To Collar a Killer, page 6
“My sins? Ow!”
“You heard me. What’s your name?”
“Gavin, sir.”
“Okay, Gavin—just so you know? Jesus is pissed at you right
now and that’s why you’re being punished.”
“Punished for what? Ow! Ow!”
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LEE CHARLES KELLEY
“Don’t play dumb. He’s pissed about some of the thoughts
you’ve been having.”
“What thoughts? Ow! Ow!”
“You know very well what thoughts. The ones about naked
girls.”
He was amazed that I knew this. “Oh, God. Oh, my God.”
“And he’s also pissed at you for the way you’ve been fooling
around with that girl.”
Again he was stunned at my depth of knowledge. “Darcy?
How do you know about Darcy? Ow! Ow!”
“Now, He’s willing to forgive you. In fact, He wants to for-
give you. You know how He is.”
He nodded, smiling and crying at the same time. “He’s filled
with light and love and mercy.”
“That’s right. But you’re going to have to pray long and hard
to get your soul free from the perils of hell.”
I was actually having too much fun with this, if the truth
were known. Of course, I could have cared less about this sorry-
ass kid and the fate of his pygmy soul. I just wanted some peace
and quiet. Was that too much to ask?
He started exhorting the Lord: “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, please
forgive me of my many—ow! Ow!”
“Not out loud! Don’t you know those who pray publicly, in a
loud voice, are an abomination in the sight of God?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Pray silently to yourself.” He nodded and his lips began to
move. “Okay, good. Now, I’m going to let you up, and when I
do I want you to crawl into the bottom bunk and—”
“You’re giving me the bottom bunk?”
I sighed. “Think of it as a sign that Jesus still loves you even
though you’re a terrible sinner.” It had nothing to do with being
a sign, of course. It was just that if he had to throw up again, I
didn’t want to be lying in the bottom bunk and have him spew-
ing his mess on top of me.
“A sign,” he exulted. “He’s giving me a sign.” It kills me how
these people are all the time looking for and putting their faith
in signs when the Bible clearly states that only a “wicked and
adulterous generation seeks after signs.” I know this because I
TO COLLAR A KILLER
41
spent a few years in Catholic school, until one day, when I was
about thirteen, one of the priests got frisky with his hands.
Without thinking, I kicked him in the groin as hard as I could,
and I was immediately expelled—thank God.
“That’s right,” I lied. “It’s a sign from above. So go lie down.
Start your silent prayers. But remember, if the Lord hears you
praying out loud, you’ll be punished even more.” With that I fi-
nally let him up off his knees.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, and meekly went to the bottom
bunk, climbed in, and assumed a fetal position with his hands
clasped fervently in front of his face.
My job was done. It was quiet and peaceful once again.
I climbed into the top bunk—all the while trying to keep from
laughing—and felt around for a pillow. There wasn’t one.
“Do you have a pillow down there?” I asked.
“Yes, sir?”
I reached down. “Jesus wants you to give it to me.”
He quickly handed it up.
I got comfortable and a few minutes passed. Finally, he said,
“Sir? Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“You’re an angel of the Lord, aren’t you? I mean, how else
could you have known about me and Darcy?”
I stifled another laugh and said, “Son, you know I’m not al-
lowed to divulge that information. Now keep praying.”
“Sorry, sir,” he said, then under his breath I heard him say, “I
knew it!” This was going to be a great story for him to tell his
Christian brothers and sisters one day, about how he’d once had
a visitation from an angel in the drunk tank at the Cumberland
County Jail in Portland, Maine.
I eventually fell asleep and took a nap, which lasted a few
hours. Then I heard the cell door open and a guard said, “Jack
Field?”
I sat up. “That’s me.”
“You’ve got a phone call.”
8
It was Kelso.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m at the Portland airport,” he groused. “Your attorney is
apparently unavailable so Jamie asked me to fly up from New
York to represent you.”
“Since when are you licensed to practice in the State of
Maine?”
“Since I passed the multistate, years ago. I’m licensed in
New York, New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, and all of New
England.”
Lou Kelso and I first met while working together on a murder
case. I was the lead detective and he was a prosecutor for the
Manhattan DA. One of our witnesses, a young woman who
knew the victim, was also murdered before she could testify.
The two police officers guarding her hotel room were also
killed. Someone in the DA’s office was on the take and had set
up her murder. A few years later Kelso quit prosecuting, hung
out a shingle as a P.I., but kept his license to practice law. (He
tells this story better than I do, so I’ll just go on with what hap-
pened while I was in jail:)
“Anyway,” he went on, “I just got in from LaGuardia.”
“Are your arms tired?”
He failed to laugh. “That’s not even the right way to tell that
old joke. What is wrong with you?”
TO COLLAR A KILLER
43
“I’m in jail. Unjustly accused, unfairly incarcerated.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, listen: I wrote a writ of habeas cor-
pus on the plane. I’m going to rent a car and check into a hotel,
then, as soon as I can, I’m going to find a judge and try to get an
emergency hearing, then I’m coming to see you.”
“Don’t rent a hotel room. You can stay at my place. And
what’s wrong with Jill?”
“Who’s Jill?”
“My attorney.”
“Oh. I don’t know. Jamie told me she had to go to the hospital.”
“Jesus, I hope she’s all right. But seriously, don’t rent a hotel
room. You’re staying in the guest bedroom.”
“Fine, whatever. I’ll get there as soon as I can. Just hang in
there. It’s not as bad as it seems.”
He should know. He’d been in jail a few times himself, and
had even done a stretch in prison on an obstruction of justice
charge when he’d supposedly hindered an investigation into the
murder of sixties art icon Sebastian Video. (His conviction was
eventually overturned on appeal, but that’s another story.)
We said our good-byes in our usual terse fashion then I was
led back to my cell and my born-again roommate.
I missed Jamie’s press conference, which was held around
noon. The reason I missed it, obviously, is that I was in jail,
though I watched the whole thing on videotape a few days later.
She announced that she was resigning from the ME’s office due
to—well, I think you can imagine most of the things that this
was due to—and that she was going to conduct an independent
forensic investigation into Gordon Beeson’s death, along with
help from noted criminalist Dr. Sidney Liu. She also demanded
to be allowed to observe the autopsy on behalf of her client—
namely me, and my attorney, Lou Kelso.
Jamie’s was not the only press conference held that afternoon.
Dr. Reiner—who’d rescheduled the autopsy for two o’clock
(thanks to Donna Devon and me)—made a brief appearance in
front of the cameras on his way to the morgue. He denied any in-
volvement in the State Police’s decision to arrest me.
“This is a murder case, pure and simple,” he’d said. “The
preliminary report shows more than ample evidence to support
44
LEE CHARLES KELLEY
my ruling of homicide. Neither I, nor anyone else in this office,
have any opinion on the guilt or innocence of anyone in police
custody. Our job is to determine the cause and manner of death,
not to track down suspects. That is for the State Police and the
District Attorney’s Office to determine, and it’s a course of ac-
tion they are free to pursue. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
There were questions shouted about Jamie’s resignation.
“Please! Ladies and gentlemen, I have work to do.”
With that he strode toward the front entrance of the State
Morgue Building.
Someone shouted behind him, “So, Dr. Reiner, what’d you
shoot today?” (I think this was a golf reference.)
Reiner ignored the comment and kept moving toward the
front door, where Jamie suddenly appeared and stood waiting
for him. There was just a moment’s hesitation in his gait. On the
videotape (which I reviewed in slow motion at the TV station)
you could even see it from behind, in the way his neck twitched
and his shoulders sagged slightly. He really didn’t want her
there. Still, he shook it off, got to the door, opened it, stood
aside and held it open for her in a magnanimous, if completely
phony, gesture, then followed her into the building.
The District Attorney—Morgan Lieberman—held his own
press conference, as did a spokesperson for the State Police.
They both claimed to have sufficient evidence (Lieberman
called it “a sufficiency of the evidence”) to support my arrest
on the murder rap.
Kelso gave me a précis of these events when he came to visit,
around six-thirty. (They wouldn’t let Jamie come, but he was
my attorney.) I was waiting for him in the visitor’s room, sitting
in a metal chair in front of a metal desk, singing, “I’ll Be See-
ing You” to myself, and trying to think who wrote it. Kelso
would know, I thought. He knows everything about old songs. I
got to the line, “In a small café, the park across the way, the
children’s . . . ,” when they buzzed him in.
A few inches taller than I, and a little beefier, he stood in the
entrance, kind of wrapped gracefully around the door, looking
down at me, with his reading glasses perched on the end of his
pug nose. “What are you? Bing Crosby now?”
TO COLLAR A KILLER
45
“It gets boring in here without no radio, man.”
He shook his head and came in, somewhat tiredly, it seemed
to me. Even his Brooks Brothers suit looked a bit droopy. He
came to the desk, dropped his leather briefcase on it, carefully
put his laptop computer down, and then plopped a huge book in
front of me. It landed with a thud. I looked at the cover. It was
Stephen Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science.
“You think I’ll be in here that long?” I said.
“You can always skip the hard parts.” He sat down and
opened his briefcase. “Anyway, Jamie thought you might like to
have something to read. That was on your nightstand.” He
looked me over. “Are you wearing make-up?”
“Shut up. I was on TV when they arrested me, remember?” I
pulled the book toward me. “Yeah, this helps me drift off to
sleep at night. Hey, who wrote that song?”
“What song?”
“ ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’ ”
He pulled some papers from his case. “Sammy Fain and Irv-
ing Kahal. I want to go over a few things with you.”
“Really? I thought Sammy Cahn wrote it.”
“Are you kidding me?” he scoffed. “Sammy Cahn never
wrote anything that good.” He thought it over. “Though come to
think of it, neither did Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal. That was
their only really great song.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” (I told you he was an expert on
old songs.) “And just so you know?” I pointed to the book.
“They’re all hard parts. That’s what makes it such a good sopo-
rific.” (Kelso also has a passion for recondite words.) “Hey,” I
said, “is recondite a word?”
He looked down his nose at me again. “It is.”
“What does it mean exactly? I forget.”
“Obtuse or difficult to comprehend. Now can we talk about
your case?” He went on to tell me about all the press confer-
ences, and the fact that the TV station I worked for was running
the tape of me with Buttons jumping on my chest at the top of
each hour, giving people the impression that I was anything but
a killer. When he was finished he said, “Is there anything you’d
like to tell me about what happened?”
46
LEE CHARLES KELLEY
“Nah, I’d rather talk about this book.” I pointed to A New
Kind of Science. “Do you know what it’s about?”
He shook his head, then took his reading glasses off and tossed
them down on the table in an easy gesture. He got out a pack of
cigarettes. “Let me guess, some new kind of science?”
“Exactly. Now, I’m not sure if this guy Wolfram’s really on
to something or if he’s just nuts, but listen to this—”
He nodded. “Jamie told me you might be like this.”
I stopped cold. “I might be like what?”
“So angry you’re totally calm. Hey, if you go up for twenty
years, do you mind if I console her for you?”
“No, you may not.”
“ ’Cause she’s pretty hot, you know.” He lit the cigarette and
waved the match around till it went out.
“Forget it, Kelso. Anyway, you’re not the type.”
He took a puff and waved the smoke away from me and my
virgin lungs. “Yeah? What type is that?”
“The type of guy to sustain a long-lasting relationship.”
“Who said anything about a long-lasting relationship? One
night’s all I need.” Then he took another puff, waited for my re-
action, which I didn’t give him. Then he grunted and said, “And
so,” he shrugged, “what? You are?”
“Am I what?”
“The type of guy to, you know, the rest of it.”
“Maybe not in general, but with Jamie I am. So, no way—
she’s totally off limits to you and your smooth charm.”
He gave me his smoothest grin. “She have a sister?”
I smiled. “No, but her mother is pretty good-looking. In fact
she’s a knockout.” (This is true. Laura Cutter is one of the most
beautiful women I’ve ever met.) “Now, stop trying to make me
lose my temper and listen to what I want to tell you about this
book . . .”
He looked at his watch. “No thanks,” he said, and put the pa-
pers back inside his briefcase. “I’ve got a habeas corpus hear-
ing to get to. Your pal Jill gave Jamie the name of a judge who’s
willing to listen.” He put his reading glasses back on.
“Yeah? How is Jill?”
TO COLLAR A KILLER
47
He took another puff. “According to Jamie, not too good. She
has to have more surgery tomorrow. Sorry.”
“Oh, man.”
He stubbed out his cigarette. “If all goes well, I’ll have you
out of here by eight o’clock and we can go get drunk.”
“Okay, cool. Mind if I play with the dogs first?”
“No, that’s fine.” He got up, went to the door and said, “Ah,
shit!” He turned back to me. “See? That’s what I should have
done to get you riled up. I should have told you that someone’s
been trying to mess with your dogs. Shit!”
“Wait. Who’s been trying to mess with my dogs?”
“Nobody. But see how emotional you are right now? That’s
the way you should be feeling about this trumped-up murder
charge, you asshole! Instead of singing Bing Crosby songs.”
“No,” I shook my head, “this makes it bearable. If I thought
about things, I’d go nuts.” I took a deep breath. “What was it
you once told me? When what’s-her-name got iced?”
“You mean Colleen? Our witness in the mob hit?”
“That’s her. I was ready to go ballistic and you told me to
chill out. ‘Take a Zen attitude,’ you said. Remember? You said
that every murder case is like a Zen hologram.”
“Yeah, I remember. I was full of crap back then.”
“No, you weren’t. We got the guy, didn’t we? That mobbed-
up Assistant DA who had her killed? We got him good.”
He smiled. “Yeah, we got him. Or you did. As I recall, I was
too drunk or pissed off to be of much use.”
“Yeah, I know. You lied to me about the Zen hologram. But
