The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

Eight

The next morning, Friday, Wes and Del were in Clay Evans’s office to update him on the investigation. Clay looked at the two of them in their black-and-white getups and wondered what planet they came from. Maybe I should have stuck it out in Miami. I could be a partner by now instead of being stuck in this backwoods dive, conspiring with a pair of lunatics. Just then, adding an exclamation point to Clay’s inner rumblings, Wes put his thumb to one nostril and honked out the other. He wiped off the snot that was hanging from his face with the back of his hand. Del didn’t even notice. A few minutes before, Clay had been at that point in his daily musings when he almost had himself convinced this career move could still work out. When Wes ended his performance by putting his hands in his pockets, Clay gave up.

“How’d the interview go?” he asked halfheartedly.

“Great!” Wes replied. “The kid admitted he was there. Had a couple of beers with her. He said he got up to go outside because he was sick and fell over the coffee table and cut himself on the broken mug, which makes the blood and the fingerprints his. He says she kicked him out after he fell but he also says he could have killed her and just not remembered it.” That last part grabbed Clay’s attention. Wes wasn’t looking like an alien anymore.

“He actually said he could have killed her and not remembered it?”

“Yup.”

“Did you arrest him?”

“No. I let him go home.”

“You what?”

“His mother came to the station during the interview,” Del cut in. “She demanded that she be allowed into the interview and then demanded that we stop. I told her that wasn’t going to happen but that she could get a lawyer. A few minutes later Austin Reaves called demanding that we stop the interview.”

“Austin Reaves? Doesn’t he do wills?”

“Yeah,” Wes chimed in. “But he drinks at the Bass Creek Hotel. We figured the mother was in a pinch and this was the only guy she knew.”

Clay thought about that for a moment. Austin Reaves was probably just a Band-Aid. These people were dirt poor. They probably couldn’t afford a criminal lawyer for the trial, which meant they’d be stuck with old Charley Peterson, the public defender. Having Charley for a lawyer in a case like this was like playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun. Clay smiled for the first time that day.

“Did you take blood?”

“Yeah. It’ll take a few days to get the results. Maybe Monday or Tuesday. He owns a serrated knife, too.”

“I’m not following you.”

“The coroner told us the knife wounds were made by a serrated knife, you know, the ones with the grooves in them. Well, the kid told me he owns one. Told me where he kept it too,” Clay laughed.

“He really is stupid, isn’t he?”

“Yup.” All three of them chuckled.

“Wait for the results of the blood test, then pick him up. And call that reporter that you know, Wes. What’s her name?”

“Pam Brady?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. I want her to get a picture of this kid for the front of the paper to kind of remind our witnesses who they’re supposed to pick out in the lineup.” They all laughed again. It was an uneasy laugh, however, since one big problem was sitting in the middle of this case like an invisible white rabbit. Clay knew it was time to address that problem.

“Del, could you leave us alone for a moment?” Clay walked to the door with Del and closed it behind him. When they were alone, he pulled a chair close to Wes’s.

“How sure are you that this kid did it?” he asked.

“Dead sure,” Wes replied. “He was there. Puked outside after it was over. He did it. I don’t think it was premeditated but he did it. He was probably mad because she turned him down.” It was Clay who was now eager for background.

“Tell me about this Lucy Ochoa.”

“She’s seasonal, been coming here for years. Married once. Divorced. Very loose. Neighbors say she’s always had a lot of guys come and go. Hard to keep track of her. But nobody saw this kid from the convenience store over there before.”

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Positive.” Clay needed that commitment before he went any further. Clay was a master manipulator, probably the only thing he did very well. It was in the blood. Although he had no use for the fat little bastard sitting in front of him, after ten years he could read Wes like a book. There were no nuances in Wes Blume’s life. Everything was as black and white as the pants and shirt he wore every day. When his wife decided to go back to work after their second child started school, Wes left her because he believed a woman’s place was in the home. It was that simple.

“There were no signs of rape?” Clay inquired, although he already knew the answer.

“Nope.”

“You know what a defense attorney is going to do with these two blood types.” It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Wes hated defense attorneys. They manipulated facts, evidence, coached their clients to lie-anything to win, even if winning meant putting a criminal back on the streets. He could hear the son-of-a-bitch now, claiming some “phantom fucker” was responsible for the murder while his client, who just stopped in for a cup of tea, was totally innocent. Wes’s face was turning red. He just didn’t understand how the Constitution guaranteed a scum-sucking parasite the right to be represented by a scum-sucking lawyer.

“Yeah, I know,” was all he said to Clay, but Clay had caught it all. It was time to make his pitch. Slowly.

“Let’s assume this kid’s blood matches the blood on the carpet and the blood on the mug, which is a pretty good assumption based on what he told you. Are you with me?” Wes nodded.

“And let’s assume that we conclude from the physical evidence that there was no rape. She must have had sex earlier that evening, don’t you think, Wes?” Clay could tell Wes hadn’t really thought that part through. With Clay’s help he would get it. . eventually.

Wes nodded his head again, but a little uncertainly this time. “I believe under those circumstances we could exclude the semen as evidence in the murder investigation completely. Do you agree?” Wes had it now. It was brilliant. There was no rape so don’t give them that evidence. Don’t let them confuse the jury with that “reasonable doubt” voodoo bullshit. And it made perfect sense that somebody else had fucked her earlier, a slut like that.

“I agree.”

“Good. But we’ve got to keep this close to the vest. Can you swear Del to secrecy?”

“No problem. But what about the coroner?”

“Harry Tuthill? Don’t worry about Harry, I’ll handle him.”

Since they were officially co-conspirators now, Clay had a few other housekeeping matters to discuss.

“Start a separate rape file.”

“Why don’t we just ditch the semen?”

“No, too dangerous.” He knew Harry would never go along with eliminating the evidence but he didn’t tell that to the Grunt. “If it ever comes out we can explain our position, but if we destroy the evidence, it will look very bad.”

“But why start a rape investigation if our position is there was no rape?”

“We have no probable cause to believe there was a rape but we’re continuing that investigation. That keeps the evidence from becoming part of the public record. If it was in the public record, any newspaper idiot could request all evidence that we found at the trailer and we’d have to give it to them. Hell, they’d get more than we gave the defense in discovery. We’d look very bad. We need to hide that information for now and this is the best way. Down the road when the hubbub dies down, we’ll declassify it, so to speak. The Feds do this all the time.”

Once again Wes was impressed with the way Clay was thinking everything through. He obviously had a talent for this kind of thing. He left Clay’s office shaking his head. He still couldn’t believe how great the meeting went. He’d been looking for a prosecutor like this all his life.