The last witness lm-2

by Joel Goldman

  Mason's footsteps slapped against the packed snow, a hollow sound in a silent theater, his shadow a poor accompaniment to a night owl passing overhead, its moonlit silhouette leading Mason deeper into the cemetery. A rasping, grating, fractious noise drew Mason off the main road along a winding path among the dead, until he crested a small rise and looked down on a pair of graves.

  Amy White was bent over one of the headstones, her back to Mason, flailing at it with a hammer, cursing the rock, the ground, and the bones beneath. Her car was stuck nose down in the snow on an embankment opposite where Mason stood, its engine running, headlights glowing beneath the snow. A woman he assumed was Cheryl lay nearby on her back, making angel wings in the snow with her arms.

  "Amy," Mason called to her.

  She wheeled around, her face twisted with exhumed rage, her movement revealing Donald Ray White's name engraved on the stone. Her cold skin was paler than the moon, colored only by flecks of blood at the corners of her mouth.

  Amy raised the hammer above her head as if to throw it at Mason, then spun back to her mad work, striking another blow against her dead father. The head of the hammer flew off, knifing into the snow as the handle shattered, spearing her hand with a jagged splinter. She clamped the splinter with her teeth, yanked it from her fleshy palm, and spat it out.

  "I knew it would be you!" she screamed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  Mason walked down the hill toward Amy, keeping his hands in plain view in an effort to calm her down.

  "How could you know it would be me?"

  Amy gulped air and wiped her bloody hand against her jeans. "That day in the parking garage, when I asked for your help-I knew you wouldn't do it. I knew you thought I was just Billy Sunshine's toady. That I just wanted to protect his precious goddamn career."

  "You're right. That is what I thought. But I was wrong, wasn't I? You wanted me to find your file, not the mayor's."

  Amy heaved, gradually catching her breath, forcing her madness back into a genie's bottle.

  "If you had told me where the mayor's file was, I would have found mine. Then everything would have been fine, except I knew you wouldn't do it. I knew you wouldn't let it rest until you found out."

  "Until I found out that you killed your father, not Cheryl; that you used the same gun to kill Jack Cullan."

  Amy threw her head back. "How did you know about the gun?"

  "You told me that Cullan had wanted Blues's liquor license brought to him on the Friday night he and Blues argued at the bar but that you put him off until Monday. Howard Trimble told me that he gave you the file that same night. Yet you didn't give the file to Cullan, and I couldn't figure out why. Then Trimble told me what your father had done to Cheryl, how your mother had hired Cullan to defend your father and then to defend your sister."

  "My father was a hell-born bastard that deserved to die!"

  "That's probably what a jury would have said. Especially since the police reports showed that you shot him in self- defense. The cops found a gun in your father's hand. Your mother said that he'd fired a shot and threatened to kill all of you. Her mistake was calling Jack Cullan before she called the police."

  Amy slumped to the ground, her back against her father's tombstone. "I don't remember very much after I shot him. My mother and I were screaming. We didn't know what to do."

  "Cullan must have convinced your mother that the only way to save you was to blame Cheryl since she would never be prosecuted. Cullan had the juice to make everyone look the other way. Your mother even got to keep the guns. Instead of a fee, Cullan got you, just like a future draft choice."

  "Jack Cullan was as rotten as my father. When he called me that night, I did what he told me, but I couldn't stand it anymore. I couldn't stand that he was going to ruin someone else. I had found the gun in my mother's things when she died. I took it with me to Jack's house. I was going to make him stop."

  "What did Cullan say?"

  Amy pawed the snow at her sides as her face slackened into a dull, exhausted gaze. "He laughed at me and told me to give him the file. I took the gun out and he kept laughing, so I shot him. Then I turned off the heat, opened the windows, and went home."

  Mason studied her, searched her suddenly detached face for a hint of meaning. She leaned against her father's headstone, reaching idly toward her mother's to dust the snow from the channels of her mother's engraved name.

  "What did you do with the gun?"

  Amy stood, brushed the snow from her jeans, and gave Mason a sly look. "I threw it into the Missouri River on New Year's Eve. By the way, you're quite the swimmer."

  Mason flashed back to New Year's Eve. He remembered seeing Amy in the mayor's entourage just before Beth found him at the back of the Dream Casino. In the video Ed Fiora had shown him, Beth had left him on the prow of the boat. The next thing he'd seen was the flash from a gun. Though the shooter's face was obscured, he and Fiora had assumed that the shooter had been Beth.

  "If it makes you feel any better, you didn't miss."

  "Actually, that makes me feel worse. I didn't know what to do about you. I just knew I couldn't let you find out about me. I saw you and Beth Harrell go outside and I took a chance. You should have bled to death and drowned."

  "Sorry to disappoint you."

  "That's all right," she answered as she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a gun. "I get a second chance."

  "Your father's other gun. The one you used to kill Shirley Parker. Harry Ryman matched the ballistics reports. I told Carl Zimmerman where Cullan's files were, and he told you. You knew about the tunnel to Pendergast's office from when you worked at the mayor's campaign headquarters on the other side of the alley behind the barbershop."

  "Jack even gave me the tour."

  "You ran into Shirley in the tunnel and killed her."

  "Kind of makes it your fault, don't you think?"

  "Except I didn't pull the trigger. You did."

  "Shirley was hysterical. She came at me with a pair of scissors."

  Mason shook his head. "Self-defense would have worked when you were fifteen. That story won't sell. There were no scissors where you left Shirley's body. You got your file and part of the mayor's, but you left enough behind to convict him. Why?"

  "I just took the parts about me."

  "Carl Zimmerman and James Toland were late to the party. They stole the files they wanted and booby-trapped the rest. Did you know about that?"

  "No, but I would have helped them if I had known."

  "Blaming all this on dear old Dad won't work anymore, Amy. Killing me won't save you. Your car is stuck in the snow. You'll have to leave my body on your parents' graves. That's a pretty big clue. And your sister is an eyewitness. Are you going to kill her too?"

  "Amy, I wanna go home," Cheryl said. "I'm cold."

  Cheryl had given up making snow angels and was standing only a few feet from Amy. She spoke with a thick-tongued child's singsong whine. Though she was nearly thirty, her mind was trapped in those last moments when she'd been an innocent child, before her father had beaten her future out of her. Her labored speech was a lasting reminder.

  "In a minute, Cheryl," Amy said, keeping her eyes and gun firmly on Mason.

  "Now! I wanna go now!" Cheryl stomped her feet and hammered her sides with her fists.

  "In a minute, I told you!"

  Cheryl began to cry, softly at first, then building to a wail that convulsed her. "Now! Right now!"

  Cheryl ran toward Amy like a child grabbing for her mother. Mason bolted at Amy in the same instant, knocking the gun from her hand as the three of them collided. Mason and Amy rolled into the headstones, with Amy on top of him howling and scratching his face. He gripped her wrists, and she crashed her forehead into his nose. Mason felt the cartilage crumble and tasted the blood that ran into his mouth. He pulled her toward him, cocked his arms like springs, and threw her off of him.

  A shot rang out, stopping Amy for an instant in midflight, bef
ore she tumbled to the ground at Mason's side. Cheryl sat on the snow, the gun in her lap.

  "I just wanna go home."

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Mason always found April a soothing month. Its cool breezes and sun-painted skies made promises the rest of the year could never keep. Though the life cycle continued unaltered, April convinced his soul that life had an edge over death. He thought about that perpetual scorecard as he stood at the foot of Amy White's grave, the sun warming his neck without penetrating to the chilled memories he carried of the past winter.

  Patrick Ortiz had ruled that Amy White's death was accidental. It had been his first official act after Leonard Campbell resigned and he was appointed to serve out Campbell's term as prosecuting attorney. Campbell had gone on the offensive, quitting and denying any wrongdoing before he was indicted.

  "What happens to Cheryl White?" Mason had asked Ortiz.

  "She's a ward of the state for now, but Howard Trimble has started adoption proceedings. What about you? I hear that Campbell tried to hire you."

  Mason had laughed. "I took a pass. He and the mayor have been leaving me messages every day. I hear that Donovan Jenkins made a deal for immunity with the U.S. attorney that will put the mayor away."

  "So why not defend one of them?"

  "I'm too close to what happened. I'll probably be a witness."

  Mason hadn't told Ortiz that he was waiting for his own visit from the feds. Galaxy Gaming Company had bought the Dream Casino. Mason figured it was just a matter of time before some Galaxy employee found the tape recording he was certain Fiora had made of Mason conspiring to gain Blues's release. He figured that Galaxy would either turn him in or book a favor. He couldn't decide which alternative he dreaded more-the visit from the feds or the visit from Galaxy.

  Beth Harrell had visited him first. He was studying notes he had written on his dry-erase board about his newest case. Mason had agreed to defend a professional wrestler who'd been indicted for involuntary manslaughter when he'd killed his archrival during a match.

  "From the ridiculous to the sublime," Beth had said from the open doorway.

  Mason had looked up and pointed to the board. "My case or your life?"

  "Fair question. I suppose an explanation is in order."

  "No. I'd say it's out of order. You don't owe me an explanation. You just need to quit blaming your weaknesses on your past and move on. You may be kinky or just fucked up. I don't know which and it doesn't matter."

  Mason cringed inwardly at his coldness toward Beth but shook it off with the realization that it was the only way he could break from her. She had a toxic allure that he couldn't risk.

  "Meaning you don't care?"

  "Meaning it doesn't matter. I can't help you either way."

  Mason had picked up the wrestler's file and started reading. When he looked up a moment later, Beth had gone.

  That had been a month ago, when winter was just releasing its grip. Mason bent down and pulled a dandelion from the sod covering Amy's grave. When he stood up, he saw Harry Ryman walking toward him.

  "Blues said I might find you here," Harry told him.

  "Yeah. I just thought I'd stop by and pull the weeds. What's up?"

  "The chief wants to know if I'm coming back to work." Harry had declined a commendation for solving the murders of Jack Cullan and Shirley Parker and had been using up his accumulated vacation and sick leave. "There's a lot of outside pressure on him to bring me back, and a lot of inside pressure the other way."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Carl was six months shy of a full pension. The department lets you buy out the time so you can retire, and still collect your full pension. I told the chief if he'd let me buy out Carl's time, I'd retire. What do you think?"

  "I think we're both pulling weeds. Maybe that's the best we can do."

  Harry looked out over the acres of grave sites. "I suppose so."

  "Listen, I'm on my way to a rugby game. You should come along. I promised Rachel I'd take her to a game. You can keep her company while I get beat up."

  "Sounds great. I'll pick up Claire and meet you at the game."

  Mason thought about Amy's father and his own father, whom he scarcely remembered, as Harry walked away. Mason had pictures of his father, but little else. Jonathan Mason had been a tall, sturdily built man who his aunt Claire said had an easy laugh.

  He couldn't remember the scrape of his father's unshaved cheek against his own. He couldn't summon his father's smell after he'd worked in the yard on a dusty, hot afternoon, nor after he'd slapped cologne on his neck on Saturday night. He couldn't remember the view from atop his father's shoulders. He had never caught a ball his father had thrown, nor measured his own strength against the man who'd given him life. He couldn't repeat the stories his father must have read to him. Nor could he conjure the fear he must have felt at his father's raised voice, or the comfort he surely had found in its softer tones. He examined his hands, searching without success for the memory of his father's touch.

  There were times when Mason would have killed for memories of his father, though he knew the depth of his longing was metaphorical. Amy White's memories of her father had made the metaphor murderous.

  He bent down to pull another young dandelion. Casting it aside, he placed a small rock on Amy's tombstone in the Jewish tradition of remembering the dead, certain that no one else would remember Amy White.

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