Thicker Than Water Page 3

  “Why?”

  “I went there to tell him I was going to sue him. I had an appointment. You can check.”

  “Sue him? For what?”

  “He fucked up some legal work he did for me a few years back.”

  “What kind of legal work?”

  Cade was studying his hands. He began to pick at the skin around his nails. “Criminal.”

  “You mean when he defended you twenty years ago?”

  Cade snickered. “Can’t call what he did a defense, not by any stretch. The asshole cost me twenty years.”

  “It could have been worse,” Louis said.

  Cade didn’t blink. His eyes seemed darker now, the color the gulf had been after the storm.

  “The rape and murder,” Louis said. “Tell me about it.”

  Cade pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not important.”

  “Tell me or this is over now.”

  Cade shut his eyes slowly, like he was tired to the bone. Or bored. His right foot kept up its steady jerking. “I was sent up for raping and killing this girl. There were things that should’ve been brought up, motions and shit like that. Duvall didn’t do any of it and I got fucked. That’s why I was going to sue him.”

  “How old was ‘this girl’?”

  Cade shrugged. “Fifteen. Sixteen.”

  “How did you kill her?”

  “I told you—”

  “How was she killed?”

  “Who cares?”

  “How was she killed?” Louis demanded.

  “She was stabbed.” Cade dragged his foot off his knee and turned away, rubbing a hand over his rough chin.

  “Mr. Cade—”

  Cade spun back. “What the hell difference does it make? This is about Duvall. This is about today.”

  Louis stared at Jack Cade, his fingers working gently against the metal clip on the ballpoint pen. Man, get the hell out of here. You don’t need this loser or the five-hundred dollars. But he wanted to know.

  “Did you do it?” Louis asked.

  “I didn’t kill that cocksucker lawyer.”

  “I mean the girl. Did you kill the girl?”

  “Why you digging up old stuff no one cares about?”

  “Did you kill her?”

  Cade leaned forward, the pupils of his eyes barely visible under the heavy lids. “The only thing you need to know is that I didn’t kill Duvall.”

  Louis was amazed to see a small smile creep into the corners of Cade’s mouth.

  “You know what?” Cade said. “I should answer your question just because I find your need to know . . . amusing.”

  “This isn’t funny, Cade.”

  The tipped corners of his mouth grew into a grin. “That depends on your vantage point.” He tapped on the plexiglass between them. “You ever looked at anything through six inches of plastic? You ever seen the world through greasy hand prints and scratches and dried spit? Try it sometime. Try it for twenty years. It kind of . . . clarifies things.”

  Cade’s smile faded.

  “Answer the question,” Louis said.

  Cade dropped his head, picking again at his ravaged cuticles.

  “What you say your name was again?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Louis Kincaid.”

  “How you spell that?”

  Louis spelled his last name and when Cade looked up he was grinning. “Thought maybe we had a distant relative in common for a minute there. Kin-CADE . . . get it?”

  “I asked you a question, Cade,” Louis said. “Did you kill her?”

  But Cade ignored him again. “Ronnie said he offered you five-hundred bucks,” he said. “That’s barely enough to put macaroni on your table, right?”

  Louis didn’t answer him.

  “Would you be so curious about whether I killed that girl if I paid you five thousand?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “What if it was ten thousand? Or a hundred thousand?”

  Louis just stared at him.

  “At what dollar amount does my value as a human being reach the defendable level? How much would it take for you not to be so curious?”

  Louis closed the notebook. Cade’s eyes flitted to it and back up to Louis’s face.

  “I didn’t kill that girl,” he said finally.

  Louis locked on Cade’s chameleon eyes, hoping to see some hint of the truth there. There was nothing.

  A steel door on Cade’s side opened and a guard emerged. Cade glanced at the guard and smiled. “Well, I guess the maids are finished with my room.” He unfurled his body from the chair.

  “So,” he said to Louis, “you staying for the macaroni?”

  Louis rose, slipping the notebook in his back pocket. “I don’t know yet. I need to do some research on your case.”

  “Yeah, you do that.” Cade turned away.

  Louis started back toward the steel door at the other end of the room.

  “Kincaid.”

  Louis looked back. He could see Cade’s face at the plexiglass again.

  “Don’t ever ask me about that dead girl again,” Cade said.

  He disappeared from view. Louis walked back to the steel door and hit a buzzer. Back out in the hall, Louis drew in a deep breath.

  “Hey, your name Kincaid?”

  Louis turned to the deputy who had called out. “Yeah.”

  “Zach says there’s someone downstairs who wants to know who’s seeing Jack Cade.”

  “Who is it?” Louis asked.

  “Cade’s lawyer. And she’s mad as hell.”

  Chapter Four

  There were only two women in the lobby when Louis got out of the elevator. One was an old blue-hair with a grandkid in tow. The other was a black woman in a dark red suit carrying a slim briefcase. Her eyes immediately lasered onto Louis and she came forward.

  “You’re Louis Kincaid?”

  “Yes, and you are—?”

  “What was your business with my client?” she asked.

  “His son wants to hire me—”

  Her brows knitted. “Ronnie? Ronnie hired you to do what?”

  “I’m a private invest—”

  “What?”

  “I—”

  “He hired a PI? Damn it!”

  Louis glanced at Zach behind the glass; he was watching intently. Louis knew he had keyed the mike so he could hear every word.

  “Look,” Louis said, holding up a hand, “maybe we should—”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head. “I told him to stay out of this, to keep his damn mouth shut.” Her dark eyes shot suddenly to Louis’s face. “What did my client tell you?”

  “Nothing. Look, lady—”

  “Nothing he told you can be used against him—”

  “Hold it, I’m not even sure I’m going—”

  “How much is he paying you?”

  “How much is he paying you?” Louis shot back.

  She pushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. “Nothing. I’m his public defender.”

  Louis gave her a wry smile. Her expression remained icy.

  “Let’s start over,” Louis said. He held out his hand. “Louis Kincaid.”

  She hesitated, then gave him a curt handshake. “Susan Outlaw. Now what exactly did my client tell you?”

  Louis looked again at Zach. His face was practically pressed against the plexiglass.

  Louis glanced at her. “Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk in private?” he said.

  She looked at the slim watch on her wrist. Louis could tell she was mulling something over. What? Whether he was going to waste her time? Shit, what was it with lawyers? They all thought they were the only ones with schedules to keep. Not that he had anywhere else to go today, except to see Mobley, and he wasn’t in any hurry to do that.

  “All right. Let’s go,” she said, pivoting to the door.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Louis said.

  She led Louis to a wood-and-fern bar near the courthou
se called The Guilty Party. Susan left to make a call. Louis waited, stirring three packets of sugar into his coffee. He glanced around the cramped room. It was packed with blue-suited lawyers and grim civilians wearing jury buttons.

  When she came back to the table, she sat down with an irritated sigh and took a quick drink of her coffee.

  “Problem back at the office?” Louis asked politely.

  “Look, Mr. Kincaid, I don’t have time to sit around in cafes sipping cappucinos.”

  “It’s just bad bar coffee.”

  “Let’s just get to the point,” she said. “What did Jack Cade tell you?”

  Louis sat back in his chair. “Not much. That he didn’t kill Spencer Duvall.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That he didn’t rape and kill that girl twenty years ago either.”

  She was sitting with her back to the window and he couldn’t make out much of her features in the glare of the sun—except for her frown. That he could see clearly.

  “Why would you ask him about that?” she asked.

  “The man was convicted. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “It’s totally irrelevant. Surely, even a PI can see that.”

  He let the barb go. “Curiosity then, I guess.”

  She was squinting at him, like she thought he was crazy. She started to say something but was interrupted by her beeper going off. With an impatient sigh, she grabbed it. Her expression changed as she read the number, her mouth dropping open slightly. In the back light, Louis couldn’t tell if she was upset or just surprised.

  “Excuse me,” she muttered, rising quickly.

  Louis watched as she went to the pay phone again. She punched in a number and with a look at Louis, turned her back. A minute later she was back.

  “I’m sorry—” she began.

  “Would you mind moving your chair?” Louis asked.

  She looked at him. “What?”

  He pointed at the window. “The glare from the window. I like to see who I’m talking to.”

  She craned her neck to look at the window then back at Louis. When she shifted her chair into the shadows Louis could see that something had changed, like a mask had slipped, leaving her face unprotected.

  Back in the police station lobby, she had seemed older, pushing forty or so. But he could see now she was probably younger, with one of those hard-to-guess faces that some women were blessed with. Smooth skin maybe a half-shade darker than his own tan, a round face with a high forehead, generous mouth and eyes the shape and color of toasted almonds. Her hair . . . maybe that was what made her look older. It was black with brown streaks, swept up in one of those hard French twisty things, but with pieces of it falling out the back, like she hadn’t had a lot of time to work on it that morning.

  Susan Outlaw . . . shit, what a name for a defense attorney.

  “I’m sorry for the interruption,” she began again.

  “Boss got you on a short leash?”

  “No, it was my son. Or his principal rather.”

  She seemed distracted. Louis started to ask if the kid was in trouble at school, but something in her expression told him not to. He remembered suddenly the time his foster mother Frances had been summoned to school when he was in the sixth grade. A kid had called him an orphan and Louis had taken a swing at him with a geography book, splitting his lip. Later that night, as Louis picked at his dinner, Phillip spoke to him quietly but firmly.

  You didn’t even know what the word ‘orphan’ meant, Louis. Next time, make sure you know what you’re fighting for. Learn to use your brains, not your fists.

  And Frances: I don’t know, Phil, sometimes a good punch in the mouth is more effective.

  “Now look, Mr. Kincaid,” Susan said, drawing him back.

  “Louis. It’s Louis, okay?”

  She stared at him. He had the feeling he wasn’t going to be invited to call her Susan any time soon. He glanced at the gold band on her left hand and found himself wondering what Mr. Outlaw called her. Somehow she didn’t look like she’d answer to Sue or Susie.

  “I’ve had two days—just two days—to get up to speed on Jack Cade’s case,” she said. “I can’t be wasting time worrying about you or anyone else getting in my way.”

  “Getting in your way?” Louis said. “I would think you’d welcome the help.”

  “I don’t need help,” she said evenly.

  “I never saw a public defender that didn’t need help.”

  She was staring at him again, daggers this time, like she was sizing him up—age, experience—and finding him lacking. It irritated the hell out of him, but he wasn’t about to take the bait.

  “How long have you been in the PI business?” she asked finally.

  “Almost a year,” he said.

  She gave a short scornful laugh, reaching in her briefcase for something.

  “I was a cop before this,” he said. Probably too quickly.

  She froze, then slowly shook her head. “I should have known,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s written all over you.”

  “Bullshit.” Now he was getting pissed.

  She waved a hand of dismissal. “The walk, the talk. The eyes. Yeah, especially your eyes.”

  She snapped the briefcase closed and he realized she was getting ready to leave. He didn’t want her to leave; he needed her to tell him things about Jack Cade. Like a good reason why he should take his case.

  “Do you think your client is innocent?” Louis asked.

  Susan was half out of the chair and she leveled her eyes at him and slowly sat back down.

  “Lawyers have to believe their clients,” she said.

  “No they don’t. They just have to believe in the law.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a lawyer,” she said.

  He thought about telling her that he was pre-law in college, but there was no way it wouldn’t sound like chest-beating at this point.

  “But you’re a cop, with a cop brain,” she added. She rose, smoothing back the wayward strand of hair again. She was standing in that back light again and he had to squint to look up at her. She was tall, maybe five-nine, with a generous body that he suspected she thought boxy dark suits could hide.

  “Which means what?” he asked.

  “Which means that you think if he is arrested he must surely be guilty. And like the rest of the scum who make cops’ lives miserable, he should probably rot in hell.”

  “I haven’t even decided to take this case,” he said.

  She slipped the strap of her purse over the shoulder of her red suit. “Well, I can’t stop Ronnie Cade from hiring you,” she said. “Just don’t get in my way.”

  She turned, her heels clicking on the terrazzo floor as she headed out the door. He picked up the mug and took a drink, grimacing at the taste of the muddy coffee.

  It hit him then that she was right.

  His first impression of Jack Cade had been that he was probably guilty. Not just of the rape and murder of the girl twenty years ago but also of shooting Spencer Duvall.

  He had been a cop for only three years, but it had left its mark, making him turn a deaf ear to the protests of dirtbags as he shoved them into the backs of patrol cars. They were thieves, druggies, wife-beaters and murderers. The harmless ones were liars who cut corners, and the worst ones were sociopaths who cut their evil swathes through other people’s lives. But they were all dirtbags who broke the law and still got a good night’s sleep afterward. And yeah, every single one of them was innocent.

  Other people, civilians, didn’t see it the way cops did. Neither did people like Susan Outlaw. She was an attorney. No, a defense attorney, who had to see the world and its lowlifes in a different light just so she could collect a paycheck and pay her rent. He had always wondered how defense lawyers did it. What, did they count leeches to get to sleep at night?

  The walk, the talk. The eyes. Yeah, especially your eyes.

  Louis took
another drink of coffee.

  Okay, so he still had cop eyes.

  But he wasn’t a cop any more.

  He glanced at his watch. Shit. It was twelve-thirty. He was supposed to meet Mobley at O’Sullivan’s. A ripple of laughter drew his attention to a nearby table, where a clot of men in suits were huddled over beers, sleek briefcases sitting at their feet like obedient pet dogs. Lawyers.

  Louis shook his head. It hit him in that second: If he took Jack Cade’s case, he would have to go over to the other side for the first time in his life.

  Maybe that was why he hadn’t slept last night.

  He tossed some bills on the table and left.

  Chapter Five

  He walked the four blocks to O’Sullivan’s. The old bar was a stone’s throw from the police station and walking distance from the sheriff ’s office, an easy stop for deputies after shifts.

  Louis eased inside, blinking to adjust to the darkness. He had been in the bar a few times before, when he first arrived in Fort Myers. He had come hoping to find some conversation and a sense of camaraderie. And at first, when he was riding the wave of the serial killer case, he had found acceptance among the cops.

  But his stature had faded quickly when the News-Press had run a follow-up profile on him. In the article, the whole Michigan thing had come out and suddenly conversation in O’Sullivan’s wasn’t so friendly. Zach back at the sheriff’s office was the exception; most the cops were like Deputy Lovett in the elevator, treating him like he didn’t exist.

  Louis scanned the crowd for Mobley. He spotted him leaning over the jukebox. Mobley’s blond hair was wind-blown, his tan face glowing blue in the jukebox lights. He was off-duty, wearing a white polo shirt and creased black trousers that looked like they had been req’d from the uniform room at the sheriff’s office.

  Louis moved through the crowd toward him. Mobley glanced at him, then looked away.

  “I expected you a half-hour ago,” Mobley said.

  “Got tied up.”

  Mobley fed a dollar bill into the jukebox and started punching numbers.

  “What’s your interest in Cade?” he asked without looking up.

  “His kid, Ronnie, wants to hire me.”

  Mobley’s finger paused over a button, then he poked at it hard. “Didn’t think the Cades had any money.”