Diehl, William - Show of Evil (2 page)

He snatched up the phone and said. 'This better be good,' and hung
up. Throwing on a thick sheepskin car coat, he headed for the lobby ten
floors below.

Major Abel Stenner sat ramrod straight behind the wheel. He was
impeccably dressed in a grey pin-striped suit. When Stenner had
accepted the job of Vail's chief investigator, Vail had promoted him to
major, a rank rarely used except in the state police. It was a
diabolical act on Vail's part - Stenner now outranked everyone in the
city police but the chief. Vail handed him a mug of coffee.

'Thanks,' Stenner said.

'I thought you said to wear old clothes. You look like you're on
your way to deliver a eulogy.'

'I was already dressed,' he answered as he pulled away from the kerb.

Stenner, a precise and deliberate man whose stoic expression and
hard brown eyes shielded even a hint of emotion, was not only the best
cop the city had ever produced, he was the most penurious with words, a
man who rarely smiled and who spoke in short, direct, unflourished
sentences.

'Where the hell are we going?'

'You'll see.'

Vail crunched down in the seat and sipped his coffee.

'Don't you ever sleep, Abel?'

'You ask me that once a week.'

'You never answer.'

'Why start?'

More silence. That they had become close friends was a miracle. Ten
years ago, when Vail had been the top defence attorney in the state and
had worked against the state instead of for it, they had been deadly
adversaries. Stenner was the one cop who always had it right, who knew
what it took to make a good case, who wouldn't bite at the trick
question and could see through the setup, and who had been broken on
the stand only once - by Vail during the Aaron Stampler trial. When
Vail took the job of chief prosecutor, one of his first official duties
was to steal Stenner away from Police Chief Eric Eckling. He had fully
expected Stenner to turn him down, their animosity had been that
profound, and he had been shocked when Stenner accepted the job.

'You're on my side now,' Stenner had explained with a shrug.
'Besides, Eckling is incompetent.'

Ten years. In those years, Stenner had actually begun to loosen up.
He had been known to smile on occasion and there was a myth around the
DA's office, unconfirmed, that he had once cracked a joke - although it
was impossible to find anyone who actually had heard it.

Vail was half asleep, his coffee mug clutched between both hands to
keep it from spilling, when Stenner turned off the highway and headed
down the back tar road leading to the sprawling county landfill. His
head wobbled back and forth. Then he was aware of a kaleidoscope of
lights dancing on his eyelids.

He opened them, sat up in his seat, and saw, against a small
mountain of refuse, flashing yellow, red, and blue reflections against
the dark, steamy night. A moment later Stenner rounded the mound and
the entire scene was suddenly spread out before them. There were a
dozen cars of various descriptions - ambulances, police cars, the
forensics van - all parked hard against the edge of the landfill.
Beyond them, like men on the moon, yellow-garbed cops and firemen
struggled over the steamy landscape, piercing the looming piles of
garbage with long poles. The acrid smell of the burning garbage, rotten
food, and wet paper permeated the air. For a moment it reminded Vail of
the last time he had gone home, to a place ironically called Rainbow
Flats, which had been savaged by polluters who repaid the community for
enduring them by poisoning the land, water, and air. First one came,
then another, attracted to the place like hyenas to carrion, until it
was a vast island of death surrounded by forests they had yet to
destroy. He had gone home to bury his grandmother thirteen years
earlier and never returned. A momentary flash of the Rainbow Flats
Industrial Park supplanted the scene before him. It streaked through
his mind and was gone. It had always angered him that they had had the
gall to call it a park.

Three tall poles with yellow flags snapping in the harsh wind seemed
to establish the parameters of the search. They were bunched in a
cluster, a circle perhaps fifty yards in circumference. The sickening
sour-sweet odour of death intruded on the wind and occasionally
overpowered the smell of decay. Four men came over a ridge of the dump
hefting a green body bag among them.

'That's three,' Stenner said.

'Bodies?'

'Where the flags are.' He nodded.

'Jesus!'

'First one was over there, in that cluster. A woman. They tumbled on
the second one when I called you.'

A freezing blast of cold air swept the car as Stenner got out. Vail
turned up his collar and stepped out into the predawn. He jammed his
hands deep in his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders against the
wind. He could feel his lips chapping as his warm breath turned to
steam and blew back into his face.

Two cops, an old-timer and a rookie, were standing guard beside the
yellow crime-scene ribbons as Vail and Stenner stepped over them. The
wind whipped Stenner's tie out and it flapped around his face for a
moment before he tucked it back under his jacket as they walked towards
the landfill.

'Jesus, don't he have a coat? Gotta be ten degrees out,' said the
rookie.

'He don't need a coat,' the older cop said. 'He ain't got any blood.
That's Stenner. Know what they used to call him when he was with the
PD? The Icicle.'

Twenty feet away Stenner stopped and turned slowly as the cop said
it and stared at him for a full ten seconds, then turned back to the
crime scene.

'See what I mean,' the older cop whispered. 'Nobody ever called him
that to his face.'

'Must have ears in the back of his head.'

'It's eyes.'

'Huh?'

'It's eyes. He's got eyes in the back of his head.'

'He didn't see you, he heard you,' the young cop said.

'Huh?'

'You said -'

'Jesus, Sanders, forget it. Just forget it. Coldest night of the
year, I'm in the city dump, and I draw a fuckin' moron for a partner.'

'There's Shock,' Stenner said to Vail.

He nodded towards a tall, beefy uniformed cop bundled in his blue
wool coat, standing at the edge of the fill. Capt. Shock Johnson was
ebony black and bald, with enormous, scarred hands that were cupped in
front of his mouth and shoulders like a Green Bay lineman. When he saw
Vail and Stenner, he shook his head and chuckled.

'I don't believe it,' he said. 'You guys don't even have to be here.'

'What the hell's going on?' Vail asked.

'The dozer operator turned over the first one, so I decided we ought
to punch around a little and, bingo, now we got three.'

'What killed them?'

'Better ask Okimoto that, he's the expert. They're a mess. Been in
there awhile. Maggots have had Thanksgiving dinner on all of 'em.'

Vail groaned at the image. 'So we don't know anything yet, that it?'
he asked.

'Know we got three stiffos been cooking down in that gunk for God
knows how long.'

'May be hard to determine when these happened,' Stenner offered.
'Location will be very important.'

Johnson nodded. 'We're taking stills and video, doing measurements.
If the weather's okay later I've ordered a chopper flyover. We'll get
some pictures from up top.'

'Good.'

Johnson had once been Stenner's sergeant and had made lieutenant
when he quit. He was now captain of the night watch, a man beholden to
Stenner for years of education and for fostering in him a strong sense
of intuition. He was Stenner's pipeline to a very unfriendly police
department.

'Eckling here yet?' Vail asked.

'Oh yeah. He's down there in the thick of it, looking important for
Channel 7. They were the first ones to get a whiff of it.'

'Nicely put,' said Vail.

'Any ideas?' Stenner asked.

'Not really. My guess is, these three here were dumped about the
same time, but we can't be sure. You couldn't hardly find the same spot
twice, the tractors keep moving this shit around so much.' He looked
off at the ragged landscape. 'Excuse me, I gotta check that bag just
came up. Besides, Eckling sees you.' He chuckled again. 'And I've had
enough fun for one night.' He left.

'I'll wait in the car,' Stenner said. He had not spoken a word to
his
former boss since the day he quit.

The chief of police huffed up the small hill with a camera crew and
a reporter trailing out behind him. He was waving his arms as he spoke
and his words came out in little bursts of steam.

'I see the DA's man is here,' he sneered. 'Everybody loves a circus.'

Eckling always referred to Vail as 'the DA's man,' putting an edge
to the words so that it sounded like an insult.

The three-man crew, having got everything they could out of Eckling,
turned their camera on Vail. 'Any comment, Mr Vail?' asked the
reporter, a small, slender man in his twenties named Billy Pearce, who
peered out from the depths of a hooded parka.

'I'm just an interested spectator,' he answered.

'Care to speculate on what happened here?'

'I don't care to speculate at all, Billy. Thanks.'

Vail turned away from them and walked towards Eckling as the crew,
grateful for his brevity, fled towards their van. Eckling was a tall
man with the beginnings of a beer belly and eyes that glared from
behind tinted spectacles.

'What's the matter, Martin, couldn't wait?' he snapped.

'You know why I'm here, Eric, we've had that discussion too many
times.'

'Can't even wait until the bodies're cold,' he growled.

'That shouldn't take long in this weather.'

'Just want to get your face on the six o'clock news,' he said
nastily.

'Isn't that what got you out here?' Vail said cheerily.

'Look, you can't butt in for seven days. How about leaving me and
mine alone and letting us do our job?'

'I wish you could, Chief,' Vail said pleasantly.

'Go to hell,' Eckling said, and stomped away.

Vail returned to the car and shook off the cold as he got into the
warm interior.

'Damn, it's bitter out there.'

'You and Eckling have your usual cordial exchange?'

'Yeah, things are improving. We didn't even bite each other.'

Stenner pulled around in a tight circle and headed back towards the
city.

'Go to Butterfly's,' Vail said. 'I'm starving.'

'Not open yet.'

'Go to the back door.'

Vail laid his head against the headrest and closed his eyes,
thinking about Stenner, so stingy with language. Soon after Stenner had
joined the bunch, he and Vail had driven to a small town to take a
deposition. An hour and a half up and an hour and a half back. As he
had got out, Vail had leaned back through the car window and said,
'Abel, we just drove for three hours and you said exactly twelve words,
two of which were "hello" and "goodbye",' to which Stenner had replied,
'I'm sorry. Next time I'll be more succinct.' He had said it without a
smile or a trace of humour. Later, Vail had realized he was serious.

They drove for fifteen minutes in silence, then: 'We're going to end
up with this one,' Stenner said as they neared the city.

'Always do,' Vail said without opening his eyes.

'Very messy.'

'Most homicides are.'

Not another word was spoken until Stenner turned down the alley
behind Butterfly's and stopped. While he propped the OFFICIAL CAR,
DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE placard against the inside of the
windshield, Vail rapped on the door. It opened a crack and a
scruffy-looking stranger, who was about six-three with machine-moulded
muscles, peered out.

'We ain't open yet.'

'It's Martin Vail. We'll wait inside.'

'Vail?'

'New in town?' Stenner said from behind Vail.

'Yeah.'

'This man is the DA. We'll wait inside.'

'Oh. Righto. You betcha.'

'Assistant DA,' Vail corrected as they entered the steamy kitchen.

'I'm the new bartender,' the stranger said.

'What's your name?'

'Louis. But you can call me Lou.'

'Glad to meet you, Lou,' Vail said, and shook his hand. Vail and
Stenner walked through the kitchen. It was a fairly large room with
stainless-steel stoves and ovens and a large walk-in refrigerator with
a thermal glass door. Bobby Wo, the Chinese cook, was slicing an onion
so quickly, his hand was a blur.
Chock, chock, chock, chock
.
Vail stopped to check the 'Special of the Day' pot.

'Shit on a shingle,' Wo said without slowing down.

'That's three times a week,' Vail complained.

'Tell the lady.'
Chock, chock, chock, chock, chock
.

'Quit bellyachin',' a growl for a voice said from across the room.
Butterfly, who was anything but at five-four and two hundred and fifty
pounds, entered the kitchen. 'There was a special on chipped beef,
okay?'

'Know what I've been thinking about, Butterfly? Crepes.'

'Crepes?'

'You know, those little French pancakes, thin with

Shana Parver rushed through the frigid morning air and climbed the
steps of the county criminal courthouse. Overly sentimental and
idealistic by nature, although she shielded it with a tough, aggressive
facade, Parver always got a rush when she saw the front of the hulking
building. 'The law is the only thing that separates us from animals,'
Vail had once said. Of course, he had added his own cynical postscript:
'Although, these days, you'd never know it.' But looking up at the
Doric columns soaring above the entrance, each surmounted by
allegorical figures representing Law, Justice, Wisdom, Truth, Might,
Love, Liberty, and Peace, reassured her faith in the sanctity of the
law and reaffirmed her belief in the profession she had chosen while
still in grammar school.