Until Proven Guilty

by Rachel Sinclair

  Yet, there was just no way that I could possibly make a move on Harper in her state. We were just friends, and I had to set my mother straight about that.

  “Mom, we’re just friends. Not to mention the fact that she’s my law partner. I’m sorry, Mom, but I’m not in the habit of crapping where I sleep.”

  “Whatever. I see the googly-eyes that she makes at you, and that you make at her. You better just admit it. You’re going to be hitting the sack with her before we know it. At least, I hope so.”

  It was time for me to change the subject. “Okay, whatever. Listen, mom, we’re going to be coming to see you in an hour. So be ready for it.”

  “Okay, see you in a bit.”

  I got off the phone, and saw Harper standing in the doorway. I wondered how much she heard of the conversation I had with my mom. I hoped that she didn’t hear the part about me talking about how she was my partner and my friend and nothing more, because if she did hear that part of the conversation, then she could ascertain what my mom was saying. I didn’t want her getting ideas. I didn’t want her to know that my mom had been pressuring me lately about the two of us getting together.

  “My mom says she’s looking forward to seeing the two of us,” I said.

  “That’s good. I wonder how much more we can really get out of her, though.”

  “Maybe you can talk to her. My mom has always had a bad habit of lying to me. I don’t necessarily know why that is. But it seems like she lies to me more than she lies to anybody else. Maybe she’ll be straighter with you about what she knows about Tracy Dunham than she would be with me. If she knows anything more about him than what she’s been telling me, then hopefully it’ll come out.”

  Harper nodded her head. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  We arrived at my mom’s trailer in about a half hour. She apparently heard us pull up, because she walked out of the trailer when we got there, and then went up and she give Harper a big hug. “Hey there, Ross. Come on in, don’t be shy.” She put her arm around Harper, and Harper did the same, as the two women walked arm in arm into the trailer. I brought up the rear.

  I noticed that my mom didn’t even say hello to me, but I wasn’t offended. I got the impression that Harper was the daughter that my mom never had but always wished that she did.

  When I walked in, Harper and my mom were already sitting on the couch. I took a seat on a chair. My mom had her hand on Harper’s knee, and she was leaning very close in to her. It looked like the two of them were talking conspiratorially about whatever it is that women talk about when they get together.

  “Harper, don’t get me wrong, you look fit as a fiddle. Fitter than a fiddle. But you also look whiter than a Walking Dead zombie and as frightened as a cat surrounded by a bunch of rocking chairs. Why do I think that you’re not exactly sitting on top of the world?” Then she narrowed her eyes. “In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I think you’ve been getting drunker than a hoot owl.”

  Harper laughed nervously. “I’ve been off the wagon, but I’m really trying hard to get back on it. The other night, Damien came over, and I was, as you say, drunker than a hoot owl.”

  Mom laughed too. “And now you’re sober as a judge.” Then she got up, and brought back a batch of cookies. “Well, here you go. My magic cookies. I call this my Alice B. Toklas mix. Just because you’re not hitting the sauce don’t mean that you can’t have the weed, right?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want to be a square, mom, but we have a job to do. And I’m going to pretend not to see this batch of cookies, because may I remind you that one of the conditions of your bail is that you do not indulge in illegal drugs.”

  Mom shook her head. “There you go, my convict son, giving me a lecture. Listen, Damien, I might like my bud, but at least I don’t like jacking cars, unlike some people I know in this room. If it’s good for the goose it’s good for the gander, I always say. Sorry, but I’m not going to get a lecture from somebody who spent most of his years in reform school because of all the crap that he did.”

  I just rolled my eyes. I’d been getting this from my mom for years. I cleaned up my act, unlike her, and I think that she resented that fact. She liked it when she had me to look down on. And now that I had gotten straight, and gotten on with my life, she felt that it was my turn to look down on her. Which I did. I admit it. I never could understand why it was that she didn’t try to do something to improve herself. Now, here she was, being accused of murder.

  Harper looked uncomfortable when my mom was saying those things to me. “Olivia, Damien’s one of the top defense attorneys in the area. He really has it all together. I mean, I know that when he was younger, he was kind of a hell raiser, but he’s not anymore.”

  Mom just shrugged her shoulders. “I know. But I just don’t like him being on my ass constantly the way that he is. Anyhow, let’s just change the subject. The two of you are here for a reason, so what is it?”

  Harper cleared her throat. “I wanted to talk to you a bit more about Tracy Dunham. Now, I know that you told Damien that you didn’t know much about him. The two of you were friends with benefits, as you put it. But I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into your relationship with him. Because Damien told me that you told him something interesting. You told him that, when he bailed you out of jail, the person that you usually relied on to bail you out was dead, and that you were being accused of killing that person. I zoned in on that comment when Damien said that to me, because it sounded to me like maybe you and Dr. Dunham might’ve known each other a little bit better than what you say.”

  Mom took a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah, Tracy has bailed me out of jail twice in the past six months. Once because I got stopped for speeding and I had parking tickets I hadn’t paid. And the other time was because I happened to get nailed for drunk driving.” She pointed at me after she told Harper about her pecadillos. “Not one word from you, Damien. I’m tired of your lectures.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t saying a word.”

  “Yeah, but you were going to, I could tell.” She straightened her back on the couch. “Anyhow,” she continued, “I called him both times just because he’s the only one I know who’s got money. Besides Damien, I mean, and there ain’t no way I’m calling him for nothing. Damien will bail me out and lecture me the whole way. I also don’t like going through a bail bondsman, because they charge too damn much money. And, look around, I got lots of friends in this trailer park, but none of them got a pot to piss in. None of them got two nickels to rub together. So, Tracy was the only friend I knew who had the money to bail me out. And he didn’t mind bailing me out either, because he liked what I did with him in bed.”

  Harper carefully took notes while she spoke. I knew that Harper was going to get to the meat of what she was trying to get at, which was that my mom probably knew more about Tracy than she let on. “Okay. So he was able to bail you out whenever you asked him? It sounded to me like maybe you guys were on slightly different terms than what you say. What time of the night would he come and get you?”

  Mom shrugged her shoulders. “Midnight, usually. He worked at his practice until 6 o’clock in the evening, and then he went home and pretty much got drunk in front of the television. So he wasn’t never doing nothing when I called him, so it wasn’t a problem for him to come down to the jail to bail me out. That’s all there was to it.”

  “And how did you know how he spent his evenings? How did you know that he drank a lot?”

  “He’d tell me about it. Listen, he had a bitch wife who was always nagging at him. He had a big old house over in Leawood, and he had a man cave. He told me that when he came home from work he’d go down to that man cave and jack it while drinking Jack. You know, he’d watch porn while drinking a bottle of whiskey, and that was that.”

  Harper continued to make notes, and I could see by the look on her face that she wasn’t quite believing what my mom was saying. “So, when he would come and bail you out, he was
drunk himself. Is that safe to say?”

  Mom got up and went into the kitchen. “All this talking about Jack Daniels is making me thirsty. I hate to do this to you, Harper, because Damien’s telling me how much you’re trying to stay on that wagon, but I really need a drink. Damien, you want one?”

  I looked over at Harper, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to take Mom up on her whiskey offering. I didn’t want Harper to feel left out, and I knew that Harper wasn’t going to be able to drink. However, I had to admit that a whiskey on the rocks sounded really good to me at that point. There was something about being around my mom that drove me to drink.

  “No, Mom. That’s okay.”

  “Suit yourself.” She came back into the living room and sat on the couch, a whiskey and water in her glass. “Yeah, when Tracy came to get me at the jail, he was usually three sheets to the wind. But that don’t matter. He always drove like that. He always told me that he drove better when he was drunk, because that meant that he didn’t speed or run lights. You know that guy never did get a DUI in his life? He’s that good. Or he was that good.”

  Harper looked like she was thinking about what mom was saying, and trying to figure out what to ask next. “So, Olivia, are you telling me that every night that Tracy went home that he pretty much just spent the evening ignoring his wife and drinking in front of a television in his man cave?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I just said that that that’s what he was doing those two nights. I know that a lot of other nights that he was busy working on other things. He told me that he was hard at work on improving some kind of newfangled pain treatment that he was using on his patients. I think he said that he was getting close to getting a patent for his idea. I don’t really know what it involved, but I do know that his patients thought that that bastard shot the moon. They thought he walked on water.”

  Harper nodded her head. “I remember reading that on the website. It said something about him pioneering a pain management technique, and there was a patent pending. Are you saying that he was working on that, perfecting it?”

  Mom just shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so. I don’t really know what he was talking about. He would come over here, babbling on about it, telling me how he got this letter and that letter from new patients telling him that he changed their lives and crap like that. I don’t know. I paid no mind. I really didn’t care. You know how some people get, just flapping their gums over nonsense. That’s the kind of guy he was. I just looked at him, acted like I cared and was listening to him, but I really wasn’t. All I know is that he said that he was working on something that he was going to be able to patent.”

  “Okay, so you have no idea what this new technique was, correct?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Like I told you, he was just babbling on. Flapping his gums. I couldn’t care less.” She took a sip of her Jack Daniels, and then smiled. “Then again, maybe I should’ve paid attention to it. My arthritis has been acting up something fierce and my back’s been killing me lately. I don’t get into all that painkilling crap, I just take some Aleve and bear through it. But Tracy, he swore that what he was working on was going to be a miracle for people who are in pain. Maybe I should’ve listened to him.”

  Harper glanced at me, and I couldn’t read what she was thinking. “Tracy’s family was very wealthy. So, Tracy had it covered as far as getting a patent. That’s the one thing that most patent seekers lack, money, because it costs a lot of money to seek a patent. You gotta hire a lawyer, for one thing. Also, I wonder if he was going to try to franchise his idea in some way.”

  Mom nodded her head. “Yeah, yeah. That was another thing he was going to do. He was going to charge doctors a lot of money to learn this technique, and he told me that he had a ton of those doctors lining up at his door, anxious to take his class for that. He even told me that he had magazines lined up, asking about it. Not just medical journals, but he told me he had some guys sniffing around from Time magazine and things like that. I don’t know, it sounded like it was going to be some big deal. Some big fat deal.”

  “What else did he tell you about what he was doing?” Harper asked my mom.

  Mom shrugged her shoulders. “Not much. He told me all about his bitch wife, and how she was always hollering at him and screaming at him about this or that, and how he just shut her out. Shut her out and drank.”

  “Now, was it unusual that Tracy would be high on street drugs? You don’t happen to know where he would get those drugs, do you?”

  Mom took a drink, and started to roll a joint. “I’m not waiting around for the two of you. I’m gonna roll this joint, and I hope you don’t mind if I smoke in front of you. If you guys do, I’ll just go out on my porch. Don’t nobody care about that around here, nobody’s gonna turn me in. Anyhow, no, I don’t think that Tracy got into that kind of stuff. He didn’t strike me as a street drugs type of guy, if you know what I mean. I don’t know who might’ve dealt it to him, but he was rich. At least, that’s what you guys tell me. You tell me he was rich. Guess I’m gonna have to take your word for that. Anyhow, those rich guys, they got all kinds of ways to get drugs, don’t they?”

  “So you don’t know then who could’ve maybe given him that heroin, do you?”

  “Hell, no. I just told you that. Harper, why do you keep asking me the same questions? I know you lawyers, I know that’s what you do. You ask a question eight ways to Sunday, and hope you somehow get a different answer. I told you no. I don’t know nobody who would be supplying him heroin.”

  Harper nodded her head. I wondered what was going through her mind. I knew that she got along with my mom, but at the same time, my mom could be pretty annoying. “Now, you were saying earlier that you could go outside on the porch and smoke a joint, and nobody would say anything about it. Nobody would turn you into the cops. Right?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said. Listen, this backward-ass state finally passed legal weed. Ain’t nobody going to be able to do nothing to me now. Not that anybody around here would do a thing to me about that anyhow.”

  “Mom, I hate to tell you this, but the state only passed medical marijuana,” I told her. “That means you have to actually get approved by a doctor to be able to buy marijuana and possess it, and that’s not going to be for a long time anyhow. The state is still passing rules about it. So, at the moment, your smoking weed is still illegal. And it will be in the future, unless you get a doctor’s note.”

  “Yeah, I know that. But I talked to other people who live in states where pot is legal if you got a card, and they tell me that they get a card for any damn thing. If they get a hangnail, they can get a card. They got all those Dr. Feelgoods who approve just about everybody who walks in the door to get a card. And I told you, my arthritis is acting up, my back has been hurting me, and I get a lot of migraines too. I’m going to be able to find a Dr. Feelgood to give me a card, no problem.”

  That was what I understood, as well - that just about anybody could get a marijuana card who wanted one in most states where medical marijuana was legal. I didn’t want to tell her that. I was quite sure that Missouri, being a conservative state, was not going to be one of those states that would allow a doctor to just give a medical marijuana card pell mell. They probably would only be allowed to give out a medical marijuana card if someone demonstrated a real need for it, like if they were on chemotherapy, or they had a condition that was proven to be helped by marijuana, such as epilepsy and glaucoma. I would be very surprised if Missouri was not very strict about what conditions would warrant a card for marijuana.

  I looked over at Harper, and she was impatiently clicking her pin on her paper. She was getting sidetracked by this conversation. I couldn’t read her mind, but it looked like she was going to be honing in on a specific area of inquiry.

  “Olivia,” Harper said. “Do you know of other people who live around you who do have access to heroin?”

  “Yeah. Of course. My next-door neighbor, Rosemarie, she’s got a s
on living with her who’s on that junk all the time. She’s always kicking him out for it, but he always comes back. I got other friends around here who have kids taking that junk, too. Hell, I even got a couple of friends who do it. So yeah, I think that people around here do know dealers.”

  “So then you also have access to heroin, right? I mean, if you have friends who take it, and other friends whose kids are on it, they might be able to get some for you too, right?”

  Mom shook her head adamantly. “No, not right. Listen, the friends I got with kids on it, they want no part of it. No part of it. They ain’t going to be getting junk for me if I ask them for it. As for my friends that are doing it, they’re always wanting to get off of it themselves. I ask them for a phone number for their dealer, they ain’t gonna give it to me. They gonna tell me to pound sand.” Mom raised her glass of bourbon and gestured towards Harper before taking another sip of her drink. “I know what you’re getting at, you’re trying to trap me into saying that I know somebody’s going to give me that junk, and that I took it. Now, I know what that drug test said, it said that I had opium in my system. But I can tell you right now, that’s wrong. I like my pot, I like my whiskey, I like my cigarettes. But I seen far too many junkies in my life to ever want to go down that road.”

  That actually surprised me. I always thought that my mother did do heroin, among other things such as meth. But maybe I was wrong about that.