“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Mike said.
“I didn’t get home till late.” Ben took the empty seat beside Mike and handed him a hot dog. “Got your note and came straight out here.”
Mike nodded. “I didn’t want to leave a message on your machine. I wanted to meet somewhere we could talk. Freely. Privately.”
“So you set up a meeting at a baseball stadium?”
“Sure. Buried in a crowd. Didn’t you ever read The Purloined Letter? The best hiding place is out in the open.” He paused to watch the shortstop trigger a magnificent double play. “Besides, I wanted to see the ball game.”
“What if Abshire sees you out here with me?”
“No chance. He’s back at FBI headquarters burning the midnight oil. He works on this case night and day.”
That was reassuring. “What did you want?”
Mike’s eyes didn’t waver from the ball game, “Ben, I don’t like what’s happening any more than you do. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I am…sorry.”
“Got any specifics?”
“Well, I find it tough to believe Christina stuffed a cache of drugs in a Betty Boop doll.”
“Then who did?”
“That’s the problem. I know both of the investigating officers who accompanied me to her apartment, and I’d swear they’re clean. No way they’d plant false evidence.”
“Someone did.”
Mike shrugged.
“What about the other evidence? What’s Abshire holding back?”
“As far as exculpatory evidence goes, nothing. I would’ve raised holy hell if he hadn’t shown you that paraffin report, though.”
Ben hoped that was right. But as he recalled, Mike was pretty tranquil at the time.
“Virtually all the evidence they’ve found goes against Christina. I gotta tell you, Ben, they’re building an airtight case. If this were in my jurisdiction, I’d ask the D. A. to press charges, too.”
“Even though you know Christina wouldn’t shoot anyone? Much less four times in the head?”
Mike didn’t say anything.
“Is there anything you can do to loosen up Abshire? Make him more reasonable?”
Mike laughed. “He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t listen to anyone, except maybe Stanford. Officially, he can’t go to the bathroom without Stanford’s okay. But a mere local cop like me he can blow off with impunity. Hell, I tried to get him to have the goddamn drug test done on Christina the day they brought her in. But he didn’t. He didn’t have to, so he didn’t.”
There was a sudden burst of shouting and applause. The Drillers batter had knocked the ball high and far. It flew into the outfield, soared and…yes! Over the fence for a grand slam. The crowd leaped to its feet, yelling, tooting horns, ringing cowbells. The batter nonchalantly floated around the bases. In the space of seconds, a hopeless defeat became a tie game. Things weren’t always what they seemed.
“You’re not exactly a fount of information tonight, Mike.”
“If you expected me to slide you some secret file that would break the case wide open—sorry. I couldn’t do that, even if such a file existed. Which it doesn’t.”
“If some new evidence comes to light, will you give me another call?”
“You know I can’t, Ben. I’ve got to play this by the book.”
Ben could not mask his disappointment.
“I took an oath to serve and protect the City of Tulsa and the United States of America. I’m on the prosecution side, and any act in opposition to them would be a betrayal of my oath.”
“Oh,” Ben said, blinking rapidly.
“Ben, you remember what I said about watching your backside? Well, it goes double now. There’s some serious trouble getting ready to go down—involving the mob, the South Americans, the FBI, everybody. And you’re right in the middle of it.”
“Thanks for the warning. It was good of you to meet me like this. I know you’re running some…career risks.”
Mike shrugged again. He was still looking away, but not at the ball game. His gaze seemed to be much further. “It was the least I could do.”
Ben had to agree. The least.
They sat together in silence. Ben felt almost invisible. Incorporeal. He snarfed down his hot dog and tried to focus on the game, without success. He just wasn’t interested; his attention kept drifting back to the gray void beside him that used to be his friend.
He slipped away during the seventh inning stretch.
30
BEN SURVEYED THE COURTROOM with disgust. You’d think they were trying Lizzie Borden again.
The courtroom was loud, crowded, and chaotic. Reporters flanked the aisle; spectators packed every available seat. Everyone was talking at once, pointing out the players, shouting questions at Ben or Moltke, demanding answers. And this was just a pretrial hearing.
A camera bulb flashed in Ben’s face, momentarily blinding him. Derek had issued a minute order permitting photography in the courtroom prior to and after the actual proceedings; the reporters were busily getting their money’s worth while they could. They were turning the courtroom into a carnival, and Moltke was playing it to the hilt—smiling, posing, pontificating about law and order and his personal crusade for justice. It was exactly what Moltke wanted: maximum exposure, minimum attention to detail.
Early that morning, Ben had received a phone message from Myra. Moltke was offering what he called his first and final offer to plea bargain: Christina pleads guilty and the government promises not to ask for the death penalty. Christina would most likely get a life sentence—long enough that no one could be critical of Moltke, but Moltke didn’t run whatever tiny risk he perceived that he might actually lose the case. And Christina? Well, of course, a huge chunk of her life would be wasted in prison. But she would live.
Ben turned it down. “No deals,” he had said.
He watched Moltke now, sitting at the other table with his flunkies. Moltke seemed supremely confident. He hadn’t mentioned the rejected plea bargain; he just kept babbling in his TV anchorman voice about “liberal criminal-coddling judges who care more about supposed civil rights than human beings.” Ben wondered if he had done the right thing. What did Moltke know that made him so damned self-assured?
After the bailiff intoned his oyez oyez routine, Derek strode into the courtroom. “Approach the bench,” he grumbled.
Ben and Moltke hurried to the judge’s platform.
Derek pulled out a white handkerchief and wiped his nose and eyes. His face seemed red and puffy. “Damned hay fever,” he said. “Pollen count in Tulsa must be over a hundred today. I’m miserable.” He looked down from the bench, directly into Ben’s eyes. “So let’s not make this too unpleasant, shall we?”
Ben tried to nod reassuringly, with little success.
“I assume you have some motions to present, Mr. Kincaid, although God knows I can’t imagine what motion you haven’t already made three or four times.”
“I have new ones, your honor.”
“Oh goody.” Derek rubbed his hands together in an exaggerated expression of delight. “Can you give me a hint as to the general nature?”
“Trying to thwart the government’s effort to cover their own butt by railroading my client.”
“God.” Derek pressed his fingers against his temples. “This isn’t going to be another of your grand conspiracy theories, is it?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“We both know exactly what I mean. I’m referring to your tendency to take a simple litigation matter and turn it into an episode of Perry Mason.”