Dominic

by Mark Pryor

  “What did she say exactly?” Dom asked.

  “Should I be telling you that?”

  Dom closed his eyes for a second, then stared right at me. “Right, Brian. That’s what’s happening right now. I am asking you to tell me.”

  Man, he really is grumpy. “Nice try.” I switched subjects, hoping he wouldn’t go on about it. “I met with that detective while you were upstairs. Brannon.”

  Dom’s head snapped up. “What did he want?”

  “Just asked if I knew anything about that kid who shot his partner.”

  “Bannon and Ledsome were partners?”

  “That’s what he said. I think.”

  “Huh. So what did you tell him?”

  “Pretty much that he was your kid and you handled his cases. I knew his face, but that’s about all.”

  “Fair enough. He ask any questions about me?”

  “A few. He talked about that whole mess you were in last year, with your roommate.”

  Dom chewed his lip for a moment. “I wonder why he’d mention that.”

  “No clue. Maybe making small talk because I didn’t know the first thing about it. Basically what I read in the papers, since you don’t like talking about it.”

  “What’s done is done,” he said, for like the millionth time.

  “Other than that, he asked what you were like, you know, as a person and to work with.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That you’re an asshole, of course.” I grinned so he’d know I was joking. He didn’t smile back. “Nah, just, you know. Good guy, good prosecutor. Middling musician.”

  He must’ve missed that joke, too, because he sat quietly for a moment. Then he said, “I didn’t know he was Megan’s partner,” as if that was the most important thing he’d heard all day.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DOMINIC

  One thing about me: I don’t like to lose. I think I mentioned that already.

  It’d been a long time since I was in direct competition with anyone like I was with Brian for the judge job. I have to admit a certain surprise and appreciation that he’d so much as thought about playing the blackmail card. A little shortsighted, perhaps. I mean, if he really wants to work for someone who resents and despises him . . . well, given how he reacts to me, he probably won’t notice.

  The irony made me laugh, though: did he really have the balls to blackmail a district judge, while only doing it because he didn’t have the balls to stand up to his nagging girlfriend? Idiot.

  But an idiot who seemed destined to wear a robe, and most likely lord it over me.

  I couldn’t have that now, could I?

  ◯

  After my spell at Maidstone Hall, I’d gone on to another boarding school, Whitley College, in Hampshire. As it was far less draconian than Maidstone, I’d actually enjoyed the place, apart from the lack of girls.

  At the end of my second-to-last year at the school, I’d gotten together with my buddy Johnny Hilford to carry out the Sixth Form prank of the year. The prank was one of those oddities that seems to thrive in the dusty, tradition-bound societies that are private schools. For this one someone, or several someones, from the class moving into their final year would dream up a prank that was supposed to get the whole school’s attention. The trick was to strive for something that received maximum visibility, topped out in the daring stakes, but caused little permanent damage. And didn’t require the police to be called.

  The previous year, a couple of boys had planned ahead. At the start of the summer term, they sprinkled some mustard seeds in the shape of a penis, on the huge grassy area in the middle of first team’s cricket pitch. Unnoticeable from ground level, the giant phallus was spotted from the top floor of the pavilion, and several other nearby buildings, when the cricket team turned out to play the prestigious Old Boy’s match, basically an all-star team of former Whitley cricket greats. The groundsman was apoplectic; the master in charge of the school’s cricket program swore vengeance on the unknown culprits; and just about every boy in the school made his way up to the pavilion to have a look, and a giggle. The prank won maximum points for attention but scored a little low on daring for my tastes. And maybe shave a few points of for a lack of class. I mean, a cock? Really?

  The best ever, in most people’s view, was the feathers in the school organ. It was two years previous when, on the last morning of school, everyone traipsed into Memorial Hall as we did every day for assembly. Three hundred boys and thirty or so teachers, sitting in respectful silence as the head of the music department started into the moving and powerful hymn, “Jerusalem.” Within seconds, the strong notes withered in the air around us and, as we looked toward the organ to see what was wrong, feathers blasted up and out of its pipes, blue and pink plumage rising high in the air and falling like snow on every man, woman, and child in the great hall. Genius. Maximum visibility, of course, given the captive audience. Although I believe there was some permanent damage to the organ. But still, genius.

  There was never any doubt in my mind that I’d be in on any prank when my turn came. My first suggestion had been to kidnap the head boy, a pompous twit who’d irritated me for years, but Johnny pointed out that the police would be called, plus everyone would know I’d done it right away. My second idea, though was gold.

  At the end of every year there was a formal dinner in the cafeteria. The usual canteen slop was replaced with three courses of genuinely good food, served to us by waiters. Excitement was always high because the next day we’d be released from captivity to go home, and talk was always about our summer plans, trips, and maybe actual jobs to earn real beer money.

  On the penultimate day of school, the day before this great meal, Johnny and I ate dinner together in the hexagonal, standalone cafeteria. We sat by one of the many large windows and, when no one was looking, we unlatched it, but made it look like it was still locked tight. We then moved to another table on the other side of the building and did the same thing. Plan B, you might say.

  That night I lay awake in bed, willing myself not to fall asleep. Not a hard task with all the adrenaline running through me, but the hands on my watch seemed to be frozen in place. Finally midnight rolled around and I slipped out of bed, grabbed my clothes, and headed for the bathroom, rousing Johnny on the way. We dressed quickly and quietly, not saying a word. Then we crept down the main stairs to the billiard room, moving slowly in the darkness, ears pricked for any sound.

  We snuck out of School House and kept close to the school buildings, staying out of the open spaces, until we got to the cafeteria. The first window we’d unlatched was still open, and we clambered in. Once inside, we took a moment to appreciate the execution of our plan thus far, secure in the knowledge that now no one would see or hear us.

  Working by the light from a couple of street lamps outside, we pulled out a dozen plastic bags and went to work, filling them with every piece of silverware we could find. I wanted to go for the cooking utensils, too, but Johnny advised caution, said we wanted the food cooked still.

  On a prior excursion, during the planning stages, we’d identified a nearby garden that was overgrown with bushes and high grass, so that’s where we stashed the bags of silverware before creeping back into School House and making our way, undetected, into bed.

  The next morning, we reaped the rewards of our derring-do. At assembly, the headmaster announced that “someone or someones unknown” had separated the school silverware from the cafeteria. It was a matter-of-fact announcement, and the headmaster made no reference to any kind of prank, though that conclusion was made obvious when he said he hoped for its return before dinnertime so that the police would not have to be called.

  Johnny squirmed at the mention of the law, but that just heightened the excitement for me. Not feeling fear in a conventional way, really at all, I knew that the threat meant that a rise in the stakes and a rise in the prank’s prestige, nothing more. And all day long, people were talking about nothing else,
wondering who’d done it and whether the cutlery would be returned before the dinner—even whether the dinner would be canceled.

  I smiled enigmatically as these questions swirled around me, and I could feel the beady eyes of the masters roaming over us, looking for signs of guilt or a reason to pull one of us aside and give us the third degree.

  None of that happened. The dinner went ahead and we all ate with plastic cutlery, spoon stems and fork tines snapping left and right as the plan to serve steak forged ahead. And, naturally, conversation was less about holiday plans and all about who’d pulled off this marvelous caper. As far as I was concerned, it was utter brilliance, marred only by the fact I couldn’t stand on my table and shout out that I’d done it. Unable to help myself, I dropped hints here and there, but if people pushed too hard I just remarked on the supreme conception and execution of the plan and how I wished I’d done it.

  Our anonymity didn’t last, of course. We got caught that same night. I think maybe we wanted to—what’s the value of such a prank if its architects remained anonymous? Johnny and I repeated our plan in reverse, sneaking out to grab the silverware and dump it, still in bags, though the cafeteria windows. It was on our way up the broad staircase to bed that the familiar figure of our housemaster appeared, ghosting through a doorway in his robe and slippers to pin us in place with his flashlight.

  Except there wasn’t much he could do at that point. The next day we were all going home, so any kind of detention or forced labor was out of the question. And in truth I think he wanted to evaluate the effect of the prank before settling on a punishment, as if a part of him was a little proud that it had been executed by boys in his house, not one of the other four boarding houses. The following morning, he told us that because our crime had been against the whole school, we’d have to report to the headmaster at the beginning of the next term to learn our fate.

  Johnny probably suffered like any empath would, worrying through his holidays about what might befall us, but of course I didn’t. In any case, the following term was to be the headmaster’s last at the school, too, and he was already the jolliest man on campus, even on a bad day.

  Sure enough, weeks later, Johnny and I stood before him on that first day back at school, and he fixed us with an unusually serious gaze.

  “I suppose you thought that was funny, did you?” he demanded.

  A moment of silence, then I said, “Actually, we did, sir.”

  That serious look melted into a broad grin. “Well, it was! Brilliantly executed, very ingenious. No harm done, and maximum attention.”

  Johnny and I swapped looks. “Thank you, sir,” I said, waiting for the “but.”

  “Buuut,” he said slowly, “there needs to be a consequence, of course. So, you are both to report to the cafeteria every evening for the next two weeks to help serve your fellow students.”

  The import of that “consequence” soon became clear, and it was bloody marvelous: those who’d not heard we were responsible for the prank now got to hear it from us, and see the proof in us serving their puddings. Not only was this no punishment, it was like being called to the stage every night to be recognized for our prank. Whether the HM intended this or not, we sure as hell didn’t care.

  This reinforced a broader lesson, too, one I’d taught to myself six years earlier, and one that became increasingly significant over time. I almost always tried to curtail my impulses, limit my misdeeds to those where I could never be caught or punished. But the Great Cutlery Prank of Whitley College reminded me that sometimes, just sometimes, it’s OK to go all in, to go big and trust that the winds of fate will blow kindly in your direction. You know, kind of like running away from Maidstone Hall.

  It’s in my nature to try to control my environment, but to do so in reckless ways. I’ve lived my life since that day knowing that when needs must, I might be able to pull out the big guns, so to speak, and just start blazing. Although, as the dead participants of the O.K. Corral will attest, even a blazing gunfight could benefit from a little planning and manipulation.

  This all came back to me as I pondered my situation regarding the judgeship. Like Bobby, I didn’t like to be told no, and Portnoy and the other judges had basically done that. This was a problem, because the more I thought about that job the more I wanted it: an extra thirty grand a year, an office with a window (and no Brian McNulty in it), and the increased respect of my colleagues at the DA’s office and the defense bar. Not to mention power. Real, actual power that I could wield at my discretion—power over the lawyers, the probation department, and the kids themselves. For people like me, power is one of the strongest aphrodisiacs life has to offer.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  That evening, I took a table at the Crow Bar on South Congress not far from work and ordered my usual grapefruit juice and tonic. Alcohol and drugs were off-limits to me, pretty much. A man with a dangerously impulsive nature didn’t need those barriers lowered further, that much I knew about myself. I did allow a little gambling now and again, the occasional bet with a friend, fellow musician, or co-worker. Nothing huge, and I always made sure the deck was stacked. I hate to lose even the smallest of wagers, like the one I had running with Bernadette at Club Steamboat the next week.

  I sat there with my eyes on the door, waiting for that familiar figure, the one that could be clad in a lime-green dress or a pair of jeans or floppy pajamas, and still take my breath away.

  She got there just after six, gliding through the door in black skinny jeans and a white shirt, along with a large pair of sunglasses. Heads swiveled to watch as she crossed the room and settled opposite me.

  “Before I forget,” she began. “Can you find out when my aunt gets out? It’s soon and I need to have the room ready.”

  “You’re too good to her.” She was. It was her mother’s sister, a deadbeat who was in and out of the county lockup for theft, possessing crack, public intoxication, all the stuff that deadbeats do. Blood relative or not, I’d have dumped that crone years ago.

  “I know.” She gave me a half smile. “But one day she’ll win the lottery, and then I’ll murder her for the proceeds.”

  “Good plan. I’ll find out tomorrow; I think I can ask the deputy at work to look up the date.”

  “Thanks. So, Sergeant Brannon came to see me today.”

  Small talk over, I guess. “He’s been busy. Buy you a drink?”

  “Water’s fine. How so, busy?”

  “He paid a visit to me and McNulty, too.”

  “I’m sure he’s just doing his job,” she said. “Right?”

  “Sure. Anything of interest come up?”

  “He asked about you,” she said, “which makes me think we shouldn’t see each other for a while.” She looked pale, sad, but even so I longed to kiss those lips, cherry red even without makeup. “I hear that the police are known to follow the subjects of their inquiries.”

  “Maybe. What did he ask about me and what did you say?”

  “Whether I knew you. I told him that I knew you as Bobby’s prosecutor, that you seemed fair, but that we’d never done more than swapped hellos in court.”

  So she lied. That could be dangerous. “You get the impression he thinks otherwise?”

  She shrugged, and when the waiter came to the table I asked for two glasses of water. “No clue,” she said.

  “He may be looking into the heist. He’s definitely interested in the letters Bell’s sending to Ledsome, and why she talked to Bobby in detention.”

  “Lucky for me, I don’t know anything about any of that,” she said.

  I winked. “Yeah, me neither.”

  “He asked if we knew Ledsome, too. If I knew her.”

  “I’m assuming you didn’t.”

  “Right. I told him that I’d never even seen her, let alone met her. And that as far as I knew, outside of the detention visit, Bobby didn’t know her from Eve, either.”

  “He’s thorough,” I said. “I’ll give him that.”

  �
�Yeah, he was asking me about some of the things I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “Like, why would a fifteen-year-old kill a cop? And why, specifically, would Bobby do it?”

  “Well, we both know the answer to that, at least potential answers. Not exactly things we can lay out for Brannon, though.”

  Her head tilted downward. “I guess that’s true.”

  “It is. So did you tell him you think Bobby didn’t kill her? Play the grieving sister?” I realized the moment I said it that it’d come out wrong. I figured she knew me well enough to know why, to cut me some slack, but I was mistaken. She took her sunglasses off and looked me in the eye, then shook her head slowly and stood.

  “Playing?” she repeated, her voice as cold and hard as ice. “Something tells me that I’m the only one around here not playing at something. Like I said before, I think it would be better if we don’t see each other for the foreseeable future. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a funeral to plan.”

  She walked out on me then, with no change to the natural and mesmerizing sway of her hips, no change to the proud straightness of her spine. She left the way she came in, in total charge of everyone in the room, including me.

  ◯

  On Tuesday morning I brought an extra latte to the deputy in charge of courthouse security at the Betts, Mike Trejo. He was a good-looking guy, bald with expressive brown eyes that could look mean as hell but were usually laughing. He was a boxer in his spare time, and coached his kids’ flag football team. Stand-up guy, and always willing to help out us prosecutors.

  “You need a favor,” he said with a grin as he accepted the latte.

  “A wee one, yes.” I nodded and attempted to look sheepish.

  “Tell me.”

  “I was just curious about something, but if you can’t do it, or shouldn’t, then just let me know. Not a big deal.”

  “Nah, man, tell me,” he said again.

  I sighed. “It’s just . . . weird. I just feel like someone’s been following me for a couple of weeks.”