David Rosenfelt: Dead Center

Unfortunately, I do more than notice the missing leg; I stare at where it would be if it weren’t missing. He catches me on it. “I used to climb mountains for fun,” he says. “I got trapped in a landslide… a boulder pinned me down. Had to cut my own leg off to get free.” He shakes his head at the memory. “Sort of took the fun out of mountain climbing.”

“What an awful story,” I say.

He nods. “And it’s also bullshit. I had bone cancer when I was twelve years old.”

I can’t help but laugh out loud at the blatant lie.

“You think bone cancer is funny?” he asks.

“I think it’s funny that for no reason you told me a totally bullshit story thirty seconds after we met,” I say. “Why exactly did you do that?”

“It’s the way I test new people,” he says.

“And did I pass?”

“I don’t know… I haven’t graded it yet.”

I tell him that I’m here to talk about the Jeremy Davidson case, but Richard has already briefed him fully about my purpose. He doesn’t quite understand it. “You live in civilization, you like to win cases, yet you travel to the middle of nowhere to get involved in a sure loser. Now, why is that?”

“Richard and his wife adopted Jeremy when he was an infant. I knew his real parents very well. They died in a plane crash. I was… I am… Jeremy’s godfather.”

He looks at me strangely. “Bullshit story?” he asks.

I smile. “One hundred percent. Not bad, huh?”

He laughs. “Not bad at all.”

Having established a relationship supported by a sea of bullshit, we get down to business. Calvin really does see the case as an almost sure loser. “I’m not saying he did it, but the evidence is sure saying it.”

“What’s your gut?” I ask.

“My gut doesn’t trust anything that comes out of Center City,” he says. “Not even two murder victims.”

“I stopped there on my way in.”

“Friendly place, huh?” he asks.

“Everybody was in some kind of meeting, except a cop. He questioned me like I was Osama bin Laden.”

He nods; what I am saying is no surprise. “It wasn’t a meeting; it was a religious service.”

I can’t conceal my surprise. “What religion is that?”

“They call themselves Centurions.”

“And the town is named Center City?” I’m seeing a pattern here. “Is the town named after the religion, or the religion named after the town?”

He shrugs. “Sort of one and the same. They have some kind of longitude/latitude formula which shows that the piece of ground the town is on is the spiritual center of the universe, and everything else comes off it like spokes on the wheel. That wheel runs their lives, and has been for over a hundred years.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about when he says that the wheel runs their lives, but now is not the time to analyze their religion. “How does all this relate to the murders?” I ask.

He shrugs again. “Probably doesn’t. But the pressure on that girl not to marry outside the religion would have been overwhelming. People born in that town stay in that town, and nobody from outside moves in. That’s just the way it is.”

We talk some more about the case, but the local prosecutor has not yet handed over much material in discovery, so Calvin doesn’t know that much about it yet. He does know Jeremy Davidson, though, and has known his family for years, and he doesn’t believe him to be a brutal murderer. “It doesn’t compute,” he says. “These girls got stabbed maybe ten times each. I just don’t think this kid is capable of that, no matter how pissed off he might have been.”

His feelings pretty much mirror Laurie’s, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that people are not always what they seem and that you find murderers in the strangest places, shapes, and sizes.

The arraignment is going to be today at eleven-thirty, and Calvin invites me to sit in on it. Afterward I’ll be able to meet Jeremy and hear his side of it. “You think you’re going to jump in?” Calvin asks, referring to my taking on the defense.

“I honestly don’t know.”

“You’re going to have to decide soon. This thing is going to move quickly.”

I nod. “I know. If I do come in, will you stay on as second chair? I’m obviously going to need local help.”

“Whoever handles this is going to need all kinds of help,” he says. “Yeah… why not? Count me in.”

• • • • •

COURTROOMS ARE THE nation’s common denominator. They have the same feel wherever you go. North or South, rural or urban, it doesn’t matter. When you walk into a courtroom, you feel like something important is going to happen. It’s the one place where society seems to have a right to take itself seriously.

Not that they all look alike. This particular courtroom could be Findlay’s tribute to To Kill a Mockingbird . My guess is that it looks exactly the same as it did fifty years ago, with the notable exception being the laptop computer sitting atop the judge’s bench.

Calvin is sitting at the defense table when I arrive, but he is not the focus of my attention. George Bush, Angelina Jolie, and Shaquille O’Neal could be dancing a naked hoedown on the table and I would barely notice, since in the far corner of the room, talking with three other people, is Laurie. She looks the same as always, which is disappointing. I had hoped she would have gained thirty pounds and had her face break out in pimples since I saw her on TV.

She doesn’t see me, so I pretend I don’t see her. I walk down toward Calvin, shake his hand, and try to get myself under control. He can tell something is going on. “You nervous?” he asks with some surprise.

I fake a laugh. “Yeah. I’ve never been in a courtroom before.”

He points toward the prosecution table. “That’s where the bad guys sit.”

I don’t want to look in Laurie’s direction, so I might as well make conversation. “Which one is the prosecutor?”

“Lester Chapman. He’s not here yet, the prick.”

“Let me guess… you don’t like him,” I say.

“He’s an okay lawyer, but he’s covered with about ten layers of bullcrap. He’s maybe five feet tall… without the bullcrap he’d be four foot three.” Calvin says this loud enough so that a woman at the prosecution table can clearly hear him, though she pretends not to.

He notices this as well, which prompts him to up the ante and the volume. He points to the woman. “That’s his assistant, Lila Mayberry. Word is that Lester and Lila are making sticky sheets. Course, I myself don’t believe it. I mean, look at her. Lila’s tall… she could eat watermelons off Lester’s head.”

At that moment a man who could only be Lester enters and walks to the prosecution table. Calvin was right: Lester is no more than five feet tall. “See what I mean?” Calvin says. “He spends his life looking up at the world.”

Lila takes Lester’s arm and talks softly to him, occasionally glancing at Calvin as she does so. My guess is, she is updating him on Calvin’s insulting monologue.

“Hello, Andy.”

I look up knowing exactly who I am going to see: Laurie. She has a smile on her face and her hand extended. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Hi,” I say, my crackling wit coming to the fore. I shake her hand, wishing mine weren’t already shaking on its own. “I just arrived last night.”

“Hello, Calvin,” she says, and he returns the hello.

“All rise,” says the bailiff, and Laurie quickly retreats from the table, lightly touching my arm as she does so. Calvin watches her go and then whispers to me, “I got a feeling there’s more going on here than meets the eye. You want to let me in on it?”