Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“No. I spoke to him. I went to the prison.”

“You went to the prison.”

“I went there today. Yes.”

“And you looked at this man. Is that it? You saw his face.”

“Yes.”

“You saw his face and it looked like your face. So you thought, Well, this man must be innocent. Must be some black boy did it.”

“I didn’t know your grandson was black until I got here. It’s just that there are flaws-there are flaws in the story.”

This time, she laughed outright, dark, flat laughter. “I had a cousin they electrocuted last year down in Florida, Mr. Everett. There were all kinds of flaws in that story.”

I closed my eyes. Opened them. Crushed out my cigarette in the ashtray. “Maybe there were. I wasn’t assigned to that one. This man is innocent.”

“Mm,” said Mrs. Russel. “You weren’t assigned to that one. No one was assigned to that one.” She lifted the hand from her lap. She reached up and fingered the locket around her neck, fingered it gently, wistfully. In the lamplight, I could see her initials inscribed in the gold surface, letters made lovingly ornate, surrounded by a decorative border like lace. “But then you didn’t look at my grandson’s face either, did you? And then my grandson’s face, it didn’t look like yours anyway. That’s all. ‘Is this your boy?’ Like they found some dog in the street.” She wrapped her hand around the locket tightly. “Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Everett. He was a loving child. My Warren. I seen all kinds of children, and my Warren was a loving child.” With a grimace, she let the locket go, let it fall against her skin. She lowered her hand into her lap again. She looked down at the rug between us. “So you got anything else to say to me this evening?”

I just sat there, on the edge of the sofa, feeling the busted spring digging into my butt. Did I have anything else to say?

“Then I think you better go back to your newspaper,” said Mrs. Russel. “This neighborhood can get dangerous at night.”

For another moment, I went on sitting there. I put my hands up, cupped them around my mouth and nose and breathed into them, smelling the cigarette on my breath. I was tired. My mind was still and gloomy and I was tired and I didn’t know if I had anything else to ask or say. I pushed off my knees and stood up. Mrs. Russel slouched in her chair with her slippered feet out before her. I took my card out of my wallet and laid it on the table next to her saucer. She didn’t stir, didn’t glance at it or at me.

“He’s … a decent guy, I think,” I said. “If it matters to you. He has a wife, a kid. I don’t think he did it. I think maybe your grandson did it. If I’m right, then I think maybe you would know. If you know, then you can’t let this happen.”

She lifted her eyes to me and the storm in there was raging. “Go on home, Mr. Everett,” she said.

“They’re going to kill him at midnight. He’s innocent, Mrs. Russel. My number’s on the card.”

I stepped toward the door.

Behind me, Mrs. Russel said, “Everybody’s guilty of something.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” I spun back around to face her. “For God’s sake,” I said.

As I put my hand on the knob, I heard her voice again. Toneless again. Flattened out by the weight on it. “Anyway, I seen a lot of innocent folks get killed in this part of town,” she said. “But it’s funny. I ain’t never seen you here before.”

As I drove back over the boulevard toward the city, I thought of all the things I should have said to her. I should’ve told her about the potato chips and my instinct that Porterhouse was lying. I should’ve told her about the way the car backed into Beachum’s left side. I should’ve drawn her a map and showed her. Sometimes you have to go on instinct, I should have said. And as for the sins of society, blacks and whites and bigotry and unfairness … all I know about are the things that happen, I should’ve said. Someone held the gun, someone pulled the trigger. Those were the facts. Amy Wilson was murdered and the wrong man was going to die for it. That’s all I knew. That’s what I should have told her.

I was cruising through University City now, cruising through the dark. Driving slowly, for me, driving just above the speed limit anyway, with nowhere special to go. The radio was on; the news station was playing, the self-important rhythms of the news were murmured low. I was passing the McDonald’s where-as I found out later from the police report-Michelle Ziegler had had her cup of coffee that morning, had sat and cried about a lousy one-night stand, before weaving off toward Dead Man’s Curve.

I should have said something , I thought as I passed it. I should have said anything that came to mind. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference, but now, as things stood, there was nothing left. Nothing else to do, no one else to talk to, no other leads to run down. It was after eight. With less than four hours to the execution, I didn’t have a single piece of evidence I could bring to the publisher, to Lowenstein, nothing to make him get on the phone to the state-house and buy Beachum a little time, enough time.

I suppose I should have been working on that. Racking my brains, trying to come up with a fresh angle, a new lead. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t even get myself to think about it for any stretch of time. Whenever I tried, my mind drifted away to other things. My job, for instance. Without this story to raise my stock, how the hell was I going to get Bob off my case, how was I going to convince him to let me keep my job? And Barbara. She would find out the truth when they fired me. She would find out the truth one way or another anyway. Then she’d be gone. And Davy would be gone with her. And I loved Davy, if I loved anyone, and I didn’t want to grow old alone. If I just could’ve gotten this story, I kept thinking. If I just could have played the hero on this one and come through, maybe I could’ve turned things around, maybe I could’ve made a case for myself. At the paper. With my wife. Maybe. Somehow.

The boulevard streetlights came toward me, flashed over me. I passed the park, then the long stretch of low garages, fast food restaurants, parking lots. I reached the border of the city and saw Dead Man’s Curve ahead. I came round it slowly in the flow of the scant Monday-night traffic. As I went, I cast a quick look through the window in the direction of the filling station. The broken husk of Michelle’s red Datsun had been towed away, but the black mark of the crash was still smeared over the garage’s white wall. I could see it in the high station sodium lights. On the asphalt, in the glow, shards of glass still twinkled.

“Dumb broad,” I murmured, and my heart hurt for her, and for Beachum, and for myself.

I was just coming out of the bend, when I heard his name, Beachum’s. I heard it spoken by the newsman on the radio. I pushed up the volume, listened as the road straightened out before me.

“Frank Beachum,” the solemn newscaster said, “the St. Louis man scheduled to go to his death by lethal injection at midnight, has reportedly confessed to his crime.”

I pulled the Tempo over to the side of the road. The newsman continued: “Television station KSLM is now reporting that a source close to the governor’s office says Beachum has expressed remorse over the murder of Amy Wilson, the pregnant woman he shot dead six years ago.”

I gripped the wheel hard, my mouth open. I leaned forward until my brow was pressed against the wheel’s hard plastic.