Joel Goldman - Final judgment

Cates flicked the butt to the ground, grinding it with his heel and turning to his partner. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Hang on,” Mason said. “It’s my turn.”

“For what?” Griswold asked.

“I let you talk to my client. I let you march through his house without a warrant like Sherman marched through Georgia. The gate swings both ways. I want some information.”

Cates gave Griswold a look that said, Forget it. Griswold answered with a raised hand. “Gate swings both ways, Counselor. You remember that.”

“If I don’t, Detective, I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

“Okay,” Griswold said. “Ask.”

“Who found the body?”

“U.S. Marshals deputy patrolling the parking lot with a dog. The dog was trained to sniff out bombs but still had a nose for dead meat,” Griswold said.

Mason kept a poker face, not wanting to dip into Griswold’s callous pool. “Any blood in the trunk of the car?”

“Nothing obvious. Won’t know for certain until forensics gets their test results back.”

“Cut a guy’s head and hands off, the body is going to bleed until the heart stops. Make a hell of a mess. Which means he was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the car,” Mason said.

Cates smiled. “You do brain surgery too?”

Mason ignored the dig. “Any signs of wounds to the body?”

“Nope,” Griswold answered.

“Rigor?”

“Full,” Griswold said.

“So the victim had been dead at least six to twelve hours. Maybe longer with the cold temperatures. The fatal wound was probably a gunshot or blow to the head, right?”

“Or broken neck, or strangled or poisoned or smothered or half a dozen other ways you can kill someone without leaving marks on the body, especially if you cut the head and hands off,” Griswold said.

Mason nodded. “Lot to think about.”

“You do that,” Cates told him. “Tell your client to think about it too and let us know what you come up with. Make it a lot easier on us cops if you lawyers and defendants would solve these murders for us. Make it even easier if your client just confesses.”

“Can’t do that,” Mason said. “Then you would have to go back to working the midnight security shift at Walmart.”

Cates took a step toward Mason, but Griswold cut him off. “Okay, kids. That’s enough for today.” He turned to Mason. “You want it this way, you can have it this way. We’ll be on you and your client twenty-four/seven. You want it the other way, remember how that gate swings.”

Mason studied the well-maintained block as the detectives drove away. Not one of the houses was less than sixty years old. All of them hewn from a rock-solid architecture featuring stone and brick, wide front porches, and detached garages at the rear of long, narrow driveways.

The houses sat on lots raised above street level, giving neighbors comfortable perches beneath broad spreading oaks and elms. More trees lined the street. Stripped of their leaves by winter, they were bare stout sentries. Mason imagined them in the summer, their leafy branches forming a protective canopy over the pavement.

Cars were parked in driveways and at curbsides in front of many of the houses. Fish’s car would not have been out of place. Nor would it have been the only one the killer could have chosen. Streetlamps dotted the block, offering enough light in the dead of night to discourage a killer in search of an anonymous random place to abandon a body. Looking at the block, Mason saw what the cops saw. The killer had picked Fish’s car for a reason.

Fish lived on Concord Avenue in the Concord Historical District. The District was one long block that ran east from Main Street to Wornall Road on the west. Mason never knew it existed until he met Avery Fish even though it was a mile from his own house. Access from Wornall Road to Concord was from Fifty-second Street directly across from the entrance to Loose Park.

Mason couldn’t remember ever having driven down Fifty-second Street or Concord despite his many visits to the park. He’d grown up in Kansas City and was always surprised when he found pockets that were new to him. They were the city’s secrets.

He found Fish still sitting at the kitchen table still reading the same book. Fish glanced up at him before returning to the pages

“Must be some book,” Mason said.

Fish laid the book down. “It’s about the origins of life and a lot of other things. The author says it’s an incredible long shot that life exists at all and that the odds of any one of us even being born are even longer.”

“Does that make you feel lucky?”

Fish shrugged. “Makes me feel religious. But, if you’re asking me, I could use a little good luck. No?”

“More than a little. I don’t think the cops found anything, but that doesn’t mean they won’t keep looking.”

“So what were they going to find? I didn’t kill that poor schlimazel.”

“Did you leave your car unlocked last night?”

“I’m sure I didn’t. I always lock it, but it’s easy enough to break into. All you need is a long piece of stiff wire. Slide it in between the door and the frame along the window and then push it against the lock button and that’s all there is to it.”

“Voice of experience?”

“I’ve locked my keys inside the car more than once. There’s another button that opens the trunk.”

“Let’s hope the killer didn’t know that and jimmied the trunk. Maybe scraped the paint or left some other evidence of forced entry.”

“The police can’t seriously think I killed that man!” Fish said, smacking his hand against the table.

“They can and they do and they’ll keep thinking that until they come up with a better idea.”

“So what happens to me now? What about our deal with the U.S. attorney?”

“Everything is on hold until the prosecuting attorney decides whether to charge you with murder.”

“U.S. attorney, prosecuting attorney-how am I supposed to keep all the lawyers straight?” Fish asked, slumping in his chair.

“Pete Samuelson is the assistant U.S. attorney. He’s federal and he wants you on the mail fraud charge. Patrick Ortiz is the prosecuting attorney. He’s state, not federal. He’ll decide about the murder charge.”

Fish let out a long sigh. “Samuelson. Mr. Federal Attorney. You were right about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cheated people out of their dream vacations. I admit that. So I’ll pay them back and they’ll take a vacation next year instead of this year. I’m an old man. Why send me to jail for something like that? There must be something else that they want.”

“You keep telling me that you’re just an old man,” Mason said. “What do you have to offer the government?”

Fish stood up, laying a heavy hand on Mason’s shoulder. “You don’t get to be an old man in my business without finding out a few things. Go ask Mr. Samuelson what he wants so I don’t have to die in jail.”

Mason didn’t run back downtown to ask Samuelson what it would take to get probation for Fish. It was the right question but the wrong time to ask it. Cases were like relationships. Some Mason had to push along and others came to him if he sat back and waited. This was one to wait for.

Fish’s trial date on the mail fraud charge wasn’t until late June. Winter had yet to breathe its last. March Madness was a month away. The first pitch on opening day was even more remote. The NBA play-offs would still be going on when Mason picked the jury that would decide Fish’s fate. If he tried to put the plea bargain back on the table now, Samuelson would think he was too anxious to deal.