Stuart Kaminsky: Blood On The Sun

He would make a call and they would save him. There was no doubt in his mind. He was too valuable. He knew too much and had hidden documents where even they couldn't find them. They knew that if anything happened to him, he would make a call and someone would bring the documents to The New York Times. He would insist that a federal government agency be notified that he had been arrested for murder.

Flack, trying to tame a limp, pushed the big man toward the door. He stopped to pick up Bloom's glasses and was about to put them on the prisoner when he noticed something. He held the glasses up to the light and then handed them to Stella.

She too held them to the light and said, "Plain glass."

Bloom looked over his shoulder at them and smiled.

"Where's your wife?" asked Stella.

Bloom continued to smile.

"Bring him in," she said. "I'll look around here and meet you in about an hour."

She was wrong. It took her two hours in the shop, and that was after she called Aiden, told her what she had found and asked her to bring her kit.

They were in an office in the Manhattan building of family court at Lafayette and Franklin.

Jacob and Tabler sat across from a judge who didn't look much like a judge. She was black, very pretty, with soft-looking ebony hair brushed down to her neck. She couldn't have been more than thirty.

Judge Sandra Whitherspoon had read the reports. Because Jacob was between the ages of seven and twelve, there would be no record of this preliminary hearing or of the case if it went beyond her jurisdiction. In addition, Jacob could not be tried for murder.

She looked up at Tabler and then at Jacob.

"How old were your parents when they were married?" she asked.

The question confused Jacob. Tabler considered saying something but didn't.

"My father was forty-one," he said. "My mother was eighteen."

Judge Whitherspoon nodded as if this were important information.

"Where were they married?" she asked.

"Houston, I think," said Jacob.

"We found your mother's parents in San Antonio," she said. "They want you to live with them. They're coming to get you. I'll be sure they're good people before I release you to them. You understand all this?"

Jacob nodded.

"When you get to San Antonio where they live, they're going to arrange for you to see a psychologist who specializes in children who need help."

Jacob turned to Tabler and said, "What about Kyle?"

"We'll do what we can for him," the old lawyer said gently.

"It's not fair," Jacob said, voice raised, tears in his eyes.

"Why isn't it fair?" asked the judge.

"Because the whole thing was my idea," Jacob said. "He wasn't coming to the house because he was seeing Becky. He came because I called him and asked him to come. When he was on the way I came up with the plan, leaving the evidence in the woods, his running and leaving clues to where I was hiding."

"You talked Mr. Shelton into taking responsibility for a murder he didn't commit?" she said. "And this is the truth?"

Tabler gave up and put his head in his hands.

"The truth," said Jacob.

She didn't believe him. Sandra Whitherspoon and her husband had a twelve-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl. Sandra Whitherspoon spent her days with children who lied and told the truth and mixed the two, sometimes skillfully. She could detect a child's lie, but she couldn't always prove it.

Truth or lie, she couldn't let the sudden confession pass.

Even if the boy testified in a trial, it wouldn't change the fact that Shelton had broken the law. The information did, however, cause her to rethink the idea of a quick placement of Jacob with his grandparents or anyone else.

She decided to order an immediate psychiatric evaluation.

He sat, hands still cuffed behind him, looking across the table at Aiden and Stella. The look was calm. He could have been a man waiting for the next Amtrak train to anywhere.

Stella nodded at Aiden, who read from a list.

"Bloodwood from your cabinet found on Asher Glick matched. You would have had to touch him."

"We hugged," the man said. "We were old friends."

"The same bloodwood dust was found in the tote bag in the church," Aiden continued.

"There are hundreds of shops in Manhattan that have bloodwood pieces and work in bloodwood flooring and paneling," he said.

This was all a game. He'd play with them until someone appeared to take him out of here. He wouldn't have to call. They would know by now.

"A newsstand owner has drawn a sketch of a man who went through his shop next to the Jewish Light of Christ, threatened the shop owner with death for him and his family if he told about your going through and out the back."

She handed him a copy of the sketch. He looked at it for a few seconds and handed it back without expression. Stella's phone vibrated. She reached into her pocket and flipped it open. It was Mac, who said he was on the way.

"I'd fill you in and let you handle it, but it would take time, and there is some information I can't give you, some information you don't want," he said.

"No problem," she said, looking at the man, whose eyes were on the sketch.

"I'm on the way," Mac said.

Stella and Mac understood each other, coworkers, friends. She flipped the phone closed.

"Looks a little like me," he said. "If, and I only say 'if,' I was in that shop, I didn't threaten the shop owner and I didn't go out of his back door and into the synagogue to kill that man."

"You ever been to Korea?" asked Stella.

He had been expecting this one too. He was well ahead of them.

"No," he said.

"And you don't speak Korean?" asked Stella.

"No," he said.

"The hospital footprints of Arvin Bloom just after he was born don't match yours."

"I don't think a bare footprint match has ever been presented to an American court," he said. "Feet change. Fingerprints don't."

"Don't you want to deny the suggestion that you're not Arvin Bloom?"

"I deny it," he said.

"The fingerprints on Arvin Bloom's identification do match yours," Aiden said. "What did you do for more than forty years?"

"Beachcomber," he said.

Stella and Aiden said nothing.

"In Tahiti," he went on.

"We found her," said Stella.

Bloom understood, but he showed nothing.

"Your wife," said Stella. "Shot in the head twice and stuffed in a zipped-up black body bag under the floor of your bedroom. You're a good woodworker."

"I'd like to make a phone call now," he said calmly.

Stella put her cell phone on the table in front of him, got up and took off the handcuffs. He rubbed his wrists and reached for the phone. Yes, they would later check the phone log and find the number he had called, but it would make no difference. He could have insisted on using a public phone, but that too would be traced. He could have insisted on privacy, but he didn't need it.

Stella remained behind him as he punched in the number. The phone rang and a recorded voice message said, "I'm sorry but the number you have dialed is no longer in service. If you think you have dialed incorrectly, please hang up and try again."

He closed the phone and placed it on the table.

This was wrong. Why had they cut him off? They knew he could make another call and copies of the documents would resound on the front page of the Times, lead off the evening news, cost a lot of people their government jobs.

"Hands," said Stella behind him.

This wasn't a perfect time, but he might not get another. And what did he have to lose? Neither woman was armed. Outside the door, to the left, down a short corridor, was an emergency exit door.

He struck out at the woman behind him, the woman who had shot him with a Taser. At the same time he pushed the table over on the other one.