Verdict in Blood - By Gail Bowen Page 0,21

tough call. Luckily, while I was vacillating, Hilda appeared and made the call for me.

As soon as he saw her, Wayne J. introduced himself and held out his hand. Hilda’s response was icy. “Mr. Waters, when I’ve satisfied myself that you had nothing to do with Justine Blackwell’s death, I’ll take your hand. Until then …”

Hilda’s blue eyes were boring into him, but Wayne J. Waters didn’t flinch. “Fair enough,” he said. “Do you want to talk out here, or can I come inside?”

Hilda shot me a questioning look.

“It’ll be easier to talk where it’s cool,” I said.

As we walked back inside, Wayne J. glanced at the briefcase in my hand. “Decided to play hooky, Joanne?”

I shook my head. “Decided not to leave until you do, Wayne J.”

He put his head back and roared. “Who could blame you?”

Wayne J. Waters might have had his troubles with the law, but somewhere along the line he had come up with some personal rules about how to treat a lady. He waited until Hilda and I were seated before he lowered himself into my grandmother’s Morris chair. Once seated, he got right to the point.

“To set your mind at ease,” he said, “I had nothing to do with Justine’s death. If I have to give you specifics I will, but for now, I hope it’s enough to say that she was the classiest woman I ever knew, and she was a good friend to me and to a lot of other people I could name.”

Hilda adjusted the mother-of-pearl button fastening at the throat of her dress. “Yet you quarrelled with her bitterly the night of her party.”

Wayne J. Waters put the palms of his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Didn’t you ever fight with a friend?” he asked softly.

Hilda wasn’t drawn in. “Not one who was murdered a few hours after our dispute,” she said.

Wayne J. reddened. “You were lucky. I’d serve ten years of hard time to see Justine walk into this room. But that isn’t gonna happen. As they say, all we can do is honour her memory.” He squared his shoulders. “That’s why I’m here. Hilda, will the people who Justine helped out at the end be welcome at her funeral?”

Hilda’s brow furrowed. “Provided it’s not a private service, I see no reason why anyone who chooses to attend wouldn’t be welcomed.”

Wayne J. sighed heavily. “That’s all I needed to know,” he said, standing up.

“Wait,” Hilda said. “I answered your question. Now please answer mine.”

He turned and looked at her expectantly.

“What was the cause of your quarrel with Madame Justice Blackwell?” she asked.

The question could hardly have been a surprise, but as Hilda posed it, the pulse in Wayne J.’s neck began to beat so noticeably that the wings of the eagle tattooed on his neck appeared to flutter. I remembered Detective Hallam’s one-phrase description of him: lightning in a bottle.

“Money,” Wayne J. said, biting off the word.

“Can you elucidate?” Hilda asked.

He eased himself back into his chair. “Justine had promised to give some money to Culhane House – it’s a prisoners’ support group some of us started up for cons and ex-cons.

“Culhane House, as in Claire Culhane?” I asked.

He gave me a sidelong glance. “She was another classy lady,” he said. “Justine suggested the name.” He turned back to Hilda. “Prisoners’ rights aren’t exactly a hot ticket now. Most people seem to think the only choice society should give a con is permanent incarceration or the end of a rope.”

“But Madame Justice Blackwell believed there were more humane alternatives,” Hilda said.

Wayne J. shrugged. “You could say that, but I wouldn’t. I think for Justine it was more a practical thing.”

“Practical in what way?” asked Hilda.

“Like in the way that, most of the time, prisons just don’t do what solid citizens want them to do. All prisons are good for is pissing away lives and pissing away money. You can make semi-good people bad in prison, and you can make bad people worse, but you never make anybody better. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hilda. They may be hellholes, but I’ve never seen a prison yet that made anybody scared to come back. Every time I hear some expert running off at the mouth about that three strikes and you’re out crap, I want to laugh. The only guy who’s scared of going to prison is a guy who’s never been there. Any ex-con knows that he might as well be in prison as anywhere else. Justine