William Lashner - Fatal Flaw

FALL HADcome to Pierce with a suddenness that stunned. How long had I been away, how long had the trial of Guy Forrest been going on? It seemed I had lost my temporal bearings. When I had driven into the little town before, it felt as though the promise of spring had just given way to the relentless summer. Now the dry colors of autumn had taken hold, the bright yellows and oranges heralding the death of a season. Right now it was a riotous bounty of color. In a few weeks all would be bare in Pierce.

We walked up the hill, through fallen leaves, their desiccated bodies crumbling beneath our feet as we made our way to the church.

Inside, our footfalls echoed about the plaster and wood of the main chapel. We knocked on the door of the rectory, and Reverend Henson bade us enter without asking first who we were. His face, when he recognized me, was distressed but not surprised, as if he had been expecting me to return all along. As if the only thing that surprised him was that I had waited so long and had brought with me someone new.

“Reverend Henson,” I said, “I’d like to introduce Oliver Breger, a Montgomery County homicide detective. Hailey died in Montgomery County and he is investigating her death. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought it important to bring him along.”

The reverend smiled thinly at Breger. “A little out of your jurisdiction, isn’t it, Detective?”

“Mr. Carl said it might be interesting.”

Breger wasn’t looking at Henson as he spoke, his gaze instead was slipping around the small room with its cherry paneling and shelves filled with prayer books and theological texts. Behind the door hung the reverend’s vestment, flat and black and surprisingly frail, pinned as it was, limp and small, to the wood. It was a comfortable room, a place to read and prepare sermons, a place to have the pro forma talk with the bride and groom before the wedding or to hear stories from the family about the dear departed before the funeral, a comfortable room, but not lush. No, the Reverend Henson did not live a posh life in Pierce, it was clear. Whatever he had gained in the bargain he had brokered, it had not been his own material gain.

Henson shifted in his seat and asked us to sit. He wasn’t happy having a homicide detective in his church, I was sure. I suppose he wasn’t happy having me there either, but I hadn’t come to make the good reverend happy. Something had happened in Pierce sixteen years ago, something rotten that the reverend was in the middle of, something that bore directly on the trial of Guy Forrest. The speeding ticket given me by the detective had shown with utter clarity that the deaths of Jesse Sterrett and Hailey Prouix were indeed related. To demonstrate that to a jury, I was going to need the reverend’s testimony. And I would need something else, something maybe Breger could help me get if I convinced him I was right. That something else was what had prompted me to ask Breger along. His own innate curiosity, so vital to the makeup of a first-rate detective, was what prompted him to agree.

“I’ve come again,” I said, “to talk about Jesse Sterrett.”

“Of course you have. But I’ve told you all I can, Mr. Carl. I have certain… responsibilities.”

“You’re talking about privilege, aren’t you? Priest-penitent. Oh, I know about privilege. Detective Breger could tell you all about my reliance on privilege.”

“I’ve thought about this ever since you left, I considered all my options, read what I could on the subject. It is a balancing act, to be sure, but I have done that balancing in my head, over and over, and I believe there is nothing I can do. I am truly sorry.”

“You need to know, Reverend Henson, that it didn’t end with Jesse Sterrett. It isn’t over.”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“He killed Hailey.”

“No, no, he didn’t,” he said. “I checked as soon as I heard the terrible news. He never left the state.”

“He sent someone else to do it. And that’s not all. He tried to kill me, too. An attempt on my life is something I take pretty personally, especially when it is my partner who ends up in the hospital, dazed with a concussion, her wrist snapped like a twig. The doctors are still trying to put it back together.”

Henson startled behind the desk and then looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t over, Reverend. No one paid the ultimate price sixteen years ago, no one was convicted of murder in his stead, Hailey saw to that, but if you ask Grady Pritchett, a price was paid nonetheless, a price almost more than he could bear. And now my client is on trial for his life. If he loses, they will kill him. I know you can’t allow that. I know you can’t allow a man to die for something he did not do.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that. I’m sure you can pull it out with some dashing legal maneuver. I’ve heard about you Philadelphia lawyers.”

“Oh, I have some tricks up my sleeve, yes I do. But so does the prosecutor, also a Philadelphia lawyer, with flashier moves than mine. And really, all I can tell you with certainty after a decade of practicing law is that no one knows what a jury will do. And here’s the thing, Reverend. You coming in after the fact might not be enough. The appellate court might not believe you, or might decide you are speaking up too late. The court might let the verdict stand. You might end up in the prison parking lot, fists balled in frustration, as an innocent man dies for someone else’s sins and for your silence.”

“Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe you’re mistaken. What proof do you have?”

I stared at him for a moment. I could see the wavering in his eyes. Yes, he had been thinking about it for the weeks since I left, and they had not been easy weeks.

“I could sit here and try to prove it to you, Reverend. In my briefcase I have all manner of evidence, but, to be honest, none of it is conclusive. It is all wildly circumstantial. But you don’t really need proof, do you? Your mind is asking for the evidence, but in your heart you know. In your heart you’ve known from the instant you learned of Hailey’s death. You knew this moment was coming, and though you’ve been reading the texts and debating what to do, your heart’s known what you needed to do all along.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’m responsible for accusing Guy Forrest of murder,” said Breger, his words soft and comforting but his unsettling gaze now straight on the reverend. “In all my years I believe I’ve never been involved in the conviction of an innocent man. It would haunt me to the day I died if ever I was. If you have information that might convince me I am wrong about that man, I need to hear it.”

“What happened to Jesse Sterrett sixteen years ago?” I said.

There was a long silence. The trees outside the window lost more of their leaves, a darkness came and passed as a cloud drifted overhead. There was a long silence, and then Reverend Henson said, “I don’t know for sure. That’s the thing, Mr. Carl, I’ve never known for sure.”

“Then tell us what you do know.”

“All I know is suspicion and surmise, and the anguished cries of a poet who died before either of the Prouix twins was born. That is all I know. But even so, Mr. Carl, even so, it remains a story to tear at your heart.”

REVEREND HENSON

SHE CAMEaround shortly after I arrived to take over for the Reverend Johannson.

He had been a formidable figure in the community, the Reverend Johannson, with his great leonine head and deep voice. They said around town that listening to his uncompromising sermons was like listening to a prophet of God. As you can see, I was quite a change. I’m more squirrelish than leonine, and no one ever confused my squeak of a voice with the voice of God. Following the Reverend Johannson, I thought I’d be a great disappointment to the congregation, but that turned out not to be exactly so. I suppose some thought I wasn’t up for the job, that I didn’t project the image of stern righteousness they had come to expect in Pierce, but then again others greeted me with much warmth, as though I were a welcome antidote. ’Tis a hard thing, I suppose, to bring what seem to be our petty little problems to a prophet of God, even when sometimes they’re not so petty.