James Burke - Dixie City Jam

'Seen by whom? When?' the judge said.

'Detective Robicheaux and others.'

'I don't see the others . You didn't answer all my questions, either. Seen when? At the time of death?'

'We're not sure.'

'Not sure? Wonderful,' the judge said.

'That has nothing to do with the charge against her now, anyway,' the defense attorney said.

'It means she has every reason not to come back here,' the prosecutor said.

Then the judge looked me evenly in the eyes.

'What motive would this lady have in coming to your house and telling you she's a nun, when, in fact, she's not?' he said.

'I believe she wanted to do my wife injury, Your Honor,' I said.

'In what fashion?'

I cleared my throat, then pulled at my collar.

'Sir?' he said.

'She's tried to encourage my wife to drink excessively, Your Honor.'

'That's a rather unique statement,' he said. 'To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard anything quite like it. You're telling me the presence of a nun somehow has led your wife into problems with alcohol?'

'I think humor at the expense of others is beneath the court's dignity, Your Honor,' I said.

I saw the prosecutor's eyes light with anger.

'You're badly mistaken if you think I see humor in any of this, Detective. Step back, all of you,' the judge said. When he folded his hands, his knuckles looked like white dimes. 'I don't like my courtroom used as a theater. I don't like sloppy presentations, I don't like sloppy investigative work, I don't like police officers and prosecutors trying to obtain a special consideration or privilege from the court at the defendant's expense. I hope my meaning is clear. Bail is set at three hundred dollars.'

He flicked his gavel down on a small oak block.

On the way out of the courtroom the prosecutor caught my arm.

'Don't give it a second thought, Dave. I always enjoy calling a witness who makes me look like I've got my ass on upside down. Why didn't you flip Dautrieve's tie in his face while you were at it?' he said.

I followed the woman and her attorney out to the attorney's maroon Lincoln. The day was bright and clear, and leaves were bouncing across the freshly mowed lawn.

'Don't talk to him,' the attorney said, opening his door.

'It's all right. We're old pals, really. He and I share a lot of family secrets. About the wifey and that sort of thing,' she said. She put on a pair of black sunglasses and began tying a flowered bandanna around her hair.

'You share a big common denominator with most scam artists, Marie. You're cunning but you're not smart,' I said.

'Oh, hurt me deep inside, Dave,' she said, and pursed her lips at me.

'You didn't understand what I told you in there. Buchalter is going to be charged with murdering two of his own people. Bad PR when you're leading a cause. Even his lamebrain followers read newspapers.'

She hooked her purse on her wrist, then placed her hand on her hip.

'I've got a problem. My tractor don't get no traction. Can you give me a few minutes, baby-pie?' she said.

'Marie, don't spend any more time on this man,' her attorney said.

'How about it, Dave?' she said. 'It won't hurt your relationship with the sow. I think I remember somebody cranking a whole bunch of electricity into your batteries. Wouldn't you like a little sport fuck on the side?'

I opened her car door and fitted my hand tightly around her upper arm. Her skin whitened around the edges of my fingers. Pieces of torn color floated behind my eyes, like the tongues of orange flame you see inside the smoke of an oil fire, and I heard whirring sounds in my ears, like wind blowing hard inside a conch shell. I saw the top of the attorney's body across the car's rooftop, saw his Humpty-Dumpty head and wide tie and high collar, saw his mouth opening and a fearful light breaking in his eyes.

'There's no problem, Counselor. I just want to make sure y'all don't accuse us of a lack of courtesy in Iberia Parish,' I said, and sat the woman down hard in the passenger seat. Her sunglasses fell off her nose into her lap. 'Happy motoring, Marie. It's a grand day. Stay the fuck away from my house. Next time down, it's under a black flag.'

Late that afternoon Lieutenant Rankin of the Toronto Police Department called back and told me everything he had learned from others and the case record about the death of a robbery detective named James Mervain.

'This is what it comes down to,' he said. 'Mervain was one of those fellows whose life seemed to be going out of control-booze, a brutality charge, a wife in the sack with another cop, some suspicions that maybe he was gay-so when he got a little shrill, people dismissed what he had to say. You with me?'

'Yes.'

'He'd been working with a recruit named Kuhn or Koontz. Maybe he knew the guy off the job, too, through some kind of gay connection…'

'I don't understand, you're not sure of the name?'

'That's what's strange. A couple of cops around here still remember this recruit, and they're sure the name was Kuhn or Koontz, but the name's not in the computer. Maybe it got wiped out, I don't know. Anyway, Mervain started telling people that Kuhn, or whatever his name was, had some problems; in particular, he liked to hurt people. But if that was true, he never did it on the job. Which made everybody think Mervain had a secret life, out there in the gay bars somewhere, and he had some kind of personal or sexual grievance with this fellow.

'Then some rather serious weapons were stolen from a departmental arms locker-ten-gauge pumps, stun guns, three-fifty-sevens, nine-millimeter automatics, armor-piercing ammunition, stuff like that. Mervain maintained Kuhn was behind it. Actually, a custodian was arrested for it, but he died before he went to trial. This is about the time Kuhn disappeared, at least as far as anyone remembers.

'Then Mervain seemed to go crazy. He got arrested for drunk driving, he got beat up in a bar, he'd come to work so hungover nobody could talk to him till noon without getting their heads snapped off. He put his name on mailing lists of a half dozen hate groups, then he'd bring all this Nazi literature to the office and try to convince people Kuhn was part of an international conspiracy to bring back the Third Reich. The department sent him to a psychologist, but he just became more obsessed.

'Then one Monday he didn't come in to work. His ex-wife had no idea where he was, his apartment was empty, and some kids had stripped his car. Two weeks later the owner of a skid-row hotel called us. Maggots were crawling out from under the door crack in one of the rooms. Our people had to break open the door with a sledge. Mervain had nailed boards across the jamb. How much do you want in the way of detail?'

'Go ahead,' I said.

'The detective who did the investigation is still with the department. He says he never had a case like it before or since. Mervain hung himself, naked, upside down by the ankles with piano wire, then put a German Luger into his eye socket and let it off.'

'You're telling me y'all put this down as a suicide?'

'Forensics showed there's no question he fired the gun. The door was nailed shut. The window was locked from the inside. Both his personal and professional life were a disaster. How would you put it down?'

I tapped a paper clip on my desk blotter.

'Look, it bothered other people at the time, but there was no indication that anyone else could have been in that room,' he said.

'What do you mean bothered ?'

'The room was full of Nazi and hate literature. The walls and floors were papered with it. But all his clothes, except what he'd been wearing, were gone. So were his billfold and the notebook that he always carried.'

'Does anyone remember what this man Kuhn looked like?'