Dead Mann Walking

35

I thought about that name a lot over the next few days.

Lamar Derby. Lamar. Derby.

I recited it slowly, quickly, all sorts of ways, as the light from my little cell window grew long and then receded. Was there still a way? Short of getting the DNA from the other cases retested, I was thinking probably not. I went over it again and again, trying to find an in, but the easiest plan I came up with was to dig him up from the hospital rubble with a teaspoon and get him to confess again.

I could’ve gone on like that for months, but what Misty thought of as fate had other plans. About a week after her visit, the lock on my cell clicked open. One of the guards stood there, shaking his head.

“Social visit, Max?” I asked.

“Nah. Someone posted bail. You’re free.”

My thoughts went to the obvious. “Fuck. Misty. I don’t want it. Give the money back.”

“Seeing how much I enjoy your company, I’d love to, but it ain’t up to either of us.”

“No choice?”

“Not even if you were a liveblood. Out you go.”

I followed him down the hall, through some doors, and into the property room. They handed me my wallet and the spare batteries, then asked me to wait for another surprise. I didn’t think they were going to throw a party for me, but I also didn’t expect Tom Booth to step in.

“You got friends I don’t know about?” he said. As usual, he didn’t look happy. Only now he looked so unhappy, I was starting to think my luck really had changed.

“You mean the bail? I tried to give it back,” I said.

“No, not the bail. The newspaper articles, the editorials. All three Fort Hammer papers were hammering away at the case against you. Conspiracy this, conspiracy that.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I decided not to let him know that. “Tom, you getting jaded? Don’t believe in reporters trying to uncover the truth? Can’t be much of a case anyway, seeing as I’m not guilty.”

He sneered. “Not jaded, Mann, just not stupid.”

Part of me wanted to get while the getting was good, but I couldn’t help trying to learn a little more. “These newspaper stories. They must be saying there was another bomber, right? Anyone starting to believe them?” I asked.

The sneer on his face all but disappeared. “Maybe.”

I straightened. “Enough to get the DA to consider dropping the charges?”

He hesitated. I twisted my head and gave him a good hard look. Finally he said, “Maybe.”

Under the circumstances that was better than a yes. “Tom, I know you hate me and I know why. But do you really think I’d blow up a building? For what? Forget everything I’ve been trying to tell you. You’re a decent cop when you pay attention. Does it make any sense?”

His eyes darted away. Shit. I was impressed.

“Okay, then. Are you so wrapped up in making this about me, you’d ignore the real crook?”

“Your imaginary psychopath who D-capped the chakz he loves? He’s buried anyway, isn’t he?”

Like him, I wasn’t stupid. I knew why he was talking to me. The investigation had gone sour. He was hoping to trick me, get me to reveal something he could follow up on. Even so, it was the most civil conversation we’d had since Lenore died.

“Yeah, but there were seven or eight heads in that bag, and I only knew about four: Wilson, Odell, Boyle, and the one he called Daddy. Forget me, okay? I’m getting my chak card and going off to summer camp. What about the families out there still thinking Mom or Dad or daughter or son is a killer? Or if there’s a liveblood on death row right now?”

“You’re full of shit.”

He was about to walk away, but I was in for a penny and going for the pound. “I’ve got a name, Tom. Lamar Derby. Some kid in grad school pinned his mother’s killing on him. Just check it out. Couple of fun calls, you could match that DNA to the other killings.”

“Lamar Derby? That’s a new one. You’ve been locked up. Where’d you get the name, from that crack head who stitched you up?”

Fuck. Misty would kill me. “If it checks out, who cares?” I said. “Two and two equals four? Didn’t you teach me the rest didn’t matter?”

I went into a little speech about everything I knew. Without the recording, it was a bunch of dangling threads, but if he bought it enough to check the DNA, it could change things for both of us.

I had to give him credit. As I spoke, he turned his head sideways and looked as if he was thinking about it. I was only about halfway through when he raised his hand to stop me.

“Give it up, Mann.”

To anyone who hadn’t studied Tom Booth, that might seem like the end of things, but this time, for a change, I remembered. It was a phrase he’d used back when I was alive and trying to get him to follow some lead that seemed thin. Give it up really meant that he was thinking about it.

For a second, just an instant, as I stood there, I didn’t feel like a chak; I felt like I was a homicide detective talking to his boss. I wasn’t angry with Misty about the money anymore. The moment was worth twice the price. I was even thinking I might deserve what I imagined could happen with Nell.

But there are no happy endings.

His shoulders relaxed. Booth was ready to leave again, but I had to go and ruin it all by asking one more question. “Tom, the woman I was arrested with, Nell Parker, what happened to her? Do you know?”

He looked puzzled, then surprised, as if something with an awful smell had been shoved under his nose. “The stripper chak?”

Not wanting to push it, I only said, “Yeah.”

“It was picked up by Colby Green. It gave him a nice big kiss when it saw him.”

Something collapsed in my chest. “A kiss?”

“If you can call it that. There was enough tongue involved to tell me I shouldn’t bother pressing charges on it, either.”

“Colby Green?”

“You gone deaf?”

The thought of her back there, dancing for him again, after I . . . when I thought . . .

Before I knew it, I was pounding the wall, just like when that photo of Booth and Lenore popped up on my computer. Only now it didn’t take one punch to break the plasterboard; it took three.

Booth remembered it, too. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me out, kicking me along the way. “If you ever say you’re innocent again, I’ll destroy you! Do you understand? Do you? I’ll D-cap you myself!”

By the time I was sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the police station, yeah, I understood.