CHAPTER SEVEN

X

Tuesday

I’m at Marcus Green’s office at 6:55. Kate seems surprised, perhaps because she’s never seen me arrive early for anything, including our wedding. This is one appointment, though, that I don’t want to miss. I am fairly certain that I have information that Ronnie Sax’s potential legal team does not possess.

Richmond can be a small place, especially if you’ve lived here your whole life and have had dealings with everyone from the governor to guys like Awesome Dude.

LAST NIGHT I got another call from Cindy Peroni. My hope was that Cindy was calling to tell me she could not live a minute longer without me. That didn’t happen, but she did that thing the reporter in me always hopes people will do. She told me something I didn’t know already.

“I saw your story in the paper, about the Tweety Bird Killer, and I thought something sounded familiar.”

It turns out that one of Cindy’s friends in the between-husbands set is Mary Kate Kusack Brown. Mary Kate is two years younger than her brother and, unlike him, never saw fit to change her last name until she got married.

“When I saw that he’d changed his name from Kusack, I knew that was the brother she’d mentioned. I called her. She says she’s sure Ronnie didn’t do it. She says he wouldn’t hurt a fly. She says her girls are crazy about him. She thinks you all ought to leave him alone.”

I asked her if she thought Mary Kate might be a tad concerned that her brother has a history of porn-related activities, or that whatever the police found on his computer was enough to send them scurrying back to his apartment, a few hours too late, to arrest him.

I offered the opinion that he wouldn’t have been the uncle I’d have sent the girls to for a sleepover.

“Well, Mary Kate says he’s a good uncle, and a good brother. She says he’s sowed his wild oats, but he’s past all that.”

I told Cindy that I hope her friend’s sisterly intuition is right. If I had been telling her the truth, though, I’d have said I hope he’s the one and that they catch him fast. I want to get the son of a bitch who’s doing this off the streets. My meeting this morning might be a step in the right direction, although I wonder if I did the right thing in suggesting that he employ Marcus Green. Even if he is guilty, Marcus might get him off. Marcus could have sprung Judas Iscariot.

“There’s one other thing,” Cindy said, just as I was about to try and steer the conversation in a more romantic direction.

“What?”

“She says he was at her house that Thursday night. She said he didn’t leave until after eleven.”

So I’m thinking Ronnie Sax at least has someone to back up his alibi, although I’ve seen more than enough relatives swear that their miscreant son/father/brother was having milk and cookies with them when all evidence put him at the scene of the crime.

Before she hung up, I asked Cindy if she’d like to have dinner with me sometime.

“Maybe,” she said, then told me she had another call coming in. I have not yet climbed back high enough in Ms. Peroni’s esteem to trump an incoming call. Tomorrow is another day.

The information I have that Marcus and Kate don’t possess came from Peachy Love. It probably will soon be in the public domain.

After my interrupted phone call with Cindy, I decided to drop in on Peachy. Maybe I was feeling a little miffed about my failure to get back in Cindy’s good graces. Maybe––stop the presses––I was horny.

Peachy was home. It was one of those things where you tell yourself, I don’t really want to be bad, and if Peachy is out somewhere, it’ll be a sign that I should take Mr. Johnson home.

“Well,” she said when she opened the door, glancing both ways to make sure nobody in a police car was nearby, “you did decide to cross the tracks, didn’t you?”

We had a good time. We always have a good time. If I were smart, I’d probably try to be more than an occasional lover. But Peachy seems to want it that way, too. She has a guy. He works for the police up in DC, and she says maybe one day they’ll move in together. I asked her once if she loved him. She hesitated too long before she answered. It seems sometimes like nobody is ever going to get married again. I have mentioned this, gently I thought, to Andi, who reminded me that, between us, we’ve been married three times, which probably is enough for right now.

At any rate, my occasional night with Peachy has to end before the sun comes up. If somebody recognizes me doing the walk of shame away from the police flack’s house, Peachy might be out of a job.

While we were lying there in the dark, both of us smoking in bed, she told me the thing I now know that Sax’s lawyers don’t.

When the cops were perusing the photographer’s digital porn collection, a face stood out to one of them.

“Turns out,” Peachy said, “it was the girl at the station.”

“The Caldwell girl.”

“Yep. There she was, her or her identical twin, wearing her birthday suit and smiling for the camera and sucking on a pacifier with a stuffed toy between her legs. Trying to look even younger, I guess.”

Peachy didn’t have to remind me that I didn’t get that information from her. I thanked her profusely for it. I didn’t mention, for some reason, that I might be talking with Mr. Sax within a couple of hours after I left her warm and welcoming bed. No sense in telling everything.

“Come back anytime,” she said as she turned off the porch light and I slipped out the door at four thirty. I said I would. I really meant it.

MARCUS GREEN SHOWS up at 7:05. He’s dressed to the nines, as always. Marcus might sleep in a three-piece suit. He glances at my jeans and pullover sweater and remarks that it’s too bad I didn’t have time to dress.

I advise him to screw himself.

Kate looks lovely, even if you disregard the fact that she’s recently given birth. She might weigh less than she did before she got knocked up. Her jeans make a much better impression than mine and elicit no comment from Marcus.

“So,” I ask them, “do you have to blindfold me first?”

Marcus doesn’t answer, just walks toward his Yukon with us following.

He heads down Franklin Street and around the capitol, and I deduce that we’re headed for the Bottom.

It never looks that great in daylight, since many of its finer establishments closed only a few hours ago and won’t open again until the afternoon. The broken beer bottles glint in the morning sun like cheap costume jewelry.

Marcus turns left, and we go one block up and two blocks over, finally stopping at one of the many old brick buildings that are being repurposed as overpriced housing. This one probably sat for twenty years before someone saw its potential as something other than a source for old bricks and timbers.

We walk inside one of the buildings and go up to the second floor, where Green knocks four times, then twice. The door opens a crack. We walk inside, and there’s our man, Ronnie Sax.

Sax doesn’t look like he’s slept much. He smells like he hasn’t showered in the last day either.

Green asks him whose place this is, and Sax says it belongs to a friend who’s out of town.

“I need you to help me,” he says.

“Well, that depends on whether you’re guilty or not,” Marcus says. Actually it depends on whether he thinks he can get Ronnie Sax off and garner some free publicity in the process.

“I ain’t guilty of nothing. The cops’ve had it in for me a long time.”

He turns to me.

“You know what I told you,” he says. “My sister will vouch for me. She knows where I was that night.”

It’s probably time to drop a little truth bomb on Mr. Sax.

I tell him, along with Marcus and Kate, what I know, without divulging how I know it, about the images the cops have of the late Jessica Caldwell.

“They’re pretty sure they have you nailed for taking pictures of an underage girl, Ronnie, right before somebody raped and murdered her.”

“Goddamn,” he says after a slight pause. “That was her? Well, maybe I did take pictures of her. But that doesn’t mean I killed her, does it?”

I note that, if they were to list everyone in the city of Richmond, he might be Number One on the “most likely” list.

Kate glares at me. Once again I’m guilty of not sharing. Well, hell, I only found it out myself a few hours ago.

“You’ve got to come clean with us,” Marcus says. “I am not going into court looking like a fool. What kind of crap are you trying to hand me?”

I’m about ready to call it a day myself. I’m thinking about a tall tree and a thick rope.

“No. Wait,” Sax says as Green starts heading back toward the door we just entered. “I’ve took pictures of a lot of girls. But there’s no way I killed anybody. And my sister will tell you I was at her house the night it happened.”

I observe that his sister seems to be one of the few people in the greater Richmond area who believes he’s not a serial killer. I further note that sisters have been known to lie to save their brothers’ asses. Marcus frowns. He doesn’t like it that I seem to be steering the conversation. Marcus likes to be behind the wheel.

“Well,” Sax says, “I just thank God she’ll come through for me.”

“If this goes to court, and she swears that, and it turns out not to be true,” Kate says, “that would be perjury. She could go to prison for that.”

Sax actually grins, showing his crooked teeth, and gives off that weird, kind of spooky, little laugh, like a rusty hinge squeaking.

“She’ll back me up,” he says. “She loves me.”

I am troubled, and I can see that the two lawyers are, too. We are all figuring the odds. Guy takes nasty pictures of girls and two of them wind up raped and murdered. He doesn’t have a record of violence, and he has, for the time being, an alibi. Still I’m starting to think Ronnie Sax might be a good deal less harmless than I was thinking he was.

“Is there some way your sister can prove you were there?” Marcus asks him.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “Maybe one of the neighbors saw my car?”

Then he snaps his fingers.

“Yeah! We were out on the back porch, talking. Mary Kate was talking with her next-door neighbors, and she told them she had family visiting. I said hi to them.”

I ask if the neighbors saw him.

“I don’t think so. There was just one little lamplight out there. But they heard me.”

“Well,” Marcus says. “That’s something.”

Ronnie Sax can’t account for his comings and goings in the other three Tweety Bird murders, but Marcus says he’s not too concerned about that. He just has to establish that Sax was otherwise engaged when little Jessica Caldwell met her demise.

I think all three of us are feeling like we should leave and wash our hands to get the crud of Ronnie Sax off us. Child pornography isn’t what you want to list among your hobbies if you’re already suspected of murdering young women.

Marcus Green seems to be thinking.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says finally. “If you turn your sorry ass in, today, I won’t call the cops, and I’ll be your attorney.”

Both Kate and I look at Marcus as if he’s lost his mind.

He looks at us and shrugs.

“What the hell,” Marcus says. “I’m bored. I always thought I could win just about anything. This’ll prove it.”

He turns toward Ronnie Sax.

“And, if I lose, nobody will think the worse of me as a lawyer. Perry Damn Mason would have a hard time getting you past a jury.”

Sax doesn’t like it, but his choices are limited. I imagine he can hear the figurative bloodhounds. The cops are bound to be close behind. Whatever friend this joint belongs to, they’ll be checking out all of Ronnie Sax’s friends soon, and the jig will truly be up.

He makes the call.

The cops are there in less than ten minutes. They are not thrilled to see Marcus Green already on the case. L.D. Jones himself arrives two minutes after the first squad cars. He doesn’t acknowledge either Green or myself. I suppose L.D. is happy he’s able to call that little press conference he meant to hold yesterday morning.

It’s not yet nine A.M., and I already have my story for tomorrow.

As we’re leaving, Marcus turns to me.

“You aren’t going to write that crap about the pictures of the Caldwell girl, are you?”

I tell him I haven’t decided yet. He threatens to make me walk back up the hill to the office. I tell him that’s one guaranteed way to make sure I tell all. Actually the cops will probably drop that information on everybody with a TV set or Internet access pretty soon.

The sweat stains on Marcus Green’s perfectly ironed blue shirt tell me how conflicted His Glibness is about taking this case on. Marcus might not have much of a conscience, but he does hate to lose.