by David Ellis
ONE DAY EARLIER
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5
Ram Haroon sits at the counter of the diner and rotates the coffee cup on its saucer. He steals a look at his watch, sees that it’s eight on the dot. By now, most of the families have left the restaurant, most of the little kiddies. There are some couples lining the booths, mostly older folks, one pair of teenagers on a cheap date.
He gets up and heads to the men’s room at the back. It’s a bigger room than he would have thought. There are two urinals and two stalls with red doors. One of them is occupied. He sees the gym shoes. Normally, one would expect to see pants bunched up at the ankles while someone sits in a bathroom stall. Which means his contact is good, but not that good.
A men’s room, he thinks to himself. Of all places.
Haroon enters the neighboring stall, puts down the toilet seat, and sits on it. There is probably no point in going through the motions of dropping his pants. It seems a little odd, in fact, given the familiarity with his neighbor.
He hears paper unwrapping in the neighboring stall. A moment later, a single piece of stationery creeps along the floor into his stall. He picks it up and reads it.
Countryside Grocery Store. Corner of Apple Drive and Riordan. Back. Delivery entrance. You will see a yellow post against the fence. Look right there. You are not keeping this so write it down.
Ram doesn’t write it down; instead he commits it to memory.
Countryside Grocery Store. Apple and Riordan. Yellow post in back.
Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow.
Ram takes the message and, with his pen, writes a single word on it and hands it back under the stall.
When?
The answer comes back in less than a minute.
Get it now. It will need to happen soon. Wait for my call.
Ram Haroon gets to his feet and flushes an unused toilet. He walks back to the counter of the restaurant, where his dinner awaits him. He keeps his eyes on the Cobb salad before him.
Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow. He says the words over and over in his head, paying no attention to anyone who might happen to pass by on the way out of the restaurant.
ONE DAY EARLIER
TUESDAY, MAY 4
This shouldn’t be happening.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Allison says, removing her fingernail from her mouth. The nails are reduced to nubs now. She’s never had long nails, not since she began writing, but now they have been chewed into nonexistence. “I’m sitting there all day, listening to my lawyer plot strategy, and the whole time, I’m thinking, ‘This shouldn’t be happening.’ ”
Mat Pagone drops his briefcase in the living room. He has come in with Allison, after picking her up at her lawyer’s office and driving her home—to what was once his home, too.
Allison watches her ex-husband disappear into the kitchen.
What do you mean?
What do you mean, this shouldn’t be happening?
Mat returns with two glasses of wine from a bottle already opened. “Drink,” he says. “Your head still hurt?”
She accepts the glass. “Only when I think. Did you call Jessica?”
“She’s studying, Ally. You know she has that paper. She turned her cell phone off, is all. She’s fine.”
“She had to testify in a murder trial against her own mother. She is not fine.”
She doesn’t see Mat “off-camera” much these days. He has played the dutiful-supporter part, picking her up for court and taking her home, but that’s a public appearance. Up close and personal, he looks tired. Worry and regret have cast a shadow across his face. His career is in tatters, his reputation probably shot. He is lucky but probably can’t see that. He never could.
“What I meant before,” she says finally, “is I should have pleaded guilty. I should have spared Jessica having to testify.”
“Pleading is giving up,” Mat says. “That’s not you. That would have torn up Jess just as much. She thinks you’re innocent, Ally.”
“She thinks I’m innocent. Wonderful.” Allison rubs her face.
“That’s a good thing, I would think. You prefer she thinks you killed Sam?”
“Mat.” Allison looks at him directly. “She can’t think I’m innocent. Because she’s going to blame herself, either way, when I’m convicted.”
“You aren’t going to be—”
“I am. I am and you know it. Jessica needs to understand that I was convicted because I’m guilty. Not because of her. She has to believe I’m guilty.”
Mat opens his arms, the wine bobbing in the glass and almost spilling on the carpet. “You want me to tell her you’re guilty? You want me to tell her you confessed to me?”
“That’s exactly what I want you to do.”
“Won’t play, Allison. She’ll need more than that.”
“Tell her I used that trophy to kill him.”
“Ah.” Mat says it like a negative, like a grunt.
The police have believed, almost from the outset, that the instrument that delivered the fatal blows to Sam Dillon’s head was an award given to him two years earlier by the Midwest Manufacturers’ Association for excellency in advocacy. They saw the spot on the mantel of Sam’s fireplace, from the pattern of dust, where it had rested for the last two years. The award, they quickly learned, had a solid marble base that would serve nicely as the head of a hammer. On the base, in gold, was a miniaturized version of an old industrial machine with a gear and sprocket. It was determined by looking at other such awards given out by the MMA that this trophy was sufficiently sturdy—indeed, it would be ironic if it were not—to be used as a weapon, bringing the marble base down on someone’s head. Assault with a deadly statuette.
Anyone who has followed the suffocating account of this case in the papers, on television, and online would know of this trophy, currently missing and the subject of a rather feverish manhunt by police. Thus, Mat’s objection.
“She wouldn’t accept that as proof,” Mat says.
“No.” Allison wets her lips. “I suppose she wouldn’t.” She goes to the window next to the side table, looks out at the backyard and her neighbors’ as well. They built a fence, about four feet high, around the property when Jessica got old enough to wander. She once tried to clear it, like an Olympic high-jumper, using the old Western-roll technique and requiring five stitches on her lip for her trouble.
“Y’know,” Mat starts.
She turns to him.
“Never mind.” He waves his hand. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me,” Allison says.
“I was just thinking.” Mat averts his eyes, strolls aimlessly through the living room. “There is probably something I could tell Jessica. There is proof.”
“What?”
Mat takes a drink of his wine, sets his jaw. “The murder weapon,” he says. “You could tell me where it is. I could tell Jessica. If it came to that.”
“I haven’t even told my lawyer that. Nobody knows that.”
But that, clearly, is Mat’s point. It would be irrefutable proof to Jessica, a fact unknown to everyone.
“There’s no spousal privilege,” Allison says. “We’re not married. You could be forced to divulge this.”
Mat makes a face. The prosecution has already rested its case, and no one is looking at Mateo Pagone to help convict his ex-wife.
“You think so little of me?” he asks.
This again. Always falling back on self-pity. But he has a point. If she can’t trust Mat, there is no one left.
She takes a breath as the adrenaline kicks in, her heart races, the memories of that night flood back. She turns again and places her hand on the window. It is colder than she expected.
“The Countryside Grocery Store,” she says. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”
“Okay.”
“When Jess was five,” she continues. “She got away from me at the store. I was beside myself. I was looking everywhere for her. I had the store manager rea
dy to call the police.”
She can faintly see Mat in the reflection of the glass. He is captivated, listening intently, but she detects a frown. It only underscores the distance that has always been between them, even then. He doesn’t remember this incident. She probably never even told him. He was at the capital, as this happened during the legislative session; this was back when Mat was a legislative aide, before he traded up to lobbying his former employers. It was one of countless episodes in their lives that passed right by him unnoticed.
She returns her eyes to the window. “I found Jessica out back,” she continues. “She had wandered through the delivery area in the back of the store. She had gone down that little ramp they have for deliveries and she was standing outside by the fence. She was pointing at this post that was supporting the fence. It was yellow. This was during that ‘lemon’ thing she had.”
Mat, she assumes, again does not get the reference. When Jessica was very young, she had great difficulty pronouncing the word yellow, so she used the word lemon instead. Even a banana was the color lemon. Even after she matured a bit and was able to say the word, she continued for many years to qualify it with the phrase—
“Yellow like lemon,” Mat says.
Allison squeezes her eyes shut. It is these little things that always move her. She takes a moment, swallows hard, before continuing.
“That’s where I put it.” She raises her chin and keeps her voice strong, as she faces the window. “It’s still there, that post. The paint has chipped away some but it’s still the only yellow post out there. I—I can’t say why I went there. I—we hadn’t shopped there for years. I didn’t think anyone would ever connect me to it.”
She takes a deep breath and faces him. His eyes retreat again.
“You buried the trophy from the manufacturers’ association next to a yellow post behind the Countryside?” Mat asks. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”
“I did. So if I’m convicted, you tell this to Jessica. But only then.”
Mat’s gaze moves about the room, anywhere but at her. He is lost in thought for a long moment, blinking rapidly, eyes narrowing. “Okay. If it ever comes to it, I can tell her about that. I’m—let’s find something to eat.”
Allison takes a step toward him. “You’re the only person who knows this,” she says. “I haven’t even told my lawyer. If this got out—if anyone found out—”
“Allison.” He stops on his way to the kitchen but does not look at her. She senses a tightening in his posture.
“I won’t tell a soul,” he assures her.
ONE DAY EARLIER
MONDAY, MAY 3
Allison stares at the ghost in the mirror. She wants the judge to see her as she used to be, before the stress started doing its damage three months ago. She wants him to know her as a person, to know her life and background, to understand what she is capable of and what she is not.
But Judge Wilderburth will not know these things. Will not care to know. The facts of the case are the only things of relevance to him. It is a tainted filter, she realizes now more than ever. He will never know the full story. No jury, no judge ever has.
She looks at her watch, expecting Mat to walk in the door any minute to drive her to court, when the phone rings. It’s seven-thirty in the morning and the phone is ringing.
She walks out of the master bathroom and finds her phone by the bed. The caller ID is noncommittal; the call is coming from an office.
“Allison, Paul Riley here.”
Paul Riley is the first lawyer Allison retained on the case. “How are you, Paul?”
“Great, Allison. I’ve been following the trial. It looks good.”
“Nice of you to say.” Allison is sure the comment is insincere.
“The evidence is circumstantial,” Paul adds, the classic take from a defense attorney. “They still don’t have the murder weapon, do they?”
Allison catches her breath. She grips the phone until it hurts. “The, uh—”
“The murder weapon,” Paul repeats. “They don’t know for sure what it is, and they surely don’t have it, as far as I can tell.”
“No—no,” Allison manages through the burn in her throat. “They don’t have it.”
“That will be tough for them, I would think. That’s how you really put someone at a crime scene. No murder weapon, it’s all speculation.”
“I—I hope so.”
“I think I’ve upset you here, Allison. Listen to me, talking about murder weapons. All I really wanted to tell you is I’m rooting for you.”
“Thank you, Paul. I should—I should probably—”
“You need to get going. Best of luck, Allison.”
She sets the phone down and puts a hand against the wall to support herself. She feels the heat on her face, the perspiration gather on her forehead.
The murder weapon.
The front door opens, Mat calls out to her to come down.
She shakes her head hard. Okay. She collects herself and takes the stairs down.
Jane McCoy sits in the back row, far left corner, a place that has been kept open for her. She’s wearing her glasses—first time in years—and a baseball cap. There’s no law that says you have to dress up to watch a trial. She’s not in hiding, exactly, but she doesn’t feel the need to highlight her presence. No one’s going to notice her, anyway. All eyes are forward, as the defense begins its case in the trial of People versus Allison Quincy Pagone.
McCoy recognizes some of the reporters, who have been given the first two rows on the other side—Andy Karras from the Watch crime beat and Carolyn Pendry from Newscenter Four are sharing notes. You can tell the print media from television by their appearance, clothes and makeup, and by her count most of these people are not going before a camera.
McCoy’s left-side seat puts her in the prosecution’s half of the courtroom. If this thing lines up like a wedding, this would make her a friend of the prosecutor, Roger Ogren, which amuses McCoy, because she has been anything but.
She sees Allison Pagone leaning in at the defense table as her attorney speaks with her. She looks awfully good for a woman on trial. Her red hair is short now, curling out in the back, and damn, she has nice clothes, a tailored blue suit, white blouse, and colorful scarf. She’s probably hoping the seventy-year-old judge will look down on her and think, How could this cute little gal be a killer? Maybe this is why the defense waived the right to a jury trial, letting the judge be the sole finder of fact.
Allison’s new attorney is Ron McGaffrey. McCoy has never had the pleasure. She has been cross-examined by half the defense attorneys in this town, but not typically the ones on the high end, where McGaffrey apparently falls.
She looked into McGaffrey when Allison made the switch from Paul Riley. Riley, she knew. She liked him. A former federal prosecutor who once ran the county attorney’s office as well. Former G-man who could give as well as he got but made it look natural. When Pagone changed lawyers, McCoy was concerned. McGaffrey never prosecuted, and those are always the guys hardest to deal with. The word about McGaffrey is that he never pleads a case, which is probably not a bad marketing device, because every criminal defendant wants a warhorse.
And that’s exactly what Ron McGaffrey looks like, as he stands and moves toward the battered wooden lectern between the defense and prosecution tables—a fighter, a tough guy. He has been through the wringer and looks it, a wide, weathered face, bad skin, deep worry lines across his forehead. He is a large man, not tall but a physical presence, a darkness through the eyes, a halt in his stride. He drops a notepad on the lectern, wags a pencil as he leans his considerable frame forward. He took shrapnel above the knee in Vietnam, survived a heart attack a couple years back and quit smoking, which may explain why he’s holding the pencil with such reverence.
“Call Walter Benjamin,” he says to the judge.
McCoy watches the witness enter the courtroom. She wonders if he will make eye contact with her, but his eyes are forward a
nd down, as he moves his long, thin body along the aisle, trying to maintain his dignity. He takes his seat and is sworn in, spells his last name. He is pushing fifty but looks older. Looks ill, actually, like the last time she saw him. He pushes his small glasses up on his long nose and fixes his hair, chestnut with gray borders.
“I am the director of governmental affairs, Midwest region, for Flanagan-Maxx Pharmaceuticals,” he says.
Technically, Walter Benjamin is on paid leave at the moment, but McGaffrey will get to that, no doubt. He doesn’t start there. He starts with the company, Flanagan-Maxx, a massive international corporation that “discovers, develops, and markets breakthrough drugs.”
McGaffrey takes him through the countries where they have offices and laboratories, the different areas of medicine, the different departments—pharmaceutical, nutritional, and hospital products. The company has billions in revenue worldwide. The point seems to be to cast Flanagan-Maxx as the cold, heartless corporate giant.
“Let’s talk about the pharmaceutical products division, sir,” McGaffrey suggests.
McCoy moves in her seat. She wants this testimony to be over, and it’s just beginning. There is no drama here, this part. F-M makes drugs for virtually anything, from brain disorders to respiratory infections to organ transplants to HIV/AIDS treatment.
“Let’s talk about a particular product, sir,” says McGaffrey. He has a commanding voice but not as deep as she expected. He compensates for this with high volume. His every word in this courtroom is a controlled shout. “Let’s talk about a product called Divalpro.”
Walter Benjamin nods without enthusiasm, adjusts his glasses again, and begins to explain it to the judge. Divalpro is a drug marketed to seniors for high blood pressure, one of the most successful products in the Flanagan-Maxx line, one of their cash cows. There is only one problem with Divalpro, a problem that is now known to anyone who follows the news, and certainly to anyone in the state capital.
