Winston’s dad had been murdered in front of Winston when the boy was eight. Over the next seven years, his mother lived with eleven different men. At least six of them beat Winston and his mother on a fairly regular basis. One of them fired a gun at Winston. Another beat him with a brick. A third sodomized him.
Katya said, You wanted to keep Winston alive, but it wasn’t your doing that he died.
I said, That rationalization hasn’t worked so well for me before, and if I start to believe that he’s innocent, it won’t work at all with Henry Quaker.
She said, Whether you believe he’s innocent has nothing to do with it.
I thought about that. I couldn’t be sure whether she had stressed the word
JEROME, GARY, KASSIE, AND I met to discuss our strategy. Jerome had read the transcripts. He noticed that when police arrived at the murder scene, they checked Dorris’s hands for gunpowder residue. The police reports did not say what the results of the test had been. But Jerome thought it was significant that they had even conducted a test. They had to have been thinking that she killed her two children and then committed suicide. But why would they think that, why would they check her hands, unless they had found a gun nearby? And if they had found a gun nearby, why wasn’t it mentioned anywhere in the file? I told the team that I’d have lunch with Detective Harmon to see what I could learn.
Gary and Kassie thought we should take another run at Green. I asked what he could possibly know. Gary had figured out from jail records that Green had been in the county jail during Quaker’s trial. He could have heard just about anything. I warned them again about Green’s temper. Kassie said, Right, you tell the guy to have a nice life, and
I shrugged. I told Gary to let Kassie take the lead in talking to Green. Then I said to Kassie, Be sure to wear something nice.
MELISSA HARMON SAID, If you’re buying lunch, you must need something.
I’d known Melissa for close to twenty years. She had been a homicide cop before leaving the police force to open her own detective agency. She is five feet two inches tall, and weighs maybe a hundred pounds after a big breakfast. She is also a third-degree black belt. For ten years she was married to an abusive spouse. I once asked her why she didn’t beat the crap out of the guy. She turned her head to the side and shrugged. I never asked again. She did me a big favor when I was a young lawyer, and I was finally able to pay it back by getting her a divorce lawyer who put her ex-husband through the misery he deserved. When I needed a cop’s perspective, I asked her. Sometimes I even hired her.
I said, If you were investigating a crime scene, is there any reason you would think a dead guy had committed suicide if you didn’t find a gun near him? She asked what hypothetical crime scene I was talking about. I told her.
She said, Lucas Wyatt pulled that case, right? I nodded. She said, He might take too many shortcuts, but he isn’t corrupt. I said that wasn’t exactly what I had asked her. We were at Goode Company Bar-B-Q. She ate a piece of sausage. She said, I don’t know why you eat the brisket. It’s like diet food. It isn’t as good as this. She stabbed another piece of sausage with her plastic fork and waved it under my nose. I waited. She said, No, I don’t think that thought would cross my mind. I asked whether it would make a difference if the victim was a woman. She thought for a minute and asked, Wasn’t she a mother? I told her yes. She said, If the kids were dead, I might give the possibility of murder-suicide a little thought.
Even if there wasn’t a gun?
If there wasn’t a gun, it would be just a very little thought, she said.
I said, If Wyatt had found a gun next to the body he’s not the kind of cop who would neglect to put that in his report, is he?
No, he isn’t.
You sure?
She paused and said, Yeah, I am.
I said, I detected a pause before that answer.
She smiled. Then she said, I told you, he’s not corrupt. If it was my time, I wouldn’t waste it chasing that rabbit. But it isn’t my time, is it? And if I know you, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. She wiped her mouth and stood up to go. Thanks for lunch, Doc. Let’s do it again when I can bring more clarity to your life.
LINCOLN CALLED ME as I was driving back to the office. He had learned to ride his bike without training wheels two weeks earlier, and ever since all he wanted to do was practice. He would wake up with me at five and wait for it to get light, then ride up and down the driveway in his pajamas until it was time for breakfast. He asked whether I could come home for a while to help him practice. I told him to practice with Nana. He said, But she runs too slow. She won’t be able to help catch me if I fall. I told him that he would have to work it out. He said, You told me this morning you would practice with me at lunch. He was correct. I had forgotten. I said that something had come up at my office, and that I would have to do it tomorrow. He said, Okay, Dada. He waited for me to break the connection.
Why is it that when my six-year-old son says,
JEROME AND BUD LOMAX were waiting for me when I got back to the office. Jerome looked at me over Bud’s shoulder and rolled his eyes.
Bud Lomax was Henry Quaker’s brother-in-law, Dorris’s younger brother. Bud had been seventeen when Dorris and the children were killed. At Henry’s trial, Lomax had testified that Dorris told him that Henry was abusive. I could not conceive of how a jury could have believed him. His eyes flitted like a bird eyeing a cat. He was a loser, and I could not imagine how anyone could believe that Dorris told him a meaningful thing. He said that Dorris was scared of Henry and once told him that Henry had threatened to kill her. Henry’s lawyer did not ask him a single question on cross-examination. Three months ago he called our office, talked to Jerome, and said he needed to see us. He told Jerome that he had lied at the trial.
Jerome drove out to Bud’s apartment. Bud told Jerome that the day after the bodies were found, a detective had come to see him and said that Henry committed the crime. He said it would help if Bud could remember fights he had witnessed between Henry and Dorris. Bud said he couldn’t remember any fights. He said Henry and Dorris loved each other. The detective told him it sure would be a shame if Henry got away with murdering his sister just because Bud had a bad memory. The detective came to see Bud four or five times. Eventually, his memory improved.
In the scheme of things, neither Bud’s original testimony nor his recantation was of great importance. Motive is overrated as an element of criminal trials. People kill for good reasons, bad reasons, and no reason at all. But in this case, the evidence against Henry was so slim that anything helped.
Bud had served twenty months in prison for drug possession. He was twenty-seven, no longer a kid, when he called Jerome. That day in my office he smelled like he’d bathed in peppermint schnapps. I said, Happy hour started a little early today, huh, partner? He looked at me blankly. Jerome asked him to tell us again what had happened after the murder. He repeated the same story Jerome had already heard. I asked him, Where were these conversations? He said at his house. I said, Inside or outside? He said he couldn’t remember. I asked him whether the detective might have found drugs inside the house. He stared at me like I had horns, with equal parts fear and disbelief. I said, How early in the morning do I need to schedule a meeting with you if I want to see you sober? He ran his thumb across his bottom lip. I told Jerome to take him home.
Later that day Jerome said, Just because the cop found drugs doesn’t mean that Bud would lie, and even if we could prove he did, just because Bud lied doesn’t mean Henry didn’t do it.
That’s true, I said. I asked Jerome whether Bud had any kids. He said, Four. Three sons, one daughter, three different mothers.
I said, Fatherhood can have unpredictable effects. I’ll see you tomorrow.
I DROVE HOME to pick up Lincoln for t-ball practice. He was waiting for me, throwing a tennis ball against the garage and catching the rebound. He seemed to have forgotten about the shitty dad episode,
