by Chris Rogers
“Which means you’ll testify against him?”
“How would you feel about that?”
“Your having to say in front of a courtroom what he tried to do? Hellfire, Dixie, the sonofabitch belongs in prison. Putting him down for the count is the only way to make up for those bruises and that broken foot. I want to be right there in court to hear you crucify him.”
Dixie didn’t think Coombs’ attack on her would crucify him, since he hadn’t been successful in raping her. A jury might reason that any woman figuring she had balls enough to be a bounty hunter should expect a few bruises. Juries were unpredictable. But she was glad Parker felt the same way she did about testifying. Men could also be unpredictable.
When she’d put away the last of her omelet and half a package of cookies to make the milk drinkable, she battled the crutches to lend a hand with the dishes.
“Give it up,” Parker told her. “You’re not helping.”
“Thanks.” Dixie hung up her dish towel and gimped to the living room to read the newspaper.
Later, wind whistling around the windows, they flicked on the bedroom television and prepared to snuggle together in her big four-poster bed. Kathleen’s patchwork quilt would keep them warm enough. In the past couple weeks, the ten o’clock news followed by The Tonight Show had become Dixie’s favorite time of day. The snuggling invariably turned serious about halfway through Leno’s monologue.
Dixie knew that wouldn’t happen tonight, when the only square inch of her that didn’t hurt was her navel. Her hands had gone numb from using the crutches, and her armpits ached as much as her bruised ribs from carrying her weight. But she still craved the comfort of curling up in bed with Parker.
While he was in the bathroom, she clumped to the dresser and peeled off her sweatshirt. The left side of her chest had turned an ugly purple. Quickly, before Parker could see it, she slipped on a fresh oversized T-shirt. Tomorrow she’d have to learn how to shower without getting the cast wet. Fiberglass would be lighter, and waterproof, the doc had told her. But he was out of it.
During the first commercial, Parker turned off the sound.
“Will you really talk to Carl about his investigator friend who wants a partner?”
“I’ll talk. That doesn’t mean I’ll take the offer.”
“What if I was part of it? Like Carl said, doing what I do best.”
Dixie hated that idea. She wanted two working partners less than she wanted one.
“There’s not a whole lot of selling to be done in investigation. Think about it. Would you knock on someone’s door and say, ‘Hey, lady, for twenty thousand bucks, we’ll locate that teenager you misplaced last week’? Customers generally come by referral.”
Parker nodded, absently smoothing the faded quilt over Dixie’s thigh. “How would you feel about spending some time in Galveston—while your foot heals? There’s a summer house for rent right next door to mine.”
They could watch the new construction go up. Whoopee. But she wouldn’t be doing much anyway. And Mud loved the beach.
“Sure,” she said.
“I may be busy part of the time, with the yacht business gearing up.”
“January is boating season?” Dixie shivered and snuggled closer.
“People start dreaming about warm weather. A lot of money can be made on other people’s dreams.”
The commercials had ended. He thumbed up the volume, but when the next break came, Dixie took the remote and hit the MUTE button.
“Do you think I do what I do for the money?” she asked.
“I suppose you make a decent living off the pecan farm.”
“Yes, I do.”
“So you don’t really need to work … at anything.”
“Not for the money. There are other rewards to be had from working.” He should know. He’d socked away enough to retire for life.
He caught a strand of her dark hair and wrapped it around a finger.
“I’m a salesman, Dixie. For me, every angle involves money. Besides”—he tugged at the strand of hair—“you do take a bounty.”
“Of course I do, it’s business. But—” She sighed. “But money alone wouldn’t make me take a job I didn’t believe in.”
Smoothing her hair aside, he nuzzled her ear. His lips felt soft, his breath warm. His tongue tickled.
“You don’t believe in finding lost kids?”
“Some of those kids don’t want to be found—and for good reason. Some will be found with needle tracks up their arms and fried brains. Others will never be found—alive. It’s a heartbreaking business.”
His eyes narrowed and his expressive mouth turned down at the corners. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
She tossed the remote on the nightstand and snuggled gingerly under the covers, wanting to wrap her good right leg over his, but the splint was like a stone wall between them, and every movement sent a fresh shiver of hurt in one direction or another.
“Nevertheless,” she murmured sleepily, “I’ll talk to Carl’s friend.”
He kissed her forehead, then her cheek, then slid down beside her to capture her lips.
Outside, the wind whistled fiercely under the eaves, while inside, Kathleen’s quilt cocooned them and the flickering TV screen bathed them in colored light.
Six weeks, the doctor had said. Not if she could help it.
Chapter Five
Monday, February 10
Dixie’s pager shuddered silently against her hip. She checked the number, then tossed away the remainder of her sandwich. Julie Colby, the victim-witness coordinator, liaison to Brenda’s staff, had promised to beep her as soon as the jury reached a verdict. Seeing the familiar number, Dixie paid her lunch tab and clumped hurriedly along a tunnel with lime-green walls. She could get around now without the crutches, but she carried one along when she knew she’d be swinging the four-pound cast for a while. Squeezing into a crowded elevator, she rose to the fifth floor and eased open the door of Judge Engleton’s court. From the low collective babble, she knew the jury was still out.
The courtroom was packed. Dixie slid into a back row, shed her jacket, and plucked a speck of gray lint off her tan sweatshirt. The drive from Galveston had been frustratingly bumper-to-bumper, due to construction on the Interstate. She’d rushed through several errands before Julie paged her, and now she wondered if her deodorant was still on the job. Sniffing, she wrinkled her nose.
“Could be worse,” offered the man sitting next to her. White-haired and small-boned, he looked like everybody’s favorite uncle. His blue eyes glinted. “Better a little honest sweat than that godawful flowery smell women spray all over themselves.”
Dixie had to agree. “Morning elevators are the worst. Hair spray, talcum powder, cologne, and men’s aftershave lotion.”
He poked her with a bony elbow, glanced around, and lowered his voice suggestively. “A spot of perfume behind a woman’s ears, now, that ain’t so bad, but there’s one place a woman oughta smell like a woman—”
“Hey! Stow that thought, goat-twerp!” She scooted away, ignoring his lecherous wink. Just her luck to sit beside a dirty old man. Now a jungle of Rastafarian braids blocked her view. But leaning sideways, she found a wide enough opening between the braids and a tall, baby-patting mother to get a clear view of Lawrence Riley Coombs.
The defendant looked as dashing as ever, sitting there in his conservative gray suit, hundred-dollar tie, and those trust-me blue eyes. Dixie had to commend counsel’s shrewdness in assigning one of their female junior partners to the case, as if to say, “This attractive young woman would never defend a man guilty of rape.”
But it would take more than smart lawyers to set Lawrence Coombs free. It would take a jury of blind, deaf monkeys.
“He’ll walk.” Belle Richards slid her classy rump onto a vacated spot on the bench. “Trust me.”
Dixie recognized her Bill Blass suit from a Fortune magazine article touting Belle as Texas’ “hottest female defen
se lawyer.”
“Not a chance he’ll walk. Unless every woman on the jury is a Stepford Wife.”
“Worth a wager?”
Dixie hesitated. “A week at your Caribbean condo.” She hesitated again. “Against what?”
“Against a favor.”
The artful gleam in Belle’s eye made Dixie instantly wary. “What sort of favor?”
“I need someone to play bodyguard to the teenage daughter of one of the firm’s best clients.”
Dixie was itching to work again. Four sedentary weeks watching Parker’s house go up were enough already. But the teen years often turned adorable kids into sullen, smart-mouthed terrors, hanging out on street corners, selling drugs in school yards. She hoped Ryan would escape the adolescent process and go straight from fantastic twelve-year-old to sensible adult.
“Bodyguard or bratsitter?”
“Our client received threats,” Belle said, “against her own life and the girl’s. The client was worried enough to take her daughter out of a pricey school—she’s some kind of whiz kid—and bring her along.”
“Along from where?”
“L.A. To work in Houston for four days.” Belle snapped her purse open and paused to check her lipstick in a palm-size mirror. “This is a VIP account, Flannigan. I need someone on the case I can trust.” She dropped a set of keys into Dixie’s lap. “In addition to your usual outrageous fee, you get to chauffeur the girl around town in the company Porsche.” Belle knew how to sweeten a deal to make it damn near irresistible. “Targa 911,” she coaxed. “Gas included.”
“Four days. How long do I have to think about this?”
“The wager or the job? I need someone to pick up the girl tomorrow morning.”
Dixie grinned. “Then you’d better lay out a backup plan. My week in Martinique is cinched. Hearing the jury’s verdict is only a formality.”
“You wouldn’t think so if you’d heard the victim testify—” Belle clamped her mouth shut, then, “Oh, shit! I forgot you’d had a run-in with Coombs yourself.”
“Got a nice souvenir from the occasion.” Dixie tapped the crutch propped beside her. As a witness herself, she hadn’t been allowed in the courtroom during the trial, but she’d followed it in the news and had occasional conversations with Brenda Benson.
Belle looked down at Dixie’s cast. “You know, Coombs’ father made sizable donations to a number of political campaigns, including those of some prominent judges. And his playboy son has sense enough to keep the money flowing.”
“Sounds like the kind of back-scratching crap that made me get out of this business three years ago.”
Dixie slid her gaze across the courtroom to Regan Salles, the victim who’d had enough guts to accuse Coombs: full-breasted, full-hipped, with china-doll skin, platinum curls, and a pouty attitude that attracted men like kids to a cookie jar. Regan had demonstrated strength and composure the first time Dixie saw her in the courtroom. Now she looked angry and spiteful; not the best persona for influencing a jury. Julie Colby, the tall, phlegmatic witness coordinator clasping Regan’s hand in support, was speaking as if to calm her, but the rape victim appeared locked in her own anger.
“I saw Regan’s photographs after Coombs worked her over,” Dixie said. “That was enough to convince me of what’s true. It’ll convince a jury.”
“Truth and testimony are two entirely different concepts, Flannigan. How did you manage to miss that in law school?”
“I caught it. I didn’t want to believe it.”
“Trust me, in rape cases, Engleton is a man’s judge.”
“The jury still decides the verdict—”
“Based on evidence presented and allowed. Which in Engleton’s court can get skewed.”
Dixie was the first to admit that the Texas legal system rarely measured up to the wide-eyed ideals she’d harbored as a junior prosecutor. And Belle was right about Engleton. Unfortunately, he wasn’t—in her opinion—the only judge who allowed bias to taint the ideal of due process.
She scanned past Regan to a third woman—Clarissa Thomas, slender and stylish, with a thin pinched face, pale hair, pale eyes, pale expensive designer clothes, and a strident determination to right wrongs. Clarissa had stumbled upon the rape scene in a suburban park after leaving her stalled car on the roadside. In search of a phone to call her husband, she arrived in time to see Coombs slink off through the trees. Later, she’d picked him from a lineup without hesitation. But now she seemed to cower from Coombs’ mocking stare. That cowering could translate as uncertainty.
Yet, surely a jury could see through Coombs’ slick posturing. According to Brenda, the man was suspected of raping and beating at least five women in two years. His victims described him as charming, generous, and thoughtful—until sometime around the third date. Dixie had seen that charm at the Parrot Lounge. She’d seen his other side, too.
Women admitted being willing to have sex with Coombs, but apparently he wasn’t interested in willing sexual partners. His game was to win a woman’s confidence, then come on rough, using his fists. Sometimes he used a knife.
A jury was not privy to unsubstantiated reports, though, and the other victims were too terrified of Coombs, or too ashamed and frightened of cross-examination, to go to court with what they’d suffered. Dixie couldn’t actually blame them. A good defense lawyer could twist a rape victim’s words until she sounded like a whore.
Brenda Benson had won tougher trials. She knew how to elicit strong testimony, and her final arguments never failed to touch a jury where it mattered. Brenda could convince a stone to roll over. Yet, lately, some of her big cases had gone south.
“How was the prosecution’s cross?” Dixie asked Belle.
“Benson was good. She was damn good.” Belle shook her head. “But that slimy bastard turned on his thousand-watt smile and dampened the crotch of every female on the jury.”
It figured. “What about the men? Sometimes they’re more astute than we give them credit for. They’ll see right through Coombs.”
Belle shrugged. “Trust me, all the men would kill to have Coombs’ style and money and good looks. Secretly, they admire the bastard.” Belle’s gaze shifted to a middle-aged couple sitting across the aisle. She lowered her voice. “Did you know about the girl who’s been catatonic since Coombs ‘allegedly’ finished with her? That’s her parents.”
The couple appeared to be in their fifties, the man sad-eyed and shrunken, the woman dark and intense. She kept twisting the strap of her alligator handbag so hard Dixie expected to hear it snap. If a look of hatred could kill, Coombs would never hear the jury’s verdict.
“Brenda’s counting on this conviction,” Dixie said.
“I hope she gets it.” Belle plucked at a racquetball glove peeking out of Dixie’s pocket. “Tell me you aren’t nuts enough to attempt a game with a broken foot.”
“A game, a workout, and a rip-roaring celebration, if the jury brings in the right verdict. The foot is healed.” Well, practically. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I have to meet a client. Flannigan, call me when you’re finished at the gym. By nine o’clock at the latest. If you don’t take this job, I have to find someone to pick up the girl by seven A.M. tomorrow.”
Dixie nodded vaguely. She hated bodyguard jobs almost as much as she hated sitting on her butt watching paint dry.
“But about that cast,” Belle said, as if reconsidering, “when does it come off?”
“Tomorrow.” Actually, tomorrow was pushing it, but Dixie had badgered the doctor into using ultrasound to hasten the healing process. She was optimistic. She turned her gaze on Lawrence Coombs.
“What do you think makes a man take pleasure from inflicting pain on women?” she asked Belle.
“Who knows? Early abandonment by his mother? Punishment or humiliation suffered as a child?”
“Or maybe a chunk of his neurological cells mutated while the bastard was still in the womb.”
“You’re a cynic, Fla
nnigan.”
“Some of us have to be.”
Such unanswerable questions were part of the reason Dixie no longer sat in the prosecutor’s chair. She believed in justice, not law. She believed the negative emotions that triggered crimes were common to all humans—greed, lust, frustration, anger, fear—and that criminals could be lumped into three classes. Third-class criminals were ordinary people pushed too far. They genuinely regretted their mistakes; given a second chance, they could usually reestablish themselves as worthwhile citizens. Second-class criminals were low-life scum indoctrinated early with the wrong values; occasionally, second-class criminals were “rehabilitated” by the system. But there was one sort of monster that no amount of punishment or counseling would change. Lawrence Riley Coombs was such a monster. A verdict of “not guilty” today would be tantamount to issuing Coombs a license to assault and rape.
A hush swept through the courtroom as the door opened to the judge’s chambers.
“All rise,” droned the bailiff.
Judge Engleton took his seat behind the bench. As the jury filed into the room, Dixie tried to read their faces. Drawing only blanks, she turned her attention to the prosecutor’s table. Brenda Benson scuffed her chair around for a better view of the jury.
“Brenda’s aged since this trial started,” Dixie whispered. Her friend’s lithe body looked ten pounds thinner under a smart gray suit. If Coombs walked, she knew, Brenda would take it as a personal failure.
Stepping forward in the jury box, the forewoman handed a folded sheet of paper to the bailiff, who gave it to the judge. The judge donned a pair of reading glasses, unfolded the page, looked at it without a flicker of change in his solemn demeanor, then passed it to the court clerk. The clerk faced the defendant and cleared his throat.
“On the charge of assault, we find the defendant, Lawrence Riley Coombs, not guilty. On the charge of rape, we find the defendant not guilty.”
