The Four-Night Run Read online

  Amber Grace could have pled to a milder charge than murder one. Or she could have argued self-defense at the trial, revealing to the jury the sordid details of her relationship with Lucius Haste. Even if the twelve didn’t buy that she was rightfully afraid of imminent harm and used only the force necessary to defend herself, they still wouldn’t have convicted her of anything rawer than manslaughter. She would have been out in seven to ten, with a third off for good behavior.

  But her defense attorney at trial had taken a different tack. He put Amber Grace on the stand to testify that she did not kill Lucius Haste, that she loved Lucius Haste, that they had intended to be married. She blamed the murder on a cop named Remi Bozant. Bozant had arrested her for prostitution a few years back, she claimed, and instead of booking her, had forced her into a sexual relationship that had continued against her will for years, with Lucius’s grudging assent because of the protection it promised. She testified that Bozant eventually turned abusive, battering her eye, breaking her nose. That when Bozant sent her to the hospital the last time, Lucius Haste publicly threatened to rip for him a new asshole: “You know what I’m sayin’? You understan’? You know what I’m sayin’?” That shortly thereafter, Bozant had brought the shotgun into Amber’s bedroom, told her to hold it for a second while he tied his shoes, and then taken it himself to kill Lucius Haste. All of this was what she stated, under oath, to the jury deciding her fate.

  She had blamed it on a cop.

  And Remi Bozant, unfortunately for Amber, was not your average potbellied nose-out-of-joint always-on-the-make beat cop. He was a member of an elite unit sent to the roughest areas of Crapstown to fight the most brutal crimes. His record was rife with citations and honors. He had a loving wife and an adoring daughter, and every year he dressed as a clown to entertain kids in the cancer ward of the hospital, dancing and singing, telling jokes in funny voices. Once, he had saved a boy on a bicycle who had been hit by a stray shot in a botched drive-by, had raced to the scene, performed CPR, and restarted a heart that had stopped. There was a picture in all the papers showing Bozant, with his bright-red hair, visiting the boy in the hospital, both of them smiling for the cameras, a picture that was passed around the jury box as Bozant sat on the stand and denied that he had ever had sex with Amber Grace, denied he had ever fought with Lucius Haste over Amber Grace, denied he had shot Lucius Haste in the chest, denied, in short, everything.

  She had blamed it on a hero cop.

  Let’s just say the strategy didn’t go over so well with the jury. Murder one. A sentence of death. Her appeals to the higher courts all denied. Case closed and locked shut. End of story. Until someone showed up at the jailhouse door.

  Knock knock. Who’s there? J.D. Scrbacek.

  He had his own pathetic office by then, hanging out his shingle while he hung out at the courthouse, hoping for a case to be flipped his way like a loose coin. The public defender’s office was underfunded and could represent only half of the indigent defendants in the system. The rest were farmed out to criminal defense attorneys willing to take the cases for the prescribed meager fees: twenty-five dollars an hour for trial prep, thirty-five dollars an hour in court. Scrbacek, still trying to make his way, still waiting for the help promised him by Professor DeLoatch, still waiting for the one big case that would make his name, was more than willing. Prostitution, drug distribution, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, DUI—Scrbacek handled them all, all but murder. You had to have experience in murder cases to be assigned a murder case, and since he had never been assigned a murder case, Scrbacek was not on that list.

  And then, out of the blue, a judge sent him the Amber Grace file.

  She had already lost all her appeals, the warrant for her execution had already been signed by the governor, a date certain for that execution had already been set. But in a handwritten letter, Amber Grace, seven years already on death row, had asked the judge to review her case. And the judge, so as not to be unduly burdened, had given it to a young, inexperienced lawyer who could be expected to do the minimum investigation, file his pro forma habeas motion, and, when it was denied, cash his check and move on to more promising material.

  Habeas corpus, the Great Writ, a staple of Anglo-American law since the fifteenth century, explicitly guaranteed by Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution. Habeas corpus, which literally means “thou shalt have the body,” and which technically demands that the state bring the prisoner to court and defend the legality of her continued detention. Habeas corpus. J.D. Scrbacek.

  He was appalled at the file, not just by the full-color pictures of the pulped face of Lucius Haste, but by the strategy of Amber Grace’s attorney. The case should have been pled out to a lesser charge, the lawyer should have argued self-defense, should have argued mitigation. How was it possible that a whore killing her abusive pimp could end up as capital murder?

  It was as obvious a case of ineffective assistance of counsel as Scrbacek had ever seen.

  “It wasn’t my damn idea,” said Bertram O’Neill, an old codger with a red-veined nose who had glad-handed his way through four decades in both the legal and corner bars. “I told her she should plead, but she said no. I told her she should tell the jury the man had beaten her, but she said no. I told her they were going to try to kill her, but she said the truth was the truth. I told her I didn’t know what planet she was from, but this was state court where the truth more often than not died of starvation.”

  “Couldn’t you at least keep her from testifying?” said Scrbacek.

  “They see enough TV, they all want to take their shot on the stand. I could have sat down with the prosecutor, had a few drinks, cut a deal, and she would have been out in three. I begged her to let me, but she wanted to have her say. How long has she been in now?”

  “Going on seven.”

  “Stupid cow. Blaming it on Bozant. Remi Bozant is one of the few cops in this town you can actually believe on the stand.”

  “Was there anything you found to back up her story?”

  “Not a thing, though it wasn’t like I had the funds to check up on everything, not at twenty-five an hour. Her alibi witness was out of town, and we had no idea where. All her corroboration turned out to be smoke and shadows. But hell, you ask me, I didn’t find anything because it wasn’t there to be found. She thought she could clever her way out of it, but if she was that clever, she wouldn’t have been a whore in the first place.”

  “What do you think really happened?”

  “I think she killed that man. He wasn’t a good man, but she killed him and then pounded his face to mash. Sometimes, you can’t say there is no justice.”

  “I don’t know where she came up with that song and dance,” said Lieutenant Remi Bozant, a tall, handsome man with broad shoulders and thick red hair. “All I know is she was lying. But you could tell she wasn’t any genius. Closest thing she ever had to a brainstorm was a light drizzle.”

  “Did you ever have dealings with Lucius Haste?”

  “Did you read my testimony?”

  “I read it.”

  Big grin. “Scintillating, isn’t it? Everything I had to say, I said in court. When’s her date?”

  “December eighth.”

  “It won’t be the first needle stuck in her arm, but it’ll damn well be the last. Though you’ll probably get it delayed another couple years and feel all proud of yourself.”

  “I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. She killed him, that’s what happened. She shot him through the chest and bashed in his face and tried to blame it on me. You wonder why I’m not sympathetic, Scrubmyneck?”

  “Scrbacek.”

  “What are you, Polish?”

  “Hungarian.”

  “The goulash, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Goulash, whether you believe it or not. It will be best for everyone, and I mean everyone, you inclu
ded, when she’s put down.”

  “She’s not a horse.”

  “Don’t I know it. Horses I like. Murdering bitches and their lawyers, on the other hand, piss me off.”

  “But there’s still one thing I can’t figure out, Lieutenant. If you never had anything to do with her before the trial, how, when it was time for Amber Grace to invent a story, did she come up with your name?”

  “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you? Someday you’ll go far. Do us all a favor and stay there. I’m done. You want to ask me anything more, have the county prosecutor order me to talk. Until then, go fuck yourself.”

  “Thanks for your help.”

  Big grin. “Don’t mention it.”

  “I said what I said because it was the truth, Mr. Scrbacek,” said Amber Grace. She was tall and thin, with dark hair pulled back from a very pretty face. There was something soft to her features, something almost angelic, despite the prison garb. “I thought that was what we was supposed to do, tell the truth.”

  “Did Mr. O’Neill advise you what could happen if you testified like you did?”

  “Yeah. But what I said about Remi and the way he treated me, I wasn’t gonna lie about it.”

  “Lieutenant Bozant says he never saw you before you accused him.”

  “He’s a lieutenant now? They must be hard up in that police force.”

  “He’s a hero cop, Amber.”

  “Wasn’t no hero when he was busting my nose.”

  “That wasn’t Lucius?”

  “Oh, Lucius was a sweetheart. He was my little man. No, it was Remi sending me to the hospital.”

  “Mr. O’Neill mentioned something about an alibi witness he couldn’t find?”

  “Loretta. When the trouble went down, she hightailed it out. Went to Vegas, I heard. Don’t blame her there. She was too sweet a piece for this market.”

  “You have a last name for her?”

  “Wayne, I think. Loretta Wayne. All blonde and skinny, driving them suburban drive-ins wild. You gonna get me out of here?”

  “I don’t know, Amber. It looks pretty bleak.”

  “I shouldn’t be in here, Mr. Scrbacek. I’m no saint, I made my mistakes, but I didn’t kill Lucius. You’ve got to get me out of here.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “It’s not about trying. I’m all tried out. It’s about doing, Mr. Scrbacek. You do what you need to get me out of here, or they’re going to kill me, they’re going to kill me dead. And then no matter how hard you tried, it’s not going to matter, is it?”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “The public defender’s office had an address,” said Scrbacek. “The woman at the apartment said you’d be here. Do you have a minute? Can we talk?”

  “Talk about what, Mr. . . .” Loretta Sorenson, née Wayne, looked down at the card in her hand. “Mr. Scrbacek?”

  “About Amber Grace.”

  The woman looked at Scrbacek for a long startled moment and then back at the card. “You came quite a ways.”

  “I have some questions.”

  She nodded and led him to a lounge in the casino, where they sat together at a table while a chanteuse sat atop a piano on the stage and sang an up-tempo jazzy version of the blues. Loretta was delicate and pretty with long blonde hair, straight and parted in the middle like a ’60s teenager’s, and with a teenager’s desperate bands of eyeliner, but the eyes inside the liner were tired enough to give her away.

  “Amber says you were with her the time of the murder,” said Scrbacek after their drinks had been served—a beer for him and a double Stoli martini for her. “She says you were her alibi.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “But when it was time for her trial, you were nowhere to be found. Did she really have an alibi?”

  “What does she say?”

  “She says yes.”

  “Well then, yeah, sure.”

  “And so if I give you a subpoena and a plane ticket, you’ll testify that you were with her at the time of the murder.”

  Loretta shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “Do you even remember when the murder was?”

  “Not the date, but I remember. Lucius was my . . . a friend. So I remember.”

  “You know what time it was?”

  “Yeah, sure. The time when I was with Amber. Are they really going to kill her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll do whatever I can, Mr. Scrbacek.”

  “Why’d you leave before the trial?”

  “It wasn’t a good time.”

  “Why not?”

  “To be truthful, Mr. Scrbacek, I don’t remember much about those months. I was into shit. So was Amber.”

  “Shit?”

  Loretta sighed and finished her drink. Scrbacek ordered her another. “Look, whatever she says, I’ll say, okay? Isn’t that what you want?”

  “What about Remi Bozant?”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t remember a thing, do you?”

  “Some things, not much. I was using pretty heavy then. So was Amber. Who the hell knows what was happening? It was a sick time. Lucius got himself killed, and I just took the chance and left.”

  “What was Amber using?”

  “Boat.”

  “PCP?”

  “And some crank to keep her going. Just a little at the start, and then more. She tried to stop when she was pregnant but she didn’t. Just kept at it, and kept working, too. By the time Lucius found out, it was too late to get rid of it, so she gave it away. And then it all got even messier, the using, and she was making less, and Lucius was getting antsy, putting more pressure on me. Just what I needed. So when he got killed, I left, simple as that. Thought I could get myself a do-over. Started pushing cocktails here. Got married. Got a life. It all seemed almost normal, and then it was like a switch was turned and there I was, back at work. It’s in my nature, I guess. You look startled, Mr. Scrbacek. What is it? What?”

  “Why didn’t you tell Mr. O’Neill, Amber?” said Scrbacek.

  “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Who was the father?”

  “I don’t know. It was just something that happened, and I didn’t take care of it in time. I tried not to think about it, and it wasn’t like I was getting all huge and all.”

  “Where did you have the baby?”

  “City Hospital. The emergency room. It fell out like a lemon drop, and then they sent me away with it, just like that.”

  “It?”

  “A girl, I think.”

  “What happened to the baby, Amber?”

  “Lucius took it away.”

  “To an adoption agency? To the Child Welfare Bureau?”

  “Lucius took it away, right after I had it. That’s all I know. He never told me, I never asked.”

  “Amber?”

  “Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Scrbacek. I made a mistake, I was wrong. But what was I going to do with it? Take it to the park with the other fine ladies? Find it playdates? Stay up nights singing nursery rhymes? What the hell was I going to do with it?”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to find her.”

  “I know we do. When I was still on the street, I didn’t think about her at all. It was like it never happened. But you know, in here, with nothing but time, I think about her a lot. I think about her all the time. You got to get me out, Mr. Scrbacek. You got to get me out so I can see my baby girl and hold her in my arms and tell her that her mommy loves her.”

  He traced the trail of Amber Grace’s baby.

  From the hospital records, he found the date of birth. Moving forward from that date, he scoured the records of the Child Welfare Bureau for any children abandoned into its care. Of the five babies whose files were opened in the operative period, two were too old and one of the others was a boy. Of the two girls remaining, one had been sent to a group foster home that would appear scandalously in the newspapers three years l
ater upon the issuance of indictments by the County Prosecutor’s Office. The girl sent there had been abused so badly that she died within days of being reclaimed by the Child Welfare Bureau, her tiny body cremated, her ashes buried in a pauper’s pit.

  But the second girl was not buried in a pauper’s pit. Someone had taken care of her, someone had done something right. Her case had been assigned to the most conscientious social worker in the bureau, who had scheduled numerous home visits and reported directly to the bureau’s director. The girl’s current foster family was a model of love and concern, was considering adoption, and was terrified that Scrbacek had come to take their Maya away. That was her name, now eight years old, with buck teeth and a shy manner and ribbons in her hair.

  Scrbacek felt a thrill in the pit of his stomach when first he saw her. He bought her an ice-cream soda at the local drugstore, learned that she was happy and well. And when the girl asked about her mother, Scrbacek hesitated a moment, but only a moment, before telling the girl that he was trying to help her mother and that she, Maya, might be able to help, too.

  It took a full-scale hearing to get a sample of Remi Bozant’s blood to compare to Maya’s. Representing the state was a rising county prosecutor named Thomas Surwin, who fought bitterly against the test, but Scrbacek cross-examined Bozant for five full hours, using shards of conflicting statements from his testimony at the trial seven years before to knock the smirk off his face and impeach his credibility. Through a welter of Surwin objections, Scrbacek was able to create enough doubt for the judge, at first exasperated and then intrigued, to consider ordering the procedure. Then he put Maya on the stand, ribbons tied carefully around her pigtails. Three weeks after the judge’s ruling, the results of the DNA analysis arrived.

  Remi Bozant was Maya’s father. He’d had a sexual relationship with Amber Grace. His entire testimony in her murder case was a lie.

  A new trial for Amber Grace was ordered by the court forthwith. With seven years already served, Surwin declined to retry the case. Instead, he indicted Remi Bozant for perjury and kicked him smack off the force and into jail for eighteen months. There wasn’t enough evidence to try him for murder, but everyone knew what he had done. Remi Bozant entered jail a pariah, cursing Scrbacek with every breath, and, when released, drifted into Crapstown and then out again, disappearing into the dusty reaches of the desert West.