Thicker Than Water

Chapter Three

The glass doors to the Lee County jail reflected the sun like mirrors and Louis paused on the sidewalk, still not used to seeing himself in what he had come to think of as his new “uniform.” This morning, it was fresh khaki slacks, a yellow polo shirt and a blue blazer. It was what he always wore when he was meeting a client for the first time.

Not that he was sure Jack Cade was going to be a client.

He had spent a fitful night turning Ronnie Cade’s situation over in his head. He couldn’t afford to take a charity case, that much was certain. He had just deposited the check from the Bonita Springs case, but there was nothing else on the horizon and he knew he’d have to live off that money for a while. He glanced back at the white ’65 Mustang parked at the curb.

He shouldn’t have spent so much getting it fixed. New brakes, new transmission, and the body work and paint job. It had taken a huge chunk out of his meager savings. He should have listened to Dodie and junked the old thing and bought something new and reliable.

He shook his head. “Man, I’ll walk before I have to drive a damn Civic,” he muttered as he started for the door.

He stopped, spotting the News-Press box. The Spencer Duvall murder was the lead story again. This time, however, there was a picture of Jack Cade.

Louis popped in a quarter and pulled out a paper. Jack Cade looked to be on the downslope of fifty, with the same long, thin face and hooded eyes as his son. Louis knew you couldn’t read much from a mug shot. Except when the person was innocent. Then you could see it in the eyes, the indignation, shock or bewilderment of the falsely accused. Jack Cade looked simply blank-bored, if anything.

He knew what had kept him tossing and turning all night. It wasn’t the money. It was that he didn’t think he could get past the fact that Jack Cade had been convicted of rape and murder. But he had made a promise to Ronnie Cade. Maybe if he met the father face to face he could find a good reason to walk away from this.

Folding the paper under his arm, he went in. At the glass window, he tapped lightly on the wall microphone to get the clerk’s attention.

“Morning, Zach.”

Zach turned and keyed the mike on his side. Reddish-blond spikes of hair sprouted from a sun-burned square head that melted into the collar of his dark green shirt. Zach Dombrowski was a dead-ringer for Barney Rubble.

“Hey, Louis. Haven’t seen you for a while. How goes it?”

“Okay,” Louis said as he picked up a pen to sign in.

Zach leaned close to the mike so the other deputy behind the glass could not hear him.

“I heard a rumor we might be adding guys in February, Louis. Why don’t you put in?”

Louis looked at Zach in surprise. The others around here weren’t usually so friendly. “I don’t think I could work for Mobley.”

Zach nodded. “He has an Eight Ball on his desk. He uses it to make decisions. ‘Should I take a shit? Signs Point To Yes.’ ”

Louis smiled and tossed the pen down.

Zach looked at the log. “You here to see Jack Cade?”

“Is that a problem?”

Zach shrugged. “Well, I guess not, except the Sheriff left orders to be notified when anyone visits Cade.”

“Then notify him.”

“He’s off duty but he’s over at the Dinkle Center.”

“Lucky break for me.”

“I better call him anyway. Hold on a minute.”

As he waited, Louis read the Duvall story. It recapped Cade’s arraignment with a few comments from the prosecutor, State Attorney Vern Sandusky, assuring Southwest Florida “that the case was progressing as expected and that I will do everything in my power to make sure that Jack Cade spends the rest of his life in prison.”

Zach tapped the glass. “Sheriff says you can go up, but he wants to see you at O’Sullivan’s in an hour.”

Louis nodded, tucking the newspaper under his arm as he headed to the elevator.

The doors opened and a deputy stepped in. He gave Louis the once-over, focusing on his VISITOR badge. Louis glanced at the deputy’s name plate. LOVETT. He remembered Lovett had been the arresting officer on a deadbeat father case he had worked several months ago. He felt Lovett’s eyes on him and wondered if the deputy remembered him, too.

“Kincaid, right?” Lovett asked.

Louis nodded. He waited, but the deputy’s eyes stared straight ahead at the closed doors.

“You remember that case we worked together on a few months back?” Louis said finally.

Lovett’s eyes didn’t waver. “No.”

Great. The silent treatment again.

“What about Jack Cade? What’s the talk?” Louis asked.

Lovett’s eyes slid to Louis, then snapped back to the doors.

“The way I see it, killers like Cade are no better than garbage, and lawyers like Duvall are no better than the maggots that feed off it.”

The doors opened. Louis moved to step off.

“You working for or against that asshole?” Lovett asked.

“Neither,” Louis said.

The doors closed with a wheeze of air. The deputy posted on the fourth floor saw Louis and jerked his head to the right. Louis followed him down a dim hall done in the same chipped beige paint as the iron-bar door that clanged shut behind them. The deputy stopped at a metal door and motioned for Louis to go inside.

“He’s in five, down at the end.”

A long table split the room, a plexiglass divider running its length with privacy partitions. Louis stopped at the end and looked at the man seated behind the glass.

Jack Cade’s head was down, his stringy, ink-black hair shading his face. His arm was slung across the back of the wooden chair and his ankle was propped on his knee. Louis cleared his throat.

Cade lifted his head, running thick fingers through his hair to move it from his forehead. His gray-green eyes peered at Louis from under lazy lids for several seconds before dropping away. He drew his thin lips into a grimace.

“I told them I didn’t want to see any reporters.”

His voice sounded hollow, strained through the small holes in the plexiglass.

“I’m not a reporter.”

“Funny. You look like one.”

“I’m a private investigator, Louis Kincaid. Your son Ronnie wants to hire me to help in your defense.”

“Kincaid? Yeah. .” Cade cocked his head. “Ronnie told me you were too expensive. What changed your mind?”

“Your son makes a compelling argument for family values.”

Cade narrowed his eyes, then flicked his hand toward the empty chair. Louis sat down, studying Cade.

His eyes were dulled with disinterest and his large body, all sinew and muscle beneath the orange jumpsuit, was draped over the chair like he was home watching a football game. Except for his right foot. The foot, propped on his left knee, was moving in a nonstop, rhythmic jerking motion.

“You got any smokes?” Cade asked.

“Sorry.”

“So you working for me or not?”

“I don’t know. Talk to me.”

“What do you want to know?”

Louis pulled a small notebook from his back pocket. “I’m coming in cold, Mr. Cade, so you’re going to have to start at the beginning. All I know is Spencer Duvall was shot Monday night around nine-thirty in his office and you were arrested the following afternoon.”

Cade didn’t reply.

“So why did they arrest you?” Louis asked.

“I went to see Duvall that morning.”

“Why?”

“I went there to tell him I was going to sue him. I had an appointment. You can check.”

“Sue him? For what?”

“He fucked up some legal work he did for me a few years back.”

“What kind of legal work?”

Cade was studying his hands. He began to pick at the skin around his nails. “Criminal.”

“You mean when he defended you twenty years ago?”

Cade snickered. “Can’t call what he did a defense, not by any stretch. The asshole cost me twenty years.”

“It could have been worse,” Louis said.

Cade didn’t blink. His eyes seemed darker now, the color the gulf had been after the storm.

“The rape and murder,” Louis said. “Tell me about it.”

Cade pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not important.”

“Tell me or this is over now.”

Cade shut his eyes slowly, like he was tired to the bone. Or bored. His right foot kept up its steady jerking. “I was sent up for raping and killing this girl. There were things that should’ve been brought up, motions and shit like that. Duvall didn’t do any of it and I got fucked. That’s why I was going to sue him.”

“How old was ‘this girl’?”

Cade shrugged. “Fifteen. Sixteen.”

“How did you kill her?”

“I told you-”

“How was she killed?”

“Who cares?”

“How was she killed?” Louis demanded.

“She was stabbed.” Cade dragged his foot off his knee and turned away, rubbing a hand over his rough chin.

“Mr. Cade-”

Cade spun back. “What the hell difference does it make? This is about Duvall. This is about today.”

Louis stared at Jack Cade, his fingers working gently against the metal clip on the ballpoint pen. Man, get the hell out of here. You don’t need this loser or the five-hundred dollars. But he wanted to know.

“Did you do it?” Louis asked.

“I didn’t kill that cocksucker lawyer.”

“I mean the girl. Did you kill the girl?”

“Why you digging up old stuff no one cares about?”

“Did you kill her?”

Cade leaned forward, the pupils of his eyes barely visible under the heavy lids. “The only thing you need to know is that I didn’t kill Duvall.”

Louis was amazed to see a small smile creep into the corners of Cade’s mouth.

“You know what?” Cade said. “I should answer your question just because I find your need to know. . amusing.”

“This isn’t funny, Cade.”

The tipped corners of his mouth grew into a grin. “That depends on your vantage point.” He tapped on the plexiglass between them. “You ever looked at anything through six inches of plastic? You ever seen the world through greasy hand prints and scratches and dried spit? Try it sometime. Try it for twenty years. It kind of. . clarifies things.”

Cade’s smile faded.

“Answer the question,” Louis said.

Cade dropped his head, picking again at his ravaged cuticles.

“What you say your name was again?” he asked, without looking up.

“Louis Kincaid.”

“How you spell that?”

Louis spelled his last name and when Cade looked up he was grinning. “Thought maybe we had a distant relative in common for a minute there. Kin-CADE. . get it?”

“I asked you a question, Cade,” Louis said. “Did you kill her?”

But Cade ignored him again. “Ronnie said he offered you five-hundred bucks,” he said. “That’s barely enough to put macaroni on your table, right?”

Louis didn’t answer him.

“Would you be so curious about whether I killed that girl if I paid you five thousand?”

“Yes, I would.”

“What if it was ten thousand? Or a hundred thousand?”

Louis just stared at him.

“At what dollar amount does my value as a human being reach the defendable level? How much would it take for you not to be so curious?”

Louis closed the notebook. Cade’s eyes flitted to it and back up to Louis’s face.

“I didn’t kill that girl,” he said finally.

Louis locked on Cade’s chameleon eyes, hoping to see some hint of the truth there. There was nothing.

A steel door on Cade’s side opened and a guard emerged. Cade glanced at the guard and smiled. “Well, I guess the maids are finished with my room.” He unfurled his body from the chair.

“So,” he said to Louis, “you staying for the macaroni?”

Louis rose, slipping the notebook in his back pocket. “I don’t know yet. I need to do some research on your case.”

“Yeah, you do that.” Cade turned away.

Louis started back toward the steel door at the other end of the room.

“Kincaid.”

Louis looked back. He could see Cade’s face at the plexiglass again.

“Don’t ever ask me about that dead girl again,” Cade said.

He disappeared from view. Louis walked back to the steel door and hit a buzzer. Back out in the hall, Louis drew in a deep breath.

“Hey, your name Kincaid?”

Louis turned to the deputy who had called out. “Yeah.”

“Zach says there’s someone downstairs who wants to know who’s seeing Jack Cade.”

“Who is it?” Louis asked.

“Cade’s lawyer. And she’s mad as hell.”