The Death of Distant Stars, A Legal Thriller

by Deborah Hawkins

  “Can’t your investigator check it out?”

  “Our investigators are more overworked than we are.”

  Hugh sipped his scotch thoughtfully for a few minutes. Then he said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let me hire an investigator for you.”

  “That’s very generous, but I couldn’t do that.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean me personally. Goldstein, Miller has a pro bono program of sorts. To be honest, it’s not as well-developed as I’d like. But we have worked with some of the Innocence Projects on a few cases to help them exonerate clients. The firm would be paying an investigator to work on Tyrone’s case. Not me, personally.”

  She could hear Tom telling her to say ‘yes.’

  Suddenly there was a light popping sound and something whizzed past her in the dark. She turned but saw nothing and no one. Then the popping resumed, and she realized someone was shooting at them. Bullets were hitting the stone patio all around them. Hugh pulled her to the ground and dragged them both behind one of the massive concrete planters that held the bougainvillea and morning glory vines.

  The gunshots continued for what must have been seconds but felt like hours. Suddenly lights came on in the windows overlooking the garden. A woman screamed, and then someone turned on the flood lights illuminating the patio as brightly as the sun.

  Jose came running out of the house, followed by Maria, the housekeeper.

  “Señor Hugh! Señor Hugh!” They ran toward the planter where Hugh and Kathryn were huddled. Jose reached them first.

  “Señor Hugh! Señora Andrews! Are you okay? What happened?”

  Hugh slowly unfolded his big body as he stood up. He reached down and gave Kathryn his hand. Her legs were shaking, and she braced herself by holding onto the concrete.

  “Someone shot at us,” Hugh said to Jose. Maria, who was crying, had come forward to hug him. Hugh lightly stroked her hair and reassured her over and over that he was okay.

  Kathryn looked down and saw at least fifteen nine-millimeter casings scattered around the patio. Whoever had been there had meant business.

  Hugh reached for his cell phone and dialed 911. The Coronado Police responded within minutes.

  * * *

  “So you work as a public defender,” Detective Richard Rodriguez said thirty minutes later as he interviewed Hugh and Kathryn in Hugh’s study. This time, Kathryn had accepted Hugh’s offer of scotch, which she sipped sparingly.

  “Yes.”

  “And you,” the detective turned to Hugh. “You represent people who’ve been hurt by big corporations.”

  “Something like that.”

  “So the pair of you have more enemies than you can count.”

  “Something like that,” Kathryn agreed.

  “Look, you two are wasting my time. More than likely some gang scum was after you, lady, because you didn’t get some guilty shit off. You get what you pay for. Sorry we can’t help you.”

  As the detective strode off toward his unmarked car in disgust, Hugh looked at Kathryn, surprised. She gave him a small smile. “Welcome to the world of being a public defender. You might want to let Erin know before she signs up.”

  * * *

  After the police left, they went into the kitchen where Maria insisted on making scrambled eggs. Hugh wanted her and Jose to eat, too; so the four of them sat down in the breakfast nook and devoured Maria’s cooking. Afterward, she cleaned up the kitchen quickly and went back to bed. Jose, too, retired again.

  Hugh poured more scotch for himself and Kathryn.

  “You have to stay here tonight,” he said.

  “No, I’ll call an Uber.”

  “I don’t mean you should stay just because we’ve had a fair amount to drink. Even though the good detective blew this off, someone tried to kill you tonight. And it was probably someone who knows you live alone and is just waiting for you to come home.”

  She drank her scotch in silence for a few minutes, wondering if she should tell him everything. Finally she said, “This isn’t the first time this has happened.”

  “You mean this isn’t the first time in your career as a public defender someone has tried to kill you?”

  “No. I’ve been in the office for seventeen years, and nothing like this has ever happened before; but since we filed the suit against Wycliffe, someone has tried twice.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” His eyebrows shot up.

  “Because the other two attempts looked like accidents, and I convinced myself they were. But now I realize someone wants me dead. Someone who has a lot of time and money to make that happen.”

  “Then you’re staying here tonight for sure.”

  “There was something else about tonight that was different,” Kathryn said. “Whoever was aiming at me was aiming at you, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Wednesday, December 3, 2014, Office of the Public Defender, 450 B Street, San Diego

  Beth Price stuck her head in Kathryn’s door at five-thirty and said, “If you don’t need anything else, boss, I’m going home.”

  Kathryn looked up from the file on her desk and smiled. “No, go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  But Beth lingered a moment longer. “Are you sure you’re okay after last night? Shouldn’t you have taken the day off and rested up?” Beth knew about the shooting because Kathryn had called her to explain why she was late and to tell her to find another attorney in the office to cover her early morning court appearances.

  “I’d have just replayed it over and over in my mind if I’d stayed home. Better to come to work where I can’t think about it. It’s too quiet at my house, and it makes it too easy to brood about things.”

  “How come you aren’t seeing anyone?”

  Kathryn thought once again of her disappointing encounter with Dan Ayers. “I don’t know. Tom’s shoes are hard to fill.”

  “You can’t fill his shoes,” Beth said. “You’re going to have to create a whole new pair and fill those.”

  Kathryn gave her a tight little smile. “I’m trying.”

  Beth disappeared, and Kathryn went back to reading the file. She didn’t look up when someone knocked lightly on her open door. She said, “It’s okay, Beth. I really don’t need anything else from you tonight.”

  “I’m not Beth,” Mark Kelly said.

  She looked up, obviously surprised.

  “I hope you don’t mind. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Hugh told me what happened. I didn’t mean to disturb your work.”

  She smiled, wishing the sight of him didn’t give her that funny feeling in her tummy. “I’m finished for the day. To be honest, I was hanging around to avoid a too-quiet house.”

  He grinned. “I have the same problem. Maybe we should hang out together. How about dinner at Martini in La Jolla? The food is not quite as spectacular as Per Se, but it’s close. And they have live jazz.”

  “Sounds fantastic.”

  * * *

  In a small, private booth, they lingered over drinks, steak and lobster tartare, and the music of the Chris Sterns Trio in Martini’s mahogany and black UpStairs Lounge. Mark asked about her work, and she told him about Tyrone’s story and Hugh’s offer to hire a private investigator.

  “You should take him up on it,” Mark said.

  They adjourned to a table overlooking the ocean, inky and mysterious under the luminous disk of the full moon. Silvered by the moonlight, tiny white waves skipped peacefully toward the shore. Kathryn felt as if she had been transported to a magical world created for the two of them alone.

  “I have a thing for appetizers,” Mark smiled at her as they studied the dinner menu. “Even though we had one in the bar, I’ve got to order some more.”

  She laughed. “An appetizer freak. I remember you ordered them all at Bice.”

  “I’m tempted to do that again.”

  But eventually he settled on oysters and Point Judith Calamari. “I’ve got to
leave room for the Georges Bank Scallops with truffle macaroni and cheese.”

  Time seemed to dissolve, along with the real world, as they laughed and talked their way through the exquisite meal. Kathryn was not sure where she could put the Dark Chocolate and Crushed Toffee S’Mores Mark had just ordered along with coffee, but she was happy for the extra time with him. The terror of the evening before no longer hung over her like a cloud.

  “You’re not holding up your end of the dessert bargain,” he complained.

  “I realize that. But I can’t eat another bite. This place may not be Per Se, but it’s close.”

  “Told you.” His face grew serious, and he dropped his light, bantering tone. “I’ve got to ask you something important.”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure you want to go on with this case?”

  She frowned. The wine was making her think a lot more about what it would be like to kiss him in the candlelight. “I don’t understand.”

  “There have been three attempts on your life. And now one on Hugh’s as well.”

  “The police thought it was some of my gang clients after me.”

  “The police were a bunch of jerks who didn’t want to do their job because you’re a public defender.”

  “Well, that, too.” She smiled at him. “I told Hugh he should warn Erin before she signs up with our office.”

  “Look, Kathryn, I think you should take these attempts seriously.”

  “I do, but there’s nothing I can do about them.”

  “You might want to consider dropping this suit.”

  “But we have Dr. Vannier’s testimony to establish that the drug wasn’t safe. And you and Hugh have said that we’ll find someone who’ll be willing to testify about the cover-up of those two deaths in the clinical trials and who can tell us exactly how many people have died since Myrabin was approved. I’m sure Tom wasn’t the only one.”

  “I agree that we have some strong evidence, but our case isn’t bulletproof. You know as well as I do that litigation is never anything but a crap shoot. Besides, what I’m saying has nothing to do with winning or losing. It has to do with staying alive.”

  “I haven’t been too attached to that notion since Tom died.”

  * * *

  December 3, 2014 Midnight, Crown Manor, Coronado

  Hugh lay on the floor in his old-man pajamas, awkwardly trying to do leg raises to strengthen his back. It hurt from all the hours he’d been sitting in chairs in conference rooms taking depositions. His last scotch of the night sat beside him on the floor. Buffy knocked and opened the door at the same moment. He was annoyed to be found in such an undignified position. She had come straight to his room from the airport because she was still wearing her travel clothes.

  He mustered what dignity he could as he got up and picked up his scotch.

  “Want one?”

  “I do.” She was angry. Buffy never drank scotch unless she was furious.

  Hugh handed her the drink and sat down in one of the small chairs across from his sofa, bracing himself for the onslaught. Buffy, who was opposed to wearing fur, slipped out of her nevertheless-expensive faux mink coat and sat down opposite him on the couch.

  “She was here last night!”

  “She?”

  “Don’t play me, Hugh. Kathryn Andrews was here. She ate breakfast in the kitchen with you this morning!”

  He adopted the calm professional tone he used in the face of hysterical opposing counsel. He always enjoyed being the only rational one in the room. He was going to enjoy putting Buffy in her place.

  “Your spies seem to be everywhere.”

  “I have a right to know what goes on in my house when I’m not in it.”

  “Well, did your spies tell you someone tried to kill both of us last night, and that’s why Kathryn slept here? She slept in Erin’s pajamas in Erin’s room. She did not sleep with me. And she ate a single scrambled egg that Maria made for her this morning and was gone by nine. She was trying to keep another attorney from having to cover all of her court appearances this morning. She’s not Logan, Buffy. She doesn’t come into the office when she wants and leave when she wants because all she has to do is sift through documents all day. Kathryn is not a blue-chip paralegal with an Ivy League law degree. She’s a hardworking lawyer with people’s lives in her hands.”

  “So she doesn’t have time for you.” Buffy’s sarcasm mocked him. She took a long drink of scotch. And then another. She was so angry her hands were shaking.

  “No, she doesn’t. She has neither the time nor the interest in me.”

  “And so that’s why she was here in the middle of the night to get herself shot at, because she has no time and no interest in you.” She polished off her scotch too fast and got up to pour herself another.

  Now Hugh was angry because he’d been cornered. Since he believed his own inflated reputation, he often underestimated Buffy’s intelligence and wound up humiliated and on the losing side of arguments with her. He was going to find whoever had ratted him out and fire the son-of-a-bitch. Jose. It had to be Jose because he and Maria were the only people in the house last night. And Hugh could trust Maria with his life. But then he realized Jose was new, and he’d fallen for Buffy’s seemingly innocent questions on the way back from the airport. No, he wouldn’t fire him. Instead, he’d train him to avoid Buffy’s interrogations and to have Maria’s unswerving loyalty.

  “Mark, Kathryn, Patty, and I went to the Grant Grill after her deposition was over to celebrate. She did well. We ate snack food and junk. I asked her back to have something healthy with me. She was going home to an empty house. I was going home to an empty house. It was just a friendly gesture.”

  “Ha! When did Hugh Mahoney ever make a friendly gesture to an attractive woman that wasn’t meant to be an invitation to sex?”

  “She’s a client, Buffy. She’s a damn client. I can’t sleep with her. I don’t want to lose my license to practice, for God’s sake!”

  “Oh, come on. The bar’s disciplinary committee is full of horny old men like you. They wouldn’t disbar you for sleeping with a beautiful woman. They’d congratulate you.”

  “That’s disgusting and untrue. You’ve had too much to drink. Go sleep it off.”

  She turned and scooped up her coat with the hand that wasn’t holding the newly- poured drink. “Good night, then, Hugh. But just remember, if you don’t stop cheating and if you don’t run for Fred’s seat, I’m going to embarrass you on every talk show in the country. Edith’s publicist is just itching to line up the dates.”

  * * *

  Hugh was shaking with rage by the time Buffy swept out of his room. He finished off his scotch and poured yet another. He paced back and forth, taking long, deep breaths and trying not to think about how high his blood pressure was. So much for avoiding stress.

  As he felt his heart rate come down, the cold pain of disappointment and despair settled around him. He went over to the locked drawer of his bureau, found the key, and opened it. His pulse began to race again as he took out the small, square blue Tiffany box. He opened it, and the emeralds sparkled green fire in the low light. Four carats, fifty thousand dollars worth of pure passion suspended from delicate strands of diamonds. He’d snuck away from work this morning, and taken a cab to Fashion Valley. He didn’t trust Jose with this secret. In fact, he didn’t trust anyone.

  Having her in the house last night had driven him mad. He could not forget those haunting seconds when he’d sheltered her in his arms, behind the planter, while the bullets flew around them. In his mind, love for a beautiful woman was always expressed by gifts of jewels. He’d learned that from his mother, who’d cherished the few diamond chips his father had managed to give her over the course of their marriage. She’d shown Hugh pictures in magazines of the jewels the dethroned king Edward VIII had showered on Wallis Simpson, the “woman he loved,” and she’d told him the shining stones told the story of deep, abiding passion.

  Buffy
and his daughters were the only women Hugh had given jewels. Mistresses got cars and houses and partnerships. But mistress were about sex, not love. What he felt for Kathryn Andrews went so far beyond anything he had ever felt for anyone in his life that he had no words to describe it. He gazed at the earrings and imagined them dangling from her ears, making her eyes that shade of deep green that he loved. He knew he could never give these to her. Just buying and hiding them like this was dangerous. But he’d had to find an outlet for the emotions that were threatening to overwhelm him that morning.

  He had lingered over the emerald rings before accepting the fact that he couldn’t go that far. He knew from his mother that emeralds were the symbol of true love. Wallis Simpson’s emerald engagement ring had been almost twenty carats. Now he knew what that kind of love felt like. But even if he, like Edward, offered to give up his kingdom for her, Kathryn, unlike Wallis, would never say yes.

  He sighed and closed the box and locked it away again. He turned out all the lights except the one by his bed. He climbed under the covers and thoughtfully sipped the rest of his scotch. Then he turned off his lamp and dreamed of the way Kathryn’s eyes would light up if only he could hand her the pale blue Tiffany box.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Monday, January 5, 2015, Juvenile Hall, Meadowlark Drive, San Diego

  The rain didn’t help Kathryn’s mood as she pulled into the parking lot that morning at eight-thirty. She had returned yesterday from spending Christmas and New Year’s with her mother in Florida. She’d accepted the invitation because traveling solo to one of the places she used to go with Tom, like Cancun or Rosarito, was depressingly out of the question. But listening to Helen and Graham Ellis finish each others’ sentences the way she and Tom once did depressed her far more than traveling alone would have done. Big mistake. And now it was Monday; and she was still jet-lagged, with a headache and bad news for Tyrone.

  He was waiting for her in the attorney-client conference room. Slumped in his gray scrubs in the gray metal chair, his skinny body looked like a gigantic piece of crumpled paper.