Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“God bless you, Bridge,” I called after her. “Make it a big one.”

“Women can fetch coffee in the office now because improved job opportunities have given us new confidence,” she called back.

“That’s great,” I said. “Make it black, will you.”

Bridget’s job had driven her insane.

I was about to start paging through the trial transcript when I noticed the time on the clock above the city desk. “Damn,” I whispered. It was nearly 11:30. “Wife, wife, wife.” She thought I was at the gym. She would be wondering where I had gotten to by now.

I snatched up the phone, tapped in my number. I wedged the handset under my ear. With one hand, I started lifting transcript pages out of the box, tossing clumps of them onto my desk. The voir dire, the opening arguments … With the other hand, without thinking, the way you do on the phone, I plucked the cigarettes full out of my pocket now and jerked one into my mouth. I was reaching for my lighter when I remembered Bob. The cigarette jerked unlit between my lips as I listened to the phone ring.

“Hello?” Barbara’s voice was mellow and deep. She always sounded busy when she answered the phone. She always sounded annoyed, as if you’d interrupted her. In the background, I could hear our son, Davy. He was singing some song he’d learned on Sesame Street about how everyone in a family had to work together.

“It’s me, sweetheart,” I said.

“Steve? Where are you?”

I let her hear a sigh-a weary, working-guy kind of a sound. “I’m at the paper. They roped me in.”

“Oh no. How’d they find you? They called here but I wouldn’t tell them where you were.”

How had Bob known where I was anyway? “I stopped off to get something on the way back from the gym,” I said. “I got caught.” It was amazing how easily the lies came out. I didn’t even have to think about them anymore. They seemed the natural language of conjugal conversation.

There was a pause. I could imagine her, my wife, with her hand on her hip, her head tilted into the handset. Not suspicious yet, just vexed that I’d come back to work after I’d been here all weekend.

In the pause, my eyes returned to the transcript on my lap. I plucked the unlit cigarette from my lips, and began paging through the testimony again, browsing through it, searching for the witness in the parking lot.

“Well,” Barbara said then, “look. You really did promise Davy you’d take him to the zoo.”

I winced. “Ah Christ. The zoo. I forgot.”

“He’s been talking about it all morning.”

I didn’t say anything. My attention was torn for a moment between the sour bath of guilt I’d just been dropped in-and the words I’d just spotted on the page:

Witness: I was just leaving the parking lot. I’d only driven in to get a Coke from the machine. There’s a vending machine there .

That’s her , I thought.

“Steve? Did you hear me? He really is expecting you. He’s been talking about it all morning.”

“What?” I said. “Yeah. Right. I know. Christ, I feel awful.”

“And you worked all weekend. He didn’t see you at all.”

“I know, I know. Um …”

CA: And you saw the defendant at the time, Mrs. Larson?

Witness: Yes, I almost backed right over him .

“I know it’s work, but I really feel it would be a bad idea to let him down like this again,” Barbara said.

“Right, right, I think you’re right.” My eyes kept running down the page. My hand automatically pulled the plastic lighter from my pocket. Without thinking, I flicked the flame to my cigarette as I read along.

Witness: He was just there all of a sudden in back of me. I guess he’d come out of the store .

Defense: Objection .

Judge: Yes, sustained. Please don’t guess, Mrs. Larson. Just tell us what you know .

“The thing is: there’s been an accident,” I thought to say. “You remember Michelle Ziegler? You met her at Christmas.”

“Oh-yes … That college girl who kept following you around.”

“Yeah. Well, she ran her car into a wall near Dead Man’s Curve.”

CA: And did you notice whether the defendant was running at that time?

Witness: Yes, I did. He was .

CA: And he continued running after you nearly struck him?

Witness: Yes. I called to him, but he hardly stopped. He didn’t even turn around .

“Oh no,” Barbara said. And she said it as if she meant it. I knew she would take it like that. She was a very compassionate woman. “Is she hurt?”

“Yeah, she really got wracked up apparently. They don’t think she’s gonna make it.”

“Oh, God, that is terrible. She was just a girl, wasn’t she?”

“Mm, yeah,” I murmured, reading the transcript. “It’s awful.”

CA: Mrs. Larson, did you notice at that time whether the defendant was holding anything in his hand?

Witness: Yes. He was. He did have something in his hand .

CA: And did you see …?

Witness: No, I couldn’t see what it was .

“You sound pretty upset,” said Barbara.

“What?” I lifted my head a moment. Upset about what? What the hell were we talking about? I tried to focus my attention on the conversation. The shots , I thought. “Oh, Well, yeah, you know, I liked her,” I said. “I like her, I mean. She was, like, a kid … she is a kid. But she was okay.”

“What do they want, you to fill in for her?”

I drew deep on my cigarette-and remembered then that I shouldn’t have lit it. But it was too good now: the balmy fog of it inside me as the sweat dried on my back. I exhaled gratefully. Through the cloud of smoke, I saw Bob sitting very still at the city desk. I saw him watching me. I hunkered down in my seat, averting my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “She had a ticket for the execution at Osage tonight.”

There was another pause at that, an angrier pause if I was any judge. Wouldn’t she have heard the gunshots? I thought. Right out in the parking lot like that . I glanced down at the transcript again. Plucked another page off and laid it on the desk.

“Well, I suppose that’s just your sort of thing, isn’t it?” Barbara said austerely. She was a very austere woman too, my wife. “I suppose you would think that was too much fun to miss.”

“What?” I said, searching the Larson testimony.

“Well, I mean, they could get someone else, Steve. You were working all weekend.”

“Gee, I don’t know …” This was no good. I couldn’t concentrate like this. I had to get off the phone. I wanted a chance to look this transcript over. “Look …” I said. “Look, I’ll tell you what … I don’t have to be down at the prison till four. And I really have all the background I need already. I can come home and pick Davy up now, take him over to the zoo, then I’ll bring him back around three. Okay?”

“What about his nap?”

“What?”

“He’s supposed to go down for his nap right after lunch.”

I put my cigarette hand to my forehead, rubbed the flesh there, trying to think. My eyes were drawn back to the transcript.

“His nap,” I said.

CA: Now, Mrs. Larson, before the moment when Frank Beachum ran out behind you, were you aware of anything unusual?

Witness: No, I was not .