The Good Father (15 page)

“So Danny wore the same shirt as the killer,” I said. “I bet there were fifty people in that hall wearing white button-down shirts.”

“But only one of them had a gun,” said Douglas.

“Whose side are you on?” I said. I was angry. Fran put a hand on my arm. Douglas crossed his legs, revealing a pale, hairless stretch of calf. He ate another carrot stick.

“I’m on your son’s side,” he said. “And that means it’s my responsibility to keep him from being executed.”

I put my briefcase on the table, opened it.

“I drew up a timeline,” I said, pulling it out. “And I’ve compiled a list of conflicting witness statements. I think they raise serious questions about what happened that night.”

Douglas looked through the pages I handed him.

“We have all this,” he said. “It doesn’t prove Danny is innocent.”

Murray, who’d been silently sipping his margarita, motioned to the waitress for another.

“Tell him about the list,” he said.

“What list?” I asked.

Douglas frowned.

“The Secret Service keeps a watch list,” he said. “People who’ve threatened the president, potential crazies.”

“Danny wasn’t on the list,” said Murray.

“Of course he wasn’t,” I said.

“But Carlos Peña was,” said Douglas.

“Who is Carlos Peña?”

“He’s an unemployed roofer who sent threatening e-mails to several members of Congress,” said Douglas.

“He was also in the auditorium that afternoon,” said Murray.

“Even if he was there,” Douglas interjected, “it doesn’t prove anything.”

Fran looked at me and frowned. She could see it on my face. This was the break I needed.

“Paul,” she said, “don’t read too much into this.”

“There is no record of Danny buying the gun that killed Seagram,” I said.

“The gun was reported stolen by its owner in Sacramento three months earlier,” said Douglas. “The Secret Service puts Danny in Sacramento at the same time.”

“What about Peña?” I said. “Has he ever been to Sacramento?”

Douglas shrugged.

“The FBI shows Danny buying two other guns in the months leading up to the assassination,” he said.

“But not this one,” I said. “What if it was Carlos’s gun? What if Carlos was the man my son fought with? What if
he
shot Seagram? He tried to get away. Danny grabbed him and wrestled the gun away.”

“Then why hasn’t Danny said anything?” asked Fran. “If he’s innocent why hasn’t he said anything?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. We looked at one another.

“It’s possible,” said Douglas, “that your son likes the attention.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“You can’t have it both ways,” said Douglas. “Either Danny did it and he’s keeping quiet so he doesn’t incriminate himself, or he’s innocent and he’s keeping quiet for some other reason.”

“He’s scared,” I said.

“Let’s say for a moment he didn’t kill Seagram,” said Douglas.

“He didn’t,” I said.

“Here’s a kid who dropped out of college, who floated around from dead-end job to dead-end job, never staying in one place for too long. He showed signs of depression, possible borderline personality ideation. We know he volunteered for Seagram in Austin. He was a lonely kid looking for connection. A kid who worried that history would forget him.”

“So when Seagram was killed,” said Murray, “when the gun literally fell into Danny’s lap, he takes credit. He is somebody now. No one will ever be able to say Seagram’s name again without mentioning Danny’s.”

I thought about this. Was it possible? Would my son throw his whole life away for a place in history?

“It’s also possible,” said Douglas, “that he feels guilty for something else he’s done, and this is his way of punishing himself.”

“Like what?” said Fran.

“Who knows?” said Douglas. “Maybe he broke a girl’s heart. Maybe he ran over someone with his car and didn’t stick around for the police. I’ve filed motions for a psychiatric evaluation. The prosecution opposes it, but psychiatric evaluations are pretty standard in these types of cases.”

Fran sat next to me, shredding her napkin. She said, “If this Carlos Peña guy was on the Secret Service’s watch list, how did he get into Royce Hall?”

“You want the conspiracy version?” said Murray.

“No.”

“Human error,” said Douglas. “The guest list shows Peña checked in using the name Carlos Fuentes. He had a fake ID. The hall holds eighteen hundred people. Seagram wasn’t one of the politicians Carlos had threatened. He simply slipped through the cracks.”

“And the Secret Service hasn’t mentioned it,” I said, “because it would embarrass the agency. They had the killer on their
do not admit
list and they let him in anyway.”

Douglas finished his carrot sticks. He zipped the bag closed, put it away, and shut his briefcase.

“These are nice theories,” he said. “But the fact remains, your son was caught with the murder weapon.”

I shook my head. In my briefcase were documents ordered chronologically. There were indices and note cards, photographs and DVDs.

“Just because your EKG says you’re having a heart attack,” I said, “doesn’t mean you have heart disease. There are half a dozen hard-to-diagnose diseases that can be misinterpreted as heart disease. I’m saying all the symptoms have to add up, not just some.”

I took off my glasses, rubbed my eyes. When I opened them I could see Douglas and Fran looking at me. I’d seen looks like this in the eyes of doctors who spoke to family members who refused to believe their brothers or sisters or mothers or fathers were dead. Denial. They thought I was in denial.

“My son didn’t do this,” I said.

Murray stood up, threw a fifty-dollar bill on the table. “What do you say we go for a walk?” he said.

I thought about it for a second, then closed my briefcase. Standing up I felt tired. My joints hurt. I was an old man, the father of the vilified. Would this be my life from here on out? Was I to become the argumentative man who can’t control the volume of his own voice? The conspiracy nut with boxes of data who spouts dates and facts, as if coincidence alone can prove the existence of God?

We walked in silence through the lobby.

“I’m not crazy,” I said.

“I never said you were.”

Outside the hotel he handed the valet his ticket.

“Danny had issues,” I said.

“Issues,” he said, trying to sound nonjudgmental.

“Problems. He had problems. Of course. But he’s not a killer. This man, this Peña, he has a history of threatening people.”

“He’s done time,” said Murray. “Assault.”

“My God,” I said. “Don’t you see? This is the proof we need. Why isn’t the government all over this guy?”

Murray clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Douglas is right. Just because Peña was there doesn’t prove he killed Seagram.”

I balled my fists. The world felt like it was spinning backward. I was dizzy. For a moment I worried I might pass out.
Slow down
, I thought.
Think it through
.

“Trials are about reasonable doubt,” I said. “We don’t have to prove Peña did it. We just have to raise enough doubt to keep the jury from convicting Danny.”

The valet pulled up. Murray walked to the driver’s door. He gave the valet a twenty. I stood on the curb watching him. Overhead the sun peeked out from behind the clouds.

“Well,” said Murray, “what are you waiting for? Let’s go see Carlos Peña.”

Ted and Bonnie Kirkland lived on Lackender Avenue just outside Iowa City. Their house was a small post-and-beam structure set a few hundred feet behind the feed store they ran. On the back forty they kept chickens and a vegetable garden and raised pigs for meat. Their daughter was away at school back east. Daniel Allen showed up at the feed store on April 1 looking for work. He blew in like a leaf on the wind. In college he had dated a girl named Cora. She told him about growing up in Iowa, about her parents, Ted and Bonnie, and what kind and gregarious people they were. She talked about cornfields as far as the eye could see, about growing her own vegetables and riding her bike through the September dusk. It was a place where people still slept with their doors unlocked, and dreamed grounded, midwestern dreams.

Danny showed up on March 28, having driven Route 88 southwest from Chicago. He drove with the windows down. It was the first real spring day. Leaving Illinois he felt himself entering a land of promise. He could smell agriculture in the air, the earthen stink of manure.

It was lunchtime when he walked into Kirkland’s Feed Store. He was wearing an old T-shirt and a pair of Dr. Martens. His hair was spiky and unwashed. He looked like a lost city boy looking for directions, especially when he stood for a long moment in the center of the warehouse-size store, looking around. It was Ted who approached him, wiping his hands on a rag.

“Can I help you with something?” he said.

Ted was a tall man, broad-shouldered. He had a plate in his head where a horse had kicked him when he was a boy. When he drank at
parties he would stick refrigerator magnets to his temple, much to the amusement of everyone around him. He had married Bonnie twenty-three years ago. They met when they were teenagers. He was the farmhand and she was the farmer’s daughter.

“I’m looking for a job,” said Danny.

“A job,” said Ted. “I thought you wanted directions.”

“Don’t need directions. This is the place.”

Ted looked at Danny. He had just finished restocking the livestock pharmaceuticals: bags of Duramycin-10, packages of Atgard Swine Wormer, jars of Calf Bolus.

“Well,” he said, “we’re not really hiring right now.”

Danny nodded.

“The thing is,” he said, “I just drove all the way from Vassar.”

“In New York?”

Danny nodded.

“And this girl I knew there, a friend of mine, she said her family had a feed store in Iowa City. She said they had a guest apartment over the garage that they rented out. Ted and Bonnie Kirkland. She said if I was ever in Iowa City I should look them up.”

Ted considered the young man in front of him. Was he dangerous? A con man, maybe? The kind who sneaks into your life then tears it down brick by brick. Ted had a farmhand’s stoicism. His face was unreadable.

“Well, sir,” he said, “all that is true. It is. What’s the name of this girl, your friend?”

“Cora Kirkland.”

“And your name?”

“Daniel Allen,” said Danny sticking out his hand. Ted shook it. He still didn’t know what to make of the kid. He excused himself for a minute and went to call Cora. She laughed when he told her whom he’d just been talking to. She couldn’t believe that Danny was in Iowa City, standing in front of her father. They had dated for just a few weeks. She liked Danny, but he was always so distracted. He was a lost boy, and she was a girl with places to go, so she broke up with him one night over pizza. Danny didn’t seem to mind, and they’d stayed friends. Now she asked to talk to him.

“Danny,” she said, “what are you doing?”

“I dropped out of school,” he said. “I needed a change of pace. I thought a few months working the land.”

“My parents don’t work the land,” she said. “They sell horse feed and farm supplies.”

“Well,” he said, “that sounds good, too.”

Sometimes when they made love, Danny would stop in the middle and go do something else—watch TV or make a sandwich. Cora thought of him now as a little brother.

“My parents are square,” she told him. “They go to bed at eight o’clock.”

“Sounds good to me,” he told her. “Besides, I like it here. The air is so fresh.”

“It smells like cow shit.”

“Isn’t that what fresh air smells like?” he asked.

He moved into the apartment over the garage. There wasn’t a kitchen, but he had a hot plate and an old livestock trough to bathe in. At night he’d climb onto the roof and look at the stars. He never knew there were so many. That first night he lay on his twin bed and watched the shadows of trees flutter across the wood-slat ceiling. He listened to the wind, and for a few hours felt like somebody else.

During the days he loaded and unloaded trucks. He wore a Velcro back brace and durable canvas work gloves. He stocked shelves. He learned the names of things: the Chore Boot and the Muckmaster. Neatsfoot oil was a natural preservative and softener of leather products. Red Hot Spray was a special formula of soap, spices, and flavoring to stop animals from chewing on bandages, leg wraps, and casts.

He ate flat, fast-food hamburgers on the loading dock with the other stock boys. Mostly Mexicans. He practiced his Spanish, learning the dirty words first.
Chingar
meant “to fuck,” as in
chinga tu madre. Manoletiando
meant “to masturbate.”
Hoto
was a term for gay people.
Pendejo
meant “idiot.” He liked to wait until his fries were cold to eat them. The Mexicans thought this was crazy. They called him
Cabrón
. Only later did he learn it meant “asshole.”

He had dinner every night with the Kirklands. Bonnie insisted. She was a tiny brunette with a gun collection. Her father had taught her to hunt when she was a girl, and she loved the feel of oiled steel in her hands. A week earlier she’d had a long conversation with Cora about
Danny. She wanted to know if he was dangerous. Cora said, “God, no. Just a little lost.” Lost was something Bonnie could handle. She was a mother, after all, and lost boys call on frequencies only mothers can hear. Danny became her mission. Bonnie would make sure he was fed, that he washed properly. She would attend to his physical and spiritual health.

They ate meat that came from the Kirklands’ own pigs and corn from their neighbors’ fields. It was fresher than any meal Danny had ever had. He could taste the dirt in every vegetable, the oaky compote of the soil. Eating a summer squash he felt like he could count every raindrop that went into it.

They asked him about his family. He was vague. His parents were divorced. His mother lived in Los Angeles. His father lived in Connecticut with his new family. Danny was nineteen years old. He wanted to travel, see the world.