by Joel Goldman
"You better learn to use it," Blues had told him, "if you're gonna keep pushing hot buttons on people that don't have any cold buttons."
Mason had killed one man, though not with a gun, and shot another who hadn't died. He had nightmares about the first man, but not the second, and that bothered him enough to give the gun back to Blues.
"You hold onto it for me," Mason said. "I'll let you know if I need it."
After the Gina Davenport case, Blues gave it to him again. "Any man gets stabbed in the heart and lives to tell about it, damn well better carry a gun. Even a fool only gets so many chances," he said. "Register it and get a permit to carry it."
Mason didn't argue, registering the gun, getting the permit, and burying it in the bottom drawer, forgetting about it. He took the gun out, hefting it in his palm, liking the solid feel more than he cared to admit. He worked the action, confirmed the magazine was loaded and set the gun down on a stack of papers about to be blown off his desk by the breeze. Picking up the utility knife, he sliced the boxes open, looking for something short and simple for a last look, settling on a thin file labeled JURY.
The file contained a single sheet of paper, the verdict form signed by all twelve jurors, each signature telling its own story. Four were left handed, judging from the slant at which they wrote. Some signed in small letters, hiding among the others as they probably did in the jury room. A couple used bold strokes, penning their names with the certainty of founding fathers. A few were feminine, given to soft strokes. One of these caught his eye as he said it aloud: Sonni Efron.
Mason stared at the verdict form, pacing around his office, waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves into the name of someone who hadn't been murdered two days ago and buried that morning. He stopped in front of the dry erase board, a siren from the street shrieking into his open window as an ambulance raced by, the coincidence of Sonni Efron's murder and Ryan Kowalczyk's execution occurring on the same day more stunning than the siren.
Mason didn't believe in coincidence any more than he believed in King Tut's curse. Legend had it that those who entered Tut's tomb were cursed to die horrible deaths, many of them doing so, their deaths serving the legend if nothing else. That a juror who condemned Ryan Kowalczyk to death for murder would suffer the same fate couldn't be the result of jury duty, a modern equivalent of Tut's curse.
Mason knew that. He knew that many crimes were random, the victim and the perpetrator connected by nothing more than fatal coincidence. Bad timing, nothing more. Yet Sonni Efron's murder felt like another shift in the earth beneath his feet, another small tremor rippling under him, adding to the aftershocks of Ryan's execution, the stone on his parents' grave, his aunt's admonition to forget about his parents' deaths, and Blues's refusal to help Mary Kowalczyk. Feeling the heat, Mason added Sonni's name to the board, closing the cabinet doors, shutting the questions about her murder inside.
"Done for the day?" Sandra Connelly asked.
Mason turned around. Sandra was framed in the doorway to his office, one hand on a cocked hip, the only woman he knew who looked good in this weather. They had been partners at Sullivan amp; Christenson, ridden out of the firm on the same rail, tied together in a killing spree that nearly claimed them both. Afterward, Mason retreated to a solo practice, shunning the limelight even when his cases shined the spotlight on him. Sandra sought out the beacons, leveraging her notoriety to land big clients with big cases, delivering victories, crushing the opposition.
Her hair was shorter now, a shade darker, her body sleek and full at the same time, her mouth still turned in a smug twist that promised a rough ride you'd thank her for. A ride she had offered to Mason that he had declined, though just barely. Horses sweat, men perspire, and women glow, Claire once told him. Sandra had the glow, beating back the heat. A purse on one shoulder, a briefcase slung from the other. A knife in both, Mason bet, counting on Sandra not to have changed that much.
"All in and all done," Mason answered. "Grab a deck chair, enjoy the ocean breeze," he said, retrieving two bottles of Boulevard Beer from his refrigerator, glad the chill hadn't left the glass.
Sandra chose the sofa, kicking off her heels, leaning against the cushions, rubbing the bottle against her neck, beneath her chin. She was wearing wheat-colored linen slacks with a pale pink blouse, open at the throat, a chunk of diamond dropped on a thin gold chain perched just above the swell of her tanned breasts. Mason chose the neutral zone behind his desk, feet on the floor, bottle unopened.
"Nice office," Sandra said, taking a quick inventory, then a short draw on the beer, Mason not answering, letting Sandra take her time. "Cute paperweight," she said aiming the bottle at the gun on his desk.
"Cigarette lighter," Mason explained, putting the gun back in the drawer. "You still carry a knife wherever you go?" he asked.
She opened her purse, pulling out a three-inch, pearl-handled knife, blade closed until she pushed an invisible button on the side, and the blade snapped to attention. "No. Just this letter opener," she said.
Mason laughed, remembering how Sandra's fascination with knives had once saved their lives. He hadn't seen much of her in the last several years; her practice focused on well-heeled corporations, his on down-at-the-heel individuals. She was a star at McKenzie amp; Strahan, the city's biggest law firm. The last he'd heard, she was defending tobacco companies, convincing juries that people were responsible for the addictions they chose, not the companies that sucked them in.
She studied him, testing Mason's nonchalance, giving up after a moment when he didn't melt at her feet. "Okay," she said, taking a sheet of paper from her briefcase. "I hear you've got a new client."
"Things must be slow downtown for a piece of news like that to hit your corner office," Mason said.
"Nick Byrnes hit my office," Sandra said. "Or, more precisely, his e-mail did after Whitney King forwarded it to me," she added, handing Mason the hard copy. Nick's message was right to the point.
YOU'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH MURDER LONG ENOUGH. I'VE GOT A LAWYER. HIS NAME IS LOU MASON. WE'RE COMING AFTER YOU. BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.
"I should have that printed on my business card," Mason said, noting the e-mail identified Nick Byrnes as the sender, Whitney King as the recipient. Time of message, three o'clock A.M. that morning, hours before Mason had agreed to represent Nick.
Sandra pulled a file folder from her briefcase, dropping it on the table in front of the sofa. "Your client is fond of sending e-mails in the dark of night. Take a look. They're all variations on a theme. You killed my parents. I'm going to get you if it's the last thing I do. Yadda, yadda, yadda."
Mason refused the bait, annoyed with Nick, but just as annoyed with Sandra. Mason accepted his clients as they were. Some guilty. Some innocent. Some eccentric pains-inthe-ass. They may be jerks, but they were his jerks, and he didn't hesitate to protect them.
"Nearly as I can tell, Nick's right. Your client killed his parents. That must be why Whitney has never tried to stop Nick from sending e-mails reminding him about what he did. In case Whitney forgot, that is."
Sandra tapped her bottle against the side of the table, slipped her shoes on, and stood. "My client was acquitted by a jury. The same jury that convicted Ryan Kowalczyk, whose conviction was upheld by every state and federal court that reviewed the case. Your client's obsession is understandable, but tell him to move on. Life is for the living."
"You know," Mason said, coming around from behind his desk. "This life is for the living crap is getting on my nerves. It's a lousy excuse for letting someone off the hook. Nick Byrnes has a good case against Whitney King for his parents' wrongful death. It won't mean jail time, but it will mean a lot of money, not to mention a new jury saying what the last one didn't have the balls to say. Whitney King killed those people."
"Are you telling me you are actually going to sue Whitney?"
"Nick's statute of limitations runs in two weeks. If Whitney wants to make a deal now, maybe we can work something out without a lot of noise,"
Mason said.
"Right. Why don't I just cut off my arm and beat myself senseless with it instead. Save my client the trouble. You don't have a case, Lou. Your client is a screwed-up kid. A whack job. File that lawsuit against Whitney and you'll draw a counterclaim for harassment and those e-mails are exhibit A."
"Your client is a murderer. I'd watch your back. Cutting off your arm may just be the beginning," Mason said.
Sandra shook her head, back in the doorway. "You haven't changed a bit," she said. "Into the breach."
"Beats the hell out of crushing widows and orphans."
Sandra drew her lips back. "You don't want to take me on, Lou. I'll carve you up."
"Funny," Mason said. "I thought your client was the killer. Not you."
Chapter 7
Mason and Abby Lieberman lay in bed late that night, windows open, begging for a breeze, the crickets too hot to make much noise. Electric power came and went, the mayor broadcasting an appeal for people to turn up the thermostat on their air conditioners to ease the demand for electricity. Mason's air conditioner went the mayor one better. It quit. He found a fan buried behind boxes in the attic, dusted off the blades, and set it on a TV table at the foot of his bed.
"It's an oscillator," Mason explained to Abby with due reverence, the fan pushing warm air at them. "Says so on the label."
"My favorite kind," she said, kicking the sheet off of the bed.
"We could go to your place," he offered.
"This is good," she murmured, snuggling close. "It reminds me of summer camp."
"You never went to camp," Mason said.
"I saw a special on the Discovery channel."
They were naked, glistening from lovemaking, Abby tracing the path of the scar on Mason's chest with her fingertip. It was an eighteen-inch raised track, pink, smooth, and shiny, short zipper scars bordering each side. He'd been stabbed in the heart, lost his pulse in the ambulance, dead on arrival. A surgeon opened his chest in the ER to stop the bleeding, massaging his heart, bringing him back before hypoxia cooked his brain. Half a day of open-heart surgery repaired his wounds.
"Does it ever hurt?" she asked him, the fan drying them.
"Nope," he told her. It was the same answer he gave her each time she asked, even though there were days when his chest was filled with a dull ache that pressed against his ribs. Normal, give it time, his surgeon said. Abby gave him a T-shirt featuring a beat-up biker scarred from stem to stern promising that chicks dig scars. He counted on that.
They'd been together almost a year, their relationship igniting when Claire invited Abby to Harry's birthday party the day after Labor Day. Abby owned a public relations firm, Fresh Air. Opportunity and crisis management she called it until the phone stopped ringing after she was caught up in the Gina Davenport case. Then she turned off the lights.
Josh Seeley bailed Abby out when he hired her to help with his race for the United States Senate, his first run for elective office, the primary scheduled for August 1. He was one of Kansas City's moneyed elite who decided that his balance sheet qualified him for office. Abby guided him through the fallout from murky business deals dug up by his primary opponent, Congressman Delray Shays. Abby accepted Seeley's offer to work full time for the campaign, shut down Fresh Air, and recruited Mickey Shanahan as an unpaid volunteer.
The loss of her business festered like a low-grade fever in her relationship with Mason. They told each other it was neither of their faults, more the rule of unintended consequences. No hill for their love to climb, Mason assured her, Abby nodding through gritted teeth. Abby told him that her credibility would be restored if Seeley won. Then she would reopen Fresh Air.
Mason propped himself on one elbow, Abby on her side facing him. She'd let her hair grow to cover the scar on her neck left by the same knife that had lacerated his heart. She recoiled whenever he touched her scar, the closed wound still raw. It was shorter than his, no more than a couple of inches, but jagged. It was a cut made as much to disfigure as to kill. Abby wore high collars, scarves, and turtlenecks year round.
Mason told her about his two new clients, gauging her reaction. He had promised her that he'd stay away from cases with deadly retainers, the kind of case that appealed to what she called his death wish. Not that he wanted to die, she explained. It was that he wanted to find out how close he could get to death to prove he was really alive. She'd been there with him the last time and had made it plain that she wouldn't go back.
Mason didn't argue with her. He called his knack for getting in over his head diving into dark water. He used to rationalize that it was a by-product of trying to find the kind of law he wanted to practice-big firm, small firm, good pay, or good works. That was part of it, but not the part that drove him to take chances they didn't prepare you for in law school.
Something was missing in his existence and he kept looking for it in close encounters between life and death. With Gina Davenport's case, he'd come as close to the line as he dared, risking not only his life, but also Abby's, chips he vowed not to play again. This case, he told her, would be different. It was only about money and memories.
"It's still murder," she told him. Mason didn't argue or complain when she held him so tight he thought his scar might tear open. He didn't tell her about Sonni Efron or the stone on his parents' graves, two wild cards he didn't have a grasp on. "Are you going to sue Whitney King?" she asked.
"If I don't fire my client first. I chewed Nick out about the e-mails he sent to King and I told him that he was on his own if he didn't stop."
"How did Nick take that?" Abby asked.
"About as well as any eighteen-year-old takes getting yelled at by an adult, but he got the point. He's not a bad kid and he hasn't had it easy, so I cut him some slack."
"So, are you going to file the lawsuit?"
"Sandra Connelly didn't give me much choice. If I don't file in the next couple of weeks, Nick's case will be barred by the statute of limitations. He's got a good enough case against King that I can't take that chance."
"What about Mary Kowalczyk? Can you get a pardon for her son?"
Mason flopped back on his pillow. "The case against King is tough enough. Finding witnesses fifteen years later won't be easy. Even if I find them, their memories may not stand up under Sandra's cross-examination. Plus the two investigating detectives are my closest friends. Sandra will make us look like coconspirators. That's a cakewalk compared to the pardon. All I have to do is convince a governor running for reelection to admit that he ordered the execution of an innocent man."
"Will you make it dangerous?" she asked, rolling away from him.
"No," he promised, stroking her side, feeling her muscles tense at his touch, both of them wanting to believe him. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't all up to him, but he knew Abby believed in a different kind of free will.
Abby got up, closing the bathroom door behind her. Mason slipped on a pair of boxers and stepped over his dog, Tuffy, a German Shepherd-Collie mixed breed, sleeping on a pillow under the window. He padded down the hardwood hall from the bedroom on bare feet to turn on the attic fan, stopping at a window on the front of the house, raising it open. A full-bodied oak tree, its leaves an early brown from lack of water, rustled in the thin current of air passing through its limbs. The branches fragmented his view of the street. A moonless sky had dropped a black curtain on the city.
A car crept down the block. An expensive sedan. Japanese or German, Mason guessed. The driver doused the headlights, slowing to a crawl when it reached Mason's house. The passenger window slid down. A sharp flash exploded from inside the car, the spit of a bullet barely heard. The first floor window directly beneath where he stood shattered along with his promise to Abby, setting off his house alarm.
Abby burst from the bedroom, clutching a towel over her body with one hand, her other hand clamped over her scar. Mason wanted to tell her that it was nothing, that it wasn't his fault, and that he was sorry. He stood in the hall looking at her
shake, not saying a word because he knew it wouldn't matter.
The alarm company sent the cops. Mason and Abby were just getting dressed when they arrived, Mason in gym shorts and a T-shirt, no shoes. Abby marched down the stairs, past the cops toward her car parked on the street as she tucked her sleeveless turtleneck into her cargo shorts. Mason followed her, his bare feet slapping the concrete walk. Tuffy trailed both of them, her tail on high alert.
"Don't go," he said, catching her arm as she reached the curb.
"I'm not doing this again, Lou! I told you that."
"It was probably just some kids. There's no proof it has anything to do with this case."
"Are you delusional?" she demanded. "You're hired to prove Whitney King murdered two people, his lawyer tells you to back off, and someone tries to kill you. All in less than twenty-four hours. If it's not connected, you're the king of bad luck!"
"No one tried to kill me, Abby," Mason pled. "The house was dark. It was the middle of the night. The shooter was counting on no one being on the first floor of the house."
"Fine," she said, pulling her car door open. "Whoever did it wasn't trying to kill you. It was just their way of saying hello. You can live that kind of life, Lou. People killing and getting killed. You and Blues pretending it's all water off a duck's back. Well, it's not water. It's blood. I know. I killed somebody and the blood didn't wash off my back. It stuck. I can't do this any more," she added, her hands raised in protest. "I can't."
Abby drove away, her parking spot taken by an unmarked police car, two detectives joining the four uniformed cops already securing his house. Mason tugged at the rough growth on his chin, clawing heat-stunted grass with his toes as Tuffy rubbed against his thigh. The dome light came on as the detectives opened the door. Samantha Greer stepped out from the passenger side.
"My luck," Samantha said. "I come out here at two o'clock in the morning for a busted window. You're not even shot."
Mason and Samantha had dated intermittently, for hormonal reasons as far as Mason was concerned. He broke it off when Samantha said she wanted something more and Mason told her he was fresh out of anything else. Mason met Abby shortly after that. Samantha gave up any hope of getting him back.
