The Step Between
Page 24
No one did.
Carla Thompkins, who ran things, let them know that Jocelyn Anderson would return to work that day and, seeing that no one had anything to add, she adjourned the Monday-morning staff meeting, noting that it was the shortest on record.
Carole Ann stood and picked up her empty coffee mug. She looked wistfully into it.
“I’ll bet Paolo has made a fresh pot,” Patty Baker said, coming up behind her and brandishing her own empty cup. “Let’s go see,” she said, leading the way to Carole Ann’s office.
“You coming?” Carole Ann asked over her shoulder to Jake, who was talking quietly with Carla. He raised one finger and she left the conference room, following Patty down the hallway.
Three weeks had passed since the resolution of “the mess.” For Carole Ann, it alternated between feeling like a lifetime ago and just yesterday. The surreal qualities of the events that had transpired would not release her thoughts. Only frequent appearances in courts in three jurisdictions for the arraignments of Bill Williams and Jimmy Sanderson and their cohorts on charges ranging from murder to kidnapping to arson to drug dealing kept her mind from running out of control.
She replayed the events in her mind the way she replayed favorite records when she was a teenager: the same song, over and over, until her mother or brother shrieked at her to stop. Only this time, it was herself doing the shrieking at herself to stop. As difficult as it had been—and continued to be—to accept, all the events, though perversely related, really were happenstance, as she’d told Ruthie Eva. It was an object lesson for all those pragmatists, herself included, who denied the possibility of coincidences.
“You still look dazed and confused,” Patty said with a laugh, extending the coffeepot.
“In truth, Patty, that’s how I feel. But from this moment on, I’m going to try to take a lesson from Mr. Smith and focus my attention on the bottom line.”
“I recommend it!” she said enthusiastically. “I hope your bonus was as healthy as mine,” and she turned away quickly to replace the coffeepot on the warmer, and to compose herself. “My people really appreciated you all’s generosity, C.A. You and Jake didn’t have to—”
“Your people kept us going, Patty,” she interjected, cutting her off. “If the army of old moved on its stomach, the modern one moves on information. Whatever doubts I’d harbored about this being the information age have been put to rest. Information is what kept us from being buried under huge piles of crap.” A healthy chunk of the payments deposited into the GGI bank account that made Donald Smith so happy had been spread around among Patty and the subterraneans.
“What about piles of crap?” Jake strolled in on the tail end of the conversation and looked around. “Where’s Petrocelli?”
“Haven’t seen him,” Carole Ann replied.
“But the coffee’s fresh, so he’s in the vicinity,” Patty added, on her way out, with a wave to them.
“Don’t tell me we have another missing person.”
He nodded. “Two. We need to hire somebody to work with him. Unless, of course, you’re interested.”
She shot him a look, the one that would freeze spit, and took her coffee to her desk and dropped into her chair. “Not even in jest, Jake,” she said wearily. “In fact, I may never again leave the office.”
“You wish. Don’t forget your date with Sandra Cooper.”
She grinned. “That’s court, Jake, and I get to be the lawyer. That falls into the ‘please don’t throw me into the briar patch’ category. I’m looking forward to that encounter.” The young assistant attorney general somehow had convinced her boss that the state should file charges against Gibson, Graham for obstruction of justice and a few other things. So, instead of being a witness, as she had in the various arraignments, she, once again, would be counsel for the defense. “I’m going to chew her up and spit her out in little tiny pieces. I think that’s what I need to make me feel better and finally put this madness behind me.”
“You did good work, C.A.—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear another word about any of it. As it is I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t need to discuss it, too.”
“Well, I do,” he retorted cheerily, sinking down into the sofa and stretching his legs out on the coffee table, “and I’ve waited long enough. You’ve taken the time you need for reflection and sorting out, or whatever it is you do. Now. Tell me about that Williams character. What turns an old man—and old lawyer—into a drug-dealing murderer?”
She pressed her temples with her fingers, then ran her hands through her hair. “The same thing that turns a good cop bad, Jake, or makes a lawyer double-bill a client. I think part of it is for the thrill of it, and I think the other part somehow is related to performance. The good cop who never will make the daring rescue that will win a commendation. The skilled lawyer who never will argue precedent-setting law before the Supreme Court. Bill Williams was a good lawyer, but not a great one. He never was going to be the guest of the week on Court TV or be interviewed by Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran.”
“Hell, C.A., how many lawyers get that chance? How many cops rescue babies from burning buildings? How many Jonas Salks or Charles Drews are there? How many are there ever going to be?”
“You know that and I know that. Most of us know that, so we just go about doing and being the best that we can. But what happens to those people, Jake, who want more? Who want to be king of the hill? What are they supposed to do with that desire when the realization strikes that it’s never going to happen?”
“Well, most of ’em don’t become murderers or deal drugs,” he said darkly and without a trace of sympathy.
“No, but quite a few become substance abusers or self-destruct in a variety of other ways. Bill Williams’s path was extreme. Yet he did some good, Jake. He genuinely cared for Ruthie Eva and Annabelle.”
“The hell he did! He kidnapped that girl, C.A. He had somebody do it, which is the same damn thing. Tied her up and blindfolded her and scared the shit out of her mother, out of both her parents, for that matter. That’s caring for somebody? Then he had the bald nerve to think you’d represent his ass? Bastard!”
She didn’t try to argue. Jake didn’t feel sympathy for criminals. Period. “There is one thing I want to know from you,” she said. “Describe the look on Sanderson’s face when you and half the cops in western Maryland and West Virginia showed up to corral him.”
The look on Jake’s face shifted dramatically as he recalled the moment, hardening into the visage of the homicide detective who has seen too much ugliness. “What do you call those people who are so full of themselves they’re not able to think about other people? Shrinks have a name for it.”
“Narcissistic?”
“That’s it! He first looked totally unconcerned, like he couldn’t be bothered. Then he was pissed off and kept wanting to know where Cameron was. That was the one you and Jocelyn bagged. Then, if you can believe it, he started to whine about how something was always going wrong for him, how his plans were always being screwed up by some idiot or other. That’s why he had to kill Childress and the guy who was Archie’s go-fer, and his own girlfriend, for cryin’ out loud, whose name he couldn’t remember! The bastard! He blamed them for screwing up his plans. Then he blamed us for ‘interfering.’ Can you believe that? And the whole time he was acting and sounding so superior. So I got in his face.
“ ‘Do you know who I am?’
“ ‘No, should I?’
“ ‘Yeah, I think you should know a man if you’re going to steal his wife from the safety of his home. You remember her name, don’t you?’
“That got to him and he backed up like he expected me to hit him.”
“You mean you didn’t?”
He laughed. “Did you get a good look at Tiny Tim?”
She laughed again, fully this time, not at all surprised that the gigantic trooper was assigned a diminutive monik
er. “I take it he was keeping an eye on you?”
He nodded. “That was our agreement: I could go along if I promised to behave. And behave meant I couldn’t smack the guy.” He shrugged. “And you know how I believe in keeping my word.” And they both giggled at that. Then, still smirking, Jake recounted Sanderson’s efforts to find his brother all that night and the next day. “Tiny Tim told me that when Sanderson finally got him on the phone, MacDonald hung up on him.”
“Could we have been more wrong about him?” she asked, sounding as guilty as she felt.
Jake snorted. “His own damn fault! He had no business following you and Paolo all over town.”
“Oh, could you try to show a little compassion for once in your life! The man was being squeezed from all sides, Jake. His brother was scamming him, the kid he loves like a daughter hates her mother, who just happens to be the woman he loves. He loses a big development deal out in California, which would have bought him independence from Islington—”
“And he’s living happily ever after. So what, he had a few bad moments. He’s probably already forgotten about them. I’ll bet Miss Simmons has seen to that.”
Carole Ann laughed and conceded the point. She knew that Ruthie was living, at least part of the time, in MacDonald’s Georgetown Park home, within walking distance to Annabelle’s DuPont Circle condo, and that the young woman had been very receptive to the relationship between her mother and her friend. “I plan to pay Ruth a visit out in Eden in a week or so; I’m in need of some major pampering. I thought I’d invite Grace to go along.”
“Grace who?”
“Your wife, Gracewho.”
He snorted. “My wife would never spend that kind of money to lay around in some mud.”
Carole Ann returned the snort and followed it with a laugh and a suggestion that her partner get better acquainted with his wife’s proclivities. He stood up to leave, the pretense that he was ignoring her in full force. “By the way,” he said, and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew several folded documents, which he gave to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, a frown disrupting her humor.
“Your permits to carry a concealed weapon. Issued by D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.” He read the expression on her face and in her body and he took them from her hand and placed them on the desk. “You don’t have to do anything with them. They just exist, C.A., that’s all. If there’s ever a question, if there’s ever a need, they exist, OK?”
She nodded. It was anything but OK but that was a conversation that she most certainly didn’t intend to have.
“Oh, I forgot to mention, your friend, Gracewho, wants you to come to dinner on Saturday and she said you have to bring that wine you brought the last time that she liked so much.”
“I’ll let you know,” she said quietly.
“Why can’t you let me know now?”
“Because I don’t know now, Jake. I don’t know what I’ll be doing on Saturday.”
“You’ll be doing what you’re always doing: watching movies and eating popcorn.”
“And maybe that’s what we’ll want to do and maybe not but I’ll let you know!” She was irritated and in a mood to let him know it. She was so busy gearing up to be annoyed with him that she missed his shifting of gears.
“What ‘we’?” he asked innocently and almost gently.
“Warren’s coming into town Friday morning.”
“What for?” Jake growled, eyes narrowed.
She fixed him in a stare that he held with his own angry gaze until she relaxed her face into a sly grin. “Why do you think, Jake?” she asked sweetly, and laughed when he blushed.
“Well,” he sputtered. “In that case, ah, I, ah. . . .” Then he cleared his throat until she thought he’d choke himself, then he glared at her. “Does your Mama know?” he asked in a stage whisper and, just before the giggle began, he ran out and left her standing in the middle of her office, mouth open, speechless.
OTHER CAROLE ANN GIBSON MYSTERIES
One Must Wait
Where to Choose
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©2000 by Penny Mickelbury
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Designed by Kyoko Watanabe
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Mickelbury, Penny, 1948–
The step between/ Penny Mickelbury.
p. cm.
1. African Americans—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.I3517 S74 2000
813'.54—dc21 99-042199
ISBN 0-684-85990-4
ISBN 978-1-4767-7760-3 (eBook)