Authors: Mark Richard Zubro
Rust On the Razor (8 page)
I said, “So, Cody, how 'bout them Braves?”
“Shut up, asshole.”
Tension-relieving chatter was not Cody's long suit.
The drive of a few blocks took only moments. Cody led me up the steps of the police station. It was two stories tall, with four windows on both sides of the front door. The woodwork around them was painted white. It could have
used another coat. Inside, the linoleum floors were faded yellow with black flecks. Pine, stained dark brown, covered the walls halfway to the ceiling; the upper portion was painted pale beige. The first floor was basically one large room with offices around the sides, separated by glass partitions that reached only three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. A reception desk was immediately to the left as I walked in, staffed by a gray-haired woman answering the phone. A low wooden railing separated the reception area from the rest of the fifty-by-fifty-foot space.
used another coat. Inside, the linoleum floors were faded yellow with black flecks. Pine, stained dark brown, covered the walls halfway to the ceiling; the upper portion was painted pale beige. The first floor was basically one large room with offices around the sides, separated by glass partitions that reached only three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. A reception desk was immediately to the left as I walked in, staffed by a gray-haired woman answering the phone. A low wooden railing separated the reception area from the rest of the fifty-by-fifty-foot space.
Two African-American men in cop uniforms stood off to my left on the far side of the room. Four white people in plainclothes worked at various desks on the other side of the railing. I noticed potted plants and pictures of families on desktops. One desk had a typewriter with a yellow rubber duck on topâit had the friendliest face of anybody or thing in the place.
I was fingerprinted and subjected to paperwork being filled out. All the people talked more slowly than I was used to in Chicago. For a few of them I wanted desperately to reach over and press their fast-forward button. It didn't seem like they'd ever get done speaking. Everyone was reasonably polite, but nobody moved a speck above slow, as if time were theirs to play with. All this took until after twelve. Finally, they led me up stairs that were immediately behind the reception desk. I saw a hallway as dreary as the space below. They put me in the first room on the right.
It was not a suite at the Ritz. The best thing about it was that there were no rats or crawling critters visible. There was a chair, but one of the legs was slightly shorter than the other, which made sitting in it annoying. The table in the center of the room could have been shellacked and made into a shrine to the criminals who had carved their initials, names, what I hoped were nicknames, and obscene
graffiti into it. The window had wire mesh on the inside.
graffiti into it. The window had wire mesh on the inside.
Nobody stayed in the room with me. For comfort I finally moved the table against a wall and sat on top of it. I waited and wondered. No doubt in my mind that I was a suspect. I tried the door. Locked. I decided if there was a fire I could batter the table or chair through the mesh on the window and jump two flights down. They hadn't taken my wallet, watch, other valuables, or shoelaces.
There was no air-conditioning and I had no way to remove the wire mesh and open the window to get some fresh air. At first I sweated a fine mist of damp all over my body. Then I started to drip. An hour later, when rivers of moisture were running off me and with my worries mounting, Wainwright Richardson came in.
I neither gave nor got a cheery greeting. He refused my first and all subsequent requests for water. Richardson took the chair, turned it backwards, and straddled it. He had to lean forward so the short chair leg rested on the ground. I guess it doesn't do to rock back and forth while grilling a suspect.
“You're in a lot of trouble,” he said.
“I want my lawyer.”
“Don't you start that with me. We aren't up north. We take our slow time down here and we do things right.”
“If you're doing things right, you're tracking the sheriff's movements from last night, finding out who saw him last, seeing if there were any witnesses for this morning, checking to see who had grudges against him. I want my lawyer.”
“You talk a lot for somebody in so much trouble.”
“I'm just enchanted with the luxury of the surroundings and the charm of my hosts.”
“Why'd you kill him?”
“I want my lawyer.”
“Now, we're not getting anywhere this way. You need to talk to me.”
“I want my lawyer.”
As his questioning continued, my responses didn't vary much from “I want my lawyer” and “I don't know why you keep asking me thingsâI want my lawyer.” Kind of a dull conversation, but I was beginning to move from worried to scared.
After an hour of this I said, “You have nothing to hold me on. I'm leaving.”
I got up, walked to the door, and tried the handle. It was still locked.
“You're staying here,” he said quietly.
“No, I'm not.” But I think he knew my bluster was for naught.
He said, “Your boyfriend may be rich, but down here we take murder seriously. Don't have much crime in this county, and we don't like strangers coming in and causing trouble.”
“Are you a throwback?” I asked. “Is this
Mississippi Burning?”
Mississippi Burning?”
“What's that?”
“A movie. Look, I know I haven't crossed any international boundaries. You people might not like me because I'm gay, but you must read the papers. The world is changing. You can't just lock somebody up and throw away the key. Eventually there will be lawyers and publicity involved with this.”
“We'll handle any problems.” He knocked three times on the door. Harvey, the young blond cop, opened it. Richardson slipped out. I didn't bother to rush them. I could see the headline: “Faggot Shot While Trying to Escape.”
Sweating before was as nothing now as the heat of the day stretched into late afternoon. Outdoors had been stifling.
Inside was beastly. During the next hour, I took my shoes and socks off, let my shirt hang open, and contemplated stripping down to my shorts. For the hour after that, hunger and especially thirst became massively important as I tried to think of all the long cool drinks I'd ever had. The third hour had me in my underwear. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. I shut my eyes and must have dozed, because I woke with a start as somebody rattled the doorknob. I did not leap to my feet. I wanted a drink of something and didn't care who saw me nearly naked.
Inside was beastly. During the next hour, I took my shoes and socks off, let my shirt hang open, and contemplated stripping down to my shorts. For the hour after that, hunger and especially thirst became massively important as I tried to think of all the long cool drinks I'd ever had. The third hour had me in my underwear. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall. I shut my eyes and must have dozed, because I woke with a start as somebody rattled the doorknob. I did not leap to my feet. I wanted a drink of something and didn't care who saw me nearly naked.
The door opened and I thought, this is the end. The man who stood in the door looked like the warden from the movie
Cool Hand Luke
, only this guy must have been in about his sixties. He was a mousy guy with a hat, a short-sleeve shirt, hands on his hips, and an arrogant air. I glanced over his shoulder for a man in mirrored sunglasses who would be toting a shotgun.
Cool Hand Luke
, only this guy must have been in about his sixties. He was a mousy guy with a hat, a short-sleeve shirt, hands on his hips, and an arrogant air. I glanced over his shoulder for a man in mirrored sunglasses who would be toting a shotgun.
I expected him to speak in a reedy-whiny voice, the first words of which would be, “What we've got here is a failure to communicate.”
He gazed around the room, caught sight of me on the floor, and said to someone behind him, “Get this man some water, and I want a fan in here now!”
He propped the door open with his briefcase, bent his pudgy frame down next to me, and offered me his hand. “You okay, son?” he asked.
“Think I'll sit until the water gets here,” I said.
He nodded and went to the door. A pitcher of water, a glass, and a fan were brought in by a lanky teenager. “Thank you,” my savior said. The kid scuttled out.
He poured me water and handed me the glass. I gulped greedily.
“I'm Beauregard Lee,” he said. “Call me Beau. I'm a lawyer. I got a call from Todd Bristol. We went to law
school together. Don't tell him I told you, but he was my first lover back when dinosaurs ruled the world.”
school together. Don't tell him I told you, but he was my first lover back when dinosaurs ruled the world.”
He plugged the fan in and aimed it so the breeze hit me directly. I drained the water from the glass, poured myself another.
“Took me a while, because I had to drive down from Atlanta, and I can't stay long. I've got to get back for a huge case tomorrow, and I don't do criminal law, but Todd said you were a sister, and I know how these backwoods towns can be. The death of the sheriff was on all the news stations.”
“I haven't been charged with anything yet.”
“Not from lack of trying.”
“Huh?” I felt somewhat better. I reached for my pants, stood up, and pulled them on. Beau looked disappointed but didn't comment.
He said, “The only thing these people have done all day is try and tie you to the murder. Every step you and Scott have taken since you got here has been investigated. What they don't have is direct evidence linking you to the murder.”
“I didn't do it.”
“I understand. They don't. They know you're gay and you're a stranger. You corrupted their favorite son. Led him to Sodom.”
“He was more than willing.”
“Yes, but they don't want to know that, or won't accept it. The big cities and evil ways have stolen him from them. There is a lot of affection for Scott Carpenter in this town, as you can imagine. I remember as he was growing up reading about him in the Atlanta papers as all-state everything. He was gorgeous then.”
“How is he?”
“He's been downstairs most of the afternoon. He's been trying to get to see you.”
“How's his dad?”
“I don't know. I told him to go back to the hospital and that I'd call him as soon as something developed here.”
“What's going to happen to me?”
“The only thing that's stood in the way of you being arrested, so far as I can tell, is that the district attorney is a young fella just out of law school.”
“And he isn't as prejudiced and narrow-minded as these others?”
“He's a part-time preacher at the local Evangelical Christian Reformed Nazarene church.”
“That doesn't sound promising.”
“He's totally new on the job, which is somewhat good. He doesn't want to be made a fool of in court. He knows he has to have a case. He wants to go exactly by the book, and going by the book at this point for you could be a very good thing.”
I stuck my feet in front of the fan and began to pull on my shoes and socks.
“Any chance I'll be let out of here?”
“I should be able to get you out without you being charged. If they find enough evidence to arrest you, that's a whole 'nother thing, as I'm sure you know, but this has been long enough.”
It was after five by now. He asked me what had happened from the moment we got to town. I told him. When I finished he said, “Come on with me.”
“They wouldn't let me out the door earlier,” I said.
“Stick with me.”
Beau took me by the elbow and walked me past the young blond cop. Harvey shuffled uneasily but let us pass. He followed us down the stairs. Beau stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gazed across the room at Cody, the dark-haired cop. Beau said nothing, just nodded to himself, and turned to the reception desk.
Violet Burnside was standing near the reception desk. She wore tight short-shorts and a halter top that emphasized her enormous endowments. her hair looked artificially colored, and I thought I saw lines around her eyes that her excessive makeup almost completely concealed.
She was speaking to the receptionist and several men in sport coats. I presumed they were plainclothes cops. She giggled and simpered at them.
Once they noticed us, they all stopped talking.
Wainwright Richardson came out of an office near the back. He strode to the railing. His eyes kept one continuous glare on Beau.
“May we leave?” Beau asked.
“Your client may not leave town. Any attempt to remove him from this jurisdiction will result in his immediate arrest.”
“Thank you, Mr. Richardson, I understand. We want to be fully cooperative.”
More dagger glares as we left.
Outside, even the humidity felt good for at least the first couple minutes of freedom. We stood in the parking lot.
“What do I do now?” I asked.
“I'm not sure. You're still in danger, and not just because of the murder. You've got more to worry about being prominently gay. Most people in the South are reasonable. However, as anywhere does, we have our share of lunatics. Try not to be in the countryside alone after dark. Carrying a gun is iffy. Do you have one?”
“No. Scott's family might, out at the farm.”
“Too long of a wait for a permit for you to carry one. And if you did, it could be an invitation to a nut to open fireâor it could protect you. Course, if they caught you with one without a permit, they could lock you up for that. Try to be with a crowd at all times. You might think of hiring a private detective.”
“A local investigator? You're seriously suggesting I trust somebody in this town? Other than you and Scott, there's isn't anybody in hundreds of miles that I would trust.”
Beau sighed. “I wish you could leave.”
“I wouldn't want to go with Scott's dad being ill.”
“Your lover is also in more danger now.”
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