Sitting here now, in the blackness of his mood, it seemed smaller than Jared remembered—the formality more contrived, the décor a decade out of sync. He wondered how it had survived all of these years.
Jared forced himself to concentrate on why they were meeting. But then he asked himself, why had he elected to bring his father here? Here, to the Cellar. The restaurant where his family had always gone to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays, special events like his father’s raise or promotion, Jared’s home runs.
That was it, he realized. This was where important moments were solemnized in the Neaton family. And this was one of those moments. This was the final chapter in his relationship with his father.
It had died the winter day his senior year when he skipped school, borrowed a friend’s car, and drove to the Mission Falls Courthouse. Sitting near the back, he watched as his father was led into the courtroom on the arm of a deputy sheriff, dressed in an orange jumpsuit. His dad’s head was down. He didn’t look around at the crowd of farmers and bankers, retirees and housewives, strangers and neighbors who filled the room. Jared listened as the judge asked for his plea.
His mother had forbade him from going. She didn’t understand that he had to be there. If he hadn’t gone, he never would have believed his father’s strained reply of “guilty.” That single word crushed the life and soul out of all the lectures, all the piety, all the lessons of a lifetime. Now all that remained was the burial.
“I haven’t been back here for years,” his father said.
“Why not,” Jared replied half-consciously, searching where to begin.
“I don’t go out too much, Jedee,” his father said, looking around the room.
Jared followed his father’s look. There were only a dozen couples and groups seated in the dining room this Monday evening. Most were engaged in conversation or sitting silently over their food. But he saw one—then two—who looked away at Jared’s glance.
Jared had planned a lecture. In his weariness, he couldn’t force himself to launch the preamble. Turning back to his father, he simply asked, “Why’d you do it?”
“Do what, son?” Sam looked at Jared’s face. “Oh.”
The waiter arrived with their orders and set them down. As he withdrew, Jared looked again at his father. His face was ashen.
Jared gave him several minutes, watching as his father picked soberly at his plate.
“If you’d asked me that in prison,” Sam began slowly, “I’d have had an answer for you. I worked on it every day. Polished it like a mirror.”
He pushed his plate away from him. “But I haven’t got an answer now, Jedee. Except this. I wanted the money. I wanted money I couldn’t get any other way, or at least as fast. Not just for you or for your mom. Sam Neaton wanted the money.”
He shook his head and exhaled a sigh like he was throwing down a heavy pack. “You never asked. Your mother didn’t either. At first I thought it was a kindness. Then, it seemed cruel. Finally, I saw it was a gift. Because the years passed and I forgot the answer I’d worked on so hard. Once I lost that, all that was left was the truth.”
It was the last answer Jared had expected from his father, the proud man who used to preach hard work and self-discipline like it was a holy writ. The man who never explained himself, just lowered his head and charged.
People don’t change, do they? Yesterday Jared was sure of it. No matter what Mrs. Huddleston might say, Jared would have responded that they twisted and contorted for a while, but people didn’t really change.
Jared’s speech had fled. They ate in silence. Whatever Jared expected to feel, this wasn’t it. Mostly he felt even deeper exhaustion.
Toward the end of the meal, Jared went to the restroom. When he came back he saw, in the dim light, a man standing next to the table. He looked like one of the men Jared had caught staring. He was leaning close to his father. Even as he crossed the room Jared could see the scowl. A finger was jabbing in the air close to Sam’s chest.
Sam’s face was calm. He was silent, nodding slightly. The man looked up. He saw Jared approaching and straightened. With a final jab, he turned and crossed the room to his own table.
Jared got the check and they left. All the way home, silence haunted the car like a baffled ghost. At the house, his father headed to his own bedroom, and Jared headed directly to bed as well. It was the first time in nearly two weeks that he hadn’t descended to the basement. Despite all the work that still awaited him there, tonight he couldn’t make himself go down those stairs.
23
What did you say?” Jared asked.
The eighth day of depositions was finally nearing an end. The witness had gone to the bathroom along with the court reporter, leaving Jared and Whittier in the room alone. Through eight days of depositions, they had not conversed—had scarcely spoken to one another at all, apart from exchanges “on the record.”
“I said, are we having fun yet,” Whittier said from across the table, a superior smirk covering his face.
Jared recognized the look. He had seen it often in the halls, the library, the conference rooms at Paisley. It was a look of supreme confidence—borne of a certainty that life was going to take care of its bearer. It said that the fix was already in—through birthright, through station, but always in the background, through money.
Without even meaning for it, another memory of Clay resurfaced.
He’d snuck up on Jared in the Paisley library, startling him with a question.
“You’re looking at Nicholas Planter over there, aren’t you.”
Jared had wanted to deny it, but knew it was pointless.
“I’ve seen your fascination with Paisley drones like Nicholas over there,” Clay went on, looking past Jared’s shoulder in Planter’s direction. “They’re relentless. I like to call them our ‘strutters.’ I don’t know if it’s taught or genetic, but sons and daughters of fortune just have a knack for self-admiration, don’t they?”
Jared was surprised. Clay had seldom spoken in an “us-them” tone, as though he and Clay were part of a Paisley fraternity with only themselves as members.
“Don’t let them get to you, Jared. You don’t need what they have—or think they have. You don’t need to strut. Just take it out on their kind in the courtroom. With proper guidance, juries can see through them.” He had patted Jared’s shoulder again as he’d turned to leave. “You should too.”
The memory ended. Whittier’s gaze didn’t waver. The man truly believed this was wired: that it had been since day one with the resources of Paisley behind him. Because that’s how it always was. Now he was just waiting for Jared to admit it too. Throw in the towel and slink back to his office.
Jared wanted to feel indignation and fire, but no amount of zeal could make up for a vacuum of evidence. Still, he would not let his fatigue or discouragement show. Not now, not in the middle of a deposition, and not with Whittier smirking across the table.
“Get your witness, Frank,” Jared said as the court reporter stepped into the room. “I’m ready to start.”
The day’s depositions ended early. Dispirited, Jared couldn’t face eating alone again tonight and picked up the phone to call Jessie—before recalling that she was in Minneapolis for the day. He punched in the number for Erin and suggested dinner on the pretext of filling her in on the case. She said yes, but asked if he’d come out to the farm.
As he drove the county roads to the Larson farm, he noticed that autumn had now completely slipped away. He’d been so busy these past few months that the season had rolled past without registering. Trees stood bare; shaggy horses gathered in a paddock beside a leaning barn. The grip of winter would come soon. He wondered how many more seasons he’d miss, burdened by anxiety or lost in the fog of this or the next case.
During dinner that night, Jared unwound the day’s deposition while Erin sat quietly, nodding or asking a brief question. He tried to spin the status of the case, but realized he was doing a poor job hiding either
his discouragement or the absence of positive news.
This had been a bad idea, he realized as they cleared the table. He could see it in Erin’s face and shoulders. No way he should have come out here feeling so low.
“I should get back and work on the documents,” Jared said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence.
Erin looked at Jared for a long minute, then abruptly brushed past him, grabbing her jacket from a hook. “Come with me,” she said. Before Jared could ask why, she was out the kitchen door.
Jared gathered his own coat and followed, walking a few steps behind her rapid pace down the driveway. She disappeared through the barn door and he followed, instantly plunging into a heavy musk of hay and motor oil and dust kicked up by his shoes in the dim light. They walked toward the back of the building, surrounded by the debris of the vacant farm: horse tack in one corner, a few molding bales stacked in another.
In the shadows cast by the single overhead bulb, Jared saw Erin reach the back wall and bend over something stacked there. She picked it up and turned, holding it toward Jared at arm’s length.
It was a small window pane still in its frame. The glass was punctured with a round hole, several cracks extending outward from the puncture like arthritic fingers.
It took Jared a moment to realize that he was looking at the pattern of a bullet hole.
“It’s not the only one,” Erin said, holding it higher in the pale light. “I’ve got three more just like it.”
“I found them when I was cleaning out the barn a couple of months ago. They were probably shot out last winter and Dad changed them.”
They were back in the living room, sitting next to the empty fireplace. Erin was on the couch, Jared seated across from her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jared asked.
She shook her head. “Because I thought that no lawyer would take this case for anything but the money. If I started muddying things up with stories of threats . . . I thought it would just scare them off.”
“Threats against your father.”
“Yes. Somebody was threatening my dad about that deposit—to keep him quiet. Those holes in the windows prove it. Someone at the bank or somebody else was telling him to shut up about the money.”
Jared thought about the implications of her words for a moment. “So why are you telling me now?” he finally asked.
“Because you look like you’re about to drop the case. I can hear it in your voice.” She reached out and took Jared’s hands. “You asked me awhile ago why I moved back to Ashley. It was to help my attorney, like I said, but it also was because I couldn’t think about anything but Dad’s death. I lost my job over it. A boyfriend.”
She took a deep breath. “Jared, you can’t drop this case. I’ve got no one else to handle it. This isn’t about the money. Don’t get me wrong: if the bank has money they got from Dad, I want it before them. But you keep whatever you want. Just don’t leave my memory of Dad broken like this. Help me know where I lost him—and why.”
Her story ripped at him—but she would know that, wouldn’t she? It echoed of all he’d felt for so many years about his own father—feelings he thought were buried before this case.
He looked into her eyes. They were open and unveiled, and he wanted to believe that she was telling the truth about what she was going through, wanted to grab hold of that truth and feed off it to finish the fight. He heard Clay’s admonitions about knowing where the personal ended and the professional began. “You can’t save clients; you can only represent them,” he’d say. But if he refused to give up this war—if he actually won it—who would he really be saving?
Looking across at Erin, another thought crossed Jared’s mind, something he hadn’t pondered before seeing the windows in the barn.
“Do you think your father’s death was an accident?” he asked quietly.
Erin let go of his hands and folded her arms across her chest as she shook her head no.
Jared turned from the Larson driveway onto County Road 3. It was dark now and, immersed in thought, he drove nearly a mile before realizing he had forgotten to turn on his lights.
Erin had no real proof that her father’s death was intentional. When pressed, she could tell him nothing more than what he already knew—that her father had gone off the road two miles from home in a heavy snowstorm and hit a tree. Death had been immediate and there were no skid marks or signs of another car involved. Based on that, her conclusion was just more speculation—like everything else in this case so far.
It would have been easier if he could be sure that she was telling him the truth tonight—the whole truth. But as much as he wanted to think that—as strongly as he identified with what she was going through—he couldn’t blind himself to the gap in her explanation about the windows.
Jared dialed a number on his cell. Richard Towers’s soft voice answered.
“Richard, do you know anyone who can help get ahold of some phone records? Good. I want you to get phone records for Paul Larson’s home and cell for the month before he died.” He reminded the investigator of the date of the crash. “Yeah, all incoming and outgoing calls if you can get them.”
He set the phone down on the passenger seat as the investigator hung up. Erin seemed too certain that her father was being threatened to be relying on four old windows in the barn. Maybe it just reflected how badly she wanted it to be true—wanted her father to be under threat because he was trying to do the right thing about the money. But Jared also wondered if those panes of glass confirmed something that Paul Larson might have told her.
As he drove on toward town, Jared recalled his final thought as he’d left Erin at the farmhouse. He remembered his own father’s eyes the night of Samuel’s arrest. Seeing the pain that Erin was carrying tonight, he’d wanted to warn her that sometimes there were things much worse than knowing the truth.
24
The movie theater was quiet and nearly empty. Jared sat in the dark, playing with his cell phone, only occasionally concentrating on the screen.
Thursday had continued the string of useless depositions. To top that off, a brusque conversation with Jessie confirmed that their relationship was still fractured.
He hadn’t shared with Jessie his talks at the farmhouse Tuesday night. Erin’s failure to tell him the truth would only strengthen Jessie’s resolve that Jared give up the case. He also had not heard back from the investigator about the phone records.
In his discouragement Jared had, against his natural inclination, decided to get out tonight. He’d stopped at the empty house only long enough to leave a note to say he’d gone to the movie theater.
Jared looked around. The theater didn’t look much different than it did during his high school days when he and his buddies would come here on Saturday nights, staying just quiet enough to avoid being ordered to leave by sheepish uniformed classmates. The cracked vinyl seats were still surrounded by scarred wooden walls, sculpted in crenellated patterns that rose to a ceiling painted in a Greek motif. They were all reminders of the day when this movie theater, like the town, was still young and modern.
Jared slumped deeper in his seat. His mind was warm Jell-O, and he couldn’t resist a sinking sensation of futility. He had hoped the change would clear his head, but so far the movie was just a distant source of sounds and images that barely distracted.
He stiffened at a tap on his shoulder. “Jared?” a whispered voice asked.
Vic Waye sat in the row behind him, leaning close. “Can I talk to you?”
Jared nodded and followed the veteran up the aisle, past the few remaining patrons. Once they reached the empty lobby, Vic turned.
There was resolution in his eyes as Vic hooked his thumbs in his back pockets and began to speak. “Your dad said you’d be here. Uh, I’ve been thinking. About what you’re trying to do for Paul’s daughter. I think it’s a good thing.”
Jared stayed silent, waiting for Vic to get to the point.
“Verne, he appr
eciates it. Not suing him, I mean. He’s sorry for what he did.”
Jared nodded as Vic looked around before continuing.
“What I told you—what we told you—at the hall the other night. It wasn’t all true. I mean, we didn’t exactly lie. But, well, Paul was different the last few months before he died.”
“How.”
Vic swayed his head back and forth, searching for words. “It was that he got really quiet—even for Paul. Like he was chewing on something. Then, one day, totally different. Real . . . up—like he’d decided. Started talking again.”
“Did he tell you what had changed?”
The veteran shook his head. “No. You know, we didn’t ask. But I could see it. Something big had changed.”
Jared felt a lull of disappointment. What good was this? The pastor said as much weeks ago.
“Thanks,” Jared said.
“But,” Vic went on, “he may have told someone else. Paul was wounded badly in Vietnam. He was always trying to hide his limp, and he didn’t talk about it much. But it was there. I don’t know how he kept that farm going. He never complained. But we knew it was hard.”
Jared remembered Mort’s description of Paul being wounded. “Okay.”
“About three years ago, he started volunteering at the Veterans Hospital in Mission Falls. He met someone there, someone he connected with. I don’t think he told anyone else, but one time about a year ago when we were alone at the Legion Hall, he told me about it. A young kid. Hurt in Afghanistan. They really connected.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No.”
Jared extended a hand. “Thanks again.”
“I hope that helps.”
When the veteran left the theater, Jared waited only a moment before following him out and returning to his car.
The Deposit Slip Page 15
