The Program Page 17

  Ron said, “Fenster, I’m thinking that the problem may be more of an internal, macho-type thing. Somebody wants to find her, prove they can beat the system. We’ve seen it with some of the LCN celebrities we’ve buried. Do you really think she’s at risk from inside?”

  A long pause later, Fenster Kastle said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. And Ron? If you know what’s best for yourself and for our friend, then you do, too. Do you understand?”

  To Ron, the words didn’t sound like the words of a soft, round man.

  Ron didn’t like getting warned by some guy in some office back east. Without even being aware that he’d decided to create a diversion, he asked, “Hey Fenster, let me ask you something. You ever play any ball when you were younger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  “Savannah State. I played with Shannon Sharpe. You’re in Denver, you’ve probably heard of him.”

  “Shannon Sharpe? The tight end? No shit?”

  Fenster Kastle wasn’t easily distracted. “Don’t get lazy on me, Ron. We lose her, it won’t look good for either of us. I’ve already been reminded by my superiors that as bad as she made us look when she was a DA in New Orleans, it’s nowhere near as bad as she’s gonna make us look if we can’t protect her properly now. Especially from some of our own people.”

  Ron was silent.

  Kastle said, “I’m waiting for you to salute.”

  “Yes, sir. I agree.”

  “Along those lines, I want to hear from you if our friend has insect problems in her new home, if she gets a funny rash on her hands. I want to be the first to know if her daughter’s grades drop, if the darn wind begins blowing funny anywhere close to her. Do you get my drift?”

  “We’re on the same page, Fenster. She’s getting a lot of special attention already. I’ll be certain that she gets some more. What position did you play at Savannah State?”

  “Defense, Ron. Defense. For me, it’s always been about defense.”

  3

  Landon wanted spaghetti for dinner on Monday night, and I didn’t care any more about the specifics of dinner than I had about the specifics of breakfast or lunch. I started to make spaghetti. She hovered for a while to be certain that I was making the sauce the way that she liked it, smooth, with no discernible chunks of tomato. My daughter appreciated tomatoes in most of their permutations, but she didn’t like chunks of cooked tomato. I didn’t understand the distinction. She and I had actually argued about it once while she was picking the tomato chunks from a glorious meal in a funky restaurant called the Gumbo Shop in the French Quarter. Robert ate the culled tomatoes and refereed the argument, and we’d all ended up laughing.

  That’s a baby beluga.

  Landon ate twice as much dinner as I did. I cleaned up the kitchen while she bathed. Afterward, she begged, so I quizzed her on a hundred spelling words before bedtime and read her two, not just one, chapters of the new Harry Potter book before she dozed off to sleep. My daughter was a Harry junkie.

  It was eight-thirty when I descended the stairs and retrieved the cordless phone from its charger. I carried it in my hand as I walked from the living room to the dining room to the family room hoping to find the right place to sit.

  I tried the kitchen but soon moved back to the floor of the dining room. I was already fearing a night without sleep, and the prospect of the empty hours before dawn drained me of any hope I might have husbanded from my day.

  The barren dining room offered no real comfort so I carried the phone to the kitchen and drank a glass of water while I decided what to do next. I didn’t know what to do about Ron Kriciak or Ernesto Castro or even about Carl Luppo. But I did know what I needed to do about Khalid Granger. I had to erase my doubts. So I phoned Andrea in Florida for the second time that day.

  She answered after two rings.

  “It’s me again. Am I calling too late?” I said.

  “Kirsten, hi,” she replied. “I’m sorry—Peyton, I meant Peyton. Hi. No, I’m still awake.”

  It was an oddly moving experience to have someone recognize my voice when everything else about me had changed. I said, “I need to know something, Andrea. Are you feeling good about what’s happening with Khalid? About his appeal?”

  “No,” Andrea said, her voice a loud whisper. “I’m not feeling good about Khalid at all. And neither is Dave. Are you?”

  I felt a lightness buoy me, a swell lifting me higher in the water. For a moment I could see lights flickering on the distant shore. I knew the feeling wouldn’t last, that every swell—every last one—was followed by a trough. I said, “I’ve been thinking he may be innocent, Andrea. I think it’s possible Mickey and Jack may have done something to set him up.”

  I heard her exhale—loudly. “Dave and I have come to the same conclusion. We were afraid that you were going to fight us if we went public. I didn’t know how to reach you to ask for your support. And I didn’t want to burden you—you’ve been through so much.”

  “Thank God I said something. I was afraid I was the only one with doubts. I was thinking that I couldn’t really do anything if I was the only one who thought there was a problem. What are our options? What can we do at this point?”

  “Unless you know something that Dave and I don’t know, we don’t have much to work with from an evidence point of view. But we think we know where to look. Even if we find something though, you know as well as I do that it’s not going to be easy getting the sentence overturned at this stage,” Andrea said. “Do you know something specific? Please have something that might help.”

  I hesitated, wanting to give her a basket full of promises. I finally said, “No, nothing. Just my gut feeling that Mickey was dirty.”

  “That’s where Dave and I started, too, after Dave got the letter. You don’t know about that. He got an anonymous letter in the mail a couple months ago that said that Khalid didn’t kill those two Mennonites.”

  “Really? What kind of letter?”

  “Do you remember Mickey Redondo’s old partner?”

  “Jack Tarpin. Sure.”

  “Good. Then I’ll tell you where we are.”

  FIVE WEEKS EARLIER Dave Curtiss had received a handwritten note at his law offices in Sarasota. The letter-size envelope had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service but did not have a return address. The cancellation mark indicated that it had been mailed in the Florida Keys.

  The note misspelled Dave’s last name, not an uncommon occurrence. The letter was two lines long. It read:

  Mr. Curtis:

  Khalid Granger did not kill those two Mennonites. Check the timing on the GSR.

  Sincerely,

  A friend of justice

  Inside the envelope, along with the short letter, was a clipping from a week-old Miami Herald article about Khalid’s upcoming final appeal.

  Dave hadn’t recognized the handwriting on the note, and after he called Andrea and showed her the letter over drinks a couple of nights later after work, she hadn’t either. But she’d quickly reached the same conclusion that Dave had.

  “It’s got to be a cop,” she said. “‘Check the timing on the GSR’? Who would talk that way? It has to be either a cop or a criminalist. Somebody on the job.”

  Andrea was still in the system, working at the DA’s office—and Dave, in private practice, wasn’t—so Andrea pulled Khalid’s voluminous old trial records and began scouring the handwritten police reports for a handwriting match. She never found one. She’d hoped the handwriting would match Jack Tarpin’s, but it wasn’t even close.

  She dug deeper into the case files and pulled the copies of the reports on the GSR, the gunshot residue test, that had been performed on Khalid Granger shortly after his detention. The administration of a GSR involves swabbing the suspect’s hands, arms, and face with specially prepared sponges that are designed to capture specific chemicals and microscopic trace metals that are emitted with the explosive gases that escape during the discharge of a firearm. The mic
roscopic particles come to rest on the skin and clothing of anyone in close proximity to a gun being discharged. The swabs are then analyzed in an electron microscope.

  Khalid’s GSR had been damning. It showed unequivocal evidence of trace metals on his hands and forearms. The presence of those metals constituted circumstantial evidence that Khalid Granger had been in the vicinity of the discharge of a firearm.

  Andrea continued to wonder what the anonymous note writer had meant by “check the timing on the GSR.”

  She went back to the reports and checked the timing. The official report stated that the GSR samples had been collected from Khalid at two-fifteen on the afternoon of the murders, only four to five hours after the shootings in the convenience store, and well within accepted time limits for appropriate use of the test. The samples had been collected by Jack Tarpin.

  The receipt accompanying the samples was signed by Jack Tarpin.

  The caution in the anonymous note that had been sent to Dave Curtiss made no sense.

  Andrea phoned a friend at the police department and asked him if he knew where Jack Tarpin had gone after he retired.

  “Jack? He’s trying to supplement his pension running fishing charters out of Plantation Key. Not doing too well as a captain is what I hear but otherwise enjoying the good life. Why?”

  Andrea replied, “I need to talk with him about an old collar of his. You got a number for him?”

  “Is he going to be sorry I gave it to you?”

  “No. This is dot-your-Is-and-cross-your-Ts-time for me. Just covering all my bases before a trial.”

  “He won’t want to testify.”

  “He won’t have to.”

  Andrea’s friend gave her Jack Tarpin’s number on Plantation Key.

  ANDREA HAD NEVER gotten along with Jack Tarpin. Not from the first time they had met.

  At the time Khalid was arrested for the convenience-store murders, Jack was an old-timer in the force. Tarpin had gone through two marriages and outlasted three alcohol rehabs before he could get either a wife or his sobriety to stick around. For the last dozen years he was on the job he was perceived as a burnout just putting in his time. If you asked his fellow officers about Jack’s main goal in life, nine out of ten would have said that he was trying to stay both alive and invisible long enough to get his pension.

  The third wife, the one who had stuck with him, had family down in the Keys and she and Jack were planning to retire down there and do some fishing after he was done upholding the peace in Sarasota.

  But Jack had his sympathizers, too. The people on the force who didn’t consider Jack Tarpin an aging loser often discovered after spending some time with him that they actually liked the guy.

  Andrea was one of the people who thought Jack was an aging loser.

  Dave Curtiss had always liked the guy.

  Andrea quickly decided that whether Dave liked it or not, he would be the one to make the call about the letter. She volunteered to run the GSR results by some people she knew at the state crime lab to see if they could spot any anomalies.

  • • •

  DAVE CURTISS HAD known Jack Tarpin well enough to know that Jack wouldn’t tell him a thing about Khalid Granger over the telephone. Dave knew he’d have to drive all the way down to Plantation Key and look the man hard in the eyes if he had any hope of finding out what Jack knew about the GSR he’d performed so many years before on Khalid Granger.

  Dave Curtiss also knew that getting to Plantation Key meant driving through Miami. Dave hated Miami and he hated the tourist-infested drive south to the Florida Keys.

  Dave would rather have another sigmoidoscope than make that drive.

  He called Jack the following Wednesday and spoke with Jack’s wife, Pamela. Dave gave a fake name and said he wanted to talk to Jack about a charter. Pamela had said that her husband was out on his boat right then but that he’d be home the next day if Dave wanted to call back. Dave didn’t call back but instead got up early the next morning, called in sick to work, and did the dreaded drive, arriving at Pamela and Jack’s home shortly after lunch.

  JACK TARPIN DIDN’T tan.

  That was Dave’s initial impression of the man who came to the door of the little frame house that he shared with his wife. Jack’s face, hands, arms, and legs displayed more shades of red and pink than a greeting card shop on Valentine’s Day.

  But Jack didn’t bluster, either. After narrowing his eyes at his visitor—giving Dave a clear indication that his presence at the front door wasn’t particularly welcome—Jack pushed open the screen door and said, “Hi, Dave. Come on in. We were just sitting down to sandwiches and iced tea. You’ll join us.”

  It wasn’t an offer as much as it was an expectation.

  IT TURNED OUT that Dave enjoyed Pamela as much as he’d always liked Jack. Her laughter and self-deprecating humor put Dave at ease, despite Jack’s obvious consternation at the visit. Pamela had stringy brown hair, was skinny as bamboo, and had a smile so wide it seemed to link her ears together. She wore a man’s sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of cotton drawstring trousers that had faded to the color of key lime pie. The outfit made it simple for Dave to come to the conclusion that Jack’s boobs were easily twice the size of his wife’s.

  THE SANDWICHES THAT Pamela served for lunch consisted of fat chunks of grilled fish swimming in a sea of Tabasco-laced mayonnaise and chopped onions. The fish mixture was stuffed into big sections that had been sliced out of a long roll of supermarket Italian bread and then topped with thick slices of pungent pickles. After weeks of processed turkey and nonfat mayo sandwiches—his wife’s idea of a heart-healthy lunch—Dave took one bite of Pamela’s grilled-fish hoagie and thought he’d died and gone to heaven.

  “Caught that yesterday,” Jack said with pride as he watched Dave chew and swallow.

  “I cleaned that yesterday,” Pamela said. “Wasn’t anywhere near as much fun as the catching, I’m telling you.”

  When the plates were empty and what was left of the tea was just a clump of cloudy ice cubes melting together in the bottom of an old Kool-Aid pitcher, Jack said, “You didn’t drive all this way just for lunch.”

  “If I knew how good lunch was going to be, I might have. But you’re right, Jack, it’s about an old case you worked on.”

  “I’m waiting,” Jack said.

  Dave watched Pamela avert her eyes and stand to clear the dishes from the table.

  “Khalid Granger,” Dave said. “I’m sure you remember him. His appeals are up, and there’re some lingering questions about the GSR that was done after he was picked up.” Dave had already decided not to mention the letter unless he had to.

  Jack scratched his scalp vigorously enough that it looked to Dave as though it had to hurt. He sighed and said, “Course there are questions. I’m surprised it took so long for someone to ask. You found the problem?”

  “Not exactly,” Dave said. “We’ve been looking but we haven’t been finding. That’s why I drove all the way down here.”

  “You said ‘we’ve’ been looking? Who else?”

  “Remember Andrea Archer? She’s still with the DA’s office. I’m not—I went into private practice before you retired. Andrea pulled the old trial records for me so we could try to figure out what was going on with that damn test.”

  Jack said, “She and I never got along. She thought I was a hopeless drunk.”

  Dave tried not to look embarrassed. Finally, he nodded and glanced over at Pamela who had started rinsing the dishes at the nearby kitchen sink. Jack followed Dave’s eyes. He said, “Don’t worry about Pammy; she knows about my reputation and she knows about Khalid. The day I handed in my badge was the day I stopped keeping secrets from her.”

  Dave said, “This isn’t about helping Andrea, Jack.”

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s you two who are doing the wondering? Nobody else? What about that other DA who prosecuted this with you?”

  “Kirsten? Kirsten Lord?”

  “Yeah, her.”r />
  “We’ll talk to her if I come up with anything here today.”

  Jack nodded.

  “Okay. Thing is, I don’t get it, Jack. It doesn’t make sense. You gave Khalid the GSR a few hours after the shooting. It lit up positive. Andrea and I don’t see a problem with the timing or the test. It’s all kosher.”

  “If that’s the case, then who’s asking all the questions? I figured that if this conversation ever took place I’d be having it with some public defender trying to save Khalid’s ass.”

  Dave pushed his chair back from the table. “Lot of people have questions. Andrea and I feel particularly vulnerable since we prosecuted Khalid. But people are raising caution flags.”

  “What people?”

  “Anonymous people. We’re getting letters.”

  “Letters.” Jack winced. “You worried about yourselves or you worried about the little prick?”

  “If Khalid did it, Jack, I don’t have any problems with him frying to death in that chair. That’s the honest-to-God truth. He won’t be the first man I convicted to end his life there. My reason for coming all the way down here to see you is simple. I want to know if there was a problem with the GSR or with anything else you and Mickey came across during your investigation. That’s all.”

  Jack pushed himself back from the table and laced his fingers together behind his head. He stared at Dave until he saw him shift his weight on his chair and avert his eyes. “Problem? There was no problem unless you count the fact that it wasn’t Khalid’s test that lit up.”

  “What?”

  “They’re about to fry him, right?”

  “Khalid? Yes.”

  Jack rubbed his stubbled face with the back of his hand. He said, “He’s pond scum—you know that, don’t you? He cuts up women, he deals drugs, he strong-arms his own neighbors. Nobody’s crying that the man’s in prison. I mean nobody. I bet his momma’s glad he’s there.”

  “I know that, Jack. That’s not the question. The question is whether or not he actually killed those two old folks in that convenience store. I’m not trying to get him out of prison.”