Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

Eddie nodded. “The Smith and Wesson’s a .380. Makes kind of a loud popping noise.” He leaned over to peer more closely at Stadler. “Did he enter the house?”

“No.”

Eddie nodded again. Nick couldn’t tell from his expression whether that was good or not.

“He see you?”

“Sure. I was standing right here.”

“You told him to stop.”

“Of course. Eddie, what the hell am I—”

“You did the right thing.” His voice was low, soothing. “You had no fucking choice.”

“He kept on going. He wouldn’t stop.”

“He would have attacked your kids if you didn’t stop him.”

“I know.”

Eddie let out a long, slow breath, a little quaver in it. “Shit, man.”

“What?”

“Shit.”

“It was self-defense,” Nick said.

Eddie drew closer to Stadler’s corpse. “How many shots?”

“I think two.”

“Chest and the head. The mouth.”

Nick noticed that the bleeding had stopped. It looked black in the artificial light. The man’s skin was white and waxen, his eyes staring.

“You must have a tarp here, all the construction.”

“A tarp?”

“Canvas. Or plastic, better.”

“A tarp?”

“A tarpaulin, Nick. You know. A big heavy plastic sheet. Or contractor bags if you have them. You must have those around.”

“What for?”

“The hell do you think? Any idea how hard it is to carry a dead body?”

Nick felt a spasm of fear in his abdomen. “We got to call the cops, Eddie.”

Eddie looked at Nick incredulously. “You are fucking kidding me. You think you even have a choice here?”

“What the hell else are we going to do?”

“Then what’d you call me for, Nick?”

“I—” He had a point, of course. “This is bad, Eddie. Really bad.”

“You just used my fucking gun. To kill a guy, okay? Are you hearing me? My gun. We really don’t have a choice.”

Nick stared, didn’t know what to say, went back into the study, Eddie right behind him. Nick sat in one of the side chairs, rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“It was self-defense,” he repeated.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe? What are you talking about, maybe? This guy was dangerous.”

“Did he have a gun?”

“No. But how the hell could I have known that?”

“You couldn’t,” Eddie conceded. “Maybe you saw something glint, a knife or a gun or something, you couldn’t be sure.”

“I saw him reach in his pocket. You told me the guy has a gun — I figured he was reaching for a weapon.”

Eddie nodded, turned grimly toward the doors, and stepped back into the inky blackness. He returned a minute or so later, some objects in his cupped hands. He dumped them onto the coffee table. “Wallet, key ring. No knife, no gun, no nothing on the guy.”

“I didn’t fucking know that,” Nick said. “He kept saying, ‘You’re not safe.’”

“Nick, of course you didn’t know. Jesus, I mean, you were dealing with a fucking psycho, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. That’s not it.”

“The truth is, you lent me your gun as protection,” Nick said. “Temporarily. You said it’s a misdemeanor.”

Eddie slammed his fist into his palm. “You still don’t fucking get it, do you? You killed the dude outside the house, not inside.”

“He was trying to get in, believe me.”

“ I know that. You’re allowed to use physical force to terminate attempted commission of criminal trespass.” The words sounded unnatural, halting, coming out of his mouth, as if he’d memorized them during his cop days. “But not deadly physical force. That’s the premises law. See, Nick, the law says deadly physical force can only be used in the face of deadly physical force.”

“But given the guy’s record—”

“I’m not saying you wouldn’t have a chance of beating this. But what the hell you think’s going to happen to you, huh?”

Nick finished his mug of coffee. The caffeine only went so far in counteracting the sleeping pill; it was adrenaline and fear that were keeping him functioning. “I’m the CEO of a major corporation, Eddie. I’m a respected member of the community.”

“You’re fucking Nick the Slasher!” Eddie hissed. “What the fuck do you think’s going to happen to you? And to your family? Think about it. You think the cops are going to cut you any slack?”

“The law’s the law.”

“Shit! Don’t talk to me about the law, Nick. I know the law. I know how it gets twisted and bent if the cops want it to. I’ve done it, okay?”

“Not all cops,” Nick said.

Eddie flashed him a look of barely concealed hostility. “Put it to you this way. The locals’ll have no choice but to charge you, right?”

“Maybe.”

“For absolute fucking sure. And when it comes to trial — and it will, you can be sure of that — yeah, you might beat it. Maybe. After ten months of a nightmare . Yeah, you could get lucky, get a reasonable prosecutor, but even they’re going to face all sorts of pressure to string up Nick the Slasher. You’re going to be facing a jury of twelve people who all hate your guts — man, the thought of locking you up... I mean, in a town this size, there isn’t going to be a juror in the pool who doesn’t know someone, a friend or a relative, that you fired, right? You saw what that jury did to Martha Stewart for a little insider trading. You fucking murdered an old man, are you with me yet? A sick old man.”

“The bottom line is, I’m innocent.” Nick was feeling ill again, thought he might throw up, looked around for his metal wastebasket in case he did.

“You don’t get to say what the bottom line is, okay?”

“But it was fucking self-defense! ”

“Hey, don’t argue with me ! I’m on your side. But it’s homicide, Nick. Manslaughter at a minimum. You say it’s self-defense, but you got no witnesses, you got no injuries, and you got a dead guy who was unarmed. I don’t care how much money you spend on a lawyer — you get tried here, in Fenwick. And what the hell you think’s going to happen to your kids during this goddamned media circus, huh? You have any fucking idea what this is going to do to them? You think it’s hard for them, dealing with Laura and the layoffs and everything? Imagine you on trial for murder. A fucking lynch mob, Nick. You want to put your kids through that?”

Nick didn’t reply. He felt frozen in the chair, completely at a loss.

“They’re probably going to send you away, Nick. Five, ten years if you’re lucky. Sentence like that, you’re going to miss your kids’ childhood. And they grow up with a jailbird father. They don’t have a mom, Nick. All they got is you. You gonna play Russian roulette with your kids, Nick?”

Eddie’s stare was unrelenting, furious.

Finally, Nick spoke. “What are you suggesting?”

Audrey Rhimes’s pager shrilled in the semidarkness.

She jolted awake, out of a blissful dream of her childhood, a warm summer day, going down a Slip’N Slide that went on and on and on, in her family’s steeply canted backyard. Ordinarily 6:30 A.M. wasn’t early at all, but her shift had ended at midnight, and after that came the usual unpleasantness with Leon, so she’d gotten maybe four hours of sleep.

She felt raw, vulnerable like a freshly hatched chick.

Audrey was a woman who liked routine, schedule, regularity. This was a personality trait that didn’t go well with her job as a detective with the Fenwick Police Major Case Team. Calls could come at any time of day or night. Though she could no longer remember why, this was a job she’d wanted, a job she fought for. She was not just the only African-American member of the Major Case Unit but the only woman — the real difficulty, it turned out.