“I will help you. I promise.”
He smiled. “Okay, then. I would like to fly back with you. And start establishing my existence again, however I need to do that. I’m pretty excited, actually, to be getting into that world again. It sounds like a lot has happened. I never thought that we would be in another war, though, after Vietnam. Sounds like this nation never does learn its lesson, does it?”
“No, it never does.” Truer words were never spoken. “But you can’t fly back with me. You need a picture ID.”
He looked strange. “Picture ID? To fly? Why?”
“Well, after those terrorists brought down those towers with those planes, everybody has to go through security to get on a plane, and everyone has to show an ID.”
He nodded his head. “Makes sense. So, how will I get back to Kansas City if I can’t fly? I can’t drive, as you can see. There’s no car left. I figured that, when I moved out here, I wouldn’t need my car, so I chopped it up and used it to gird this house. I guess I’m stuck after all.”
I had to think about this one. I wanted Steven to come to Kansas City and get re-acquainted with society. He deserved to live his golden years in peace and around people.
“I’ll send somebody to come and get you and drive you back,” I said, thinking that Heather might be the best candidate for that job. I could pay her to come and get Steven, which would help her with her financial issues and it would enable Steven to come to Kansas City. Two birds, one stone. “And I’ll help you figure out how to get an ID and get an apartment and all of that. It’s going to be complicated, because you literally have no history, but I’ll figure something out for you. I’ll pull some strings and make sure that you can get the ball rolling.”
I looked at Steven, and he had large tears in his eyes. “I guess that humanity isn’t such a bad thing after all. There are people like you in the world who will go out of their way to help a sad old man. You don’t know what that means to me.”
I stood up and gave him a hug. “You helped me. I was a stranger, and you embraced me like I was an old friend. And you’ve given me some invaluable information about my Uncle.” I drew a breath as I realized something. If Steven came to Kansas City, how was my Uncle going to react? Steven was the identical twin to Jackson, the man who tormented him for two years. Yet, Steven had aged some 45 years, so maybe Jack wouldn’t even recognize him.
I could only hope. The last thing I wanted to do was to spin Jack back into those years. Jack was so fragile as it was. I didn’t think that Jack’s psyche could handle seeing the man who tortured him.
He nodded his head. “When do you have to be back in town?”
“Tomorrow. I have an early flight.”
“Well, then, you’ll sleep here, of course.”
“No need. I have a hotel room.”
He looked disappointed. “Okay.” He looked down at the ground, and I felt sorry that I was going to have to leave. I could just imagine being in his shoes – not seeing a living soul for over forty years, and then somebody shows up, and you never want that person to leave.
“I’ll have somebody come and get you, though, so don’t despair. Okay?”
“Sure, sure.” He looked skeptical. “I mean, you don’t have to do that. I won’t expect anybody to show up, but if somebody does, I’ll be grateful.”
I smiled. “I’m as good as my word. I wouldn’t tell you something like that if I didn’t plan to do it.”
He sighed. “You have to understand, the only people I’ve known in my life have been pretty terrible people. My mother and my brother. I went to school when I was younger, trading off with Jackson, so I kinda knew people in my youth. But in my adult years, I only knew my brother and he…” He shook his head. “He was evil. I’m going to have hard time trusting.”
“Of course you are. But I’ll help you assimilate. You’ll see.”
I hugged him again and then I went into my rental car, which was right outside the door. I looked out the window and saw Steven on the porch, sadly waving, his left hand stuck in his pockets. And then he went back into the house, his head hanging.
My heart went out to him. I could just imagine how he was feeling right at that moment. He probably thought that I wasn’t going to do what I said. He probably thought that he would literally be alone for the rest of his life.
I was going to show him that I was a woman of my word.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As I sat on the plane on the way home, I doodled mindlessly. I appreciated Steven’s candor and his hospitality. But what he told me bothered me. I was going to have to figure out what Jack’s initial encounter was with Father Kennedy. There was the chance that maybe something happened to Jack and Father Kennedy. Something that nested in Jack’s psyche and finally caused him to go off the deep end and kill him.
I had to acknowledge that the facts were pointing to that scenario. Everything that I was learning about this case was pointing to it. Father Mathews indicated that Father Kennedy was “afraid” of Jack. Steven told me that Jack had a violent alter, one that I didn’t know about, and that Jack knew Father Kennedy before he was ever taken captive by Jackson.
I lay back on my seat and closed my eyes. I wasn’t going to give up. There was just no way I was going to give up. But the facts weren’t looking good.
I GOT into the office and prepared for my pre-trial conferences I had lined up for some of the other criminal cases that I had in my pipeline. One was a drug case and the other was armed robbery. The drug case was probably going to be simple enough – it was a first-time offense, and Drug Court was the offer. Basically, Drug Court meant that my client would complete the requirements that the judge sets for him – go to drug rehabilitation, give periodic urine tests, and stay away from criminals for two years, among other requirements – and the case would be dismissed. If something happened and my client messed up, then he would have to take the conviction.
The armed robbery was going to be more tricky, of course. My client was facing 10 years in prison. He was good for the crime, so I was going to have to find some avenue to get the sentence reduced. That was really all that I could do for him.
My mind, however, was on other things. My Uncle Jack. I had to hope and pray that there was something else that was going to pop up. Somebody else that I could focus on for this murder. Thus far, I didn’t have anybody that I could look at. Nobody else that would have had it in for Father Kennedy.
Tammy came into my office. “What’s going on?” she asked me. “How are things with your Uncle?”
I sighed. “Terrifying. I’ve reached a dead end, and I will be at this dead end until I can break through it. I have to figure out who else would have motive to kill him. And I have to somehow, someway, reach some of Uncle Jack’s other personalities. I have to reach the alter that knows what happened in that damned rectory. I just have to figure that out.”
Tammy sat down. “I think that you’re going to have to resort to hypnosis. That might be the only way.”
“I know. I know. I don’t want to put him through that if I don’t have to, though. It will certainly be the last resort.”
Pearl poked her head through the door. “The Grand Jury came back on your Uncle. He was indicted. The case has been assigned to Division 15.”
I nodded my head. Division 15 was Judge Greene. He was an African-American man who was kindly, patient and fair. He was anything but an impatient hot-head and he always judged each case by the merit, never pre-judging anything. I was lucky. If I was going to be in front of any judge in Jackson County for a case like this, I wanted it to be a guy like Judge Greene. I might actually have a chance in front of him.
A chance for what? The jury was going to decide if my Uncle was guilty or not guilty. The judge would be the one who would decide, however, if my Uncle was not guilty by reason of insanity. At this point, that was the best that I could hope for.
My heart was breaking as I thought about that possibility. I pictured Uncle Jack locked up in a psychia
tric facility, being poked, prodded and drugged for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t have anybody around him who he loved and cared for. He would be lonely and isolated, as much as Steven was, but, for Jack, he wouldn’t have a reprieve. He would be in that facility for the rest of his life. There would be literally no hope for him.
That was the best-case scenario. The other scenario was that Jack would spend the rest of his life in prison. I was hearing horror stories every day after how prisoners were treated on the inside. One prisoner I heard about died because he didn’t have water for an entire week. Another prisoner was scalded to death in a shower. Both of those prisoners were mentally ill, as Jack clearly was. And what if the alter that came out in prison was this Sam, whoever he was? What then? Sam was going to be violent, he was going to start trouble, and then Jack would end up in isolation or worse.
I put my head down on my desk as I thought of my beloved Uncle going into an isolated cell, after Sam came out to start a prison riot, and I felt his sense of despair. He wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t begin to comprehend what had happened to him.
I realized that I had tears in my eyes. It was so unfair. It was unfair that Jack came upon the serial killer, Jackson, all those years ago, which permanently scarred him and tripped him into mental illness. It was unfair that he lost his beloved wife so tragically. And now this. If one of his alters killed that priest, he was going to be locked up forever.
He would never recover.
Neither would my mom.
There were just no easy answers.
Tammy was still sitting on the other side of my desk, staring at me. “Harper, earth to Harper. What’s going on? It seems that I keep losing you.”
I shook my head and realized that I was starting to sob. “Tammy, I just don’t know where to turn on my Uncle’s case. I just don’t know. The signs aren’t good. The signs are that maybe my Uncle had a beef with that priest. He knew that priest when he was a child. I don’t know. What if Father Kennedy molested Uncle Jack when he was a child, and somehow Uncle Jack repressed it, but this memory came out, so he went over and killed the priest? Uncle Jack has a violent alter whose name is Sam. It’s all fitting together, although I don’t want it to. I need it not to. I need some kind of alternative suspect for this, and I just don’t know where to start.”
Tammy had a worried expression on her face. “Harper, I think that you’re taking this case too personally. I know that he’s your Uncle. I know that. I know that he’s gone through hell in his life. I know that, too. But you have to somehow detach and see this as just another case. Maybe that will help you see things more clearly, and that will help lead you to the real suspect. Or, maybe, if you lose…”
“I lose, what? What then? My Uncle is going to be locked up either in a psychiatric facility or prison for the rest of his goddamned life. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”
Tammy stood up. “You’ll figure it out, Harper. I have faith in you. I know, the knife had your Uncle fingerprints on it, and only your Uncles’ fingerprints. I know that your Uncle has a violent alter. I know that your Uncle knew Father Kennedy when he was a kid. I admit, those facts don’t look good. But you have to think outside the box on this one. You have to. I have faith that you can.”
I finally felt composed. “I’m glad that you have faith in me, because I certainly don’t. I don’t. I don’t have faith that I can find the real person who did this, because I think that my Uncle Jack was the one who did it. I think that he was.” I shook my head and put my face on the desk. “I think that he was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I got home, exhausted from my day in court. Nothing went right. My Drug Court client said that he didn’t want Drug Court after all. He informed me, when I got into court, that he had talked to his buddies, and he didn’t want to “deal with the bullshit.”
“I don’t want no random piss tests,” he said. “And I don’t want no classes. Just plead this shit, give me whatever they’re going to give me, and it’s going to be cool.”
I sighed, not wanting to deal with that crap. “Okay, then, you’re going to have a felony record. You’ll still be on probation, too, which means that you’re going to have to check in with your probation officer periodically and still do random drops. And if you drop dirty, then you’re going to be serving prison time. Sounds to me like you’re not going to be getting a better deal that way, but it’s your call.”
At that point, my client, whose name was Alton Gallagher, got up and left in a fury. I didn’t chase after him. I was tired of having to chase down my clients when they decide that they didn’t like what they were hearing and they stormed out of the courtroom.
So, the judge called his case, he wasn’t there, and a warrant was placed for his arrest.
That was strike one.
The armed robbery case didn’t go much better. I was trying to work out a plea agreement where my client could have his sentence reduced to five years, and the actual charge reduced from a Robbery 1 to a Robbery 2. That was important, because in the State of Missouri, felons convicted of Robbery 1 had to serve 85% of their sentence as a mandatory minimum. For a Robbery 2, however, they could get out of prison, if they were good and didn’t catch any more cases while they were behind bars, after they served just one-third of their sentence. Plus, his sentence was going to be less for the Robbery in the second-degree, or “Rob 2,” because that was a B Felony, where the Robbery in the first-degree, or “Rob 1,” was an A felony.
That was the plea agreement that I was shooting for. I figured that I could get it.
But no. The prosecutor, Vince Malloy, who was my nemesis on my Heather Morrison case, was going to be a hard-ass. He informed me that he wasn’t going to reduce the charges and that we just were going to have to try the case.
My robbery client’s name was Ty Pennings, and he was an overweight African-American man with a bald head. He insisted to me that he didn’t want to participate in that armed robbery, but that he did it as part of a gang initiation. Not that this fact made the crime any better, but I did feel sorry for him. I especially did, because he was so young – only 18 – and he cried when I told him that he was facing many years in prison.
I had to break it to him that my promised plea agreement to Rob 2, in which I hoped that my client would be out in a couple of years, wasn’t going to materialize just yet. If at all.
At which point, he started to cry. His wrists were shackled and he was in his orange jumpsuit, and my heart just went out to him.
So, by the time I got home, I was feeling out of sorts. To say the very least. I was getting too emotionally involved with my clients, including my Uncle Jack, and all that I wanted was to go home, kick off my shoes, make a glass of Glenfiddich Scotch Whiskey, turn on a playlist of classical music or put on one of my Cary Grant CDs, and drown my sorrows. That was what I used to do when everything was getting overwhelming for me. That was my usual routine when I was under stress – go home, get hammered while watching Cary Grant pratfalls or Audrey Hepburn highjinks, and then pass out into sweet, sweet oblivion.
Instead, I had to deal with Rina, who was pulling Abby’s hair for some ungodly reason, while Abby screeched like a banshee. That was the scene that I was treated to when I got home after the day I had, and I was at my wit’s end.
“What’s going on here?” I asked them. Sophia had left a half hour before, as she had to be home early, and I figured that two 12-year-old girls would be okay in the house alone for less than an hour without adult supervision.
Apparently I was wrong about that.
Rina stopped pulling Abby’s hair, but that didn’t stop Abby from wailing. She came over to me and wrapped her arms around my waist and bawled.
“Rina Marie,” I said. “Do you mind telling me what you were doing just now? Why were you pulling your sister’s hair?”
She shrugged her shoulders, which made me angry. That was such a passive-aggressive move, that shoulder-shrugging business. She knew damn
ed well what she did to Abby, but she wasn’t going to tell me.
“Okay, fine, I’ll have to ask the source.” I looked at Abby’s big brown eyes. “Abby, Buttercup, what happened? Why were you and Rina fighting like that?”
Her little lips were quivering and her eyes were filled with tears. More crying. I couldn’t handle crying. I couldn’t handle it when I saw my gang-member client crying and I couldn’t handle it from my little 12-year-old daughter.
She pointed at Rina. “She’s mad at me because the teacher caught her cheating. She caught her looking at her phone in class while she was taking a test, and she was looking up the answers to the test. She’s mad at me because the teacher asked me about it, and I didn’t know what to say. Rina said that I should have stuck up for her.”
I sighed. This was the last thing that I needed. The very last thing. “Rina, is that true? Were you cheating on that test?”
She shrugged her shoulders again and I almost blew a gasket.
“Well, this is great. Just great. I suppose that you were expelled, too? Or suspended?”
She stuck out her tongue. “No. It was only a quiz, a pop quiz, and I did look up some of the answers on my phone. The teacher took my phone away and gave me an F for the quiz and sent me to see the headmistress, who chewed me out. But Abby was such a little weasel. She could have stuck up for me. She could have, but she didn’t.”
I took a deep breath. “Rina, you were caught doing something wrong and you’re mad at Abby about it? How does that make any sense? I think that you’re just mad at yourself that you weren’t prepared and you’re taking it out on your sister, which isn’t quite fair. It’s not fair at all, as a matter of fact.”
She sneered. “If I can’t get my own sister to take my side, then who is going to?”
“Rina, you have to take responsibility for yourself. When you do something wrong, you don’t have to have Abby tell your teacher that you really weren’t in the wrong. You have to take your punishment, realize that there is only one person to blame, and that’s the person in your mirror, and move on. Take your licks. Abby will stick up for you when you’re in the right, as she should, but if you do something wrong, you can’t expect her to stay behind you on it.”
Harper Ross Legal Thrillers vol. 1-3 Page 79
