The White Road

And then I would die, for I would not be able to take such pain again.

“It’s Elliot Norton,” she said as I reached her, her hand over the mouthpiece. “He says he’s an old friend.”

I nodded, then patted Rachel’s butt as I took the phone. She swatted me playfully on the ear in response. At least, I think it was meant to be playful. I watched her head back into the house to continue her work. She was still traveling down to Boston twice weekly to hold her psychology tutorials, but she now did most of her research work in the small office we had set up for her in one of the spare bedrooms, her left hand resting gently on her belly while she wrote. She looked over her shoulder at me as she headed into the kitchen and wiggled her rump provocatively.

“Hussy,” I muttered at her. She stuck her tongue out and disappeared.

“Excuse me?” said Elliot’s voice from the phone. His southern accent was stronger than I remembered.

“I said ‘hussy.’ It’s not how I usually greet lawyers. For them I use ‘whore,’ or ‘leech’ if I want to get away from the whole sexual arena.”

“Uh-huh. You don’t make any exceptions?”

“Not usually. By the way, I found a nest of your peers at the bottom of my garden this morning.”

“I won’t even ask. How you doing, Charlie?”

“I’m good. It’s been a while, Elliot.”

Elliot Norton had been an assistant attorney in the homicide bureau of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office when I was a detective. We had managed to get on pretty well together both professionally and personally on those occasions when our paths crossed, until he got married and moved back home to South Carolina, where he was now practicing law in Charleston. I still received a Christmas card from him each year. I’d met him the previous September for di

“Well, we Southern folks tend to keep pretty much to ourselves,” he drawled. “Plus we’re kinda busy, what with keeping the coloreds in check and all.”

“It’s good to have a hobby.”

“That it is. You still private detecting?”

The small talk had come to a pretty sudden end, I thought.

“Some,” I confirmed.

“You in the market for work?”

“Depends upon the kind.”

“I have a client due for trial. I could do with some help.”

“ Maine is a long way from South Carolina, Elliot.”

“That’s why I’m calling you. This isn’t something that the local snoops are too interested in.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“Nineteen-year-old male accused of raping his girlfriend, then beating her to death. His name is Atys Jones. He’s black. His girlfriend was white, and wealthy.”

“That’s pretty bad.”

“He says he didn’t do it.”

“And you believe him?”

“And I believe him.”

“With respect, Elliot, the jails are full of guys who say they didn’t do it.”

“I know. I helped to put some of them away, and I know they did it. But this one’s different. He’s i

“What do you want from me?”

“I need somebody to help me move him to a safe house then look around, check witness statements; someone who isn’t from around here and isn’t likely to be scared off too easy. It’s a week’s work, maybe a day or two more. Look, Charlie, this kid had a death sentence passed on him before he even set foot in a courtroom. As things stand, he may not live to see his trial.”

“Where is he now?”

“ Richland County lockup, but I can’t leave him in there for too much longer. I took over the case from the public defender and now rumor is that some lowlifes from the Skinhead Riviera may try to make a name for themselves by shanking the kid in case I get him off. That’s why I’ve arranged bail. Atys Jones is a sitting duck in Richland.”

I leaned back against the rail of my porch. Walter came out with a rubber bone in his mouth and pressed it into my hand. He wanted to play. I knew how he felt. It was a bright autumn day, my girlfriend was radiant with the knowledge that our first child was slowly growing inside her, and we were pretty comfortable financially. That kind of situation encourages you to kick back for a time and enjoy it while it lasts. I needed Elliot Norton’s client like I needed scorpions in my shoes.

“I don’t know, Elliot. Every time you open your mouth, you give me another good reason to close my ears.”

“Well, while I have your attention you may as well hear the worst of it. The girl’s name was Maria

With the mention of his name, I recalled some details of the case. Earl Larousse was just about the biggest industrialist from the Carolinas to the Mississippi; he owned tobacco plantations, oil wells, mining operations, factories. He even owned most of Grace Falls, the town in which Elliot had grown up, except you didn’t read about Earl Larousse in the society pages or the business sections, or see him standing beside presidential candidates or dullard congressmen. He employed PR companies to keep his name out of the public domain and to stonewall journalists and anybody else who tried to poke around in his affairs. Earl Larousse liked his privacy, and he was prepared to pay a lot of money to protect it, but the death of his daughter had thrust his family unwillingly into the limelight. His wife had died a few years back, and he had a son, Earl Jr., older than Maria

Now Elliot Norton was defending the man accused of raping and murdering Earl Larousse’s daughter, and that was a course of action likely to make him the second most unpopular person in the state of South Carolina, after his client. Anybody drawn into the maelstrom surrounding the case was going to suffer; there was no question about it. Even if Earl himself didn’t decide to take the law into his own hands there were plenty of other people who would because Earl was one of their own, because he paid their wages, and because maybe Earl would smile upon whoever did him the favor of punishing the man he believed had killed his little girl.

“I’m sorry, Elliot,” I said. “This isn’t something I want to get involved with right now.”

There was silence at the other end of the line.

“I’m desperate, Charlie,” he said at last, and I could hear it in his voice: the tiredness, the fear, the frustration. “My secretary is quitting at the end of the week because she doesn’t approve of my client list and pretty soon I’ll have to drive to Georgia to buy food because nobody around here will sell me jackshit.” His voice rose. “So don’t fucking tell me that this is something you don’t want to get involved with like you’re ru

He didn’t finish the sentence. After all, what more was there to say?

I heard him exhale a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“It’s okay,” I replied, but it wasn’t, not for him and not for me.