Chapter Fifteen

Max awoke next morning at nine, latest he had slept in years.

Despite the sour ending to last evening, the mood at breakfast was buoyant. Word was Norton had suffered only a minor concussion; the Japanese kid Carswell whacked had already been released from the hospital.

Max and Philip were coasting on the events from last night and their primitive bonding, fighting back-to-back against the Carswell bunch. Elizabeth joined in the cheerful banter as they downed half a dozen eggs and several cups of coffee.

She was still laughing at Philip’s parody of Carswell grabbing his face only to get walloped in the stomach as she got up to answer the phone.

Max and Philip continued but stopped suddenly upon hearing Elizabeth call out.

“No! It’s not fair. Not fair.”

He and Philip hurried to her. Elizabeth held the receiver away from her as if it was scalding.

Max took it.

“Hello,” he said. “Who is this?”

“Mr. Byrns? It’s Miriam here. Tadeo’s daughter.”

He heard the tremor in her voice, the strain.

“What is it, Miriam?”

“It’s Jimmy,” she said, sobbing now. “He was killed last night in a hit-and-run.”

“Jesus,” Max groaned. A shiver passed through him and he felt a hard ache in his chest.

“But that’s not all. Sheriff McCall, he’s arrested my brother James.”

“For Christ sake, what does he think, James killed his own nephew?”

A moment of silence, then, “No, Mr. Byrns. He’s charging James with the deaths of both our father and Jimmy.”

When Max hung up, the three of them stood speechless. Despite his years of experience with death, Max still felt sick at the futility of it all. Like trying to stomp out a grass fire in a heavy wind. You get one blaze put out and a cinder starts it at another spot. Poor Jimmy; his whole life in front of him. And what the hell was McCall drinking? Arresting James?

“Fucking absurd,” was all he could say.

They were not allowed to see James until early afternoon. By that time, the charges of double homicide had been levelled against him.

“I’d like to go along, Dad,” Philip said.

“You sure?”

“I need to see what’s happening here.”

It struck Max as odd, but he was happy to have his son by his side.

McCall groused when Max introduced him to Philip and asked for both to be allowed to speak with James.

“I thought you were going to diffuse tensions,” he protested. “But shit, here you are joining in a goddamn riot at the Grange Hall last night. What the hell were you thinking of?”

“Ask that asshole Carswell. It was he and his men started it, trying to break up a peaceful meeting.”

McCall snorted at this. “There’s another waste of protoplasm.”

They glared at one another for a moment.

Finally McCall allowed them to visit James, but only after Max claimed to have a written note from Sam Norton, still in hospital, that he would defend Suzuki and that Max was a representative of the defense team.

“He tells you anything, it’s your duty to pass it on to me,” McCall said as he led Max and Philip to the cells.

Max stopped and shot the sheriff a disdainful look. “He tells me anything and it’s protected testimony. Take another look at the Constitution. And you’ve got to be crazy arresting James. No way he’d kill his own family.”

McCall shook his head but said nothing.

As they approached the cell, Max could see James through the bars of door, hunched on the bunk, reminiscent of how Max must have looked after getting arrested for erratic driving.

That seemed an eternity ago now.

McCall took time finding the right key. Then he said, “You can blame yourself for this, Byrns. You’re the one who supplied the motive. James wanted to sell the farm, but his father and nephew were dead set against it. And he’s got no alibi for the night of the twenty-third or last night. Refuses even to say where he went after the meeting at the Grange.”

The door clanked open and McCall gestured for Max and Philip to enter.

“We’re going to need an interview room,” Max said. “Some privacy.”

“Whisper then,” McCall said with a sneer. “You’ve got ten minutes. Clock’s ticking.”

The door slammed and James finally lifted his head.

“I don’t want any visitors.”

“I’m not a visitor,” Max said. “I’m part of your defense team. And this is my son, Philip.”

James shook his head. “I don’t want any defense, either.”

Max got furious. “So you did kill Tadeo. And Jimmy. What kind of shit head are you?”

This brought what he was hoping for. James leaped off the bunk to strike but could not move. Only then did Max see he was shackled with a short chain to the bunk frame.

“Jesus Christ,” Max said. “McCall’s inhuman. Now sit down, James. I know you didn’t kill anybody, let alone your own family. But you need to tell me what’s going on.”

James sank back down, making the springs groan, then put his head in his hands.

Max gave it a half minute. Then, “Mind if I sit next to you? We need to talk quiet.”

He glanced out the bars. A deputy was loitering about twenty feet from the cell.

Max called to him. “Hey. My client and I need some privacy. If you don’t want this charge thrown out, you’ll back off.”

Max was talking out of his ass, but he guessed the deputy didn’t know that. The man moved away to a distant desk.

Philip stood by the bars as if to provide privacy.

“Can I sit?” Max asked again.

James was silent, then nodded.

Max, lowering his voice to a whisper, said, “McCall says you’ve got no alibi for later last night or for the night your father was killed. That right?”

A nod.

“That you won’t tell him your whereabouts.”

Another nod.

Max felt a painful impatience rise in him. Enough with the damn whispers. He tapped James’ arm.

“Hey. You’ve got to look at me, James. No more head-in-hands shit. You want to choke to death in the gas chamber? That’s what they do in this state for murderers. Take you to San Quentin and next thing you’re dead. Is that what you want?”

James lifted his head, looking into Max’s eyes.

“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter about me.”

“That may be. But it does matter about your family. You want them to face the camps alone, without you to hold things together? You’re being pig-headed, James, and I need to know why.”

Max felt himself losing his temper. Not a good idea. Just make the man clam up more. Max took a long, deep breath.

He watched as James’ eyes darted about the cell, a caged animal. As if he were only now waking to the desperate situation he was in.

“Did you kill them?” Max asked.

“No,” James said with heated conviction.

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“So where were you last night?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I say you can. And I know you have to. Or your family goes to internment with only Hiro to look after them. You want that?”

James shook his head, emotion wracking his face.

“Then talk to me.”

“You’ve got to promise. This is between us. Just us.” He shot a glance at Philip.

Max looked at Philip, who nodded.

“Hey, Deputy,” Philip called out. “I need to wait outside, okay?”

The guy took his time picking out the right key.

“What’s the matter,” he said, opening the door. “They don’t like your looks?”

“Something like that,” Philip said. Then, “I’ll be out here, Dad.”

Max waved and then turning to James he said, “I can’t promise to keep it just between us two. Sam Norton’s your lawyer. When he gets out of the hospital, he’ll need to know.”

“Then the both of you. But no further.”

Max shook his head, but again lowered his voice to a whisper. “What’re you trying to hide?”

“It’d be bad for her if people found out. Very bad. You see how the country is now.”

“Bad for who?”

James gripped his hands together so tightly that his knuckles whitened. He looked at the deputy at the desk and lowered his voice.

“I’m not telling you who. Just telling you I have a special… friend. A lady. A white lady.”

Max let out a big breath. Jesus, he thought. “And so you’ve got to protect her?”

“That’s right. We love each other. She’s the first I’ve been with since my wife died. But a secret. And I will not have her hurt because of me. You saw that animal Carswell. He and his goons would drive her out of the county, or worse.”

“You can’t tie my hands like this, James.”

“No!”

The deputy looked up at this. “Everything okay in there?”

“It’s fine,” Max said. Then turned back to James. “If she loves you, she’ll come forward on her own.”

“Not if you prove I’m innocent without me needing an alibi.”

“You think I’m a magician?”

“You find the murderer and who cares where I was those nights?”

Max felt his shoulders slump.

“It’s okay, Mr. Byrns. If you’re half the man my father said you are, you can do it.”

Max abruptly felt like James was the free man and he was the prisoner.

“So, maybe you should get to it,” James said, a slight smile on his lips.

Before leaving, Max decided to tie up a loose end.

“Wait at the car, okay?” he told Philip. “Just be a sec.”

Philip shrugged, said, “Sure thing,” and sauntered off while Max made his way to the lab in an annex. Looking through an open door, he saw the coroner, Peter Sherry, working on a corpse. Chances were it was Jimmy Suzuki, Max thought. Chandler County, after all, had a population of only thirty thousand. How many people could have been killed here last night?

Max knocked, hoping to get Sherry to come out, but the coroner looked up and motioned for him to enter.

“Getting squeamish, are you, Max?” Sherry said as Max warily approached. “Don’t worry, it’s not the Suzuki kid. I finished with him first thing this morning. Massive head trauma where the car ran over him. Also a broken collar bone, three fractured ribs, and a splintered femur. But all were bee stings compared to that head wound. Somebody wanted Jimmy Suzuki very dead and telling no tales.”

“McCall thinks it’s his uncle.”

Sherry raised eyebrows but did not respond. “What do you need Max?”

Max meanwhile had allowed himself to look at the body on the dissection table, jerking worriedly at the sight. Shit, it was Joe Aleotto.

“What the hell happened to him?”

“Beats me,” Sherry said. “Maybe it could be this six-inch wound in his thorax.”

Max was in no mood for this. “He was murdered?”

“A man doesn’t tear his own heart to pieces. So, yes, I surmise it’s homicide.”

“Where was he found?”

“Near the same little gambling den in Franklinburg where most of the mischief in this county occurs. Seems when you were here last, we had a customer from that same establishment. And another Suzuki death. I’m not a believer in the black arts, but a guy like you might have found his neck stretched back in the days of the Salem witch trials.”

Max chose to ignore this. It’d always pissed him off when medical examiners made cute over a corpse. It showed disrespect. Maybe on their job they needed the relief of black humor, but still, it wasn’t right.

Now his mind was storming with possibilities. Yes, far too much coincidence: Joe Aleotto showing up at the rally last night, then disappearing after the brawl. And not hours later turning up dead.

“Suspects?”

Sherry nodded. “Sure thing. About every Jap and Mex in south county with a penchant for gambling.”

“When?”

Sherry shrugged, assuming a professional demeanor now that the ball was firmly in his court.

“A deputy found the body this morning about six. Figured it had been dumped blocks away from the gambling den in a deserted alley maybe middle of the night. Not too cold last night, so calculating body temperature and heat loss, probably about one or two.”

So, Max thought, Aleotto’s going to a rally in support of the Japanese American community, cut the lights to make for more chaos, and then amble to a nice little night of gambling? Not hardly.

A falling out with Carswell? They did know each other from the Coast Watch, but enemies?

No, one more death than he needed right now, so he put it on his mental back burner.

“Look, Sherry, I didn’t really come about Jimmy Suzuki, but thanks for the information, anyway. What I’m checking on is the status of the fingerprints.”

“Christ, Max, I gave those to you last week.”

“From the mason jar?”

“What the hell you talking about? From the flashlight by Tadeo Suzuki’s body.”

“Look, I gave McCall a mason jar I found in the garbage at the Bluff. He told me the other day he’d passed it on to you.”

Sherry shrugged. “Right. That jar.” He shook his head dismissively. “A big nothing.”

“How do you mean, nothing?”

“As in no thing. No prints. Clean as a new-born baby’s cheek.”

“Wiped?”

“Can’t really tell.”

Which meant whoever had brought that jar—which had alcohol residue when he’d found it in the trash bin—had purposely wanted to conceal his or her fingerprints. So there goes McCall’s theory about suicide and Tadeo needing Dutch courage to do it. Not only no gloves found on or near Tadeo’s body, but no trace of alcohol in his system, either.

Of course that wouldn’t stop McCall, Max thought. Like accusing James of the murder of his own father and nephew.

Fucking absurd.

But he didn’t say it out loud.

Philip was waiting by the car.

“Sorry about that,” Max said. “Had a few things to clear up.”

“No problem. … James doesn’t seem too eager to save himself.”

“Misplaced sense of honor.”

“What makes you so sure Tadeo really was not a spy like Sheriff McCall said.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. Just a question.”

“He was a murder victim, pure and simple. I’ve already proved that. I’m not looking for a spy but a murderer. Why the question?”

They climbed in the car. Max started it and pulled out of the parking lot.

“Just trying to help,” Philip said. “Add another perspective.”

“Well, we could use another perspective. But take it from me, Tadeo was no spy.”

Max glanced at his son. Strange.

Then he told himself to shut the hell up. Enjoy their time together.