Stories: All-New Tales
Page 86I rang the doorbell and stepped aside from the peephole. I heard the footsteps approach. She flung the door open and had only a moment to gasp at the sight of the black stocking mask I was wearing and the lengthy knife in my gloved hand.
I grabbed her hair and plunged the blade into her chest three times, then sliced through her neck. Both sides and deep, so the end would be quick.
Lord knew I didn’t want her to suffer.
Two
THE JOB OF MAKING sure that Martin Kobel was either put to death or sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Annabelle Young fell to Glenn Hollow, the Wetherby County prosecutor.
And it was a job that he had embraced wholeheartedly from the moment he got the call from county-police dispatch. Forty-two years old, Hollow was the most successful prosecutor in the state of North Carolina, judging in terms of convictions won, and judging from the media since he had a preference for going after violent offenders. A mark of his success was that this was to be his last year in Wetherby. He’d be running for state attorney general in November and there wasn’t much doubt he’d win.
But his grander plans wouldn’t detract from his enthusiastic prosecution of the murderer of Annabelle Young. In big cities the prosecutors get cases tossed onto their desks along with the police reports. With Glenn Hollow it was different. He had an honorary flashing blue light attached to his dash and, ten minutes after getting the call about the homicide, he was at Ms. Young’s house while the forensic team was still soaking up blood and taking pix.
He was now walking into the Wetherby County Courthouse. Nothing Old South about the place. It was the sort of edifice you’d find in Duluth or Toledo or Schenectady. One story, nondescript white stone, overtaxed air-conditioning, scuffed linoleum floors, and greenish fluorescents that might engender the question, “Hey, you feeling okay?”
Hollow was a lean man, with drawn cheeks and thick black hair close to a skullish head—defendants said he looked like a ghoul; kinder reports, that he resembled Gregory Peck in Moby Dick, minus the beard. He was somber and reserved and kept his personal life far, far away from his professional life.
“Go on in, Glenn.”
Inside were two big men. Rollins was midfifties and had a pitted face and the spiky gray hair of a crew cut neglected a week too long. He was in shirtsleeves, though noosed with a tie, of course. He wore plucky yellow suspenders that hoisted his significant tan pants like a concrete bucket under a crane. Gray stains radiated from under his arms. As usual the judge had doused himself with Old Spice.
Sitting opposite was Bob Ringling—the circus jokes all but dead after these many years of being a defense lawyer in a medium-size town, and, no, there was no relation. Stocky, with blondish brown hair carefully trimmed, he resembled a forty-five-year-old retired army major—not a bad deduction, since Fayetteville wasn’t terribly far away, but, like the circus brothers, not true.
Hollow didn’t like or dislike Ringling. He was fair, though abrasive, and he made Hollow work for every victory. Which was as it should be, the prosecutor believed. God created defense lawyers, he’d said, to make sure the system was fair and the prosecution didn’t cheat or get lazy. After all, there was that one-in-a-hundred chance that the five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High presently in custody wasn’t the same five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High who actually pulled the trigger.
Judge Rollins closed a folder that’d he’d been perusing. He grunted. “Tell me where we are with this one, gentlemen.”
“Yessir,” Hollow began. “The state is seeking special-circumstances murder.”
“This’s about that teacher got her throat slit, right?”
“Yessir. In her house. Broad daylight.”
The courthouse was on the crook of Route 85 and Henderson Road. Through one window you could see Galloway-belted cows grazing. They were black and white, vertically striped, precise, as if God had used a ruler. Hollow could look right over the judge’s shoulder and see eight of them, chewing. Out the other window was a T.J. Maxx, a Barnes & Noble, and a multiplex under construction. These two views pretty much defined Wetherby.
“What’s the story behind it?”
“This Kobel, a therapist. He was stalking her. They met at a Starbucks when she was in Raleigh at an educational conference. Got witnesses say he gave her his card but she threw it out. Next thing he tracked her down and shows up in Wetherby. Got into a fight at Red Robin, near Harris-Teeter. She threw a drink in his face. One witness saw him park at Etta’s, the diner, the morning she was killed—”
“Tonight’s corned beef,” the judge said.
“They do a good job of that,” Ringling added.
True, they did. Hollow continued, “—and he hiked up into those woods behind her place. When she opened the door, he killed her. He waited till her boy left.”
“There’s that, at least,” Rollins grumbled. “How’d the boys in blue get him?”
“Unlucky for him. Busboy on a smoke break at Etta’s saw him coming out of the forest, carrying some things. The kid found some blood near where he’d parked. Called the police with the make and model. Kobel’d tossed away the knife and mask and gloves, but they found ’em. Fibers, DNA, fingerprints on the inside of the gloves. People always forget that. They watch CSI too much…Oh, and then he confessed.”
“Yep. Advised of rights, twice. Sang like a bird.”
“Then what the hell’re you doing here? Take a plea and let’s get some real work done.”
The judge glanced at Ringling, but the defense lawyer in turn cast his eyes to Hollow.
Rollins gripped his ceramic coffee mug and sipped the hot contents. “What isn’t who telling who? Don’t play games. There’s no jury to impress with your clevers.”
Ringling said, “He’s completely insane. Nuts.”
A skeptical wrinkle on the judge’s brow. “But you’re saying he wore a mask and gloves?”
Most insane perps didn’t care if they were identified and didn’t care if they got away afterward. They didn’t wear ninja or hit-man outfits. They were the sort who hung around afterward and fingerpainted with the blood of their victims.
Ringling shrugged.