Defensive Wounds

by Lisa Black

  “How long have you known Marie?” Theresa asked. Frank cleared his throat, to let her know she had veered off topic. She ignored him, of course.

  “Since law school. She’s our age.”

  Theresa goggled. “Then how does she look like she’s twenty-five?”

  “By not eating, I guess.” Sonia shrugged. “Maybe a tuck here or there. I told you, she took care of her image.”

  “Can we get to more recent history?” Frank asked, before they could start exchanging diet tips. “Was she planning to hook up with anyone in between seminars?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Marie was nice to me—Don’t raise your eyebrows, she really was. Even though I obviously have the social status of a half-dead rat, she has always been nice to me. Steered me toward a civil-rights statute once that proved a lifesaver. But still, we were acquaintances, not BFFs.”

  “It’s a conference. They’re like a high school where everybody is the new kid. Word gets around.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Detective, but I don’t have any intelligence to share on hookups.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?” Theresa asked. “Husband? Fiancé?”

  “Never a husband, so far as I know. But I can’t believe that you don’t know who she’s dating.”

  “Why would I?”

  Sonia smiled, not very pleasantly. “Because he’s a particular favorite of yours.”

  Oh, boy.

  Theresa thought a moment, then exploded. “Britton? The one that rakes me over the coals about ASCLD certification and whether I can prove I used sterile tweezers to pick up a fiber? The one who exclusively defends murderers and rapists? The only attorney in Cleveland even sleazier than Marie Corrigan?”

  The attorney talking to Angela turned to stare. Detective Powell, guiding another interviewee into the room, started to laugh. Sonia threw up her hands again. “And you tell me you’re going to be objective.”

  “Britton? Well, I see where Marie got the fingerprint-analysis line of questioning. But Britton can’t be at this conference, too. I just testified in front of him this morning, about the East Sixth shooting.” Cops and carjackers had gotten into a shoot-out, which ended with two bleeding officers and one deceased carjacker. Now the suspect’s family had brought a civil suit against the police department and the dead suspect’s partner. “I thought he seemed in a hurry, though he still found time to spend twenty minutes questioning me about crime-scene procedures. Not questioning anything I actually did or actually found or actually analyzed, of course, just talking long enough to irritate me and put the jury to sleep so that they won’t remember what I did find or did analyze. Does he ever have a real point to make, or is that considered old-fashioned?”

  Sonia ignored this tirade. “Of course he’s here, in between court appearances. He ate lunch at the keynote speaker’s table.”

  “Without Marie?” Theresa calmed slightly. “She couldn’t have been happy about that.”

  “I’m sure she wasn’t, but it’s par for the course. I’ve seen them together at 1890. She’s running at full wattage, but he spends half the time on his cell phone. He’s the king of the hill, and she’s hot, and that’s all that’s keeping that relationship together. Kept.”

  Frank spoke up. “So where was he last night?”

  “That’s the question I’d like you to ask. Because if you have a suspect list, I suggest you put him at the top. You want a scumbag off the street, make it him.”

  “Why?” Frank and Theresa asked in unison.

  “I got assigned a kid picked up with some other guys for possession. Less than felony weight, so I should have been able to get him out with time served. As I arrive for the pretrial hearing, Britton is just leaving, and my client wants to plead guilty to dealing, says all the drugs in the group were his.”

  “What happened?” Frank asked.

  “The kid’s outfit offered the kid something to take the fall. Take care of his family, give him a lump sum when he got out, or else he’ll be killed in his cell before the trial can even begin. That’s the standard deal.”

  “And Britton brokered it.”

  “Had to. He conspired to coerce my client to commit perjury and obstruct justice. And yet I’m sure that in his mind he only delivered a message for his client. Period.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, except my client didn’t make his full term. A fight broke out in the cafeteria one day, and he never saw his nineteenth birthday.”

  Theresa said, “I’m sorry.” Something in the lawyer’s expression made Frank feel sorry as well. Sonia Battle might be a pain in the ass, but she was a sincere pain in the ass.

  Sonia shook it off. “I filed a complaint with the Office of the Disciplinary Counsel, for all the good it will do me. He’ll win in the end. There’s too many routes for jailhouse communication. I can’t prove it was him. I can’t even prove that a deal was made.”

  Nor could she implicate Britton in Marie Corrigan’s death. Sonia, unlike her partying compatriots, had gone back to the PD office immediately after Tuesday’s final session to work on what had piled up on her desk during the day. She hadn’t seen either Britton or Marie and had no idea where they’d been during the evening.

  “So you don’t have a particular reason to think Britton did it,” Theresa clarified. “Any other suspects?”

  “Who knows?” Sonia sighed again. “We’ve all got enemies. It comes with the job.”

  “Even you?” Frank asked.

  “Well, let’s see. One of my clients’ ex-wives sent me a Barbie doll that had had an unfortunate encounter with a blender because I couldn’t keep her ex-with-benefits out of jail. Then there’s the surfer girl who met me in the parking lot one day and gave me a fat lip and a chipped tooth before the attendant pulled her off. I represented the driver who’d totaled her brother’s car. Strong little thing. I think she spent some time in the Roller Derby.”

  “Sonia!” Theresa grasped her friend’s arm.

  “Hey, being a lawyer is like being a cop—if you’re not willing to get your ass beat once in a while, you’d better find another line of work. There’s also a Peeping Tom who graces me with an obscene phone call every couple of months—after I got him a reduced sentence, the ingrate. And the saintly-looking grandmother of my client’s alleged victim once sent me a box of oatmeal cookies with a razor blade lovingly baked into each one.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Sonia said. “A tragic waste. They had chocolate chips in them, too.”

  Frank said, “I thought families considered you the good guys.”

  “Most of my clients do end up in jail, Detective. Families think I’m the one who needs to be punished.”

  This exhausted the conversation, so Theresa bade adieu to her cousin and went to collect her daughter. Sonia came along, stepped carefully over the elevator threshold, and kept talking about Dennis Britton. “I filed my complaint with the bar last year. But he just keeps schmoozing the board and having it postponed.”

  “It’s the same way he tries his cases,” Theresa said. “He just delays and delays until he gets the best deal he can, and then suddenly the guy he’d been insisting was as pure as the driven snow pleads guilty. Do you know anything else about Marie’s relationship with him? Anything at all?”

  “Like, were they into S&M?”

  Theresa rolled her eyes. “I take it the crime scene isn’t much of a secret anymore?”

  “You want something kept secret, don’t let that squirrelly little guy from Des Moines in the room. He’ll eat lunch on that story for the next three months. I don’t know what they did for sex—except that they probably met at the Hyatt to get together. I told you I saw them at 1890 more than once.”

  “Why a hotel? They live on opposite sides of town or something?”

  Sonia gave her that pitying look again. “You don’t know that, either? Britton’s married.”

  “Married.”

  “To one of the Vaughn girls. You know, Vaughn Ai
rcraft?”

  Theresa formed an O with her mouth. “Big bucks.”

  “If your forehead were a neon sign, ‘Hello, Motive!’ would be flashing across it. You are so transparent, Theresa. That’s why I love having you on the stand.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are you going to report everything I tell you back to your cousin?”

  “Of course I am. We’re trying to solve a murder here. How long have they been—”

  The lobby had quieted some. Theresa came to a halt near the front desk and waited until the harried young woman there arranged for Housekeeping to deliver yet more towels to Mr. Trask in room 1402. “I don’t know what he’s doing with them, and I don’t want to know. Just don’t lose count.” Then a new call erupted from a Mr. McManus who wanted his regular suite, but it currently contained an aging actress with the Wicked tour, and surely he would understand that they couldn’t uproot such an esteemed and fragile lady. But apparently Mr. McManus did not feel quite so understanding, and so the girl put both calls on hold and rubbed her forehead, then handed a white envelope to the young man Theresa had seen earlier in the day.

  “Hi,” he said to her. Brown eyes, good skin, clean-shaven. “Are you looking for Rachael?”

  She confirmed this.

  He jerked his head toward the elevator bank with a pleasant-enough smile. “Come with me. I’ll show you our hideout.”

  “Lead on,” she told him, grasping Sonia Battle’s elbow.

  CHAPTER 6

  *

  Sonia dragged her feet, both literally and figuratively. “I really should get back to work. I’ve been gone all day, and my desk—”

  “Not. I’ve been listening to you vent about how we’re all nasty agents of the prosecution and egging on the killer. The least you can do is ooh and aah over my kid for a minute or two. You haven’t seen Rachael since she was, what, ten?”

  Sonia stepped into the elevator, eyes on the floor, and mumbled a reluctant assent.

  William pushed button number thirty-three, then turned to face them.

  “Your hideout is in a penthouse?” Theresa asked.

  He merely smiled. “You’ll see.”

  William’s name had been popping up in conversation, steadily and increasingly for the past two weeks, so Theresa used the ride time to observe. About five-eleven, dark brown hair in a conservative but not-too-short cut, no visible piercings, looked her straight in the eye. So far so good, even if the straight look held a bit more defiance than affability. She stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, William.”

  He gave a perfunctory smile, using decent teeth. Theresa introduced Sonia, who still fidgeted, and he repeated the process. Smile, shake.

  Sonia’s pasty complexion turned a bit green. Perhaps she was claustrophobic. Or had a problem with heights. Even Theresa felt a bit dizzy when they stepped off onto the thirty-third floor, though it could have been from the slight stripe in the carpeting. It complemented the walls and the framed black-and-white photographs of the Terminal Tower at various stages: in the thirties, the fifties. Theresa barely had time to glance at them or at the office doors they passed as William led them around to a second elevator bank. There the carpeting and the decor stopped. The fancy wood paneling and glossy floor of the car were covered with huge panes of steel or aluminum. It didn’t look like something you wanted to step into and be suspended thirty-three floors above the ground.

  “Where are we going?” Theresa asked.

  William held the door open. “It’s a surprise.”

  “I hate surprises,” she muttered, and kept a firm grip on Sonia’s elbow. The lawyer looked ready to bolt.

  As the doors closed, William pushed button number forty-two, and Theresa could guess their destination.

  “The observation deck is closed,” she said.

  “Yes, it is,” the young man agreed.

  Theresa felt a worried thrill. In her forty years in the city, she had never been up to the observation deck—or if she had, she’d been too young to remember. It had been officially closed since 9/11, but it had been closed off and on before that. The firms on the thirty-third floor got tired of the tourists trooping past their doors and lobbied to restrict access to weekends only. Providing guides and guards for the deck eventually cost more than it brought in.

  The doors opened to a room in no better shape than the elevator—a bare, dusty floor, peeling paint, exposed ceiling pipes, a few scattered cigarette butts and empty fast-food wrappers. Under construction, obviously. Empty, and growing dark.

  Everything about the situation felt wrong, and neither woman moved.

  “Where’s Rachael?” Theresa demanded, surprised by the quaver in her voice.

  “Here,” William said without inflection. He walked off, leaving her no choice but to follow. Sonia trailed behind her.

  He led them into a hallway. To the left sat a small room with three large windows, overlooking the Cuyahoga River. Theresa’s bout of nervousness melted into delight to see the Flats, the Hope Memorial Bridge, part of Steel Valley—even more of it when she turned to her right and the larger room, with sweeping views of Lake Erie.

  But still no Rachael.

  “This way,” William said, and plunged into the dim inner core of the deck, again without waiting for a response. Theresa turned to be sure that Sonia would follow and then went behind him up a circling metal stairway. Her feet complained about the prolonged use of leather pumps on hard surfaces, and she promised them it wouldn’t be much longer. The air grew darker with each ringing step as the natural light from the observation room remained below.

  William’s shadowy form approached a door, rimmed with sunlight and, giving a small grunt of exertion, pushed it open and freed them into the upper observation deck, an outside ring that formed the highest point in the city of Cleveland—at least on this side of Ontario Street.

  She could immediately hear her daughter’s voice. Now she followed William without hesitation, sucking in the water-scented breeze. The outside deck couldn’t have been more than four feet wide and made of shingles layered, plastered, and painted over through the years until the surface beneath one’s feet had an uncomfortable give to it. This surface and the chest-high outer wall had been freshly painted in brilliant white.

  About a third of the way around, this channel had been plugged by a small scaffold for men working on the tower’s brickwork. Rachael sat on the platform, arms resting on a wire railing while her legs dangled seven hundred feet above the city of Cleveland. Another girl rested next to her, with a boy on the steps leading up to the platform.

  “Get down from there!” Theresa burst out before she could help herself.

  Rachael just grinned. “Come up here. Are you ready to go now? It’s three hours past the end of my shift, and I am so over the drama.”

  “Who you kidding?” William protested. “You’re all about the drama.”

  “That thing looks like an Erector Set, and you’re trusting it—”

  “Come up here,” Rachael demanded again, because she knew her mother. And Theresa slipped off the pumps and did so, slowly, gingerly, but ultimately unable to resist the delicious freedom that comes with perching high atop the rest of the world, tempting both fate and gravity.

  The wind was hearty but not cold. She sat in the middle of the small platform and then scooched to the edge, destroying her nylons and working hard not to flash the innocent youth around her. The “railing” made of three cables would reach only her hip while she was standing, and she had grave doubts that it would stop someone from tumbling over, though it felt rigid enough to the touch.

  William tucked himself into the foot of space between the steps and the outer wall, gripping the railing post, his fingers an inch from Rachael’s thigh. Sonia stayed on the deck, leaning on the outer wall. Theresa reintroduced her, and the attorney dutifully produced a My how she’s grown beam at Rachael. “But are you supposed to be up here?”

  “No,” the girl admitted. “Bu
t we’re not hurting anything. The guys working on this are never here. They’ve got some contract dispute going.”

  William pulled off the white chef’s smock, revealing a taut torso in a plain black T-shirt. His stare, while not hostile in any way, felt piercing enough to make Theresa think about squirming with discomfort. But then, she thought as she looked at her daughter, didn’t all excitement begin with discomfort? “You’re investigating the murder?” he asked Theresa.

  Rachael answered for her. “She’s been picking up hairs and fibers and using a black light on our signature light-as-air comforters.”

  “But it’s a hotel room,” the other girl pointed out. “All sorts of stuff in there.”

  “Exactly. So give it up, Mom. If you want to know what really goes on in this hotel, you need to talk to us.” Rachael obviously enjoyed the role reversal, with herself as the dispenser of information.

  William had gotten that right. Rachael was all about the drama.

  Interviewing witnesses had never been part of Theresa’s job. Usually she avoided witnesses, victims, and suspects as much as possible, to keep from becoming biased by their opinions and because people under stress could be problematic and unpredictable—not to mention a pain in the ass. And prickly detectives didn’t take kindly to what they saw as interference. Too soon to tell whether Kelly and Powell fell into that category. But age had taught her that the fruit of vital information could tumble out of any tree. “Okay, tell me.”

  Rachael introduced the black girl and a pudgy boy as Lorraine and Ray. Both gave their location when they’d heard about the murder and a detailed theory as to what had occurred. Theresa nodded until her neck began to hurt. Sonia, uncharacteristically, said nothing.

  Lorraine reported, “So Bobbi said that our maintenance guy is always hanging around the Club Level floor when he’s not supposed to be, and no one’s seen him since this morning—”

  “He’s in the machine room with the electrician,” William corrected. The wind picked up a lock of Rachael’s hair, and he reached out to slide it back over her shoulder in a gesture that expressed way too much familiarity between them. “I keep telling you that. The A/C in storage is out, and the soap’s getting soggy.”