[Jessie Black 01.0] Burnout

by Larry A Winters

  Goldhammer’s voice sounded anxious, nothing like his courtroom bravado. “Did you have anything to do with that death? No. Wait. It’s better if you don’t tell me.”

  Footsteps. Ice and liquid swishing in glasses. She imagined Jack passing one to the puffy-faced defense attorney. “Of course I had nothing to do with it.” His voice was low, tight. She had to strain to hear him. “Did you?”

  “Don’t be asinine.”

  “Then don’t accuse me.”

  “I’m very uncomfortable with this whole situation,” Goldhammer said. She heard ice cubes clink as the men sipped from their drinks.

  “You’re uncomfortable? A girl is dead, Gil. An innocent girl!”

  “I never thought anything like this would happen,” Goldhammer said. “The risks are getting too high.”

  “The risks? What exactly are the risks for you? Last I checked, I’m the one who had to pretend to be insane, watch my career go down the toilet.”

  “Come on, Jack. Pretend? Who do you think you’re kidding? I’ve met Snickers bars less nutty than you.”

  “Well, uncomfortable or not, there’s no backing out now,” Jack said.

  “I can’t believe I allowed you to get me involved in this,” Goldhammer said.

  A silence followed. Quietly, Jack said, “We both know who was responsible for that girl’s death.”

  “Bullshit. You have proof? No? Then relax. No one else does, either.”

  “I just want this to end,” Jack said.

  “We’re almost there.”

  “Thank God.”

  Another quiet moment as they drank.

  “What about Jessie cross-examining Kate?” Goldhammer said. She heard a hint of laughter in his voice, then a creak of springs as he sat on a couch. “Hell of a show.”

  “She was something, wasn’t she?”

  “You said there wouldn’t be any surprises.”

  “I said I’d try to minimize them,” Jack said.

  Goldhammer sighed. “Hopefully she didn’t hurt our case too much. I’m going back to the hotel. I need some sleep. I’m writing my closing this weekend.” There was another creak of springs, and a quiet grunt, as he stood up again.

  “You’re not going to call Ramsey to the stand?” Jack said.

  Goldhammer barked a laugh. “After watching your girlfriend savage my expert witness? Are you kidding? And Kate is a pro. If I put Ramsey up there, I don’t even want to think what Black would do to him.”

  “I think he should have the opportunity to tell his own story,” Jack said.

  “Well, Jack, that’s why I get paid the big bucks and you get psychotherapy. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  “Alright. I’ll see you.”

  Jessie heard a soft thump—she imagined Jack giving Goldhammer a friendly pat on the back as he took the empty glass from the lawyer’s hand. The front door opened with a creak. Wind whistled into the house. A moment later, the door closed.

  Jack cursed under his breath. Footsteps moved past the staircase. Two glasses clinked in the basin of the sink. Water surged briefly. Then the footsteps moved close to the stairs again.

  Jessie heard the metal step at the bottom of the staircase clang beneath Jack’s foot. He was coming upstairs.

  She turned, scanned the bedroom. Don’t panic. There were a few places to hide—the closet, the bathroom—but if he’d just come home from a meeting, either of those places might be his first destination. That left the bed. Moving with as little noise as possible, she crawled underneath it.

  The space between the hardwood floor and the box spring was tight. She lay on her back, her nose inches from the dark cloth covering the bottom of the bed frame. Jack’s footsteps seemed impossibly loud as he climbed the stairs, the metal squealing at every step. He stepped from the stairs to the floor and flicked a light switch. The room brightened and she saw his shadow on the hardwood floor near the bed. She held her breath.

  Two feet, wearing socks, stopped near her shoulder at the edge of the bed. She twisted her neck until she could see them—black and thick, pointed away from the bed. He sighed and the dark cloth above her lurched downward until it brushed her face. The rows of coil springs inside the frame pressed against her cheek.

  It’s okay. Breathe. You can breathe.

  During her rush to slide beneath the bed, the strap of her purse had slid off her shoulder. Carefully turning her head, she saw the black leather bag peeking out from under the bed, no more than six inches from his left foot. She hooked two fingers under the strap and yanked the purse out of sight.

  If Jack noticed, he gave no indication. He continued to sit, his body still, his sock-clad feet unmoving.

  He sighed again. The springs shifted under his weight, extending and recoiling as he squirmed on the mattress. Jessie realized a moment later that he had reached for something in his pocket—his phone—when he sat still again and tapped the screen.

  “Come on, Jessie.”

  She froze. Waited for his face to appear in the space between the bed and the floor, a cold smile on his face and a gun or a knife in his hand. But all he did was say her name again, his voice sounding irritated this time. “Jessie, pick up the phone.”

  He was calling her.

  Her mouth opened in silent panic. Dust from the cloth of the box spring drifted onto her tongue.

  Her phone was in her purse.

  She still had two fingers of her right hand hooked around the strap. Frantic, she tugged the purse toward her, reeled in the strap like a fishing line until the leather corner of the purse bounced against her hand.

  With her left hand, she groped for the zipper. She could see nothing except Jack’s sock-clad feet and the hardwood floor leading to the staircase. Slowly, cringing at the noise it made, she slid the zipper along its track.

  It stopped halfway. She tugged harder, but it would not budge. She must have trapped some of the lining in the zipper’s teeth.

  She yanked at the zipper. It was stuck. Above her, Jack drew one leg up onto the mattress. More dust dropped from the bottom of the box spring into her mouth.

  Breathe.

  Her hands scurried over the purse, examined it. She had zipped open a hole of no more than three inches. Not enough room for her hand. She thrust three fingers inside. The teeth of the zipper raked her skin. Her knuckles burned. She wriggled the fingers inside the bag. Fished past tissues and a pen and a pack of gum and a box of Altoids. The pad of her index finger brushed the edge of the phone, then slipped away.

  From the tiny speaker of the phone pressed to Jack’s ear, she heard a ring.

  In seconds, her own phone would ring in response.

  Her index finger found the phone again. This time, she clamped the phone between her index and middle fingers and pulled. When the top of the phone cleared the zipper, she grabbed it, and yanked it out of the bag. She thumbed the power button, holding it until the phone silently shut down.

  Barely audible, the speaker of Jack’s phone rang again. After a few more rings, she heard—faintly—her own voice mail greeting.

  Jack leaned forward.

  “Hey, Jess. It’s me. Again. Please call me back.” He paused, then added, “I really miss you.”

  Bastard.

  He ended the call. The dark cloth lifted away from Jessie’s face as he stood up.

  From her narrow vantage point, she watched him undress. He danced out of his khakis like a boy, undid the top button of his shirt and pulled it over his head. The T-shirt next, the boxer shorts, the socks. Naked, he padded toward the bathroom.

  The door closed. Beyond it, she heard water pound into the bathtub. Now was her chance.

  Jessie slid out of her hiding place, careful not to disturb the clothing he had tossed around the room. Steam escaped from under the door of the bathroom, warming the air. She resisted the urge to bash the door open, grab him by the throat, and drown him in his own tub.

  She shoved her phone past the stuck zipper of her purse and hurried down the s
tairs. She had come here looking for a traitor, and she had found one. It was time to leave.

  Jessie had parked her Accord a block away from Jack’s cobblestone lane. She dug the keys out of her purse through the three-inch opening of her stuck zipper, raking fresh scratches into her fingers. That pain was nothing next to the thought that Jack had been playing her for a fool for months.

  Sliding behind the wheel, she replayed the last ten minutes in her mind. Unless she had left something behind or out of place—and she was almost positive she hadn’t—Jack would never know she had been there.

  She suppressed the urge to punch the steering wheel. It wasn’t so much his betrayal that infuriated her as her own gullibility. She had thought she was smart, but all it had taken was a charming smile and a few corny compliments to turn her into a sucker.

  She twisted the key in the ignition, got the heater going. Warm air puffed against her open palms as she held them up to the vents. The engine thrummed.

  She did not want to go home. Not yet. She needed to talk. She needed to be with someone who would listen, and care.

  Only half-surprised by the person who came to mind, she shifted the car into drive.

  49

  “Jack Ackerman? Are you kidding?” Leary paced in front of the bookcase in his one-bedroom apartment.

  Her mouth and throat felt dry. She swallowed. Finally, she said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go, and I need your help.”

  Tears were gathering in her eyes and she wasn’t sure why—whether they were tears of anger, despair, or relief. Because she was feeling all of those emotions right now.

  “Okay,” Leary said. He stopped pacing, ran a hand through his hair, and sighed. “Tell me what happened.”

  She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I thought there was something between us. Apparently it was all bullshit and he’s been manipulating me, spying on me, God knows what else.”

  “You slept with him?”

  She looked up sharply. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Leary turned away. For a brief moment, she saw his eyes squint shut, his jaw bunch. He rubbed his face with his hand and the expression vanished. “Okay, so why would he want to help Goldhammer and Ramsey? What’s his motive?”

  Like most cops, Leary had a tendency to retreat into procedure and jargon. Jessie sighed. “Not everything has a rational motive.”

  “Do you think Ackerman is financing Ramsey’s defense? Paying Goldhammer’s bills?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.” It seemed plausible. He’d managed to buy a nice house, and his stint at Wooded Hill Hospital could not have been cheap. He had money, probably from his family.

  “I’ll tail him this weekend, see where he goes, who he talks to. Okay?”

  She nodded. “Thanks.” She tried to open her purse for a tissue, then remembered the stuck zipper and cursed.

  “What’s wrong?” Leary took the bag and held it under the light. He peered at the zipper’s teeth. Calmly, with one thumb, he tugged the interior fabric, stretching it away from the metal. With the thumb and index finger of his other hand, he yanked the zipper. It popped forward, moving smoothly across its track. He handed it back to her.

  “They teach you that at the police academy?” she said.

  For the first time since she’d arrived at his door, he smiled. “It’s my solemn duty as a member of the Philadelphia Police Department to serve, protect, and fix women’s handbags.” His face became serious again. “I’ll call you in a few days and let you know what I find. For now, you need to play along, or we’ll lose whatever advantage we have. Can you do that?”

  Jessie felt a flash of rage. “I can do whatever’s necessary to nail that prick.”

  Leary nodded approvingly. “Then let’s get him.”

  50

  The Lexus idled in Woody’s brother’s driveway, but despite the heat blowing against her face, Amber felt a chill. Michael’s lawn was layered in a thin crust of snow, through which dead, brown blades of grass poked. Amber, in the passenger seat, crossed her arms over her chest. Woody was talking to her—yelling at her—but she refused to look at him until he grabbed her roughly by the chin and forced her to face him.

  “Don’t you ever, ever ignore me when I’m talking to you.”

  She thrust her chin in the air. She was sick of his bullshit. His interrogations, his bullying. “Fuck you.”

  He slapped her, hard, before the word was fully out of her mouth. Her face stung and tears jumped to her eyes. She could feel her lower lip begin to swell where his index and middle fingers had struck it. She raised a hand to touch her face.

  “How did he find out?” The question boomed inside the Lexus. “What did you do that tipped him off, you stupid cunt?”

  She should have known better than to tell Woody about her confrontation with Elliot at the gym. But during the drive to his brother’s house, when he’d asked her all the usual questions about Elliot and the trial, she had been unable to conceal it from him.

  No, that’s a load of shit. You told him because you knew it would mean the end of your little mission, the end of your usefulness as a whore.

  He was staring at her. His eyes were feral. Something in her stomach did a somersault as the certainty overcame her that he had read her thoughts. “I swear to God, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything.” She blurted the words, sputtering, her eyes unable to resist glancing at his right hand. “He figured it out himself. He figured it out when Rachel Pugh—”

  The hand moved. There was no room in the car to dodge the blow, but she jerked her head away from him, lessening its impact. Not that it mattered much. Her face still throbbed from his first slap. She barely registered the new pain.

  “Don’t say that name. Forget you ever heard it.”

  “Did you—” She was surprised by the steadiness of her own voice. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t sobbing, wasn’t begging him not to hurt her. She met Woody’s eyes and said, “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  He raised his hand again, but this time she blocked him. Their wrists collided with a smack that sent waves of pain reverberating down her arm, but she kept her eyes locked with his.

  He didn’t need to answer her question. His confession was written all over his face. In the guilty way he averted his eyes. In the rabbit-quick jerks of his fingernails as he scratched his goatee.

  “If you keep staring at me like that I’m going to hit you again.” The roar had faded from his voice. His threat sounded hollow. For the moment, at least, she had beaten him back.

  But she wouldn’t be able to beat him back forever.

  She had loved him. As recently as one month ago, she had loved him so much that the only thing in the world she had wanted for Christmas was an engagement ring.

  He reached for her chin, cupped it in his hand, gently this time, and studied her face. He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. “Your face is going to bruise. You might have to skip a few nights at the club.” He handed her a wad of cash. She took it. “When he asks, tell Elliot you slipped on an icy sidewalk and smacked your face against the ground.”

  “Wait. You mean ... you’re sending me back?”

  “The trial’s not over yet. I still need your help.” After a moment, he added, “I’m sorry.”

  “But he knows.”

  “You said he believed you when you denied it.”

  “I said I thought he believed me. And even if he did, he’s still going to be suspicious if I start asking questions about the trial again.”

  “But he won’t be suspicious if you suddenly dump him?”

  He cut the engine. Apparently the conversation was over. She had been given her marching orders and he expected her to obey them like a good little soldier.

  “Woody.”

  The truth, although she would never confess it to the monster in the seat beside her, was that she had actually started to like Elliot Williams. Not in a sexual way—fuckin
g him was a chore—but she had begun to see him as a person, a goodhearted nerd whose biggest faults were arrogance and gullibility, faults dwarfed by those of most of the men she’d encountered over the years. She didn’t like scamming him.

  Woody opened the door, slid halfway out of the Lexus. “Michael’s waiting.”

  “I’ll stay in the car.”

  “No you won’t. He wants to have a look at you.”

  The story of her life. She stared at him for a moment, then opened the passenger-side door and followed him to the house.

  Amber once resented Michael’s nurse, Natalie Baron, who couldn’t seem to help mooning over Woody with the eyes of a lovesick twelve-year-old girl. Today she didn’t mind at all. She wished Natalie all the luck in the world with her conquest of the psycho’s heart.

  “How is he?” Woody’s whole body seemed to stiffen the moment he and Amber met Natalie in the foyer. He licked his lips.

  “Not great.” Natalie followed his gaze as it slipped toward the dark staircase “He seems comfortable, though. He hasn’t been in a lot of pain.”

  “Good.” He started up the stairs. Natalie followed closely behind. Alone in the foyer, Amber considered running. But where would she go? It wasn’t like she had a secret identity, or the knowledge and resources to acquire one. Wherever she went, she would have to use an ATM or a credit card. She would have to get a job and give her employer her social security number. Tracking her down would pose no problem for a guy like Woody. And once he did, what would stop him from killing her, breaking her neck like he broke Rachel Pugh’s?

  His voice boomed down from the upstairs hallway. “Amber, come on.”

  She walked up the steps.

  The first thing she noticed when she entered Michael’s bedroom was not the medical equipment surrounding the bed. It was not the jug of urine on the nightstand. Nor was it the laptop computer tethered to the wall by an Ethernet cable that eerily mimicked the tube tethering Michael’s emaciated right arm to an IV drip. All of these things she noticed, but only after her eyes had zeroed in on the chessboard. It was one of those nice sets made of marble, with beautifully carved pieces. The board had been placed on the seat of a chair near the bed, the pieces arranged in an unfinished game. Propped on one of the chair’s armrests, dog-eared and worn, was the beginner’s guide to chess that Amber had given Woody for Christmas.