David Ellis - The Hidden Man

I thought about Sammy’s willingness to take twelve. I thought about our scapegoat, Archie Novotny. I thought about all the ways this could go south. I was relatively sure that I didn’t want the prosecution to take a long, hard look at Novotny.

“We’ll take four,” I said.

ITHOUGHT WE TALKED about eight,” Sammy said from his hospital bed.

“We did. But you have remarkably able counsel. I got you four.” I pointed to the door. “I can go back and offer to double it, if you’d like.”

Sammy smiled and laughed. “No, four sounds pretty good.”

Sammy was in pre-op, getting ready for tomorrow’s transplant surgery.

“Hey, just to ask,” he said. “You think we would’ve won the case?”

I made a face. “I would’ve used Archie Novotny to make sure the jury knew that the dead guy was a child molester. It was possible, right there, that they’d acquit. But other than that, I don’t know, Sammy. They had a strong case.” I paused, then added, “I don’t think Archie Novotny would’ve held up under scrutiny.”

Sammy didn’t look at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he was pretty clever, but maybe too clever by half. It was nice of him to leave the closet by his front door open when I came to visit, and even nicer of him to have that bomber jacket and green stocking cap prominently displayed for me.”

Sammy didn’t answer.

“Nicer still,” I added, “that the murder happened on a Thursday night, when Archie would normally have a guitar lesson which he conspicuously missed. I mean, he even went so far as to write a note on his check to the guitar instructor, in case anyone might forget that he missed his lesson on that fateful night.”

Sammy shook his head, fighting a smile. A shade of rose colored his cheeks.

“Let me guess,” I continued. “If we went to trial, Archie would have pleaded the Fifth, leaving me to shit all over him in front of the jury and getting us a long way toward reasonable doubt. And if the prosecutor gave him immunity, Novotny would have grudgingly admitted that he missed his guitar lesson that night but he’d say he didn’t remember where he was that night. He’d deny murdering Perlini, but it wouldn’t have been a convincing denial. Right so far?”

Sammy brought a hand to his flushed face.

“And say the shit really hit the fan. Say the prosecutors decided to charge him with murder. I’d imagine that Archie had an out. One that he could say he ‘forgot,’ given that it was over a year ago-but push comes to shove, Archie had an alibi. Didn’t he?”

Sammy paused, then spoke through his hand. “He went to the emergency room that night, complaining of chest pains.”

“Ah, I like that,” I said. “Nothing the prosecutors would ever think to look for. But he could always play that card. The hospital would have documented a check-in time, all sorts of testing, and a check-out time. An iron-clad alibi, in his back pocket, if he needed it.”

“Archie’s a good guy,” Sammy said. “Perlini really fucked with his family’s life.”

“So the deal was, you’d kill Perlini, and Novotny would play the alternate suspect.”

That was the reason, all along, that Sammy hadn’t wanted to plead temporary insanity or a similar defense. He didn’t want to admit to killing Perlini because he knew he could point to Archie. It had been Sammy, after all, who had referred me to other victims of Perlini as possible suspects. Novotny’s daughter was a documented victim, one of the two who had sent Perlini to prison for molestation.

“Smart,” I said, “but maybe too smart. Conspiracy to commit, Sammy. You guys could’ve both gone down for that. You knew that, right? That’s one of the reasons you wanted to cut a deal. You decided, end of the day, you didn’t want to risk Archie.”

He nodded. “That was part of it, yeah. But like I told you-when you told me Perlini didn’t kill Audrey, I felt like maybe I should pay a price.”

Sammy, I decided, had paid plenty. Maybe the sentence he’d serve would be slightly out of proportion to the crime he’d committed, but all things considered, I didn’t think the world was terribly out of balance as a result.

I looked around the room. “You ready for tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “It feels good, y’know? I’m helping her. I get to do something positive. A guy like me, I don’t get to do a whole lot of good.”

“Call it a second chance, then.” I patted his arm. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” I promised. “And when Audrey wakes up.”

“Yeah.” He lit up at the mention of her name. “She don’t even know me, Koke. She’s got a whole family now.”

Such as it was. She’d only be seeing the man she thought of as her grandfather, Carlo, during visiting hours at Marymount Penitentiary. Carlo hadn’t been formally sentenced, but I was pretty sure his term would be tantamount to life for a seventy-three-year-old man. Her “mother,” Marisa Butcher, had received a complete pass from law enforcement, who’d never be able to prove that a mildly retarded woman was behind a plot to kidnap Audrey. In fact, I don’t believe she played any role in it whatsoever, and I’d found her to be a sweet, gentle woman. She’d been on quite the roller coaster recently, losing her father to prison but gaining a kidney donor for her desperate “daughter.”

Tommy, Audrey’s “uncle,” was a different story. Regardless of what he knew about Audrey twenty-eight years ago-he claimed total ignorance, naturally-it was pretty obvious that he was clued into the truth recently, given his role in Sammy’s murder trial. Prosecutors were taking a hard look at him for perjury from his testimony at Sammy’s hearing. Given his obvious self-interest in the outcome of Sammy’s case, it seemed like one whale of a coincidence that he happened by the Liberty Apartments on the night of Griffin Perlini’s murder and spotted a black man fleeing the scene, particularly when he clearly was not at Downey’s Pub drinking liquor that night, as he’d said. I figured the odds were good that he’d take a fall on that one. Which meant that Tommy’s brother, Jake, who had provided corroboration for Tommy, might get hit with an obstruction charge himself.

So all was not warm and fuzzy in the Butcher household. Audrey, if she awoke tomorrow with a new, healthy kidney, would find herself down a grandfather and possibly two uncles, and with a hell of a revelation about her entire family.

But she’d have Sammy.

“Audrey knows you,” I told him. “And she will know you.” I put on my coat and walked to the door.

“Hey.”

I turned back around.

“I’m not the only one who got a second chance.”

It was true. Not many people can say they dodged a bullet and mean it, literally. Guns misfire. It happens. Should I accept that as an element of some grand plan, an act of divine intervention? I couldn’t just turn off a lifetime of cynicism, nor could I accept that compromise-my life for Talia’s and Emily’s.

THE AIR OUTSIDE had grown chilly. I lifted my chin to the November sky, letting the wind curl inside my jacket. This is it , I thought. Life 2.0. As bizarre and sometimes terrifying as October had been, it was better than the four months preceding it. I’d been pulled out of my funk-against my will, but pulled out no less. I’d probably look back on that span of time and summarize it as grief bookended by twin traumas, though the second one had a pretty happy ending, all things considered.

But that meant that the worst of that grief-not the dull ache but the pulse-pounding, nightmare-inducing, breath-whisking horror-was over. And this was the truth: I was more frightened now than I’d ever been during the four months after my family died; more scared than I was at any time while Sammy, Pete, and even I faced life-threatening challenges. I knew how to mourn; that, in many ways, was easy. But this part-moving on, starting fresh, the beginning of the rest of my life-this, I didn’t know how to do. This didn’t make sense. Put a smile on my face, earn a living, have some laughs with Shauna and Pete, smell the occasional flower-and pretend that all of it means something?