CHAPTER 50
Roy Calloway did not go home after the hearing. He went where he always went, where he’d gone nearly every day of his life for the last thirty-five years—rain or shine, weekday or weekend. He went where he felt most comfortable, more comfortable than his own living room, and why not? He spent far more time in his office than he did at home. He sat behind his desk, the desk with the nicks and scrapes on the corner where he had a habit of resting his boots. The desk at which he told people they’d find his dead body, because he wasn’t leaving until then, or until someone got a crane to haul his ass out from behind it, kicking and screaming.
“Hold all my calls,” he said to the desk sergeant. Then he sat back at his desk, propped his feet on the corner, and rocked in his chair while considering his mounted prize trout. Maybe it was time he acceded to his wife’s wishes and retired. Maybe it was time to catch some more fish and lower his golf score. Maybe it was time to step aside and let Finlay take over, let a younger man have his turn. Maybe it was time for Calloway to go and spoil his grandkids.
It sounded good. It sounded right.
It sounded like a cop-out.
And Roy Calloway had never copped out. He’d never run from anything in his life. And he wasn’t about to start now. He also wasn’t about to make it easy on them. Call him stubborn, obstinate, proud. Pick one. He didn’t give a shit. They could call in the feds, the Justice Department, the Marines, whoever the hell they wanted. He wasn’t ceding his desk or his office to anyone, not without a fight. They could speculate. They could opine about the evidence being questionable. They could intimate about wrongdoing. What they couldn’t do was prove it.
Not one damn thing.
So let them come with their accusations and their pointed fingers. Let them come with their high-and-mighty attitudes. Let them come with their speeches on the integrity of the judicial system. They didn’t know. They had no idea. Calloway had had twenty years to think it all through. Twenty years to ask whether he’d done the right thing. Twenty years to confirm what he’d known the moment they’d all made the decision. And he wouldn’t change a thing, not one damn thing.
He reached for the bottle of Johnnie Walker in his lower desk drawer, poured himself two fingers, and took a sip, feeling the burn. Let them come. He’d be right here, waiting.
Calloway had no idea how much time had passed when his cell phone rang, bringing him back from his reminiscing to the present. Few people had his cell phone number. Caller ID said “HOME.”
“Are you on your way?” his wife asked.
“Soon,” he said. “Just finishing up.”
“I saw on the news. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“The snow’s really starting to come down heavy. Best you get on home before you can’t. I made stew out of the leftovers.”
“That sounds appropriate on a night like this. I won’t be long.”
Calloway disconnected the call and slipped the phone in his shirt pocket. He slid the empty glass and the bottle from his desk back into the lower drawer, about to slide it closed when the distinctive shadow passed along the smoked-glass windows. Vance Clark didn’t knock when he reached the door. He stepped in looking like he’d gone three rounds blocking punches from a heavyweight—shirt collar unbuttoned, the knot of his tie pulled low and askew. He dropped his briefcase and overcoat into one of the chairs as if his arms were too weary to hold them any longer and slumped in the other chair, the worry lines across his forehead prominent. As the County’s Prosecuting Attorney, Clark was obligated to appear before the cameras and speak to the media following a big trial. The county had mandated it, though it had only happened a handful of times that Calloway could remember. Twenty years earlier, after Edmund House’s conviction, Calloway had joined Clark at the podium. Tracy had also been there. So had James and Abby Crosswhite.
“That bad?” Calloway asked.
Clark shrugged, which appeared to be all the energy he could muster. His arms hung from the chair like limp noodles. “About what you’d expect.”
Calloway retook his seat and retrieved the bottle. This time he set two glasses on the desk, poured two fingers in one, and slid the full glass to the corner where Clark sat. Then he poured himself another drink.
“You remember?” he asked. They’d drunk a toast in his office twenty years earlier, after Edmund House’s conviction. James Crosswhite had been there too.
“I remember.” Clark picked up his glass and tipped it toward Calloway before throwing back the alcohol and grimacing. Calloway lifted the bottle, but Clark waved off a refill.
Calloway spun a bent paper clip like a helicopter blade between his thumb and index finger, listening to the clock on the wall tick and to the low-pitched hum of the fluorescent lights, one still flickering and ticking.
“You’ll file an appeal?”
“It’s a formality,” Clark said.
“How long before the Court of Appeals denies it and grants a new trial?”
“Not sure it will be up to me to decide. New prosecuting attorney might want to cut his losses,” Clark said, apparently already resigned to losing his job. “He’ll have a built-in excuse, blame it on the old guy, say I screwed it up so bad he can’t win a retrial. Why waste the taxpayers’ money? Why blemish his own record for someone else’s shit pile?”
“Speculation and innuendo is all it is, Vance.”
“The media is already running with their stories on corruption and conspiracies in Cedar Grove. God knows what else they’ll come up with.”
“People in this county know who you are and what you stand for.”
Clark smiled, but it had a sad quality to it and quickly dimmed. “I just wish I did.” He set the glass on the desk. “You think they’ll come after us, criminal charges?”
Now it was Calloway’s turn to shrug. “Could.”
“I suppose I’ll be disbarred.”
“I suppose I’ll be impeached.”
“You don’t seem concerned.”
“What’s to be, will be, Vance. I’m not about to start second-guessing myself now.”
“You’ve never thought about it?”
“Whether it was the right thing to do? Not once.” Calloway finished his drink and thought of his wife’s admonition about the storm. “I suggest you get on home while you still can. Go kiss that wife of yours.”
“Yeah,” Clark said. “There’s always that, right?”
Calloway looked again to the trout. “That’s the only thing.”
“What about House? Any idea where he’ll go?”
“Don’t know, but he won’t get far or anywhere fast in this weather. You still got that .38?”
Clark nodded.
“Might want to keep it close by.”
“I already thought of that. What about DeAngelo?”
Calloway shook his head. “I’ll keep an eye on him, but I don’t think House is that smart. If he was, he’d have filed an appeal based on inadequacy of legal counsel. He never did.”