Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

"Now hold the phone there, Mr. Lou-fifty-dollar Mason," Albert said. "Marty, he was working down along the wall near the street. I hollered down at him, did he get a look at her. Marty says at who, and I holler back at him, that woman what put a rock on the Mason headstone. And Marty, he hollers back there's a woman pulling out from the curb right then, must be her on account of there ain't nobody else around there but him and me. So Marty, he writes down her license plate."

Mason grinned for the first time in a week. "Albert, you and Marty are going out for the biggest steak dinner my money can buy. Give me the tag number."

Albert recited it, telling Mason he liked his steak well done. Mason thanked him again before making another call.

Harry Ryman picked up on the second ring.

"Harry, it's Lou. Can you get someone in the department to run a plate for me?"

Harry hesitated, clearing his throat. "The chief is clamping down on that sort of freelancing since I retired, from what I hear."

Mason didn't know whether that was true or not, but he knew that Harry could get the plate run in a heartbeat even if the chief had to do it himself. Harry was no more in the mood to help Mason prove Ryan Kowalczyk was innocent than he had been the last time they'd talked.

"It's got nothing to do with the King case, Harry. It's something else. Something personal. I'd really appreciate it," Mason added.

Mason listened to Harry breathe. Harry finally said, "Give it to me. I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, Harry. One other thing," Mason added, not wanting Claire to know what he was doing. "Keep this between you and me, okay?"

"Sure, Lou. I can do that."

"Wait a minute," Mason said before Harry could hang up.

"What?" Harry asked, his meter running.

"You remember telling me that the jury in the Byrnes murder trial was deadlocked for two days before they reached a verdict on the third day?"

"Yeah, so what?" Harry asked.

"Nancy Troy told me that the jury refused to talk to anybody after the trial. How did you know they were deadlocked?"

"Because, Clarence Darrow, they hadn't reached a decision."

"That doesn't mean they were deadlocked. They could have been working through the evidence, talking about it. You and Nancy said the same thing. The jury was hung up and then something happened. How did you know that?"

Harry was silent for a moment, Mason visualizing him as he called up his memory of the trial. Harry remembered the details of every case he ever worked. Mason waited patiently.

"It was the priest," he said at last. "You remember the priest at the execution?"

"Father Steve. He's practically my new best friend," Mason said.

"He didn't miss a day of the trial. He was the one who told me."

"Father Steve says that Whitney's father told him about the jury," Mason said.

"Whitney's father didn't know squat. He never got within a mile of that courtroom."

Mason rode the surge of energy he always got when he put things in motion. It wasn't much but it was better than whining and throwing darts at his defenseless wall. He drummed a pen against his desk, shuffled stacks of paper, wiped off the dry erase board and started a new mosaic, linking names with lines, broken and solid. He was ready to try anything to nurture his rekindled momentum.

He stood back from the board, the pattern plain. Father Steve was at the center of this new universe. The Kowalcyzks and the Kings were his parishioners. He was the last one to have seen Mary and the one witness to the shooting of Nick Byrnes. His church depended on Whitney's money.

The latest flake of suspicion was even more intriguing. Father Steve knew that the jury had been deadlocked, though he shouldn't have known anything about their deliberations. His claim that he had learned that fact from Whitney's father didn't wash with Harry's memory.

Mason conceded the vagaries of fifteen-year-old memories; he'd won enough cases by convincing juries that memory had an accurate half-life of minutes, not years. Unless it was Harry's memory. None of this made the priest guilty of anything, but all of it made Mason wish for a seat next to Father Steve the next time he made confession.

Mason asked himself what angles he wasn't working, what rocks he was stepping over instead of turning over. Vince Kowalczyk, he realized, might not be in the Omaha phone book, but Mary said he was a carpenter, which meant he could be in a union. Mason got the phone number of the Omaha local from directory assistance. A human being answered his call instead of an artificial voice telling him their options had recently changed.

"I'm looking for someone who may be a member of your union. His name is Vince Kowalczyk. I am an attorney representing his wife, Mary. It's very urgent that I talk to him," Mason explained.

"Hold on," a man said, asking someone named Jim if it was okay to give out membership information. Mason eavesdropped from his end of the conversation. Jim said to take the guy's name and we'll give the message to Vince, let Vince call the guy if he wants to.

"Works for me," Mason said, leaving his phone number when the man repeated the message.

His paper shuffling brought the clipping about his parents' accident back to the surface, Mason picking it up again, asking himself the same questions. What was he missing? The article told only part of the story: how the car went off the road. Mason wanted to know why. The article said nothing about witnesses, but that didn't mean there weren't any. Their names would be included in the police report. Mason picked up the phone again.

"Detective Greer," Samantha said.

"What's the best way for me to beg a favor?" Mason asked.

"Dial another number," she answered.

"Too late. I'll settle for the second best way. I need an accident report."

"A car accident? You've got to be kidding. Get off your ass, go to the records department, pay your ten dollars, and wait for the mail. Just like everybody else."

"I would, except for one thing. This accident happened forty years ago. No records clerk is going to lose any sleep tracking that down unless it's an order instead of a request."

"What's so important about an accident that happened forty years ago? A little late to file a lawsuit, isn't it?" Samantha asked.

"It's my parents' accident," Mason answered. "They were killed. I never knew the details. Now I want to know."

"I'll buy that if it will keep you out of trouble for a while," she said. "Friday afternoon is no time to ask someone to start a search like this. Can it wait until Monday?"

"Monday would be fine. And, thanks, Sam."

Mason wondered if the accident report would tell him why someone was visiting his parents' grave now. The accident happened on August 1 forty years ago. Today was July

19. There was no way to know when the rock Mason had found had been left there. It could have been a week, a month, or a year.

Mason couldn't remember when he'd last visited his parents' grave or whether there were any rocks on the headstone. But someone had left another rock today. Mason knew the question, writing it on the board, even if he didn't know the answer. Why July 19? Then, Mason added another question. Who left the rock?

Mason didn't have answers, but at least he had questions. He'd kick-started his case and peeled open his past. Now all he could do was the one thing he hated to do most of all. Wait.

There's only so much heat a city can take. Some people shrug it off at first, declaring over cold beer and barbecue that it augurs for a hard winter and pass the beans, please. Like they'd written The Old Farmer's Almanac. Others claim to like the heat, thumping their chests as they jog or paint the house while the sun is at its zenith, their faces rigid with surprise when the rest of their bodies wilt, somebody calling an ambulance for them if they're lucky. Then there are those who go to the mattresses, cranking up the air-conditioning, watering their lawns at noon, flying their I'll-be-goddamned if-anybody's-going-to-tell-me-what-to-do flags every time the mayor invokes another emergency heat ordinance.