He should already have finished mourning her, nestled her
into that part of the brain where, though the memory is preserved, the scar
has healed. A year should be enough time to remember, re-taste, review, and
finally inter. He'd read that grieving was a process of getting over it;
wear black, accept condolences of friends and acquaintances, adjust to being
alone. That's not how it was for Jack Ely. It was a year, and he wasn't
done yet. The world and its business would wait for an unlikely closure.
Jack Ely had it all. He was handsome, twenty-eight, tall,
slim, a lawyer in a prestigious law firm. Women fell at his feet, and
collected there. But he never smiled anymore, that is, nothing beyond a
straightening of the lips. The eyes didn't even try. Work, well, he just
stopped going. When Teri died, he couldn't get up a passion for the law. It
wasn't his path. Maybe it never was.
They met in Penn law school, helped each other study, held
each other's hand through finals, and the bar exams. She was at the top of
her class, he was in the middle. At their chosen professions she excelled,
he struggled. It was all past tense now, just like his law career. It was
the lawyering that killed her, the lawyering that killed his love for, no,
he was never in love with it, the law. He did the law for Teri.
The law killed Teri Ely. Not the legality of it, not even
the process of it, but more that point where it intersected the criminal
world, that netherland-like wound in the fabric separating humanity from
hell. Yes, his pretty wife was a criminal lawyer; it was her passion, and
she was good at it. She loved it so much more than Jack loved anything,
except Teri. She didn't care that justice had nothing to do with criminal
law. It was the process she loved, and she was caught up in it, the process,
that is. So she became an expert at the game of the law, and it killed her.
Raul Mendez was a drug runner and an assassin. He'd killed
twenty people they knew about. But he'd been hauled in for tax evasion, like
Al Capone, because that was all they could pin on him. His was a
high-profile case, a future rainmaker, albeit with dirty water. So, the
firm, they loved Teri, they gave it to her. And she worked day and night to
free Mendez. It was the game.
The game of law is rules, and procedures, and facts, real
and imagined. And one of the problems with facts is that they sometimes
stand independent of the witnesses. The facts were against Mendez, and
nothing Teri did could save him. Then one day Mendez threatened his lawyer,
and she was dead.
It was a murder, just another random crime in a big city
rife with it. She was found in her car, raped, shot in the head. There were
fingerprints, but no one on record to match them to. Mendez had another
lawyer by the next day, a new firm, engaged a week earlier. Jack figured
Mendez had canceled Teri's contract.
Jack re-chased down every lead after the cops shut the
investigation down, back-burnered it, so to say. But he had to stop;
doggedness could not replace process and experience, and he had neither. It
broke his heart.
Now, it was the anniversary. One year to the day. Teri's
managing partner asked him to come to the office. They were having a
memorial. Jack wanted to beg off, but what right did he have to deny them
their grief? They had a rabbi. He said nice words. So did her co-workers.
They didn't ask him to speak. They knew he couldn't bear it.
The partner, Bob Skinner, took Jack into the office. He
poured two beers and they drank in silence. Bob was a good man. He felt
responsible. But the two men didn't know each other, so they couldn't share
their grief, their guilt.
Jack saw the box with Teri's name on it. "What's in the
box, Bob?"
"Just some last business records. You know, receipts and
the like. Got to send them east to Corporate."
Jack didn't ask, just reached over and put the box in his
lap. He leafed through the papers as he drank his beer. Meals, hotel rooms,
plane tickets. Even dead people need their accounts closed.
Bob was lost in his own thoughts.
Jack's eyes stopped. He waited, and waited. The phone
rang, and Bob turned his back to take the call. Jack folded the receipt
into his pocket, then put the box on the floor. He gulped the last of his
beer, tapped Bob's shoulder, and waved good-bye. He didn't stop until he
got back to the flat. It needed his concentration. His full concentration.
Yes, there it was. A call on Teri's cell phone, the one
under her business account. It was paid by some kind of central billing
contract out of the main office in New York, but the detail went to the
user. They didn't cancel the phone. Big companies are like that.
April! Last month! A call last month on Teri's phone. The
call was made to Vancouver, on the other side of the Columbia. He called the
number, it was the bus station. He dialed Teri's number. He let it ring.
A tentative, "Hello."
"Who is this?" he asked, more brusquely than he'd
intended.
"Who wants to know?" the female voice responded, equally
sharp.
Careful, he told himself. "This used to be my wife's phone
number. I dialed it by accident."
"Well, okay, you'll just call her then."
He could almost feel her moving to close the phone. "No,"
he cried, "wait."
"Yes?"
"She's dead."
"Then why are you calling her?"
"I wasn't."
"No?"
"She was murdered."
"And?"
"Her phone," he paused, then, "you have her phone."
"I've had this phone a year, mister. It's one of those
pre-paid things."
"You're wrong, it's not." He paused, confused, then,
"That's when she died."
"When?"
"A year ago today."
The voice softened, "How did she die?"
He forced the words out, but they choked him, "She was
raped ... then shot in the head."
The voice at the other end was again abrupt, "Call me
tomorrow. Same time." The line went dead.
He didn't know what to do, but wait. He waited.
The phone rang twenty times. Nothing. He was going to call
the cops when his phone buzzed. He answered.
Another tentative, "Hello."
"You weren't there."
"I'm sorry. I was doing the dishes. I used the call-back
feature." She sounded like she meant it.
"That's okay," he said.
Without preamble, the voice said, "Tell me about your
wife."
And Jack did. He told her what kind of woman she was,
what she cared for, how much he loved her. She didn't say anything, but he
felt her attention over the phone.
She said, "What's your address?"
Suspicion, "Why?"
"I have something for you, then we can talk," a pause,
then, "maybe."
He gave her his address.
She made a polite, "Thank you."
"Wait."
"Yes?"
"How did you get the phone?"
"I found it. I thought I knew where it came from."
He waited. His silence made it a question.
"I think I know."
"Please! Please ..."
"No, I need to be sure." Another long pause, then, like
she'd meant to ask earlier, "Were there fingerprints?"
"Yes."
"That's good. I'll send you some things."
"When?"
"Couple days. But?"
"But what?"
"You can't lead the police to me."
He was silent again.
"Please," she pleaded, "you can't lead the police to me.
They'll take ..."
He waited again, but she didn't finish it. "Okay," he
said.
"Call me in a week." The phone clicked dead.
Four days later the envelope arrived. There were three
playing cards, aces of spades, hearts and diamonds. Nothing else.
He drove to the police station. The investigating
detective, Maureen McMartin, was at her desk. She had treated him nice.
She'd been with the patrolwoman who told him his wife was dead, a Diane
Simpson. Two pretty women who didn't look like cops. They'd both been kind.
McMartin told him to sit down.
"Mr. Ely," she said.
"Detective." He laid the envelope on the desk between
them, then held it open for her to see.
She moved her hand towards the cards. He pulled them back.
"I think the fingerprints of the man who killed my wife are on the cards."
"Where did you get these?"
He shook his head, "I can't tell you."
The detective eyed his hand, then took a deep breath.
"Okay, for now."
He stayed in the chair.
"You can go," she said, "I'll call you."
He put a stubborn look on his face, "No, do it now,
Detective."
"Do you know whose prints these are, Mr. Ely?"
"No."
She looked confused. He didn't explain.
"Okay." She dialed three digits. "Jake, it's Maureen." She
waited, laughed, then, "I need some prints checked and compared." Silence.
"Now." Jake Bobbins' voice was a buzz, then, "The Teri Ely case."
She hung up the phone. "Let's go, Mr. Ely."
The big black cop took the cards and walked them from
person to person. It was two hours before the three of them scrutinized the
side-by-side prints on the computer screen.
Bobbins did the speaking, "First, the ace of spades." They
bent their eyes to the screen. "No match." The image changed. "The ace of
hearts. No."
Jack felt his heart pounding in his ears.
Bobbins tone of voice said he was just doing his job. "The ace of
diamonds." They all scanned together. The black man's tone changed, "Bingo.
He's the one."
McMartin led Jack back to her office. "Spill," she
ordered.
He shook his head, "Can't."
She strained to put a look of sympathy on her face,
"Revenge won't bring her back to life, Mr. Ely."
He blushed, "I wouldn't do that. I really don't
know who it is."
"Then where'd you get the cards?"
"From a friend."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't ..."
He cut her off. "I don't know. I'll know in three days. I
hope. I'll tell you then."
"No, we need to work together on this."
"I made a promise, Detective. I don't have a choice."
"That's not a reason."
"I made a promise."
"Three days?"
"Three days."
He called on the third day.
She picked up. "Which card?" she asked.
He heard the fear in her voice. "The ace of diamonds," he
said.
There was a long silence. He could hear the deep breaths
at the other end. He waited her out.
"Tell the police that if they go to the main post office
tomorrow and wait for someone to pick up a general delivery for Alan
Baldwin, he will be the one, who killed your wife."
"Is that his name?"
"No."
"What's your name?"
The line clicked.
Maureen McMartin picked up Adrian Brown, a.k.a. Alan
Baldwin, at the post office. His prints matched those found at the scene,
and he was booked for the murder.
Jack was in the courtroom when Brown was arraigned. A
pretty, black-haired woman, barely more than a girl, sat in the front row,
hugging a skinny five-year-old girl to her. There was a female marshal next
to the little girl, holding her elbow. The woman watched as her husband was
denied bail. She looked forlorn, like there was no tomorrow. When she stood,
the marshal kept the child. The woman touch the little girl's cheek, then
wiped away the child's tears. As she made her way out of the courthouse,
Jack used his cell phone to call Teri's number. The woman stopped, turned
and looked him in the eye. She opened the phone.
He said, "Thank you."
She said, "You welcome." She closed the phone and tossed
it in the waste basket.
Just like that, it was over. Nothing to do with the law at
all. Just like him.
- the end -
Tell me what you think - click to e-mail
bill.capron@tds.net