The phone stood at attention on a base at Goss’s elbow. As it rang, a robotic female voice announced that it was a Michigan call.
He waited for the answering machine to pick up. I’d expected that. In our state, “Michigan call” could mean a friendly canned sentiment from your local congressman or a bail request from your grandson being held in an Albanian prison. The line the suckers use at Second Precinct Admissions was separate from the official-business line.
“Mr. Goss?” said a youthful voice. “This is Coc—”
He snatched up the handset. “Not now.” A beat. “Okay, what?”
I reached behind myself to scratch my back, loosening the Ruger in its holster while I was at it.
I had to admire his control. Aside from turning his glass around and around in his hand, he showed no reaction to what Officer Cochran was telling him. After a minute he said “Okay” again and replaced the handset. He uncrossed his legs, crossed them the other way. His face was illegible, but the new position reeked of smugness.
“Good news?” I said.
He drank. “Nothing I didn’t expect. What you were saying. You think I had something to do with this Abrahim person?”
“Let’s call him Jared Kady. Even radical Islam won’t claim him. He came through for you: Message received. If Corbeil’s case stays open, next time he won’t be so lucky. Same basic lesson I was supposed to learn from Whitelaw. Kopernick too, only that time he dropped the ball. Or was he supposed to finish the job after Kopernick turned down your offer?”
He set his glass on the pedestal table by the phone, put his foot back on the floor, and leaned forward, clasping his hands. His face remained immobile. “Do me a favor. Repeat what you just said before witnesses. My sponsors will love the free publicity when I take you to court.”
“Then you’d force me to make my case. Slander’s the only complaint where the rule of law doesn’t apply to the defendant. The accused is challenged to prove his innocence, not the complainant to prove his guilt. I’d subpoena the tapes of the shows about Kady and Whitelaw and put Corbeil on the stand. It’s circumstantial, yeah; but you know what Oscar Wilde said about the trout in the milk.”
“It was Thoreau. You should check your sources before you enter a quote into evidence.”
Triumph had seeped into his tone. It had nothing to do with catching me in an error. I smiled.
“Cochran lied,” I said.
The mask cracked wide open. “What?”
“You’d have been proud of him when we braced him, Alderdyce and I. He held out a lot longer than we expected. I thought I’d be here at least an hour earlier. But the bluff worked in the end. He agreed to place that call so he could resign from the force instead of being dismissed for cause, and for a promise not to prosecute.
“You were bluffing, too,” I said. “He wouldn’t survive a week as an expert consultant on your show. When you fired him, all you had to do to shut him up was remind him you offered him a bribe and he took it.”
He’d recovered some of his composure. “You’re still bluffing. What is it you said he lied about? To me, you mean?”
“Corbeil. Cochran told you he just died of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by that blow from a baton when Kady shoved him into the guard. We told him to say that. Corbeil’s recovering, under constant surveillance for his protection. When he leaves the infirmary he’ll be placed in isolation. We put a muzzle on your cutthroat dog Kady.”
“What was the point of the call? Is that why you said you’d put him on the stand? Make me drop my guard, say or do something to incriminate myself because I thought he couldn’t testify?”
“An experienced talking head like you? Come on. I just wanted to see how you’d take the news. I had to be sure I was right about you.”
“I’m listening.”
“Of course you are. You’re a professional interviewer.” I rearranged myself again, leaning forward like him to keep from pinning the revolver to the back of my chair. “Everyone was so caught up in the story that Corbeil murdered April and rigged the scene to look like suicide. What the hell, writers have been using that one for a hundred years. Cops love it when real-life killers try to imitate it. It’s so obvious, with certain evidence conveniently removed so that it couldn’t have been suicide, it greased the prosecution’s case. Only it didn’t happen that way. Exactly the opposite.
“I can’t even say you blundered,” I said. “Twenty years ago, who could’ve predicted forensic science would come into a windfall like DNA?”
“And just how did I betray myself, according to you?”
“That wooden-Indian act of yours can work two ways. Guy calls, reports something grim—only not so grim for you—you don’t ask questions, tell him he’s got a wrong number; you don’t even show surprise. Which you would, if you had any notion I knew what the call was about. How could you? You didn’t know I’d helped coach him what to say, and was expecting the call when it came.
“Sometimes,” I said, “subtle shouts.”
He said nothing; sat back again and steepled his hands like a priest in the box.
I went on. “Alderdyce said my theory was upside-down. I had more than half a mind to agree with him. It was like saying wet sidewalks cause rain. But I couldn’t let go of it, and that’s what convinced me in the end. No matter how many times you push things away, the one that keeps coming back is the truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
“It wasn’t murder made to look like suicide. It was suicide made to look like murder.”
He separated his hands, recrossed his legs, and picked up his drink. He was back in charge, the host of the program. “And why would I do that? Go to all that trouble just to spare April’s memory? That’s not even a motive. It’s a joke.”
“That’s what I thought, so I threw it out and got another. Two, actually. Oldest in the book. The Book, in fact. Fear and greed.
“Fear first. How does a parent whose daughter kills herself come off? Either someone who didn’t care enough about his own child to read the signs beforehand or a tyrant who drove her to it. The cops would look into that. Even if they didn’t find anything to back it up, the specter of abuse—physical, emotional, sexual—would still be out there in the public eye. Even a minor celebrity like the host of a local cable-access TV show would feed that hunger. People love it when someone famous turns out to be a louse. The cops would drop the investigation for lack of evidence; but not before your sponsors dropped you.
“Or maybe it’d be worse,” I went on; “no one would care. You’d be just another weak character whose kid wouldn’t even go to him with her troubles. She’d been diagnosed as a depressive once, and even though she was declared cured, it’s a condition that can come back, like malaria. It made more sense for her to slash her wrists than to depend on you to snap her out of it. And then you’d be somebody who used to be sort of famous, and now just some loser, only nobody cared. What could be worse for a spotlight hound like you?”
Here was another place where his poker face worked against him. I’d started out groping my way into it, still unconvinced even that late in the game; but as I moved on to the brutal details of April’s death, he gave me nothing to show they pained him at all. And I knew then I’d scored a hit.
“No,” I said, “suicide would be a disaster. But a watchdog for justice whose daughter was murdered by her boyfriend—that’s gold in terms of ratings. A grieving father who throws all that attention into ramming through a conviction; a crusader with a personal grudge against crime. Guy like that deserves a bigger audience. Motive number two: greed.
“April’s neighbor wasn’t the first to discover her body,” I continued. “You were. Maybe you went there to have it out with her, maybe—giving you the benefit of the doubt—to make things up. After you got over the shock of what you found, figured all the angles, you went to work.
“You didn’t have anything personal against Corbeil; welcomed him, in fact. You had to have a conviction, and he was convenient, the callow college student with the girlfriend who might be pregnant. Without it, you wouldn’t have an ending for your pilot episode. You said it: a show without justice won’t last one season.”
I looked around the large, comfortable room. “First time I saw this place, I thought of it as the house April built. She’s the one responsible for your success; with a little help from you to restage the scene. If I’d only listened to myself, I’d have finished the job a lot quicker.”
He was perfectly still. It was as if I was back watching him on a TV whose screen had frozen. It lasted long enough that when he opened his mouth, it made me jump in my seat.
“Heard enough?” He raised his voice a little.
I jumped, all right. I’d assumed he was alone in the house. I should have followed up by bringing the Ruger around in my hand. That would have made three guns out in the open instead of just two.