Before I Sleep Read online

  Then had come the case of a man who had rented a gold necklace from a rent-to-own place. He had pawned the necklace in the full expectation of being able to continue making his payments on it, and being able to get it out of hock within a week.

  Unfortunately, he had been arrested for getting into a brawl in defense of his sister before he could recover the necklace. He didn't get out of jail again for three and a half years.

  He was charged by the state for theft of the necklace, even though the rent-to-own place got the necklace back from the pawn shop for a hundred dollars. The man had been out of jail for six months when the cops picked him up on the necklace charge. He scraped the money together, and paid the rental company everything he owed them, but the state asked for twelve years anyway, because the score on his rap sheet demanded it.

  The defense attorney made a persuasive argument for a downward departure, pointing out that what had happened had been beyond the defendant's control, and that the defendant was making large strides in getting his life together, was working full-time, paying child support, and had paid full restitution to the rental company.

  The judge had looked at Evan, who was representing the case for the state, and asked what he thought of a downward departure.

  Evan could have made an argument for twelve years as his bosses would have expected. Pawning the necklace had been a violation of the rental agreement, even if the defendant hadn't realized it. But instead all Evan had said was, “Your honor, the state is not permitted to agree to a downward departure.”

  It was as good as saying he would have, if he could have. Carey, who had felt that the prosecution was pointless once restitution had been made, given the facts of the case, had been surprised and pleased by what Evan had done.

  Nor had the judge misinterpreted him. “I cannot,” said Judge Greg Hanson, “in good conscience sentence this man to twelve years based on these facts.”

  So sometimes it did work right. And at times it occurred to her that if all the idealistic attorneys bailed out of the system, then only self-interest would remain. Sometimes she felt uneasy, as if she had betrayed a trust.

  But she didn't want to think about that now. It was just a way to avoid thinking about Harry Downs and John William Otis.

  She could deal with the hash she had made of her own life later. Right now, she had to save a man from death row.

  She had a friend at the newspaper who occasionally fed her tidbits to use on her show. It was a two-way street, though, and Sally Dyer never forgot it.

  “Yeah, I could get you everything from the morgue on Otis,” Sally said, her voice hoarse from years of smoking. “What's in it for me?”

  “Maybe an inside track on who killed Harry Downs.”

  Sally's voice sharpened. “What do you know about that?”

  “Not much just yet. But there may be a link, Sally. I need to check it out. Word is, Harry was slashed to death. And he was lead prosecutor on the Otis trial.”

  “A lot of people could have wanted to slash Harry,” Sally said, and coughed. “Christ Carey, the man put some really tough dudes away.”

  “But the method may have been the same as in the Kline case. That's a little coincidental, don't you think?”

  “Maybe. Do you know that for sure?”

  “Not until the M.E. prelim is in. But for now, we've got two weeks until the Otis execution. I can't afford to wait for anything.”

  “You've sure been stirring up the stew on that, haven't you.” Sally thought a moment. Carey could hear her pencil tapping nervously. “Okay, I'll do it. What exactly do you want?”

  “Everything where there's a mention of John William Otis.”

  “That ought to be a trailerful or two.”

  “All the way back to his first murder trial, if you can get it.”

  “They're going to want to fire me in the morgue. Okay. Let me see what I can do. If I get it on floppy, can you read it?”

  “I've got a laptop.”

  “Okay then. That might make things easier. Let me get on it.”

  “If necessary, I'll come over there and read everything, but I could sure work a lot faster if I could do it in every free moment.”

  “I figured that out already.” Sally gave a dry laugh. “Why do I think you've got a tiger by the tail?”

  “Time will tell.”

  “I get first dibs.”

  “Always.”

  And after that call, Carey felt a whole lot better—until she started thinking about poor Harry Downs again. Thinking of him drove her out back to smoke the first cigarette she had had in days.

  Harry might have been a son of a bitch, but he hadn't deserved to die.

  Gil pulled the earphones off his head and switched the tape player off. “Interesting. Especially the part about the nightgown.”

  “That's what I thought,” Seamus agreed. He felt as if he were viewing the world from the bottom of a swimming pool, and his brain was full of cotton. “Carey noticed the similarity first. Linda Kline was wearing a pink silk nightgown, too.”

  “Shit.” Gil rubbed his chin wearily. “It's hard to call it a coincidence when Summers didn't own the nightgown that was slashed.”

  “Yup.”

  “But that still doesn't mean this guy did the Klines. Maybe he just researched the case. That would even cover the connection between Summers and Downs and Otis.”

  “I know.”

  Gil reached for his coffee and grimaced when he found that it was cold. “Well, let's pull the Otis file anyway. No stone unturned, and all that.”

  “I've already requested it.”

  Gil tipped his chair back and looked up at the ceiling. “This kind of puts the pressure on.”

  Seamus nodded and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and fingers of his right hand. He usually did better than this on a few hours of sleep, but for some reason his brain was refusing to make connections without a lot of difficulty.

  “Look,” said Gil. “I don't make a habit of mother-henning, but get your ass home and get some sleep. We've got that interview tonight on the Mayberry murder, and it would be a great help if you were awake.”

  “I want to wait for the prelim.” Among his messages this morning had been one from the M.E. promising a preliminary report by late this afternoon on the Downs killing.

  “I'll get it and bring it with me tonight. A couple of hours isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference, and you know it.”

  Seamus was past arguing. For whatever reason, he was on the edge of hallucinating. “Yeah, all right. See you at seven.”

  And all the way home, he tried not to feel guilty about all the cases on his desk, because Gil was right; he was next to useless in his present state.

  And he was next to useless because he hadn't really gotten much shut-eye this morning. Lying next to Carey had made it impossible for him to sleep soundly. Every one of his senses had been acutely aware of her.

  Shit. What he really needed was some kind of twelve-step program for people who were addicted to misery. God knew, he wasn't any good at breaking the habit himself. Like this morning. Why in the hell had he shared Carissa's bed? Even with covers and clothing between them, it had been an asinine thing to do, like picking at a scab on a barely healed wound.

  It was hardly any surprise that he felt like he was bleeding from his soul all the time.

  And that, he told himself, was a very sick state of mind.

  He slept until five-thirty. The September sun was still high, bright and hot, but in the shade of the live oaks that sheltered his house, he felt removed from the steaming world outside. Looking out his bedroom window, he saw shimmering heat waves rising from the pavement of the street, but they didn't reach into the shadows around his house.

  Nothing reached into the shadows around his house.

  He headed for the kitchen to make some coffee, and heard the air-conditioning click on. Moments later, cool air was stirring the warm, heavy air inside. He paused under one of the ducts,
letting the chilly air wash over him until he felt more awake.

  In the kitchen, he started the coffeemaker and hunted up some day-old bagels and a tub of cream cheese, all the while trying not to look out the back window.

  His backyard had been a no-man's-land since his wife had hanged herself from the oak out back. He wouldn't even mow the grass anymore, but paid a company to come and take care of it every week.

  But somehow, with a bagel in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, he found himself standing at the kitchen sink, staring right out at that damn tree. He ought to have it cut down. For seven years he'd been telling himself to get rid of the thing, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was like a hair shirt, to remind him of his sins and failings.

  He couldn't have found words to explain to anyone why he felt that he needed the tree as a reminder. It wasn't as if he would ever forget the awful events of that couple of weeks, or forget his part in them. Nor was it likely that if he didn't see the tree for a while, he might actually go a day without remembering.

  He stood now looking at it, hating it, and admitting that a healthy person would simply have cut the damn thing down—or moved to another house.

  Muttering a curse, he turned his back on the window and tried to eat his bagel. Even with cream cheese it seemed too dry, and wanted to stick in his throat. He washed it down with scalding coffee, accepting the discomfort as his due.

  His wife, Mary, had been a beautiful, vivacious young woman. Somewhere in this house of pain, he had photo albums full of pictures of Mary, full of pictures of their daughter, Seana. He wasn't sure why he kept them, because he was sure he'd never be able to look at them again. He had no one to pass them on to, now that his only child was dead. Somehow he had come to a point in life where all the family he had was his father. And Mary had never had any family at all.

  They had tried to build that dream family, the two of them. Maybe they had expected too much. Maybe that was why neither of them had been able to deal with the reality of tragedy. He sure wasn't dealing with it, even now, and Mary hadn't been able to deal with it at all. Sometimes he even had the stupid idea that he continued to draw breath only so that he could experience the suffering that was his due.

  Sick indeed.

  He threw the bagel in the trash and worked on finishing the coffee. Another cup, hot enough to burn, singed his tongue.

  He'd only tried once to break out of the prison that tragedy had built around him, and that, too, had failed miserably because he hadn't been able to escape the confinement of his guilt. Carey had been right about that, when she had accused him of wallowing in it. He did wallow. And he was perceptive enough to feel disgust with himself.

  What he needed, he decided, was a good, swift kick in the ass. Carey had suggested that, too, during one of their heated arguments about what was wrong with their relationship. She would still be right.

  Feeling a weighted need to do something, he got the phone book out and called a company to come take the tree out of his backyard. He didn't even want a stump left.

  Then, feeling he had taken a step in the right direction, he got ready to go back to work.

  He might not be able to change the past, but he sure as hell could change the future.

  You're listening to the Talk of the Coast, 990 WCST, Tampa Bay's number one talk radio station. This is Carey Justice, reminding you that John William Otis has just over fourteen days to live. Fourteen days before he will die for a crime he may not have committed. Have you thought about the fact that once we execute a man, we can never take it back? If, by some chance, fifteen days from now we discover that someone else killed Linda and Harvey Kline, we won't be able to give John Otis his life back.

  Tonight our subject is the election of judges. The theory behind judicial elections is that by making judges accountable to the public, the public will have a say how justice is administered in their towns and counties. Sounds good, doesn't it? But justice is supposed to be blind, and how blind can it be when it has to consider public opinion? We ‘re going to talk about that tonight, but let me start with a story …

  “Damn,” said Gil, “that woman is something else. Her voice'll melt the socks right off you.”

  Even over the car radio, Carey's voice was hot honey, and reminded Seamus of the sleepy way she had sounded this morning. For some damn reason, in the back of his mind he was getting erotic images of all the things he'd like to do to and with Carey's body. “Yeah,” he said, wanting to think about something else.

  “She really intends to push this Otis thing right to the end, doesn't she.”

  “That's my impression.”

  Gil pulled over and parked in the lot of the Denny's where they were to meet the man who had called them. They climbed out of the car.

  “Okay,” said Gil. “It's hot enough to pass for a sauna and my brain is beginning to feel like the egg in that drug commercial. Suppose you bring me up to date.”

  “If you insist.”

  “Oh, I insist. Funny, but I hate walking blind into these things.”

  “You want to be bored?”

  “Bore me.”

  “Sam Hollister. He lives in the neighborhood where Mayberry was killed. Want the address?”

  Gil rolled his eyes.

  “He called, says he wants to talk to us, but we have to meet him someplace he won't run into any of his neighbors.”

  “Well, Denny's is sure it,” Gil said drily.

  Seamus smiled wryly. “Hey, there's one closer to his home.”

  “Ah. So the ninety billion gray heads who walk through here in the next hour won't be gray heads he knows.”

  Seamus shrugged. “I won't ask him to do any undercover work for us.”

  “Wise decision.”

  But it wasn't really a bad meeting place, and they both knew it. Especially at this time of evening. Most of the elderly customers would have dined earlier and long since left. As it was, there were enough windows to ensure that if anyone that Sam Hollister recognized approached, he could duck into the men's room and pretend he was there alone.

  Which was exactly what Seamus told him when they took a booth by a window back near the rest rooms.

  The advice made Sam's rheumy blue eyes sparkle with excitement. The excitement was short-lived, though, and was replaced almost immediately by fear. The thin, elderly man sank lower in the booth, almost as if he wished he could crawl under the table.

  “Let me get us some coffee,” Gil said. “What do you take, Mr. Hollister?”

  “Decaf with cream and sugar.”

  “Want anything else?”

  Sam shook his head.

  Gil signaled for the waiter and ordered three coffees while Seamus dug out his notebook and pen from his breast pocket. They waited to begin the questioning until the coffee had been delivered.

  “Sure has been hot out there today,” Gil remarked by way of breaking the ice.

  Sam gave an almost shy smile. “I don't suffer from the heat the way I used to. When my wife used to talk about retiring to Florida, I used to tell her she was crazy. Not anymore. The heat feels good to my bones these days.”

  “Is your wife enjoying it as much as she thought she would?”

  “She did, but she passed on about six years ago.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Sam didn't respond to that. For a moment he looked far away and sad, but then he shook himself out of memory and looked at the two detectives.

  “We talked to you last week, didn't we?” Seamus asked him.

  Sam nodded. “I told you I didn't see or hear anything.”

  “Just like everybody else in the neighborhood.”

  Sam shifted uncomfortably. Gil took a gentler tone. “What is it you wanted to tell us, Mr. Hollister?”

  “I heard something, but I didn't look.”

  Gil and Seamus exchanged glances.

  “What did you hear?” Seamus asked, dropping the role of bad cop. This guy wasn't going to need it.

&nb
sp; “I heard gunshots. Four of them.”

  “About what time?”

  “It was about two-thirty in the afternoon. I was on my back patio, watering Daisy's ferns. She loved those plants, and I figured she'd want me to keep them alive.”

  “I'm sure she would.”

  There was a silence as the man fell once again into memory, but then he stirred. “Four gunshots. I knew it wasn't a backfire, because they don't come close together like that. I'm not proud of it, but I just kept on watering the plants. I didn't want to know what happened.”

  “Why not?”

  Hollister lifted his cup in a shaky hand and sipped coffee, as if taking time to consider exactly what he would say. “It's a good neighborhood,” he said finally. “I've lived there nearly twenty years now. Would you believe I'm almost eighty-five?”

  Seamus would have. He didn't think the years of widowhood had been kind to Sam Hollister. “I'd have guessed seventy,” he lied.

  Hollister smiled. “Well, I am. And at my age you don't want to get involved in things you can't do anything about. There's not enough time left.”

  “I can understand the feeling.”

  Hollister nodded, then abruptly shook his head with a sigh. “No, that's just an excuse. At my age you start feeling old and helpless and scared. You start to realize there's a lot of ways you can't take care of yourself anymore. That's why so many people my age have bars on their windows.”

  “You start to feel vulnerable.”

  “And selfish,” Sam said flatly. “Too many of us get so damn selfish. Guess I've been doing that like all the rest.”

  Seamus nodded. “So you heard four shots.”

  “Yes, sir, I did. And I didn't want to say anything because … well, we've been having trouble with drug dealers lately.”

  Seamus felt his heart kick. This quiet neighborhood where nothing ever happened? “I thought you had a relatively crime-free neighborhood.” That's what Rico had said.

  “We did up until about, oh, six, eight months ago. Then these young hoodlums started showing up, selling their drugs on the street as bold as you please in broad daylight. Got so folks was afraid to look out their own windows, never mind go outside. We called the police, and everybody was all hot on starting a neighborhood watch. Except the first time we tried to patrol the streets like we were told, the hoodlums threatened us and we went back inside. And nobody even dared call the police again because of the threats. Everybody was afraid that someone might get hurt if we did. I don't know but what the police thought the problem went away.”