David Ellis - The Hidden Man

“Only thing I can tell you,” Carruthers added, “is we have a preliminary take on the age of these girls. They’re all about the age of Audrey at the time. We can’t be precise, you understand.”

I grew up thinking that I couldn’t fathom how difficult it must have been for Sammy’s parents to lose a child in such a violent way. I had a new perspective now. The imagery produced by this conversation, which I struggled to stifle, was not of Audrey but of my daughter, Emily, strapped in her car seat, struggling for air underwater.

I stared at the motion I had drafted in Sammy’s case-the motion for expedited DNA testing of the bodies discovered behind the grade school or, in the alternative, a continuance of the trial until DNA testing could be completed. I didn’t need this anymore. I could use Archie Novotny’s motive to tell the jury that Griffin Perlini was a pedophile. But filing this motion would certainly provoke Smith. Should I do it? It made me think of my brother. I dialed him on the cell phone.

“Bored as hell,” he said.

“Bored is good. I like bored.” I missed bored.

“How’s it coming?”

“Working on it,” I said. “Getting there.”

I hung up and reviewed the motion. It was ready to go.

“Marie,” I said into the intercom, “let’s file this motion in Cutler today.”

I’d be getting Smith’s attention very soon.

LESTER MAPP’S OFFICE was on the sixth floor, above most of the courtrooms in the newly refurbished courthouse. He was given one of the plum, cushy spaces, by which I mean that he had walls and even a door. The place hadn’t really changed since I’d left-torn-up carpets, cheap artwork, drab paint, low-grade furniture.

He swiveled around in his chair and nodded to me. He had an earpiece that must have corresponded to a cell phone. He waved me to a chair.

“Sure thing,” he said, but his attention had turned to me. He was appraising his adversary and, I assumed, was probably feeling good about where things stood. It only took a glance in the mirror this morning to see the purple bags under my hazy eyes.

“Sure thing. We’ll follow up. I’ve got someone here.” Mapp reached to his waist, presumably killing his cell phone. “Jason Kolarich,” he said, in a tone that suggested parental disapproval. “You’ve been the busy bee.”

I didn’t answer. Condescension is not high on my list of quality attributes. I’d prefer that he just call me an asshole.

“Archie-Archie…” He fished around his desk, which looked like a model of cleanliness and order compared to mine. “Archie Novotny,” he said, seizing on the document I had faxed him. “Archie Novotny is the man who killed Griffin Perlini!”

He still hadn’t asked me a question. I settled into my seat and looked around his office.

“Judge won’t let that in,” he informed me. “A back door to get in Perlini’s pedophilia? C’mon, Counsel.”

I forced a smile, the kind I reserve for people whose teeth I’d like to kick in.

“No, you can forget about that,” he went on. “But listen, Counsel. With the headlines about Perlini and all-I’ve got a little room here. This was obviously a premeditated act with the equivalent of a confession, a store vid that puts him at the scene, I mean-”

“Lester,” I interrupted. “Did you bring me here to tell me how shitty my case is? Or to offer me a deal?”

He watched me for a moment, then broke into a patented smile. This guy was like silk. “Murder two, twenty years. A gift. You go tell your friends you played me like a fiddle.”

The way he presented it, you’d think balloons and streamers were about to fall from the ceiling. “Involuntary,” I countered. “Time served.” Involuntary manslaughter is the only murder charge that gives the judge the discretion to drop the sentence down to no prison time at all or, in the case of Sammy, who’d already spent almost a year inside, to time served.

“Time served. Time served.” Mapp chuckled. He let a hand play out in the air, as if conducting a silent orchestra. “I could think about voluntary. I might be able to give you fifteen. Christmas comes early for Sammy Cutler.”

I could see that the discovery of the bodies behind the elementary school-and the subsequent headlines-had had the intended effect. The county attorney’s office was not thrilled to be coming down hard on a man who avenged his sister’s murder. They couldn’t give him a pass, nor condone vigilantism, but they wanted a quiet resolution where they didn’t play the heavy.

“Let me give that some serious thought, Lester.” I looked up at the ceiling. “Involuntary, time served.”

The prosecutor’s smile went away, but not without a fight. “Jury isn’t going to know that Perlini was a pedophile,” he said. “Or what he allegedly did to Cutler’s sister.”

“You’re starting to sound like a defense attorney, Lester.” The prosecutor was referring to the judge’s pretrial ruling, excluding evidence of Perlini’s criminal sexual history. If Sammy would have agreed to plead diminished capacity, this would be a no-brainer. But with Sammy saying he didn’t do it, the victim’s criminal past was irrelevant.

Then again, I wasn’t so sure Sammy did kill Perlini. I was beginning to like Archie Novotny.

“Involuntary and three,” I said. If Sammy could play nice and get a day for a day, and with credit for time served, he’d have about six more months inside. He could do that, I thought. Another variable was Smith. This would certainly satisfy his need for an expedited resolution, and I wouldn’t be turning over any rocks he wanted to stay covered.

Mapp made a whole show of rolling his neck, moaning, warming himself up to a grandiose display of generosity on this, Sammy’s early Christmas. The only thing missing from his car-salesman act was telling me that “they’ve never done this before,” but that he “liked me.”

What’s it gonna take to put you in a plea bargain today?

“I’d have to go upstairs on this one,” he began. “Voluntary and twelve. If I could even sell that for a premeditated murder-”

“With the equivalent of a confession, right?” I poised my hands on the arms of my chair, elbows out, ready to get up and go.

“Now, you’re not going to tell me you won’t take that one back,” he said. “Twelve years?”

“You don’t have twelve years, Lester. You said you’d have to take it upstairs.”

He watched me again. He thought he was intimidating me with that direct stare. A lot of prosecutors think that. I probably did, too.

I pushed myself out of the chair. “Next time bring roses,” I said.

My adversary switched tacks, bursting into a premeditated laugh and wagging his finger at me. “Kolarich, Kolarich, Kolarich. ‘Next time bring roses.’ That’s good, that’s good. Listen, Counsel. See about that twelve years, and I will, too. Maybe-maybe even think about ten.”

Interesting. If I had ten years on the table now, I could probably knock it down to eight, maybe even six or seven if the judge would help me out, and that wasn’t such a bad deal. I still wanted to know more about my case, but I had the prosecutor moving in the right direction. It wasn’t much, but compared to the rest of the last week or so, things were looking up.

INEVER LIKED POLICE STATIONS, even when I was a prosecutor. It reminded me of a fraternity house, only the members of this particular fraternity had sidearms and batons and the authority to search, seize, detain, and arrest. I never really had much time for the individual cops, either, only that was probably due more to the disdain I had for them growing up than anything else. Aside from the few cops that were outright wrong-on the take, corrupt-there were plenty of corner-cutters in the bunch, guys and gals who were sure the ends justified the means, who remembered a knock-and-announce that never was, who kicked the drugs into plain view after finding them under the mattress, who had an extremely generous interpretation of a voluntary confession. But then again, I didn’t have to go through a door not knowing what was awaiting me. I didn’t have to pat down a suspect, wondering whether there was a needle in his pocket infected with the AIDS virus. I didn’t have to wonder, every shift, whether this was going to be the day. And I didn’t have a healthy sector of the populace that resented me without understanding all the shit I had to put up with.