“Not recent, not that I know of.”
“What about Felicia?”
That stopped Toby cold. “What about her?”
“She’s—?”
“My mother. Have you spoken to her? Does she know what happened?”
Murchison sat motionless, as though he didn’t hear. His brow knit almost imperceptibly, then smoothed again. Another long silence. “Your mother get along with the victim?”
“Get along?” Toby let loose a harsh chuckle, shook his head, thinking, There it is again. The victim. Could be just some cop way of talking. “My father wanted nothing so much as to get back with my mother. My mother wanted peace.”
“Peace?”
“Shortest path to my father’s heart was through his ego. Not my mother’s style, pampering a man’s vanity. And he had a temper. He never backed down, never, not from anyone.”
“Not even you.”
Toby laughed, nervous. “Especially not me.”
“And when he got in your face, your mother’s face, you stood your ground. Defended your mother.”
“I don’t recall saying my father got in anybody’s face.”
“Sure you did. Plain as day.”
Toby bristled at the accusation. At the same time, he feared what the man said was true.
“It’s hard, Toby, when you’re caught in the middle. I understand that, I do. The victim, your mother, all those years, him wanting to be with her, your mother keeping her distance. And with his temper, I’m sure it got rough. I’m sure you got punished for things you had no part of.”
“Detective—”
“And then you try to do the decent thing. He’s sick, alone in that house, you come up here to lend a hand. It’s a generous offer. A sacrifice.”
Murchison edged in closer.
“You know, Toby, my father, he’s old, he’s sick. Needs me more than ever. Still treats me like dirt. He’s proud, he’s depressed, and sometimes he’s just a little crazy. And it’s hard, it’s damn hard, to do what you’ve got to do, do what you know is right, when all it earns you is abuse.”
“I didn’t say—”
“So, you see, Toby, I understand. In particular, I understand how hard it must have been tonight. The brandy in his tea. Didn’t think I knew that. Yeah, I knew that. And a few weeks after he’s lost a kidney. Tells you a lot, Toby. Tells you it will never stop. Never. Whatever price he wants you to pay, or wants your mother to pay, he intends to collect, over and over, till the day he dies. And now he’s got you right where he wants you, stuck in a small room in his house, a prisoner, giving up your life for his.”
“I didn’t give up—”
“You tried to be gracious, invited him along tonight, but that just rubbed it in. He had to punish you. Had to punish you for having a life with promise ahead, not just memories behind. Had to punish you for the fact he’s never earned your mother’s love. So he picked a fight. Got kicked out of the club. But he won’t be the one to suffer. You will. It’s your reputation now, not his. He knew that. You told yourself, ‘I’m willing to do the decent thing, the right thing, but I won’t let him destroy my life the way he destroyed his.’ Burning every bridge he crosses, till he’s left in that house all alone—that’s how the neighbors saw it, we’ve talked to them—killing himself just to get someone to be there with him. None of that’s fair. Anybody can see that, Toby. And so you came home from the club. Straight home. Enough’s enough. Time the two of you had it out. Time you said what needed to be said.”
To a point, Toby thought, it was eerily true. He felt the same disgust with himself.
“Where were you right before you came up to the gate outside the house, Toby? That’s what I need to know. Sergeant Holmes stopped you, wouldn’t let you come in the yard. Right before that, you were in a car coming back from the club.”
“Yes.”
“The driver of that car was …”
An icy pall came over him. “One of the guys in the band.”
The look—it was like he’d kicked the detective’s chair.
“He has a name, Toby. The guys in your band, you know them. They’re your friends. A couple of them are still down at the club. They’re helping us out. We’re grateful for that. The one who drove you home, though. His name.”
Toby tried to think, but all he could hear was Francis’s voice.
This ain’t no joke. I ain’t here. I ain’t the one drove you home.
“Stop this, Toby. Don’t. Stop it now.”
“Stop what?”
“This is my job, Toby, I like to think I’m good at it.”
“A guy in my band—”
“He’s got a name, Toby.”
“Jimmy Seagraves.”
Murchison sat back, shook his head. “I’m gonna give you a chance to think about what you’re doing. Don’t think this is any fun for me, Toby.”
“Jimmy Seagraves, he’s the organist in the band.”
“Drives a van.”
Toby went stiff. “Actually, his cousin Javelle—”
“They’re still down there, Toby. At the club. Never left. Can’t get the van to start.”
Toby felt light-headed. Tell him the truth, he thought. Now.
“Francis Templeton. That’s his name.”
Murchison tapped his hands together slowly, his eyes never straying from Toby’s. “Francis Tyrone Templeton. He’s an abscond, out of Bellflower, in South Central L.A. Felony possession, two and a half years in Corcoran. Probation officer’s sworn out a bench warrant for him, hasn’t seen him in eighteen months. But you know all that. You just thought you could lie to me about it.”
“Francis asked me to lie,” Toby said. Funny, he thought, how the truth doesn’t really help.
“What else did Francis ask you to do?”
“Nothing. He was scared. He asked me not to say he was there, that he wasn’t the one who drove me home.”
“So you lied for him.”
Toby’s head sagged. “What’s going to happen to him?”
“Him? You’re worried about
him
?”
“Why—”
“He staying somewhere here in town?”
“With his great-aunt.”
Toby felt the way he had when he’d cut himself badly once, strangely calm, staring at the blood, thinking, Stupid. Then: Now what?
“The aunt,” Murchison said, removing from his pocket a pen and tiny spiral notepad. “A name and address, Toby.”
Toby gave him the information, imagining what would happen. A car would rush over, more than one, cops at the door, pounding, waking up that poor old woman and the neighborhood, too, taking Francis away. Toby pictured him, tottering in handcuffs down the porch stair at his great-aunt’s house with a cop clutching his arm. A third of the guys Toby had known growing up were filing in or out of prison. Queasy, he put his head in his hands, thinking, So this is what it feels like. To betray a friend. What sort of prayer do you offer up, he wondered, to get right again?
Murchison clicked his pen. “Okay, Toby. Good. But this is just the first step. Right? You need to ask yourself: What will Francis say once he’s in that chair instead of you? I can only help you for so long. If Francis decides to help, you have to understand, I’m going to listen.”
Toby snapped to. “Listen to what?”
“This is your chance, Toby. Offer won’t be on the table forever. Francis is your friend, okay. I can understand that. But that’s not going to be the situation in a very short while. Down here, in these rooms, a guy learns quick. It’s every man for himself down here. Francis, he’s been through all this before. He’s going to be afraid, Toby, afraid this deal down South he’s running from will be a second strike. That ups the ante, huge. It’s Corcoran they’ll send him back to. You heard about the gladiator fights? Jury acquitted the guards, but you really think that doesn’t happen?”
Toby’s mouth and throat had turned to sand. He worked his tongue, trying to create saliva. Murchison watched.
“My point, Toby, is this. Francis, he’s going to be willing—hell, eager—to do what he can to help himself. But that’ll be later. Now, it’s you and me. Here. I want to help. I do. I can see you’re a decent young man. It’s not the world we’d like it to be sometimes. Things go haywire. The feelings, they just come. Then we look at what’s happened and wish to God we could go back, undo it.”
Toby glanced down at his hands. Only then did he realize how tightly they were clasped. It took him a second to untangle his fingers. They were numb. He shook them out and, as he did, one of those feelings Murchison had just talked about, it came.
“I get it now,” he murmured. “I understand.”
Murchison offered a sad smile, but the eyes held steady. “That’s good, Toby.”
“I understand why Francis was so afraid. In the car. When he dropped me off.”
“What was Francis scared of?”
“You.” He made sure to connect—Murchison’s eyes, his own. “This.”
“Everybody’s scared in here, Toby. But there’s a way out.”
“Why would I want a way out? I’ve just figured out the secret.”
Murchison sat back wearily in his chair, his head cocked. “You playing games now, Toby?”
“No. Just lying. Again.” Toby pushed his glasses up, rubbed his eyes, then shook the dull tired ache from his head. “Well, that’s what you think, right? Not a word I say can be trusted, right? It’s all one big lie. Unless, of course, I say I killed my father. That’s the truth.”
Stluka, hearing that as he came back into the room, jumped on it. “You ready?”
“I’m lying,” Toby said again, louder. Sweat poured freely down his back now, his face wet with it, too. “Right? I came up, pointed the gun, shot my own father like some crackhead. Like my evil, worthless friend. I did it. Except I’m lying. I shot the man took me to music lessons, ten years old, my hand in his, walked me down the hill to Henderson’s Music Store twice a week. Paid for those lessons when my mother refused. I shot him dead. But I’m lying. I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m just so goddamn glad he’s dead. But I’m lying.”
He shook with rage and, sneakily, the grief slipped in behind. A desperation tinged with longing—it choked him. He’d heard stories of family members throwing themselves into graves, wailing as they landed on the coffin, and others climbing down in their funeral clothes to drag them out. It had always seemed bizarre, false, comical.
“Damn you,” he whispered, wiping his face.
Murchison said, “Damn me why?”
“He was my father. I loved him. Not perfect—”
“What wasn’t perfect about it?”
Toby uttered a miserable laugh. “It was mine.”
“Tell me the rest, Toby,” Murchison said, leaning forward, not unkind. “Tell me now.”
Toby glared at him. “I did not. Kill my father.”
“Did you kill Strong Carlisle?”
“I just told you.”
“He’s not your father,” Stluka said, impatient, like some deadline had just passed. “Everybody knows it. The neighbors. Guys in your own damn band. He pretended to be your father, hoping he could get a second shot at your mother. And she played him like a fucking drum.”
Toby dropped his hands from his face. He was light-headed, short of breath, again. Stluka stood there, glaring. Murchison waited. So that was it. Not my father. The victim.
“Ah, no. No.” Toby rose from the chair. His legs melted beneath him. The room swam with shadows and whirling dots. “This is nuts, just—”
“Tell me now,” Murchison said. “There won’t be a better time. It’s Francis’s turn next.”
“Tell you what?” Toby turned this way, that, trying to figure out where to move.
“You know what,” Murchison said. “Sit back down, Toby. Please. There’s something you want to get off your chest. Tell me.”
Toby caught himself before raising his voice again. It’s just what they want, he realized. Emotion. Careless, wild, Negro emotion. He leaned forward, hands outstretched, and announced quietly, soberly, eyes locked on Murchison’s, “I killed no one.” He turned to Stluka. “Absolutely, utterly, no one. And neither did Francis.” He straightened, realizing finally how right he’d been, how small a part truth would play in this. “As for
the rest,
as you call it, do what you’re gonna do. I’ve run out of ways to tell you. I’m through talking to you. I want to speak to a lawyer.”
5
M
urchison worked his first murder in 1974—571st MP Company, Seventh Infantry, stationed at Fort Ord near Monterey. Because he’d had a year of college before enlisting, his superiors waived the four-year MP and rank-of-sergeant requirements—he was being groomed for Criminal Investigations Division. His workload consisted of on-base wife and child beatings mostly, off-base rapes and brawls and D & Ds, the occasional dope case. Once, a load of weapons gone missing.
The night manager of an hour-rate SRO on the breakwater end of Ocean View Avenue called in the case. He said he had a soldier on a bender in one of the rooms. “Make it quick. Girl he’s with, she sounds unlucky.”
Murchison and three MPs jumped in the Jeep and got there in fifteen. The night manager—almost thirty years later, Murchison still remembered his rippling fat, his yellow teeth, his sleek gray pompadour—met them in the lobby and they charged upstairs. Murchison knocked hard, got no response, used the manager’s passkey, and, pushing open the door, discovered John T. Boyle, Specialist 4—Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Purple Heart, Bronze Star for valor at Dak To—tottering on his feet with a broken bottle in his fist. He’d dressed out a woman he’d met in some drinking hole, slathering himself and the shabby room in her blood.
The manager, who came in behind, upchucked the instant he hit the door. By the time they had Boyle under control—whiskey-eyed, half-naked, and handcuffed to the headboard, mumbling, “The whore had a blade, I swear”—the manager was popping a vein, spouting stuff like “I don’t need John Law around here. That’s why I called you guys, not the locals. Collect your own garbage. Get it outta here.”
“Yeah?” Murchison stood in the bathroom doorway. “And whose garbage is she?”
The woman—maybe twenty-five, shag haircut, racoon eyeliner—had fled to the shower stall, like it was some sort of home base. Her body still lay in there, naked except for high-heel sandals, more a tangle of body parts than a human being, arms and face scored into shreds.
Murchison had enlisted two years earlier, April 1972—a matter of days after the family got word his brother was dead, killed during the NVA’s Easter Offensive. Willy’s truck took a freak direct hit from rocket fire while it convoyed relief supplies toward the siege of An Loc. The way Murchison saw it, there was no choice. Sign up and serve. Eighteen, he thought one sacrifice could redeem another. His father never forgave him. After Willy’s death, seeing his lone remaining son star in football—he was rounding out freshman year on scholarship, the full deal, Oregon State—it was the only dream left. The prospect of losing both sons in the same sinkhole, especially at that futile and chickenshit stage of the war, it was too much. They fought about it, just once; then the old man went inward.