Deadlocked (Lou Mason Thrillers)

by Joel Goldman

  "My luck," Samantha said. "I come out here at two o'clock in the morning for a busted window. You're not even shot."

  Mason and Samantha had dated intermittently, for hormonal reasons as far as Mason was concerned. He broke it off when Samantha said she wanted something more and Mason told her he was fresh out of anything else. Mason met Abby shortly after that. Samantha gave up any hope of getting him back.

  Samantha had shoulder-length blonde hair, green eyes, and a compact body that he hadn't thought about in months. Facing her in the dark, flush from the heat and sex, his memories of her surfaced like the twitch of an involuntary muscle, compounding his guilt about Abby.

  "You get paid the same whether or not I got shot, so don't complain," he told her.

  "That Abby?" she asked, pointing to the car disappearing at the end of Mason's long block.

  "Yeah. Shootings make her jumpy. She went home. You can talk to her tomorrow if you need to, but she didn't see anything. She was in the bathroom."

  Samantha asked him, "How about you? What did you see?"

  Mason told her, Samantha writing it down. Her partner, a rumpled, overweight, middle-age guy with a bad comb-over stood back, letting her handle the interview.

  "What's it all about, Lou?" she asked him.

  Mason ran both hands through his hair, shaking his head. "Beats the hell out of me, Sam."

  "It usually does, Counselor. Go after any bad guys lately? Piss off any good guys with bad tempers?"

  Mason grinned, one reaction Samantha could count on from him. She understood him and didn't try to change him. Then again, they weren't sleeping together anymore. Maybe, Mason thought, she'd be less casual about his capacity to find trouble if they were.

  "You remember the King and Kowalczyk case, the two high school kids convicted of killing that couple, Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes?"

  "Sure," Samantha said. "That was Harry's and Blues's case. I was just out of the academy. Ryan Kowalczyk was executed the other day, wasn't he?"

  "That he was."

  "What's that got to do with you?" she asked. As Mason told her, Samantha listened. This time her partner was taking notes. When he finished she said, "Are you telling me Whitney King was using your front window for target practice?"

  "No. Like I told Abby, I don't buy the connection. It's probably some kids just horsing around."

  "You think they borrowed Daddy's Lexus or BMW for a drive-by shooting at your house instead of picking up a dozen Krispy Kremes and calling it a night?"

  "You think only poor kids get bored eating donuts all the time? he asked her.

  Samantha nodded. "That work for you?"

  "Has to," he said. "Mind if I switch gears?"

  "This one isn't going anywhere," she said.

  "Are you working the Sonni Efron case?"

  "Matter of fact, I am. Why?" she asked.

  Mason asked her, "Any leads?"

  Samantha glanced over her shoulder at her partner. "Lou, say hello to Al Kolatch, my partner." Mason and Kolatch exchanged nods. "Al, remember this. Lou Mason never asks whether you've got any leads in a fresh murder case out of idle curiosity. Isn't that right, Lou?"

  "Would it do me any good to lie?"

  "No," she told him. "We've got nothing official yet, but we're following a number of leads. Why the interest?"

  "Nothing special," he said. "Just one thing. Sonni Efron was a juror in the King and Kowalczyk case. She was murdered the same day Ryan Kowalczyk was executed. Interesting coincidence, don't you think?"

  Samantha looked at Mason, the corners of her mouth flattening out. "Real interesting," she said. "Let us eliminate Kowalczyk as a suspect. Thanks for the tip. Go back to bed."

  Chapter 8

  An early morning run through the Country Club Plaza did nothing to clear Mason's head or pound the kinks out of his body from lack of sleep, the last punishing uphill mile on Wornall Road payback for sins not yet committed. The shops and restaurants on the Plaza were dark and quiet, the sun glinting off the Spanish-tiled rooftops, casting morning shadows on the outdoor sculpture that adorned the wide sidewalks. Swans in the Loose Park pond south of the Plaza glided through the shallow mist hanging at the edges of the water, unruffled by passing cars and early runners.

  Mason made it back to his house two blocks south of Loose Park before the sun put the city on the spit for another day. He stood in front of the wide, rectangular window that looked into his living room, pockmarked by a single bullet, a minicrater on the pane of glass. The police had found the bullet on the living room floor and dropped it into a plastic evidence bag, assuring him that they would run ballistics on it and check it against other drive-by shootings. It was a .22 caliber slug, lacking the punch to do much besides break the window. A vandal's ammunition, not a killer's. Mason doubted whether Abby would appreciate the distinction.

  He'd grown up in the two-story, dusky brick house Claire gave to him and his ex-wife Kate as a wedding gift. It was as familiar to him as a second skin, though it, like him, had become a target too many times. Neighbors had quit talking to him and instructed their children not to ring his doorbell on Halloween. Anna Karelson, the one neighbor who'd stuck by him, moved away, confirming his isolation. The shooting nearly convinced him that it was time to move on as well before the neighbors had him thrown out and the house torn down as a public nuisance.

  Anna had sold Mason her husband's TR-6. Mason had sold the car for scrap after it was stripped by carjackers, the carcass recovered by the cops. He put the money into a new Road Runner, a rock-solid truck masquerading as a car. Mason liked the higher view, the solid ride, and the wall of steel around him, attributing the change in his tastes more to midlife than nightmare memories.

  Tuffy ran from the back of the house, glad to see him, happier that he didn't take her on his run. She sniffed at his feet and crotch, removing any doubt of his identity, and shoved him toward the house so he could feed her. Mason was glad to have someone in his life whose needs were so easily met and whose affection was so unconditional. Maybe, he thought, all he needed was another dog.

  Mickey Shanahan's office was between Blues's and Mason's. It was more of a one-room efficiency apartment since Mickey had no other known address. The only other office on the floor had been vacant since the last tenant, a CPA, moved out. Mickey had quickly occupied it, referring to the offices as his rooms. The door to the CPA's office was open, the first sign he'd seen of Mickey all week.

  Mickey was in his early twenties, a skinny scammer with an engaging smile. He had a wild shock of brown hair and a patchy mouse in the cleft of his chin. He walked into the bar one day soon after it had opened and convinced Blues to rent him an office for a PR shop that had yet to see its first client. Blues traded Mickey rent for part-time bartending and pretended not to notice that Mickey lived in the one-room office.

  Mason hired Mickey as his legal assistant a couple of years ago, a title Mickey loosely interpreted to mean running the store when Mason couldn't, and covering Mason's wing when things turned ugly, Blues usually taking Mason's back. Mickey claimed that politics was his real meat and that he would one day walk the halls of the powerful, whispering in their ears, making things happen. Abby gave him a taste, landing him a spot on Josh Seeley's volunteer staff.

  "Welcome back," Mason told Mickey.

  Mickey was throwing clothes into an olive drab duffel bag. "Hey, Lou. What's up, man?"

  "The usual," Mason said. "A fight for truth and glory as our clients define it. We've got a new case. A lot to do," Mason added, pointing to the duffel bag. "You coming or going?"

  Mickey zipped the bag, hefted it onto his shoulder. "Going. Josh Seeley put me on the payroll for the rest of the campaign. Said he'd take me to D.C. if he wins. Isn't that great! I tell you, Lou, Seeley's train is pulling out of the station and I'm riding in the first car."

  Mason kept his poker face, not wanting to step on Mickey's moment, telling himself that he got by without Mickey before and would do so again.
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  "When did you talk to Seeley?" Mason asked, clearing his throat instead of asking Mickey to give two weeks' notice.

  "Well, I haven't yet, not really anyway. Abby called me this morning and said she'd talked to Seeley and it's a done deal. She said Seeley wants both of us to travel with him at least through the primary. It's going to be nonstop, man. A hand-shaking, rubber-chicken-dinner, baby-kissing extravaganza."

  Mason nodded, waiting for Abby's kick in the head to stop ringing in his ears. He wondered if Abby would call to say good-bye.

  "When do you leave?"

  Mickey checked his watch. "Couple of hours. I've got to get down to the campaign office. I put the mail on your desk plus something Claire dropped off. You can hold my last check until I get back. Either that or send it to the nation's capital. Later man," he said, his kid-in-the-candy-store smile hanging off his face. He brushed past Mason, pulling the door closed and leaving Mason alone in the hall.

  Mason propped open his office door and his window, offering refuge to the bugs that flew in, a fair price for the chance of a breeze. He checked his voice mail and e-mail for a message from Abby. Nothing. That Abby had pulled strings to get Mickey his job was plain to Mason. The question was why. To get back at Mason or to protect Mickey from what she was certain lay ahead in Mason's newest case?

  Mason decided to ask her if she called to tell him she was leaving for the next two and a half weeks or forever. Whichever came first. If she didn't call, neither the question nor the answer would matter.

  He opened the dry erase board, grabbed a bottle of water from his refrigerator, and studied the names he'd written on the board the day before. The names didn't tell him anything because he didn't know enough about the people.

  Though he had watched Ryan Kowalczyk die, all he knew was that Ryan had been convicted but died claiming he was innocent. He had met Ryan's mother and Nick Byrnes. Heard and seen conflicting portraits of both. The pictures of Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes in the file Nick had given him were of good-looking, vigorous people. They were the bred-to-succeed type who would have sent Nick to private school, lived in a big house, and traveled. At least he knew what they looked like.

  Mason didn't even have a current picture of Whitney King. He knew nothing about him except that his life was the opposite of Ryan's. He was acquitted, though Mary and Nick claimed he was guilty. He was alive while Ryan was dead. The rest was a one-dimensional yearbook summary. Whitney had been a decent student at St. Mark's, a parochial school on Main between Westport and the Plaza. He was a basketball player who had never been in trouble before that night. He could have been anybody.

  Brandon Potter, King's lawyer at the trial, had been in his prime then, more committed to the courtroom than the pint of scotch he now carried in his briefcase. Even then, Potter had been expensive. Mason guessed that the defense ran at least a quarter of a million, plus the expert witnesses who had testified that the fatal blows were struck by someone taller and stronger than Whitney, someone fitting Ryan's build. So the King family had money and, Mason knew, defendants with money spend less time in jail than those represented by public defenders.

  There was nothing in the little he knew about King that explained the murderous rampage against Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes. He had to say the same for Ryan Kowalczyk. Working-class family. Same good grades. Same school. Same basketball team. No red flags like torturing small animals, pulling the wings off of flies, or even sending threatening e-mails in the middle of the night.

  Juries want to know what happened and who did it. Those answers often came more easily than the one they most wanted to know in a case like this one. Why? Why did one or both boys—good boys from good families—go crazy and kill those people? If Mason could answer that question, he'd have a chance of getting his clients what they wanted.

  Normally, he would have told Mickey to run an Internet search on all three families, the Kings, the Kowalczyks, and the Byrnes, picking up data on houses, cars, and neighbors, the dull stuff that sometimes led to the good stuff. Mason promised himself that he'd get around to that, picking up his phone instead. Rachel Firestone answered on the second ring.

  "Buy you dinner," Mason said.

  "Wouldn't blame you if you did. Company like mine is hard to come by. Especially for a man."

  Rachel was a reporter for the Kansas City Star, a self-described lipstick lesbian who gratefully extended the term sister to describe her close relationship with Mason. She and Mason had an understanding about what was on and off the record that let them both do their jobs.

  "Company like mine comes at a price," Mason said.

  "No free lunches or dinners, huh? What do you need?"

  "Background on Whitney King."

  "Name's familiar. Wait a minute. The other kid, what was his name, Kowalczyk or something like that? They were tried for murder. One was convicted, the other got off. Which was it?"

  "Kowalczyk was executed the other day. That help any? Or are you only covering the society pages these days?"

  "Easy, cowboy. You're the one that wants the freebie here," she told him. "What's the story and when can I write it?"

  "Bring me the freebies and I'll lay it out for you. There's a new place at Eighteenth and Vine I want to try. Camille's. Meet me there at seven."

  "The Jazz District," she said. "A straight shot east on Eighteenth from the paper. Even I can't get lost. See ya."

  Mason thumbed through the day's mail, stopping at a thin envelope with his name written on it in Claire's sharp-edged script. A time-yellowed news clipping from the Kansas City Star was inside. The photograph above the story was a grainy, black-and-white of a car dangling from the back of a tow truck, its front end mangled, the passenger side caved in, the windows blown out. In the background, a gash in the guard rail cut by the car on its way into the gully below. Wet pavement reflected the glare of the camera's flash. The story below the picture was brief, the camera telling it better.

  John and Linda Mason were killed last night when their car spun out of control on a wet roadway in south Kansas City late last night. Police officers at the scene described the conditions as treacherous.

  Mason checked the date on the clipping. August 1. The fortieth anniversary of their deaths was less than two weeks away. Tucked behind the clipping was another, this one of his parents' obituary cut out from The Jewish Chronicle, the weekly newspaper focusing on Kansas City's Jewish community.

  The obituary featured a picture of his parents, probably from their wedding or engagement, judging from the unabashed joy they showed in their broad smiles and electric eyes, their heads millimeters apart. Mason held the clippings, one in each hand, not able to match his parents' faces to their collapsed car. His hands shook so that he dropped the clippings on his desk. He pressed his palms flat on the hard surface, locking his elbows to restore order in his limbs.

  Mason had never seen the clippings, never thought to ask if there were any, Claire never hinting she had them. He picked up the envelope, and a handwritten note from Claire slipped out, settling on top of the clippings.

  It's all here. Let it go.

  Claire had never shrunk from any confrontation on any subject no matter how uncomfortable. She taught him about sex, drugs, race, religion, and politics. Not just the sterile, public consumption versions. Telling him there were no stupid questions, just stupid people who were afraid to ask questions. She talked to him about masturbation and wet dreams, not easy topics for a twelve-year-old boy to cover with his aunt. She answered his questions about drugs, admitting her dope-smoking days, telling him she hoped he would be smarter than she was. She fought for the underdog, battling fiercely, never backing down.

  Sending him the clippings instead of sitting down with him to talk it through was not just unusual. It was the anti-Claire and it told him one thing. It wasn't all there and he couldn't leave it alone. Nick Byrnes's question echoed in his mind. Who was protecting you?

  Chapter 9

  Mary Kowalczyk live
d in a cramped house off of Van Brunt Boulevard, a northeast pocket of the city built before World War II and not much improved since. Small homes and apartment buildings, more tenement than residential, mixed with low-slung businesses that fixed leaky radiators, sold pagers, and rented appliances.

  Though old and modest, the house was well maintained, the front porch furnished with a swinging bench suspended beneath a pitched roof. The front of the house was made of stone, the sides covered in clapboard, giving it a sturdy feel. The narrow concrete steps leading up the sloped yard to the front door were lined with summer flowers that were holding their own in the heat, no doubt because Mary was ignoring the emergency ordinance restricting watering.

  A white Kia sedan, the front fender creased, was parked in front of her house when Mason pulled up behind it shortly after lunch. A bumper sticker on the rear fender identified the owner as a fan of the St. Mark's Mustangs.

  He had to learn as much about Ryan as he did about Whitney, not from the sterile court record, but from the people in their lives. He didn't expect Mary to be an objective historian, but she was the logical person to start with.

  Sitting in his car, Mason checked his voice mail for a message from Abby. He snapped the lid of his cell phone shut like it was the phone's fault that Abby hadn't called. He cut the engine letting the car heat up along with his mood, then getting out before he boiled over.

  Mary was at her front door, but not because she was waiting for him. Mason hadn't called to say he was coming, preferring the unprepared responses he got when he dropped in on clients and witnesses. Mary had another guest who was leaving. Shading his eyes against the sun, Mason recognized the short, squat figure of the priest who'd been with Mary at Ryan's execution. Father Steve, Mason remembered. He waited for the priest as Mary watched from the porch.

  Father Steve, his black pants and short-sleeved black shirt sucking in the heat, took his time, sweat oozing from his temples when he reached Mason. He extended his hand, squinting against the harsh sunlight. Mason caught the sour scent of sweat and cigarettes.