Show of Evil

Nineteen

Trial transcripts, autopsy reports, photographs, old police reports, and copies of book pages were all spread out on Martin Vail's large table. Naomi, Flaherty, and Harvey St Claire stood in front of the big desk, studying what St Claire called his 'exhibits.' Naomi and Dermott Flaherty stared mutely at the display, occasionally picking up a report or a photo and studying it, then slowly replacing it, obviously stunned by what St Claire had laid out on the table.

'You make a good case, Harve. You ought to be a lawyer,' Flaherty said.

'I don't make a very good impression in a courtroom. 'Cept in the witness stand. Hold m'own pretty good under oath.'

'What's Abel say?' Naomi asked.

'He's concerned,' said St Claire.

'For Abel, that's verging on panic,' Flaherty said with a chuckle.

'Am I wrong about this?' St Claire asked. 'Am I just being paranoid?'

'Paranoid! I hardly think so,' said Naomi. 'Why the hell didn't we know about this sooner?'

' 'Cause Gideon don't want the world't'know about it,' said St Claire. 'From what I gather, the town is run by old Fundamentalist farts. I imagine they all look like Abraham or Moses or John Brown. They don't want the world't'think Satanists are loose in their holy little village.'

'Don't they care who did it?'

'Doesn't seem so. Been about six months, ain't happened again. Guess maybe they decided to shut it outta their minds. Pray it away on Sunday mornings.'

'And they just wrote off Linda Balfour?'

'One way a puttin' it,' said St Claire.

'The first question that pops into my mind is, Who? And the second is, Why?' said Flaherty.

'Well, I can tell you who it ain't. Ain't Aaron Stampler.' St Claire dropped a wad of chewing tobacco in his silver cup. 'He's still locked up in max security at Daisyville.'

'That's Daisyland,' Naomi corrected him.

'Just as stupid,' St Claire said.

Naomi looked up as Vail, Parver, and Stenner got off the lift. 'Here comes the one person who can answer these questions if anybody can,' Naomi said, nodding towards Vail.

'What've we got here?' Vail asked as he entered the office.

They all looked at one another and then focused their attention on Harvey St Claire. He smoothed out his moustache and got rid of the wad of tobacco in his cheek.

'Tell ya how it started out,' he said. 'I was runnin' the HITS network, thinkin' maybe we could turn up something outta town on them bodies in the city dump. Missin' persons, maybe a bank heist, drug gang. Playin' a hunch, okay? And Ben Meyer runs across this brutal murder down near the Kentucky border. Town called Gideon. Ever hear of it?'

'Not that I recall,' Vail said.

'Anyway, uh, this town's run by some old religious jokers and they hushed it up. Wrote it off as Satanists. We got interested outta curiosity much as anything. The victim was a housewife. Happily married, nice solid husband. Year-old son. I thought what I'd do, I'd read the autopsy report. The police chief brushed me off, but the town doctor, he's also the coroner, was a nice old guy, most cooperative.' St Claire searched around the table and found Doc Fields's autopsy, which Ben had entered into the computer and printed out, and read it out loud.

'The victim, Linda Balfour, is a white female, age 26. The body is 53.5 inches in length and weighs 134 pounds and has blue eyes and light brown hair. She was dead upon my arrival at her home on Poplar Street, this city. The victim was stabbed, cut, and incised 56 times. There was evidence of cadaver spasm, trauma, and aero-embolism. There was significant exsanguination from stab wounds. The throat wound, which nearly decapitated Balfour, caused aero-embolism, which usually results in instantaneous death. Wounds in her hands and arms indicate a struggle before she was killed.'

St Claire looked up for a moment. 'Beginning to sound a little familiar, Marty?'

'Where are you taking this, Harve?'

'Okay, now listen to this. It's from the ME's testimony in Stampler's trial.'

He read excerpts from William Danielson's description of the wounds that had killed Archbishop Richard Rushman ten years before:

'DANIELSON: Body trauma, aeroembolism, cadaveric spasm, exsanguination, that's loss of blood. All could have caused death… The primary cause, I believe was the throat wound… It caused aeroembolism, which is the sudden exit of air from the lungs. This kind of wound is always fatal, in fact, death is usually instantaneous… And the wounds indicated a knowledge of surgical techniques.'

Vail was beginning to react. He leaned forward in his chair, his cigarette smouldering, forgotten, between his fingers.

'Now listen't' the rest of Dr Fields's report,' St Claire said, and finished reading the autopsy:

'There was also evidence of mutilation. Both the victim's nipples and the clitoris were amputated and placed in the victim's mouth. It appears that the wounds were accomplished by a person or persons with some surgical knowledge. Also the inscription C13.489 was printed with the victim's blood on the rear of the skull, 4.6 centimetres above the base of the skull and under the hairline. The weapon was determined to be a common carving knife with an eight-inch blade found on the premises and belonging to the victim…'

'She was also nine weeks pregnant,' St Claire added, almost as an afterthought.

Vail was staring into space. He did not say anything for almost a minute.

'Where's Stampler?' he finally asked.

'Up in Daisyland, still in maximum security,' said Stenner. 'Never had a visitor, never had a letter, never made a phone call.'

'In ten years?'

'In ten years,' Stenner said. 'I talked to the head of security, Bascott and the other executives were in conferences. He wouldn't tell me much, but he volunteered that.'

'There's somethin' else,' said St Claire. 'When I was finishing up the transcripts my eye caught somethin' I missed the first time 'round. Damn near jolted me outta m'chair when I saw it. It was when you was questionin' Stampler on the witness stand. Stampler says, "My girlfriend, Linda, and I decided to live together…" I thought, Maybe it's just a coincidence - two women named Linda, so…' St Claire selected one of the photos of Linda Balfour, a close-up of her head and shoulders, and handed it to Vail. 'She look familiar?'

Vail studied the photograph for several seconds. 'That's a horrible picture. I can't really—'

'I checked the records in Carbondale, where she and her husband got married. Maiden name's Linda Gellerman, from Akron, Ohio.'

Vail looked up at St Claire and his memory suddenly was jolted back ten years.

A tiny waiflike creature, huddled in a yellow rain slicker, her fearful eyes peering up at him as she stood in the rain.

'Mr Vail?' her tiny voice asked.

He took her inside, gave her a Coke, and asked her about her boyfriend, Aaron Stampler.

'You think Aaron killed the bishop?'

'Doesn't everybody?'

'Were you there, Linda?'

'Where?'

'At the bishop's the night he was killed?'

'Of course not!'

'Then how do you know Aaron did it?'

'Well, because he was hiding in the church with the knife and all…'

'How do you know it wasn't Peter or Billy Jordan?'

'You know about that?'

'About what?'

'Nothing.'

'Linda, why did you come here?'

' 'Cause I can't help Aaron and I want you to stop looking for me.'

'Maybe you can help him.'

'How?'

'I need you to testify.'

'About what?'

'The Altar Boys.'

She panicked, backing away from him like a cornered animal, then running for the door. Vail caught her arm as she reached for the doorknob.

'I won't do that! I'll never admit that! I'll lie. I'll tell them it isn't true.'

'Linda, it may help for the jury to know what really went on. What the bishop made you do.'

'Don't you understand? He didn't make us do anything! After a while it was fun. We liked it.'

She had turned and run out the door and vanished into the dark, rainswept night. He never saw her again until a moment before when he looked at the picture of the dowdy housewife, sprawled in her living room, covered with blood.

'Linda Gellerman,' said Vail. 'Aaron Stampler's girlfriend.'

'I'm thinkin' maybe we got us a copycat on our hands here,' St Claire said.

'Except for one thing,' Stenner added.

Vail finished the thought for him. 'The Altar Boys.'

Stenner nodded.

'Who the hell're the Altar Boys?' St Claire asked. 'They were never mentioned in the trial.'

'That's right, they weren't,' said Vail.

'But whoever killed Linda Gellerman knew about them. Had to,' said Stenner.

'Who were they? What did they have to do with this?' St Claire asked.

Vail snuffed out his cigarette and went to the urn for a cup of coffee.

'You have to understand, ten years ago, Archbishop Richard Rushman was known as the Saint of the Lakeview Drive,' he began. 'He wasn't liked, he was revered. He was also one of the most powerful men in the state. There was as much Richelieu in him as there was John the Baptist; as much Machiavelli as Billy Budd. But to the average person on the street, to your average juror? He was a man who awed.

'Aaron Stampler came here from a squalid little town in Kentucky. He was a true anachronism, a kid with a genius IQ and an illiterate mother and father, living in abject poverty in the coalmining hills of western Kentucky. He had to sneak to his teacher's house to read books - his father wouldn't permit books in the house except for the Bible. His father also insisted that he work in the place he feared more than anything else in the world. The hole. Shaft number five -I can still remember him talking about it - the deep-pit mines. When he finally escaped that prison, he came here. Rushman met him, took him in at Saviour House, which was a home for runaways and homeless kids. Stampler and the bishop grew very close.

'Then Aaron got himself a girlfriend. They decided to live together. And that's where the story started getting fuzzy. Jane Venable contended that the bishop was upset because these two were living in sin, so he threw them out. They were living down on the wharves in a terrible warehouse called the Hollows - it was demolished years ago. The girlfriend left Sampler, and in anger and despair he went to the church and carved up the bishop like a Christmas goose.

'Our story? Stampler left voluntarily. There was never any dispute between him and the bishop. He was in the library, thought he heard arguing up in the bishop's apartment, went up to check. When he looked into the bedroom he sensed that there was somebody else there. Then he blacked out, went into what's called a fugue state - he did it quite often, particularly under stress - and the next thing he knew, he was hiding in a confessional with the murder weapon, soaked with the bishop's blood. The girlfriend was Linda Gellerman.'

'But that wasn't the real motive,' said Stenner.

'No, there was another motive, much darker - both Venable and I knew about it - but neither of us used it in the trial.'

'Which was?' Flaherty asked.

'The bishop was a paedophile. His victims were a group called the Altar Boys. The bishop would direct movies of the Altar Boys seducing a young lady. Then he'd turn off the camera and step in and do the girl, the boys, whatever suited him. Aaron Stampler was one of the Altar Boys. Linda was the girl.'

'Why didn't that come out in the trial?' Parver asked.

'Too risky. And Venable and I agreed to destroy the tapes when the trial was over,' said Vail.

'Why?'

'To protect the bishop's good name,' Stenner said.

'Christ, a paedophile?' St Claire said. 'Why protect him?'

'You weren't there,' Stenner offered. 'He was loved by everybody. Raised millions for charity every year. Incredibly powerful man.'

'And he was dead,' said Vail. 'The tape we both had was very risky. The bishop did not appear on it, it was just his voice. Too risky for either Venable or me to introduce it. It could've been construed by the jury as a desperation move and the backlash might've lost the case. Besides, I didn't need it. Our case was that Stampler suffered multiple personality disorder—'

'Split personality?' said Flaherty.

'A misnomer, but yes. Like Sybil. His alter ego was a madman who called himself Roy. Stampler was this sweet, almost naive backwoods kid. Roy was a psychotic killer. When Stampler became agitated or was abused in some way, Roy was triggered. He came out and did the dirty work. Stampler was in a fugue state and didn't know what was going on.'

'So Roy was the other person in the room when the bishop was killed,' St Claire.

Vail nodded. 'Venable was cross-examining Aaron and she triggered Roy. He came out of the witness box like a skyrocket, tried to choke her right in the courtroom.'

'You set her up, Martin,' Stenner said.

'Did she say that?'

'I say it.'

'How do you figure?'

'You knew from taping Aaron all those weeks.'

'Knew what?' asked Parver.

'That hammering on those quotes in the books would cause the switch. You started in, then backed off the quotes. She took the bait, thought you were afraid to get into it, so she did.'

'But you never bought it?' Stenner shook his head.

'You gave Abel a real hard time on the witness stand over that there point. The fugue state 'n' everything,' Harvey St Claire said with a smile.

'I don't remember it all that well,' Stenner said brusquely. 'Ten years does tricks to your memory.'

'How about these here Altar Boys?' St Claire asked. There were five of them. Linda and one of them ran. Two others were killed. There were no witnesses to corroborate Rushman's voice, that's why neither of us would touch it in the courtroom.'

'Killed?' Flaherty asked.

'By Stampler-Roy,' Stenner said. 'We all knew that, too. Venable figured she had Stampler, anyway, why risk trying him for three crimes when one would do.'

'After he was put away, it became moot,' Vail added. 'Part of the plea bargain was that I turned him up for all three homicides. It was an inclusive sentence.'

'There's one more thing,' Harvey St Claire said, interrupting Vail's reminiscence. 'Found it in the bishop's library. His books're in a special collection over to th' Newberry. I didn't have any trouble when I got to page 489. The passage was marked for me.'

'Was it recent?' Stenner asked. 'What I mean was, was it marked recently?'

'I imagine Okimoto could tell us. Looked't' me like it'd been there a while.'

'What was the message?' Vail asked.

'It's from The Merchant of Venice? said St Claire:

'In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil?'

There was a minute or two of stone silence as Vail thought about the message. 'What plea so tainted and corrupt/But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,/ Obscures the show of evil.'

It seemed obvious to Vail that the quote was directed at him. Was his defence of Stampler tainted? Corrupt? Did his defence obscure the show of evil? Was he just being paranoid? After the Stampler trial, Vail himself had considered the possibility that his clever tactics might have obscured the truth - what the Bard called 'the show of evil'. It had taunted him for months, forced him to appraise his career as a defence attorney, to ponder about the mobsters, drug dealers, cat burglars, and other miscreants who had been his stock-in-trade. In the past he had sometimes balanced the scales in his own mind - good versus evil, truth versus deceit - always tempered with the concept of reasonable doubt. But until now Vail had never given a moment's consideration to the question Shakespeare so eloquently posed to him: Had his voice been tainted and corrupt but seasoned with gracious and masterful conviction?

Thinking back, Vail realized that Stampler himself had raised the question in Vail's mind ten years before, as he was being led away to Daisyland; a devious comment, perhaps made in jest, that had goaded Vail for months. Eventually Vail had assumed the inevitable conclusion: It was his responsibility, as an officer of the court, to provide his client with the best defence possible, and that he always had done brilliantly. And so, eventually, Vail had discarded all these ideas as abstractions.

But not, as Vail now admitted to himself, until after they had influenced his decision to take the job as chief prosecutor.

Now, in a frightening deja vu, Vail could make sense out of what was happening, for there was that one piece of the puzzle only he knew, a moment in time he had never shared with anyone, and never could share with anyone.

His thoughts were interrupted by the phone. Naomi stepped out of the office and answered it at her desk. She came back a moment later.

'It's for you, Harve. Buddy Harris at the IBI.'

'What the hell's Buddy want?' St Claire said, half aloud, as he left the office to take the call.

'Kind of an obscure message, that Shakespeare quote,' Stenner said while St Claire was gone.

'Yeah,' Vail answered. 'In the Rushman case, the messages always referred to the archbishop. Now who's he talking about?'

St Claire returned to Vail's office, his face clouded by a frown.

'We got another one.'

'What!' said Vail.

'Where?' asked Stenner.

'Hilltown, Missouri. About thirty miles outside of St Louis. A white, male, age twenty-six. UPD man, delivering a package to a private home, was cut six ways to Sunday. Harris says St Louis Homicide is handlin' the case and they're playin' it real tight. Don't wanna give up too much to the press yet. Buddy says he was talkin' to a cop in East St Louis this mornin' about a drug case, the cop mentions they got a butcher job across the river. So Buddy calls the St Louis PD and they didn't wanna talk about it. They finally told him this UPD delivery man got sliced and diced. Buddy says it sounds like a repeat of the Gideon case.'

'Did he tell them about Balfour?'

'Nope. Didn't tell 'em anythin'. Just listened.'

'Any name attached to this victim?'

'Ain't been released yet. Can't find a next a kin. Buddy says they're obviously riled up over it.'

'Well, surprise, surprise!' said Naomi.

Vail was leaning back in his chair without moving. He stared at Stenner without blinking, deep in thought. Finally he said, 'If Stampler's behind these killings, how does he find these people? Gideon, Illinois? Hilltown, Missouri? You can barely find these places on the map.'

'And if he is involved, how the hell's he doin' it from maximum security at the State Hospital?' said St Claire.

'Maybe Stampler isn't behind it,' Stenner suggested. 'Perhaps it is a copycat who found about the Altar Boys.'

'And waited ten years to move on it?' Vail said.

'Maybe he's lazy,' Flaherty said with a smile.

Vail leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, clenched his hands, and leaned his chin on his fists. He stared at St Claire for several seconds.

'Harvey, I want you to grab the red-eye to St Louis first thing in the morning and get everything you can from St Louis Homicide.'

'I can't, boss, I'm in court in the morning. The Quarries case.'

'Abel?'

'I got two depositions tomorrow.'

'I'm between engagements,' offered Flaherty.

'Okay, you're on. Naomi, book Dermott on the early-bird, arrange for a car at the airport. Dermott, call Buddy and get some names of people you can talk to.'

'Right.'

'Naomi, get me Bascott at Daisyland. I want him personally. I don't care if he's in a conference with God, I want him on the phone now.'

It took Naomi ten minutes to get the director of the state mental institution on the line. Vail had forgotten how disarmingly gentle his voice was.

'Mr Vail,' he said after the usual salutations, 'Dr Samuel Woodward has been handling the Stampler case for the past, oh, eight years now, I guess. Uh… Stampler… is his patient and I would prefer that you speak to him directly if you have any questions regarding -'

'What's Stampler's condition now?' Vail asked, interrupting Bascott.

'Once again, I prefer to - '

'Dr Bascott, I have a problem down here and I need some questions answered. If Dr Woodward is the man to talk to, then put him on the phone.'

'He's on vacation, fishing up in Wisconsin. He'll be back tomorrow night. I'll have him call - '

'I'll be up there day after tomorrow, first thing,' Vail said, and there was annoyance in his tone. 'Please arrange for me to interview both Woodward and Stampler.'

'Mr Vail, you were, uh… Aaron's… lawyer. You haven't even been to visit him in ten years. I don't see that -'

'Day after tomorrow,' Vail repeated. 'I'll see him then.' And he hung up. 'Damn it,' he said. 'I'm getting the runaround from Bascott. Naomi, arrange for the county plane to fly me up to Daisyland at eight o'clock day after tomorrow.'

'Done.'

At six o'clock that night, Stenner appeared, as he always did, at Vail's office door.

'Ready to wrap it up?'

'Yeah,' Vail said wearily. But before he could get up, the phone rang. It was Paul Rainey.

'I can't put my finger on Jim Darby,' he said.

'What do you mean, you can't put your finger on him?'

'I was tied up in court all afternoon on a sentencing. Didn't have time to call until an hour or so ago. He's probably out with his pals. Give me until tomorrow morning, I'll have him there.'

Vail hesitated for a few moments.

'I'm sure I can locate him, Marty, I've just been snowed under.'

'Okay, Paul. Nine A.M. If he's not here by then, I'll have the sheriff issue a fugitive warrant on him.'

'That's not necessary.'

'Paul, I'm trying to be fair. He could be on his way to Rio for all I know.'

'Hell, he doesn't know there's a warrant out on him. He's out raising hell somewhere. I'll have him there in the morning.'

'You accepted service, he's your responsibility. Have you thought any more about our conversation at lunch?'

'I haven't even talked to him yet,' Rainey said, but there was a note of urgency in his voice.

'See you in the morning,' Vail said before he cradled the phone. He looked up at Stenner. 'We have a murder-one warrant out against James Darby and Rainey sounds a little panicky. If he doesn't deliver Darby by nine A.M., I want you to take two of your best men and a man from the sheriff's department, find Darby, and bring him in.' Stenner nodded, but he looked pensive. 'What's bothering you?' Vail asked.

'Poppy Palmer,' Stenner said. 'What about her?'

'I was just thinking, maybe she panicked. Maybe…' He let the sentence hang ominously in the air. 'You have a morbid imagination, Abel.'

'I've been a cop for almost twenty-five years,' Stenner said. 'It comes with the territory.'

'What do you want to do?'

'Go out there and put some heat on, see if we can get a line on her. Darby's facing murder one and she's a key witness.'

'How about your depositions tomorrow?'

'I'll work around them.'

Vail thought for a moment and nodded. 'Okay,' he said. 'She's all yours. Go find them both.'