The Gods of Guilt(131)

Lankford shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Before I gave him the address that night, I asked him again what was going on. I said I didn’t want to get involved if she was going to get hurt. He insisted that he just wanted to talk to her. He admitted that he knew she was back in town because she had called him from a blocked number and told him that she’d gotten a subpoena in some civil case. And he said he needed to find her to talk to her about it.”

I underlined that answer with some silence. Essentially my case was made. But it was hard to end Lankford’s testimony.

“Why did you do this for Agent Marco?”

“Because he had a hold on me. He owned me.”

“How?”

“Ten years ago I worked that double-homicide case in Glendale. On Salem Street. I met him on that and I made a mistake . . .”

Lankford’s voice trembled slightly. I waited. He composed himself and continued.

“He came to me. He said there were people . . . people who would pay for the case to remain unsolved. You know, pay me not to solve it. The truth was, my partner and I probably weren’t going to close it. Not a shred of evidence was left in that place. It was an execution and the hitters had probably come across the border and then gone right back. So I thought, what difference would it make? I needed the money. I had gotten divorced and my wife—my ex-wife—was going to take our son away. She was going to move to Arizona and take him, and I needed money for a good lawyer who would fight it. My boy was only nine. He needed me. So I took the money. Twenty-five thousand. Marco made the deal and I got the money and after that . . .”

He paused there and seemed to go off on some internal flight of thought. I thought the judge might step in again here because, statute of limitations notwithstanding, Lankford had certainly now confessed to a crime. But the judge remained as still as every other person in the courtroom.

“After that, what?” I prompted.

It was a mistake. It brought Lankford back angry.

“What, you want me to draw you a picture? He had me. You understand what I’m saying? He owned me. This little hotel thing wasn’t the first time he used me or told me what to do. There were other times. A lot of other times. He treated me the way he treated his snitches.”

I nodded and looked down at my notes. I knew the case was over. I didn’t need to bring back Marco or put any of the other witnesses on. Moya, Budwin Dell—none of them were needed, none of them mattered. The case ended right here.

Lankford had his head down so no one could see his eyes.

“Investigator Lankford, did you ever ask Agent Marco what happened that night to Gloria after you gave him her address?”

Lankford nodded slowly.

“I asked him point-blank if he killed her, because I didn’t want that on my conscience. He said no. He said he went to the apartment, but when he got there she was already dead. He said he set the fire because he didn’t know if she had anything that would link him to her. But he claimed she was already dead.”

“Did you believe him?”

Lankford paused before answering.

“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”

I paused. I wanted to hold the moment for the rest of my life. But then finally I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

I passed behind Forsythe on the way to the defense table. He remained in his seat, apparently still deciding whether to mount a cross-examination or simply ask the judge to dismiss the case. I sat down next to Jennifer and she whispered urgently in my ear.

“Holy shit!”

I nodded and leaned toward her to whisper back when I heard Lankford speak from the witness stand.

“My son is older now and he’ll be okay.”

I turned back to see who he was talking to, but he was bent over in the witness stand and obscured by the wood paneling. It looked like he was reaching down to something that had fallen to the floor.

Then, as I watched, Lankford sat up straight and brought his right hand up to his neck. I saw his fingers wrapped around a small pistol—a boot gun. Without hesitation he pressed the muzzle into the soft skin under his chin and pulled the trigger.

The muffled pop from the gun brought a shriek from the jury box. Lankford’s head snapped back and then forward. His body listed slowly to the right and then dropped down behind the front panel of the witness stand out of sight.

Screams of horror and fear came from all over the courtroom, though Jennifer Aronson never made a sound. Like me, she sat there speechless, staring at what now appeared to be the empty witness stand.

The judge started shouting for the courtroom to be cleared, though even her high-pitched and panicked tenor drifted into the background for me. Soon it was as though I couldn’t hear a thing.