James Grippando - Hear No Evil

Jack’s head was pounding, but it wasn’t the wheat beer. “Does it say who the source is?”

“No. One of those anonymous jobs. You want me to visit Johnson, try to find out?”

“No. Stay out of it.”

“I don’t really get the point of this, anyway,” said Theo. “Lindsey’s already convicted. Why would the prosecutor want to deal for Johnson’s testimony now?”

“We’ve still got a sentencing hearing. Torres wants a needle in her arm, and I’m trying to keep her alive.”

“So Johnson is going to flip again and say it wasn’t the kid who done it after all?”

“I don’t know. This is just an article in a newspaper, with anonymous sources to boot. Who knows what’s really going on? Could be true, or it could be someone with his own agenda who lied to an overeager reporter for his own purposes.”

“Or this he could be a she.”

“Yeah. Or that.”

“Whatchya gonna do?”

Jack massaged his temples, trying to stop the throbbing. “Go straight to my only source. I’ll talk to Lindsey.”

Lindsey’s pallor was as lifeless as the cold beige walls of the detention center. She looked the way Jack felt, and she hadn’t been the one drinking all night. Her elbows were on the table, her head was in the palms of her hands. The newspaper article was spread out in front of her. They were alone, behind a locked door in a windowless room that was reserved for attorney-client communications.

“Who’s the source for the article?” asked Lindsey.

“Don’t know,” said Jack.

“Who do you think it is?”

“No idea. I was listening to Cuban radio on the way over here. They think it’s Castro.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not kidding.”

She got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. She began to pace slowly, just a few steps in each direction, as the room was small. “You think it could be true? You think Johnson is dealing with the U.S. attorney?”

“I phoned Hector Torres on the way over here. He wouldn’t take my call.”

“Then it must be true,” she said, her voice quickening. “They’re talking.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

“You don’t know Damont. Deep down, he’s a survivor.”

“Survivor or not, he has a long way to go to earn the trust of a federal prosecutor.”

“Torres is a slimeball. He won’t care how slippery Johnson seems, as long as he wiggles in his direction.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Jack. “If Johnson is going to be of any use at all to the prosecution, he has to say that you shot your husband. Problem is, he’s already testified under oath that he was in your house that morning and that your son confessed to the crime. Those are hardly reconcilable.”

She stopped pacing and looked Jack in the eye. “They’re completely reconcilable.”

Jack was taken aback by her glare. “How do you mean?”

“Brian confessed to the crime because…”

“Because why?”

“Because he thought he was covering for me.”

Jack’s pulse quickened. “Was he?”

She drew a breath and turned away

Jack said, “Was Brian covering for his mother, Lindsey?”

She still didn’t answer, wouldn’t look at him.

Jack’s voice took on an edge. “I want the truth this time, damnit. No more lies. You tell me the truth, and maybe I can work something out with Torres. You keep on lying, I guarantee you’ll die by lethal injection.”

She turned and faced him, her eyes glistening with tears. “Brian didn’t kill Oscar. But neither did I.”

“Then what did happen?”

She drew a breath, collecting herself. “Most of what you heard about Oscar was true. He was an awful man, awful to me, awful to Brian. We fought a lot, and Brian was the one who suffered. The thing with the headphones and Brian’s loss of hearing-that’s all true.”

“Is that where the truth ends? Everything else you told the jury was a lie?”

“No. Not by a long shot. The sex. Oscar and Johnson and me. I was telling the truth about that, too. He gave me a club drug or something. That’s how it all got started.”

“It wasn’t something you wanted to do?”

“No. Not at all.” She paused, then added, “Not at first.”

Jack nearly had to shake his head, make sure he’d heard that right. “What do you mean, ‘not at first’?”

She was suddenly less misty, more defensive. “What do you think it means, Jack? It means I didn’t like it at first, but my feelings changed over time.”

“So what are you saying? You were abused and fell into some low self-esteem psychological-”

“I’m not making any bullshit Stockholm syndrome excuses, Jack. My feelings never changed about the three-way stuff. My feelings toward Damont-that’s what changed.”

“You liked having sex with him?”

“It went beyond that. I liked him.”

“How did Oscar feel about that?”

“Ask the fertility doctor, the government’s expert. He told the jury all about Oscar’s assassin sperm count, his jealousy over my infidelity. What the doctor didn’t realize was that Oscar wasn’t jealous in the normal sense. He just didn’t like it that Damont and I started to do it on our own terms.”

“It was something Oscar could no longer control. Was that it?”

She shook her head and chuckled, but it was mirthless. “The only time Oscar was ever happy was when he had everything and everybody under control. He got his rocks off watching Damont and me go at it. He scored points with his daddy by getting all Coast Guard routing information from Damont and feeding it to Brothers for Freedom. And I was the pornographic quid pro quo he used to pay back his buddy Damont for all that secret information.”

“And then things fell apart,” said Jack.

“Of course. But Damont is the one who came up with the solution, not me.”

“You two had a plan?”

She nodded slowly. “I went to work at the hospital that morning, and I called Damont, just like he told the jury I did. But I wasn’t trying to lure him over to the house and set him up for a murder that had already gone down. It was all just part of the plan. I told him, ‘Go on over, Damont. Door’s unlocked. Brian’s asleep for another forty-five minutes. Oscar’s asleep in the bedroom. Do what you gotta do.’ ”

Jack felt numb for a second. “So Johnson went?”

“Yeah. Just like that Cuban soldier said he did.”

“Then what?”

“He went straight to the bedroom. He found Oscar’s gun right where I told him it would be. And then…”

“He shot him?”

She seemed to struggle, then said, “Yeah. He shot him.”

Jack paused. He wasn’t sure why. It just seemed like the fitting thing to do upon the mention of someone’s untimely death. “But wait a minute,” said Jack. “At some point he talked to Brian, right?”

“Right. That was when things started to go wrong. See, Damont and I didn’t think Brian would hear the gunshot. But something woke him. The vibration of footsteps on the wood floor, maybe a light going on. Whatever it was-Brian sensed that something was happening.”

“But if Brian got up and he saw Johnson standing over Oscar’s body, he would have known that Johnson shot him, right?”

“Except that he didn’t see Johnson. Damont heard Brian’s bedroom door open before Brian stepped into the hallway. Damont hid in the closet. All Brian saw when he came in the bedroom was Oscar all bloody and lying on the bed.”

“Is that when Brian called you at work?”

“Yes. And then he went back in his room, too scared to come out until I got there.”

“What did Johnson do?”