Джон Гришэм - The Judge’s List

Butler hadn’t brought enough rope for two strangulations, and besides, Dunwoody didn’t deserve one. Only the special people got the rope. Dunwoody groaned and thrashed as his mortal wounds shut down his organs. He turned his head and looked at Butler, his eyes red and glazed and seeing nothing. He tried to say something but only grunted again. Finally, he fell hard on his chest and stopped moving altogether. Butler waited patiently and watched him breathe. When he stopped, Butler took his cell phone out of a small pocket of his jacket and added it to his growing collection.

Suddenly, he felt like he had been there for an hour. He checked the street again, eased out the front door, and locked it behind him — all three doors were locked now, which might stall them for a few minutes — and climbed into his truck. Cap down, sunglasses on, though the day had been cloudy. He backed into the street and drove slowly away, just another inspector closing out a busy week.

He parked in a shopping center, far away from the stores and their cameras. He removed the surgical gloves and shoe covers and put them in a bag. He placed the two stolen phones on the seat where he could see and hear them. He tapped one and the name mike dunwoody flashed on the screen. He tapped the other and saw the name lanny verno. He was not about to get caught with the phones and would lose them in short order. He sat for a long time and collected his thoughts.

Verno had it coming. His name had been on the list for a long time as he drifted from one town to the next, from one bad romance to another, living from paycheck to paycheck. If he had not been such a shiftless and sorry bastard, his life might have been worth something. His early demise could have been avoided. He had signed his death warrant years earlier when he physically threatened the man who called himself Butler.

Dunwoody’s mistake was simply bad timing. He had never met Butler and certainly didn’t deserve such a violent end. Collateral damage, as they say in the military, but at that moment Butler didn’t like what he had done. He didn’t kill innocent people. Dunwoody was probably a decent man with a family and a company, maybe even went to church and played with his grandchildren.

Dunwoody’s phone blinked and hummed at two minutes after seven. “Marsha” was calling. No voicemail. She waited six minutes and called again.

Probably his wife, thought Butler. Really sad and all, but he had almost no capacity for sympathy, or remorse.

Collateral damage. It had not happened before, but he was proud of the way he handled it.

Mike Dunwoody had stopped drinking years earlier, and his Friday nights in the bars were now history. Marsha wasn’t worried about a relapse, though she still had vivid memories of the pub-crawling days with his buddies, almost all of whom worked in construction. In her last call that afternoon she had been specific: Stop by the grocery and get a pound of pasta and fresh garlic. She was making spaghetti and their daughter was coming over. He thought he would be home around six, after he dropped off some checks in the subdivision. With a dozen subs building eight houses, he lived on the phone, and if he didn’t take a call it usually meant he was on another line. If he missed a call, especially one from his wife, he returned it almost immediately.

At 7:31, Marsha called his cell for the third time. Butler looked at the screen and almost felt pity, but that lasted for only a second.

She called her son and asked him to drive to the subdivision and look for his father.

No one was calling Verno.

Butler was driving on county roads and heading north, away from the coast. He figured that by now the bodies had been discovered and the cops knew the phones were missing. It was time to get rid of them. He found the town of Neely, population 400, and drove through it. He had been there before, scouting. The only business that appeared to be open on a Friday night was a café on one end of the settlement. The post office was on the other end with an ancient blue drop box outside, next to a gravel drive. Butler parked in front of the tiny building, got out and walked to the door, opened it, went inside to the cramped lobby and saw a wall of small square rentals. Seeing no cameras inside or out, he left the building and casually dropped a 5×8 padded envelope in the drop box.

Dale Black was the elected sheriff of Harrison County. He had finished dinner with his wife and was leashing his dog for their nightly post-meal walk through the neighborhood. His wife was already outside, waiting, checking her phone. His buzzed and he wanted to cuss. It was the dispatcher, and any call at eight o’clock on a Friday night was not good news.

Twenty minutes later, he turned in to the new development and was met with an impressive display of emergency lights. He parked and hustled to the scene. A deputy, Mancuso, met him at the curb. The sheriff looked at a truck and said, “That’s Mike Dunwoody’s truck.”

“Damned sure is.”

“Where’s Mike?”

“Inside. One of the two.”

“Dead?”

“Oh yes. Cracked skull, I’d say.” Mancuso nodded across the street to another truck. “You know his kid Joey?”

“Sure.”

“That’s him over there. He came out looking for his dad, saw his truck, went to the house but the doors were locked. He got a flashlight and looked through the front window over there, saw the two bodies on the floor. He did not go charging in but had the good sense to call us.”

“I’m sure he’s a mess.”

“And then some.”

They walked up the drive toward the house, passing other deputies and first responders, all waiting for something to do. Mancuso said, “I kicked the kitchen door in, got inside, took a look, but kept everybody else out till now.”

“Nice work.”

They entered the house through the kitchen and flipped on every light switch. They stopped at the entrance to the den and tried to absorb the ghastly crime scene. Two lifeless bodies, faces down, heads covered in blood, dark red pools around them, paint splattered, the ladder on its side.

“Have you touched anything?” Black asked.

“Nothing.”

“I assume that’s Mike,” Black said, nodding.

“Yes.”

“And the painter?”

“Got no idea.”

“Looks like he has a wallet. Get it.”

In the wallet, they found a Mississippi driver’s license issued to one Lanny L. Verno, address in Gulfport. The sheriff and the deputy stared at the scene for a few minutes, saying nothing, until Mancuso asked, “Got any knee-jerk reactions?”

“You mean, theories about what happened?”

“Something like that. Joey said his dad was in the subdivision wrapping up the week, paying his subs.”

Black scratched his chin and said, “So, Verno here got jumped, knocked off his ladder by somebody who really didn’t like him. Cracked his skull, then finished him off with the rope. Then Mike showed up at the wrong time and had to be neutralized. Two killings. The first was well planned and done for a reason. The second was not planned and done to cover up the first. You agree?”

“I got nothing else.”

“More than likely the work of someone who knows what he’s doing.”

“He brought the rope.”

“I say we call in the state boys. There’s no hurry. Let’s protect the scene and let them worry about the forensics.”

“Good idea.”

He had never returned to the scene. He had read countless stories, some fictional, others supposedly true, about killers who got a thrill by going back. And he had never planned to do so, but the moment suddenly seemed right. He had made no mistakes. No one had a clue. His gray pickup looked like a thousand others in the area. Its fake Mississippi license plates seemed perfectly authentic. And if for any reason things appeared threatening, he could always abort and leave the state.