by Dave Daren
“But, Leslie’s out tonight with a few of her girlfriends for margaritas at some bar in Dallas they’ve been meaning to try,” Brody continued. “So I swung back to the area to stop at Bertie’s for a bite to eat, and planned on heading by the office to give you Evelyn’s car keys if you were still there.”
He paused and gave a soft chuckle that even he seemed to think was out of place for the tense energy in the car.
“She told me to tell you that you can borrow it for the time being, but if you so much as get any lint in it, she’ll string you up by your short hairs,” Brody explained.
A small smile twitched at my lips despite my persistent fear, and I nodded my understanding since I still couldn’t quite find my voice. I really wanted to be the sort of person that could be shot at and throw out a nifty one-liner, and maybe one day I would be, but right now, the best I could come up with was a grunt of acknowledgement.
“But, I saw somebody run past the diner like a bat out of hell with somebody chasing them, and they looked like they were in trouble,” he said and suddenly his surprise appearance made perfect sense.
“So,” I said and sucked in another gulp of air. “You came to the rescue.”
He nodded, and I noticed that the tension in his posture hadn’t released yet. He reminded me of a coiled spring that threatened to snap loose at any second.
I probably looked the same way as I dropped my head back against the leather seat and closed my eyes while I tried to process the situation. I didn’t have to ask where Brody was taking me to know he was heading back toward my apartment building. Like Clara, he’d been by once or twice for one reason or another.
He’d once helped me build a bookshelf because he’d insisted I would do it the wrong way, and I’d let him because I had realized he seemed to miss doing those sorts of things with his son.
I gathered that their relationship hadn’t been quite the same since the college admissions scandal, but I had never voiced that theory out loud.
“Thank you,” I finally said once I felt like I was able to form full, coherent sentences again.
I dropped my hand down from my chest as I tried to force the fear from my body, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the adrenaline wore off and my body started to shut down in protest of the strain.
I could also tell that Brody had a thousand questions he wanted to ask, but we drove in silence the rest of the way back to my apartment. I think my hard breathing when I’d first lunged into the car had him worried that I was about to keel over. And then there was the idea of being chased by a gunman that loomed over the both of us like a brewing storm. We would have to deal with it, but only once we’d found a safe haven.
But now that I was safe in the car, I let my mind drift to the mystery figure that had been so determined to catch and kill me. Unless disgruntled clients had escalated from bad Yelp reviews to attempted murder as a way to show their dissatisfaction with our services, this had to be related to the Thompson case.
Nothing else made sense, but that knowledge didn’t exactly make me feel better.
Brody slowed as he pulled into the parking lot for my building and inched his car into one of the few open parking spots. He shifted gears into park and glanced over at me with concern written all over his face.
“Are you going to be able to talk with the judge tomorrow, or should I?” he asked instead of saying what he was really asking. Are you okay?
I knew how to answer the words that had come from his mouth, but it took me a moment to force them out.
“I’ll be able to meet with him,” I assured Brody.
But I didn’t know how to answer the second, unasked question.
Was I okay? I’d just been shot at for the second time in less than a damn year and had been once again forced to reevaluate what exactly I would want carved into my headstone.
I’d had to wonder who would be the one to call my mother and give her the news, and that was not a question I ever wanted to ponder again.
I reached to unbuckle my seatbelt before I realized that I hadn’t even buckled it in the first place. With a chuckle, I shifted to push open the passenger side door instead.
I swung one aching leg after the other out into the parking lot that desperately needed to be repaved and pulled myself up to my feet. As I stood there and scanned the area for any other shadowy figures, it suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning that the figure had been familiar after all.
I slowly turned to look back at Brody with one of my hands still curled around the top of the car door as I ducked down to see him.
“I know who tried to shoot me,” I said the words slowly and felt as if I were trying them on.
Brody’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he opened his mouth as if to ask me who, but no words came out, just an inquisitive little sound.
I felt bile rise up in my throat.
“I’ve seen him before,” I said before I swallowed the bile down and met Brody’s eyes. “In uniform at the sheriff’s department.”
Chapter 18
I spent the night in my apartment sleepless and vigilant. For the first time since I was a child, I felt myself flinching at shadows, and to appease my overactive mind, I left the lights on all night long. I’d sat on my couch and let the television play in the background as I tried to sort through what had happened until the sun broke over the horizon and my artificially illuminated apartment started to fill with sunlight as well.
I knew that I should have slept, but every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was the flash of the muzzle and the barrel of a gun. Logically, I knew the fear would fade with time, like it always did. But just then, it had felt as raw as an open wound, and I wasn’t sure how to tend to it.
As soon as the infomercials that only ever aired at night faded into morning cartoons and news broadcasts, I knew I should call Evelyn and ask for the judge’s information. Her car keys sat on my kitchen island where I usually tossed my own, and I was at the very least thankful for having access to a vehicle again. I didn’t exactly want to walk more than necessary at the moment.
I shifted on the couch to grab my phone from where it rested facedown on the small end table only to see that she’d already texted me all of the information I had wanted to call and ask for.
I wasn’t sure if Brody had gotten in contact with her about what had happened the night before and it had jogged her memory, or if she’d intended to send me the message all along, but no matter which option it was, I was grateful.
After I sent her a message of thanks, I pushed myself up from my couch and made my way into the bathroom to change clothes and make myself look presentable. If Judge Calhoun was going to make his way down to the courthouse early in the morning for me on a weekend, the least I could do was try and look professional in return.
I shuffled into my bathroom and cranked on the shower with the water as hot as I could stand it before I stripped off my clothes and stepped under the heavy stream. Then I scrubbed at my skin and lathered shampoo into my hair as I let my mind wander.
On the docket that day, I had my meeting with Judge Calhoun over Natalie’s injunction to look forward to, and then David’s campaign announcement that was supposed to come later in the afternoon. I also wanted to call Clara at some point, but that was strictly for personal reasons. I didn’t want to dive into the details of my night with her, but I at least wanted to talk with someone that wasn’t involved in the mess my life had become overnight. I suppose I was hoping for a quiet conversation that seemed almost normal.
Once I realized that I was daydreaming in the shower and that the water was definitely cooling, I scrubbed myself sufficiently clean, stepped out of the shower, and wrapped a towel around my waist. I moved over toward my sink and turned on the faucet there as well to begin the process of shaving.
I could feel as disheveled as I needed, I decided, but I didn’t want that to come through in my appearance. In front of the Judge, I needed to appear calm, cool, and coll
ected, no matter what obstacles Thompson tried to throw up in my path.
It only took me a few minutes to thoroughly shave my face and use a towel to mostly dry my damp hair before I walked back into my bedroom to find clothes for the day. I settled on a pair of dress pants and a nice shirt and my standard dress shoes, and after a minute of debate, I grabbed the matching suit jacket as well and clipped my watch onto my wrist. I might as well go the whole nine yards.
Once I ascertained that I looked as professional as I was going to get, I wandered back out into the main portion of my apartment and walked over toward my kitchen island to snag my borrowed keys and my single house key from where I’d left them the night before.
I patted down my pockets to make sure that I’d remembered to grab my phone as well and started out the door.
I’d have to walk to Landon Legal to pick up Evelyn’s car, but the walk shouldn’t take me long. I still intended on getting to the courthouse early, and on a slow Sunday morning, there wasn’t anything that could keep me from that goal.
I locked up with my spare key before I redeposited it in my pocket instead of up on the doorframe. I didn’t know how long it would be before I could get the rest of my belongings back from the sheriff’s department, and I had gotten tired of having to blindly reach up for the key every time I needed to get into my apartment.
The world felt different than it had the night before when I stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of my building, and I realized as I walked that it wasn’t the world, but me instead.
I found myself keeping a closer eye on my surroundings and walking with more of a purpose than I had the night before. While it wasn’t the best situation to have driven me to higher vigilance, that by itself didn’t feel like a bad thing.
I nodded to one of my neighbors, the newest resident of the building, as I walked past him at the mailboxes.
He was a young-looking guy, and I thought that we were probably around the same age. He had a kind, open face, and when I wasn’t so stricken for time, I wanted to stop and ask his name. As the previous ‘newest tenant’ of the building, it felt like a rite of passage in a way.
I turned onto the sidewalk that ran from my building toward the center of town where Landon Legal sat. I knew that I had a full hour until I needed to be at the courthouse, but I didn’t want to waste any time. I set a brisk pace, and a few minutes later, the parking lot for my office came into view.
But instead of turning into the parking lot right away, I walked past it and Evelyn’s waiting car and toward Landon Legal itself.
My curiosity had gotten the better of me, and I wanted to see the bullet hole in the light of day. When I approached the building, I sucked a sharp breath in through my teeth at the sight.
It wasn’t as if the building was going to crumple now, but the bullet hole still made my heart stop. It was an ugly, angry wound amongst the neatly stacked red bricks that made up our building.
The bullet hole sat just along my eyeline, and I realized that if I hadn't started to run when I did, the inside of my skull would be embedded into the bricks right along with the bullet.
I reached out to ghost my fingers over the marred, shattered brick of the exterior wall of Landon Legal, and a shiver rolled down my spine.
I was suddenly reminded of that old wive’s tale that explained a random shiver or cold chill meant someone had walked over your grave, and as I pressed my fingers into the gash in the wall, I felt like I truly understood that phrase for the first time.
I pulled my hand away before I could trap myself there in my own thoughts of imagined doom. I didn’t have time to dwell on the horrors of what could have been, and I didn’t want to give Thompson that much power over me.
I gave the bullet hole one last look and on a whim, reached into my pocket to pull my phone from my pocket to snap a picture of the bullet hole. I doubted anything would come of the clear property damage and the slightly more hazy attempted murder, but I wanted the picture for posterity.
I knew that I couldn’t report the crime because it was one of the deputies that had tried to kill me. I didn’t know his name, but I knew without any doubt that it had been a deputy.
As I looked through the view of my phone’s camera, I realized that whatever shell casing dropped off the bullet that had notched itself into the wall was nowhere in sight. The sudden burst of knowledge sent another shiver through me as I put together what that meant. The man that had tried to kill me in the street had come back for the shell casing after I made my escape.
I knew well enough what that meant.
Whoever it was didn’t want the remnants of the bullet traced back to him, and paired with my near-certain knowledge that my would-have-been murderer worked for the sheriff’s department. I felt like I might upend whatever was left in my stomach onto my shoes, but I swallowed the sudden taste of bile and let my anger filter through instead.
I lowered my phone to break my trance and doom-spiraling as I stared at where a shell casing should have been in the wall and took a small step back on the sidewalk. My breathing hadn’t evened out yet, but I couldn’t waste any more time thinking about my near brush with death. I could, and did, make a silent oath to see that Thompson went down for the attack, somehow.
In the meantime, I had a judge to see and a client to help, and I’d be damned if I let the corrupt sheriff’s department put a stop to that like they’d so clearly tried to do the night before.
I slid my phone back into my pocket and gave the wall one last lingering look before I turned on my heels and headed toward Evelyn’s car in the Landon Legal parking lot as I swung her key around my finger.
Her car was one of those mysterious vehicles that was neither new nor old, and I had a hard time placing what year it actually came from. It suited her in its strange abstractness, and I honestly couldn’t picture her in anything else.
Evelyn was a marvel, but she was also a woman that I doubted I would ever truly understand, and part of me never really wanted to understand her. Somehow, knowing those things felt like it would diminish her power.
I did know a handful of things about her life before she came to work with me, but there seemed to be things that she purposefully kept from both Brody and I. I wasn’t one to pry when I didn’t need to, and I had a feeling Evelyn would find a way to punish me if I did.
However, I could tell that her willingness to let me use her car without her presence was a sign of definite trust, and I knew I’d need to find a way to show her how grateful I was for the gesture without her thinking I was just being a pandering asshole.
I clicked the lock button on the key fob and waited until I heard the familiar click of a car unlocking before I slipped into the driver’s seat. Or rather, I tried to slip into the driver’s seat, but Evelyn’s seat sat so close to the steering wheel to make up for her lack of height that I felt like I was trying to slither my way into a clown car.
I took a moment to bend down and push the seat back as far as it would go before I ducked my head down to squeeze myself into a car that felt like it was built for someone half my size. I adjusted the mirrors as best as I could, but I was still forced to hunch at a slightly strange angle to make the vehicle even remotely driveable.
The position wasn’t comfortable, but it was still better than being forced to walk everywhere, and the newly paranoid part of my brain supplied that it would be harder to try and kill me if I wasn’t walking outside and exposed.
I pulled out of the parking spot and started off toward the courthouse as I worked to get a feel for how Evelyn’s car actually drove.
Her brakes were touchier than mine, but her steering wheel was less forgiving of overcorrections, I found. I also noticed that her radio seemed to be stuck on some sort of oldie’s station that played exclusively sixties soft rock if the music that trickled through the speakers worked as any sort of indicator.
A small, purple pine tree air freshener hung from her rearview mirror and bobbed along with the movemen
ts of the car. At one point, it even kept time with the music as I drove, and I found my head nodding along in response.
By the time I pulled up to the courthouse, though, I felt like my entire back had locked up. It took me a few minutes to fully unfurl myself from the driver seat and into the parking lot, and I was having serious doubts about driving the car home.
I managed to pull myself to my full height, and I could hear my spine snap as I tried to stretch. But the cricks in my neck felt instant relief as soon as I was able to straighten my spine.
I glanced down at the watch on my wrist to check the time and was pleased to see that despite my reverie at the bullet hole in my office earlier that morning, I had still arrived at the courthouse nearly fifteen minutes early.
I took the time to lock up Evelyn’s car and put the keys back into my pocket before I made my way up the large stone steps of the courthouse and toward the wide front doors. I reached out to pull one of the handles only for the door to shake in its locked frame.
A small frown creased across my face, and I checked my watch again to make sure I hadn’t misread the time. But everything was exactly as I thought.
It made sense for the courthouse to be locked up on the weekend, I supposed, and I didn’t see any other cars in the parking lot, which led me to believe that Calhoun hadn’t even arrived yet for our impromptu meeting.
I heaved a deep sigh and on a whim, tried the second front door only to find it was locked as well. I don’t know what I’d expected, but I would have felt like an idiot if I hadn’t tried the door and it ended up being unlocked.
I pursed my lips and glanced around at the barren parking lot where Evelyn’s car sat and the empty sidewalks that surrounded the courthouse. I checked the heavy watch at my wrist one more time as if the time could have changed that drastically in a few seconds. When the watch confirmed that I was still on time, I moved over to sit down on one of the stone steps that led to the doors of the courthouse.
I hoped that Calhoun wasn’t going to be late, but I couldn’t exactly predict how his morning had gone. The tired ache from the night before had yet to leave my body, and it felt smarter to just sit and wait as opposed to my other option of anxiety-ridden pacing. Besides, if I wanted to appear like a lawyer in control, then walking in circles on the courthouse steps didn’t seem like the way to go.
