“I talked to the Big Guy.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked for guidance so Heather would be pleased with my service.”
“Heather Roache?”
“Yes.”
“You are fond of Heather, are you not, Mr. Thompson?”
“She is radiant among women.”
“What is your relationship to her?”
“I am not worthy to eat the worms she treads on.”
When the snickering in the courtroom had desisted, Mahanes continued, “Does Heather like children?”
“Yes, sir. She loves children.”
“What else does she like?”
Gums warmed to the topic. “Small white dogs, espresso coffee from the Silver Bean, Bush’s maple baked beans, Matt, Beautiful by Estee Lauder, pictures of Jesus—”
“Yes, thank you. Mr. Thompson, you were arrested for shoplifting in December, weren’t you? You had stolen a gift box of products from the ‘Beautiful’ range. Who was this for?”
“Heather.”
“Is it true that in August 2004, you were charged with the theft of a Maltese terrier?” Mahanes asked.
“I gave it back,” Gums protested.
Directing a meaningful stare at the jurors, Mahanes asked, “You stole that small white dog from inside its owner’s home, did you not?”
“It was scratching at the window.”
“How did you get into the house?”
“I found the keys under a magic stone.”
“So you knew God meant for you to go inside?”
DA Schrott rose immediately. “Objection. He’s leading the witness, Your Honor.”
The judge agreed. “Sustained. Get to the point, Mr. Mahanes.”
Mahanes nodded, apparently lost in earnest reflection. “Why did you try to steal the Maltese?”
“To offer it to Heather.”
“Of course. Because Ms. Roache loves small white dogs. And ‘Beautiful’ perfume. Have you taken other items to offer Heather?”
“Yes.”
“You mentioned Ms. Roache loves children. If you had a child, would you offer it to her?”
Gums looked at Mahanes like he was a loser if he even needed to ask the question. “Yes.”
Mahanes took a couple of steps closer to him. “Have you ever stolen a child to offer to Heather Roache?” When Gums hesitated, Mahanes wheedled with a sucrose smile, “Please tell the court. You’ve promised God you would be truthful.”
Gums’s eyes darted back and forth until they landed on Jude. Her heart sank.
He mumbled, “Yes.”
“That was a yes, my friends.” Mahanes paced before the jury, letting this answer sink in. “When did you do that?”
“I don’t know.”
The courtroom erupted into avid speculation. The judge demanded order.
Mahanes lifted his mellifluous voice above the din. “You stole a child, but you don’t know when?”
Shamefaced, Gums said, “I transgressed and God punished me.”
“What happened to the child you stole?”
“I buried it.”
Heather Roache fainted.
Jude said, “Oh, Christ.”
Pratt was ashen.
Their case was over. It was that simple.
*
No one was entirely sure how Mahanes had managed to decode Gums’s ramblings, but everyone agreed that the next time they committed a class-one felony, he was their guy.
Gums took the police to a sad little grave in the Mesa Verde, and they found the body of a child who had disappeared from an Arizona trailer park three years earlier. Cause of death was choking. Gums had left the child eating a hamburger in his truck, at a rest stop on the way back to Cortez, and had panicked when he returned to find him dead.
Jude spent a long, discouraging week in Cortez finalizing the police reports on the Arizona child. On her last day, she was heading for her truck when she heard footsteps approaching. Somehow, Miller had managed to give his dwindling media entourage the slip and found his way into the MCSO parking garage. She was amazed by the nerve of the guy, but she supposed getting away with murder made a person feel invincible.
With soft menace he taunted, “You forgot to congratulate me, Detective.”
The seductive weight of the gun at her hip drew Jude’s hand. “Get out of here before I blow your brains out,” she advised.
“You’re not gonna do that.” Miller drew closer, tempting her. His pupils were tiny black holes that seemed to suck the life from his pallid blue eyes.
Jude glanced around the parking garage, making automatic calculations. How would it play out? He threatened her. Assaulted her. She defended herself. He grabbed her gun from its holster. She disarmed him. The gun went off. No one would buy it. She would lose her badge and do time. Over this amoeba.
“You’re right, I’m not,” she said dismissively. She didn’t want to give Miller the satisfaction of seeing how incensed she was. “I wouldn’t waste a bullet on you.”
As she moved toward the driver’s door, he taunted in a voice so low she had to strain to hear, “What if I tell you right now, I killed the little shit and there’s nothing you can do about it?”
“Is that what you
are
telling me, Mr. Miller. Or are you playing games again?”
He got cocky and pulled a comb from his top pocket. As he slid it through his lank tendrils, he said, “I’ll give you a big fat clue, since you geniuses couldn’t even figure out where it happened.”
“I’m all ears.”
“There’s a buddy of mine with a boat parked out back of his place in Cahone. That was his cousin, Howie, on the jury.”
Three seconds, Jude thought. That’s all it would take. Point-blank. Straight between the eyes. She slid her balled fist into her pocket and met his gaze levelly. “So you took Corban out there after you’d broken his arm and used him as a punching bag?”
“Hey, I tried to fix up his arm. But he wouldn’t shut up.”
“I’m thinking I should break yours the same way, so you can understand why that was,” Jude said.
“Yeah, right. That’s gonna happen.”
“So you took him onto the boat.” Jude wanted the rest of the story. Several cars had come and gone while they were standing there, and it was only a matter of time before someone stopped to ask if there was a problem.
Apparently, Miller wanted to get it off his chest. He said, “I sleep out there sometimes, since my buddy is away most all the time. The plan was, I put the kid there and tell him when he shuts up I’ll take him home. But he’s not listening, is he? Fucking Mommy’s boy.”
“So you smashed his head in?”
“It was just a knock. Most people would have got up and walked away. But he’s just lying there and there’s blood all over the fucking place.”
“Where was your buddy while this was taking place?”
“Last I heard, he was driving trucks for Halliburton in Iraq. Big bucks if you want your fucking head cut off.”
“Not a risk you would take, being the coward you are,” Jude noted.
His eyes glittered. “You think you’re such a smart fucking bitch, but you weren’t that smart this time, were you?”
Jude stepped right up, in his face, challenging him to take his best shot. “Go ahead.” She tapped her chin in invitation. “Make my day.”
“I saw that movie,” Miller blustered. “And you aren’t even close.”
“Ouch, that hurt.” She sneered at him, wanting to push his buttons.
If she couldn’t put him inside for the crime he’d committed, a consolation prize was better than nothing. First-degree assault of a law enforcement officer was a felony that carried a ten to thirty-two-year prison term in the state of Colorado. Add obstruction and resisting arrest, and with any luck, Miller would serve most of his worthless life. Even second-degree assault would see him inside for a fourteen-year stretch.
“It must make you proud,” she said. “Knowing you killed a child that was thirty-two inches tall and weighed twenty-seven pounds. What a hero.”
He sidled edgily around her. “You can’t prove anything.”
“I already did. No one believes you’re innocent, Mr. Miller. You’re just another creep who got away with murder because a blindsided jury stopped thinking.”
“I can live with that.” He leaned deliberately against her door so she’d have to make him move before she could open it.
“Step away from my vehicle,” she said.
“Make me.”
He was trying to play her at her own game, pushing for a reaction. Like an alcoholic who presses drinks on others, he needed the affirmation of a shared weakness. He wanted to see her lose control just as he had. Only he thought he knew how far it would go. He thought she wouldn’t really hurt him, but that there would be just enough contact for him to press charges and bleat about police harassment.
Jude almost laughed. Miller wouldn’t be so cocky if he knew what she knew about her temper. That killing him would come easy. That with men like him, she had to fight the urge to inflict serious pain. Intellectually, she was aware that the dark places inside her had to remain shuttered. She had the self-discipline to keep herself in check, so she used it. But she was always conscious of a bomb ticking inside and a sense that when it exploded one day, she might not be able to hold herself back.
They stared at each other and Jude saw the violence in him, contorting the bland veneer of his features, straining for release. But he wasn’t going to attack her. He was smart enough to know which one of them would end up without a pulse if things got serious.
“I was just thinking,” she said coldly. “Every time you look in a mirror…every day for the rest of your life…you’re going to see the face Corban saw that night. Ugly. Brutal. A disgrace to humanity.”
“Fuck you.”
Jude laughed. “Is that the best you’ve got? Jesus, you really are pitiful.”
She swung the door open and got in her truck, allowing herself to picture him spread over her tires. She started the motor and backed around sharply, missing him by inches, forcing him to jump out of her way.
“I know what you are,” he shouted.
Jude rolled her window down and granted the darkness inside some room. “Watch your back, Mr. Miller,” she returned with chill threat. “Because one day—and you won’t know when it’s coming—you’ll answer for Corban Foley. And you better hope it’s not me with the knife to your throat.”
Chapter Twenty
“They’re leaving town,” Tulley said, poring over the
Durango Herald
.
Agatha topped up Jude’s coffee. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Detective. The prosecutor did everything he could after that shocking revelation.”
“They’re saying two guys on the jury bullied everyone else.” Tulley fed a forkful of his scrambled egg to Smoke’m. “Shit like that happens. We do our job and the system lets us down.”
Jude supposed she would be putting up with these assurances for the next six months until her colleagues convinced themselves that she wasn’t planning to blow her brains out anytime soon.
“I’m okay,” she told them.
“Everyone knows he did it,” Tulley declared. “They know we had him fair and square.”
Agatha sat down and stretched her feet out. She was wearing the UGG boots Jude had given her for her seventy-first birthday. Her extremities got cold even in the summer, she’d told Jude. “We can blame falling educational standards,” she said. “Individuals are placed in a position beyond their mental capacity. I think at least three members of that jury were semiliterate at best.”
“You got that right, Miss Benham.” Tulley mopped egg from Smoke’m’s jowls with a napkin. “Howie Nelson. He’s a retard. How he made it through jury selection is a goddamned mystery.”
“Language,” Agatha chided. “As a matter of fact, I taught Howie. Now there was a child with learning challenges. The family environment didn’t help. Cultural pygmies—that’s what we’re talking about.”
Jude said, “We should have found Miller’s buddy in Cahone.”
“The guy hasn’t lived around here for ten years,” Tulley said. “No one knew he even had that boat anymore.”
“Howie Nelson did.”
“Like I said, Howie’s ma dropped him on his head.”
“Howie isn’t the issue. We are. We investigated this case.”
“You know what I don’t understand,” Tulley anguished. “That’s how come the judge let Gums on the stand, anyways. He’s bat-shit crazy.”
“I think that was the point,” Jude said. “His testimony spoke to reasonable doubt. And the fact is, he could have done it. He had the opportunity. And Griffin Mahanes knew how to imply that he had the motive and practice, too.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t do it.” The buzzer sounded, and Tulley flipped his dark bangs away from his brow and angled his head expectantly toward the door.
The morning just got worse. Jude sighed as Bobby Lee Parker sauntered in. He tipped his fedora to Agatha, gave Tulley a broad wink, and placed a gift basket of fruit and nuts in front of Jude. He followed this with an ostentatious kiss that made Agatha beam and look away, then he relocated to the mirror where he removed his hat and rearranged his tousled blond hair.