Ride the lightning

IV

The next morning Police Lieutenant Jack Hammersmith was in his Third District office, obese, sleek, and cool-looking behind his wide metal desk. There was a comfortable grace to his corpulence, like that of a seal under water. He was pounds and years away from the handsome cop who'd been Nudger's partner a decade ago in a two-man patrol car. Nudger could still see traces of a dashing quality in the flesh-upholstered Hammersmith, but he wondered if that was only because he'd known him ten years ago.

"Sit down, Nudge," Hammersmith invited, his lips smiling but his grayish-blue cop's eyes unreadable. If eyes were the windows to the soul, his shades were always down.

Nudger sat in one of the straight-backed chairs in front of Hammersmith's desk. The desk was neat: a phone, brown plastic "in" and "out" baskets, two stacks of papers, some file folders, a glass ashtray with a chip out of it, all of it symmetrically arranged. Hammersmith was always busy, always organized, always-well, sometimes-ready to assist his old strayed-away sidekick.

"I need some help," Nudger said.

"Sure," Hammersmith said, "you never come see me just to trade recipes or to sit and rock." Hammersmith was partial to irony; it was a good thing in his line of work. Nudger thought it might be what kept him sane.

"I need to know more about Curtis Colt," Nudger told him.

Hammersmith got one of his vile greenish cigars out of his shirt pocket and stared intently at it, as if its paper-ring label might reveal some secret of life and death. "Colt, eh? The guy who's going to ride the lightning?"

"That's the second time in the past few days I've heard that expression. The first time was from Colt's fiancee. She thinks he's innocent."

"Fiancees think along those lines. Is she your client, this woman who's already picked one loser?"

Nudger nodded, but didn't volunteer Candy Ann's name.

"Gullibility makes the world go round," Hammersmith said. "I was in charge of that one. There's not a chance Colt is innocent, Nudge."

"Four eyewitness IDs are compelling evidence," Nudger admitted.

"Damning evidence," Hammersmith said.

"What about the getaway-car driver? His description is a lot like Colt's. Maybe he's the one who did the shooting and Colt was the driver."

"Colt's lawyer hit on that. The jury didn't buy it. Neither do I. The man is guilty, Nudge."

"You know how inaccurate eyewitness accounts are," Nudger persisted.

That seemed to get Hammersmith mad. He lit the cigar. The office immediately fogged up. Even considering their hugeness, Hammersmith's cigars generated a tremendous amount of smoke in proportion to their size. And they burned fast, like fuses; sometimes their coarse tobacco even made a faint crackling sound. Yet they never seemed to burn down to butt size so they mercifully could be extinguished.

Nudger made his tone more amicable. "Mind if I look at the file on the Colt case?"

Hammersmith gazed thoughtfully at Nudger through a dense greenish haze. He inhaled, exhaled; the haze became a cloud. "How come this fiancee didn't turn up at the trial to testify for Colt? She could have at least lied and said he was with her locked in steamy sex that night. Hell, that's traditional."

The smoke was beginning to affect Nudger's stomach violently; he felt as if he ought to swallow, but he didn't allow it to happen. It made talking difficult. "Colt apparently didn't want her subjected to taking the stand," he said in an odd, phlegmy voice.

"How noble," Hammersmith said. "What makes this fiancee think her Prince Charming is innocent?"

"She knows he was somewhere else when the shopkeepers were shot."

"But not with her?"

"Nope."

"Well, that's refreshing."

Maybe it was refreshing enough to make up Hammersmith's mind. He picked up the phone and asked for the Colt file. Nudger could barely make out what he was saying around the fat cigar, but apparently everyone at the Third was used to Hammersmith and could interpret cigarese.

Nudger finally allowed himself to swallow. Yuk. Beyond the hazy office window, the summer air looked clear and sweet and shimmering, beckoning in bright sunlight. St. Louis, the Sultry City, had its alluring moments.

The file, which was mostly a mishmash of fan-fold computer paper, didn't reveal much that Nudger didn't know. Same account of the crime as was in the newspapers. Same eyewitness testimony, almost word for word. Twenty minutes after the liquorstore shooting, Colt was interrupted by officers Wayne Callister and Elvis Jefferson while buying cigarettes from a vending machine at a service station on Hanley Road. A car that had been parked near the end of the dimly lighted lot had sped away before they'd entered the station's office. Both Callister and Jefferson had gotten only a glimpse of a black or dark green old Ford; they hadn't made out the license-plate number, but Callister thought it started with the letter L.

Colt had surrendered without a struggle, and that night at the Third District station the four eyeball witnesses had picked him out of a lineup. Their description of the getaway car matched that of the car the police had seen speeding from the service station. The loot from the holdup, and several gas-station holdups committed earlier that night, wasn't on Colt, but it was probably in the car. A paraffin test on Colt's hands turned up nitrate traces, indicating that he'd recently fired a weapon.

"Colt's innocence just jumps out of the file at you, doesn't it, Nudge?" Hammersmith said. He was grinning a fat grin around the fat cigar.

"Paraffin tests aren't foolproof," Nudger said. But he knew they were virtually always right; Colt had fired a gun.

"They aren't even admissible in court," Hammersmith said. "The evidence against Colt was so strong, that didn't make any difference."

"What about the murder weapon?"

"Colt was unarmed when we picked him up."

"Seems odd."

"Not really," Hammersmith said. "He was planning to pay for the cigarettes. And maybe the gun was still too hot to touch, so he left it in the car. Maybe it's still hot; it got a lot of use for one night."

Closing the file folder and laying it on a corner of Hammersmith's desk, Nudger stood up. He was relieved to find that the air was more breathable in the upper half of the room. "Thanks, Jack. I'll keep you tapped in if I learn anything interesting."

Hammersmith waved the cigar gracefully, almost as if conducting a silent orchestra. "Don't bother keeping me informed on this one, Nudge. It's over. I don't see how even a fiancee can doubt Colt's guilt."

Nudger shrugged, trying not to breathe too deeply in the smoke-hazed office. "Maybe it's an emotional thing. She thinks that because thought waves are tiny electrical impulses, Colt might experience time warp and all sorts of grotesque thoughts when all that voltage shoots through him. She thinks he might die a long and horrible death. She has bad dreams."

"I'll bet she does," Hammersmith said. "I'll bet Colt has bad dreams, too. Only he deserves his."

"Is there any doubt the switch is going to be thrown?" Nudger asked.

Hammersmith bit down on his cigar and shook his head. "No doubt at all. This one is Governor Scalla's personal project. Once Colt became a convicted felon and ceased to be a voter, all hope was lost."

Though he believed in the necessity of capital punishment, Hammersmith was no fan of Governor Scott Scalla. Hammersmith was a good man and a good cop; he didn't like the methods Scalla had used to put people away when the governor was attorney general.

Early in Scalla's career, he'd seen to it that all the juveniles he'd tried received maximum sentences when convicted; he'd often done this by plea-bargaining and letting their confederates serve lighter terms in exchange for their cooperation and a sure conviction. As long as those terms kept the juveniles in prison until they were twenty-one, it was all fine with Scalla. That way he could brag about juvenile crime statistics decreasing under his special attention, not mentioning that these juveniles were often back out on the streets adding to adult crime statistics. Crime paid for Scalla; it had helped to get him elected governor despite the often-accurate charges by his opponent that he had used his office of state attorney mainly to further his political career, and that he had been bought and was controlled by several special-interest groups.

Scalla blithely denied all of these charges, all the while decrying the evils of crime and espousing the biblical credo of eye-for-an-eye. He belonged to a stiff-backed religion, something called Friends of God, occasionally played piano and sang gospel music, smiled boyishly and often, and had a wife who wore no lipstick. How could you not believe a guy like that?

"Maybe the fiancee is right," Hammersmith said.

"About what?"

"About all that voltage distorting thought and time. Who's to say?"

"Not Curtis Colt," Nudger said. "Not after they throw the switch."

"It's a nice theory, though," Hammersmith said. "I'll remember it. It might be a comforting thing to tell the murder victim's family."

"Sometimes," Nudger said, "you think just like a cop who's seen too much."

"Any of it's too much, Nudge," Hammersmith said with surprising sadness. He let more greenish smoke drift from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth; he looked like a stone Buddha seated behind the desk, one in which incense burned.

Nudger coughed and said good-bye. His eyes stung and watered for twenty minutes after he got outside.