Show of Evil

'Here's what I got in mind,' St Claire said. 'I wanna cross-match missing people and unsolved homicides, then see if we have any overlap in dates. Can we do that?'

'State level?'

'Yeah, to start with. Exclude this county for the time being.'

'Nothing to it,' Meyer said, his fingers clicking on the computer keyboard.

'What the hell're you two up to?' Vail asked.

Hunch,' St Claire said, still watching the screen. His blue eyes glittered behind wire-rimmed glasses that kept sliding down to the end of his nose.

'Everybody's got a hunch. I had to listen to Abel's hunches all the way through breakfast. A hunch about what?'

'About this new thing,' St Claire said.

'What new thing?'

St Claire's upper lip bulged with a wad of snuff. Without taking his eyes off the big screen of the computer, he spat delicately into a silver baby cup he carried at all times for just that purpose.

'The landfill murders,' he said. 'We're trying to get a leg up on it.'

'Well, Eckling's got seven days before we officially enter the case.'

'Cold trail by then.'

'Let's wait until Okimoto tells us something,' Vail said.

'That could be a couple days,' St Claire said. 'I just wanna run some ideas through the computer network. No big thing.'

'Who says they were murdered, anyway?' Meyer said.

'Hell,' said St Claire, dropping another dollop of snuff into his baby cup and smiling, 'it's too good not to be murder.'

'What's your caseload, Ben?' asked Vail.

'Four.'

'And you're playing with this thing?'

'I don't know how to run this gadget,' St Claire complained.

Vail decided to humour him. 'You can have the whiz kid here until after lunch,' he said. 'Then Meyer's back on his cases.'

'Can't do much in three hours,' St Claire groaned.

'Then you better hurry.'

Naomi finally walked across the office and grabbed Vail by the arm. She pointed across the room to Yancey's office.

'He called ten minutes ago. I told him…'

'No. N-o,' Vail said, entering his office. He stopped short inside the door. Hanging on the coat tree behind the door were his dark blue suit and his tuxedo.

'What's this?'

'I had your stuff picked up for you. Didn't think you'd have time to get home and change.'

'Change for what?' he growled.

'You have to accompany Yancey to the opening luncheon of the State Lawyers Convention. He's the keynote speaker. High noon -'

'Oh, for Christ sake!'

'And the opening-night cocktail party is at the Marina Convention Center at six.'

 'Goddamn it! Why didn't you tell me earlier?'

 'I may as well give you all the bad news. Yancey wants to see you in his office. He wanted me to go down and get you.'

'Out of interrogation?'

'I explained that to him - again.'

'Tell him I'm tied up until lunchtime.'

'I don't think he'll buy it. Raymond Firestone's in there with him. Came in unannounced.'

Vail looked at her with a sickened expression. 'Saved the worst until last, huh? Just stood there and sandbagged me.'

'No, no, I'm not taking the rap for this one. You agreed to both the lunch and the cocktail party last summer.'

 'And you're just reminding me now?'

 'What did you want me to do, Marty, give you daily time ticks? Three days to go until the lawyers convention, two days, eighteen hours. Call you at home and wake you up. Nine hours to go!'

 'Wake me up? I haven't been to bed!'

'I did not drag you out to the city dump. Parver set up the interrogation with Darby, not me. And I had nothing to do with Councilman Firestone's visit.'

Vail stared angrily across the broad expanse of the office at DA Jack Yancey's door. He knew what to expect before he walked into Yancey's office. Raymond Firestone had arrived in the city twenty years earlier with a battered suitcase, eighty dollars in his pocket, and a slick tongue. Walking door to door selling funeral insurance to the poor, he had parlayed the nickel-dime policy game into the beginnings of an insurance empire that now had offices all over the state. A bellicose and unsophisticated bully, he had, during seven years as a city councilman, perfected perfidity and patronage to a dubious art. As Abel Stenner had once observed, 'Firestone's unscrupulous enough to be twins.'

Firestone, who was supported openly by Eckling and the police union, had let it be known soon after his first election that he was going to 'put Vail in his place'. It was a shallow threat but a constant annoyance.

Firestone was seated opposite Yancey with his back to the office door and he looked back over his shoulder as Vail entered, staring at him through narrowed dubious eyes that seemed frozen in a perpetual squint. Firestone was a man of average stature with lacklustre brown hair, which he combed forward to hide a receding hairline, a small, thin-lipped mouth that was slow to smile, and the ruby, mottled complexion of a heavy drinker.

'Hello, Raymond,' Vail said, and, ignoring the chair beside Firestone, sat down in an easy chair against the wall several feet from the desk.

Firestone merely nodded.

Yancey sat behind his desk. He was a chubby, unctuous, smooth-talking con man with wavy white hair and a perpetual smile. A dark-horse candidate for DA years before, Yancey had turned out to be the ultimate bureaucrat, capitalizing on his oily charm and a natural talent for mediation and compromise, surrounding himself with bright young lawyers to do the dirty work since he had no stomach for the vigour of courtroom battles.

'We seem to have a little problem here,' Yancey started off. 'But I see no reason why we can't work it out amicably.'

Vail didn't say a word.

Like Jane Venable before him, Vail had little respect for Yancey as a litigator but liked him personally. Abandoned ten years earlier by Venable, Yancey had eagerly accepted Vail - his deadliest opponent in court - as his chief prosecutor. Their deal was simple. Yancey handled politics. Vail handled business.

'It's about this thing between you and Chief Eckling,' Yancey continued.

Vail stared at him pleasantly. The 'thing' between Vail and Eckling had been going on since long before Vail had become a prosecutor.

'It's time to bury the goddamn hatchet,' Firestone interjected.

'Oh? In whose back?' Vail asked quietly, breaking his silence.

Firestone glared at Yancey, who sighed and smiled and leaned back in his chair, making a little steeple of his fingertips and staring at the ceiling.

'That's what we want to avoid, Martin,' he said.

'Uh-huh.'

'What we're suggesting is that you back off a little bit,' Firestone said.

'That's a compromise?'

'I thought it had been agreed that the DA's office would keep out of the chief's hair for seven days after a crime. That's the deal, he gets the week. Am I right? Did we agree to that?' Firestone looked at Yancey when he said it.

'Uh-huh,' Vail answered.

Firestone turned on him and snapped, 'Then why don't you do it?'

'We do,' Vail said flatly.

'Bullshit! You and your people show up every time a felon farts in this town,' Firestone growled.

'Now, now, Raymond,' Yancey said, 'it's not uncommon for the DA to go to the scene of a crime. Usually the police appreciate the help.'

'He ain't the goddamn DA.'

'No, but he is my chief prosecutor. It's well within his jurisdiction.'

'We're talking about cooperation here,' snapped Firestone, his face turning crimson.

'Why don't I go back to my office?' Vail suggested with a smile. 'You guys are talking like I'm not even in the room. I feel like I'm eavesdropping.'

Firestone whirled on him. 'You go out of your way to make Eckling look bad,' he said, his voice beginning to rise.

'I don't have to,' Vail said. 'He does that all by himself.'

'See what I mean!' Firestone said to Yancey. 'How can Eric do his job with this smartass needling him all the time?'