Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“All right,” I said. I sighed. “That stinks. That really stinks.”

Bob nodded, frowned.

I straightened. “So what do you need?”

He went on watching me, his own thoughts moving behind the passionless features. I just felt sick. How had he found out? Why had he had to find out? I wished he would curse me for it. I wished I had never seen his goddamned wife at all. I wished for the days when we could’ve gone outside and shot at each other. Pistols in the Bois de Boulogne at dawn. It would’ve been easier to bear than this.

“Michelle had an interview scheduled today with Frank Beachum,” Bob said finally.

“Frank Beachum,” I repeated. I was thinking again about Michelle’s slender limbs, her brittle bones; Patricia’s long, strong figure; her breast beneath my hand. All the while, Bob’s steady gaze burned into me. I forced the images down. “Right,” I said, blinking once. “Right. Frank Beachum. The guy they’re gonna juice today. Right. I remember. Michelle had a seat for the show.”

“She also had an interview with him. At four, face-to-face in the Deathwatch cell.”

“Right. Okay. I remember that.”

“Alan wants you to cover for her,” Bob said.

“Alan. Right,” I said. I was beginning to focus again. I got the message. Alan wanted me to cover for Michelle. Alan wanted me, Bob didn’t. What Bob wanted was burbling like hot tar at the bottom of his unwavering stare. I stood before him stupidly for a second or two. I tried to think how to answer. I tried to think of what I would’ve said if I hadn’t been sleeping with his wife. If I were just a reporter being called in for a pickup assignment on his day off. “So, uh … Beachum,” I said. “What did he …? This was before my time. He killed some girl or something.”

“A pregnant woman,” said Bob in his quiet, controlled voice. “A college student. Amy Wilson. She was working the summer in a grocery in Dogtown. She owed Beachum money, fifty dollars or something, for some repairs he’d done on her car. He shot her dead.”

“Okay. Anything special about him?”

Bob lifted one shoulder slightly. “He was a mechanic over at that Amoco station on Clayton. That’s about it.”

“He’s one of these born-again crazies,” Jane March chimed in.

I was relieved-I was delighted-for the excuse to turn away from Bob, to turn my attention to her. Still, I could feel his stare, his eyes, like two tiny sets of teeth, gnawing on my profile as I faced her.

“Yeah, they all get born again on death row,” I said. “That place has the highest birth rate in the country.”

“Now, now, now,” said Jane. “Don’t be such a cynical boy. He was born again before all this started. He’d been a drifter or something. From Michigan, I think. Broken home, alcoholic mother. He’d been in jail a couple of times for violent assaults, barroom fights, that sort of thing. And then I think he did three years in MSP for beating up a state trooper who tried to give him a ticket.”

“Sounds like a reasonable sort of fellow.”

“But he was clean for something like four years before the Wilson killing. He got out of slam and met his wife, Bunny or Bonnie or Bipsy or something. She’s one of these born-againers too. I guess she’s the one who led him to Jesus.”

“Yeah, I know these prison groupie types,” I said. “Boy meets girl, girl saves boy’s soul, boy and girl go on interstate kill spree.”

“Cynical, cynical.” Jane March pursed her lips primly. “They were very nice. They had a daughter together. They bought a house in Dogtown. He had his mechanic job. She took care of the baby. They were the all-American family. The guy was totally clean for like three, four years. Then, one July fourth, he walks into the grocery store, this Pocum’s in Dogtown. Amy Wilson is working the register. She says she hasn’t got the money she owes him …”

“And old Frank just kind of lost that nasty temper of his.”

“Looks like it.”

“Tsk, tsk. I hope he expressed his remorse, at least.”

“Well, no, he’s been a little slow there,” said Jane March. “He still says he just went to the store to get some A-1 steak sauce for his Fourth of July picnic.”

“Hey, convincing story.”

“That’s what the jury thought. It didn’t help much that a guy in the store saw him run out with the smoking gun. And then some poor woman who had no idea what was going on nearly bumped into him in the parking lot.”

I laughed. “A-1 Sauce. I like that. That’s good.”

“What Michelle wanted on this story …” Bob’s soft, contained, penetrating voice brought me back around to face him, brought my mind back around to the sickly heat between us and the conversation we were not having as Jane March looked on. “What I want on this story,” he said, holding up his hand, explaining in that schoolteacher way of his, “is the human interest. All right? What it’s like on death row on the final day. Don’t overload it with the details of the case. We’ve already covered the case, and all the appeals and all that. I want what the cell looks like, and what Beachum looks like, and what’s going on inside his mind. A human interest sidebar, that’s what I want. All right?”

“Right. Sure,” I said. I adjusted my glasses which had slipped on the sweaty bridge of my nose. This is almost over , I told myself. It isn’t going to be too bad. Not yet, not now . First, we would deal with the story. That was Bob’s way. Professional, ordered, calm. We would deal with the story first, and all the rest would come later. All I had to do for now was keep my mouth shut and my head down; do the job, do the work, and we would get through today without the full-blown disaster that was surely coming. We would get through today, and tomorrow-well, maybe the world would end. Who knows? I could get lucky. “Human interest sidebar,” I repeated. “Righty-oh.”

I thought I saw a grimace of distaste twist Bob’s mouth for a second. But then the round, youthful face was still again, and the expression calm, and the blue eyes black to their depths. “I’m sorry to call you in on your day off,” he said, with no inflection in his voice at all.

“Hey … hey … I mean … hey. No problem. It’s an emergency,” I said.

“Yes,” said Bob. “It is.”

Jane March watched him, then me, then him again. She would get at the truth before long, I was certain. Everyone in the damn building would get at the truth before too long. And as for my wife, as for Barbara … I didn’t want to think about that.

“Okay. Hokey-dokey. Right,” I said. “I’ll be … I’ll get … right on that.”

Silently, I sang me a hallelujah when, at last, I could turn away from him and head toward my desk. I felt the basilisk at my back, but I knew that if I just kept going it would be all right. I would get to my chair. I would bury my head in the story. I would hand in my copy at the end of the day, and then go home and move away without leaving a forwarding address. Something. I would think of something. I felt the clenched fist of my stomach starting to loosen as I hurried up the aisle.

Three steps. I got three steps. And then I pulled up short.

Shit , I thought. A question had occurred to me. On a normal day, it would have been a simple thing to turn around and ask my question of the city editor. It did not seem a simple thing to do today. My stomach clenched right up again. I imagined the sweat on my back made my white shirt gray as Bob stared at it. I imagined he didn’t want me to turn around again any more than I wanted to turn around again. I told myself not to turn around. I told myself to forget my question, to go to my desk and get to work.