David Ellis - The Hidden Man

“You’re in a special place now,” I said aloud, cursing a God that would have let this happen but needing now, more than ever, to believe in His heaven. “You’re in a special place and it doesn’t matter what happened.” A horn honked behind me and I opened my eyes, a considerable distance having opened between my car and the one in front of me, the light green. I gripped the wheel with white knuckles and took deep breaths, my heart rattling against my chest, my arms trembling.

You were supposed to live. You were supposed to have a childhood full of happiness and then become an artist or a doctor or a-you were supposed to fall in love with someone and have children of your own and be compassionate and warm and loving and happy and I-I wasn’t-I wasn’t there when you needed me. I wasn’t there ever. Not ever.

I slammed on the brakes and stopped just short of the SUV idling at a light in front of me, two children in the backseat turning their heads. I wiped thick, greasy sweat from my forehead and struggled to breathe. This happened, from time to time, when I let it get the better of me. I would calm in a few minutes, and it would wash away to my default mode.

That’s what happens to those of us who get to live. We fight through, grit it out, and move on to something better. It’s the dead who have to settle for what they had.

IMADE IT to the detention center by two o’clock, having calmed down from my lunch appointment. I had to get my act together for Sammy’s sake. And I was pretty sure I could do it. If there is one thing I took from my father, it was that ability to compartmentalize. He was a bitter, insecure asshole who could charm a rattlesnake when he turned it on. My version came in a different flavor-I was about as charming as a rattlesnake-but I could focus when the need arose.

I wondered, briefly, how Sammy would feel about his lawyer being pretty sure he could handle his case, but by then a guard was showing me back to the glass conference rooms. You get to know these guards, who are usually your typical robotic public servants, and it always pays to get on their good side. That’s always been my instinct, being nice to the staff, because they can make your life easier, though I wasn’t really sure what good it was having a prison guard on my side. Either way, for some reason entirely unknown to me, prison guards are not big fans of defense lawyers. And most of them, I’ve seen more humor in a hungry alligator. This guy pushed the door open like he didn’t want anything to do with me and pointed at the table where I was to sit.

“This is great, thanks,” I said to the guard. “I’ll start with a shrimp cocktail, and maybe I can see a wine list?”

The guard didn’t see the humor. “You being smart?”

“That was my first mistake. I’ll talk slower next time.” I opened the small file that Smith had given me on Sammy’s case. Sammy and I hadn’t discussed the details of the case yesterday. It was enough for us, yesterday, to simply reconnect after a long separation.

The case file was relatively small, but sufficient to tell me that the state had a pretty decent case against Sammy.

Griffin Perlini had answered his door on the evening of September 21 at about nine o’clock, whereupon he was greeted with a bullet from a.38 special through the forehead. A neighbor saw a man in a brown bomber jacket and green stocking cap running down the hallway. A married couple, strolling the sidewalk outside, positively ID’d Cutler as the man they saw passing them at a sprint, coming from the apartment building where Perlini lived. And a security camera from a convenience store down the street caught Sammy’s eight-year-old Chevy parked outside.

I’d reviewed a copy of that tape, typically grainy footage with a real-time clock running in the corner of the screen. The camera was positioned in the store’s back corner, providing an overview of the entire shop, including the front register, and continuing to a small area outside the store. At the time of 8:34 P.M., a beat-up Chevy sedan pulled up next to the convenience store, parking mostly out of the camera’s sightline but, alas, the rear end of the car was in full view-including the rear license plate, which confirmed it was Sammy’s beat-up Chevy. The car remained there until 9:08 P.M., at which time it drove away, out of the camera’s view. The time frame matched up perfectly with someone who drove to Perlini’s apartment, got in and killed him, and left. The only silver lining was that the camera could not, at any point in time, show the front of the car, or who got in or out-but Jesus, it wasn’t exactly a quantum leap here.

Once the police visited his house to inquire, Sammy didn’t exactly acquit himself well. He was asking for a lawyer before he had the door open. Then he changed his mind, at the police station, and unleashed a tirade against Griffin Perlini before they even mentioned why they were questioning him. He never outright confessed but that’s like saying Custer never outright surrendered.

I reviewed the list I had made:

1. Neighbor witness-saw man in brown jacket, green cap fleeing

2. Married couple-ID’d Cutler running from apartment building

3. Security video-Cutler’s car parked down street

4. Police interview-Cutler brought up Perlini’s name spontaneously

The case against Sammy looked pretty solid. Eyes at the scene, his car on camera at the scene, and a statement tantamount to a confession. But what was missing from all of this was what, in my opinion, was the most obvious element of the defense.

Sammy had pleaded a straight not-guilty. What he should have pleaded was a diminished-capacity defense, probably temporary insanity. He should admit he killed Griffin Perlini and tell the jury why-because Griffin Perlini was a child sex offender who had preyed on Sammy’s sister, Audrey. No jury would convict Sammy on those facts. Hadn’t his public defender explained that to him?

Sammy walked in, deputy escort in tow, and remained silent until the guard had locked him to the table and left the room. He had darker circles under his eyes than yesterday, and those eyes fixed on me with none of the curiosity and tolerance from our first meeting. He nodded without enthusiasm at the case file in front of me as he reached for his cigarettes. “So you know everything?”

You never know everything from a cold file. “They have you at his apartment building at the time of the murder,” I said. “You got any valid reason to have been in that neighborhood?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“You own a thirty-eight special?”

“Nope.”

The cops didn’t recover the gun, which was something, at least. Nor did they recover the brown bomber jacket or green stocking cap from Sammy’s place. Obviously the theory would be that Sammy tossed the gun and clothes, but at least plausible deniability was an option.

“Anyone ever borrow your car?”

Sammy stared at me with a sour expression. “Yeah, there’s this guy who goes around killing child molesters who wanted to borrow my car that night. You think that might be important? Should I have mentioned that before?”

He was in a real mood. What did he think, I wouldn’t ask him any questions? But I played along. “This vigilante, did he own a brown jacket and green stocking cap?”

He didn’t seem to like my return volley. He was pissed off about something. Maybe it was my questions, which reminded him of how tight the state’s case was. Maybe it was the fact that he was looking at life in the pen. It felt like something more personal.

“Sammy, your public defender ever mention a diminished-capacity defense?”

He blew out smoke with disgust. “What’s that? You mean the insanity shit?”