No more stops. The elevator was on the express route to the lobby. I glanced at the lighted numbers above the door, then back at the mirror.
My heart nearly stopped; I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It had lasted only a split second, but what I’d seen was unmistakable. Obviously, Jessie and the doctor hadn’t noticed the mirror, hadn’t realized that I was watching them even though they were standing behind me.
They’d locked fingers, as if holding hands, then released.
For one chilling moment, I couldn’t breathe.
The elevator doors opened. I held the Door Open button to allow the others to exit. Dr. Marsh passed without a word, without so much as looking at me. Jessie emerged last. I took her by the arm and pulled her into an alcove near the bank of pay telephones.
“What the hell did you just do in there?”
She shook free of my grip. “Nothing.”
“I was watching in the mirror. I saw you and Marsh hold hands.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Apparently. Crazy to have trusted you.”
She shook her head, scoffing. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Swyteck? That’s what I couldn’t stand when we were dating, you and your stupid jealousy.”
“This has nothing to do with jealousy. You just held hands with the doctor who supposedly started this whole problem by misdiagnosing you with ALS. You owe me a damn good explanation, lady.”
“We don’t owe you anything.”
It struck me cold, the way she’d said we.I was suddenly thinking of our conversation on the courthouse steps just minutes earlier, where Jessie had heaped such praise on the kind and considerate doctor.
“Now I see why Dr. Marsh performed the diagnostic tests himself,” I said. “It had nothing to do with his compassion. You never had any symptoms of ALS. You never even had lead poisoning. The tests were fakes, weren’t they?”
She just glared and said, “It’s like I told you: we don’t owe you anything.”
“What do you expect me to do? Ignore what I just saw?”
“Yes. Like my first lawyer. The one I fired before I hired you. He just keeps his mouth shut. And you will, too. If you’re smart.”
“Is that some kind of threat?”
“Do yourself a favor, okay? Forget you ever knew me. Move on with your life.”
Those were the exact words she’d used to dump me years earlier.
She started away, then stopped, as if unable to resist one more shot.
“I feel sorry for you, Swyteck. I feel sorry for anyone who goes through life just playing by the rules.”
As she turned and disappeared into the crowded lobby, I felt a gaping pit in the bottom of my stomach. Ten years a trial lawyer. I’d represented thieves, swindlers, even cold-blooded murderers. I’d never claimed to be the world’s smartest man, but never before had I even come close to letting this happen. The realization was sickening.
Jessie had cheated death.
Her investors.
And me.
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
BY DANIEL J. HALE
The Pacific stretched to the horizon, smooth as velvet. Hints of jasmine wafted in the cool morning air. We glided through the meandering streets of the hushed enclave under a cloudless sky. Our shoes were whispers on the manicured pavement.
People call La Jolla paradise. For the past three years, it had been purgatory. My daily runs with this group of middle-aged megalomaniacs was the only thing that had kept me from sliding off the cliffs into hell.
We slowed to a walk as we passed the house in the crook of the Camino de la Costa. The other guys headed out to the brink of Sun Gold Point to cool down, stretch, and obsess over the market value of their portfolios. I jogged down the street toward my front gate and the long-legged blonde standing there in the black pantsuit.
The young woman turned toward me as I drew near. I stifled a gasp. I thought for a moment I was seeing a ghost.
“Hi, Uncle Robert.” The voice was hauntingly familiar as well, but this was no apparition.
“Shawnie?” I hadn’t seen her in over a decade, not since she was a gawky adolescent. I was shocked by how much she now resembled her mother. Like Mary Shawn in her younger years, Shawnie was a flawless beauty. I took a final step toward her. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re unlisted.” She let out a long breath smelling of cigarettes. Her chin began to quiver. “The number was in Daddy’s cell phone, but it burned up in the fire.”
Another fire?My stomach tightened into a knot. “Is Jimmy okay?”
Her eyes—her mother’s big blue eyes—grew wide. “I didn’t have your address, but I knew your house was on the ocean. I remembered what the place looked like from when Mama and Daddy brought me out here to see you and Aunt Elizabeth after Riley was born. I tried to find you last night, but it was too dark to tell which house was which, so I stayed in this moldy old motel on the beach and tried to get some sleep, but I couldn’t sleep at all. It took half an hour to find your house this morning. Thank God you’re here!” Tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Shawnie.” I put my hands on her shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”
“Mama’s dead. Daddy’s in jail.”
____
SHAWNIE LOOKED OUT the window as the crowded jetliner climbed over the Pacific. The plane banked right and headed east over land. She looked at me and let out a long sigh. “I need a drink.” Just like her mother.
Four Bloody Marys later, as if things at home were perfectly normal, she said, “I hate being packed in this plane like I’m a sardine.” She pouted. “I thought you owned your own jet.”
“I sold it.”
“Couldn’t we have flown in first class?” She looked out the window again. “Coach sucks.”
I leaned back in my seat. “This is how I travel now.”
____
I SWITCHED ON the headlights as twilight faded to night. The rented Ford sedan’s outside temperature indicator read 97. Condensation formed on the passenger-side window where Shawnie had pointed the air-conditioner vent away from herself, toward the glass. The heat and humidity alone would have been enough to keep me away from this part of the world. I had other reasons for vowing never to come back. But here I was, driving across the pine-infested river flats dressed in the suit I’d worn to Elizabeth and Riley’s funeral… three years ago to the day.
The paper mill’s sulfur reek began seeping through the vents.
“Wake up, Shawnie. We’re almost there.”
She checked her face in the mirror. I didn’t understand why she bothered. She didn’t wear makeup, didn’t need it.
We drove through town, passing the Wal-Mart and the crumbling red-brick storefronts and the corrugated-metal structures. It could have been any one of a thousand other small Southern towns. I wished it were.
I wheeled the black sedan into a parking space outside a seventies-era concrete building with vertical-slit windows. “You stay here. I’ll leave the engine running so you can keep the air conditioner on.”
“You’re gonna get him out of there, aren’t you?” Shawnie’s voice was so much like her mother’s; if I’d had my eyes closed, I could have easily imagined it was Mary Shawn sitting in the car with me. “I mean, you have to get him out of there.”
“I can’t, Shawnie. Not tonight, anyway.”
“I thought you were supposed to be one of the most high-powered lawyers in the country.”
The taunt in her voice set me on edge the same way her mother’s had. I wanted to snap at her, to tell her how ungrateful she was, but I’d learned my lesson long ago. I kept my cool. “Sweetheart”—I smiled—“Jimmy’s my brother. I want him out of there, too, but I’m no Houdini.”
She shot me a puzzled look. “Who’s Houdini?”
I just shook my head. “I haven’t practiced law in three years, and I was never a criminal attorney.” I switched off the Ford’s headlights. “I know a good defense lawyer in
Little Rock. I called him from the San Diego Airport while you were outside the terminal building sneaking that last cigarette. He’ll be here day after tomorrow. I’ll do what I can for Jimmy until then.” I grabbed my suit coat and left the engine running. “Lock the doors after I get out.”
The concrete was gritty under the hard leather soles of the shoes I hadn’t worn since the graveside service. The distance from the car to the building was thirty yards at most, but it was so muggy I wanted to take off my jacket halfway down the sidewalk.
A middle-aged woman with frizzy hair looked up from behind the counter when I walked in the door. “Robert Hicks!” She bared her bad teeth. “You haven’t changed a bit since the day we graduated.”
If we’d gone to high school together, she couldn’t have been more than forty-three. She looked like she was in her mid-fifties. I had no memory of her. I smiled and slipped into the drawl of my childhood. “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”
“Oh, I’m a godawful mess. Have been ever since Kenny Earl stole my savings and left me with the grandbabies and run off to Houston. I had to get me a second job at the E-Z Mart just to make ends meet.”
I had no idea who Kenny Earl was. “Kenny Earl ain’t worth spit.”
“I swear, Robert, you’re even better-looking now than you were senior year. Every girl in our class had a big ol’…” Her expression turned serious. “I’m sure sorry about your wife and son. That was just plain horrible news.”
“That’s very kind of you to say.”
“What’s it been now? Three years?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry about your brother too.”
“Speaking of Jimmy…” I loosened my tie, undid the top button, and leaned over the counter. “I know it’s awful late, but could you get me in to see him?” I winked. “Please?”
Her yellow smile gave me my answer.
____
A POTBELLIED DEPUTY who said we’d played on the same Little League team showed me into a windowless room. Four tan plastic chairs circled a scratched Formica table. The overhead fluorescents emitted an annoying buzz. A large no-smoking sign dominated the far wall. The place smelled like an ashtray.
The deputy brought Jimmy into the room. He’d lost too much weight. His skin was ashen, his eyes sunken and hollow. He looked mostly dead. The life had started draining out of him the day he married Mary Shawn.
I had thought that once he was free of her, his situation would improve. I was wrong. Things had gone from bad to worse. It wasn’t supposed to have turned out this way.
The deputy left the room. My brother sat across from me. He placed his hands on the marred surface of the table.
“Hi, Jimmy.” The stale cigarette smell stuck in my throat. I coughed. “Shawnie tells me you’re not talking to anyone.”
He looked down as if he were inspecting the gnawed ends of his fingernails.
“I know what the sheriff says you did. I know he’s wrong.”
Jimmy just kept looking down.
“You didn’t kill Mary Shawn any more than you killed her father.”
He looked up.
“I’m not going to let you go to prison for something you didn’t do. Not again.” Water welled in my eyes. “You’re the only family I have left. I can’t lose you.”
His sunken gaze locked on mine.
“Help me, Jimmy.” I touched his bone-cold hands. “Tell me what happened.”
He pulled away and looked down at the table again.
Ten minutes later, he began to speak.
____
I SQUINTED INTO the morning sun as I drove down the pine tree–lined country road. When I came to the clearing where I’d built the house for my brother, I pulled into the driveway alongside a red Mustang convertible. Its windows and top were up.
The melted remnants of a Mercedes-Benz sedan stood ten yards ahead, in what had once been the partially detached garage. Mary Shawn had commandeered the car from Jimmy after his last DWI conviction six months ago. She’d wanted the Benz ever since Jimmy bought it. Mary Shawn always got what she wanted.
I parked the rental car and stepped out into the hot sun. The convertible’s engine was running. I looked inside. The driver’s seatback was fully reclined. A half-empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka lay on the floorboard. As I looked around for some sign of the car’s owner, a cloud of bluish smoke wafted over the hood.
I walked around to the other side of the convertible to find Shawnie sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette. Even in the heat and humidity, she still wore the black pants and jacket she’d had on when she showed up at my house yesterday morning. She looked up at me through her sunglasses. The lenses weren’t dark; I could plainly see that her eyes were bloodshot. I wondered if it was from the crying or the lack of sleep or the vodka. Her being so much like her mother, I’d put my money on the Grey Goose.
Even now, after a night of hard drinking, Shawnie was stunningly beautiful. Her thick, sleek hair glowed golden in the sun. Women would have killed for her high cheekbones, pouting lips, flawless skin. She was the epitome of classic beauty. Shawnie took it all for granted. Just like her mother.My wife had been jealous of Mary Shawn’s looks. Throughout the years of our marriage, Elizabeth always wondered if something had happened between Mary Shawn and me. Nothing had, of course, but I was never able to explain why Elizabeth’s suspicions were unfounded. I couldn’t tell her. I’d given Jimmy my word.
I took Shawnie by the wrist and pulled her to her feet. “Where’d you go last night?”
“I couldn’t handle it anymore.” She took a drag from the cigarette in a theatrical sort of gesture, the kind of motion Mary Shawn had made when she smoked. Shawnie exhaled and said, “I had to get away.”
“You left the rental car running in the parking lot. Couldn’t you have at least left the keys at the front desk? Someone might have stolen it.”
She shrugged.
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Where’d you sleep?”
“Here. In my car.” She dropped the cigarette on the concrete and crushed it with one of her black stilettos. “The sheriff put that yellow tape stuff across the door of Daddy’s apartment. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I got you a room at the Marriott on the interstate.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out the keycard, and handed it to her. “You’re in four-one-one. Like the number you call for information. You can remember that, right?”
She rolled her eyes at me. Either the lenses weren’t as dark as she thought they were or she just didn’t care if I saw. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Still in jail.”
Shawnie frowned. “What’d he tell you?”
“Not a word.”
Perspiration beaded on my forehead. I looked over my shoulder. The shade of a large pine was only a few yards away. Beyond that, twin two-story chimneys stood watch over the rubble that had once been my brother’s house. When I offered to build the place for him after I’d won my first big verdict, Jimmy said he wanted something made of brick, something simple that wouldn’t require a lot of maintenance. I still had the blueprints of the house he wanted… and of the house that was actually built. Mary Shawn had insisted that the place be a two-story wooden structure with a tall staircase, a wraparound porch, and lots of gingerbread. She got what she wanted. Mary Shawn always got what she wanted.
I faced Shawnie. “I’m going to have a look around, try to figure out what to do until the attorney from Little Rock gets here.”
She squatted and rummaged through the Louis Vuitton purse on the ground. She pulled out a lighter and a cigarette, then stood again. With the spiky heels she wore, it was an amazing feat of balance. She may have had a lot to drink last night, but she was apparently sober now.
“Go to the hotel and get some sleep.” I turned to walk away.
She grabbed my arm and said, “I was hoping Daddy’d be out of jail by now…”
“And?”
She lit the cigarette. �
�The man at the bank won’t let me draw on Daddy’s trust. Mama had me on her account, but I used all that money to buy my ticket out to California. There’s nothing left, Uncle Robert. I’m broke.”
I wondered why we had to do this in the hot sun when there was shade only a few steps away. I pulled my wallet from the pocket of my jeans and fished out three one-hundred-dollar bills. “Will this do for now?”
She motioned toward the rubble with her cigarette. “All my clothes burned up in the house.”
I added two more hundreds and passed her the cash.
Shawnie didn’t say thank you. She stood there biting her lower lip.
I was sweltering. “If you need more, speak up.”
“The funeral home wants everything paid for up front.”
“Which funeral home?”
She took a drag from her cigarette and blew out the smoke. “There’s only the one.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “Anything else?”
“My car payment’s due.”
“Where?”
“At the bank.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of everything. Just go to the hotel and get some sleep. I’ll come get you for dinner later.”
Cigarette hanging from her mouth, Shawnie picked up her purse, stepped into the convertible, and drove away.
There was so little left of the house, it took a few moments for me to get my bearings. I stepped over the crime scene tape, walked through what used to be the front door, and worked my way through the charred wood and broken glass to the base of the staircase.
When Jimmy had finally started talking in the jail last night, everything he told me was clear, coherent, chronological. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my brother sober. I wondered when he’d last been more than a few hours without a drink. Years ago, I imagined. Probably not since before he got out of prison.
Jimmy told me that Mary Shawn had called him from the house—it showed on the caller ID—threatening to tell Shawnie the truth about her father if Jimmy didn’t come over right away. He’d put away several shots of Macallan by then, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t have a license, and he didn’t have a car. He got one of his neighbors to drive him to the house and drop him off at the end of the driveway. He found the front door ajar. Mary Shawn was at the base of the staircase. Dead. Broken neck, as best he could tell. He figured she’d fallen down the stairs.
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests Page 16
