Thicker Than Water

by P J Parrish

  “You want me to work for you?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Yes, I do.”

  Louis went to the kitchen and came back with a fresh beer.

  “So where were you planning to start?” she asked as he took a drink.

  “I already have,” Louis said, sitting on the sofa across from her. “I went and saw Bernhardt this morning.”

  “A real prince, isn’t he. You get anything useful?”

  “Not from him. But Duvall’s secretary told me she thought Duvall was getting ready to divorce his wife.”

  “The secretary? She didn’t mention anything like that when I talked to her.”

  “I saw Duvall’s lawyer to make sure, some guy named Brenner.”

  “Scott or Brian?”

  “There’s two?”

  She nodded. “Brothers. They come from good lawyer stock. Their father was an attorney here for centuries and went into politics as a state senator. He died a while back. The sons stayed local, kept the family practice going. They’ve made a fortune in civil work, suing doctors, insurance carriers and pharmaceutical companies.”

  “Brian Brenner confirmed that Duvall was getting ready to draw up papers,” Louis said. “But get this—he claims Candace didn’t know about the divorce.”

  “Oh, right,” Susan said. She was frowning slightly, like she was perturbed she had missed all this.

  “I found out something else,” Louis said. “Candace Duvall has a lover.”

  Susan’s eyes shot up. “Who is he?”

  “She. It’s a she.”

  It took Susan a second before his comment registered.

  “Fuck a duck,” she whispered. “How do you know?”

  “I went to her house.”

  “She let you in? How in the hell did you find out she has a lover? Did you see them?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “She told you?”

  “No.”

  Susan sat forward. “Well, how, damn it? This could be important stuff.”

  Louis shifted slightly, playing with the Heineken label. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try,” Susan said dryly.

  “I smelled it.”

  She burst out laughing and fell back in the chair. She looked back at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No. It’s true. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about here.”

  She picked up the beer bottle, still chuckling.

  “Look, I saw a woman at the house,” Louis said. “She was out at the pool, topless.”

  Susan arched an eyebrow.

  “Well, if Candace does have something going on the side and if she knew she was about to be dumped, wouldn’t you say that could give her motive?” Louis asked.

  “Motive is not a requirement to prove your prima facie case,” Susan said.

  “But money is important to Candace and Florida is not a community property state,” Louis said. “Spencer could have divorced her and not given her a dime, right?”

  “Theoretically,” Susan said slowly.

  “I thought all you needed was to dig up something to prove reasonable doubt. This doesn’t do it?”

  “Only if we can prove Candace has a lover. And last time I looked, smells were not admissible evidence, Kincaid.”

  She was smiling. She was enjoying this.

  It took a moment, but he finally smiled. “Okay, so I’ll find the topless babe.”

  Susan was still smiling. “Kind of gives new meaning to the term ‘the other woman’ doesn’t it.”

  “No shit.” Louis took a swig of beer.

  Susan pulled out a business card and set it on the table. “Call me in the morning at my office and we’ll work out a way to pay you.”

  “I’ll go see Cade tomorrow and set him straight,” Louis said.

  She nodded, like she still wasn’t quite comfortable accepting his help. The rain stopped. The sudden silence was deafening.

  “I gotta get home,” she said, slipping on her shoes.

  Louis followed her out to the porch. A strong breeze swept in from the water, catching him full in the face. He turned to look at her. Her hair was a mess, plastered to her head, but her face looked clean and smooth.

  “You sure you can do this?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Work the other side of the fence?”

  Louis hesitated.

  “If you take this job,” Susan said, “you’ve got to operate under the assumption that Jack Cade is innocent.”

  “He killed once before. Hard for me to forget that.”

  “He served his time,” Susan said.

  “Twenty years isn’t near enough justice.”

  “That’s your cop brain talking, Kincaid. Cops have their own warped idea of justice and how it should be served up.”

  “That’s because they see firsthand the damage these assholes do.”

  “Cops seem to forget they don’t work for the prosecutor.”

  Louis leaned against the door jamb. “If you believe that, why are you hiring me?

  She cocked her head. “I’m not sure. I get the feeling you operate with a different kind of compass. One that keeps you from crossing certain lines.”

  “You don’t know me, counselor.”

  “I know what happened to you. I know why you’re not the most popular guy in O’Sullivan’s.”

  Her eyes were steady on his, and he felt his chest tighten. He took a quick drink of beer to stay cool.

  “Who told you?”

  “A deputy I know. Then I went and did some research, read some old newspaper articles. I know that you killed a cop to protect a kid, a punk kid no one cared about.”

  Louis looked past her, out at the swaying dark palms, lost in a wave of images he had thought were long buried. A blue uniform in the snow. A gun, cold in his hand.

  “It was a long time ago,” Louis said.

  “It cost you a lot.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she asked, “Do you ever think what would’ve happened to you if you hadn’t done what you did?”

  He didn’t like talking about this. He hadn’t talked to anyone about it, except Sam Dodie. But something made him answer.

  “I don’t think I could’ve put on a uniform again, for one thing.”

  “You haven’t.”

  He shrugged. “I will, when the time’s right.”

  Susan was silent.

  Louis sighed, then looked at her. “Look, I’ve got to be honest here. I don’t like dirtbags like Cade. I don’t like lawyers either. But I’m a good investigator and that’s what you’ll get.”

  “What about Kitty Jagger?”

  “What about her?”

  “Can you forget that Cade was convicted of killing her?”

  Louis hesitated. “Let’s put it this way—I won’t let it get to me.”

  “Then I think we can do business.”

  Susan extended her hand. Louis shook it without returning her smile.

  “Christ, Kincaid, you look like you’re making a deal with the devil,” Susan said.

  Louis finished off his beer in one gulp. “Maybe I am, counselor.”

  Chapter Ten

  Louis sat in the hard wooden chair, waiting for Jack Cade. His gaze wandered around the visitation room. Standing near the back was a deputy, his green uniform crisp but his eyes limp with boredom. The florescent light flickered as the rattle of a fan suddenly filled the room. Louis could feel a spray of cold air from the vent above him.

  He watched the plain black and white clock on the wall over the deputy’s head. The thin red second hand made its way slowly around the stained face.

  To Louis’s left was a heavyset black woman in a brightly patterned cotton dress. She was speaking in a soft foreign accent to a weary-looking man on the other side of the dirty plexiglass. The man’s eyes locked briefly on Louis’s.

  He had been behind bars himself once. It was brief, but he had never forgotten the soul-numbing feel of it. How did men
stand it for decades? He looked away from the man’s gaze.

  The back door opened and a deputy escorted Jack Cade in, shoving him down into the chair across from Louis. Cade didn’t even shrug off the deputy’s hand. Just took it, like he was used to it or it no longer mattered.

  Cade was cuffed and he settled into the chair uneasily. His hair was hanging in eyes, and he tossed his head slightly to throw it back. He peered at Louis through the scarred plexiglass.

  “I see Miz Outlaw took my advice,” Cade said.

  “Let me tell you something, Cade. You have nothing to gain by pissing off Susan Outlaw or me.”

  “Well, you’re here, ain’t you?”

  “For the time being. You pull anything like that again, I walk. And you better hope she doesn’t walk with me.”

  Cade didn’t look at him. The prisoner next to them was starting to talk excitedly, his accent so heavy Louis couldn’t understand what he was saying. Cade was staring at him.

  “Did you hear me, Cade?”

  “Why would I care if the bitch walks?”

  Louis leaned close to the plexiglass. “Because she’s probably the only person in Lee County who thinks you didn’t kill Duvall. How’s that grab you?”

  Cade’s eyes slid back to Louis. “You don’t?”

  Louis didn’t answer.

  “How the hell can you help me if you think I’m guilty?”

  “Convince me otherwise.”

  Cade looked away again. He was picking at his cuticles, scratching at them with the hard, dark nails of his other hand.

  The prisoner in the next cubicle raised his voice, his speech slipping now into a foreign language that sounded like slurred French.

  “Talk to me, Cade,” Louis said.

  Cade was staring at the black man and his girlfriend.

  “Cade,” Louis said sharply.

  Cade shook his head slowly. “Fucking foreigners. Can’t even get away from them in jail.”

  He finally let his eyes drift back to Louis. “Haitians. Washing up on the beach like goddamn fish. They ought to toss them off a boat in the Bermuda Triangle and see if they can swim home past the sharks.”

  Cade was waiting for Louis’s reaction. But Louis wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing his disgust.

  “Tell me about the night Duvall was killed,” Louis said. “Why did you go back to his office that night?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “They’ve got a witness who ID’ed you.”

  “A homeless drunk.” Cade smiled.

  “Why were you going to sue Duvall?”

  “I told you.”

  “You said he was incompetent. How?”

  “I never said he was incompetent. Incompetent means somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing. Duvall knew exactly what he was doing.”

  The Haitian prisoner was getting more agitated. His girlfriend was crying. Cade’s eyes lasered onto the couple.

  “What do you mean?” Louis asked.

  “Duvall sold me out.”

  “How?”

  Cade shook his head.

  “Cade, look at me.”

  Cade shifted, his breathing turning hard. “It’s fucking over. I got no way to get anything back now. My life is down the drain because of Duvall and I got no way to get anything back because the sonofabitch is dead!”

  The guard was eyeing Cade.

  “You’ve got to calm down here, Cade,” Louis said.

  “Shit . . .”

  “You’ve got—”

  Cade leaned into the plexiglass. “Don’t tell me what I gotta do,” he said. He took a deep breath and leaned back, running a hand over his hair.

  “My kid was here yesterday,” Cade said. “He’s lost most the yards on his routes,” Cade said. “Folks are telling him they don’t want their lawns paying for his scumbag father’s defense.”

  Louis let out a long breath. “Look, Cade . . .”

  “That sonofabitch lawyer took away my life and now he’s taking away my kid’s. He owes me.” Cade leaned forward, his eyes glistening. “You hear me? He owes me!”

  Louis was quiet for a moment. He decided to play his card.

  “You couldn’t have sued Duvall anyway,” he said.

  Cade looked up at him.

  “Statute of limitations on legal malpractice is two years in this state,” Louis said.

  Something passed over Cade’s eyes momentarily and was gone, like a final dissipating swirl of smoke from a dying fire.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?” Louis said.

  Cade was silent for a long time, head bowed as he picked at his hands. The Haitian’s creole mixed in with the hum of the florescent lights.

  Suddenly, a hard twisted smile came to Cade’s face. “I should have known, man, I should have known.”

  “Known what?” Louis asked.

  “That it wouldn’t work,” Cade said. “The cards aren’t stacked that way for guys like me.”

  The black woman in the next cubicle started to cry softly again. The Haitian man just sat there.

  “When I was in the joint,” Cade said, “this guy who knew something about the law told me I could sue Duvall for a million bucks when I got out. I didn’t believe it. I mean, a fucking jury giving a guy like me a million bucks.”

  He looked up at Louis. “Then I got out and saw how bad things were for Ronnie and I figured what the fuck, what do I got to lose?”

  He gave a sharp laugh. “Now you tell me I couldn’t have gotten anything anyway. Ain’t the legal system fucking great?”

  Louis was silent. The Haitian man had started up again. But his angry chattering was muffled, pushed to the back of Louis’s mind.

  If Cade thought he stood to get a big settlement from Duvall, he was the last person who wanted Duvall dead. But there was something else here, too. Cade represented a part of the past that a lot of people wanted to forget. Suing Spencer Duvall would have brought back bad memories for a lot of people, no matter how hard the courts tried to keep the focus on Duvall’s alleged malpractice and away from the evidence that convicted Cade in the first place. The media alone would retry the case. He wondered if Jack Cade looked at it from that angle.

  “What do you think would have happened if you could have sued Duvall?” Louis asked.

  Cade just looked at him.

  “The evidence would have been reexamined, Cade,” Louis said. “Other people, the newspapers, would retry it all over again, outside of the courtroom. Things would come out that have nothing to do with Duvall’s ability or intent. Hell, other lawyers would step forward with new technology, raise questions. It would have been a circus.”

  “Told you, it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Not to you, but maybe it did to someone else.”

  Cade looked up at him. “Who?”

  “The person who really killed Kitty Jagger?”

  Cade gave a snort, shaking his head. “Now you’re saying you believe me, that I didn’t do it?”

  Louis hesitated. “Let’s just say I believe that if someone thought Duvall could be sued, they’d be worried about what might come out.”

  The Haitian man raised his voice and Cade looked over at him.

  “Who did you tell that you planned to sue Duvall?” Louis asked.

  “Everyone from here to Raiford for the last year.”

  “Did you see a lawyer?”

  Cade shook his head, his eyes still on the Haitian. “No money.”

  “Then we’ll have to go another direction,” Louis said. “We have to talk about Kitty Jagger.”

  Cade looked back quickly. “Fuck that, man.”

  “It’s a believable defense for the mess you’re in now,” Louis said.

  Cade was silent. The Haitian man was ranting, his girlfriend’s crying growing louder.

  “You’ll have to tell me everything that happened twenty years ago,” Louis said.

  Cade sucked in a slow, long breath that expanded his chest under the orange jumps
uit.

  “The only thing I’m going to say is that I was set up.”

  Louis didn’t reply.

  Cade raked at his hair with both hands, glancing again at the Haitian. Suddenly, he spun toward the man. “Hey, shut the fuck up!” he yelled.

  The Haitian man and his girlfriend froze, staring at Cade.

  Louis tapped on the plexiglass.

  “Cade, forget them. Look at me.”

  Cade’s eyes shot back to him.

  “Now tell me about Kitty Jagger,” Louis said.

  Cade shook his head slowly. “It’s over, man.”

  “How did you lose the garden tool?”

  “Look, I told you I don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Who else had access to your tools?”

  “I said I didn’t do it, man.”

  “But someone—”

  “I told you!” Cade spat out. “I told you I don’t know who killed that girl!”

  Louis’s eyes flicked up to the deputy watching Cade’s back, then he looked back at Cade.

  “She had a name, Cade. Her name was Kitty.”

  Louis was amazed to see a small smile tip Cade’s lips.

  “Kitty,” he said slowly. He cut Kitty’s name into two sharp syllables, holding each between his teeth before spitting them out.

  Louis felt something tighten inside his chest.

  “I didn’t kill Kitty,” Cade said. “Kitty killed me, man.”

  Cade sat back in his chair, staring at Louis. His eyes had gone opaque in the florescent lights. The Haitian man had started up again, his voice ricocheting off the concrete walls.

  Louis rubbed the bridge of his nose. Suddenly, the room seemed to close in on him, the stale stench, the clang of a door, the muted bellow of a deputy and the desperate babbling of the Haitian man.

  Louis rose sharply and pushed back his chair.

  Cade looked up. “Where you going?”

  “Think about what I said, Cade,” Louis said. “Think about Kitty Jagger. She might be the only person right now who can save your ass.”

  Louis didn’t look back as he walked away. At the door, the deputy buzzed him through.

  Out in the hall, Louis paused. He could still see Cade’s eyes, as murky as that damn plexiglass between them. He pulled in a deep breath. Nobody should have eyes that you couldn’t see into.

  Chapter Eleven