Mental State, page 14
“Yeah, my recollection is that it did.”
They sank into silence until Jenny took his hand. They got up together and made their way in silence back to the room.
Jenny decided she wasn’t going back to bed and opted for a shower. She heard the television flick on when she stood under the steaming water.
By the time she was standing in her towel, one wrapped around her head as well, Royce came in.
“Why’d you ask me that? You know, back there on the path. Why’d you ask me if I ever…”
“Curious, I guess. Just wondering if having done it was necessary to get into the mind of a killer.”
“What are you talking about, Jen?” He was standing behind her and their eyes met in the mirror. She went back to smoothing cream on her face, scrunched it up a little, and spoke out of the side of her mouth.
“Well, I bet it’s like anything. Unless you practice, a tense situation will make you mess it up. I mean, if you aren’t used to it. Like anything. If I handed you a golf club or a chainsaw and told you to use it in the pressure of a tense situation, could you really do it perfectly?”
“Huh?”
“Marcus. I mean, I bet Alex was the first person he killed.”
“I don’t know. He ran with some bad dudes.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
The conversation trailed off and she pushed the door closed. When she emerged, dressed for a day that was still a few hours away, Royce was on his computer.
She picked up her Kindle and settled into the side chair. A few minutes later, he looked over from his laptop.
“So, what if Alex was his first?”
The more they talked, the more Jenny realized how this conversation should have already been had. She could see it in Royce’s eyes too.
“It just seems like a pretty incredible thing for someone to do. I know I couldn’t pull the trigger, no matter how mad I was, let alone do it in a way that made it look enough like a suicide to fool the cops.”
“You think?”
They shared a small laugh. Jenny felt she was making progress pulling him out of the gloom. They went back to their devices. A few moments later, he restarted.
“The way they found the gun was by tracing it to a shooting range, so he had some training, or, at least practice.”
“I’m not saying he was like me; a rookie, an amateur. But shooting at a range is one thing. I would bet shooting someone in the head—sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It’s okay.”
“You tell me. What must it be like when someone not used to killing actually gets there, standing with a weapon in their hand and looking at another life, seeing the photos of kids and grandparents on the table? Can they really pull it off so clinically and perfectly that it really looks like suicide to the trained eye? And not leave a trace?”
“This guy was great at everything he ever did.”
“That’s what I gathered but—”
“So I have no reason to think he wouldn’t study up, make the necessary preparations, and perform under pressure.”
“Okay, I…you are the…”
“Like I said, most criminals get caught because they’re idiots. They can’t make it in the real world, so they resort to crime. That’s why we catch them.”
“But Marcus was no idiot.” It was an obvious point, but making it changed everything.
Jenny didn’t see the trap she had just laid. But she saw Royce’s shoulders edge forward and his brow furrow. He looked like an animal realizing it was caught, the tension in the trap’s spring, steel clamping around his ankle.
“From what I’ve read, he sounds like an impressive kid. But still. Being good at chess or whatever, and being about to sneak up on Alex, shoot him at just the right spot and angle to make it look like it was self-inflicted, then clean the scene and escape all in a minute or two…that’s remarkable, right?”
She cast her eyes at the pineapple motif in the rug as Royce answered.
“I’ve seen some things that don’t make sense when you try to piece it together like this. I mean, incredible things happen. All the time. I’ve seen some bank shots that juries had a hard time believing, even when we drew the picture for them.”
She went back to her Kindle. Royce flipped through channels, finally settling on SportsCenter. They sat consumed by distractions for a while.
“Yeah, and a kid like that would be capable of lots of planning and attention to detail.” She picked up the conversation right where they left off.
“That’s what I was thinking, Jen. I mean, he is a smart kid. Real smart. When I questioned him, he tied me in knots. I’m actually surprised we got him. If it weren’t for that x-ray-whatever the kids in the lab use, we wouldn’t be here.”
“So why does he use his phone?” Snap. The accidental trap slammed shut. The simple question that would change everyone’s life. “He used it right after he…you know. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he was…”
“No, I mean, why risk it? Why not wait until he’s back at home or at least far enough away so as not to raise suspicion.” Jenny didn’t realize it, but she was torqueing the trap tighter and tighter.
“I think the…”
“I mean who was he calling?” She said it half-jokingly.
Royce caught an image of Marcus, the image that Mr. Fernandez, the gardener, painted for him—green hoodie, bare legs, eyes on his cell phone, running away from a murder—and suddenly it made no sense. None at all. It didn’t fit with the methodical and clinical nature of the murder. The conversation with Officer Dziewulski sprang to the front of mind. A contraband Glock and no suicide note were pieces that didn’t fit together either. And now, two more incongruous pieces had been shoved together. His wife had just blown his entire case wide open.
Royce shifted uneasily. His case—it was his despite the fact it was credited to Officer Dziewulski—was a sham. He was a patsy. They both were. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and it was revolting.
Jenny put down the Kindle. “Are you okay, babe?”
He wasn’t okay. And he didn’t know what to do about it either.
CHAPTER 27
Royce blew reveille at o-dark-thirty, and while Jenny finished a cup of coffee on the back porch of the inn, he got the girls out of their PJs. An hour later they boarded a plane for Pittsburgh.
He wanted to think about the case or get some more sleep on the short flight, but his girls wanted to play “Pass the Pigs!” He tried to be in the moment, this moment, with his girls rolling two small plastic pigs like dice, instead of thinking about Marcus sitting in a jail cell awaiting the latest Trial of the Century. Or, on the people who, he was increasingly convinced, were sitting somewhere toasting themselves for duping him and the entire world and pulling off whatever it was they were trying to pull off. What are they trying to pull off? Who would want to kill a law professor and pin it on one of his students? A poor kid from the inner city? It made no sense. Royce stared out the window as the plane leapt skyward, then jerked back when Jane rolled a double leaning joweler.
He stewed all day. That night, when Jenny slackened beside him in bed, he eased the covers back and slipped into khaki pants strewn on the floor. Gingerly retrieving his gun and badge, he headed for the FBI field office. Winding streets lead out of his hillside neighborhood down to the Monongahela River, and as he sped along its shoreline, littered with carcasses of Pittsburgh’s industrial past, he thought of his own transformation and the bodies he’d littered by the side of the road. He made the fifteen-minute trip in ten and parked illegally in front of the Carnegie Building, letting the siren lights hidden in the grill of his bureau car flash without sound.
By the time he keyed into his office, he was enraged. He was coming around to the idea that Jenny was right, even though Jenny wasn’t actually making an argument one way or the other. Someone had set up Marcus, then set up Royce to get him. Once the idea of a double setup was raised, it was impossible to see anything else. It was like a pointillist painting—from one perspective it was nothing but a bunch of dots, but once the image is realized, you can’t unsee it.
But what if the FBI brother gets involved? That surely would have been asked at the planning meeting. He could see them, faceless men in suits—he was sure they were all men—sitting around a large, oak table, plotting his brother’s murder. They had to set a trap if Alex’s pesky bro walked that way. The filed-off serial number was sloppily done, which allowed the FBI, but not the Chicago PD, to ID the weapon. This required pretty advanced knowledge of the capabilities of the FBI, and this thought made him seethe. Whoever was behind this was knowledgeable and clever. Suicide was the first and most likely resolution, but if the FBI brother snooped around, he’d be led to Marcus. It was an ingenious plan. The timing of the hit to correspond with people being around to hear and see, but not to hear and see everything. The delivery truck, the shorts and the green sweatshirt, and, of course, the cell phone. All of this was deliberate. The entire scene was a stage, and Royce was the leading man. A leading man who didn’t know he was even in the scene. He’d been played. Even Royce admired the craft. These were pros.
He pulled a banker’s box labeled “Operation Slapbox” from his office closet and dumped the contents on the floor. Time for a fresh start. He looked at each hand-labeled manila folder, read every note, and looked at every detail twice. He sifted and sorted the evidence until the sun poured through the windows of his office, hours later. At one point he fell back onto the floor and lay among the photographs, scraps of paper, and bags of evidence. Officer Dziewulski, the detectives from the Chicago PD, and the state’s attorney had similar boxes, but theirs didn’t contain the false starts and bad leads this one did. He held up the bag of syringes and looked up at them from the floor, before letting them fall to the ground with the other evidence. Poor Alex.
Ms. Rachelle found him asleep on the floor a few hours later. She appeared at his door holding a steaming mug of coffee.
“What happened in here, child?” Ms. Rachelle said loud enough to raise the dead.
Royce jumped up. “Oh, just a case that took an unexpected turn last night. Nothing really.”
“This is your brother’s case,” she said, picking up a glossy photograph of Alex from the pile. “I seen it all over the news and knew you were the brains behind this.” Her tone was that of a mother who was both proud and a little worried at what her son had done.
Royce looked up at her massive frame looming over him like a hovering angel.
“Intuition, dear,” she said. “All the women in my family got it. We see things others don’t.” She handed him the coffee.
He managed a half smile, then sat up. “I could use some of your powers, Ms. Rachelle.” She saw the look in his eyes, like something had gone wrong.
“What is it? That boy, he’s the one who done it, isn’t he?”
“Maybe. I…” He took a deep breath, “I don’t know anymore.” He took a big sip of coffee. “I’ll pick up this mess.” My mess. Yup, that about sums it up.
“Pardon me, sir.” It was the first time she’d ever called him that. “I have to say that if you think there’s any chance he didn’t do it…I’ve seen too many young men taken from their families. I know many of them did bad things or, at least illegal things. And I don’t like those gangbangers at all, you know that. But the thought of a young black man with so much promise going away…”
She bent down to hide her face and started putting the evidence back in the proper files. They sat together, legs crossed, putting the papers back where they belonged. Ms. Rachelle picked up a set of papers containing phone records. She began to collate them, then stopped and scanned the floor.
“We’re missing a page.” She held out the phone records. “Page eight, nine, eleven…” she counted. “Page ten is missing.”
Royce confirmed the missing page but thought little of it. He hadn’t focused Alex’s calls. Before turning the case over to Dziewulski, he ran down every call Marcus made in and around the murder and found nothing. But, because the clues came in waves just around the time his NSL hit and turned in Alex’s phone records, he never really examined them in detail.
Looking now, he saw nothing leap out, but page ten, the last of the actual calls in the file, was the last few days leading up to Alex’s death. It could be a key piece of the puzzle, and it was missing. Had someone gotten to his files? Or, did someone within the FBI instruct Verizon to omit this potential crucial piece of evidence?
He heaved himself off the floor and laid out the phone records over his desk, scanning for any hints at what might have happened.
“Here it is!” Ms. Rachelle shouted.
Royce peered over the edge of his desk, “What?”
“Page ten.”
She stood up awkwardly and walked over, holding out a single piece of paper, arm extended.
“It was stuck to a page of a—what is this?—a…a bank statement—something sticky, maybe honey or something like that.”
Deflated, he took it and put it in its proper place in the file. As he sorted the pages, he noticed something odd about page ten. Setting it on his desk next to the other pages—all filled with numbers dialed by and dialing Alex—one number repeated again. On page ten, two four-oh-four numbers appeared over and over again, sometimes two or three times an hour for several days. He looked back at the other pages, and saw the number a few times, but not in the density in which it appeared at the end of Alex’s life. And no other number appeared that often on any of the days in these records.
“Four-oh-four,” he muttered to himself.
“Huh?” Ms. Rachelle looked up at him from the floor, where she continued refiling his mess.
“Where is the four-oh-four area code?” He was already firing up his computer.
“Atlanta. My sister lives there,” Ms. Rachelle said without looking up.
He typed one of the four-oh-four numbers into Google and hit search. The first result was the web page of an Emory University law professor named Roger Havens. A click on the link, and he was looking at the picture of a middle-aged white guy who seemed like central casting’s answer to a request to send over a typical law professor. He had thinning hair, small round glasses, and was wearing a tweed jacket. Neither the name nor the face was familiar.
Royce manhandled the bulky phone around on the desk and dialed the number. The phone rang and rang. Nothing. It was 8:30 a.m. on a Monday. Maybe he was teaching.
He tried the second number, not knowing whether they were connected. On the second ring he heard the voice of a young girl, maybe ten years old.
“Havens residence, may I help you?” she said with impeccable manners.
They were connected.
CHAPTER 28
One hour and forty minutes nonstop from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. On the runway at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, the Embraer 190 taxied in as Royce googled “Roger Havens.” He was about Alex’s age and they were both law professors. They went to different colleges, different law schools, and worked in different fields. Alex studied financial and business law; Havens studied criminal law. They never coauthored a paper together, and the conferences Havens attended regularly were not the ones Alex went to. If there was an overlap, it wasn’t obvious.
After picking up a cheap rental, he drove straight to Emory. The schedule on the flat-panel monitor in the entryway of the law school told him that R. Havens was at that moment teaching a seminar on Sexual Crimes in Room C. A perky student in sweatpants and flip flops—not the appropriate sartorial style for a law student—directed him to the classroom. Peeking through the door’s thin rectangular window revealed a few wide-eyed faces and a bunch of people staring idly at their laptops. Havens, or, at least he assumed it was Havens, stood slumped in front, leaning on a half podium that sat askew on the table. He turned toward the white board behind him, and when he did, caught Royce looking through the glass. They made eye contact.
At precisely five o’clock, a group of backpack-laden students burst through the door, followed by Havens, who turned off the lights and closed the door. He paused unnaturally long with his hand on the handle, staring into the classroom. Royce was leaning up against a wall checking his Blackberry when Havens approached.
“You must be Alex Johnson’s brother?”
“I am.”
“My family told me you called. I didn’t expect a visit.”
Royce tilted his head in the direction of a long hall that seemed less densely populated with students. He tried to look unthreatening, but the look of fear on Havens’s face was unmistakable.
Havens followed down the hall, then pointed to a service corridor that stank of garbage and toner. The professor keyed into an unmarked office, flipped on the lights, and closed the door, making sure it was secure. Royce extended his hand, but the professor walked past him, took his phone out of his pocket, and turned it off. He walked over toward a large copy machine in the far corner of the room, put a blank piece of paper on the glass, and keyed in a request for two thousand copies. When the machine hummed to the task, he finally turned.
“Alex spoke of you often.” His voice cracked. “The look, especially the eyes, is uncanny.”
They shook and Havens leaned forward.
“I’m so sorry.” He almost ended on a whimper.
“Sorry that I crept up on you. I tried calling—”
“Why did you come here?” Havens’s mood changed in a beat from sadness to accusation, then to panic. “Are you alone?”
Royce pulled back and leaned on the copy machine.
“I’m trying to get a picture of Alex’s last days. You guys talked a lot in the past few months. Sounds like you were friends.”
“We are…were, I guess…”
Havens’s eyes filled with tears, but Royce saw that it wasn’t just sadness. The man seemed terrified.
