Hostile Witness

by Rebecca Forster

  5

  “That someone would take the life of a man like Fritz Rayburn . . .What can I say to that? I can only hope whoever did this feels the full wrath of our justice system – regardless of who they are. I promise, the person I appoint to fill Justice Rayburn’s seat will have the same commitment to law and order; perhaps feel even more strongly about it than I do.” - Governor Joe Davidson, Good Day LA Interview

  “Hannah Sheraton.” Josie tattooed her name on the jail log as she stated her business.

  “Room three, counselor. It’ll be a few minutes.”

  The officer behind the window flicked her head to the left as she finished searching Josie’s portfolio and purse, and then pushed them toward her. Josie nodded her thanks and dodged the guy behind her as she turned to leave.

  “Bitch of a place to be on a hot day,” he muttered as he pulled the log toward him and signed in.

  “Bitch of a place to be any day.” Josie answered back, but she was the only one who heard it.

  Josie was already standing in front of the door that led to the interview rooms at Sybil Brand. Pushing through the first of two doors when the buzzer sounded she paused, waited for the second buzzer, and then went through. The door locked behind her while she was still wondering if she shouldn’t just forget the whole thing. In room number three, Josie tossed her briefcase on the table, sat down, and looked through the glass at the LA County women’s jail.

  The place was a sprawling complex of old buildings that housed women who committed real crimes: murder, arson, burglary, assault. Hannah Sheraton would be a ‘keep away’, cut off from the general population for her own protection because of her age. If she were convicted, though, this could be home; this prison with the pastel butterflies painted on the walls to inspire the inmates to come out of the cocoon of Sybil Brand bigger, better, and smarter. But this was also the prison where yellow footprints were stenciled on the floor and each prisoner stepped on them, as if they were balancing on the razor’s edge. Forbidden to veer away. Forbidden to look back.

  Josie shifted, trying to get comfortable on the wooden chair. It had been a long time since she’d been in this place. It could be twenty minutes before they fetched Hannah. Josie closed her eyes and rested her head against the cold, concrete wall and replayed the conversation with Linda Rayburn.

  Linda wove her own story in with her daughter’s. Josie had directed, but Linda knew how she wanted the tale to go. One thing was clear; Linda and Hannah did not exist without the other.

  Hannah Sheraton. Sixteen. She had been carted around the world with Linda and her lovers, gone through puberty with a bang, and started acting out when she was twelve. Nothing big. Nothing Linda hadn’t done. Nothing Linda couldn’t handle. Skip classes, smoke a little weed. Try cigarettes. Hang out with guys too old to have good intentions. Chip off the old block. Really a good kid though, just a little wild. Grew up too fast.

  Linda went through the scotch like water. She didn’t so much as slur a word. She was a hell of a drinker. And always it was back to Hannah.

  Smart kid when she was in school. There had been so many schools, but everyone said the same thing. Talented, talented kid. Painter. Oils mostly. Some acrylics. She experimented with other mediums. Hannah had a future if she could just settle down. A big future. Bigger than Picasso.

  Josie raised a brow. Linda caught it but didn’t back off far.

  Okay, maybe not Picasso, but big. Linda took Hannah’s paintings to a guy in Beverly Hills. He bought a painting for five hundred bucks. Five hundred was big stuff before Linda met Kip, when Linda was between friends. Hannah was so happy when her painting helped out. That kid was so selfless. But then, it wasn’t hard work for her. Hannah was only happy with a brush in her hand.

  Josie ran out of scotch. Linda didn’t run out of information.

  The fire. It started in Hannah’s studio. Okay, it wasn’t really a studio but Fritz let her use the old west wing to do her painting. She used the bottom floor. When Fritz was in town he stayed in the bedroom suite above. That’s where he died. That’s where the fire started. Hannah loved that studio. Jesus, if Josie had seen her when they first started living in the big house. It was like being a princess...

  Josie put a hand on Linda’s arm. Linda refocused. She moved her hands around like she was rearranging a piece of a puzzle.

  Hannah got weird. The Rayburns didn’t think she was all that endearing, but what could you expect from two men? One had been a widower for ages and the other hadn’t married until he was fifty. They were set in their ways. It was hard enough to get used to Linda, much less Hannah. They didn’t like the way she looked one bit. But Hannah was beautiful. Linda wanted Josie to know that. Oh, and Fritz took a great interest in Hannah’s painting. But the Rayburns also said Hannah needed discipline. Kip was impatient when he paid attention at all. He thought Hannah reflected badly on the family.

  Things got worse. Hannah had new tricks. She didn’t sleep well. She made everyone crazy with these weird little things she did. Hey, they’d gone from a one-bedroom apartment to a mansion. They’d gone from being two, to being part of a family. That was tough. There would be adjustments. Fritz thought different. He put Hannah into therapy, spent hours talking to her when he was home. He called to check on her. He was a good guy that way. Linda thought, as Hannah’s mother, she should make the decisions, but she and Kip weren’t married long enough for her to object. Linda didn’t want to appear ungrateful and no one had ever been so nice to them before. Damn her acting out like that. Always head games with Hannah. For God’s sake, she just didn’t know how lucky she was – they were – to be Rayburns.

  So Josie was thinking about the dynamic in the Rayburn house when the door opened. There stood the real thing. Hannah Sheraton, drop dead gorgeous and jumpy as a racing pulse.

  Even in an orange jumpsuit Josie could see that her body was perfect: slight but full breasted and broad shouldered. Her long black hair hung down her back and framed her face in a riot of tight curls. Her skin was dark, smooth, luminescent, but her eyes were that same spring green of her mother’s. She could have stood in front of the Taj Mahal in a gold sari or danced on the beaches of Bali and looked at home. Hannah was an exotic creature, petite and feminine where Linda was tall and feline featured. Hannah was a child of the world and all Josie could think was that the other half of her genetic equation must have been something gorgeous to look at.

  The guard, it seemed, was not impressed with Hannah. She put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and then gave her a verbal shove.

  “Move ahead, Sheraton.”

  Hannah lifted her foot but before she put it down again, her left hand touched the doorjamb. Once. Twice. Four. Five times.

  “Come on, Sheraton. I haven’t got all day.” Startled by the order, Hannah stepped into the room, her face tightening in anger. Before the girl could give the guard any lip, Josie stood up.

  “Thanks. We’ll call when we’re done.”

  The woman nodded curtly even as her eyes lingered on Josie. Three years had passed but people had long memories. Josie had almost lived at Sybil Brand during the Kristin Davis trial. She had been the poster girl for defense attorneys – get ‘em out of jail whether they deserved it or not. Law enforcement didn’t care for Josie’s brand of lawyering; Josie hadn’t cared for it either after Kristin.

  “I said I’ll call when we’re done,” Josie reiterated.

  The guard left. Hannah didn’t move. Her hands were clasped behind her back, her shoulders twitching as if she were pumping those hands up and down.

  “Where’s my mother?”

  Hannah’s angry voice wasn’t half as attractive as the rest of her. Josie’s smile faded. She had worried about calming a frightened girl, not fighting with a pissed off chick.

  This was a mistake, Archer.

  “Your mother’s at home,” Josie answered plainly. She motioned to the only other chair in the room. “Sit down.”

  “Did you check?” Hann
ah stepped forward then back again, screwing with Josie.

  “I saw her night before last night.”

  “No, I mean did you check this morning? You’re sure she’s there?” The girl’s voice rose with agitation.

  “Yes, your mother is at home. She sent me here to help you.”

  “Are you a doctor? I don’t need a doctor.” Hannah cut Josie off, her expression a mix of arrogance, anger, and a bit of childish hope. Kids like Hannah never thought anyone saw the hope.

  Josie shook her head.

  “My name is Josie Baylor-Bates. I’m a lawyer. Now, are you going to sit down or am I going to have to call a guard to put you down.” Those green eyes sharpened. Hannah wasn’t going to give an inch and the sooner Josie took control the better. She pointed to the chair again. “You’ve got one minute, or I’m out of here.”

  Hannah’s eyes closed briefly. She squeezed her shoulders back. Those hands were pumping again and then it was over. Her body relaxed, her expression eased into something close to relief. Throwing back her hair she reached for the chair. Josie saw the burn; Hannah saw Josie’s look of surprise.

  From fingertip to wrist, the skin on Hannah Sheraton’s hand was swollen and mottled, red and white. A lacy looking roadmap of darker pigment was the only reminder of what that hand used to look like. It had been over a week since Fritz Rayburn’s death. The injury must have been horrible if it still looked that bad.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  Hannah furrowed her brow and turned her hand to the right and left, right again as she sat down. Putting her injured hand palm down on the table, she gazed at it.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You have to think about it?” Josie sat, too.

  Hannah raised her eyes without lifting her head. She was a demonic sprite with those eyes, that skin, her wild hair, and the piercings on her nose and ears. Her full lips curled around her words as if casting a spell.

  “Some people can’t stand it when the wind blows too hard. There are degrees to everything. I don’t recognize pain. I don’t even remember it hurting when it happened. I didn’t even cry. ”

  Josie pulled a pad of paper from her portfolio.

  “I don’t know if that’s anything to be proud of.” Josie noted the date and time on the top of the paper, trying to ignore the warning in her gut.

  “I didn’t say it was, did I?”

  Hannah’s burned hand went to her hair, grasped the longest tendril and wrapped it behind her ear. She pulled it forward, wrapped it back and forward and stopped as suddenly as she had begun. She put her hands under the table and looked right at Josie.

  “Will you be able to paint?” Josie asked.

  “If I can’t paint I’ll kill myself.”

  “No you won’t. You’re in protective custody,” Josie muttered, making a point about powerlessness that Hannah seemed to miss. “You can’t breathe without someone watching you. But that doesn’t answer the question. Your mother told me about your painting, and that the fire that killed your grandfather started in. . .”

  “My s-t-e-p.” Hannah spelled it out. “Fritz was my step.”

  Hannah’s hostility spike at the mention of Fritz Rayburn wasn’t lost on Josie. She tried again.

  “The fire that killed Fritz Rayburn started in the place you used as a studio. Do you know anything about that?”

  Hannah came right back at her.

  “Why don’t you ask me if I did it? Why ask me if I know anything about it?”

  “Because I want to know what you know about it,” Josie reiterated. “If I want to know if you did it, I’ll ask you.”

  “I know that the place was on fire. I know if I wanted to burn down the house I wouldn’t have tried to put it out, would I? My paintings were in there.” From beneath the table came a light and rhythmic thumping. Hannah leaned close to the wood, her hair spilled onto it, her anger shot toward Josie. “I don’t know why you’re here. Kip will get me out of jail and take care of everything. He got me back in school when I got kicked out. He fixed it so my mom could get into some fancy club.” Hannah’s eyes sparkled with challenge, “Kip and Fritz fix everything.”

  “Not this time, Hannah.”

  Josie twirled the pen between her fingers as she listened to Hannah’s view of her world. The truth was that sometimes saving people wasn’t simple, sometimes saviors weren’t who you expected them to be, all people don’t get saved, and not everyone deserved to be saved. It was time Hannah heard those facts of life.

  “Look, Hannah, Fritz is dead, and if Kip were going to help you he would have done it by now. Your mother knows that, so she sent me.” Josie leaned forward, crossed her arms on the table and looked right into that gorgeous, defiant face. “You are in a shit load of trouble. Now, if you want to go home to your mother then you look at me, you talk to me, you listen to me, and you cut the crap because, believe me, this is the last place on earth I want to be.”

  Hannah bit her bottom lip – a gesture so like her mother’s. Those broiled fingers were at her hair again. Front. Behind. Front. Behind. Over the ear once, then again. She swished her hair and her lips moved as if she were counting. Her eyes wandered as if Josie was no more interesting than a gnat.

  Frustrated, unnerved by her surroundings, sick of this kid’s self-absorbed nonsense, Josie shot out of her chair. Her thighs pushed the table as she reached across it and clamped down on Hannah’s wrist.

  “Stop that,” she growled.

  Hannah’s eyes narrowed. She tried to jerk away. Josie held on tight and Hannah bared her teeth.

  “I can’t. Do you want to make something of it?”

  6

  Josie backed off, slowly releasing Hannah’s wrist. She was shaking, stunned at her anger and Hannah’s admission.

  “No, I don’t want to make anything of it.”

  Josie sank back into her chair. Grown women broke their first hour in this place. Hannah Sheraton was ready to fight. She had guts, Josie would give her that.

  “So then don’t call me on it.”

  Hannah slumped in her chair, resentment seeping out of her. Her jumpsuit gaped open. Josie could see one perfectly formed breast sans bra. The nipple was pierced. There was a tattoo staining her shoulder, blue/black and red. Her hand knocked underneath the table in a maddening rhythm. Everything about her said hard as nails but Josie didn’t buy it. There was something beyond the anger that intrigued Josie; something in the way Hannah stood up for herself that Josie admired.

  “So tell me about what you’re doing. There isn’t time for me to guess, and you don’t want the prosecution to know anything your own attorney doesn’t know.”

  Hannah closed her eyes and kept them closed.

  “I do it because that’s what I do. I touch things twenty times. It makes me feel safe. I’m obsessive/compulsive. All the doctors say the same thing.” Hannah’s lashes fluttered. Her lids raised half way in an expression that was weary and guarded. “What a waste of money. What’s wrong with liking to know my boundaries? It doesn’t hurt anyone. It doesn’t even hurt me.”

  “I think I’ll wait for your doctors to tell me if you have severe behavioral problems,” Josie said.

  “That’s rich. They only know what I tell them.” Hannah dismissed Josie only to find the ensuing, insistent silence annoying. She filled it. “I’m better with doors than I used to be. I saw you looking at me when I touched the door. That’s why I figured you for a doctor. You look like the kind of doctor my mother likes.”

  “And what kind would that be?”

  “My mom likes women doctors. Extreme women.”

  Hannah put her burned hand to her throat and dropped the fingers down to the opening of her jumpsuit. This was a Linda move. Hannah was a puppy, learning all the wrong things before she was weaned. Sensing Josie’s discomfort, Hannah teased.

  “The kind of women my mom likes either hate to screw, or they screw too much. That’s the kind of extreme they are. She probably likes lawyers like tha
t, too. Which one are you?”

  Josie shook her head.

  “I’ve heard that word before, Hannah, so why don’t you tell me something I really want to know. Tell me what kind of doctors Fritz liked.” When Hannah fell silent Josie pushed on. “Your mother said Fritz Rayburn took an interest in you. She said he paid for some clinics and your doctors.”

  Josie wasn’t playing Hannah’s game and Hannah wasn’t interested in Josie’s.

  “They were just places, just people. I don’t think he ever met any of the doctors in them. He just sent me there.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  “Like he was sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong; like he was punishing me when I didn’t do anything.”

  The hair was going back and forth again but slower now as if she was seeing Fritz, hearing him, and was pissed at him. Between the words Hannah breathed her numbers. When she reached twenty twirls she stopped and put her burned hand on the table, always in the same place. She was done.

  “I’m not going to talk about Fritz. He was just in the house sometimes, that’s all. He was a damn hypocrite always talking about the law, and justice, and art, and people falling all over him like he was better than everyone else. Well, he wasn’t better, and he wasn’t around a lot. So let’s not talk about Fritz.”

  “How did all that make him a hypocrite, Hannah?” Josie pressed for information, looking for the bottom of Hannah’s resentment.

  She shrugged, “I don’t know. He thought he was above everybody. Forget it. Forget him.”

  “That’s all anybody’s going to be talking about, so you better get that through your head. You’re charged as an adult. You’re going to have to start acting like one.”

  Hannah shifted. She sat up straight, still cautious but suddenly engaged.

  “Okay. I’ll be an adult. I have some questions. How come my mom sent you and not some guy?”