Free A Murder of Justice by Robert Andrews Page B

coming up again. Nothing you can do will bring it back. In the 1800s, a British member of Parliament, Samuel Plimsoll, demanded a safety limit, a load line marked on a ship to limit the weight of cargo.”
    “So you shouldn’t go past the Plimsoll line?”
    Tom Kearney nodded. “I’ve often wondered if our society doesn’t have its Plimsoll line.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning fifteen hundred murders. Fifteen hundred unsolved murders loaded onto a society that isn’t too stable in the best of times. How much more weight before we pass our own Plimsoll line? What if enough people—the people outside the courtrooms, the people in the streets—start believing the ship’s going down?”
    A t home, Frank put the box of marbles down beside the answering machine in the kitchen. One message on the machine.
    “Frank, I’m at home.”
    Frank checked his watch. José had called fifteen minutes earlier. His number rang twice before he answered. Sheresa Arrowsmith had called him from the Hospital Center. Pencil Crawfurd was groggy, but able to talk.
    D on’t know.”
    Frank stood on one side of the bed, José and Arrowsmith on the other. A mound of bandages covered Crawfurd’s left shoulder, and dried saliva crusted around his mouth. The ICU was overly warm, the air heavy with the smells of ammonia, alcohol, and antiseptic soap.
    “Come on , Pencil,” Frank said in disbelief. “Somebody stood out in the street . . . right beside your car . . . opened up a shooting gallery . . . and you don’t know who did it?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “What were you and Skeeter doing?”
    “Sittin’ there. Just sittin’.”
    “So you and Skeeter were just sitting on Bayless Place and somebody just walked up and just started shooting? And you don’t know who and you don’t know why?”
    “Tha’s it. Show me the muthafucka who did it, I take care a him.”
    “You got any guesses who?” José asked.
    Crawfurd rolled his head to look venomously at José, then Frank. “You cops hard-headed? Or hard-hearing? Tol’ you. Don’t . . . know. We’re sittin’ there. Skeeter talkin’ to me. All a sudden his face blows out. I don’t remember hearin’ anything. I don’t remember seein’ anything ’cept his face blowin’ out at me.”
    “Come on,” José prodded, “guess.”
    Crawfurd said nothing.
    “You not a guessing man, Pencil? Nobody’s name comes to mind? Nobody who’d want to take over the business you and Skeeter built up?”
    Again, nothing.
    José bent closer, bringing his face inches from Crawfurd’s. “Let me ask it this way, Pencil. . . . Who you gonna watch out for when you get out? Who you gonna worry’s out there, waiting for you?”
    Crawfurd ran his tongue across cracked lips. “Take care a myself.”
    “Unh-hunh,” José said, “like you and Skeeter took care of yourselves on Bayless Place. Somebody caught you two badasses like sittin’ ducks.”
    Pencil Crawfurd’s eyelids closed, then opened, then fluttered. “I’m tired,” he murmured, and fell off the edge of consciousness.
    In the hallway, Frank turned to Arrowsmith. “He still need to be in ICU?”
    The doctor shook her head. “Not really. It’s a precaution I take with all gunshot cases.”
    “You keep him there another couple of days?”
    “I can. . . . Why?”
    “Visitors have to sign in, don’t they?”
    Arrowsmith nodded. “And you want to know who?”
    I n the car, José settled into the passenger seat.
    “Bad-nigga wannabe.” He sighed.
    “Scared bad-nigga wannabe,” Frank amended.
    “I could use some hash browns.”
    Frank started the car.
    “With a couple eggs on top, sausage sides,” José added.
    “It’s Sunday night.”
    José gave Frank his “So what?” look. “Get us a running start on the week’s cholesterol quota.”

 NINE
    M onday morning, Frank and José sat at their desks, facing each other, Eleanor’s printout between them. Beside the desks, a battered institutional-green