The Devil Knows You're Dead by Lawrence Block Page A

worried after the murder, after he picks up the cartridge casings, and decides he better get rid of the gun, so he goes home and finds it and tosses it. Or here’s another way it could have happened—”
    He went on working out scenarios to fit the evidence while leaving his brother innocent of all charges. Finally he ran out of theories and looked at me and asked me what I thought.
    I said, “What do I think? I think the cops arrested the right man. I think your brother showed you a nine-millimeter pistol and said it was a forty-five because they look similar and that was the type of semiautomatic handgun he was familiar with. I think he probably found the gun in a garbage can while he was searching for redeemable cans and bottles. I think there were bullets in the clip when he found it. I think the previous owner used the gun in the commission of a felony and got rid of it afterward, which is generally how guns find their way into garbage cans and Dumpsters and the river.”
    “Jesus,” he said.
    “I think your brother was nodding in a doorway when Glenn Holtzmann went to make his phone call. I think something roused him out of a dream or reverie. Something he saw or heard, on the street or in his dream, convinced him that Holtzmann was a threat. I think he reacted instinctively, drawing the gun and firing three times before he really knew where he was or what he was doing. I think he put the fourth and final bullet in the back of Holtzmann’s neck because that’s how you executed people in Southeast Asia.
    “I think he picked up the casings because he was taught to, and also because they might tie him to the shooting. I think he got rid of the gun for that reason, and I think he would have thrown the casings in after it if he hadn’t forgotten they were there, or that he was supposed to get rid of them. I think he has no memory of shooting Holtzmann because he was only partially aware of what he was doing at the time. He was in a dream or a flashback.”
    He sat back, looking as though he’d just taken a stiff right to the solar plexus. “Whew,” he said. “I thought . . . well, never mind what I thought.”
    “Go ahead, Tom.”
    “Well, see, I figured on having to spend a few thousand dollars on a lawyer for George, and it turned out they’d already appointed an attorney, and on account of him being an indigent person the attorney’s fees are paid out of public funds. And the lawyer was as good as anybody I could hire, plus he’d already seen George and had some rapport with him.” He shrugged. “So I’ve got this money I thought I was going to spend, and I thought, you know, maybe I could hire somebody to do a little detective work, find out if maybe George is innocent. Soon as I thought ‘detective’ I thought of you. But if you’re stone certain the man is guilty—”
    “That’s not what I said.”
    “No? That’s what it sounded like.”
    I shook my head. “I said I think he’s guilty. Or that he did it; words like ‘guilty’ seem ill-chosen when the person involved may have thought he was executing a sniper somewhere north of Saigon. But that’s just what I think, and it’s an opinion based on the existing evidence. I could hardly think anything else, given the data available to me. There may be more data that neither of us knows about, and if it was brought to my attention I might have to revise that opinion. So yes, I think he did it, but I also think it’s possible I’m wrong.”
    “Say he didn’t do it. Is there a way to prove it?”
    “You’d have to prove it,” I said, “because I don’t think you could get him off by discrediting the prosecution’s case. Even if you impugned some of the eye-witness testimony, the cartridge casings are solid physical evidence and the next best thing to a smoking gun. Since they’ve got enough to prove him guilty, your only defense is to provide actual proof of innocence, probably by establishing that somebody else did it. Because