Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests (20 page)

On second thought, it was just as well that she’d missed that big hug Jessie had given me in her excitement over the verdict.

The judge leaned forward and used the friendly tone he reserved only for non-lawyers. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank
you for your service. We are adjourned.”

With a bang of the judge’s gavel, it was all over.

Jessie was a millionaire.

“Time to celebrate,” she said.

“You go right ahead. You’ve earned it.”

“You’re coming too, buster. Drinks are on me.”

I checked my watch. “All right. It’s early for me, but maybe a beer.”

“One beer? Wimp.”

“Lush.”

“
Lawyer.
”

“Now you’re hitting way below the belt.”

We shared a smile, then headed for the exit. The courtroom had already cleared, but a small crowd was gathering at the elevator.
Most had emerged from another courtroom, but I recognized a few spectators from Jessie’s trial.

Among them was Dr. Marsh.

The elevator doors opened, but I tugged at Jessie’s elbow. “Let’s wait for the next one,” I told her.

“There’s room,” said Jessie.

A dozen people packed into the crowded car. In all the jostling for position, a janitor and his bucket came between me and
Jessie. The doors closed, and as if it were an immutable precept of universal elevator etiquette, all conversation ceased.
The lighted numbers overhead marked our silent descent. The doors opened two floors down. Three passengers got out, four more
got in. I kept my eyes forward but noticed that, in the shuffle, Dr. Marsh had wended his way from the back of the car to
a spot directly beside Jessie.

The elevator stopped again. Another exchange of passengers, two exiting, two more getting in. I kept my place in front, near
the control panel. As the doors closed, Jessie moved all the way to the far corner. Dr. Marsh managed to find an opening right
beside her.

Was he actually pursuing her?

It was too crowded for me to turn around completely, but I could see Jessie and her former physician in the convex mirror
in the opposite corner of the elevator. Discreetly, I kept an eye on both of them. Marsh had blown the diagnosis of ALS, but
he was a smart guy. Surely he’d anticipated that Jessie would speak to her lawyer about suing him for malpractice. If it was
his intention to corner Jessie in the elevator and breathe a few threatening words into her ear, I would be all over him.

No more stops. The elevator was on the express route to the lobby. I glanced at the lighted numbers above the door, then back
at the mirror.

My heart nearly stopped; I couldn’t believe my eyes.

It had lasted only a split second, but what I’d seen was unmistakable. Obviously, Jessie and the doctor hadn’t noticed the
mirror, hadn’t realized that I was watching them even though they were standing behind me.

They’d locked fingers, as if holding hands, then released.

For one chilling moment, I couldn’t breathe.

The elevator doors opened. I held the Door Open button to allow the others to exit. Dr. Marsh passed without a word, without
so much as looking at me. Jessie emerged last. I took her by the arm and pulled her into an alcove near the bank of pay telephones.

“What the hell did you just do in there?”

She shook free of my grip. “Nothing.”

“I was watching in the mirror. I saw you and Marsh hold hands.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Apparently. Crazy to have trusted you.”

She shook her head, scoffing. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Swyteck? That’s what I couldn’t stand when we were
dating, you and your stupid jealousy.”

“This has nothing to do with jealousy. You just held hands with the doctor who supposedly started this whole problem by misdiagnosing
you with ALS. You owe me a damn good explanation, lady.”

“We don’t owe you anything.”

It struck me cold, the way she’d said
we.
I was suddenly thinking of our conversation on the courthouse steps just minutes earlier, where Jessie had heaped such praise
on the kind and considerate doctor.

“Now I see why Dr. Marsh performed the diagnostic tests himself,” I said. “It had nothing to do with his compassion. You never
had any symptoms of ALS. You never even had lead poisoning. The tests were fakes, weren’t they?”

She just glared and said, “It’s like I told you: we don’t owe you anything.”

“What do you expect me to do? Ignore what I just saw?”

“Yes. Like my first lawyer. The one I fired before I hired you. He just keeps his mouth shut. And you will, too. If you’re
smart.”

“Is that some kind of threat?”

“Do yourself a favor, okay? Forget you ever knew me. Move on with your life.”

Those were the exact words she’d used to dump me years earlier.

She started away, then stopped, as if unable to resist one more shot.

“I feel sorry for you, Swyteck. I feel sorry for anyone who goes through life just playing by the rules.”

As she turned and disappeared into the crowded lobby, I felt a gaping pit in the bottom of my stomach. Ten years a trial lawyer.
I’d represented thieves, swindlers, even cold-blooded murderers. I’d never claimed to be the world’s smartest man, but never
before had I even come close to letting this happen. The realization was sickening.

Jessie had cheated death.

Her investors.

And me.

BY DANIEL J. HALE

T
he Pacific stretched to the horizon, smooth as velvet. Hints of jasmine wafted in the cool morning air. We glided through
the meandering streets of the hushed enclave under a cloudless sky. Our shoes were whispers on the manicured pavement.

People call La Jolla paradise. For the past three years, it had been purgatory. My daily runs with this group of middle-aged
megalomaniacs was the only thing that had kept me from sliding off the cliffs into hell.

We slowed to a walk as we passed the house in the crook of the Camino de la Costa. The other guys headed out to the brink
of Sun Gold Point to cool down, stretch, and obsess over the market value of their portfolios. I jogged down the street toward
my front gate and the long-legged blonde standing there in the black pantsuit.

The young woman turned toward me as I drew near. I stifled a gasp. I thought for a moment I was seeing a ghost.

“Hi, Uncle Robert.” The voice was hauntingly familiar as well, but this was no apparition.

“Shawnie?” I hadn’t seen her in over a decade, not since she was a gawky adolescent. I was shocked by how much she now resembled
her mother. Like Mary Shawn in her younger years, Shawnie was a flawless beauty. I took a final step toward her. “What are
you doing here?”

“You’re unlisted.” She let out a long breath smelling of cigarettes. Her chin began to quiver. “The number was in Daddy’s
cell phone, but it burned up in the fire.”

Another fire?
My stomach tightened into a knot. “Is Jimmy okay?”

Her eyes—her mother’s big blue eyes—grew wide. “I didn’t have your address, but I knew your house was on the ocean. I remembered
what the place looked like from when Mama and Daddy brought me out here to see you and Aunt Elizabeth after Riley was born.
I tried to find you last night, but it was too dark to tell which house was which, so I stayed in this moldy old motel on
the beach and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t sleep at all. It took half an hour to find your house this morning.
Thank God you’re here!” Tears trickled down her cheeks.

“Shawnie.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”

“Mama’s dead. Daddy’s in jail.”

____

S
HAWNIE LOOKED OUT
the window as the crowded jetliner climbed over the Pacific. The plane banked right and headed east over land. She looked
at me and let out a long sigh. “I need a drink.”
Just like her mother.

Four Bloody Marys later, as if things at home were perfectly normal, she said, “I hate being packed in this plane like I’m
a sardine.” She pouted. “I thought you owned your own jet.”

“I sold it.”

“Couldn’t we have flown in first class?” She looked out the window again. “Coach sucks.”

I leaned back in my seat. “This is how I travel now.”

____

I
SWITCHED ON
the headlights as twilight faded to night. The rented Ford sedan’s outside temperature indicator read 97. Condensation formed
on the passenger-side window where Shawnie had pointed the air-conditioner vent away from herself, toward the glass. The heat
and humidity alone would have been enough to keep me away from this part of the world. I had other reasons for vowing never
to come back. But here I was, driving across the pine-infested river flats dressed in the suit I’d worn to Elizabeth and Riley’s
funeral… three years ago to the day.

The paper mill’s sulfur reek began seeping through the vents.

“Wake up, Shawnie. We’re almost there.”

She checked her face in the mirror. I didn’t understand why she bothered. She didn’t wear makeup, didn’t need it.

We drove through town, passing the Wal-Mart and the crumbling red-brick storefronts and the corrugated-metal structures. It
could have been any one of a thousand other small Southern towns. I wished it were.

I wheeled the black sedan into a parking space outside a seventies-era concrete building with vertical-slit windows. “You
stay here. I’ll leave the engine running so you can keep the air conditioner on.”

“You’re gonna get him out of there, aren’t you?” Shawnie’s voice was so much like her mother’s; if I’d had my eyes closed,
I could have easily imagined it was Mary Shawn sitting in the car with me. “I mean, you have to get him out of there.”

“I can’t, Shawnie. Not tonight, anyway.”

“I thought you were supposed to be one of the most high- powered lawyers in the country.”

The taunt in her voice set me on edge the same way her mother’s had. I wanted to snap at her, to tell her how ungrateful she
was, but I’d learned my lesson long ago. I kept my cool. “Sweetheart”—I smiled—“Jimmy’s my brother. I want him out of there,
too, but I’m no Houdini.”

She shot me a puzzled look. “Who’s Houdini?”

I just shook my head. “I haven’t practiced law in three years, and I was never a criminal attorney.” I switched off the Ford’s
headlights. “I know a good defense lawyer in Little Rock. I called him from the San Diego Airport while you were outside the
terminal building sneaking that last cigarette. He’ll be here day after tomorrow. I’ll do what I can for Jimmy until then.”
I grabbed my suit coat and left the engine running. “Lock the doors after I get out.”

The concrete was gritty under the hard leather soles of the shoes I hadn’t worn since the graveside service. The distance
from the car to the building was thirty yards at most, but it was so muggy I wanted to take off my jacket halfway down the
sidewalk.

A middle-aged woman with frizzy hair looked up from behind the counter when I walked in the door. “Robert Hicks!” She bared
her bad teeth. “You haven’t changed a bit since the day we graduated.”

If we’d gone to high school together, she couldn’t have been more than forty-three. She looked like she was in her mid-fifties.
I had no memory of her. I smiled and slipped into the drawl of my childhood. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”

“Oh, I’m a godawful mess. Have been ever since Kenny Earl stole my savings and left me with the grandbabies and run off to
Houston. I had to get me a second job at the E-Z Mart just to make ends meet.”

I had no idea who Kenny Earl was. “Kenny Earl ain’t worth spit.”

“I swear, Robert, you’re even better-looking now than you were senior year. Every girl in our class had a big ol’…” Her expression
turned serious. “I’m sure sorry about your wife and son. That was just plain horrible news.”

“That’s very kind of you to say.”

“What’s it been now? Three years?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry about your brother too.”

“Speaking of Jimmy…” I loosened my tie, undid the top button, and leaned over the counter. “I know it’s awful late, but could
you get me in to see him?” I winked. “Please?”

Her yellow smile gave me my answer.

____

A
POTBELLIED DEPUTY
who said we’d played on the same Little League team showed me into a windowless room. Four tan plastic chairs circled a scratched
Formica table. The overhead fluorescents emitted an annoying buzz. A large no-smoking sign dominated the far wall. The place
smelled like an ashtray.

The deputy brought Jimmy into the room. He’d lost too much weight. His skin was ashen, his eyes sunken and hollow. He looked
mostly dead. The life had started draining out of him the day he married Mary Shawn.

I had thought that once he was free of her, his situation would improve. I was wrong. Things had gone from bad to worse. It
wasn’t supposed to have turned out this way.

The deputy left the room. My brother sat across from me. He placed his hands on the marred surface of the table.

“Hi, Jimmy.” The stale cigarette smell stuck in my throat. I coughed. “Shawnie tells me you’re not talking to anyone.”

He looked down as if he were inspecting the gnawed ends of his fingernails.

“I know what the sheriff says you did. I know he’s wrong.”

Jimmy just kept looking down.

“You didn’t kill Mary Shawn any more than you killed her father.”

He looked up.

“I’m not going to let you go to prison for something you didn’t do. Not again.” Water welled in my eyes. “You’re the only
family I have left. I can’t lose you.”

His sunken gaze locked on mine.

“Help me, Jimmy.” I touched his bone-cold hands. “Tell me what happened.”

He pulled away and looked down at the table again.

Ten minutes later, he began to speak.

____

I
SQUINTED INTO
the morning sun as I drove down the pine tree–lined country road. When I came to the clearing where I’d built the house for
my brother, I pulled into the driveway alongside a red Mustang convertible. Its windows and top were up.