Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

Very carefully, Frank probed. “He… Tobias… ever talk about it…? Details?”

“I didn’t want to know,” she said. She hugged herself, bending forward as though in pain. The words came out in a rush. “I was goin’ to have his baby, we needed money, and I didn’t ask.”

Jose waited a moment, then took over. “The dealing… Tobias talk about that? What he was doing and all?”

“Some.” Walsh ran her hand over her hair, captured a strand and twisted it nervously with her fingertips. “He’d come in all excited. Tell me how he and Skeeter took over somebody’s territory… how many street dealers he had workin’ for him… his travelin’.”

“Travel? Where to?”

“South America. Skeeter and him.”

“You know where in South America?”

Walsh shook her head. “I told you, I didn’t want to know. He’d come back, tell me how he was gonna take me with him down there.” She paused. Her lips pulled into a thin disapproving line. “Never did, though. Shuckin’ and jivin’. Just shuckin’ and jivin’.”

Jose backtracked. “You said you didn’t want to know about Tobias killing anybody.”

“Yes.”

“How’d you know that was going on?”

“He’d brag on it. Like the travelin’. I’d tell him I didn’t want to hear. He’d brag anyway. Like it got him a rush.”

Jose’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Tobias say any names?”

Walsh closed her eyes so tightly that her mouth pursed. Her face put Frank in mind of a child squenching up its face to shut out something scary.

“Zelmer Austin?” Jose tried.

“I don’t remember,” she said without hesitation, and Frank knew she was lying.

“You don’t remember if Tobias said any names?” Jose persisted. “Or you don’t remember the names?”

Eyes still closed, Walsh shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said in a rising tone, “and I don’t want to talk any more about it.”

The three sat without speaking.

Walsh opened her eyes. “He left me and Samuel. He left his boy. Just… walked out.” She said it to no one else, just to herself.

Frank had to strain to hear, and he realized that what she’d come to tell was a story about a woman and a man and love and betrayal.

He led her on. “When was that?”

“Two years ago.”

“He helping out?” Jose asked.

Walsh lost her wistfulness. “I don’t need his money,” she said sharply to Jose. “I used to think money was important. Don’t want it. Not what Samuel needs… he needs a father. Boy growing up needs a man around. Money…” She curled her lip in contempt.

“Did you ever worry about him going back to jail?” Frank asked.

“All the time. ’Specially after I had Samuel. First time I said something, he laughed at me. Told me not to worry. I couldn’t help but worry. Tobias and Skeeter… all the money. I knew they had to be dealin’ bigger. I kept worryin’. We’d fight about my worryin’.”

“He ever tell you why not to worry?” Jose asked.

Walsh nodded. “He said he and Skeeter had insurance. That nobody’d come down on them.”

“He tell you why?”

Frank listened as Jose asked the question. He was holding his breath as Walsh took it in and thought about it.

“He said he saw a meeting Skeeter had.”

Jose hesitated, then asked, “A meeting?”

“Unh-hunh.”

“What’d he say about the meeting?”

“He said one day Skeeter told him he had a meeting. A big deal. He wanted Tobias to make sure he wasn’t bein’ set up.”

“How’d Tobias do that?”

“He said he went out before… to watch the meetin’ place. He watched to make sure it wasn’t a setup… you know, a trap or something. Then he call Skeeter on his cell. Tell him it was clear.”

“Where was the meeting place?” Jose asked.

“Golf course.”

Jose did a slow take. “Golf… course?”

“That one down at Hains Point.”

“Skeeter played golf?”

For the first time, she smiled. “No. The man Skeeter was to meet parked in the lot and waited. When Skeeter came, the man got in Skeeter’s car.”

Jose did the eye-exchange again with Frank. This time Frank gave him a nod. Jose sat back as Frank leaned forward ever so slightly.

“When was this, Alta Rae?” Frank said.

“The same time he and I… Tobias and I… same time we met.”

“That’d be June 1992?”

“Yes.”

“He say who it was, Skeeter met?”

Walsh shook her head.

Frank looked at Jose and gave it back over.

“Last question,” Jose said.

“Yes?”

“Why’d you call us?”

Walsh eyed the two detectives.

“You thinkin’ it’s because I’m angry at him.”

“You certainly got grounds,” Jose said.

Walsh shook her head.

“Because a my boy.” Her jaw tightened and lines hardened around her mouth. “I’m gonna shut the door on all that shit his daddy got into and didn’t know how to get out of. That shit’s gonna kill his daddy. It’s not gonna kill Samuel.”

She checked her watch. “I gotta be back.”

“Where’s that?” Jose asked.

She pointed to the tall, silvery airfoil-shaped building that was the home of USA Today.

“I’m the senior receptionist,” she said proudly. “I got benefits and they’re payin’ for school.”

“School?”

“American University,” she said, the tilt of pride still in her voice. “Finish up in June. Gonna be a paralegal.”

Frank and Jose watched her walk away.

“Good luck, lady,” Jose breathed. “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

I n high heels and carrying two-year-old Samuel, Alta Rae Walsh managed to stay on the treadmill until the man in the suit threw a massive switch and the treadmill picked up speed and Alta Rae stumbled once, then twice, and holding her son with one hand reached out for support and came up with empty air and the treadmill sped on…

“No!”

Frank bolted upright.

The telephone was ringing and Monty was looking up from the pillow beside him and the clock was saying two-seventeen a.m.

I came up here to smoke,” the slender nut-brown man named Alem said.

“Up here” was the rooftop of McKinney’s Auto Storage, a grim four-story garage of time-stained raw concrete on Half Street, just down from the DMV inspection station.

“You see, the manager will not let us smoke in the office.” Alem said it almost apologetically. “So I came up here to smoke, and then I notice…” The man paused delicately, as though worried he might offend. “I notice,” he repeated, “the odor.”

A dust-covered Trans Am squatted in the headlights of a squad car. Off to the side, a Forensics van and a meat wagon from the M.E.’s Office. The slightest wisp of breeze carried a pungent rotten sweetness to Frank and he noticed that the techs and the uniformed officers were standing upwind from the car.

“I then call nine-one-one.” Alem looked at Frank and Jose anxiously. “I hope I do the right thing.”

Jose took a breath and exhaled loudly. “You did, Mr. Alem. How long’s the car been here?”

“It will be on the ticket… under the windshield wiper. I smell that”-he pointed to the Trans Am-“I do not touch the car. I do not touch it anywhere.” His anxious look returned. “I do right? Yes?”

“Yes,” Jose said. “Nobody notice it before? Anybody say anything? About the smell?”

Alem shook his head. “Up here is long-term storage. There is no elevator, so…”

“Thank you, Mr. Alem,” Jose said.

“Blessingame answered the nine-one-one,” Frank explained to Jose as the two walked toward the Trans Am, “ran the tag through DMV.”