was agreeable, maddeningly so, as if we’d just decided where to have lunch.

I said, “I learned something interesting this morning. Did you know that Callison Air Freight was formerly Callison Brothers Air Cargo, that your father bought out your Uncle Paul in 1964?”

He nodded blankly. “Yeah. They were small back then. One beat-up old DC-3. Uncle Paul was the chief and only pilot. I told you before that Dad didn’t fly.”

“I’ll bet your Dad bought him out cheap.”

“Could be. I don’t know.”

“Paul was probably sorry he did after the company took off.”

“I don’t know.”

“I hear Paul hasn’t been doing very well lately.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “That’s not his fault! His leg that got shot up in Korea, he needed an operation on it two years ago. He couldn’t fly any more.”

“I didn’t say it was his fault, Peter. Lucky, though, that he lives in a nearby town, isn’t it? Having his family close enough to help him through the rough spots.”

“Why don’t you drop it, okay?” he snapped. “That guy who’s going to try me and that other guy from your office were by yesterday to talk to me. All they asked about Uncle Paul was when I last saw him.”

I squeezed my hands together and remained outwardly calm. “When did you last see Uncle Paul?”

“I don’t know. Last fall, I think.”

“That’s odd for brothers who live only a few hours apart. But your father was a busy man. I suppose he mailed Paul a check now and then.”

That cockeyed smirk returned. “Are you kidding? They hated each other’s guts. I’ll bet Dad cheated him when Uncle Paul sold out. That’s what I think.”

I took a deep breath. If there was such a thing as a right time to draw to an inside straight, this was it.

“Is that why Paul killed your father? Did he come over for money? Was there an argument? Did tempers flare? Maybe he really didn’t mean to fire the gun. Maybe there was a struggle. Maybe your mother and sister got involved. Maybe one of them ran to the phone. In any event, they were witnesses. You were upstairs alone, as you usually were. In the heat of it Paul probably wasn’t aware that you were in the house. Lucky for you, otherwise he may have—”

“He would not,” Peter screamed. “He’d never have hurt me.”

The boy was trembling. His eyes were moist.

“Then after Paul left,” I went on, “you locked up and waited for the police. The gun hasn’t been located because Paul took it with him. Everything so obviously points toward you that Paul wasn’t even suspected.”

I had brought a pack of cigarettes this time. I waited until he smoked one.

“Well, Peter?”

He lit another one and stared at the opposite wall.

“Do you know what my folks got me last Christmas? Football pads and a tennis racket. They wouldn’t say anything. They’d just watch to see if I’d use the stuff. Then it would go into a closet with every other present they got me but really got for their own egos. Nobody ever yelled at me, Mr. Clay. Not that I can remember. Nobody ever hit me. They just disapproved of me.

“When they finally gave up and accepted the fact that I was different and that I’d never change, they just left me alone. It was real hard for Dad to even talk to me. When he did, it was like he was talking to a stranger on the street.”

I fought back tears, then a surge of nausea. “Uncle Paul. Did he pay attention to you?”

“The best he could. He wasn’t welcome in the house, so we talked on the phone a lot. Those model airplanes you saw in my room, they were presents from him. He never sent me the easy kind either, that plastic junk. These were wood and tissue. Uncle Paul said I’d appreciate them more if I had to work to put them together.”

“Did you really intend to take the blame for him?”

“I don’t know. Uncle Paul probably won’t let me anyway when he finds out I’m in trouble. I just figured I’d play along for a while.”

“And subject yourself to all that goes with being an accused killer?”

He lit another cigarette. “Why not?” he said with a casual shrug. “All kinds of people are interested in me now. People listen when I say something. What’s wrong with that?”

I walked out, happy that Peter would soon be free. But that didn’t prevent me from almost losing my lunch in the parking lot.

There was no hearing. I related my story to Alvin, who passed it on to the Chief Criminal Deputy, who immediately called the Portland police.

When the coroner arrived at Paul Callison’s fleabag room, his initial guess was that Paul had been dead for about twenty-four hours. The missing .38 was on the floor beside the pillow he’d fired it through. On the bed a Portland newspaper was opened to an article about Peter’s upcoming hearing.

I surmised that Paul had picked suicide as the only way to handle his problem and Peter’s too. He knew that he and his gun would be discovered sooner or later; when that happened, both he and his nephew would be free.

Peter stayed at the Juvenile Detention Center for several more weeks, while foster home arrangements were made. I visited him every few days and noticed that he had become a minor celebrity with his peers. He lived in the open wing now and seemed to enjoy the attention.

A family east of the mountains who volunteered to take him was approved. They had eight hundred acres of winter wheat and the consensus was that the fresh air, country living, and Middle American values would do the boy a world of good.

I doubted it. Peter had passed into adolescence emotionally stunted. As with anybody who had an untreated childhood-growth disorder, I felt it was much too late.

I drove Peter to the airport. When his flight was called, we shook hands. I gave him the stock pitch about regarding his new life as an adventure. He asked me if I planned to go into private practice soon.

“Why?”

That same smirk. “I’ll probably need a good lawyer when my inheritance clears. Just because these people are farmers doesn’t mean they won’t try to get their grubby paws on it.”

I didn’t know how to reply, so I didn’t. I waited until his plane broke ground, then entered the nearest lounge, and had a couple of stiff drinks.

Odds were I’d never see Peter Callison, Junior again. The probability that someone in the criminal justice system would at another time and place was, unfortunately, much better.