Mark Gimenez - Accused

"Care for a drink?" the D.A. asked.

"No, thanks."

"Don't mind if I do."

The D.A. found a glass and blew the dust out then poured two fingers of whiskey. He held the glass up with a solemn expression.

"To Trey."

The D.A. downed the drink and poured another.

"Rex, tell me about Melvyn Burke."

They had finished the tour and were now sitting on leather seats in the upper salon as if they owned the boat. The D.A. smoked his cigar and sipped his whiskey.

"Melvyn is the dean of lawyers on the Island. Honorable to a fault."

"He seems burdened by his past."

"Aren't we all."

"I'm representing my burden. What's his?"

The D.A. puffed on his cigar then pondered a moment. He came to a decision.

"Scott, I'm gonna tell you something about Melvyn in strict confidence. He's too good a man for this to get out."

"Sure, Rex."

"Melvyn is BOI and five years older than me. Went to Rice then UT law. Top of his class, could've hired on with the big Houston firms, made a career representing the Enrons of the world. Instead, he came back to the Island and set up a one-man shop, figured on being our Atticus Finch, if you can believe that."

"Well…"

"Anyway, he had a good paying practice, but he took court appointments, for indigents. Judges appointed him because they knew poor folks would have a good lawyer. A great lawyer. Melvyn worked their cases just like his paying clients'."

The D.A. blew out a cloud of smoke. He watched it hang in the air above his head then dissipate.

"Melvyn caught a death penalty case, teenage orphan boy, what we called a 'retard' back then, 'mentally challenged' today. Black boy, charged with raping and killing a white girl. Melvyn took a liking to the boy-he didn't have his own kids, something with the missus-got the judge to release the boy into his custody pending trial. Took him home with him, came to love him like a son. Melvyn proved that boy innocent-I wasn't prosecuting then, but I was there-but the jury-all white men- they convicted him anyway, sentenced him to death. Melvyn appealed all the way to the state supreme court, but lost. No DNA testing back then. State executed the boy a year later."

"A year? That's fast."

"That was back in the sixties when the State of Texas was executing black men like the Taliban executes loose women." The D.A. paused and puffed. "Few years later, the real killer confessed on his death bed. The boy was innocent."

"Damn."

"That case haunts Melvyn to this day. Blames himself."

"Why? It wasn't his fault."

"Because that's what good men do. Just like it wasn't your fault your wife left you, but you blame yourself. So you figure you gotta defend her."

"How'd you know?"

"Twenty-eight years in this job, you learn about folks… and I've been there. Wife leaving you, that's tough on a man. You wonder what's wrong with you, how you failed her. You blame yourself. You start thinking differently about yourself. You go to the bar luncheon or the grocery store, everyone smiles at you but you know they're thinking you couldn't make her happy in bed, you couldn't satisfy her, you-"

"Weren't man enough."

The D.A. nodded. "My first wife left me twenty-five years ago. I always wondered if I had only been a better husband, a better man, a better… something… whatever she needed, maybe she wouldn't have left me. Took me a while to figure out it wasn't about me. It was about her. Just like it wasn't about you, Scott… It was about your wife."

The D.A. drank his whiskey.

"She left me for a Houston doctor with a mansion in River Oaks."

"Did she have an affair with the doctor, before she left you?"

"Yep."

"Mine, too. I never knew."

"We never do."

"Looking back, the signs were there, I just didn't see them."

"Life is clear in the rearview mirror."

"When she left, I felt like I'd been stomped on."

The D.A. inhaled the cigar and exhaled smoke. "Scott, if you live long enough, life will stomp the ever-living shit out of you. And having a woman you love stop loving you, that qualifies as a stompin'."

"How'd you get over her?"

"I didn't."

"But you remarried?"

The D.A. nodded. "Five years later. Took that long to stop drinking." He held up his glass. "This ain't drinking. You drink?"

"Not liquor."

"Don't start. At least not over a woman. You seeing a gal up in Dallas?"

"No."

"Prospects?"

"Well, there is this fourth-grade teacher…"

"But you can't take that step?"

"Not yet."

He nodded. "You will. One day."

They sat in silence for a time and pondered women and life. The D.A. finally tamped out his cigar and said, "Scott, even the bad Trey didn't deserve an eight-inch blade stuck in his gut."

"No, he didn't."

"Some folks do. Three decades of prosecuting murderers and rapists and gangbangers, I know some people deserve to die. Benito, those Muertos — but the law doesn't allow us to make that decision outside a courtroom. We can't engage in private executions, not even here in Texas. So I'm still going to find justice for Trey. The good Trey and the bad Trey."

"You should. But his justice isn't Rebecca. It's the mob… or maybe the Muertos… or maybe Pete Puckett. I'm not sure. But I am sure it's not her."

"Why are her prints on the knife?"

"I don't know. But there's something else."

"Not Lee Harvey Oswald?"

Scott smiled. "The mob wanted Trey to be a long-term investment. So they paid him a cut of their winnings for those two thrown tournaments… in cash. Three million dollars. Hundred-dollar bills. Gabe made the payoff personally-at Trey's house. You can't take that kind of cash to the bank, they'd have to report it to the Feds. Which leaves under the bed or in a tin can buried on the beach."

"No tin can. Old-timers walk the beach with metal detectors, still searching for Lafitte's treasure."

"Then under his bed."

"What are you saying, Scott?"

"You think the cops might've taken it? When they searched the house that day?"

The D.A. considered the smoke ring he had exhaled then said, "I want to say no, but in a world where a governor is caught on tape trying to sell a Senate seat to the highest bidder, who knows? I'll have Hank check it out."

"You trust him?"

"Hank Kowalski's got no use for money. All he needs to be happy is a fishing rod and bait." The D.A. finished off his whiskey and stood. "Oh, prints on the whiskey bottle match the set on the kitchen counter, but the prints from the tape don't match either of the other sets. And Hank said thanks."

"For what?"

"The whiskey."

"That proves Pete Puckett was in Trey's house the day he was murdered."

"Figure because Trey was screwing his kid?"

"That's a good motive."

"Would be for me. But I thought Pete was playing in Florida that day?"

"He DQ'd, flew home that afternoon. But not to Austin where he lives. Karen got his flight-he flew from Orlando into Houston Hobby, arrived at four. Which puts him at Trey's house by five."

"In the kitchen."

"Where that knife was."

"That makes him a material witness."

"Or a killer. He had the motive, the means, and the opportunity."

"I always liked Pete. Everyone I know likes Pete."

"His WM squared rating is eighty-eight percent."

"WM what?"

Scott shook his head. "The cartel and the mob, they had motives, too. And they're professionals. They wouldn't have left prints behind."

"They wouldn't have left your wife behind either. Not alive." The D.A. grunted. "Seventeen days till trial, Scott. We could ask the judge for a continuance, give us some time to investigate Pete, the mob, the cartel."

"You mean, suspects with motives?"

"Yeah, I mean that."

"Rex, she's innocent. Dismiss the charges and find the killer."