'He's in a panic. He's exhausted. He's been out in a blind for five hours.' Flaherty lowered his head, miming Darby: 'I was cold and tired. I came in and suddenly this crazy woman's blazing away at me. I duck behind the hall wall. She keeps shooting. Finally I just charged into the room and fired. It all happened so fast. I don't remember firing that last shot. All I remember is the noise and the smoke, one of those shots coming so close to my cheek that I could feel the heat. It was over just like that.' He snapped his fingers.
Vail said, 'Very good, Dermott. You ought to be defending him.'
The group laughed except for Shana Parver, who glared at Flaherty. He smiled at her and shrugged. 'Just doin' my job, Counsellor,' he said. 'I think nailing that witness was a stroke of genius.'
'No question about it,' Vail said. 'The questions we have to decide are: One, do we arrest him yet? And two, do we go for murder in the first or second?'
Shana Parver said, 'It's cold-blooded murder. We can prove premeditation. He did it the minute he walked in the door.'
'So do we arrest him?' Stenner asked. A hint of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He watched Vail go to the urn and draw another cup of coffee. The old master, playing all the angles in his head.
Vail walked over to Shana and toyed with the ruler and said, 'How about Betty Boop? Did you talk to her about the phone call?'
Parver smiled. 'She flew the coop.'
'She did what?'
'We went by the club and her boss told us she left town yesterday afternoon,' Stenner said. 'Told him her sister in Texarkana is dying of cancer. We checked it out this morning, that's what we were doing on the phone. Her sister lives in San Diego. In perfect health. Last time she heard from Poppy Palmer was five years ago.'
'What do you know,' Vail said to Parver. 'Your ploy may have worked. The question you asked Darby about the phone number could have spooked her.'
'Something did,' Stenner said.
'You want to go for an indictment now?' Vail asked Parver.
She nodded.
'Fleishman?' Vail said.
'Yeah, we bust him. It'll hold up the insurance payoff and that could shake him up. And maybe Rainey, too.'
'Good point. Meyer? Indict him?'
'Pretty risky. Our whole case hangs on Shunderson's testimony. Maybe we need something more.'
'There's plenty of strong circumstantial evidence to go with it,' Parver countered.
'Abel?'
'If it gets that far.'
Vail smiled. The young lawyers looked at one another. 'What's that mean?' Parver said.
Vail stood up and circled the desk slowly. He finally lit a cigarette, then returned to the corner near the exhaust fan and blew the smoke into it. 'What we're after here is justice, right? Here's a man who killed his wife in cold blood for greed and another woman. He planned it, even down to putting the gun in her dead hand and using gloves to fire it so she'd have powder burns on her fingers. That's planning. No way around it, he didn't even have time to think about it if we believe Mrs Shunderson's testimony. He knew exactly what he was going to do when he walked into the house. That's what we have to prove to get a first-degree conviction. Flaherty's right, the whole case will hinge on whether the jury believes Shunderson and the time element involved. If they don't, he could walk off into the sunset with his jiggly girlfriend and two hundred and fifty thousand bucks. So, do we go to the wall with this guy? Or maybe try an end run?'
'You mean a deal?' Parver said with disbelief.
'Not a deal,' Vail said. 'The deal.'
'And what's that?' she demanded. She was getting angry.
'Twenty years, no parole.'
'Part of our case is that he premeditated this,' Parver said, defending her plea for a murder-one indictment. 'Twenty years, that's a second-degree sentence.'
'No, it's a first-degree sentence with mercy. Think about it, Shana. If we go to trial and get a conviction, but the jury brings in second-degree instead of first, he could get twenty years to life and be back on the street in eight.'
'You think you can manoeuvre Rainey into twenty, no parole?' asked Flaherty.
'If we can shake his faith in Darby. Right now, he's sold on his client. Look, most defence advocates don't give a damn whether their client is guilty or innocent. It's can the state make its case and will the jury buy it. Rainey's a little different. If he finds out he's been lied to, then it comes down to whether he thinks we can prove our case. It's really not about guilt or innocence, it's about winning. If he thinks we've got him, he'll make the best deal he can for his client.'
'You think the tape will do that?'
'I don't know,' Vail said. 'But I don't know whether we can win a trial with this evidence, either. If we put the SOB away for a flat twenty, he'll be fifty-six and dead broke by the time he's back on the street.'
The room fell silent for a few moments. Vail put his feet on the edge of his table and leaned back in his chair. Stenner could almost hear his brain clicking.
'Shana,' Vail said finally, 'get an arrest warrant on James Wayne Darby. Murder one. Tell the sheriff's department we'll serve it. Naomi, set up lunch with Rainey as soon as possible. Flaherty, check with your pals in the audio business, see if you can get the sound on that tape enhanced a little.'
'Ah, the art of the deal…' Stenner said softly, and smiled.
Eleven
The section known as Back of the Yards sprawled for a dozen square blocks, shouldering the stockyards for space. Its buildings, most of which were a century old, were square, muscular structures of concrete, brick, and timber behind facades of terracotta. The warehouses and old manufacturing plants were once headquarters for some of the country's great industrial powers: Goodyear and Montgomery Ward, Swift and Libby. Developers had resurrected the structures, renovating them and turning the once onerous area of canals, railroad tracks, and braying animal pens into a nostalgic and historic office park.
The Delaney building was six storeys tall and occupied a quarter of a block near Ashland. The brass plaque beside the entrance road simply: DELANEY ENTERPRISES, INC., FOUNDED 1961.
The executive offices were on the sixth floor and were reminiscent of the offices that had been there a hundred years before. As Shock Johnson stepped off the lift, he looked out on a vast open space sectioned off into mahogany and glass squares. With the exception of Delaney's office suite and the three vice presidents' offices that adjoined it, which occupied one full side of the large rectangle, all the other offices lacked both privacy and personality. Johnson thought for a moment of Dickens: he could almost see the ghost of Uriah Heep sitting atop a high stool in the corner, appraising the room to make sure everyone kept busy. The executive secretary, Edith Stoddard, was dressed to mourn in a stern, shin-length black dress. She wore very little make-up; her hair was cut in a bob reminiscent of the Thirties and was streaked with grey. She was a pleasant though harsh-looking woman; her face was drawn and she looked tired.
'I've arranged for you to use three VP suites,' she said, motioning to them with her hand. 'You got the list of employees?'
'Yes, ma'am, thank you,' Johnson answered.
'We have very hurriedly called a board of directors meeting,' she said. 'I'll be tied up for an hour or two.'
'Are you on the board?' Johnson asked.
'I'm the secretary,' she said.
Three teams of detectives were assigned to the VP offices. The forty-two secretaries, sales managers, and superintendents had been divided into three lists. Each of the interrogation teams had its list of fourteen subjects. Johnson and his partner for the day, an acerbic and misanthropic homicide detective named Si Irving, took the middle office. Irving was a box of a man, half a foot shorter than his boss, with wisps of black hair streaking an otherwise bald head. He was an excellent detective but was from the old school. As he had once told Johnson, 'Catch 'em, gut 'em, and fry 'em, that's my motto.' They suffered through a half-dozen dull men and women, none of whom would say an unkind word about 'Mr D.' and none of whom knew anything. Shock Johnson was leaning back in a swivel chair, his feet propped up on an open desk drawer, when Miranda Stewart entered the room. She was a striking woman, zaftig and blonde, wearing a smartly tailored red business suit and a black silk shirt. Her hair was tied back with a white ribbon. Johnson perked up. Irving appraised her through doleful eyes.