“Surely you’ve seen stories about the victims on TV,” said Elizabeth.
“I don’t own a television,” said Kingsman. “We used to have one in the den that my wife would watch. I got rid of it when she passed. I do read the Times and the Journal, but only the headlines on the front and the pontifications in the back—the editorial pages.”
I was listening to Kingsman the entire time, but something had caught my eye.
“What are you staring at, Professor Reinhart?” he asked finally.
“My book,” I said.
“Your book?” He looked confused.
I pointed opposite the couch. “Second shelf on the right.” I stood and walked across his office, then pulled the book from his bookcase, which was caked with dust. Ironically, the book itself was missing its dust jacket. I held up the spine so he could read the title, Permission Theory, along with my name. “That’s me,” I said.
“So it is,” said Kingsman. He still looked confused.
“You haven’t actually read the book, have you?” I asked.
“I didn’t even know I owned it,” he said. “What’s it about?”
“Abnormal behavior,” I answered.
The corners of his mouth tilted upward, a slight smile. “Abnormal behavior. I always found that term to be a bit redundant.”
Good line. “Me, too,” I said.
“So what is it?” he asked. “This permission theory of yours?”
“You’ll have to take my class, Your Honor,” I answered. “For now, let’s just say it addresses the reasons why someone would be killing people who were indicted for serious crimes but ultimately found not guilty in your courtroom.”
I was all prepared to continue. That was merely my opening statement. Hell, it wasn’t even a question.
But Judge Arthur Kingsman still had the answer.
Chapter 76
“HELPLESSNESS,” HE said. “The most dangerous people in the world are the ones who think they’ve run out of options.”
“So they invent their own,” I said. “They grant themselves permission.”
Kingsman nodded. “The very nature of vigilante justice.”
The cases were all legal layups. At least that’s how they looked on paper. Reams of evidence and corroborating witness testimony for the prosecution and the Matterhorn of uphill battles for the defense.
Then again, not all defense attorneys are created equal. At a thousand dollars an hour, some aren’t even really lawyers. They’re magicians.
Jared Louden, victim zero on the Dealer’s kill list, had been caught dead to rights bribing and extorting people in exchange for insider information on behalf of his hedge fund. The recordings made of Louden revealed him to be ruthless, malicious, and borderline pathological. But it wasn’t the feds who secretly planted the bug in his office. It was an employee acting as a whistle-blower. His name was Bob.
Problem was, the feds didn’t carefully read Bob’s employment contract. Louden’s defense team certainly did. During the trial, Judge Kingsman ruled that while Bob was “trying to do the right thing,” he had indeed violated the morals clause of his employment contract with Louden’s firm. Anything recorded on that bug was therefore inadmissible. Sorry, Bob. Nice try, feds.
And if it wasn’t a high-priced lawyer pulling a legal rabbit out of a hat, it was a rookie cop making a rookie mistake. He left out a line from his Miranda warning to Bryce VonMiller after arresting the spoiled punk for selling Ecstasy on a playground. That’s right. A playground.
Technicalities, loopholes, perversions of the law. They were the get-out-of-jail-free cards at one time or another for all the victims. Now, whether a few years later or many, the Dealer was making them pay. Did he know that Rick Thorsen was never carjacked, as he claimed—that he was the one who ran over that elderly man in the crosswalk with his BMW? Or that the woman who came forward as a witness—Cynthia Chadd—was actually his mistress?
He had to have known. Just as he had to have known that Colton Lange, while still in high school, had raped a girl at a party even though the rape kit from the hospital was ruled inadmissible by Kingsman. Once the lab technician stopped to go to the bathroom and left the kit unattended outside his stall, the chain of custody could no longer be verified.
So it went with all the trials, all the way back to Jackie Palmer and the negligent homicide indictment that came a decade later. The smoking-gun hair sample was disallowed, and yet another not-guilty verdict was rendered.
“I do what the law tells me to do,” said Kingsman, slumping back in his chair. He removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s not always what my conscience tells me, and sometimes it’s not even what a jury tells me. I’ve overruled them before.”
“Because you thought you were doing the right thing?” asked Elizabeth.
“What is the right thing?” asked Kingsman. “Is it what I think? What you think? What the judge in the next courtroom thinks? That’s why we have laws in the first place, Detective, and no law can protect the innocent without occasionally helping the guilty. I offer no apology for that.”
“We didn’t come here for an apology,” I said, sliding my book back onto the shelf. “We came here to stop a murder, and, if past is prologue, there’s not a lot of time. What we want from you is your help.”
“The queen of hearts, that’s the next victim,” said Elizabeth. “Assuming it’s not you, Your Honor, then who is it? What was the case? Who was on trial?”
Kingsman thought for a few seconds.
“Here,” he said finally. “This is the key to everything.”
Chapter 77
“THERE’S NOTHING more I could find,” said the man in the black turtleneck sitting across from Edso Deacon in the stretch limo driving through lower Manhattan, the tinted double-pane windows blocking out the bustle and noise of the city at night.
Nothing more he could find?
The mayor stared back at the man as if he didn’t hear him, something he did a lot when he got answers he didn’t like. This answer, in particular, he despised.
“Do you know where the expression tit for tat comes from?” asked Deacon, picking a piece of lint from the sleeve of his Kiton K-50 suit. “Some people think it’s a shortened version of this for that. Others think it derives from the fencing term tap for tap, which would make sense from a standpoint of retaliation. Still others believe it to be less adversarial and more about equality. They point to the French culinary expression tant pour tant, which refers to a mix of equal parts of fine sugar and ground almonds. Which one makes the most sense to you?”
“I don’t know,” said the man.
Deacon nodded. “That’s okay,” he said. “Do you know why it’s okay?” He leaned forward in his seat, clasping his hands over his knees as his jaw tightened. “Because I didn’t pay you to tell me that.”
“Mr. Mayor—”
“Shut up,” said Deacon. “You said you could get more on Dylan Reinhart if I paid you more. So that’s what I did.”
“Do you want the money back?”