Riley got to his feet, stuffed his hands in his pockets, chewed on his lip. He couldn’t believe he was being threatened. And he knew what Ed Mullaney was thinking-this was the biggest case a prosecutor could hope for. And it had fallen into Paul Riley’s lap.
Riley looked beyond Mullaney, through the window and onto the plaza. It was a warm, sunny day. Riley pictured himself leaving this office, crossing the plaza to the federal building, knocking on the door and asking for his old job back.
Mullaney was next to him now, a look of compromise on his face.
Riley knew, suddenly, that his days at the county attorney’s office were numbered. Yet Riley wanted this case. He wanted to put away this monster. He didn’t believe, in any way, that Terry Burgos deserved to beat these charges. He had used rational thought all along the way as he butchered those women. He hadn’t come close to meeting the legal definition of insanity.
And regardless of how new Riley was to the job, Burgos had killed these women on his watch.
Riley did the math. It would probably take six to nine months before this case was over. He would convict Terry Burgos, and then he would resign.
“From here on out,” Riley said, “I make the calls.”
“All of them.” The county attorney put a hand on Riley’s shoulder. “Now, go convict us a mass murderer.”
Tuesday
June 21, 2005
16
WAIT, SHELLY. Just wait,” I say, then open my eyes. A brief moment of panic, disorientation, then I lift my head and see the street. Dillard Street, I assume, where I last remember escorting the young lady who called herself Molly. I look for my watch and find only the impression of one, like a tan line, on the skin of my wrist. I make the mistake of touching the back of my head, moist and raw. I manage to get to my feet on shaky legs and instinctively wipe at my suit, damp from lying on rain-soaked trash. I could make a decent salad out of what I brush off my tuxedo.
I’m in an alley that intersects Dillard, where a pair of garbage bags just served as my bed for the last hour or so. I’m still in my clothes, at least, but that’s about all I can brag about. No money, no keys. Still have my wallet and credit cards and license, only the cash missing. They probably figured they wouldn’t have time to spend the limit before I canceled them tonight-they being the woman, “Molly,” and whoever hit me with the sledgehammer, which is how I choose to remember it.
My head is ringing but I’ll live. I take a deep breath and catch the odor of city garbage on my clothes.
Oldest damn trick in the book. Jesus, how easy could I make it? I let this lady walk me into an alley, middle-aged and sauced off my rocker. The guy could have been wearing clown shoes and I wouldn’t have heard him. A child of ten could have taken me.
At least I have an I was mugged in the city story.
The good news is, I’m only two miles from home. I don’t ordinarily consider it unsafe to walk these streets, and I’m figuring the odds of being jumped twice in one night makes me more or less immune from attack. Not that I have any choice. No cash.
So I walk, hoping that it will sober me up and clear my head, but it’s more like gravity is trying to pull me down with each step I take. A concussion, or a hangover, or both. The cool air helps fight the nausea, but I’m swimming against the current. I try to celebrate with each street sign I pass, that much closer to home, when what I’m really doing is trying to ignore the pain and my gullibility and my bruised ego, and the fact that I was dreaming about my ex-girlfriend when I came to.
I own a brick house on a corner, a single-family place I bought six months ago. Way too big for just me-a home for a family, Shelly had noted ominously-but I liked the look of it, and I suppose it didn’t hurt that the place had been owned by a U.S. senator at the turn of the century-twentieth, not twenty-first.
Before moving here, I had lived in a high-rise condominium, downtown by the lake, a place that was close to work and very low maintenance but that never really felt like a home. I didn’t like having a doorman who could register my comings and goings, not that there was anything particularly interesting about my life. It just didn’t feel private.
So now I have privacy and then some. Forty-five hundred square feet all to myself. I’m now locked out of my house, but, in a rare moment of invention, I hid a spare key when I first moved in. I was terrified of losing my keys, though I didn’t anticipate losing them this way.
I head to the alley by my garage where I taped the spare key underneath the rain gutter. I open the gate and walk into my backyard, which is small by suburban standards but pretty ample for the city. The border is covered in shrubbery that manages to grow all by itself, thankfully, because I don’t have a clue about that stuff. On the back of the garage is a basketball net, with a small paved area serving as a minicourt. Then there’s a small kids’ play area-swing set, jungle gym-which I think was what spooked Shelly. I might as well have proposed marriage on the spot.
Not the right time, had been her way of putting it.
A few steps lead down to the basement door. Only then do I realize that I never checked my spare key against this lock. Never checked to see that it worked. I’ve never, in fact, opened this door since I moved in last January. I’m hoping pretty damn hard that it’s the right key, because if it isn‘t, it really doesn’t do me much good, now does it? There are ways to pick a lock, but I have no experience. The only robbery I’ve ever committed is when I send my clients their bills.
I turn the key and say a silent prayer. Nope. No, Mrs. Riley, your son is as scatterbrained as always. He can try the hell out of a case, but don’t give him any menial chores. “God,” I say, “dammit.”
I decide that this door is going to be sorry it kept me out. I go with a rock from the garden. There is probably a safer and more efficient way to do this, but my head is screaming for a pillow, so I wind up like the mediocre baseball player I used to be and slam it against the small pane of glass closest to the lock.
“Dammit,” I yell. “Shit.” I hold up the side of beef that is my right hand, shards of glass cutting between the knuckles, blood cascading down to the sleeve.
Nice night.
I reach through and turn the dead bolt. I try to focus on the relief at being home, rather than yet another chore I have now created for myself, a new pane of glass for the door. They sell you on how well the old places are built. That’s fine if you want to survive a hurricane, but get ready to fix toilets and reignite the water heater and find the circuit breaker in the middle of the night. I didn’t go to law school to be a carpenter. I went so I could afford one.
The basement is huge. Soon to be a recreation area-billiard table, dartboard, wet bar, and, of course, a big-screen plasma television-if I ever get to it, which should be sometime before there’s peace in the Middle East. There are over a dozen boxes I haven’t gotten to. The only thing I have set up in the basement is what I affectionately call the Wall of Burgos. It looks like a trophy case in a high school, except instead of banners and medals there are weapons and scratched notes and barbaric photographs and courtroom sketches.
The city magazine that did a story two months back on my purchase of this house spent more time on the Burgos stuff than on the rest of the house put together. The story was supposed to be a fluff piece about someone buying the old Senator Roche home, but instead it was about the guy who prosecuted Terry Burgos.