Robert Andrews - A Murder of Justice

“How much?”

“Best I could estimate, hundred twenty thousand. More than I make in a week.”

“That’d be a nice payout for a source,” Frank said.

Janowitz was peering into the depths of the bag. “Ah, yes,” he muttered, pulling out a small manila envelope, which he handed to Frank.

Someone… Gentry?… had printed “Rch/Analysis” across the envelope flap. Frank shook out a key and a slip of paper.

“Receipt for a safe-deposit box at Riggs,” Janowitz explained.

“Opened June 15, 1998,” Frank said.

“Might be interesting to get a look. I checked the bank. We’re gonna need a court order.”

Frank returned the key and receipt to the envelope and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

Janowitz trailed a teaser, “Funny thing about Osmond,” he said softly.

“Funny ha-ha?”

“He lived on Bayless Place with his grandmother,” Janowitz said. “About half a block from where Skeeter bought the farm.”

From the rising inflection and the look in his eyes, Frank could tell Janowitz was holding on to yet another card.

“A small world, Frank… Arch Sterling’s background report on Martin Osmond? Martin and his grandmother were members of Jose’s dad’s congregation.”

Minutes later, Janowitz stood on the sidewalk, holding his overstuffed canvas briefcase, watching Frank lock up the house.

“Where’d you park?” Frank asked, when he had joined Janowitz.

Janowitz pointed down Olive, toward Twenty-ninth. “Just in front of you.”

The two had gotten midway down the block when Frank’s cell phone rang. He stopped to answer. It was Kate. He waved Janowitz on. Janowitz nodded and continued down the sidewalk.

“Catching the first shuttle out in the morning,” Kate said. “Dinner still on?”

Charlie Whitmire and Murphy appeared down the street, returning from Murph’s morning walk.

“I’ll pick you up at National, and dinner’s still on. You learn how Giuliani benched the squeegee men?”

“I learned that sometimes a mayor has to kick ass,” Kate said. “Take care of yours.”

Frank closed the phone and continued toward his car.

Up ahead, Janowitz had left the sidewalk and was in the street, stepping along the drivers’ side of a line of parallel-parked cars. He was just passing Frank’s.

On the sidewalk opposite, and farther down the block, Charlie Whitmire had stopped to let Murph sniff around the base of a maple.

Frank felt in his pocket for his keys, found them, pulled them out, and pressed the remote to unlock his car.

The world vanished in a blinding flash. A massive rippling sound, as if the earth had split under the impact of a cosmic jackhammer. A dirty cloud engulfed the street and shut out the sun.

For the thinnest slice of a second, Frank lost all orientation. Up, down, night, day, who he was, where he was, where he’d been going-all stripped away by the shock wave that threw him to the street.

Reflexively he struggled to his knees. A red blackness everywhere. Security alarms from nearby houses and cars screeched and warbled. Panicked by his blindness, he felt a wetness on his face. He wiped his eyes with his hands and cleared away the blood. The street blurred into focus.

Litter and leaves stripped from the trees pinwheeled lazily down through the dusty haze. An odor of ash and scorched fabric. A green and white canvas awning hung from its frame, swinging back and forth in the secondaries from the shock wave. Frank’s car leaned drunkenly nose first into the street, tires flattened, steel skin peeled back in all directions from the driver’s seat.

A dark figure lay crumpled in the middle of the street. Frank got up. Pressing his palm against the gash over his eye, he staggered toward what had to be Janowitz.

From the opposite direction, Charlie Whitmire was running toward Janowitz, Murph barking in chase. In the distance, sirens. Up and down Olive, people began opening doors and venturing out onto front steps.

When Frank reached Janowitz, Charlie Whitmire was already there, kneeling in a pool of blood, tightening Murph’s leash around what was left of Janowitz’s right arm.

The ER doors crashed open as Jose pushed through.

“Frank! You okay?”

Frank sat with his legs dangling off a gurney, head tilted back. Sheresa Arrowsmith, examining flashlight in hand, peered into his eyes.

“Okay, Hoser,” Frank whispered.

“He’s had a concussion, multiple contusions of the chest, and enough stitches to make a quilt,” Arrowsmith said, still checking out Frank’s eyes.

“Leon?” Jose asked.

Charlie struggling with the blood-slicked leash. “He’s bleeding,” Charlie was saying. “He’s bleeding,” Charlie kept saying, over and over, and Frank knew what he was saying but he couldn’t hear the words.

“Bad. Real bad.”

Irritably, Arrowsmith lowered the flashlight and turned to Jose. “Mr. Janowitz is in surgery. I’m with a patient, and you’re in the way,” she said abruptly. “Go wait outside, Jose.”

Behind her, Frank eased himself off the gurney, rocking slightly.

Arrowsmith whirled, and put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “We’re admitting you, big boy.”

Frank got his feet under him and gently pried her hand loose. “Not today, Sheresa. Just get me something for this goddamn headache.”

Arrowsmith jammed the flashlight in her jacket pocket. “If there’s anything worse than treating cops, it’s treating men cops. You’re too old to think you’re bulletproof, Frank.”

“I want to see Leon when he gets out of surgery.”

Arrowsmith gave a surrendering shrug, and in a nearby cabinet found a small pill bottle and put it in Frank’s hand. “They’ll be bringing him into ICU.” She waved the back of her hand at Frank and Jose as though shooing away two troublesome little boys. “Go on, get out of my ER.”

Frank began feeling better in the corridor as they made their way toward the ICU.

“Who’s handling the scene?”

“Hawkins has the place nailed down,” Jose answered, and before Frank could ask, added, “and R.C.’s there too.”

“Leon’s wife?”

“I called her.”

“And…?”

“She’s on her way over. Didn’t waste any words. Just ‘Thank you’ and hung up.”

“Emerson?”

“Typical… First thing, he wanted a press release.”

The ICU waiting room, small, windowless, and wall-scarred, had been a storeroom before the growing ICU business necessitated a place for relatives, friends, and police. Frank and Jose took two of the four hard plastic chairs, across from a battered rack filled with medical journals, pharmaceutical sales literature, and a handful of dog-eared travel magazines. To their right, the nurses’ station was visible through a glass door.

Jose watched as Frank dropped deeper into a brooding silence. He let him go until it got too much for him. “You want some coffee? A Coke?” he asked.

It took Frank a second or two to register. “What?”

“Coffee? Coke?”

Frank shook his head.

“You need one of those pills Sheresa gave you?”

“Pill?”

“Headache?” Jose prompted.

“Oh,” Frank said it slowly, as though he had to take inventory. “Yeah. I still have it.”

Jose got up, stepped into the hall, and returned with a paper cup. Frank was back to wherever he’d been.

“Water,” Jose said louder than he had to, and thrust the cup at Frank.

Frank took it and looked at Jose.

“I did it, you know.”

Jose regarded him gravely. “You did… what?”

“I set it off. They must have had it rigged to the door lock. It was supposed to get me when I turned the key. I set it off when I did the remote.”