“No,” Howie Gold said. “No, no, no.”
“It’s for his own protection,” Ralph said. “Surely you see—”
“What I see is a front-page photograph in the paper. What I see is lead story footage on every channel, showing my client walking into district court wearing a bulletproof vest over his suit. Looking already convicted, in other words. The cuffs are bad enough.”
There were seven men in the county jail’s visitors’ room, where the toys had been neatened away in their colorful plastic boxes and the chairs had been upturned on the tables. Terry Maitland stood with Howie at his side. Facing them were County Sheriff Dick Doolin, Ralph Anderson, and Vernon Gilstrap, the assistant district attorney. Samuels would already be at the county courthouse, awaiting their arrival. Sheriff Doolin continued to hold out the bulletproof vest, saying nothing. On it, in bright accusatory yellow, were the letters FCDC, standing for Flint County Department of Corrections. Its three Velcro straps—one for each arm, one to cinch the waist—hung down.
Two jail officers (call them guards and they would correct you) stood by the door to the lobby, meaty arms folded. One had supervised Terry as he shaved with a disposable razor; the other had gone through the pockets of the suit and shirt Marcy had brought, not neglecting to check the seam down the back of the blue tie.
ADA Gilstrap looked at Terry. “What do you say, chum? Want to risk getting shot? Okay by me if you do. Save the state the expense of a bunch of appeals before you take the needle.”
“That’s uncalled-for,” Howie said.
Gilstrap, a long-timer who would almost certainly choose to retire (and with a fat pension) if Bill Samuels lost the upcoming election, only smirked.
“Hey, Mitchell,” Terry said. The guard who had monitored Terry’s shave, making sure the prisoner did not try to cut his throat with a single-blade Bic, raised his eyebrows but didn’t unfold his arms. “How hot is it outside?”
“Eighty-four when I came in,” Mitchell said. “Going up close on a hundred come noon, they said on the radio.”
“No vest,” Terry said to the sheriff, and broke into a smile that made him look very young. “I don’t want to stand in front of Judge Horton in a sweaty shirt. I coached his grandson in Little League.”
Gilstrap, looking alarmed at this, took a notebook from inside his plaid jacket and jotted something.
“Let’s get going,” Howie said. He took Terry by the arm.
Ralph’s cell phone rang. He took it from the left side of his belt (his holstered service weapon was on the right) and looked at the screen. “Hold it, hold it, I have to take this.”
“Oh, come on,” Howie said. “What is this, an arraignment or a dog-and-pony show?”
Ralph ignored him and walked to the far side of the room, where there were coin-op snack and soda vending machines. He stood beneath a sign reading FOR VISITOR USE ONLY, spoke briefly, listened. He ended the call and returned to the others. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Officer Mitchell had stepped between Howie and Terry long enough to snap cuffs on Terry’s wrists. “Too tight?” he asked.
Terry shook his head.
“Then let’s walk.”
Howie took off his suit coat and draped it over the cuffs. The two officers led Terry out of the room with Gilstrap in the lead, strutting like a majorette.
Howie fell in step next to Ralph. He spoke in a low voice. “This is a clusterfuck.” And when Ralph made no reply: “Okay, fine, clam up all you want to, but between now and the grand jury, we have to sit down—you, me, and Samuels. Pelley too, if you want. The facts of the case aren’t going to come out today, but they will come out, and then you won’t have to worry about just state or regional news coverage. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the Internet blogs—they’ll all be here, savoring the weirdness. It’ll be OJ meets The Exorcist.”
Yes, and Ralph had an idea Howie would do all he could to make that happen. If he could get reporters to focus on the question of a man who appeared to have been in two places at the same time, he wouldn’t have to worry about them focusing on the boy who had been raped and murdered, perhaps partially eaten.
“I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not the enemy here, Ralph. Unless you don’t give a shit about anything except seeing Terry convicted, that is, and I don’t believe it. That’s Samuels, not you. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
Ralph made no reply.
Marcy Maitland was waiting in the lobby, looking very small between the hugely pregnant Betsy Riggins and Yune Sablo from the State Police. When she saw her husband and started forward, Riggins attempted to hold her back, but Marcy shook her off easily. Sablo only stood pat, watching. Marcy had just time enough to look into her husband’s face and kiss his cheek before Officer Mitchell took her by the shoulders and pushed her gently but firmly back toward the sheriff, who was still holding the bulletproof vest, as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it had been refused.
“Come on, now, Mrs. Maitland,” Mitchell said. “That’s not allowed.”
“I love you, Terry,” Marcy called as the officers moved him toward the door. “And the girls send theirs.”
“Same goes back to all of you doubled,” Terry said. “Tell them it’s going to be all right.”
Then he was outside, into the hot morning sunshine and the incoming fire of two dozen questions, all hurled at once. To Ralph, still in the lobby, those mingled voices sounded more like invective than interrogation.
Ralph had to give Howie points for persistence. He still hadn’t given up.
“You’re one of the good ones. Never took a bribe, never pitted evidence, always walked a straight path.”
I think I came close to pitting some evidence last night, Ralph thought. I think it was close. If Sablo hadn’t been there, if it had just been me and Samuels . . .
Howie’s expression was almost pleading. “You’ve never had a case like this. None of us have. And it’s not just the little boy anymore. His mother is dead, too.”
Ralph, who hadn’t turned on the television that morning, stopped and stared at Howie. “You say what?”
Howie nodded. “Yesterday. Heart attack. That makes her victim number two. So come on—don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to get this right?”
Ralph couldn’t hold back any longer. “I do know. And because I do, I’m going to give you one for free, Howie. That call I just took was from Dr. Bogan, in the Pathology and Serology Department at General. He doesn’t have all of the DNA back yet, and won’t for at least another couple of weeks, but they crashed the semen sample they took from the backs of the boy’s legs. It matches the cheek swabs we took Saturday night. Your client killed Frank Peterson, and buggered him, and tore away pieces of his flesh. And all that got him so excited that he spunked on the corpse.”
He strode away quickly, leaving Howie Gold temporarily unable to move or speak. Which was good, because the central paradox still remained. DNA didn’t lie. But Terry’s colleagues weren’t lying, either, Ralph was sure of it. Add to that the fingerprints on the book from the newsstand, and the Channel 81 video.
Ralph Anderson was a man of two minds, and the double vision was driving him crazy.
Until 2015, the Flint County courthouse had stood next to the Flint County jail, which was convenient. Prisoners up for arraignment were simply led from one gothic heap of stones to the other, like overgrown children going on a field trip (except, of course, kids going on field trips were rarely handcuffed). Now a half-constructed Civic Center stood next door, and prisoners had to be transported six blocks to the new courthouse, a nine-story glass box that wags had dubbed the Chicken Coop.
At the curb in front of the jail, waiting to make the trip: two police cars with flashing lights, a short blue bus, and Howie’s gleaming black SUV. Standing on the sidewalk next to the latter, and looking like a chauffeur in his dark suit and darker shades, was Alec Pelley. On the other side of the street, behind police department sawhorses, were the reporters, the camerapersons, and a small crowd of lookie-loos. Several of the latter were carrying signs. One read, EXECUTE THE CHILD KILLER. Another read, MAITLAND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL. Marcy stopped on the top step and stared at these signs with dismay.
The county jail corrections officers halted at the foot of the steps, their job done. Sheriff Doolin and ADA Gilstrap, the men technically in charge of this morning’s legal ritual, escorted Terry to the lead police car. Ralph and Yunel Sablo headed for the one behind. Howie took Marcy’s hand and led her toward his Escalade. “Don’t look up. Don’t give the photographers anything but the top of your head.”
“Those signs . . . Howie, those signs . . .”
“Never mind them, just keep moving.”
Because of the heat, the windows of the blue bus were open. The prisoners inside, most of them weekend warriors bound for their own arraignments on an array of lesser charges, caught sight of Terry. They pressed their faces against the wire mesh, catcalling.
“Hey, faggot!”
“Did you bend your dick getting it in?”
“You’re bound for the needle, Maitland!”
“Did you suck his cock before you bit it off?”
Alec started around the Escalade to open the passenger door, but Howie shook his head, motioned him back, and pointed to the rear door on the curb side instead. He wanted to keep Marcy as far as possible from the crowd across the street. Her head was lowered, and her hair obscured her face, but as Howie led her to the door Alec was holding open, he could hear her sobbing even in the general tumult.
“Mrs. Maitland!” That was a leather-lunged reporter, calling from beyond the sawhorse barricade. “Did he tell you he was going to do it? Did you try to stop him?”
“Don’t look up, don’t respond,” Howie said. He wished he could tell her not to listen. “This is all under control. Just get in, and off we go.”
As he handed her in, Alec murmured in his ear. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Half the city police are on vacation, and FC’s fearless sheriff can barely manage crowd control at the Elks Barbecue.”
“Just get us there,” Howie said. “I’ll ride in back with Marcy.”
Once Alec was behind the wheel and all the doors were closed, the yells from the crowd and the bus were muted. Ahead of the Escalade, the police cars and the blue bus were pulling out, moving as slowly as a funeral cortege. Alec fell into line. Howie could see the reporters sprinting up the sidewalk, oblivious of the heat, just wanting to be at the Chicken Coop when Terry arrived. The TV trucks would already be there, parked nose to tail like a herd of grazing mastodons.
“They hate him,” Marcy said. The little eye makeup she had put on—mostly to hide the bags beneath them—had run, giving her a raccoon-like aspect. “He never did anything but good for this town, and they all hate him.”
“That will change when the grand jury refuses to indict,” Howie said. “And they will. I know it, and Samuels knows it, too.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. In some cases, Marcy, you have to struggle to find even one reasonable doubt. This case is made of them. No way can the grand jury indict.”
“That isn’t what I meant. Are you sure that people will change their minds?”
“Of course they will.”
In the rearview mirror he saw Alec grimace at that, but sometimes a lie was necessary, and this was one of those times. Until the real killer of Frank Peterson was found—if he ever was—the people of Flint City were going to believe that Terry Maitland had gamed the system and gotten away with murder. They would treat him accordingly. But for now all Howie could do was focus on the arraignment.
As long as Ralph was dealing with prosaic day-to-day affairs, things like what was for supper, a grocery run with Jeannie, an evening call from Derek at camp (these were less frequent now that the kiddo’s homesickness was abating), he was more or less okay. But when his attention centered on Terry—as it had to now—a kind of uber consciousness set in, as if his mind was trying to reassure itself that everything was just as it always had been: up was up, down was down, and it was just the summer heat in this badly air-conditioned car that was producing fine droplets of sweat under his nose. Each day was to be relished because life was short, he understood that, but too much was just too much. When the mind’s filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.
When the little procession reached the Flint County courthouse, Ralph snuggled in behind the sheriff, noting every hot point of sun on the rear bumper of Doolin’s cruiser: four points in all. The reporters who had been at the county jail were already arriving, streaming into a crowd twice the size of the one that had been waiting at the county jail. They were crammed shoulder to shoulder on the lawn flanking the steps. He could see various station logos on the TV reporters’ polo shirts, and the dark circles of sweat under their arms. The pretty blond anchor from Channel 7 out of Cap City arrived with her hair in a tangle and sweat cutting trenches in her showgirl makeup.
Sawhorses had been set up here, too, but the ebb and flow of the jostling crowd had already knocked some of them askew. A dozen cops, half city police and half sheriff’s department, tried their best to keep the steps and the sidewalk clear. Twelve weren’t enough, in Ralph’s estimation, not nearly, but summer always depleted the ranks.
The reporters jostled for the prime spots on the lawn, unapologetically elbowing the spectators back. The blond anchor from Channel 7 tried to make a place for herself in front, flashing her locally famous smile, and was thwacked by a hastily made sign for her pains. The sign featured a crudely drawn hypodermic needle below the message MAITLAND TAKE YOUR MEDICINE. Her cameraman shoved the guy with the sign backward, shouldering an elderly woman off her feet in the process. Another woman caught her and fetched the cameraman a good one upside the head with her purse. The purse, Ralph noticed (he was currently helpless not to), was faux alligator, and red.
“How did the vultures get here so quick?” Sablo marveled. “Man, they scurry faster than cockroaches when someone turns on the light.”
Ralph only shook his head, looking at the crowd with mounting dismay, trying to see it as a whole, and unable to in his current state of hyper-vigilance. As Sheriff Doolin exited his car (brown uniform shirt untucked on one side above his Sam Browne belt; roll of pink fat peeking through the gap) and opened the rear door so that Terry could get out, someone began shouting, “Needle, needle!”
The crowd picked it up, chanting like fans at a football game.