Kindle County: Reversible Errors Part 32

After that, it had the desperation and speed of a caged bird hoping to fly. All that useless beating of wings, the smashing about. In the heat; there was a salty taste to her flesh, a smell, eventually, of blood that he was slow to identify. His heart pounded along in frightened spurts and it was, as a result, far briefer than he might have liked. And unexpectedly messy. She was just at the start or end of her period and had been urgent about having him inside her, as if she suspected he might think again.

She had ended up on top and clung to him afterwards as though he were a rock. The feeling of her resting there was far more satisfying than anything else. He searched her form with both hands and felt a desperate pang at how near it had remained in memory, the defined k.n.o.bs in her spine, the ribs prominent as the black piano keys, the ripe turn of her behind, which he had always found the most becoming part of her anatomy. In the time since they'd split, he had wept only once, when his grandfather, the immigrant wheelwright, had died near the age of one hundred. Larry had been overwhelmed by how much harder life would have been for the old man's twenty-three children and grandchildren were it not for the blessing of his bravery in making the journey here. The example of a heroism that spread itself over so many lives bolstered Larry against any tearful mourning for his own sake now. But the safest harbor was humor.

"How am I going to explain to my guys why we have to clean a brand-new rug?"

"Go ahead," she said, "complain." Her small face perked up in front of him. At her collar, she'd worn a pin that, in their haste, had remained fastened, so that her dress, otherwise unb.u.t.toned, flowed around her like a cloak. Her shoulders were sheathed with the filmy black polka-dot fabric, while her bare arms were crossed now under his throat; "Are you sorry about this?" she asked.

"I don't know yet. I may be."

"Don't be."

"You're tougher than I am, Muriel."

"Not anymore."

"Yes, you are. At least, you know how to keep moving forward. When it comes to you, Muriel, I guess I can't."

"Larry. Don't you think I've missed you?"

"Consciously?"

"Come on, Larry."

"I mean it. You don't let yourself look back and see stuff. It's only hitting you now."

"What's that?"

"You should have married me."

Her blackish eyes were still; her small nose, decorated with tiny summer freckles, flared as she inhaled. They stared at one another, their faces only inches apart, until he could feel the strength of his conviction begin to wear her down. He could see then that she knew it already. But how do you walk back through the door at home, once you've said that out loud? And even so, he sensed the vaguest acknowledgment, a gesture with her eyes, before she again laid her head down on his chest.

"You were married, Larry. You are."

"And just a cop," he answered.

He'd never had the gumption to swing this hard at her, not at close quarters. And she never would have taken it. He could feel her laboring to come to the new day.

"And just a cop," she said finally.

He could not really see her, but merely with his hand on her skin he could feel the pulse of emotion. She felt fragile, narrow and small, briefly returned to the truth of nature, and Larry, large as he was, surrounded her. Lying on the pale rug, he rocked her for quite some time, as if they were aboard a ship, tossed back and forth on the swells of the terrible sea of life.

Chapter 34.

August 9, 2001 Former Acquaintance AT 8:00, GILLIAN waited for Arthur at a table at the Matchbook, sipping bubble water. He was almost certainly with Pamela. Their motion for reconsideration was due in the Court of Appeals soon.

In the last week, with the exception of their Tuesday night dinner with Susan, Gillian and Arthur had been out every night"a play, the symphony, three movies. Arthur was a man set free. Leaving the apartment relieved Arthur of his anxieties about Gandolph's case in which neither of them had found much new encouragement. When he was walking with her down the street, Arthur even exhibited a trace of macho swagger. Whatever. There was very little about Arthur she did not find endearing.

Across the room, Gillian felt a glance light on her. This was not an unaccustomed phenomenon"she was, after all, the notorious Gillian Sullivan"but when she peered that way a dark pretty woman, a few years younger than she, ventured the faintest smile. Not a lawyer. Gillian knew that at once. From the woman's tony looks"she was wearing a silk, funnel-necked top they sold in the store for more than $300"Gillian might have thought she was a customer, but Gillian sensed that the memory under retrieval had far more dust on it than that. Then it returned in increments. Tina. Gillian did her best not to recoil, but it was only the fact that Arthur was probably on his way that allowed her to disregard an immediate impulse to flee.

They had never dealt in last names. This woman was solely Tina, poor little rich girl in a high-rise on the West Bank, who supported her habit by selling. The maid actually answered the door when Gillian came by to score. She had entered a unique society"junkies of the professional cla.s.s. The manners were better and the danger less, but this milieu was nearly as porous as the street. People sank out of sight or into the depths, and Tina was gone abruptly. She had been busted. Terrified that she herself would be named, or had already been detected by a police surveillance of Tina, Gillian vowed to quit. But the drug now had first claim on everything inside her body. Like dealers in every trade, Tina had never introduced her to an alternative source. There was an actor from a local theater whom Gillian had seen going in and out several times. But it was too insane to call him. Thirty-six hours after her last fix, she donned a scarf and walked due west from the courthouse into the North End and copped on a street corner. In the event of arrest, she planned to say she was doing research for a sentencing, or on potential changes in the administration of drug cases. She had the good sense to approach another woman, a working girl in a leopard micro skirt and matching boots. 'You see Leon,' the girl told her, but looked Gillian over, shaking her head all the time, as she teetered between pity and reproof.

So, Tina. They stared at each other across a distance of forty feet, trying to make sense of the crazy turns of life and the burdens of the past, then Gillian broke eye contact first, pained almost to the point of laughter by the wisdom of her reluctance to be seen in public.

Arthur arrived then and immediately asked what was wrong. She was about to answer him frankly but she could see a significant smile drain from his face at the sight of her. Not tonight, she thought. She would not darken his mood or distract him tonight. Or any other night, for that matter. She had come to the brink of telling him too many times and then retreated. She was keeping her secret.

"You look as if something good has happened," she told him.

"Good? It may be good. It's majorly confusing. They found Faro."

"You're kidding!"

"That's not the half of it. Muriel wrote me a letter."

"May I see?" She had her hand out even before Arthur had fully removed the envelope from his pocket. It was on the letterhead of Muriel D. Wynn, Chief Deputy, Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. The reference fine noted People v. Gandolph and the old criminal court case number. Even at this late stage, Muriel was reluctant to acknowledge she was stuck in the alien terrain of federal court.

Dear Mr. Raven: Over the last two months, this office, in the course of its continuing investigation of this matter, has encountered a variety of information concerning Collins Farwell. As you know, Mr. Farwell has refused to offer testimony on the grounds of the Fifth Amendment. Furthermore, the information received appears to have no immediate relevance to your client. Nevertheless, in the interest of full disclosure, we wish to advise you of the following ...

Eight bulleted items trailed down the page. Muriel had crafted the letter to be largely opaque, not to Arthur, who'd see through the obscurities, but to the Court of Appeals, to whom she knew the doc.u.ment would soon be displayed. But imbedded in the details of various records concerning Faro Cole, most of which Arthur had shown Gillian earlier in the week, were two matters of note: a summary of statements that Collins Farwell, Erno's nephew, had made in June while being served with a subpoena in Atlanta. And an acknowledgment that two police officers had recently identified photographs of Collins as Faro's.

"My Lord!" cried Gillian at that sentence. Her heart was racing. After a moment, she was struck by her own reactions, the fact she had no pretense of distance any longer. She asked Arthur what he was thinking.

"I'm not sure that what's going on in my head is called thinking," he said. "Pamela and I were just bouncing off the walls. I'll tell you one thing though: I won't be joining Muriel's campaign committee. A lot of this was pretty underhanded." Arthur suspected that Muriel or Larry had shadowed Pamela on her visit to the Department of Registration. And he was angry about the failure to reveal Collins's statements in Atlanta. "I'd already made a motion to give Collins immunity. In her response, Muriel claimed there was no evidence that Collins had anything favorable to say for Rommy."

Yet his chief disappointment seemed to be with Erno, who had told Arthur that Faro was a cheap hustler who had disappeared long ago.

"We'll never touch bottom with the lies Erno told," Arthur said. "It's like quicksand. We just keep sinking."

"I wonder," said Gillian. Erno was where her thoughts had gone, too, and had lingered. "Erno said he was out to protect Collins when he first involved Larry back in 1991. I wonder if he hasn't been protecting him all along."

"By shooting him in the back? Some protective uncle. I think I'd rather have a gift certificate."

Gillian laughed. He was right. But not completely.

"Even there, though, at Ike's, Erno chose not to acknowledge that Faro was his nephew. Have you wondered why?"

"I can guess. Collins walked into Ike's holding a gun. Felon in possession of a firearm is a two-year minimum mandatory."

"So Erno did protect his nephew," said Gillian.

Arthur shifted a shoulder, granting she might have some kind of point.

"I just wonder, Arthur, if at the end of it all, Erno didn't maintain his own consistency with you. Your instinct was that Erno always told you the truth about one thing."

"Which is?"

"That Rommy is innocent."

"Oh," said Arthur. "That."

"So let's a.s.sume he had two dominating motives: exculpating Rommy. And protecting Collins."

Arthur picked up Muriel's envelope and tapped it against his hand as he pondered. Soon, he was nodding.

"That would explain why Erno never mentioned the tickets before Genevieve's dep," Arthur said. "He was protecting Collins, rather than his pension. If the airline found out Collins had been stealing tickets with Luisa and Rommy, even if it was back in the Stone Age, they'd probably bounce him as a travel agent"and sue his a.s.s, too."

"Possible. But I was actually thinking it could be more than that. Rommy was angry with Luisa for shortchanging him. Is it possible Collins was angry with her, too? For jeopardizing their scheme? Or perhaps he'd been shortchanged as well. Remember, we decided Faro was probably at Paradise that night."

Arthur stared at her. The sophisticated dinner clamor of the restaurant rose up around them, low strings, clinking stemware, pleasant chatter.

"You think Collins is the killer?"

"I don't know, Arthur. We're trading ideas. But clearly Erno wanted to free Rommy, without disclosing what Collins had been up to."

Arthur digested it, then said, "Our next move has to be to renew my motion to immunize Collins. Right?"

"You certainly want to hear from him."

"What do you think the chances are that the Court of Appeals will grant a motion to reconsider so we can pursue Collins's testimony?"

"Not outstanding. It looks like an eleventh-hour delay.

And they'll want to adhere to their prior conclusions about the case, no less than other human beings."

Arthur nodded, frowning. He had the same opinion.

"You want a friendlier forum, if you can find one, Arthur. Someone who was inclined to believe Erno in the first place, I'd say."

"Harlow?"

"Why not?"

"He has no jurisdiction for one thing. The case is in the Court of Appeals."

But she had ideas about that, too. Like Muriel, Gillian's career had been made exclusively in the state courts. Her knowledge of federal law and procedure had been nil when she entered Alderson, but after years of helping other prisoners craft futile pet.i.tions for relief in the federal system, she had acquired considerable expertise.

Arthur reached down for his briefcase to make notes. Together, they began to sketch out a motion. Each came up with phrases and Arthur read the sentences back. He moved the candle on the tabletop next to his pad. In the wan light, she watched him, eager, happy with her and with himself. The focus of her concern was as much Arthur as Gandolph, but she shared his excitement in finding some hope for Rommy in the law. The power of the law, whose drab reality was nothing more than words on the page, struck her then, not simply its determining role in the life of other citizens, but in hers. The law had been her career, the site of her triumphs and of her downfall, and now, through Arthur, a source of recovery. Its words, long forcibly unspoken, remained the language of her adult being. Even as Arthur and she gently debated what to write next, she was unsure whether to accept that recognition with exhilaration or misery.

Chapter 35.

August 10, 2001 The G.o.d of Fingerprints MIDDAY ON FRIDAY, Larry received a message from Maurice d.i.c.kerman, Chief Fingerprint Examiner and Head of the Kindle County Unified Police Force Crime Lab, requesting that Larry visit his office in McGrath Hall. After studying the slip, Larry rolled it into a ball the size of a pea and tossed it. Once he saw d.i.c.kerman, there would be no choice about calling Muriel, which Larry had avoided for the last two days. This morning, she'd left him a voice mail about Arthur's latest filing in the Court of Appeals, in which she'd sounded chipper and cute, clearly happy to have the excuse to track him down. He'd promptly pushed delete.

In the old days, he'd run from her after every encounter, but that was because he wouldn't say to himself that he was a complete case for this woman, that the air smelled cleaner and brisker when she was around, that he needed someone to go with him stride for stride. Now he was hiding because he was unsure about how much of that he wanted to say today.

And while he avoided Muriel, he avoided his wife as well. He had thought this stuff was done in his life"smelling his clothes before he put them in the hamper to ensure Nancy wouldn't catch the scent of another woman's powder or cologne. Ten years ago, he'd been so blown out and defeated when Muriel called it quits that he couldn't fake it with Nancy. One evening after he'd collapsed in a recliner, several beers to the wind, Nancy had stood over the chair.

'Ripped again? Let me guess. One of your chickie-poos dumped you?'

He felt too weak to lie, but she was astonished by the truth.

'Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?'

'You asked.'

'And I should cut you some slack?'

But she did, because she was Nancy and too nice not to. They tacitly agreed that they'd get back to the lawyer with whom they'd been discussing a bloodless division of property when Larry was in a better frame of mind. Six months later, they still meant to do it. Even after two years, Larry figured each of them was just waiting for something better to come along. Nancy, however, held certain trumps. She was never going to leave his boys. And as time went on, his grat.i.tude to her for that and for a character worthy of canonization approached the boundless. There was no longer much point in other women"they did not measure up to Muriel, and, more important, he owed Nancy that much respect, after she'd pa.s.sed on the opportunity to throw his a.s.s out. Sometimes when Larry considered the prevailing amity between his wife and him, he wondered if this was simply how marriage was supposed to be, calm and respectful. But no. No. There had to be a melody line that grabbed you, not just harmony and chorus.

That conclusion brought him back to Muriel. No good was going to come of this, he thought. That was something his mother liked to say and she'd say it now. If he'd slept two hours total since Wednesday, that was a lot. The inside of his stomach felt as if it had been sandpapered, and in the mirror, his eyes looked like craters. And even he could not see there any clue about what he really wanted. All he knew for certain as he arrived at d.i.c.kerman's door was that his life had gotten beyond him.

An angular New Yorker, Maurice d.i.c.kerman was generally referred to by cops and prosecutors and even most of the defense bar simply as the Fingerprint G.o.d. Mo was a regular lecturer at universities and law-enforcement conferences around the country, a distinguished researcher who'd auth.o.r.ed the leading texts on prints. Given his renown, on any given day he was more likely to be offering expert testimony in Alaska or New Delhi than supervising the Crime Lab, but on a police force where scandal was not infrequent"two separate crime rings of cops had been busted in the last year, one for selling dope, one for robbing jewelers"Mo was a precious a.s.set, a unique source of credibility and distinction. In the mid-1990s, his threat to leave had finally choked the money out of the county to buy an automated fingerprint identification system, an innovation other departments of comparable size had possessed years before.

In 1991, when Gus Leonidis, Paul Judson, and Luisa Remardi had been murdered, an unknown fingerprint generally could not be identified without isolating a specific suspect. Unless a perp had left behind all the fingerprints that appeared on his ten-card"the inked impression of each finger taken when a suspect was booked"there was no way to tell which finger a partial came from, and thus no way to match the unknown print against the vast catalog of fingerprints maintained by the Force locally and the FBI nationwide. Computer imaging changed that. AFIS, automated fingerprint identification systems, allowed the machine to compare an impression against the stored pictures of every known print in the county. AFIS had made it possible, for example, for Muriel to determine overnight that none of the prints left at Paradise in July 1991 was Erno's.

The major drawback of AFIS was time. Even with computers getting faster every month, each print submission tied up a machine for roughly an hour. In a case like Gandolph's, where seven or eight hundred latents had been lifted at the restaurant, there was no practical way to attempt to identify all of them, given the other demands on the Force. But if Mo developed a print on the gun Faro Cole had brandished at Ike's, it would be only a matter of minutes to match it against the county's database, which necessarily included prints from a multiple arrestee like Collins Farwell.

Mo had just returned from two and a half weeks in Paris, teaching fingerprint developments to the gendarmes, an absence that had kept him from responding to Larry's original request to examine Faro's gun. Now, he insisted on showing off the Parisian snapshots stored on his P.C. Mo was a hard guy to interrupt. He wasn't called the Fingerprint G.o.d only out of reverence. He spoke in complete thoughts and usually insisted on finishing them, and as he clicked his mouse, he told Larry a lot more than he'd ever wanted to know about the sculptures in the Tuileries and the antique district in the sixth arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. In a hard chair on the other side of Mo's desk, Larry awaited the chance to ask if Mo had found anything on the weapon. When he finally put the question, Mo slowly turned from the computer and lumped his tongue into his cheek.

"Do I take it, Larry, that this is on the Gandolph case? The one I've been reading about in the papers?"

Given the Byzantine alliances in the Hall, Larry had not identified the case in the paperwork and so Mo's prescience caught him up short. There was an ethereal element to d.i.c.kerman. McGrath Hall was a good place to appear not to notice stuff, and Mo's consciousness was believed to be confined to only two subjects, fingerprints, naturally, and baseball, about which he also seemed to know everything, ranging from the seasonal totals for Home Run Baker to the present statistical likelihood of the Trappers scoring three runs in the bottom of the ninth, odds that always approached zero.

"That's a pretty good guess, Mo."

"I wouldn't really call it a guess, Larry." From the other side of his desk, where the crumpled paper bag from his lunch still rested, Mo treated Larry to an extended look.

"What are you telling me, Mo?"

"Well, let me just show you what I did. You can draw your own conclusions."

With that, from a metal file drawer behind him, Mo removed the pistol and the carbons of several forms that had accompanied the gun from Evidence. It had been re-sealed in the heavy plastic, now brittle and brown along the creases, in which it had been stored since Erno shot Faro in 1997. Larry hadn't seen the weapon until now. It was a revolver, a .38 by the looks of it. Given procedures established to combat the notorious propensity of firearms and narcotics to disappear from the police Evidence Room, Larry, in the absence of a court order, would have had better luck getting a look at the Crown Jewels, and he'd simply requisitioned the pistol to Fingerprints once he'd determined it had never been released. When a prosecution was complete, the legal owner of a firearm utilized in a crime could apply for return. Evidence would check with ATF and examine the indexes of stolen firearms. If the gun was clean, the owner could have it. But Faro Cole had never bothered, which hadn't surprised Larry, given Faro's disappearance after the shooting.

In his tedious fashion, Mo now explained how hard it was to lift fingerprints long after a suspect's last contact with the object. Because prints were generally left by an oily residue emitted with perspiration, they tended to evaporate over the years. Larry knew all of that, which was why, in the days when he was looking hard for Faro, he had requested that the Fingerprint G.o.d himself conduct the examination. Notwithstanding the lectures, it had been a good thought, because Mo appeared to have had some luck.

"In this case, the only latent that developed with standard techniques was right here." Mo pushed his black gla.s.ses up on his nose and pointed with an eraser tip, through the plastic, at a couple of spots on the barrel, then showed Larry the digital photos on his computer monitor. "They're very, very partial. AFIS kicked out about half a dozen ten-cards. After visual examination, I'd say they appear to be from the right middle finger and thumb of this guy. But I wouldn't call it a courtroom-quality opinion. A good defense lawyer would have me looking like a barking seal for making on such scant impressions."

He laid down the ten-card. It was a six-by-nine file card, filled with the familiar black reliefs of fingerprints, four each in two rows for the fingers, two larger blocks for the thumbs, and then, at the bottom, a simultaneous impression of five fingers on each hand. To ensure the reliability of the identification, a face-on photo of the fingerprints' donor was laminated to the upper left-hand corner of the card. The handsome young man, looking entirely vacant in the light of the flash, was Collins. Larry's better senses had told him this was coming, but apparently he'd held out hope, because a sigh forced itself from him. Life would have been easier.