True Crime

1

I lit another cigarette as the six o’clock news came on. I sat in my car, parked at the curb in front of the municipal court building. The long summer day was still full bright, the heat still filled the car like stagnant water. The western sun came hard down Market Street, throwing the gables and spires of City Hall into looming shadow in front of me. The light glared through my windshield, making me squint, making my face feel sticky and damp. I smoked, my elbow on the open window’s frame.

Outside, the traffic on Market was fast and steady and loud. When the light on the corner changed and the cars stopped, the cicadas in the trees along the sidewalk crackled above the idling engines, their voices growing stronger as the evening drew on. All the while, the man on the radio news seemed to gabble shrilly at me from a distance, like Tom Thumb stuck in a tin can.

I waited, looking up the long steps to the columned arch above the courthouse door. The building peered back down at me, an Attic block of white stone, imperious and grand.

The Beachum story came on about four minutes into the broadcast. They were leading with it on the local news.

“The governor met about an hour ago with lawyers for Frank Beachum, the St. Louis man condemned to die tonight for shooting a pregnant convenience store worker to death six years ago …”

I touched the filter of the cigarette to my lips as the voice of a lawyer came on the air. I looked up at the courthouse with unfocused eyes. I thought about Bonnie Beachum, clutching the cage bars, screaming through them at me. Where were you all this time?

“We have told the governor that, um, a grave injustice is about to be done here and, uh, we’ve made our case to him,” the attorney said from inside the tin can. You could hear the lassitude in his voice, even from here. You could tell the governor hadn’t gone for it.

“Earlier today,” the newscaster went on, “the governor also met with the murder victim’s father and mother, who urged him not to grant Beachum a pardon. Governor’s aide Harry Mancuso spoke to us after that meeting …”

“This administration is determined to be tough on crime,” said governor’s aide Harry Mancuso, “and we’re determined to see justice done for the family of Amy Wilson and for the people of this state.”

I whiffled like a horse and popped the radio off as the broadcast moved on to other stories. That pretty much took care of that, I thought. Whether I got to Lowenstein or not, whether he called the governor for me or not, my only chance of turning the statehouse around was if I found some lunatic still dripping with Amy Wilson’s blood after six years and screaming, I’m the guy, I’m really the guy at the top of his …

I sat up in the driver’s seat as the glass door of the courthouse swung open. Through the car’s side window, I saw Wally Cartwright holding the door with a mighty hand. Cecilia Nussbaum walked out under his arm.

The two started down the stairs together. Nussbaum was the circuit attorney, a small, ugly woman in her late forties. She had a big fleshy beezer sticking out of a face that looked like a collection of frowns all glued on top of each other. She wore a drab brown dress set off by a length of gold chain around her neck. Cartwright towered over her, a block of cement on legs with the tiny eyes of a blackbird poking out of his cinderblock head. In his concrete gray suit, he looked like a building only bigger. He was the assistant CA who’d handled the Beachum case. He had to lean way over to talk to Nussbaum as they started together down the long stone stairway.

Tossing my cigarette, I got out of my car in a hurry. Came around the front, the traffic whipping by to the side of me. I heard Nussbaum’s thick, heavy heels clomp-clomping on the stone as I climbed the courthouse steps to meet her. I heard Wally’s deep voice as he murmured down into her ear. I couldn’t make out the words above the noise of the traffic.

I stood in front of them on the steps. Nussbaum stopped as she raised her eyes and saw me. Cartwright stopped when she stopped and looked down at me from his height. He sneered.

“I smell shit,” he said. He had a rolling baritone with a country twang in it. I grinned up at him stupidly. I wondered if Patricia had been right this morning when she said that stuff about my problems with authority. In any case, it was now pretty clear I should’ve left Cartwright’s secretary alone.

“Hi, Wally,” I said.

“This is not a good time, Everett,” said Cecilia Nussbaum. Her voice was deeper than Cartwright’s. It was toneless and gravelly. “We’re in a hurry.”

She came down another step as if to walk through me.

“Wait,” I said, “this is urgent.”

Cartwright’s hand cranked out and took hold of my shoulder. Big hand. Large, large hand. “It’s not a good time,” he rumbled. He shoved me. I staggered a step to the side.

I thought I saw Cecilia Nussbaum smile a little to herself as she started past me.

“Cecilia, I’m telling you,” I said.

Cartwright leaned around in back of her and poked a sausagy finger hard into my chest. “Look …”

“Oh bullshit.” I knocked the finger off. I snarled into his blackbird eyes. “You’re a fucking circuit attorney, I’m a reporter,” I said. “You wanna hit me or you wanna keep your job?”

The ape had been working himself up to a pretty good sadistic grin, but it faltered at that. I straightened my shirt-front.

“What do you think this is, a fucking movie?” I muttered. “Hit me and I’ll sue your fucking head off.”

The CA was now on the step below me, but she paused there and, judging by the heave of her shoulders, she sighed. She glanced back around at Cartwright.

“Why don’t you get the car, Wally,” she croaked.

“Yeah, why don’t you get the car, Wally,” I said angrily.

He hovered in front of me another moment. Not a pretty sight, a hovering cinderblock. Sneering, hovering. Then he straightened away from me. He waggled the big finger at me.

“We could meet in private, you know,” he said. “Just the two of us.”

“Oh, great idea,” I said. “I’ll take it under advisement. My people’ll call your people. What do you think, I’m an idiot? Fuck you,” I called, because he was already stomping on down the stone steps, boom, boom, boom, like some monster returning to the deep.

“New York asshole,” he rumbled as he sank away.

I rubbed the place on my chest where he’d poked me. I came down the step to stand next to Cecilia.

“Great staff choice, Cecilia,” I said. “The guy’s a walking paperweight.”

“What do you want, Everett?” she said in her dead, froggy voice.

“A walking doorstop,” I muttered.

“I’ve gotta go. I’ve got meetings to attend before I go to the prison. What do you want?”

I took a breath to cool the anger down. Cecilia regarded me, meanwhile, with her murky brown eyes, with that face of frowns. There was nothing stupid in those eyes, in that face, not a single stupid thing. There was nothing of kindness in them either. There were no second chances with her.

“All right,” I said, still annoyed. “Frank Beachum. The Amy Wilson case.”

She watched me impatiently, saying nothing.

“Who else was there?” I asked her.

She didn’t move or answer. She kept considering me. She would consider the execution tonight with those same eyes, I thought. She would watch Beachum on the table with that same expression. Afterward, in the visitors’ room with the other dignitaries, she would sip a little white wine from a paper cup. She would listen to jokes about local politics and if the person making the joke was important enough she would laugh, showing her crooked teeth. While Beachum’s body was being carried out the delivery door to the hearse, she would laugh. She was a damned good prosecutor.

“What do you want?” she croaked again.

“I want to know who else was at Pocum’s grocery the day Amy Wilson got shot,” I said. “There was Porterhouse and Nancy Larson outside and Beachum. And who else? Someone drove in just as Beachum was leaving, just as Nancy Larson was starting to drive away. That’s why she was backing up, to let the new arrival in. If she’d backed up from the soda machine, she’d have come at Beachum from his right side. She came at him from his left. She was backing up from the driveway cause someone blocked her path, coming in as she was leaving the lot.”

There was a long pause. There were her eyes, her frowns. There were cicadas singing in the still air and then the light changed at the corner and there was traffic grumbling and whizzing past again. A long pause.

“What difference does it make?” said Cecilia Nussbaum finally. And I knew I was right.

I took a half step toward her. Tension made my skin feel a size too small. “He’s the shooter, Cecilia,” I said. “Whoever he was, he shot Amy Wilson. It wasn’t Beachum. It was him.”

A horn honked twice below us. Wally Cartwright had pulled up to the curb in an official brown Cadillac. He stopped it behind my Tempo. He frowned grimly up at us from behind the wheel.

Cecilia Nussbaum spared him a long, slow glance, then turned to me again. Her froggy croak was as dispassionate as before. “You’re parked illegally.”

“Who was he, Cecilia? Come on.”

“What is this?” she said. “What are you planning to write? This is a solid case.”

“Yeah, except the condemned man is innocent.”

“If you write that, it’ll be wrong. If you’re working up some conspiracy theory …”

“No, nothing like that.”

“I don’t send innocent men to the Death House.”

“I know that. I do,” I said. “But you made a mistake.”

Cartwright honked the horn again. This time, Nussbaum didn’t look at him at all.

“The guy was buying steak sauce,” I said. “That’s what the Larson woman saw in his hand. The whole thing happened after she was gone. That’s why she didn’t hear the gunshot.”

“All that was covered in the trial. Read the transcripts. A witness saw Beachum running out. It’s all solid, Everett.”

“The witness didn’t see him.” The tension pushed the volume of my voice up a notch. I forced it down again. It was not a good idea to shout at Cecilia. “There was a rack of potato chips in his way. I went there. I saw it.”

“When?”

“Today.”

“It was six years ago. Anyway, the witness came down the aisle. He could see from there. It’s all in the transcripts.” Now the impatience was creeping into her voice as well.

“But he didn’t see,” I said, controlling myself as best I could. “I talked to him. He didn’t see, Cecilia.”

“You’re telling me he said that.”

“No. But … I could see it in his face. I could tell.”

When I said that, she drew back. All her leathery frowns seemed to pucker in an expression of disdain. “You mean you haven’t got anything,” she said curtly.

“There was somebody else there. Wasn’t there?”

“You haven’t got doodly squat.”

“He didn’t doodly do it, how much squat do I need?”

I bit my lip, reining myself in, holding down my temper. Cecilia studied me another second or two. Then she turned and started down the stairs.

I went after her. “Cecilia. Please.”

Her heels hammered the steps.

“There was someone else, wasn’t there?” I said.

“A kid,” she croaked without turning back. “He bought a Coke from the machine. He didn’t even go inside.”

“He shot her.”

“We interviewed him. I remember it. We issued a description of his car and he came in of his own free will. He didn’t see anything.”

She reached the sidewalk, headed for the car. I stumbled after her. “You’d already made the arrest. You interviewed him as a witness,” I said. “He wasn’t a witness. He was the guy!”

Wally Cartwright opened the driver’s door and loomed up out of the car. He watched me grimly across its roof. Cecilia took hold of the passenger door handle.

I put myself in front of her. “Tell me his name. Let me talk to him.”

“I don’t know his name. He was nothing to the case.”

“It’s in your files, your records, your notes. Somewhere. He was the shooter, Cecilia.”

She pulled the door open. “My office is closed for the day. Call me tomorrow. I’ll see if I can find it.”

She started to get into the car. I felt a red sunburst go off inside me. I caught hold of the Caddy’s door, drawing it back, drawing her back with it. Those eyes and all those frowns swung around to me. I spoke into them through gritted teeth.

“If you let it wait till tomorrow, then you better sleep goddamn well tonight,” I said. “Cause after today, I’m gonna haunt you, lady. I’m gonna be your bogey man.”

At that, the circuit attorney let the door go. She brought herself full around to face me. Her small figure was very still but her gaze was cloudy, swirling.

Stupid, I thought. Stupid big mouth stupid.

Cecilia Nussbaum spoke quietly, an expressionless froggy noise. “I’m not Wally,” she said.

I closed my eyes.

“I’m a lot bigger than Wally,” she said. “And if you threaten me again, there’ll be pieces of your life all over the gutter. The rest will have blown away.”

I stood still, my eyes closed. Stupid, I thought, stupid big mouth stupid stupid. Cecilia Nussbaum, meanwhile, lowered herself into the passenger seat. She drew the door shut with a heavy thud. I opened my eyes again just as the Cadillac pulled out into the traffic and drove off down Market Street.