P. Parrish - Thicker Than Water

Louis spun back. “I’ll kill you before I let you get away with this!” he shouted.

Scott laughed, coming toward him. “Jesus, Louis, I think you’re more hung up on her than Brian was.”

Louis turned away. Don’t do it. . keep walking. . don’t do it.

Scott came up behind him. “Let it go, Louis,” he said softly. “She wasn’t all that good.”

Louis spun and hit him, hard and quick. Scott stumbled backward, but Louis came at him again, taking another swing and connecting solidly against Scott’s jaw.

Scott stumbled again, grabbing onto a headstone to keep his balance. He wiped his lip, looking back at Louis.

“Feel better now?” Scott asked.

Louis hit him again, sending Scott toppling over a stone bench. Scott sat on the grass, looking down at the blood on his hand.

“Get up!” Louis shouted.

Scott didn’t move and Louis stepped forward, dragging him to his feet by his lapels. Louis slugged Scott again, but before he could fall, Louis grabbed his suit coat to keep him upright.

When he was steady, Louis hit him again, then again, each punch driving him backward over a small rise in the grass. Louis could hear someone yelling in the background-Brian, yelling Scott’s name.

Scott threw up his hands, choking, his face smeared with his own blood.

“Enough. . enough,” Scott gasped.

“It’s nowhere near enough!”

Louis stepped into another punch, this time knocking Scott to the grass, where he sat huddled, his bloody hand on his mouth. Behind him Louis could see the backhoe that sat near Kitty’s open grave.

He looked back at Scott. “Get the fuck up.”

Scott shook his head, holding up a hand.

Louis grabbed Scott’s coat and started dragging him toward the open grave. Scott fought to twist loose, cursing as he tried to untangle himself from his suit coat.

“You’re going in the ground, you sonofabitch,” Louis said, jerking him toward the grave.

Brian was following slowly, his mouth moving, but Louis couldn’t hear him.

Scott saw the open grave and for the first time, his face registered fear. He began to struggle harder to get out of Louis’s grip.

Louis dragged him closer. Scott was screaming now, and Brian’s voice was somewhere in the background.

At the lip of the grave, Louis stopped. He pushed Scott’s face into the dirt, then picked him up by the back of his coat. He held his face over the gaping black hole.

“You ready, motherfucker?” Louis said.

Scott spat out a mouthful of dirt. “Stop! Stop!” he screamed. He twisted frantically, wrestling himself out of his coat and Louis’s grasp. Louis let him go. Scott scrambled away on his knees, backing up against the backhoe. He sat there, heaving, wiping his dirty face.

Louis still had the coat in his hand. He threw it to the ground. A flash of red caught his eye. He bent down and picked up the paper that had fallen out of the coat. It was an Air France ticket envelope.

Louis looked over at Scott. “You sorry sonofabitch,” he said quietly. “You were going to fucking run.”

Scott was crumpled against the backhoe, his white shirt streaked with red. He lowered his hand from his mouth and squinted up at Louis.

“You were going to run out on your own brother,” Louis said tightly.

“Fuck you,” Scott said, coughing on his blood. “Fuck you and him and that girl.”

Louis saw Brian out of the corner of his eye, staring at his brother. He threw the ticket at Scott. Scott flinched but did not get up.

“Her name was Kitty,” Louis said. He turned and walked away.

Louis examined the knuckles of his right hand. The skin was broken and something hurt, like he had cracked a bone. He glanced up at the wall clock. It was after one; he had been here since seven this morning.

After leaving the cemetery, he had gone right to Mobley. He told him what Brian and Scott had said, but not what happened afterward. Mobely had looked long and hard at Louis’s swollen hand but had not asked the obvious questions. Then Mobley had called Scott, asking him to come in for questioning. Scott had come willingly, bringing Brian. They had been in the interrogation room for more than an hour now.

A door opened and Louis looked up as Mobley came out. He saw Louis sitting there and came over.

“You look like hell,” Mobley said.

Louis realized Mobley had the same beaten look he had the last time Louis had seen him at O’Sullivan’s. Something hadn’t gone right in that room.

Mobley sank down onto the bench next to him. “They’ve denied everything,” he said. “Scott says they were at the cemetery mourning their poor dead father and you just appeared and started harassing them.”

“Did he tell you the rest?”

“No. Why don’t you give it a shot?”

Louis drew in a deep breath. “I tried to walk away, but Scott kept talking. He laughed about her. He said it was ironic that he was hired as Cade’s lawyer. Ironic, for chrissake.”

“So you beat the shit out of him.”

Louis nodded, flexing his hand. “I lost it. And he just stood there while I beat the crap out of him. Just stood there with that fucking smile on his face like he wanted me to keep hitting him.”

“He did.”

Louis started to ask Mobley what he meant, but suddenly it hit him. Scott knew exactly what he was doing; it had been part of his game strategy. He knew that if Louis attacked him, Louis would lose all credibility and any testimony that might get admitted wouldn’t be believed. That why he was so willing to show up at the station; he wanted everyone to see his face.

Louis leaned his head back against the wall.

“If you push this so-called confession,” Mobley said, “I get the feeling he’ll counter with assault charges. And we’re not talking thirty days here, Louis.”

“I don’t care. I’ll tell it to anyone who will listen.”

“I don’t think it’s going to do you any good.”

Louis stared at the closed door to the interrogation room. “So Scott was right? It’s all privileged?”

Mobley shrugged. “I don’t know about that, but between the privilege, hearsay and coercion issues, I do know we got one big fucking legal cesspool that will take years to clean up.”

Louis sighed, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“It gets worse,” Mobley said. “They’ve hired a big time lawyer from Miami who’s already on his way here to file a motion to try Brian as a juvenile. Sandusky says we’ve got to go by the 1966 laws, and it was general practice back then to try kids as kids. If they do that, Brian will walk away completely because he’s already over the maximum age you can punish juveniles for.”

Mobley hesitated, watching Louis. “And without Brian facing charges, we got no leverage to ever turn him against Scott.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“And even if the juvenile thing doesn’t work, Scott’s claiming everything we found in the search is inadmissable because the warrants were based on information you gave us-”

“And that makes it privileged,” Louis said.

Mobley nodded. “And without the warrants, we can’t even use Brian’s statement.”

“That’s fucking crazy. There’s no way a lawyer can claim privilege when one of his employees discovers he’s committed a crime.”

Mobley sighed heavily. “I don’t know about that, but I do know this case is going down the toilet real quick. Even if we could use the evidence, what else do we got?”

Louis didn’t answer. He knew what was coming.

“Hell, we got a shaky statement by Brian that some lawyer will get thrown out because we didn’t Mirandize him when he showed up or some shit like that,” Mobley went on. “And we have no way to put Scott at the house when either girl disappeared.”