Paul Levine - Lassiter

The state didn’t have the murder weapon but didn’t need it. The day after the M.E. testified, two witnesses from the gun range told their stories. Both said they saw Amy Larkin slay my innocent Michelins with a weapon they recognized as a Sig Sauer.380. The logical paradigm was simple and straightforward:

Amy Larkin shot my tires with a.38 caliber gun.

The same gun was used to kill Perlow.

Therefore, Amy Larkin killed Perlow.

Then came the physical evidence I’d been expecting. Amy’s finger-prints were on two panes of glass in the solarium windows. A scrap of fabric taken from the jagged leaves of the bayonet plants matched a unitard seized in Amy’s motel room.

On cross, I got both the experts to admit that the prints and the cloth could have been left several nights earlier. That’s what defense lawyers do. Wait for the state to launch a clay pigeon, then try to blast it out of the air. What makes it tough is when the state has more pigeons than you have ammo.

Sitting next to me at the defense table, Amy remained composed. When I glanced at her profile, I sometimes saw her sister. The same angular jawline, the same girl-next-door quality.

I had told Amy that I was still looking for Krista and that I’d found Snake, the biker-turned-reverend. I expected the news to excite her, but she expressed little curiosity, even after my telling her that Snake placed Krista at Ziegler’s party.

I gave Amy a legal pad to make notes. Clients sometimes come up with better questions than lawyers. But Amy didn’t give me any help. She doodled. She drew pictures of a house with four people standing out front. Mom, Dad, and two daughters, a bright sun in the sky. It reminded me of the artwork in the women’s jail, cheerful paintings mocked by the grimness around them.

At one lunch recess, I joined Amy in her cramped holding cell, just down a corridor from the courtroom.

“What’s Ziegler going to say on the stand?” I asked, yet again.

“What did he say when you took his deposition?”

“You know damn well. He saw you outside the window.”

“So …?”

“So I’m wondering if he had a change of heart.”

She was tying the bow on her silk blouse, fumbling a bit without a mirror. “If you must know …”

“If I must know! I’m your lawyer, dammit! When Ziegler came to the jail, what did he say?”

“That he was going to do what’s right.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“The son-of-a-bitch told the cops you were the shooter. He signed an affidavit to that effect for Castiel. In deposition, under oath, he repeated the same thing to me. It’s a big deal to recant. But you didn’t ask?”

“It’s in God’s hands.”

“Let’s hope He doesn’t have butterfingers.”

“Don’t be blasphemous.”

Playing the religion card. It could have been an act. But with Amy, who knew?

We had about two minutes before court would reconvene. For weeks, I’d been pressuring her to tell me what Ziegler had said during his jailhouse visit. This do the right thing bit was the first crack in her can’t tell you armor. I decided to stay quiet a moment. In court, it’s a trick I use to keep a witness talking. Give the room a moment of silence that demands to be filled. I looked into Amy’s green eyes and waited.

“Charlie’s different than I expected.”

“Yeah?”

C’mon, Amy. Talk to me .

“He asked for my forgiveness.”

“For what?”

“For taking advantage of Krista all those years ago. For my being in the situation I’m in now. He blames himself and he’s looking for redemption.”

Ziegler had talked to me about redemption, too. But talk’s cheap, and the man was a born bullshit artist.

“He had tears in his eyes,” she continued, “and seemed truly repentant.”

What’s next? I wondered. Amy and Ziegler as Facebook friends?

She grabbed one of my hands and clutched it in both of hers. “Charlie told me that after all this time, he’s almost certain Krista is dead.”

“Sounds like he might feel guilty about that.”

“I think so, too. But not in the way you mean.”

“How, then?”

“Looking at him, listening to him, I don’t think Charlie had anything to do with Krista’s death. In a strange way, that brought me peace.”

She managed a small, soft smile. Placid and accepting. I tried to measure her sincerity. It’s what I do for a living, but if I had to deal with Amy every day, I’d go broke. From day one, the woman has been a mystery.

“I don’t want you at peace, Amy.”

“Why?”

“To help me at trial, I need you alert and wired. Not in some Zen state. Not the president of the Charlie Ziegler Fan Club.”

“I can only be who I am, Jake.”

Just who the hell that was, I still didn’t know.

Kip promised to clean his room, do all his homework a week in advance, and never talk back for the rest of his life … if only I would take him to the erotica convention.

I turned the kid down.

“C’mon, Uncle Jake. Why should you have all the fun?”

“I’m gonna interview Angel Roxx. It’s strictly business.”

I knew Angel had a special relationship with Charlie Ziegler. She’s who he sent to my house that first night, and she was at his place when he invited me over for sushi and tough-guy talk. Now I wanted to see what the porn actress knew about her boss’s relationship with my client.

“You took me to the gun and knife show,” Kip said, pouting. “You let me watch Reservoir Dogs on DVD.”

“So?”

“Violence is okay for kids, but sex isn’t? That what you’re saying, Uncle Jake?”

Where in the world did he learn the art of cross-examination?

“I make the rules, Kip. Deal with it.”

“That’s so arbitrary!”

“So’s life. Deal with that, too.”

I try to be a good surrogate dad. I really do. But sometimes Kip can be a real pest. How do parents handle it? The ones with three or four kids, always yapping, always wanting something. Where does that patience come from? Only this morning, I got a phone call from Commodore Perkins at school. My latest request for a continuance was denied. I’d have to show up for Kip’s official disciplinary hearing next week.

“Jeez, I did all that work for you and this is how you treat me,” my nephew whined.

“You researched a porn star. It wasn’t like digging ditches.”

Kip spent last night happily downloading material from Angel’s fan sites. He also printed out several photo sets. Some were highly educational. 101 Positions to Try at Home illustrated the difference between reverse cowgirl and rodeo, something that had always puzzled me.

I skimmed Kip’s research and learned that Angel grew up in horse country in Central Florida. “I was just another little cocksucker from Ocala who decided to get paid for it,” she was quoted as saying. “Charlie Ziegler discovered me. One day I was doing Stable Girls in Heat , and the next I was a legit personality on reality TV. I even have health insurance!”

The convention center was mobbed. Young guys in University of Miami T-shirts and shorts; bikers with multiple piercings and body art; some old hippies, ash-gray hair tied back in ponytails, some with their old ladies along. Booths ran along narrow aisles, like any trade show. But these were staffed by young women in micro-minis, leather corsets, and all manner of see-through teddies, baby-dolls, and assorted come fuck me attire. Under the bright lighting, it was a pretty bizarre sight, even by Miami standards.

I passed the Titty Tattoo booth, the Penile Cosmetic Surgery Center, the Sin Toy Shoppe, and a fetish place called “Fluffy Bunny Whips.” The biggest crowd-a bunch of young guys cheering and high-fiving-gathered around the Anal Ring Toss competition.