Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“Jose and I decided to do our part, keeping kids off the street.”

Janowitz looked wounded. “I turn thirty next month.”

Frank gestured to the coffeemaker. “Making coffee’s my job.”

“Mine is…?”

“You,” Jose said, “are our one-man task force.”

“I’m honored.”

“What do you know about the Gentry case?” Frank asked.

Janowitz tapped the file. “That Milton fucked it up and you guys got it on your plate.”

“What’s this ‘you guys’ shit?” Jose asked.

“We guys,” Frank corrected. “We guys got Gentry and Skeeter.” He pointed to the Gentry file. “Get into that. Deep as you can.”

“And don’t talk to Milton before you talk to us,” Jose added.

“Why’s that?”

Jose held up a finger. “One, because I said so, young man, and two”-he held up a second finger-“because like you say, Milt fucked it up. No sense you startin’ from where Milt is… or was. Better you start from your present state of ignorance.”

Janowitz nodded. “Okay.” He drained his coffee, got up, and tucked the Gentry file under his arm. “You guys going to the press conference?”

Jose frowned and looked at Frank, who shrugged.

“Yeah,” Janowitz said, “about the Gentry case. The mayor, Chief Day, and Emerson… front steps.”

In the street, TV relay masts towered over mobile control vans. Headquarters doors opened. Three men clustered around microphones, with Mayor Tompkins, neat and bowtie precise, in the middle.

“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Jose whispered.

He and Frank slipped through the crowd to get closer. Tompkins drew an index card from his pocket. Cameras clicked.

“I have a short statement. I’ll be followed by Chief Day and then by Captain Emerson of Homicide.” Tompkins paused and took a deep breath. “Yesterday, I learned that mistakes were made in the closing of a particularly tragic homicide case-”

“ ‘Mistakes were made,’ ” Jose echoed. “They just happen. Nobody does anything.”

“Bureaucratic immaculate conception,” Frank whispered back.

“Accordingly,” Tompkins was winding up, “we are reopening the investigation of Mr. Kevin Walker Gentry’s homicide.” The mayor stowed the index card in his pocket and turned to his right. “Chief Day?”

Noah Day, a big, hulking man, scowled as though, somewhere in front of him, the killer hid among the reporters and cameramen.

“Ladies and gentlemen”-his voice sounded like granite boulders grinding together. “I have some background information for you…”

He cranked up what department insiders dubbed “Noah’s Numerical Fog Machine”-an avalanche, a flood, a veritable tsunami of statistics and data. A rapid-fire chatter of numbers on everything that could be counted that had anything to do with crime and punishment.

Jose let the numbers flow through part of his consciousness while he thought about Skeeter Hodges, then found himself thinking about Edward Teasdale. Then he worked on making the connection back. Something, perhaps the inflection in Day’s recitation, made him break off.

“… but numbers don’t tell the whole story,” Day was saying as Jose surfaced and the meeting with Teasdale faded.

Day powered into his standard closing. “And performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” Like a bull eyeing a matador, he swung his big head back and forth, wanting to make certain the small brains in front of him had absorbed his wisdom.

Apparently satisfied, he stepped back, and Emerson came front and center.

“As Chief Day said”-Emerson smiled-“the performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” He shot a suck-up glance toward Day, then looked out over the reporters. “Open for questions,” he announced.

The gabbling and hand thrusting reminded Frank of third-graders trying to get the teacher’s attention.

Emerson pointed into the crowd. “Ms. Lewis?”

Lewis went straight for the throat. “Two years ago, you held a press conference. You told us Zelmer Austin had killed Mr. Gentry. Are you telling us today that he didn’t?”

Emerson pursed his lips and worked his jaw muscles. “That’s not being said,” he replied, erecting the passive-voice fortress of a seasoned bureaucratic warrior. “What’s being said is that there is insufficient evidence to identify Austin as the killer.” Emerson’s eyes darted, searching for an escape route.

Like an intercepting hockey goalie, Lewis angled herself back into Emerson’s line of sight.

“So you had evidence once… now you don’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

Emerson looked around desperately. No raised hands. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched him squirm.

“Is that what you’re saying?” Lewis persisted.

Emerson coughed, started to bring his hand up to his tightly knotted necktie, then, apparently thinking better of it, dropped the hand. “There,” he began slowly, “have been changes in… ah… the… um… evidentiary base.”

“The evidentiary base?” Lewis repeated scornfully before she sprang the trap. “Isn’t it a fact that you solved the Gentry case by a bureaucratic dodge? That you relied primarily on the testimony of an informant, and that then, on the basis of that testimony, you declared Austin the killer and the case closed?” She paused just long enough to gather momentum and not long enough to let Emerson reclaim the floor. She delivered high and hard. “And haven’t you found that the weapon that was used to kill Skeeter Hodges was also used to kill Gentry?”

Emerson searched the chief’s face, then the mayor’s. Their blank expressions offered no refuge.

He knows she has the goods, Frank thought. He tries to dodge now, and the shit will get even deeper.

Emerson took a deep breath. “That has been found to be the case.”

“And so Zelmer Austin didn’t kill Kevin Gentry.”

Emerson held up his hands in a “Halt there” gesture. “It may be that renewed efforts as described by Mayor Tompkins and Chief Day will produce proof that Austin was indeed the killer,” he said. Then, quickly moving his head up as if to see farther back into the ring of reporters, he found a raised hand. “Next question? Yes? Hugh Worsham?”

“Oh, shit,” Jose breathed.

Worsham, who made a living out of anarchy, confusion, and the failures of others, stood almost within arm’s length of the two detectives.

“What”-Worsham chopped out a histrionic pause-“what are you, Captain Emerson, going to do about this imbroglio?”

Emerson winced. “Ah… Hugh… would you care to rephrase that?”

Worsham rolled his eyes and heaved a suffering sigh-I have to put up with such fools. “What, Captain Emerson, are you doing to make certain something like this doesn’t happen again?”

Emerson decided to play. “Certain, Hugh? We can’t be certain of achieving perfection, as much as we try.” Emerson shot a sly smile at the mayor and Chief Day. “But we can reduce the probability of such errors.”

“How?” Worsham followed up.

“One step we’ve already taken. I’ve ordered a thorough internal review of our evidence-handling process. And to ensure this is an unprejudiced review, I am suspending the person who has been responsible for that process.”

“This person have a name, Captain?”

Emerson paused. Frank thought he saw Emerson’s eyes graze those of Chief Day. Emerson returned to Worsham.

“Yes, Hugh. He is the head of our forensic analysis. Dr. Renfro Calkins.”

Frank!… Goddamnit!… Stop!”

Grabbing his right arm and left shoulder, Jose spun his partner around, backing him against a parked patrol car.

“That son of a bitch.” Frank heard the words come up from the murderous roaring inside his head and chest.