Diehl, William - Show of Evil (5 page)

'Is that why you dumped this Rushman
case on me?'

'Ah, you need a little humility,
Martin. Besides, they want a
monkey show out of that trial and you'll give it to them.'

'So that's what it's all about,
getting a good show and teaching
me a little humility?'

Shaughnessey just smiled.

Now, ten years later, nothing seemed to have changed.

'Now what the hell's that mean, I got to start acting like one?'
Vail responded.

'This thing between you and Eric - '

'He's an incompetent ass-kisser.'

'He's chief of police. You two got to work together - '

'Listen, Roy, in my first nine months in office, I lost more cases
than in the entire nine years I'd practised law. Know why? Eric
Eckling.'

'Just work with him instead of going out of your way to make him
look like a schmuck.'

'Eckling's cops reflect his own incompetence. They lose evidence,
lie, fall apart on the witness stand, put together paper cases, violate
civil rights

Handsome, debonair, the perfect host, and master of Avanti!, the
best Italian kitchen in the state, Guido Signatelli had but one flaw:
outrageously tacky taste. Plastic grapes and dusty Chianti bottles
dangled from phony grape arbours that crisscrossed the ceiling, and the
booths that lined the walls were shaped like giant wine barrels. But
Guido and Avanti! had survived on the strength of personality,
discretion, and dazzling cuisine. Located three blocks from City Hall,
Guide's - the regulars never referred to the place by its name - had
become the lunch-time county seat and the legal profession dominated
the fake landscape. Guide's personal pecking order was as precise as a
genealogical chart. Starting at the bottom were the lobbyists, their
mouths dry and their palms damp as they sucked up to everybody. They
were followed by young lawyers eager to be seen as they cruised the
room, hoping for a handshake; then the assistant prosecutors, huddled
over out-of-the-way tables and whispering strategy; and finally the
kingmakers, the politicos who greased the wheels of the city from
behind closed doors in what was jokingly called 'executive session'

'Was Delaney alone when they found him?' Vail asked as he got in the
car. 'I mean, do they have a suspect?'

'Told you all I know,' Stenner said. He drove the few blocks from
Vail's Dearborn Park townhouse to the Loft Apartments, pulling up in
front of a tall, glass shaft of a building. Behind it, a hundred yards
away and beyond the Hilton, the lake shimmered in the light of a
half-moon. There were four police cars, an ambulance, and Okimoto's
omnipresent van parked all over the street in front of the place. A
small crowd weathered the cold and pressed against the crime-scene
ribbons waiting for something dramatic to happen. Vail and Stenner took
the lift to the thirtieth floor.

The lift opened onto a small hallway with only two doors. One was
propped open with a chair and a uniformed cop stood beside it, looking
back over his shoulder at the action inside.

As they entered the apartment they saw Shock Johnson, standing at
the end of a long hallway, which was carpeted in white and softly
illuminated with indirect lights. The big cop smiled, sauntered over to
them, and stuck out a hand the size of a catcher's mitt.

'Hi, boys,' he said, leading them down the hallway towards the
living room. 'We seem to be seeing a lot of each other these days.'

'Yeah, people'll think we're going steady,' said Vail.

'You're not my type,' Shock said. 'I like blondes.'

'I'll wear a wig.

'It ain't the same.'

They reached the end of the hall and looked into a large living room
with picture windows overlooking the lake. A lab man, who was on his
hands and knees vacuuming the rug with a small hand machine, stood up
and left as they entered. Another was dusting lamps, tables, chairs,
and anything else in the room that might have gathered fingerprints. A
pebbled old-fashioned glass was sitting on one of the tables, powder
still clinging to it.

Except for the panoramic view of the lake, the room was cold and
sterile. Black, ultramodern furniture contrasted harshly with white
carpeting and walls. The three large paintings on one wall were
abstracts in various configurations of black and white. The place
appeared to be spotless. Spotless except for City Council Chairman
Delaney, who lay flat on his back, stark naked, staring blandly at the
ceiling. A lot of blood had collected under the body and dried in a
large, brown stain on the carpet. 'Where's Okie?' Vail asked.

'Other room. He's guessing he got it between seven and eight-thirty.'

'Who found him?' Stenner asked. 'Delaney was the key speaker at a
banquet tonight. When he didn't show up or answer his phone by the end
of dinner, somebody called the office. The doorman answered, told them
he hadn't seen Delaney leave the place. He checked the parking deck to
make sure Delaney's car was there - you can get to it without going
through the lobby. It was. There was a lot of hemming and hawing until
the meeting was over. A couple of the dignitaries came over, the night
manager used a passkey, and they came in. Delaney'd taken the express
to Goodbye City.'

'What time was that?' Stenner asked.

The Delaney house was in Rogers Park on Greenleaf just off Ridge
Avenue, an old, columned, Italianate mansion with tall windows and
bracketed eaves, which from the outside had a gloomy nineteenth-century
look. Eckling left his aide in the car. The maid led him through a
house that had been gutted and remodelled with large, high ceilinged
rooms decorated in bright pastel colours, to a radiant atrium at the
rear of the house with french doors opening onto a large garden
protected by high hedgerows. Outside, a bluejay fluttered and splashed
in a concrete birdbath.

Ada Delaney, dressed appropriately in black, was seated on a bright
green flowered sofa with a tall, slender man with shiny grey-black
hair, olive skin, and severe, hawklike features. He was dressed in dark
blue. Her confused look of the night before had been replaced with a
mien of cold, controlled calm and she greeted Eckling with the attitude
to go with it. Antagonism permeated the room.

'Eric.' She nodded curtly. 'Do you know Gary Angelo?'

'We've met,' Eckling said, shaking his hand.

'Mr Angelo is the family attorney,' she said. 'He's going to handle
things for me. I'm sure you don't mind if he joins us.'

'Not at all,' the chief of police answered, as if he had a choice.

'Would you like coffee?' she asked, motioning towards an ornate
silver service. 'Or perhaps a drink?'

'Nothing, thank you. I hope I'm not comin' at a bad time.'

'Not at all,' she said with a grim smile. 'We were just discussing
how well off Farrell left me and the children. At least he did
something thoughtful.'

'I'm sorry, Ada - '

'Forget the compulsory grief,' she said brusquely, cutting him off.
'The fact is, you were one of his friends, Eric. You knew what was
going on.'

'Uh, it wasn't my business to - '

'To what? Raymond Firestone told me all about it. Parties, poker
games, weekend
retreats
, as Farrell called them, for his in
crowd. You were one of them. Now you come here implying - '

'I'm not implyin' anything,' Eckling said with chagrin. 'I'm just
doin' my job. These things have to be addressed.'

'Well, at least you came yourself, you didn't send one of your
flunkies.'

'Please,' Eckling said, obviously ill at ease. 'I want to make this
as pleasant as possible.'

'I'm sure. What is it you want to know?'

'Do you know of anyone who might have had a motive to do this to
John?'

She sneered at the question. 'Don't ask stupid questions, Eric. It
was very easy to hate Farrell Delaney.'

'How about, uh

The section known as Back of the Yards sprawled for a dozen square
blocks, shouldering the stockyards for space. Its buildings, most of
which were a century old, were square, muscular structures of concrete,
brick, and timber behind facades of terracotta. The warehouses and old
manufacturing plants were once headquarters for some of the country's
great industrial powers: Goodyear and Montgomery Ward, Swift and Libby.
Developers had resurrected the structures, renovating them and turning
the once onerous area of canals, railroad tracks, and braying animal
pens into a nostalgic and historic office park.

The Delaney building was six storeys tall and occupied a quarter of
a block near Ashland. The brass plaque beside the entrance road simply:
DELANEY ENTERPRISES, INC., FOUNDED 1961.

The executive offices were on the sixth floor and were reminiscent
of the offices that had been there a hundred years before. As Shock
Johnson stepped off the lift, he looked out on a vast open space
sectioned off into mahogany and glass squares. With the exception of
Delaney's office suite and the three vice presidents' offices that
adjoined it, which occupied one full side of the large rectangle, all
the other offices lacked both privacy and personality. Johnson thought
for a moment of Dickens: he could almost see the ghost of Uriah Heep
sitting atop a high stool in the corner, appraising the room to make
sure everyone kept busy. The executive secretary, Edith Stoddard, was
dressed to mourn in a stern, shin-length black dress. She wore very
little make-up; her hair was cut in a bob reminiscent of the Thirties
and was streaked with grey. She was a pleasant though harsh-looking
woman; her face was drawn and she looked tired.

'I've arranged for you to use three VP suites,' she said, motioning
to them with her hand. 'You got the list of employees?'

'Yes, ma'am, thank you,' Johnson answered.

'We have very hurriedly
called a board of directors meeting,' she said. 'I'll be tied up for an
hour or two.'

The felony and misdemeanour history of the county was stored in
canyons of documents in an enormous warehouse that covered a square
block near the criminal courts building. Row after row and tier upon
tier of trial transcripts, bound between uniform brown covers, filled
the enormous warehouse with faded and fading files. Many more had been
misplaced, lost, destroyed, or misfiled; simply transposing the
numbers in the index could send a record into file oblivion. Physical
evidence was harder to come by. Returned to owners, lost, or destroyed,
it was hardly worth the effort to track it down. St Claire signed in
and quickly found the registration number of the trial transcript:
'Case Number 83-45976432, the State versus Aaron Stampler. Murder in
the first degree. Martin Vail for defence. Jane Venable for
prosecution.' He was pointed down through the narrow passageways. Dust
seemed to be suspended in shafts of lights from skylights. It took
fifteen minutes before he found a cardbox box with STAMPLER, A.
83-45976432 scrawled on the side with a Magic Marker. He carried the
box containing the transcript, three volumes of it, to a steel-framed
table in the centre of the place and sat down to study Vail's most
famous case.

Something had triggered St Claire's phenomenal memory, but he had
yet to finger exactly what was gnawing at him: an abstract memory just
beyond his grasp. But in that box St Claire was certain he would find
what he was looking for, just as he now knew it would have nothing to
do with the bodies in the landfill.

He started reading through the first volume but realized quickly
that he would have to categorize the material in some way. He leafed
through the jury selection and the mundane business of preparing the
court for the trial; scanned ahead, looking for key words, piecing
together bits and pieces of testimony; and made numerous trips to the
copy machine. Then he began his own peculiar version of link analysis,
categorizing them and working through the trial in logical rather than
chronological order.

But St Claire was also interested in how Vail had conducted a
defence that almost everyone believed was hopeless. And also the
adversarial cross-examination of Stenner, who was the homicide
detective in charge of the investigation. The fireworks began in the
opening minutes of the trial.

JUDGE SHOAT. Mr Vail, to the charge of murder in the first
degree, you have previously entered a plea of not guilty. Do you now
wish
to change that plea?

VAIL: Yes sir.

JUDGE SHOAT: And how does the defendant now plead?

VAIL: Guilty but insane.

JUDGE SHOAT. Mr Vail, I'm sure you're aware that three
professional psychiatrists have concluded that your client is sane.

VAIL:

Jane Venable stared south from her thirtieth-floor office window in
the glass and steel spire towards the courthouse and thought about
Martin Vail. It had been a long time since she felt such passion or
been as comfortable with a man. Throughout the day she kept having
flashbacks of the night before, fleeting moments that blocked out
everything else for an instant or two. Now, staring into the
late-afternoon mist in the direction of the courthouse, she wondered if
Vail was having the same kind of day.

God, I'm acting like a high school girl
, she thought, and
shrugged it off.

But she had a brief to be filed and she decided to take it herself
rather than have her secretary do it. Then she would drop in on Vail.
Why not? Her memory jumped back to an afternoon ten years earlier when
Vail had shown up unannounced, in the same office that was then hers;
how she had suddenly realized while they were talking that she was
breathing a little faster and paying more attention to him than to what
he was saying. Ten years and she still remembered that brief encounter
when she had first realized that she was attracted to the
rough-and-tumble, sloppy, shaggy-haired courtroom assassin.