Before I Sleep

by Rachel Lee

  She climbed into her car, a bright red Jeep, turned on the ignition, and put the air-conditioning on high. The rain beat a steady, lonely tattoo on the canvas top. The radio was on, as always, tuned to WCST. Tonight, she reached over and switched it off.

  The show following hers was run by Ted Sanders, a right-wing Rush Limbaugh wanna-be, and she didn't want to hear Ted spouting about the joys of the death penalty and how Old Sparky was the first line of defense against evil in society. Carissa wasn't dead set against the death penalty, but she figured electrocution was about as enlightened as burning at the stake.

  She hadn't mentioned John Otis on her show. When she'd walked back into the station after her break, she had planned to, but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth. Instead she'd spent the last hour talking about lawsuits.

  Everybody had an opinion on the law, and everybody thought they understood how things really worked. And when it came to lawsuits, everybody wanted tort reform— until their own ox was gored. It had turned out to be a pretty lively discussion, thank God.

  But now she was alone, and John Otis might as well have been sitting in the seat beside her. She didn't want to think about her role in putting him on death row, but she had a feeling she wasn't going to be able to avoid it.

  Instead of going home, she headed for a club where some of her friends hung out. Maybe she wouldn't go home at all tonight Almost anything seemed better than being alone with her thoughts.

  She had a moment of sanity, a moment of pure clarity when she realized she was going to have to face the Otis thing all over again, whether she did it tonight or she postponed it for twenty years. What she really ought to do was drive around the darkened streets and let memory pummel her until sleepiness caught up with her. It was going to pummel her anyway, and she might get deadened to the pain if she just let it have its way.

  She turned around, intending to circle the bay. Crossing the Howard Frankland Bridge to Tampa and coming back by way of the Courtney Campbell Causeway was always a calming drive at this time of night, as long as motorcycles weren't drag racing on the Causeway. Or maybe she could head south, over the Sunshine Skyway, and for a few minutes be several hundred feet above it all on the soaring bridge that looked as if it leapt aloft on golden sails.

  But the Jeep seemed to have a mind of its own. It took her to Roof's Place anyway, and pulled into a parking slot before she'd even made up her mind about which way to go.

  “Traitor,” she said to the steering wheel.

  But she hadn't eaten all day. One thing or another seemed to have gotten in her way since she awoke that morning. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that while John William Otis might be on death row, she was very much alive, and Roof's made great club sandwiches and chicken wings.

  Giving in, she turned off the ignition, climbed out into the suffocating mugginess of the night, and went inside.

  The music and noise was deafening after the quiet of the night outside. The jukebox was playing a country tune about some guy whose wife had left, taking the dog and the pickup truck. Apparently the singer was missing the dog and truck more than the woman.

  “Hey, Carey!”

  She wasn't happy to see Kel Murchison and some of the others from the station. Talk radio in America these days was a right-wing occupation in which Carissa stood out like a sore thumb, being slightly left of middle.

  There was no way to escape them, though, without being rude. She made her way to their table and exchanged greetings. Kel had the afternoon drive-time show, just before hers every weekday evening. Ed Ulrich, who went on air with the name of Ed Rich, was the news anchor. The station's two biggest guns. With them were lesser lights, a couple of producers.

  Ed had a radio voice and a radio face. In other words, his voice was great but his face looked like the backside of a mule. Too many years sitting in front of a microphone had given him a potbelly. Kel, on the other hand, was built like a greyhound, with a long face and lantern jaw. He ate constantly and burned it all off on weekend bicycle trips. The joke around the station was that anytime Kel wasn't talking, he had food in his mouth.

  “Join us,” Kel said.

  Carissa looked at the two of them and saw something in their expressions that reminded her of birds of prey. They were going to beard her on the Otis thing, and if they did, she was probably going to spend the night in jail for battery. She was that close to the edge.

  Then she spied another friend sitting alone at the table in the corner. “Thanks,” she said, “but I'm meeting a friend.”

  She started to move away, but Kel stopped her. “You going to do Otis on your show?”

  She looked down at him, hating him. “I'll think about it.”

  “It'd be a great topic for you,” he said. “Ed and I were just discussing it. You have the inside story.”

  “I'll think about it.”

  “If you don't, I will.”

  She nodded, leaving it at that, and walked as fast as she could over to Barney Willis's table.

  She knew Barney from Legal Aid, where she donated ten hours every week helping the poor deal with their legal wrangles. In a society where nearly everything was controlled by the law, there were an awful lot of people who couldn't afford help for even the simplest thing, like a divorce.

  Barney was a lawyer, too, a man with twenty years of experience under his belt, and a thriving law practice. Like most lawyers, he was one of the beautiful people, attractive and fit. Carissa had first noticed that in law school years ago. She couldn't remember more than one or two homely people in her entire class.

  Barney had been volunteering at Legal Aid for nearly two decades, and from things he'd absently let drop from time to time, she gathered he did a lot of pro bono work in his private practice, too. Barney was one of those attorneys who just couldn't let an injustice go by without taking up his sword to straighten things out. Carissa didn't know whether she admired him or thought he was a fool. In her experience, most people who had legal troubles were at least partly responsible for them.

  But she did like him.

  “Can I join you?” she asked.

  “Anytime,” he replied with a smile. His teeth were perfect, professionally whitened.

  She pulled out a chair and sat. “Angie still hasn't come back, I take it.”

  He shrugged, but the hurt was visible in his dark eyes. “I'm a workaholic. I can't blame her.”

  “So, she should have gotten a job. Then she'd have had a life, too.”

  “Things aren't always so black and white, Carey.”

  “Actually, I see things in shades of dingy gray.” She looked up at the waiter who'd just arrived, pad at ready. “Club sandwich, please. Light on the mayo.” She hesitated, then thought, what the hell. “And a beer. Whatever's on tap.” She turned back to Barney. “Speaking of shades of gray, aren't you seeing it all in black and white when you take the blame?”

  “I recognize my faults. Working sixty or seventy hours a week isn't exactly good for family life.”

  “Show me a lawyer who doesn't work sixty hours a week.”

  “There are a few.” He sipped his drink. “Most of them do wills and trusts.”

  She had to smile at that. “Dead people are easy. They don't call in the middle of the night.”

  “The only good client is a dead client, is that it?”

  Wrong subject. She felt the fist squeeze her heart again and looked away. Where was that beer? She wanted it.

  “You look… out of sorts tonight, Carey.”

  She shrugged and dragged her thoughts away from the mire. “Long day.”

  “Me too.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair, looking around the room.

  People moved continuously in swirling splotches of color, voices were raised to be heard over the music pouring through speakers around the room. There was a lot of laughter, but most of it sounded off-key to Carissa.

  Great, she thought, looking at Barney again. This is a wonderful time to get depressed.
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br />   The beer took the edge off her nerves, so she had another one. By the time she finished her sandwich, she was on her fourth. She wasn't used to drinking, though, and she was definitely beginning to feel rubbery.

  Barney said something about a case he was working on, but she couldn't concentrate on it. Freed by the alcohol, her mind was determined to go in only one direction.

  Finally she pushed back from the table. “I have to make a call.”

  Barney nodded, then called the waitress to bring more wings.

  Crossing the room seemed harder than usual, but Carissa didn't care. She found the pay phone near the rest rooms and punched in a number she hadn't dialed in five years.

  Seamus was standing with his hands in dishwater when the phone rang. He reached for the dish towel immediately, figuring something important had come up in one of his cases. His beeper was on his belt, but turned off since he wasn't supposed to be on call tonight.

  When he got to the living room, his dad was putting the receiver down beside the phone on the end table.

  “For you,” Danny said.

  Of course it was for him, Seamus thought. It was his phone. He shook himself as he reached for the receiver, trying to lose his irritable mood. Having Danny in the house wasn't helping.

  “Rourke,” he said into the phone.

  “Who was that who answered?”

  He recognized the voice. How could he not? But what he didn't expect was the sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach and the way shock made him grip the phone until his fingers ached. It shouldn't rattle him like this, he thought. He listened to her every night on the radio. It shouldn't affect him at all to hear the voice. “My dad,” he said finally. “Hello, Carissa.”

  “I didn't know you had a dad.”

  “Most of us do.” He waited, wondering why the hell she would call him, but not wanting to ask. He didn't want to give her even that much.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess most of us do.”

  He picked up on her tone, on the slight slurring of her words. “Have you been drinking?” She never drank. That was one of the things that had attracted him to her in the first place.

  “Just a… just a couple of beers.”

  He heard noise in the background, figured she was out somewhere. “Don't drive yourself home,” he cautioned. “Call a cab.”

  “I'll do what I damn well please.”

  “Carey—”

  She cut him off. “I'm not your problem anymore, Rourke.”

  He felt the bite of an old impatience. “So why'd you call?”

  She was silent for a long time. In the background, he could hear voices laughing and talking, and some sad country song wailing.

  “Carey?” he said finally. “Why'd you call?”

  “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “The governor… the governor signed the death warrant for John Otis today.”

  He let her words echo for a minute. They'd argued over this one until it had become the last straw in their relationship. The last straw among a hundred other straws they hadn't been able to weave together. “So?” he asked, forcing himself to be brutal. “That's not news. It was coming sooner or later.”

  “Yeah.” She paused, and he could hear her draw a long shaky breath. “Yeah. We knew it was coming. So how does it feel, Seamus?”

  “How does what feel?”

  “How does it feel to know you're responsible for a man's death?”

  Christ! If he could have gotten his hands on her just then, he might have shaken her until her teeth rattled. No, he wouldn't have. He never would have touched her. But, by God, he wanted to.

  “I did my job,” he said flatly. “So did you.”

  “Yeah.” She gave a strangled laugh. “Yeah, I did my job.”

  “He killed his foster parents! He slashed them to death with a razor. He's getting exactly what he deserves.”

  Her voice grew quiet. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I'll tell you one thing for sure, Seamus Rourke. It might as well be you and me flipping the switch on him in three weeks. So how does it feel to be an executioner?”

  He closed his eyes, angry and not wanting to be angry. Hurting for her and not wanting to hurt. It should have been dead and buried by now, but her call was raising a zombie from the grave.

  “Look, Carey,” he said finally, “the system did what the system does. You didn't hand down that death penalty. The jury did.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Carey, you need to get someone to drive you home.” He was more worried about her driving drunk than anything else, he realized. In this mood … “Carey?”

  “Just mind your own damn business!” She snapped, and slammed the phone down.

  He stood a minute listening to the dial tone, then hit the automatic callback code. A man's voice answered.

  “Where's that phone located?” he asked.

  “Um, Roof's Place, man. You need to talk to somebody?”

  “No thanks.”

  He hung up and looked at his dad, who was watching a late-night movie. “I need to go give a ride to a friend,” he said. “I don't know when I'll be back.”

  Danny looked at him and nodded. “Sure, son. Sure.” Then his bleary eyes jumped back to the TV set.

  Seamus wanted to smash the set. He wanted to throw his father out. He wanted most of all not to see Carissa Stover again.

  So he picked up his gun and badge and headed out. He wouldn't need the gun, but he was a cop. He never went anywhere without it. Besides, much as he hated his dad, he didn't want to have to deal with his suicide. One had been more than enough. Two would probably kill him.

  And right now, he didn't trust any of the people in his life not to do something stupid.

  CHAPTER 2

  22 Days

  T he steady rain had become a thunderstorm. Seamus drove down Thirty-fourth and watched red, pink, and blue lightning leap across the sky, watched the clouds glow from within in a dazzling array of colors. The Tampa Bay area was the lightning capital of the world, and late summer was the height of the display. There had been a time when he had loved the wild storms that often blew through. These days he hardly noticed them except as an inconvenience.

  He drove into a patch of heavier rain, and not even at top speed could his wipers keep up. He slowed down and tried to restrain his irritation. He didn't want to think about what might happen to Carey if she tried to drive in this mess in her current state.

  Cars and booze. They had turned his life into a living hell.

  He reached Roof's Place at last and pulled into the parking lot, spraying water in every direction as he hit the flooded gutter and then a deep puddle. He was just wondering where to start looking for Carey when he saw her Jeep in the side lot. It was the same vehicle she'd bought when she'd worked at the State Attorney's Office. He pulled up behind it and parked so that if she managed to slip past him, she wouldn't be able to pull out.

  Leaving his emergency flashers on, he climbed out into the downpour and felt water swirl around his ankles. Damn the woman anyway. She'd been nothing but a pain in the butt since he first set eyes on her.

  He started to dart past her car to the protection of the roof overhang, when he caught sight of movement in the driver's seat. Pausing, he looked through the plastic window and saw Carey sitting at the wheel with her head tipped back and her eyes closed.

  He rapped on the door, but she didn't respond. Muttering an oath, he tried the door and found it unlocked. He flung it open.

  “Jesus Christ, woman!” he said. “Have you lost your mind? Sitting in an unlocked car in a dark parking lot this late at night?”

  Her eyes fluttered open, and she mumbled something.

  It was useless. He reached for her arm. “Come on. I'm taking you home.”

  That seemed to wake her fully. Suddenly she was glaring at him. “No! Get lost, Rourke.”

  With a huge effort of will, he reached for some shreds of patience. “I'm not leaving you h
ere,” he said flatly. “If you don't get raped or robbed, you'll get busted.”

  “Busted! I'm not doing anything wrong!”

  “You're drunk and you're sitting in your car. Hey, you're the lawyer! You don't need me to tell you about being in actual physical control of a vehicle when you're drunk.”

  “I only had a couple of beers!”

  “That's what they all say.” He leaned toward her. “Look, here are your choices. You can climb into my car and let me take you home, or I can arrest you for DUI. Either way, you're not going anywhere alone, because I'm parked right behind you.”

  She turned her head and recognized his aging gray Taurus. “Fuckin’ cop,” she said.

  The Carey he knew hadn't done much swearing. That word coming out of her mouth shocked him a little. It was the alcohol, he reminded himself. But one thing for sure— he didn't like what he was seeing.

  “Come on, Carey,” he said impatiently. “I'm getting soaked to the bone.”

  She looked at him, then surprised him by touching the tip of his nose and wiping a raindrop from it. Then she laughed, a slightly hysterical sound. “You're all wet, Rourke.”

  “At least I'm not drunk.”

  “I'm not drunk!”

  He looked away for a moment, reaching for another shred of patience. “Wanna take the Breathalyzer and see?”

  That shut her up. She looked down at her hands and the keys in her lap. “I don't want to leave my car.”

  “It'll be okay. You can get a cab in the morning and come back for it. Come on.”

  She started to climb out, and he had to snatch at her keys so they didn't fall to the ground. She took an unsteady step toward his car, then reached out to brace herself against the side of the Jeep. He used the opportunity to grab her small handbag from the passenger seat and lock the car. Then he took her elbow in a steely grip and guided her around to the passenger side of the car. He buckled her in and slammed the door.

  When he climbed into the driver's seat, the air-conditioning felt icy. He was nearly soaked to the bone, but so was Carey. He flipped the knob from cooling to heating, and was grateful when the warmth started to seep in.