The Rose Conspiracy

by Craig Parshall

  “I wanted to be there for my guy,” she said brightly. “How’d it go?”

  “I see a chance,” he said. “More than a good chance actually.”

  “That you’ll win the motion?”

  “Right.”

  “Which means,” she said, “what—that they would give you permission to show the Langley note to other people?”

  “Right,” Blackstone said.

  He waited. But Vinnie was quiet on the other end.

  “People like, who, your experts?” she finally asked.

  “Correct,” he said.

  “Which just might help me out of this mess I’m in.”

  “That’s the plan,” Blackstone said with fatigue in his voice.

  “You must be tired, darling,” Vinnie said. “Why don’t you come on over to my apartment? I’ll fix you a nice dinner.”

  “That sounds really nice,” he said. “But I think I’ll just head home and crash. I’m in heavy-duty need of some sleep.”

  “Are you sure? You know,” Vinnie said, “if you come on over, after dinner you could just fall asleep on the couch. I’ll slip your shoes off and tuck you in.”

  “Yeah, well…I think I’m going to take a rain check on that.” Blackstone said. “But I’ll be cashing it in some time, okay?”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Oh, probably head out into the country for an hour or two. I’ve got a horse stabled out there.”

  “That’s right. You’re a champion long-distance rider, I had almost forgot…want some company?”

  “I wouldn’t be very good company, I’m afraid. I’m pretty much all business with my horse.”

  “That puts me in the same category as your horse, then,” she said with a laugh. “You seem to be all business with me too.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “But your case, and your life—they’re in my hands. I’m spending the rest of tomorrow working on your case…and pretty much full-time, around the clock from now until trial.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Take care of yourself, J.D. I need you so desperately. In so many ways.”

  “Right,” he muttered. “Take care, Vinnie.”

  After taking off his headset, he didn’t bother to clean up his office. Or even stuff some of the file into his briefcase as he usually did, just to have work to do in the late watches of the night when he couldn’t sleep.

  He trudged past Frieda in the lobby, gave her a silent wave as he walked through the front door, and headed to his car.

  CHAPTER 33

  There was the promise, the enticing hint. But like much of J.D. Blackstone’s life, it didn’t unfold the way he had planned.

  When he lumbered through the door of his condo exhausted, having been up for forty-eight hours, he figured that he would be able to finally get some sleep. It was early evening. But the nature of his insomnia was weirdly unpredictable.

  He stripped off his clothes and dumped himself into bed. He didn’t remember falling asleep. But soon he was dreaming. Marilyn, his dead wife, was there in the middle of his dream. This time she kept coming in and out of focus, as if he were looking at her through a camera lens that couldn’t quite get adjusted right, that kept focusing on the depth of field in the background but not the subject. He wanted to see her face. But he couldn’t capture it.

  Somewhere a voice said, Don’t forget…

  And then he woke up with a start.

  He looked at the clock. It was a little before midnight.

  And he was wide awake.

  He found himself now very frustrated that he had not brought any of his file on Vinnie’s case to work on. He could get dressed and drive down to the office and then fetch some work to do. But that seemed ludicrous.

  He clicked on his TV, and while a news program droned on in the background he flipped through several magazines he had stockpiled with the intent of eventually perusing them.

  He glanced through a philosophy magazine on postmodernism. And the journal of the American Psychological Association. After that he took in a few of the current poets in an issue of the Southern Review. Then a Capitol Hill political newspaper.

  And then an outdoor magazine. Halfway through he noticed an announcement for a new long-distance equestrian race set in the Southwest.

  Maybe I’ll get Blackjack up to speed and then enter it, he thought.

  That was when he had the fleeting recognition, as he had before, that in the life he was now leading he was free to do everything, virtually without constraint, but found it difficult to muster the will to want to do anything. So he would force himself ahead in a manic, pile-driving effort to keep busy. To do whatever the task was. Never satisfied, even with victory. Never at rest.

  He was now beginning to realize how, when Marilyn and Beth were alive, he would leave them often. Of course, sometimes on legal cases that required some travel. Or a few speaking engagements in connection with his professorship at the law school. But often they were his private treks into the wilds to go rock climbing up the sheer face of a mountain, or kayaking down the rapids of rivers in West Virginia, Colorado, even once in South America. That last one was with a group of experienced adventurers, but the rest were solo. Marilyn resented it and said so. She asked why he had the impulsive need to go on those one-man expeditions.

  For a man who prided himself on being able to come up with breathtaking solutions for insoluble legal dilemmas and who was capable of mastering a bewildering number of different intellectual disciplines, Blackstone never could come up with a satisfactory answer for that question from his wife.

  Then, after a while, they spoke less and less about it. Until finally the icy acceptance of separate lives had set in.

  Blackstone had begun working on solving that a few weeks before the car accident. He figured it was just a matter of coming up with the theoretical solution and then applying it to their lives. He looked at restructuring his schedule so his time and Marilyn’s could mesh better. He did the same thing with scheduling time with his daughter, Beth. But the mechanics of it didn’t easily solve the emotional heart of the matter. Marilyn was still coldly resentful. Beth had grown distant and secretive, even if she was able to maintain a friendly exterior in a kind of superficial way.

  And then they both were taken away from him.

  Turning off the TV a little before four in the morning, he decided to try to crawl back into bed again. But he couldn’t click off his mind.

  He tossed and flipped around in his bed for several more hours until finally, sometime after dawn, he fell into a deep sleep.

  Blackstone had not set his alarm, and he had turned off the ringer on his phones.

  When he awoke, it was one in the afternoon.

  And now he was feeling mildly refreshed. He climbed out of bed, put on his gym trunks, and worked out on his Nautilus. Ordinarily he would then have raced down to the office. But just then he had the urge to drive out into the country again to give Blackjack a workout. He glanced at his watch. He still had time to put Blackjack through the paces and get back into town and work at his office into the evening. He put on his jeans and a cutoff work shirt.

  Blackstone was halfway to the stables in the Virginia countryside when his cell phone started ringing.

  “J.D.,” Frieda said on the other end, a little breathless. “You got a stack of calls from reporters this morning.”

  “What’s up?” he asked. “Something break on our case?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Something broke alright. Wait a minute, Julia wants to tell you.” And then she put him on hold.

  Blackstone kept driving. He was just getting off onto the county road that led to one other county highway that led finally to the stables. He was trying to figure out what was going on. The obvious answer was that the Court of Appeals had issued its decision, but he couldn’t see how that was likely. Although he had asked the Court to issue an expedited ruling, he had never heard of a court giving a decision in twenty-four hours.

/>   Usually the panel of judges would convene in conference after argument while the case was still fresh from the arguments of counsel and then take a quick poll. If there were at least two votes out of three, they would have their decision, but it would usually take a while to draft the opinion and then get it past the other judges.

  “J.D.,” Julia said coming on. “Where are you?”

  “Talk to me,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “The Court of Appeals issued its ruling. Just a one-page order. We got it electronically this morning. Can you believe that kind of turnaround time? Nothing elaborate. Just the nuts and bolts. Are you on your way in?”

  “How’d they rule?” Blackstone asked.

  “You won,” Julia said energetically. “Here’s the bottom line: You can share the Langley note with not more than two defense experts, who have to be sworn to secrecy on the contents of the note. You can also share it with me as co-counsel. But if you want your client to see it, or anyone else for that matter, you have to show cause to the District Court and argue why.”

  “Alright. Now we’ve got some momentum,” Blackstone said. “Have you looked at the file yet to find the note and take a look at it?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “You’ve got stuff piled all over your office. I figured I would wait until you got back.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Look, I’ll be out until later this afternoon. I’ll talk with you around five-thirty or six today, okay?”

  “What do you want me to do about all the reporters?” Julia asked. “They’re descending like locusts. New York Times, National Journal, Washington Post.”

  “You talk to them.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure,” Blackstone said. “Look, what they are really after is some hint about the contents of a note that may reveal something about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Number one, we can’t even whisper anything to them about what that note says. And number two, the stuff in that note seems to have nothing to do with that anyway. And if they are trying to figure out how that note will have an impact on our legal case, well, we really have nothing to tell them there either, right?”

  “So what do I tell them?”

  “That we are gratified and encouraged that the Court gave us such a quick victory. But we are prohibited from sharing anything else with the press at this time.”

  “Alright,” she said. “I guess I’ll be seeing you shortly.”

  “Count on it,” he said.

  He glanced in his rearview mirror. There was a minivan in back of him. Far behind that vehicle there was a white utility truck.

  Blackstone slowed down and then turned onto the county highway.

  The minivan didn’t turn, but kept going.

  When Blackstone was a mile down the tree-lined road he glanced at his rearview mirror again.

  He noticed that the white utility truck had turned onto the county highway also and was heading in the same direction he was.

  CHAPTER 34

  Blackstone had called ahead to Manny and let him know he would be driving out to give Blackjack a workout that day.

  Rather than cloister himself in his office, Blackstone was glad he was going to get some fresh air. Things had been starting to jell in his brain. The vague outline of his defense theory was starting to configure itself. Whenever that happened, he liked to get away from the law office and the interruptions and distractions.

  By the time he pulled up to the stables he had already constructed a mental checklist of the final details that needed to be done before the trial.

  When Blackstone walked up to the barn he could see that Manny already had the Arabian saddled and tacked out. He suggested that Blackstone take the horse out into the big field in back of the stables.

  Blackjack was led out to the gate, where Blackstone mounted him and then rode him into the open spaces of the back twenty acres of the property. The land was flat, with some gently rolling hills.

  He could tell that Blackjack wanted to break out fast. He was like a surging engine waiting to be loosed. But Blackstone kept him at a slow jog first, then posted with him for a while. All the controls were there. Blackjack was responsive and quick. As Blackstone pressed his thighs into the big barrel chest of the Arabian he could feel the full, muscular power of the horse.

  “Good boy!” Blackstone shouted out as he took him around a couple of turns, now faster, at a canter, and Blackjack was following his cues effortlessly.

  The horse and rider headed back to the far end of the acreage. Alongside the field there was a private road lined with trees, with a black fence separating it from the field. Blackstone glanced over at the winding fence and noticed something odd about the three gates in the fence which were usually closed.

  Today, for some reason, they had all been swung open.

  He thought that was a little unusual. Each gate had a short entranceway to the dirt road that ran along the property. He knew that Manny and the stable owners were fastidious in keeping the fence line locked down so the horses they would turn out into that part of the field wouldn’t get out.

  I bet Manny doesn’t know about those gates being open, Blackstone thought to himself.

  When he was ready to head back to the barn, he thought, he would stop at the gates and close them up.

  Then something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.

  He reined his horse to a stop, and he turned in the saddle and looked back, down the field from where he had come and along the fenceline rimmed with willow trees. Blackstone thought he had seen something large and white.

  But now it was gone.

  He turned forward again and gently squeezed the sides of the horse into a trot. But the thought was nagging at him.

  As he was trotting forward he twisted around in his saddle again to look back. This time he saw it, now from a different vantage point.

  Partially covered by the trees, the white utility truck that had been following him was parked in the dirt road next to the fence.

  Maybe an electric company truck—or the telephone company, he thought to himself.

  But there were no electric poles there. And no telephone wires.

  A vague sense of foreboding and urgency overcame him. There was no logic to it, except for the need to ensure one’s own survival. And that was something that Blackstone fully understood.

  He gathered the reins in his right hand. He was ready to swing the end of the reins down onto the right shoulder and send Blackjack catapulting forward into a full gallop.

  But before he could, he heard a crack.

  And there was a ping just behind him. A small puff of dust was released just to the right of Blackjack’s right rear hoof.

  The horse reared up wildly on his powerful hind legs. Blackstone could see the terror in the eyes of the Arabian.

  As Blackstone struggled to one-rein the horse from the left and bring his front legs down to the ground again, he thrust his head straight into the horse’s mane.

  Then there was a second crack, and a second bullet whizzed just over his head.

  Now Blackjack was bucking and stomping like a crazy horse. Blackstone was fighting to stay on. He knew his only chance now was to ride the horse back to a state of control, and quickly. Then he would ride him like a rocket to the far side of the field, out of danger.

  When Blackjack was finally reined down and had all fours on the ground, Blackstone quickly craned his neck around to spot the truck.

  Now the white utility truck was barreling down the dirt road toward him, sending a cloud of dust up behind it. Then it slammed on its brakes.

  Blackstone rammed both of his feet into the horse’s sides, lashed his reins down on his shoulder, and screamed, “Go!”

  Blackjack sprang forward so fast that Blackstone’s head jerked back. The horse, all of him, muscle, sinew, hair, and sweat, was now flying across the field, with the rider clamping his legs tightly around his heaving midsection.

  Then a third bullet whizz
ed.

  But this time it found its mark.

  J.D. Blackstone felt something rip into the back of his left shoulder. A searing, scorching pain. As he was galloping he glanced over. He saw the front of his shirt was wet with red.

  Blackstone screamed out for Blackjack to go. To go faster.

  The Arabian was bursting into high gear.

  But behind the horse and rider, the white utility truck had entered the field through one of the open gates. And it was roaring toward them across the grassy hills, bouncing madly. Then it slammed on the brakes again.

  Blackstone reined his horse to the left, still at a gallop.

  He began a turning arc, bringing Blackjack around to head him back to the barn.

  A puff of smoke burst just to the horse’s left. But now the Arabian was at a full launch speed and was unstoppable.

  The white truck gunned its engines and roared after them across the field, closing the gap.

  Blackstone looked down and saw the red blood from his sweatshirt now running down onto the glistening shoulder of the horse.

  “I hope that’s me and not you, boy,” Blackstone muttered, looking at the blood as he now grabbed two fistfuls of mane, trying to stay on the horse as they galloped together toward the barn and the stables and the main house. He was getting lightheaded and dizzy from the loss of blood, so he lifted his head almost straight up to keep his airway clear. His was leaning against the horse’s mane, bouncing back and forth with each stride like a toy on a string.

  He could hear the truck coming up from the rear, but the end of the field and the outbuildings were just in front of him.

  Then he spotted Manny, across the driveway at a fast run heading toward him.

  That is when the white truck did a quick turn and headed like a dirt-track racer to the open gate. When it reached the gate, the driver slammed on the brakes to get through the fence, then drove at breakneck speed down the dirt road to the county highway, took a fast turn to the left, and then sped out of sight.

  By the time Blackstone and his horse had reached the buildings, Manny was already running up to them, yelling.