Show of Evil

Thirty-Three

In the hazy light of an almost full moon, gargoyles and harpies and strange mythical creatures lurked in the spires of the Gothic buildings forming one of the University of Chicago's many quadrangles. Staring up at them, Naomi Chance felt a sudden thrust of fear, as if they were harbingers of doom. The medieval beasts seemed to be taunting her. She quickly shook it off and turned up the collar of her coat against the brisk wind that funnelled between the buildings, assaulting her as she left the library and started across the quad towards the parking lot a block away. The monthly meeting of the Association of Legal Secretaries had been particularly dull, but she had presided with her usual elan and kept the proceedings moving as briskly as possible.

As she approached 57th Street, she saw the glow of a cigarette among the trees and shrubs near the street. A moment later the butt arced to the ground. A man was huddled in the shadows, his hands buried in his pockets. A car was parked by the kerb ten or twelve feet away.

She gripped the small can of Mace she always kept handy in her pocket and subconsciously quickened her pace. Normally, she would not have noticed him, but tonight was different. Tonight she saw omens everywhere. Hell, she thought, everybody's jumpy because of Stampler's release. As she approached the figure huddled in the bushes, she gripped the Mace even tighter and steered a course away from the bushes and trees. But before she got to the street, a voice said, 'Naomi Chance.'

'Who's that?' she demanded when he said it, increasing the pace.

'Hold up a minute, please.'

She glared into the darkness as a large, bulky man moved away from the shrubs. He was tall and muscular, a powerful black man, his features obscured by the dark. 'What the hell do you want?' Naomi demanded, and took her hand out of her pocket. 'Keep your distance, this is a can of Mace.'

'Whoa,' the big man said, and stopped in his tracks, fumbling in his coat pocket. 'Man, they warned me you were rough and ready,' he said in a deep voice, and laughed. He held out his hand and flipped open his wallet. A gold badge twinkled in the streetlights.

'Detective Zack Lyde, Chicago PD,' he said. 'My boss, Shock Johnson, loaned us out to the DA and the DA says keep an eye on you. So that's just what my partner and I are doin', Ms Chance, keepin' an eye on you.'

Naomi's breath came out in a rush. 'You scared the shit out of me, son,' she said.

'I'll tell you, that can of Mace gave my pulse a little kick, too. Look, why not let us drive you home? We need to clear your apartment when we get there and then just kinda, you know…'

'Keep an eye on me?' she said, finishing the sentence for him.

'Yeah.' He said, chuckling, in his deep, gruff voice. 'My pard can follow us in your car. I'd feel a lot better that way.'

'Why don't you just drive with me and let your pard follow us,' she suggested.

'Fair enough,' Lyde said. As they walked towards his unmarked police car, Naomi saw Judge Harry Shoat leaving the library after his weekly graduate-school seminar. His driver trotted up to him as Shoat started down the walk.

'How about Judge Shoat over there? Watching him, too?' Naomi asked.

'Hell, he just laughed at us,' Lyde said. 'Says Mr Vail looks for spooks under his bed before he goes to sleep.'

'You mean you don't?' she said with a grin, and followed her protector to the car to fill his partner in on the plan.

A block away Jefferson Hicks, a city patrolman assigned as Shoat's driver and bodyguard, rushed up to him and took his briefcase.

'How'd it go, Your Honour?' he asked.

'Excellent, as always,' Shoat said, exuding self-assurance. 'Although for the life of me, I don't see how some of those oafs ever hope to pass the bar.'

'Yes, sir,' said the driver.

Hicks had a black belt in karate and had attended a special course in antiterrorism. He had been assigned to Shoat for four months, ever since an irate taxpayer, who felt he had been treated unjustly in court, had shot and nearly killed one of Shoat's peers. Hicks belonged to the city; the sedan belonged to the judge.

Once inside the four-door Mercedes, Shoat reached into the pocket in back of the shotgun seat, took out a bottle of Napoleon brandy and a snifter, and poured himself a drink. He savoured the brandy, swirling the snifter around, sniffing the aroma and gauging his sips so the drink would last the thirty minutes it took to get to his condominium in the Edgewater district.

'I got another call from the DA's office while you were in lecturing,' Hicks said. 'About that Stampler guy.'

'Vail!' Shoat snapped with disdain. Before he became a state supreme court judge, back when he was known as Hanging Harry Shoat, the ultraconservative jurist was a 'max-out' judge known for meeting out harsh sentences, often tainted with racism. An impatient and humourless perfectionist, he dispensed justice with a callous disregard for the situations or circumstances of defendants and had been passed over three times for the supreme court before his impressive knowledge of the law and precedents had made it impossible to snub him further.

He huddled down in the back seat, a stern man with a razor-slim moustache and black hair tinted to hide its grey streaks. He and Vail had gone to the mat many times in the courtroom. Shoat still harboured resentment towards the man who defied convention and challenged the law with consistent fervour. Even as a prosecutor Vail had an arrogant attitude about authority that rankled the jurists. Now that he had changed sides, Vail was slandering his own client, implying the man should not be freed, even though the state's leading psychiatrists had approved the release.

'Wants it both ways,' Shoat muttered, taking a sip of brandy, remembering with distaste how Vail had ambushed Venable in the Stampler trial. 'The hell with Vail,' he said aloud.

'Yes, sir,' Hicks agreed.

'He's baaack,' Morris said as Vulpes entered the house. He trained the videocamera on the open window and waited until he saw Vulpes enter the room before he started shooting.

'Been shopping,' Solomon said, watching through binoculars. He saw Vulpes dump out the contents of two shopping bags on the bed. 'Got himself a couple CDs, looks like a sweater.'

'He's got a videotape, too,' Morris said, squinting into the eyepiece. 'Looks like… Sleeping…'

'Sleepless in Seattle,' Solomon said. 'That's a funny picture.'

'I hope it sounds funny because we're probably gonna have to listen to it.'

'Got some pretty good music in it, It's got Jimmy Durante singing "As Time Goes By".'

'Who's Jimmy Durante?'

'He's an old-time movie actor. Big nose. Voice like a gravel grinder. You'll hear.'

'He's putting the tape in the VCR,' Solomon said.

'I can see that, Solomon, I don't need a play-by-play.' Vulpes started to get undressed, then almost as an afterthought he went to the window and closed the blind. 'Well, shit,' said Morris. 'We're back on ear-time.' They could hear Vulpes whistling softly, moving around the room, heard the bed groan as he lay down on it, then they heard the TV turn on, following by a preview at the beginning of the tape.

Morris turned off the camera and leaned back in his chair.

'What a way to make a living,' Solomon said. 'Listening to movies you can't see.'

In his room, Vulpes quickly switched to the black turtleneck after pulling down the shade. He took a small tape recorder from the tool chest and put it on the night table. He had made the audiotape while still at Daisyland, playing the movie through several times, stopping it at any funny spots and taping his laughter, timing it perfectly. He even sang along with Durante.

Vulpes waited until the film started and on a precise cut he pressed the play button and the audio recorder. The movie and the tape, now perfectly in sync, were about two hours long. He set the TV so it would turn off at eleven. The audio recorder would turn itself off. With luck, nobody would know he was gone until morning.

He opened the door to his room and looked down the stairs. He could hear Schmidt moving around in the kitchen. He went down the stairs.

'Hi, Raymond,' Schmidt said.

'Hi. Thought I'd get a Coke.'

'Sure. Well, I'm packing it in,' said Schmidt. 'Lock the door after me, will you?'

'Sure. Good night.'

'You're gonna be happy here, Raymond. I'm sure of it,' said Schmidt.

Vulpes smiled and nodded. 'Already love it,' he said.

At nine-fifteen Morris saw Schmidt leave the halfway house, huddled in his plaid lumber jacket. Five minutes later the lights on the first floor of the halfway house blinked out. And five minutes after that Vulpes slid open the side window in the kitchen, slipped over the sill, and dropped silently into the shrubs beside the house.

Stenner had never seen Vail this edgy. He had double-checked everyone in the Wild Bunch to make sure they were protected. He was jumpy about Naomi going to the meeting at the University of Chicago until he was assured she was in capable hands. And he insisted that Parver, Flaherty, and Meyer, who lived alone, stay together for the night.

'Why don't I take you home,' Stenner said to Vail. 'Vulpes is tucked in watching a movie on TV.'

'I have a nudge,' said Vail. 'The kind of nudge Harvey gets. And you, too, only you call it instinct.'

'I got a nudge, too,' said St Claire. 'Had it ever since we got to the office.'

'What kind of nudge, Harve?' Flaherty asked. St Claire said, with a touch of annoyance, 'How many times I gotta tell ya, Dermott, if I knew, it wouldn't be a nudge, it'd be a reality.'

'Last time you had one of your nudges, you turned up the Linda Balfour case,' Stenner said.

'The last time you had a nudge, we turned over Poppy Palmer,' St Claire countered.

'I agree with Abel, let's go home,' Venable said to Vail. 'But I want to talk to you for a minute before we leave.' Surprised at how serious she seemed, Vail led her into his office and closed the door.

'Something got your goat?' he joked.

'I have to tell you something,' she said. 'And this isn't about Aaron Stampler.'

'So… tell.'

'I went to Delaney's apartment. Out of a sense of duty, I suppose. Wanted to experience the scene of the crime. And I discovered something. There's a hidden compartment built into the closet in the bedroom.'

'What kind of compartment?'

'It's about two feet deep and five feet long. It's a hiding place for Delaney's toys.'

'What kind of toys?'

'Whips, handcuffs, garter belts - '

'What?'

'And a .38-calibre Smith and Wesson. It's on the floor. Looks like it was just thrown there. I didn't touch any of it.'

'The gun is in this room?'

Venable nodded. 'I assume it's the murder weapon.'

'How did you find it?'

'Probably only a woman would have noticed it - women are very conscious of closet space. I was sitting on the bed, staring at the closet, and I realized that it's lopsided. I mean, there's a lot more room on one side than the other. So I snooped around and couldn't figure out why. And I snooped around some more and felt the door give. And I kept snooping. To open it, you unscrew the hanging rod and take it out. There's a button recessed in the fixture it screws into.'

'That's very sneaky, Venable. You want a job?'

'I have a job - defending Edith Stoddard.'

'If this is going to be a bargaining session I'd like to bring Shana in on it, it's her case.'

'We're not going to bargain, Marty. We're going to trial.'

'Janie, you probably turned up the murder weapon. That's all we need to burn this lady.'

'She was a victim for almost ten years, Martin. He degraded her and she took it so she could keep her job. Then he tossed her over for a younger model and ruined her life. I can make that add up to a walk.'

'On what grounds?'

'Name it. How about the McNaghten Rule. Namely that Stoddard was labouring under such a defect of reason, caused by the circumstances, that she didn't know the nature and quality of the act she was committing. Then we have the concept of irresistible impulse - she was so distressed she couldn't control her actions. Or how about temporary insanity? She was degraded and humiliated and finally thrown away like a piece of garbage.'

'Save your closing statement for the jury,' he said. He lit two cigarettes and handed her one. 'And you're forgetting we have premeditation. And I thought Stoddard was determined to cop a plea?'

'I never was.'

'She's the client.'

'And I'm an officer of the court charged with giving my client the best advice and defence possible. That's what I'm going to do. You want to settle for involuntary manslaughter?'

Vail laughed. 'I can't do that, I'd be disbarred for incompetence. Either she's not guilty or she's guilty of something.'

'Then I guess it's Parver and me,' she said. 'Unless you're going to step in.'

'I don't step in on my prosecutors' cases,' he said. 'I'll send St Claire and Parver over to investigate the secret room. Then maybe you and Parver can have a sit-down.'

'What do you think she'll do?'

'Go for the jugular.'

'Trained her well, huh?'

'Didn't have to, it comes naturally with her. Thanks for telling me.'

'You wouldn't have told me?'

'Sure. But it still had to give you some bad moments, considering the options, I mean.'

'There weren't any options and you know it.'

'Ain't ethics hell?' He grinned.

'Yeah, ain't they,' she said, and after a moment, 'You never cease to amaze me, Mr Vail.' She was obviously relieved.

'Why? Did you expect me to throw a temper tantrum?'

'I know some men who would.'

'Look, we'll both do what we have to do, Janie. Hell, in a way, I got you into this.'

'In a way?' she said, raising her eyebrows. They both laughed.

St Claire tapped on the door and Vail waved him into the office.

'I just figured out what my nudge is,' he said. 'Something you said about Vulpes's phone calls strikes me as odd.'

'What's that?'

'You said he made a phone call and got a bad connection?'

'That's what Morris told me.'

'Well, if he got a bad connection, how come he didn't try the call again?'

Vail stared across the room at him, then looked at Venable.

'He's right,' she said. 'It's not like he didn't have time to dial again. If I made a call and got a bad connection...'

'You'd either call the operator or try again, right?' St Claire finished the sentence.

Hicks entered Shoat's elegant two-bedroom condo first. He flicked on the lights and walked down the short entrance hall to the living room. He put Shoat's briefcase on his desk. Shoat had bought the condo after his wife died, preferring to get rid of the old house near Loyola University with its painful memories. The two-bedroom condo near the lake was convenient, was in a proper neighbourhood, and was on the ground floor. It suited his purpose perfectly. It had a small deck at the rear that was secluded by a high redwood fence. He enjoyed sitting on this rustic terrace, reading cases and writing out his opinions in longhand. Hicks pulled back the thin, white cotton drapes, flicked on the lights, and slid open the door, checking the deck then closing the door and pulling the drapes closed again. He checked the living room, the master and guest bedrooms and baths, all the closets, and the small sitting room the judge used as an office. 'All clear,' he told his boss.

'Very good, Hicks,' the judge said. 'Don't know what I'd do without you.'

'Look, you want I should maybe spend the night in the guest room what with all this hoopla over…?'

'Don't be silly.' Shoat said, waving him off. 'I'm going to get in bed and watch Court TV for an hour or so. I'll be sound asleep by ten.'

'Right, sir. Seven o'clock in the morning?'

'As usual.'

He followed Hicks to the door, pulling on the night chain and twisting the dead bolt after letting his bodyguard out. He made himself a Scotch and water, turned off the lights, and went into the bedroom.

Shoat was fastidious in his nightly ritual. He set out his clothes for the next day, placed his Scotch and water on the night table, brushed his teeth and scrubbed his face, and changed into scarlet silk pyjamas. He folded his silk bathrobe carefully over a chair within arm's reach of the bed, lined up his slippers side by side exactly where he expected his feet to hit the floor when he arose, piled three goose-down pillows, and fluffed them up just right before finally turning down the covers and slipping sideways between the flannel sheets so as not to wrinkle them. He propped himself up and pulled the feather comforter up under his chin and turned on the television, flicking the remote control to the Court TV channel. Settling down, he sipped his drink and watched with the sound turned Vovj. Within minutes he was trying to keep awake. He finished the drink and clicked off the TV.

He was dozing when suddenly the room seemed to be flooded with cold air. He lay in bed, staring sleepily into the dark. It got colder.

Then he thought he heard something. The sound seemed to be coming from the living room, although he was sleepy and confused in the dark.

'Hicks, is that you?' he called out, thinking perhaps his bodyguard had come back for something and was at the front door. He waited and listened.

There it was again. Was someone talking outside the condo?

Disoriented in the dark, he groped for the lamp and instead grabbed his bathrobe. He stumbled out of bed in the dark, his feet padding the floor of the darkened room in search of his slippers. The room was frigid and he gave up on the slippers and floundered his way towards the living room.

A frosty draught sighed past him as he reached the bedroom door. He looked across the room. The door to the terrace had blown open. The white cotton curtains, flapping and twisting in the wind, looked like apparitions in the ghostly moonlight.

Damn! he thought. Hicks forgot to lock the door to the terrace.

He started towards the door. Then he heard a voice.

'Order. Order in the court.' And a gavel smacking against wood.

The voice seemed to come from the dervish curtains, swirling in the wind. He stepped closer, squinting his eyes to get a clearer look. And then he saw something, a vague shape hidden within the gossamer panels. Shoat was suddenly hypnotized with fear. The shape slowly materialized into a dark form that seemed to emerge from within the whirling folds. It moved towards him. Shoat's mouth turned to sand. His feet would not move.

'W-w-who's that?' he stammered. The figure, silhouetted by the moonlight against the shimmering drapes, raised its hand. There was a click and the same voice, the same husky whisper he had heard a moment before said:

'The prince who keeps the world in awe;

The judge whose dictates fix the law;

The rich, the poor, the great, the small,

Are levelled - death confounds them all.'

There was a slight pause, then: 'Greetings from Daisyland, Judge.'

'Oh, my God!' the judge shrieked. He turned and rushed towards a table near the door, pulled open a drawer, thrust his hand in, and felt the cold steel of his .32-calibre pistol. But before he could pull it from its hiding place, he felt a hand grab his hair and his head was snapped back.

Shoat felt only a slight burning sensation when the knife sliced through his throat. But when he opened his mouth to scream, all he heard was a rush of air from beneath his chin. And then the taste of salt flooded his mouth. When the pain struck, it was too late for Shoat to feel it.