Andrew Klavan - True Crime

Then, lifting her chin, she made the effort, and spoke to me for the first time.

“They’re in the nursery,” she said. “I’ll get them.”

As she left the room without a backward glance, I wondered if she already knew about Patricia. Knew, or suspected, or guessed. But no, I thought. Not yet. It was just that I was late. It was just that.

I clapped my hands. “Dave!” I said. “Davester! McDave!”

He stopped running in circles and lifted his arms urgently. “I can’t find my shoes anywhere!” he said.

“Mama’s going to get them. Why don’t you turn off the tape.”

“Yeah!”

He liked doing that; he was proud of knowing how. He squatted low on his haunches in front of the VCR. He guided his fat finger toward the power button with painstaking care. With a flash, the squealing face of Miss Piggy vanished. In its stead, as the regular TV took over, there appeared the squealing face of Wilma Stoat, the city’s morning talk show queen.

“The death penalty!” she shrieked sincerely. “An urgent issue! What’s your opinion? We’re talking to Murder Victim’s Dad Frederick Robertson and president of the Anti-Capital Punishment Task Force Ernest Tiffin.”

I snorted. Funny that should be on just at this moment, I thought. It was another second before I realized that the man now before the camera was Amy Wilson’s father.

Frederick Robertson. He was an impressive figure in close-up: a thick, oval face; a frown worn into the granite; the hard, tired countenance of a lifelong working man. The caption Murder Victim’s Dad was shown over his cheap necktie as he listened grimly to a question from the audience.

Davy crouched on his haunches, mesmerized as always by the images on the screen. I stood where I was, thinking, Tenderloin; sirloin; T-bone .

“The way it seems to me,” said Frederick Robertson in a gruff, slow voice, “the law makes a deal with the public.”

Porterhouse , I thought. That was the name of the witness. Dale Porterhouse.

“The law says to us-the public: you be nonviolent; you don’t take justice into your own hands-and in return the government is gonna make sure that the guilty party is found and the government is gonna carry justice out in your place.”

I had stepped to the end table by the sofa; I had picked up the phone before I’d even thought about doing it. I pressed the buttons.

Davy’s head swiveled around. His mouth opened in a worried frown. “No, no, Daddy,” he said. “Don’t talk on the phone! Let’s go to the zoo now.”

“We’re going to the zoo just as soon as you get your shoes …”

“Information, what city please?”

“In St. Louis,” I said. “Dale Porterhouse.”

“I fulfilled my part of that bargain,” Frederick Robertson said on the TV screen. “I been a hardworking, honest citizen my whole life. But I would not have fulfilled the bargain if I thought Frank Beachum would not have to pay for my daughter’s life with his life.”

A recorded voice came over the phone with Dale Porterhouse’s number. I whispered the suffix to myself, holding the prefix in my mind as I pressed the buttons again.

My wife strode back into the room carrying Davy’s sneakers and socks. The little boy ran to her, reaching up.

“Oh, what now?” Barbara said, glaring at me.

I held a finger up at her.

Davy bounced on his toes. “Put my shoes on now, Mommy,” he said. “Then Daddy will not talk on the phone.”

“I don’t think anyone who hasn’t gone through it,” said Frederick Robertson ( Murder Victim’s Dad ) to the studio audience, “can understand what happens to a family when a child is taken away from it-not by sickness or an act of God-but by another human being acting for whatever motives-by a murderer.”

“Jello.”

“What?” I said.

“Jello?”

“Oh. Hello. Is Mr. Porterhouse there please?”

Shaking her head with exasperation, Barbara marched over to the cushioned chair by the window. Her dark eyes continued to hurl thunderbolts at me as she sat down, as she hoisted Davy up into her lap.

“My life, my family’s life, has been ruined,” said Amy Wilson’s father. “We spend every day angry. Every day full of rage.”

“Meester Putterhus ees not to be in,” said the woman on the other end of the phone. “Ee ees to be at work now.”

“Look, Daddy,” Davy said happily, “I have my Snoopy socks today.”

“Hey, great,” I told him.

“Jello?”

“Yes, jello, do you know his number? At work. Do you have his number?”

“Oooooh,” said the woman, “noooooo. I no hef hees number there.”

“Oh. All right. Well, thank you.”

I didn’t see much point in leaving a message. I set the phone down.

On television, an audience of housewives and retirees listened thoughtfully as Frederick Robertson’s rough voice continued. “I got other children, okay? I got a wife who depends on me emotionally and financially too. I’m foreman now at a brewery; I got workers who depend on my decisions, a boss who depends on me and so on. And for six years, all that has been … screwed up by this rage, this terrible anger I feel at what happened.”

My wife had pulled Davy’s socks on and was now unlacing his shoes. He waited patiently in her lap, laughing sometimes as she sang to him softly. Her voice was off-key, the song was something silly of her own invention. All the while she sang it, she went on glaring at me over the top of our son’s head.

It’s ridiculous , I thought. Potato chips! Let it go, let it ride .

I hauled the phone book up from the end table’s bottom shelf.

“My rage is only going to be ended by the death of my daughter’s murderer,” said Robertson. “And I don’t think anyone who was not involved, who has not been through what I’ve been through, has the right to tell me that shouldn’t happen.”

He was there, in the book. At least, I hoped it was he. Porterhouse and Stein, Certified Public Accountants. I heard Barbara make a noise deep in her throat as I began punching the buttons again. She yanked one of Davy’s sneakers open wide and slipped his foot into it.

“Mr. Robertson’s rage is, of course, understandable,” said Ernest Tiffin ( Anti-Death Activist ). “But society has to take a broader, more dispassionate view …”

“Porterhouse and Stein.”

“Yes,” I said eagerly. “Is Dale Porterhouse there please?”

“I’m sorry. Mr. Porterhouse has gone to lunch,” the woman drawled over the wire. Shit! I thought.

“May I ask who’s calling?” she said.

“Urn … yeah,” I said. “Yes.”

“I have my shoes on now, Daddy!” Davy leapt off his mother’s lap and ran across the rug to me, clutched at my pants leg. “Now we can go to the zoo!”

I patted his head abstractedly. “My name is Steve Everett. I’m a reporter for the St. Louis News . Would you ask Mr. Porterhouse to call me as soon as he possibly can? It’s in reference to the Beachum case.”

Davy hugged my leg tightly. “Don’t talk on the phone now, Daddy.”

“Oh yes,” said the receptionist-I could hear her interest rouse. “I’ll certainly let him know as soon as he comes in.”

I pronounced my beeper number and hung up.

“You’re not taking your beeper,” Barbara said.

“Are we going now?” said Davy.

“Let me tell you something,” said Amy Wilson’s father. “My daughter was shot in cold blood for no reason. She’d already given Beachum the money from the register. He already had his money. And while she was lying on the floor-okay? — choking to death on her own blood, this … creature , this man, pulled her wedding ring off her and tore the locket off her neck-a locket I gave her for her sweet sixteen …” Robertson couldn’t go on. He swallowed hard as his eyes began to swim. He forced out the words: “And then he left her there to die. See? See, it’s not about some morality debate on TV or some newspaper editorial or some expert and his big ideas for society. This is a fact of life, it’s a fact of my life-and I want justice to be done- in my life.”