Panther's Prey

by Lachlan Smith

  Dot and Tamara were in the front room, supervising Carly at the easel, newspapers spread on the floor at their feet. The door was open, the family’s fat yellow Lab lying across the wide threshold. It was eight months since I’d last seen Dot. Today was hot, and she was wearing a sleeveless top and jeans, her leather jacket and chaps lying discarded over the arm of the couch. When I stepped over the dog and said hello, each woman looked away, as if I’d brought shame on the family. In many households the source of their coldness would have been my recent stay in jail. In ours, it was how I’d gotten out.

  Dot gathered herself, and rose for a brief embrace. “I’m sure you’re glad to be back,” I said as she stepped away. She’d lost weight, and her hair was cut shorter and had, I imagined, more gray in it. But on her face was still the same no-nonsense expression I remembered from the first time we’d met, a look that promised woe to any man who crossed her.

  She stepped back, sizing me up and apparently not liking what she saw. “Yes and no. If I’d guessed the kind of trouble you were in, I’d have kept Lawrence as far away as possible.” I nodded. She’d provided an alibi for Lawrence in the trial, but I’d sensed it was a lie. Bell had been a sadistic, unrepentant rapist, a true psychopath, and had sought to cover his own crimes by offering himself as a snitch against my father. No man deserves to die, but his death hadn’t added to the world’s sorrows.

  “Whatever Lawrence has done, I didn’t want or ask for it,” I said. But that was no excuse. He was my father and I was his son. He’d make any sacrifice for me and she knew it.

  Her face seemed to harden in response and she turned back to Carly and Tamara. Carly wiped her hands and ran to me. I hugged her, touched her mother’s arm with silent acknowledgment, then went out through the kitchen to the backyard, where I found Teddy and Lawrence in plastic Adirondack chairs by the lemon tree, drinking from sweating bottles of Red Tail.

  “Grab yourself one,” Lawrence said. I declined.

  Teddy watched me like a kid waiting to be called out for some misdeed, but Lawrence was riding high. I’d helped assure his freedom, and now he’d returned the favor. He was magnanimous in his new role of benefactor. “Congratulations,” he said. “Twenty days or twenty years, it’s just a matter of degree. You’re out.”

  “Quit bullshitting. I didn’t need anyone to spring me.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it.” He gave me a wink.

  I straddled one of the chairs and returned his gaze with dismay. During his twenty-one years behind bars, he’d mastered San Quentin’s Darwinian rules and emerged as shrewd as a fox among wolves, and I now saw he was utterly without moral qualms where his or his family’s survival was concerned. An innocent man indeed.

  “What now?” I wanted to know.

  “You go back to the public defender’s office.”

  “And you?”

  “I need to make a living. And for a man who’s spent more than two decades in prison, there aren’t many ways to do that.”

  “We won’t be breaking any laws,” Teddy put in. “Bo Wilder, this big, bad white supremacist prison gang leader, he invests all his spare cash in real estate. He’s some kind of absentee slum lord. He’s got plenty of people he trusts to do his dirty work. But he needs ones he can trust to handle the clean side of his business.”

  “You believe there’s such a thing as a clean side?”

  My father shook his head like I just wasn’t getting it. “He’s got six hundred rental units and a dozen resident managers all currently doing whatever they want. What he wants us to do is clean it up, get everything in compliance with the law, file articles of incorporation, hire experienced staff, get the operation running like a proper business.”

  “And this’s why Teddy was in fear for his life, and why you had to run halfway around the world, and why our office was firebombed. All because Wilder needs a couple of guys with no experience in property management to handle his rental business.”

  I didn’t for a second believe that they’d merely be keeping his rental books.

  “There ought to be plenty of money coming in with an operation like this. Right now, though, there’s not. He wants us to find out why and fix it.” Lawrence shrugged. “It’s accounting, not rocket science. I called a few people who are in a position to know, and what I hear is Bo’s stepped back. He’s taken his money out of the game. Which makes sense, given he’s in prison. He saw what happened to Santorez.”

  “Because he was the man holding the knife. He sent us the man’s ears.”

  “Right. Meaning, Bo knows better than anyone the game is finished for him. He has a family, just like Teddy does, and he wants them looked after. That’s his priority now. He doesn’t trust his old associates for a job like that.”

  “He trusts you?”

  “Like it or not, I owe him. If he hadn’t put out the hit on Bell, I’d be in prison now. I didn’t ask him for that, but it doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. He gave me back my family. I can’t turn away from such a serious obligation, nor would I want to.” It was as if he’d forgotten entirely about his sojourn in Croatia. “And then there’s leverage. I think he’s demonstrated that there’s a downside to not doing as he asks.”

  “He threatened your family, Teddy,” I said in a quiet voice.

  Teddy’s face looked pale beneath the lemon tree. “To be accurate, what he told me was I could walk away, but in that case he couldn’t guarantee my family’s safety.”

  “And what if working for him puts you where he is?”

  Teddy didn’t have an answer to that. “It won’t,” my father said, as if his assurance ought to be good enough for the two of us.

  “So it’s done.” I had to swallow back an enormous bitterness. I hadn’t been conscious of a progress in our lives, or what we might be progressing toward. Normality, I thought now, the kind of easy domestic existence the rest of the world seemed to take for granted. I could feel all the achievements of the last six years slipping away, as if a great wave had lifted us nearly to safety but now was sweeping us back out to sea.

  “So this is how the two of you plan to make your living from now on. Have you told Tam and Dot?” I couldn’t keep the belligerence from seeping into my voice.

  “Dot knows,” Lawrence said. “I’m not sure what Teddy’s told Tam.”

  “I haven’t told her anything. She wouldn’t understand. The fire … “

  “What wouldn’t I understand?”

  We turned. Tamara was at the open kitchen window. She must have come to the sink to wash her hands, then paused there when she heard her name. Teddy rose and took a step toward the house, but something in her face made him stop.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he told her.

  She didn’t respond. The screen partially masked her expression and made her seem far away, the way I sometimes saw my mother in dreams.

  “We’ll be safe from now on,” Teddy told her. “I won’t be doing anything illegal. Just managing the man’s real estate and ensuring his family gets paid.”

  When Tamara spoke again, her voice seemed far away. “What if he’s lying to you about what he wants? Last time he burned your office. If you try to say no to something he asks, what’s next? He burns us out of our house, murders us in our beds?”

  Blame swung in me like a compass needle, honing magnetically toward my father as it’d done at all such moments in the past. Lawrence had been the bogeyman and scapegoat of my childhood. As an adult, I knew the truth was more complicated. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. Tamara deserved peace, and each of us would have given it to her if we could.

  Oblivious to the chasm over which we seemed poised, Carly called for her mother from inside the house. Tamara threw a glance over her shoulder, then stepped back from the window and out of sight.

  Chapter 23

  Rachel Stone had left me several messages since my release, but I hadn’t returned them. When her name appeared on my phone’s screen after my visit to Teddy’s, however, I p
ressed Talk, despite knowing nothing good could come of it.

  “Has Rodriguez’s guilty plea changed your feelings about him being innocent?” She spoke as if she expected me to have come around on this.

  “I’m just as sure as ever that he’s innocent. He didn’t kill Jordan, no matter what he says.”

  “Who did?”

  “How about Jacob Mauldin.”

  “You want me to print that?”

  “Only if your lawyers will let you.”

  “Give me a break. I’ve got to have proof before I start making accusations of murder. Stop wasting my time.”

  I knew I shouldn’t have, but I gave her the short version of my recent activities, going easy on the blood and leaving Lydia Cho mostly out of it. Instead, I focused on what Walter Hayes had told me about Mauldin’s private security guards provoking bloodshed in Double Rock.

  She listened. When I was finished, she sighed and said in a defeated voice, “Leo, I’m going to do you a favor and not print a word of what you’ve just said.”

  “So you don’t believe me?”

  “In a word? Maybe. But without proof, what’s the point? Hayes is a man with an agenda. Just like you. Speaking of things I can’t print, my sources tell me he’s only against the Candlestick project because he’s been secretly taking a piece of the action in Double Rock, and he doesn’t want to lose out.”

  I decided to change the subject. “What about the Panther?”

  “I’m talking to the man who conjured him. You tell me.”

  “Benton knows what they did to her. Make him tell you the story. All of it.”

  “Tommy’s out of it. He’s taken a leave from his law firm. A sailing trip, evidently, the big one he’s been planning for years. Jordan’s death hit him hard. He loved her, you know. He tells me you were jealous. Shall I print that?”

  “Print whatever you like,” I told her.

  I called Benton’s office but instead of his secretary answering, I got his voice mail, the message confirming his temporary absence. Taking a cab to the Sausalito boat docks was my next idea. There was no guarantee he wasn’t already out to sea, but if I didn’t find him I’d only be out the fare.

  I called from a box at the gate. After a few minutes he appeared on the dock, a figure dressed in khaki shorts and a Stanford sweatshirt. He stood looking toward where I leaned against the bars at the entrance gate. He took his time getting to me.

  “You won,” I told him as he approached. “You and your client got away with it.”

  He shook his head, opened the gate, and let me through. I felt as if he’d been expecting me. “I went to see her father,” he told me as we walked toward the end of the pier. “The man was filled with ideas. He said Rodriguez was innocent of Jordan’s murder, that he’d been framed. I asked him who was guilty, if that were the case. And do you know whom he accused? Me.”

  Benton gave a sudden laugh that died in his throat almost as soon as it’d begun. Then he shook his head again. “Someone filled his head with conspiracy theories. You?”

  “He wants Jordan to have been right about Rodriguez,” I said. “Before she was killed he told her she was foolish to believe her client was innocent. Called her naïve. Now he wants more than anything to be wrong. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s a father’s heart.”

  “The poor bastard,” Benton said. “Torturing himself that way.”

  “I suppose you set his mind straight and told him the truth.”

  “I told him Rodriguez had confessed, pleaded guilty, and he’d be spending the rest of his life in prison. I said that was the most justice any of us was likely to see in this world.”

  “You couldn’t lie to his face, in other words. And you also couldn’t tell the truth.”

  “I loved her,” Benton said. “By now you must realize that.”

  We stood at the end of the sailboat pier, shoulder to shoulder in uncomfortable proximity. “Then do something about it. Her father deserves to know the truth about her death.”

  Benton gave an irritated shrug. “It was a pointless visit. One that only gave him more pain.”

  “But it helped you see things more clearly. It made you realize you had to leave. Just like she did.”

  “Look,” Benton said sharply, the façade finally dropping. “I don’t know if you believe your own accusations. Just remember, nothing is ever so simple or so complicated as it seems.”

  “Your secrets sail with you, I suppose.” I wanted to remind him there was no safety in renunciation.

  “Here’s what you need to know. When a case is done, I put it behind me. I don’t ask myself whether I was on the right side, or what was true. The moment you start second-guessing, you’re finished in this business. That’s where Jordan went wrong. She couldn’t move on.”

  “She called you after Cho first approached her, back from the grave. You told Mauldin that Cho had communicated with her, and that she was listening to what he had to say.”

  “Even if you were correct, which you aren’t, I would have a clear duty to speak with my client regarding anything that touched on his case.”

  “You did your duty and look what happened. Even now, the only thing that allows you to face yourself is you keep telling yourself you didn’t know they were going to kill her. The more you repeat it, the more it might be true. Is that the deal you’ve made?”

  When he answered this time, his voice was thick. “My mind’s made up. I’m sailing tonight. I understand your frustrations, but they’re no longer my problem. I wish to God Jordan was still alive … But she’s gone, and nothing I say can bring her back.”

  “Does Rodriguez deserve to be framed for a murder he didn’t commit?” I asked.

  He looked at me, hesitating. “I don’t know what anyone deserves.” Then he walked away.

  It didn’t surprise me when I heard, a few weeks later, that his boat had been found adrift and empty. Then, complicating the picture, it was revealed that several million dollars were missing from the client trust fund at Benton’s firm, with suspicion focused solely on him. It wasn’t hard to picture the situation in which he’d found himself. Everyone else with direct knowledge of what’d happened was either dead or neutralized by threats. Benton, haunted by Jordan’s murder and his role in it, was a liability and a loose end.

  I wondered what his plan had been. And whether it had been thwarted by his enemies—which is to say, by his former client—or just bad luck. Maybe, like Cho, Benton had found himself in a situation with no winning outcome and had decided to fake his death. These thoughts and more filled my mind as I went about my daily routine at the public defender’s office, where I’d at last returned after my own leave of absence.

  Walking back to the office from court one fall morning, I felt a tap between my shoulder blades. I turned and was handed an envelope. “You’ve been served.”

  Inside was a subpoena commanding me to appear in Superior Court. Cho v. Kairos, the subpoena heading read. The clerk’s office couldn’t tell me what it was about, and the court’s electronic filing system had no information. In the morning, with no clue what I was walking into, I headed over to the federal courthouse.

  The courtroom was locked. I pressed the buzzer at the door of the judge’s chambers and was admitted. “They’re waiting,” a serious young woman said, and led me down a hallway.

  Beyond another door lay Judge Parker’s chambers. He was responsible for the complex litigation docket and handled exclusively civil cases, and I’d never appeared in front of him. A court reporter sat ready. Two lawyers occupied high-backed chairs at a conference table a short distance from the judge’s desk. A third attorney sat at the head of the conference table. None of the three appeared on friendly terms with the others.

  Dressed in a dark suit, Lydia Cho sat behind one of them, staring intensely at me.

  The judge indicated a chair and waited until I sat before he began. “Thank you for appearing so promptly, Mr. Maxwell. I have a few questions for you, and wh
en I’m finished, these lawyers may wish to ask a few questions of their own. The only questions you’re required to answer are mine.”

  He then took a moment to briefly introduce the lawyers in the room. One from Benton’s firm represented Kairos. Another represented Lydia Cho. The third was introduced as being from the US Attorney’s Office. “I see you’ve arrived without counsel. Do you wish to consult an attorney before we begin?”

  My head was spinning. “Why don’t you give me a little more context. If it looks like I need a lawyer, I’ll pipe up. Right now, I can’t imagine why I would.”

  “Very well. You’re here because your name was mentioned prominently in a letter to me written by a lawyer named Tom Benton. His letter claims you have knowledge of a conspiracy between his client and others to commit a fraud on this court and defame a man named Gary Cho, and to commit other crimes in furtherance of that conspiracy, including possible murders. I brought you here to tell us what knowledge you may have.”

  The court reporter finished typing. Silence seemed to swell from every surface. The judge’s desk had a marble inlay holding a fine tracery of cracks that appeared to me like a spider’s web. “Are you sure this letter is authentic?” I asked, to buy time while my mind scrambled to guess what this was about.

  “That’s not your concern. For the moment, we’ll assume for our purposes that it is.”

  “You’ll have to ask me more specific questions. My involvement has to do with investigating the murder of Jordan Walker. She worked with me at the public defender’s office after leaving Benton’s firm. She was Tom Benton’s associate in the Kairos trial, as you already know. Their client was Jacob Mauldin, who I believe was involved in Jordan’s death. But I can’t prove it.”

  “You’re aware that a man named Randall Rodriguez has pleaded guilty to her murder?”

  “Of course. He was our client. But that doesn’t mean he killed her. He’d confess to killing JFK if anyone thought to ask him about it. Whoever framed him knows that.”