John Lutz - Ride the lightning

A drunk, almost unintelligible, painstakingly explained that he'd called the wrong number and asked for the right one. He got angry when no one accepted his apology, and hung up in a snit.

Beep. Eileen's voice: "Call me today, if you know what's good for you. If you don't-"

Nudger punched the machine's off button. He didn't know what was good for him. Never had.

He sat back in his chair. He'd heard enough messages for now, and the mail he'd brought in from the landing didn't look interesting: bills, ads, threatening letters from creditors, bills, junk mail, bills, bills. He made up his mind not to open any of the mail until he needed something to do.

The office was getting comfortably cool. It didn't take long; the place was small. Nudger watched the electric bill on the desk flutter lazily in the breeze from the air conditioner. Finally it slid off the desk and sailed toward the far wall, out of sight. He didn't bother to retrieve it.

He went through the Curtis Colt information again, this time more carefully, and decided Colt was guilty as original sin.

Nudger didn't like where that left him.

He'd have liked it even less if he'd known where it was taking him.

Nudger looked at the list of names he'd compiled and decided to start with Randy Gantner. Gantner and a friend had been in the liquor store at the time of the shooting and had testified for the prosecution in court. He was as good a place as any to begin-the logical place, really, since it occurred to Nudger that there were so many witnesses against Curtis Colt that he might as well talk to them in alphabetical order. Randy Gantner was a construction worker for Kalas Construction, one of the major contractors in St. Louis, a road builder who did a lot of highway work. Nudger had seen the company name lettered across truck trailers parked at major road construction sites all over the city. Road contractors not only did this to advertise; the countless permits they needed to work were plastered all over the sides of the trailers to satisfy various inspectors and busybody local officials.

It was afternoon before Nudger located Gantner working weekend overtime on a highway access ramp job in Northwest County. Kalas Construction was building a new cloverleaf on the stem of Interstate 70. It was hot work and a hot afternoon to do it in.

"Why should I worry about it anymore?" Gantner asked Nudger, leaning hipshot on his shovel. He didn't mind talking to Nudger; it meant taking a break from scooping away mounds of black dirt that had been brought up by a huge drill that was boring holes to bedrock for concrete piering. "Colt's been found guilty and he's going to the chair, ain't he?"

The high afternoon sun was hammering down on Nudger, warming the back of his neck and making his stomach uneasy. He thumbed an antacid tablet off the roll he kept in his shirt pocket and popped one of the white disks into his mouth. With his other hand he held up a photograph of Curtis Colt for Gantner to see. It was a snapshot Candy Ann had given him of the wiry, shirtless Colt leaning on a crooked fence post with a placid lake behind him and holding a beer can high in a mock toast: This one's for Death!

Why am I doing this? Nudger asked himself. It was hopeless. He could feel Colt's guilt. The jury had been right.

But he said, "This is a photograph you never saw in court. I just want you to look at it closely and tell me again if you're sure the man you saw in the liquor store was Colt. Even if it makes no difference in whether he's executed, it will help ease the mind of someone who loves him."

Gantner was a ruddy, beefy man, shirtless in the sun. A rivulet of sweat zigzagged like an exploring insect down through the gingery hair on his chest. He shifted his weight against the shovel handle to lean with his other arm. "I'd be a fool to change my story about what happened now that the trial's over," he said logically.

"You'd be a murderer if you really weren't sure."

"The little punk's gonna fry; I don't see the point in this."

"There's a point," Nudger assured him.

Gantner sighed, dragged a dirty red handkerchief from his jeans pocket, and wiped his meaty, perspiring face. He peered at the photo with pale eyes framed in seamed, tan flesh, then shrugged. "It's him. Colt. The guy I seen shoot the man and woman when I was standing in the back aisle of the liquor store. If he'd known me and Sanders was back there, he'd have probably zapped us along with them old folks. He was having a hell of a good time playing Jesse James. Little fart richly deserves to get the chair, you ask me."

Well, Nudger had asked. But he wanted to make doubly sure. "You're positive it's the same man?"

Gantner spat off to the side and frowned; Nudger was becoming a pest, and the foreman was staring. "I said it to the police and the jury, Nudger, and now I'm saying it to you: Colt did the old lady in."

Persistent Nudger. "Did you actually see the shots fired?"

"Nope. Me and Sanders was in the back aisle looking for some reasonable-priced bourbon when we heard the shots, then looked around to the front of the store. There was Colt, standing over the old man, holding a gun. Then the old lady sees what happened and screams and runs out from behind the counter at Colt, at the gun. Give her top grades for guts. Colt holds the gun higher and shoots her. She goes wild and starts twitching and bouncing all over the place, knocking good whiskey all to hell, and Colt runs out the door to a car. Looked like a black or dark green old Ford. Colt fired another shot as it drove away."

"You try to help the old lady?"

"Sure. But by the time me and Sanders got to the front of the store, she'd gone down and we could see she was dead. Round hole smack in the center of her forehead, eyes open."

Gantner was rolling now. He knew this part of his story almost by rote from his interviews with the law and his testimony on the stand. He enjoyed telling it, polishing his delivery; show-biz was in his blood.

"Get a look at the car's driver?" Nudger asked, thumbing another antacid tablet off the roll. God, the sun was hot!

"Sort of. Skinny dude, curly black hair and a droopy mustache. Leaning over the steering wheel and holding it tight. That's what I told the cops. That's all I seen. That's all I know."

"Where was your friend Sanders when Colt ran out the door?"

"I don't know, exactly. Around where I was, I guess. I told you, that's all I know. Finish." Gantner raised a dirt- streaked hand and traced neat printing in the air. He said with perfect enunciation, "The fucking end."

And that was the way to describe this conversation. The foreman was walking toward them, glaring. He was a big guy who swaggered like a sailor on a rolling deck. He had a hell of a glare. Thunk! Gantner's shovel sliced deep into the earth, speeding the day when there'd be another place for traffic to get backed up. Nudger thanked him and advised him not to work too hard in the hot sun.

"You wanna help?" Gantner asked, grinning sweatily.

"I'm already doing some digging of my own," Nudger said, walking away before the ominous foreman arrived.

He sat for a while in his dented Volkswagen Beetle with the windows rolled down. There was a faint breeze wafting through the car; it felt cool on the right side of Nudger's sweat-plastered shirt. He watched the foreman motion toward the Volkswagen, talk for a few minutes with Gantner, then walk away. Gantner kept digging, not glancing over at Nudger, as if not looking at him meant he wasn't there.

Nudger got out his spiral notebook and jotted down the pertinent parts of his conversation with Gantner. Some kind of huge machine that hammered concrete into dust rolled onto the scene then and began smashing its way noisily up the old exit ramp, like some creature from a sixties Japanese horror flick: Crushzilla the Destroyer. The ground trembled. Nudger wanted to stay and watch, but he had miles to go and promises to keep.