The Pardon

answering a few questions?”

“Sure,” Jack shrugged.

“You do mind?” said Stafford, taunting again.

“No, I don’t mind,” Jack snapped. The detective took mental note of his agitated tone.

Stafford continued the game. “It’s okay, really, if you don’t want to talk, Jack. I mean, you don’t have to talk to us.”

“I know that,” Jack said dryly.

Stafford’s eyes narrowed. “You have the right, you know, to remain silent.”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“You have the right to an attorney,” Stafford continued. “If you can’t afford an attorney-”

“Are you reading me my rights?” Jack asked. “I mean, for real?”

Stafford’s expression was deadly serious.

“Look,” said Jack, “I know you guys are just doing your job. But the truth is, nobody is going to be terribly upset if you don’t catch the guy who blew away Eddy Goss.”

“How’d you know he was shot?”

All expression drained from Jack’s face. “I just figured he’d been shot,” Jack backpedaled. “I just meant killed, that’s all.”

Stafford gave him that slow, exaggerated nod again, his old detective’s eyes brightening as he pulled a little pad and pen from his inside coat pocket. “You mind if I take a few notes?”

Jack thought for a moment. “I think this has gone far enough.”

“That’s certainly your right,” Stafford said with a shrug. “You don’t have to cooperate.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to cooperate.”

“Hey,” Bradley intervened, as if to calm Jack down. “It’s no problem.”

Jack swallowed hard, completely unaware of how obvious it was that they’d rattled the hell out of him.

The detectives rose from the couch, and Jack showed them to the door.

“See you again, Jack,” Stafford promised.

Jack showed no reaction. He just closed the door as soon as they stepped outside and went to the window, watching as the two detectives walked side-by-side to their car. He looked for some feedback, but they didn’t even look at each other until Bradley got behind the wheel and Stafford was in the passenger seat.

“There was a steak knife on the floor at Goss’s apartment,” said Stafford as his partner backed the car out of the driveway.

Bradley glanced at his passenger, then looked back at the road as he backed into the street. “So?”

Stafford sat in silence, thinking. “Check with forensics for prints. First thing.”

“Sure,” Bradley shrugged, “no problem.”

“Then call the Florida bar. They keep a set of fingerprints on all attorneys. Tell them you need a set for Swyteck.”

“Come on, Lon,” Bradley groaned. “We had a little fun with the guy in there, playing with the Miranda rights and the whole bit. But you don’t really think he killed Goss?”

“You heard me,” Stafford snapped. “Check it out.”

Bradley sighed and shook his head. “Swyteck, huh?”

Stafford stared at the dashboard. He cracked his window lit a cigarette, and took a long, satisfying drag. “Swyteck,” he confirmed, smoke and disdain pouring from his lips. “Defender of scum.”

Chapter 18

The steak knife found in Goss’s apartment yielded a nice set of prints, and by the following Monday afternoon Detective Stafford thought they looked even nicer, when Jack Swyteck’s prints came from the Florida bar.

“We got a match!” Stafford blurted as he barged into the state attorney’s office.

Wilson McCue peered out over the top of his rimless spectacles, his working files spread across the top of his desk. Stafford closed the door behind him and bounded into the room with boyish enthusiasm. “Swyteck’s prints are all over the steak knife,” he said with a grin.

The prosecutor leaned back in his chair. Had anyone but Lonzo Stafford charged unannounced into his office like this, he would have tossed him out on his tail. But Lonzo Stafford enjoyed a special status-acquired more than half a century ago, when an eleven-year-old Lonnie entered into a pact with an eight-year-old Willie to remain “friends forever, no matter what.” As boys they’d hunted in the same fields, fished in the same ponds, and gone to the same school, Lonzo always a couple of steps ahead of Wilson on the time line, but Wilson always a notch higher on the grading curve. Now at sixty-five, Wilson looked at least seventy-five, even on a good day.

“I want you to convene a grand jury,” said Stafford.

The prosecutor coughed his smoker’s hack, then lit up a Camel. “What for?”

Stafford snatched the lit cigarette from his friend and smoked it himself, pacing as he spoke. “Because I got a suspect,” he replied, “in the murder of Eddy Goss.”

“Yeah,” McCue scoffed, “so do I. About twelve million of them. Anybody who has seen that animal’s videotaped confession is a suspect. Eddy Goss deserved to die, and everybody wanted him dead. There ain’t a jury in the world that would convict the guy who did the world a favor by blowing Goss’s brains out.”

Stafford arched an eyebrow. “Unless the guy who did it was the same slick defense lawyer who got him-and others like him-off the hook and back on the street.”

McCue was apprehensive. “And I can see the headlines already: ‘Republican State Attorney Attacks Democrat Governor’s Son.’ It’ll be ugly, Lon. With the gubernatorial election just three months away, you’d better have plenty of ammunition if we’re gonna start that war.”

Stafford took a drag on his cigarette. “We got plenty,” he said, smoke pouring through his nostrils. “We got Swyteck’s prints on the handle of a knife we found on the floor. I also had the blade checked. There was blood on the tip. AB negative. Very rare. Same as Swyteck’s. Lab found some fish-stick remnants on there, too, which is what the autopsy showed Goss had for dinner. And best of all, the blood came later, after the fish sticks.”

“Which means?”

“Which means that on the night Goss was murdered I can place Jack Swyteck in the victim’s apartment, after dinner, wielding a steak knife.”

“And you got a victim who was shot to death,” the prosecutor fired back. “I’d say we need more.”

“There is more. Just a few hours after the murder, about seven in the morning, we interviewed Swyteck. This was before he was a suspect. Swyteck came to the door in a pair of gym shorts, right outta bed. Nervous as a cat, he was. Big bruise on his ribs. Looked like a bite mark on his belly. Fresh red scratches on his back. Had an open cut on the back of his left hand, too. It looked like a stab wound, to me and Bradley both. Just to look at him, I’d say he’d been in a pretty recent scuffle.”

“And he would say he fell down the stairs.”

“Maybe,” said Stafford, his voice gathering intensity. “But he’s gonna have a hard time explaining how he knew Goss had been shot before we ever told him so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I checked with the media. No news reports were out about Goss’s murder until almost eight o’clock. We showed up at Swyteck’s house at seven, and we told him Goss had been killed-but we didn’t tell him how. Swyteck knew he had been shot. He said so. It was a slip of the tongue, I think, but he was talking about a shooting before we were.”

McCue listened with interest. “We’re getting there,” he said. He paused to rub at his temples and think for a second. “Why don’t you just arrest him, Lonnie. You know, maybe B and E or something, if all you want to do is rattle his cage?”

Stafford’s eyes narrowed with contempt. “I want to do more than rattle him. I want to convict his ass.”

“Because of what he did to you in the Goss trial?” McCue asked directly.