by Joel Goldman
Propped on an elbow, I blinked at the digital clock on the nightstand. I’d been asleep for three hours, long enough to stifle the gremlins living inside my body. My cell phone was next to the clock, a pulsating red light announcing that someone had left me a message. I picked it up. The ringer was on silent.
It took me a moment to remember that my phone had been in my pants pocket when I fell asleep. I was still wearing my pants, which meant that Kate must have heard the phone ring, taken it out of my pocket, and turned the ringer off. I had been in worse shape than I had thought if she’d been in my pants and I never knew it.
I swung my legs onto the floor, turned on the lamp next to the bed, and opened my phone. There were three voice messages, all of them from Joy, matching the three text messages she’d also sent, each a variation on the same theme. Where are you?
I’d learned a few things over the years: sometimes, there’s no way to answer a question without lying or committing suicide; there are no secrets; and being innocent won’t help if you look guilty. All of these things made my return call to Joy a midnight stroll in a minefield.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s been a rugged day, but I’m fine.”
“You’ve been gone so long, and I know how hard that is on you. I got worried when you didn’t answer your phone.”
“I’m sorry. It’s been crazy, but everything is okay.”
“What happened?”
“Roni Chase was picked up for questioning in Frank Crenshaw’s murder. A gun she owned turned out to be the murder weapon. I’m about to go into a meeting with her lawyer.”
“Are you at the jail?”
I knew where this was going, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it except make it worse by forcing her to drag it out of me.
“We’re at the Raphael Hotel. I’m with Lucy, Simon, and Roni’s lawyer, Ethan Bonner, and his jury consultant.”
“Jury consultant?” The pitch in her voice changed from concern for me to concern about me. “Who?”
“Kate Scranton.”
No woman wants to hear that her man is at a hotel with another woman he used to sleep with, no matter how many other people are there with him. The other woman part is bad enough, but the hotel part lights a fast-burning fuse.
“Are you in her room?”
“Yes. We’re all here.”
She hesitated, both of us knowing what was coming next.
“Why didn’t you answer my calls?”
“I needed some down time so I took a nap.”
“In Kate Scranton’s hotel room?”
“Yeah. It’s okay. It’s not like that. I promise.”
She sniffed, her brittle voice turning the phone cold in my hand. “Will you be coming home?”
“As soon as I can.”
“No hurry. Tell Lucy and Simon I said hello.”
That was the end of the conversation and the beginning of a fight we hadn’t had since we were married and Joy was certain I was having an affair with Kate. It wasn’t true then, at least not in the physical sense, though I’d later learned that was a distinction without much of a difference.
And it wasn’t true now, even if I had to admit that my feelings for Kate were percolating again. I’d promised Joy that I wouldn’t put her through that a second time, which reminded me of something else I’d learned. A promise to protect can frighten more than comfort.
“So, you’re not dead,” Lucy said, opening the door.
I stretched, rubbed my face, and finger-combed my hair. “Once again, those reports are greatly exaggerated.”
She grimaced. “Okay, Mark Twain; in the other room. Believe it or not, we need you.”
Simon was sitting in a chair at one end of a coffee table. Lucy took the chair opposite him. Ethan Bonner leaned back in a desk chair. Kate sat on a two-seater sofa that in other circumstances I would have admitted was a love seat. She was holding a laptop, studying the screen and ignoring me. The coffee table was littered with room service remnants surrounding a covered dish.
“It’s a club sandwich on toasted wheat bread, no cheese, light mayo, just the way you like it,” Kate said without looking up. “And fresh fruit instead of fries.”
“Thanks. You’ve got a good memory,” I said, uncovering the dish, picking it up, and looking around the room for another place to sit even though I already knew the sofa was the only option. I joined her, the cushions collapsing toward the center, drawing us closer together. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing.” She finally looked at me, biting back a smile. “Ethan is paying for it.”
“Twelve bucks,” Ethan said. “Tax and tip included.”
“That’s what I get for referring a new client to you?”
“You’re lucky I’m not charging you a hundred and twelve bucks.”
“That bad?”
He nodded. “Tonight it is. I couldn’t get Roni out. They’re charging her with conspiracy to commit murder. She’s being arraigned in the morning. The judge will probably grant bail, but she doesn’t have any money so she may be a guest of the county for a while.”
“What do they have on her besides the gun?”
“You mean the murder weapon? If I had a nickel for every time Quincy Carter called it that, I could post Roni’s bail. He’s hanging his hat on the gun and the disturbance he says she created at the hospital, or as he puts it, the diversion she caused to set up the shooter.”
“That won’t stand up if she’s got an explanation for the gun.”
“If she has one, she isn’t saying, not even to me. She’s covering for someone, and Carter figures to pressure her into giving him up. We’ll see if a night in the tank does the job. In the meantime, it would help if you have any idea who she’s protecting.”
“Best bet would be Brett Staley. He’s in love with her, and she thinks she might be in love with him. Maybe she is. Odds are he knew about the gun. He showed up at the hospital right after Crenshaw was killed. Said he was looking for her. Carter questioned him, but let him go before he cut Roni loose.”
“Where do you fit into the mix?” Bonner asked me.
“Didn’t Roni tell you?”
“I’d rather hear it from you. See how it matches what she told me.”
I gave him the rundown, ending with Roni’s story about her fight with Brett and how Quincy Carter worked Roni and me, my face reddening as I told that part of the story.
“And that’s why I think she’s covering for Brett.”
“Why would he kill Frank Crenshaw? What’s the connection? Did he know Crenshaw? Did Crenshaw owe him money? He’d have to have a reason unless he’s a psychopath that roams hospitals looking for someone to shoot,” Bonner said.
“I don’t know if he’s got a connection or, if he does, what it is, but Roni should know.”
“She shot Crenshaw the first time. Maybe she meant to kill him and her boyfriend decided to finish the job for her.”
“I was there. That was self-defense. He was her client. Why would she want him dead?”
“I’m better at questions than answers,” Bonner said. “I keep asking them, hoping someone else will do the rest. Your version fits with Roni’s story, except she didn’t say anything about an ATF agent. What was he doing at the hospital?”
“There was a gun show in Topeka last month. Thieves followed one of the dealers before he got home and robbed him. They got a small armory of handguns and assault rifles. Frank Crenshaw shot his wife with one of the stolen handguns. If the ATF agent wasn’t interested in that, he needs to find another line of work.”
“We don’t know if Crenshaw’s murder was related to the theft of the guns or to something else,” Bonner said. “We need to know more about Brett Staley’s relationship with Crenshaw. Right now, the only reason he’s a suspect is that it looks like Roni is covering for him. Maybe if you go with me in the morning, she’ll open up, tell us about the gun. She seems to trust you.”
“Not enoug
h,” I said. “She didn’t tell me about it.”
“She’d have had no reason to tell you if she didn’t know the gun was missing or that it was used to kill Crenshaw,” Bonner said.
“She’d have had less reason to tell me if she did know.”
“Her arraignment is at ten. They’ll have her at the courthouse by nine so I can talk to her. Can you meet me there?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how much that will help.”
“Why not?”
“Roni may not want to be rescued.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“Well, no one is going to rescue her before she’s arraigned,” Bonner said.
Lucy jumped from her chair. “And no one is going to rescue Peggy Martin’s kids if we spend all night sitting around here talking about goddamn Roni Chase!”
“Take it easy, Lucy,” I said. “We’ve got to be able to do more than one thing at a time.”
She crossed her arms, glaring down at me. “No, we don’t, Jack. I can’t and I won’t. You don’t have to help Roni. She can find someone else to do that, and Ethan doesn’t have to represent her. The court will appoint a lawyer for her if she can’t afford one. She may be in jail, but she’s got a roof over her head and isn’t scared to death that someone is going to rape and murder her at any second. So, no, I’m not going to do more than one thing at a time until I find those kids, and I need to know that you aren’t either.”
“I’m on this case to the end, but I’ve got to help Roni too.”
“Jack, you can’t save everybody. Sometimes you have to choose.”
“Babe, we’re doing the best we can,” Simon said.
Lucy flung her arm at him. “What is that? You’re telling me this is the best we can do? We haven’t done shit! Those kids are out there somewhere, and Jack’s taking a nap while we ordering fucking room service, for Christ’s sake!”
Simon stood, taking her hands in his, his voice low and soothing. “We’re doing what we know how to do. We could run out of here screaming into the street, but we’d still have to do the same things. Dig up leads and run them down, talk to witnesses, stir things up until we get a break. If there was a faster way, we’d do it.”
They were a mismatched pair, filling each other’s gaps. She was a head taller, street savvy and full of fire. He was a round-shouldered numbers guy, a grinder sifting through digits and data looking for a thread to tug on until he unraveled the truth. She took a deep breath, leaned down, resting her forehead on the top of his head.
“They’re just babies.”
He put his arms around her. “And we’ll find them.”
She turned away and went into the bathroom, coming back a moment later, eyes red but composed. She settled into her chair, rubbing her hands on her thighs.
“So,” she said, “what’s next?”
“The video,” Kate said. She was standing next to a flat-panel television parked on top of a dresser. “This TV has a USB port. I connected my laptop so we can all watch. Let’s have a look at Peggy Martin.”
Peggy’s image filled the thirty-two-inch screen. Her face was drawn and washed out by hours spent waiting in the cold and wind at Kessler Park. We watched in silence as she talked about her children, her marriage, and her husband, Kate not offering any commentary until the video ended.
“First time through was for context,” she said. “Now let’s take a look at a few key moments. The first is when she talks about her children. See how her mouth turns down, her eyes scrunch up, and her cheeks sag? That’s agony.”
“What else would you expect?” Lucy asked. “Her husband kidnapped her kids.”
“Her kids are missing,” Ethan Bonner said. “That’s all we know for certain.”
Lucy threw him a poisonous look and started to say something, but Kate cut her off.
“The agony is important because it may indicate that she didn’t kill her children. If she had, she’d show signs of shame, like she did here.”
Kate fast-forwarded to the moment when she asked Peggy if Jimmy’s allegations that she’d had an affair were true. Peggy looked down and away, nodding her head, her voice breaking as she muttered her confession.
“Classic expression of shame,” Kate said.
“It makes sense that she’s ashamed,” Bonner said.
“Agreed. It’s not unusual for a spouse to be ashamed of cheating, no matter how big a jerk the other spouse is and, having spent an hour with Jimmy today, he is that big of a jerk. The question is whether she has other reasons for being ashamed besides her cheating heart.”
“When you asked her who she was fooling around with she wouldn’t tell you,” Bonner said. “What do you make of that?”
“My best judgment? Revealing her boyfriend’s identity would only make things worse. Could be he’s someone Jimmy knows, which would make his feelings of betrayal and her shame even worse, maybe unbearable.”
“If it was like that, if she was fooling around with Jimmy’s best friend or someone else he was close to,” Simon said, “it’s more likely that he would snap and do something to the kids to punish her.”
“Or,” Bonner said, “Maybe she’s afraid her boyfriend had something to do with her kids’ disappearance. That would give her a double dose of shame. She says she left them alone in the house while she went to the store to get some milk. Her boyfriend might have had a key. The kids might even have known him and let him in the house.”
Lucy let out a sigh. “It gets worse. Peggy says that when she left the kids that morning that she went to the Quik-Trip on Independence Avenue to buy milk. I talked to the cashier who worked that shift. He remembered her because she’s a regular. He says she bought beer, not milk.”
Bonner leaned forward in his chair, rubbing his hands together. “I like it. I like it a lot. This has the makings of a fine defense.”
Lucy sprang to her feet. “You unholy asshole! That’s all you care about! Throwing a load of shit against the wall, hoping enough of it sticks to get your fucking client off!”
Bonner leaned back in his chair. “I’m as worried about those kids as anyone in this room, but I don’t have the luxury of being self-righteous and sanctimonious like you do, Lucy. I owe my client the best defense I can give him, and that means I’ve got to make sure the jury knows that someone besides Jimmy Martin could be guilty.”
Hands on hips, she snarled at him. “This morning you were all about how Jimmy has only been charged with theft and contempt, not kidnapping and murdering his kids. So why are you trying so hard all of a sudden to defend him against something he hasn’t been charged with? Did he confess? Are you hiding behind the attorney-client privilege and just using us to build a defense when you know he’s guilty because, so help me God, if I find out you are, I’ll put you in the ground.”
Kate was studying Bonner with freeze-frame eyes, a look that could read bar codes a mile away. I needed time alone with her, to ask her what she saw in Bonner’s expressions. He ignored her, giving Lucy a tight-lipped smile.
“It’s been a while since someone threatened to kill me for doing my job. Bet it happens to you all the time. I bend a lot of rules because I think they’re bullshit, but I won’t breach my client’s confidence because if I do, he’s done and I’m done.”
“Even if it costs Evan and Cara their lives?” Lucy said.
“Let me put it this way. I won’t help Jimmy commit a crime, but I won’t turn him in for one he’s already committed.”
“I couldn’t live in your world,” Lucy said.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s step down to DEFCON Three. Bonner, I know you can’t tell us if Jimmy confessed. But if there’s a chance that Peggy’s boyfriend had something to do with this, we need to take a look at him, and if you know the boyfriend’s name, now would be a good time to tell us. At least that way, we could try to rule him in or out.”
Bonner pursed his lips, searching for the limits of the attorney-client privilege. “Okay. You don’t think I hadn’t t
hought of the boyfriend angle? First thing they teach you in criminal defense school is to give the jury any suspect except the defendant, and Peggy’s boyfriend, whoever he is, makes an easy target. I pushed Jimmy to tell me, but all he said was that he’d take care of it himself.”
“The guy has pride,” Simon said, “even if it’s the ugly kind.”
“So, he knows or thinks he knows,” I said. “If Kate’s right about why Peggy is so ashamed, we need to find her boyfriend, and the best place for us to start is with Jimmy’s friends, assuming he has any.”
“There was one person he mentioned several times,” Bonner said, flipping through a legal pad filled with scrawled notes, looking up from the page. “Guy’s name is Nick Staley. That name mean anything to anybody?”
Chapter Thirty-five
Nothing happens in a vacuum. We go through life, content in the belief that our little corner of the world is a gated community, that outside our limited circle of family and friends no one much cares or notices what we do. Politicians and celebrities are criticized for living in a bubble, a closed atmosphere impervious to reality. But the truth is we all live in our own bubbles, ignoring the ripples we create until we bump, trip, or stumble into someone else’s world, the bubbles burst, and the ripples well up, becoming shock waves.
“Nick Staley owns a little grocery store on St. John,” I said.
“You live in Brookside,” Simon said. “Since when do you buy bread on St. John?”
“I don’t. Staley has a son named Brett who works at the grocery. He’s also in love with Roni Chase.”
“Six degrees of separation,” Simon said. “Which one was in a movie with Kevin Bacon?”
Lucy scooted to the edge of her chair. “Jack, you can talk to Roni, find out if her boyfriend knows anything, maybe get her to make an introduction to Nick. That way you can come at him without him being on guard. He might open up or at least let something slip.”
