Last to die

Fifty-four

Jack had time enough to smell but not taste the coffee before Theo came barging into his office on Wednesday morning. He had Tatum in tow, so Jack knew it was serious.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jack, rising from behind his desk.

His secretary suddenly appeared behind the double-barreled hulk of humanity that was blocking Jack’s doorway, standing on her tiptoes and waving from the hallway to get Jack’s attention. “Knight brothers are here,” she said.

“Thanks, Maria.”

Theo closed the door and said, “Siddown, Tatum.”

Tatum took a seat, and so did Jack. No one told him to sit, but with Theo speaking to his own brother in that tone of voice, it seemed wise to anticipate.

Tatum glared at his younger brother and said, “You think now you could maybe tell me what the hell this-”

“Shut your mouth,” said Theo.

It had been a long time since Jack had seen his friend so worked up. “Theo, calm down, all right?”

“Calm down?” he said with an angry smile. “I been calming myself down all night long, and it just gets me more pissed. So don’t tell me to calm down.”

“What happened last night?” asked Jack.

“I went back to Shelby’s.”

Jack and Tatum exchanged glances, as if neither one knew where to go from there.

Theo kept talking, pacing. “I was trying to understand, why would Tatum refuse to take a DNA test to get found not guilty when his own brother got hisself off death row that way? And then it hits me: That is the reason he won’t take the DNA test.”

Tatum said, “What you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Ain’t got a clue.”

“Four years I wasted on death row. No more lies, Tatum.”

“You’re pissing me off now. Don’t be calling me no liar.”

“Then stop the lying,” said Theo, his voice rising. “Ain’t no more excuse for it. That’s why I dragged your ass all the way over here, held off talking about it till you and me both was sitting down in front of our lawyer. Tell him, Jack. Everything we say here is protected by the attorney-client privilege, right?”

“You’re both clients. But it’s two different cases. I’m a little confused as to what’s going on here.”

“Jack, let’s just agree that nothing leaves this room. Can you fucking do that for me?”

Theo’s eyes were bulging. “Sure,” Jack said in a calming voice. “This is all privileged.”

“Nothing that we say here can ever be repeated in a courtroom. No one can run out of here and tell the cops what the other one said, right?”

“That’s right,” said Jack.

Theo glared at Tatum and said, “Talk to me, brother.”

“Talk what?”

“I want the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“Was you the one who killed that clerk at Shelby’s?” Theo wasn’t shouting, but his voice was firm and harsh, and the question hit like ice water. Jack looked at Theo, then at Tatum, then back at Theo, wondering what in the world had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He expected Tatum to jump any second and grab his brother by the throat for talking such shit.

Tatum simply chuckled and said, “Wha-at?”

It was a nervous chuckle. Jack could hear the little break in his voice, and he knew Theo was on to a horrible truth that was about to change things forever. Jack looked at Tatum and said, “He wants to know if you’re the member of the Grove Lords who let him take the fall.”

Tatum gave his lawyer a look that said, Stay the hell out of this, Swyteck.

Theo was pacing again, speaking in what sounded like pure stream of consciousness. “This is what I realized last night. You refused to take the DNA test for Gerry Colletti’s murder because you was worried about a match.”

“I didn’t kill Colletti.”

“I know you didn’t. But I’m not talking about a match between your DNA and the DNA found in the dried spit they took from the back of Colletti’s suit coat. You were afraid of a match with the human hair and skin the cops scraped from under the fingernails of that convenience store clerk at Shelby’s. That kid fought like a tiger, right, Jack?”

“That’s what the crime scene suggested.”

“The forensic guys who testified at my trial said the kid fought back and put a nice scratch into the top of his attacker’s head. Got some skin and hair under his nails. My first lawyer tried to use that at trial. He asked the jury, Why no scratch on top of my client’s head if the victim had skin and hair under his nails? Too bad for me that I wasn’t arrested and examined by a doctor until seven months after the crime. Scratch could have healed in all that time. At least that’s what the prosecutor made the jury believe. But it all worked out in the end. The scrapings of skin and hair gave us a nice DNA sample. DNA wasn’t used that much at the time of my trial. Four years later, it was. When Jack came in to handle my habeas corpus petitions, he got the test, got me off death row.”

“And the only one happier than you was me,” said Tatum.

“Yeah, now I know why. I don’t understand all the details, but, Jack, help me out here. Once there’s a DNA test, the cops keep that shit around, don’t they?”

“You’re talking about CODIS,” said Jack.

“Tell him, Jack. Tell Tatum what he already knows, and what I just figured out.”

It was strange, the way this was coming off as if Jack and Theo had rehearsed it. But Jack had wondered about the real killer for almost as many years as Theo had, and now that Theo was on a roll, Jack was right with him, step for step. “CODIS is the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System,” said Jack. “If a DNA test is performed on a specimen sample taken from a crime scene, that DNA profile is entered into the forensic files of CODIS. Once I was finally able to get the test done to compare Theo’s DNA to the hair and skin sample taken from the victim, the DNA profile of the unknown killer would, as a matter of course, have been entered into the CODIS forensic database.”

“Which is exactly the reason my brother didn’t want to give his DNA profile. Even though his DNA would have proved that he didn’t kill Gerry Colletti, a simple run through the FBI’s database would have proved that he did kill the store clerk.”

A tense silence filled the room as the two brothers stared each other down.

“That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down,” Tatum said quietly.

“Oh, man,” said Jack, his response involuntary.

Tatum continued, “It was my next step up in the Grove Lords. I had to take someone out, you know, if I ever wanted to have my own turf. So Lionel, he picks out this clerk at Shelby’s. No real reason, just picked him. So, I did him.”

Theo looked ready to explode. Jack knew he had to say something before he had another homicide on his hands. “Why’d you pin it on Theo?”

“Wasn’t supposed to be no one else in the store. But when I came out, I ran past some guy on the sidewalk. I was afraid he could ID me. I had to think fast, man. I was scared, you know? So when I get back to the car, that’s when me and Lionel come up with the plan.”

“What plan?” asked Jack.

“We had to get someone else, you know. Someone else to go in that store.”

Theo’s voice shook with anger. “Someone who looked like you.”

He shook his head, his voice filled with regret. “I didn’t want it to be you, Theo. That’s what I told Lionel. All the Grove Lords dressed alike. Black pants, Miami Heat jerseys, gold chains, backward baseball caps. We could have picked almost anyone. But Lionel picked Theo.”

“And you didn’t fight him?”

“At first, yeah. I said no way. But it made sense for it to be you.”

“Bullshit, Tatum. It was dark, we all dressed alike. There were ten other Grove Lords that could have looked like you.”

“We didn’t pick you just because we looked alike. It was smarter than that.”

“Smart?” he said, almost screeching.

“You was fifteen, man. Lionel said no way you’d be charged as an adult. I was almost eighteen. No question I was looking at adult charges. So that’s how we picked you.”