“That’s him. I don’t suppose he was ever prosecuted?”
“ ’Course not. The mother didn’t want Heather to testify against her own father, and he probably wouldn’t have done much time anyway. Wasn’t worth it to the D.A. Why? What’s his sorry ass done now?”
“My kid that died? He was his stepgrandfather.”
“Oh, crap. You think he had something to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your kid OD’d, right? On mamma’s drugs?”
“He OD’d. I’m not sure the drugs were mamma’s.”
“Al’s MO was more smacking them around. If your boy —” “Michael.”
“If Michael had been beaten to death, then I’d be suspicious for sure. Is Al doing drugs?”
“I don’t think so. He’s still a drunk, and a gambler.”
“Nice.”
“No kidding. Thanks for the info.”
“Hang in there, kid. And remember what I said.”
“I will.”
I returned the file to Dolly in the basement and went back to my cubicle to get my things, where I literally ran into Michele.
“There you are. I was looking for you. You want to go to lunch?”
“Thanks, I’d love to, but I’ve already got plans.”
I headed north a few blocks to the Top of the Hill Grill. The restaurant squatted on a small rise of ground near the Convention Center, and was walking distance from the courthouses and towering financial institutions downtown. It was a popular lunch spot for those who wanted something hot and fast. The fare was typical diner stuff, hamburgers and club sandwiches and a daily special. It was also where Ashley had worked every weekday from eleven to four.
I circled the block and parked at a meter. Hoofed it back to the restaurant, made my way around the chalkboard sign announcing the specials, and went in. A long green Formica counter ran the length of the space, and a few small tables sat in front of the windows. The place was half full but buzzed with loud conversation. The special today was fried catfish, and the oily rich smell pervaded the place. The bells on the door jangled and I froze.
Sitting at the counter, in front of a crumb-covered plate, was Kirk Mahoney.
`
CHAPTER EIGHT
Today’s dress shirt was pink, sleeves again rolled to just below the elbows. The pink emphasized the ruddiness of his skin and made his blue eyes a shade lighter than I remembered. He was chatting up a waitress with purple-streaked hair and ketchup stains on her apron. The bells on the door announced my entrance and caught their attention. Kirk the Jerk’s eyebrows went up.
“Well, hello, Claire from DHS. What brings you here?” “I’m here to eat lunch.”
“Not fond of good food then?’
The unamused waitress snorted a “huh” and cleared his plate
away.
“I wouldn’t come here again,” I said. “She’ll probably spit in your
food.”
“Why do I have a sneaking suspicion you’d be fine with that?” I bit back a smile, took a seat at the counter several stools down
from him, and pointedly stared at the menu. In my peripheral vision
I saw him look at his check, lay down a ten out of his wallet, and stand
up. He swaggered over and hovered at my shoulder. His cologne
mixed with the smell of frying oil and fish.
“Come take a walk with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He lifted the laminated menu out of my hands and laid it down on the counter. “Five minutes,” he said, executing a
gentle grip on my upper left arm. “I won’t bite.”
He led me out the door. The heat of the day was peaking and, after
the rain, it was muggy. Steam rose off the sidewalk. Kirk put a toothpick in his mouth, which bobbed up and down as he talked. “Walk
with me to my car.”
“What is it you want?” I asked.
“I want to know why you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t hate anybody. I hate what you are doing
to — my agency.” I almost said “to me” but caught myself in time. He stopped and faced me. “What? What am I doing to your
agency? The article I wrote about Dr. Pope was very fair.” I lost it. “Hah!” I sputtered, “Are you kidding? You’ve done nothing but point out all of our failures. Bringing up all those old cases.
Using words like incompetent and mismanaged, and making us
sound like a bunch of unfeeling idiots.”
I was really getting mad now. I could tell because my eyes were
filling with tears. I always cry when I’m really angry, but I didn’t want
Kirk to see that. Trying in vain to calm myself, I went on. “Why the
hell don’t you ever write about all the good stuff DHS does? About all
the kids we save from sexual abuse. Or about all the crack babies we’ve
found homes for? About the kids we’ve taken out of dangerous meth
labs? We save lives, damn it! Lots of them. But nobody ever hears
about that.” My voice was cracking and my eyes were welling up again.
I brushed the tears away quickly with my hand.
Kirk took the toothpick out of his mouth. His head cocked and
his eyes squinted as he studied me. Then he finally put two and two
together.
“It was your case, wasn’t it?”
Through clenched teeth I said, “I can’t talk about it.” I whirled
around and walked quickly back to the diner. Thankfully he didn’t
follow me. In the distance, I heard a car door shut, then the engine
roar as he drove away.
I took a second outside to compose myself. I pulled a mirror from
my purse to make sure what was left of my mascara wasn’t streaking
down my cheeks. It wasn’t, but my face was red and I was sweating. I
put the mirror away, went back in, and sat down.
The purple-haired waitress approached me. “You okay?” “Hi, Brandi. I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”
“You look rattled. Don’t worry, he asked a lot of questions about
Ashley, but I didn’t answer them. She don’t need all of her business up
in the paper.”
Brandi was Ashley’s best friend. They were the same age, twentythree. Brandi didn’t have any children yet, and she didn’t have the
same history of addiction. But Brandi had enough violence and pain
in her past to be able to relate to Ashley. It was the cement that held
their friendship together. I’d met her twice, once here at work and
once at Ashley’s apartment when I’d done a spot-check on Michael.
That day, Ashley and Brandi had been sitting on the sofa, barefoot,
talking and giggling. A different time. A different Ashley. “Have you seen Ashley?” I asked.
“I haven’t been able to get off work during visiting hours. I’m
going tomorrow.”
“She looks miserable.”
“I’m sure.”
A portly grayhaired man in a navy suit sitting at the other end of
the counter said, “Excuse me —”
“Be right there,” Brandi said to him. “Are you going to want anything to eat?” she asked me.
I scanned the menu. “Sure, um, the hamburger, I guess. With
chips.”
She scribbled my order on her pad, tore off the sheet and placed
it in the window that led to the kitchen. I continued, “Can I ask you
something?”
The elderly man said again, “Excuse me —”
She rolled her eyes. “Hold on.” She walked the length of the
counter, slapped his ticket down in front of him, and whisked his plate
away just as he shoveled in the last bite. He left without leaving a tip. Brandi put his plate in the window and came back to me.“Sorry.
What were you saying?”
“Do you know if Ashley was seeing anyone?”
She looked uncomfortable. “Why?”
No immediate denial. I decided to tell her. “I keep seeing this
green Dodge Charger around. Looks like something Flash might
drive, and someone slashed my tires and left a threatening message on
my voice mail at work. Sounds like something he might do. Do you
know if she was hanging out with him again?”
“She wasn’t. I know that for sure. She hates him.”
“Then I went by the jail to see her. There was a guy there. They
looked like they knew each other pretty well. He had kinda wild hair,
brown, and a scraggy beard. Short and heavyset. Ring a bell?” She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t know —” “You heard about the autopsy, right?”
Her eyes went wide. “No.”
“Michael died of a GHB overdose. It was in the orange juice in
the fridge and in his sippy cup. The detective on the case told me there
was enough to kill both of them in the pitcher. Do you think Ashley
would pour Michael a cup of juice she knew was laced with drugs?” Now she looked horrified. “No!”
“Then something else is going on. Rumor has it Ashley’s going to
plead guilty. For some reason she won’t tell anyone what’s up. If this
guy, whoever he is, knows something about what happened that
night, someone needs to talk to him.”
A small bell rang behind her. She turned and grabbed three plates
off the window, and, balancing one effortlessly on her forearm, delivered them to one of the tables. Then she came back.
“Well?” I asked.
Her voice lowered almost to a whisper.“His name’s Jimmy. Jimmy
Shelton. He’s a maintenance worker in some building around here.
He came in for lunch right after Christmas. He and Ashley started
talking, then he came in more and more often till it was, like, every day. They’d flirt, you know, and I was picking on her about it a few months ago. I asked her if she was going to go out with Jimmy and she was like, nah, and I said how come, if you like him and all, and she said but he’s so much older. And I said that didn’t matter. And then she said that she could never go out with anybody that didn’t want
kids.”
Uh-oh. “She said that? That he didn’t want kids?”
“That’s what she said. So anyways, lately she’s been acting weird.
Like she’s always in a good mood. So I asked her what was going on
and she was like, nothing. But I got the feeling that maybe she had a
boyfriend. But she wouldn’t tell me nothing about it for some reason. Maybe it was Jimmy. I don’t know. I know it wasn’t Flash. Maybe
he was giving her a hard time, but she wouldn’t hook up with him
again.”
From the way Ashley’d looked at Jimmy from behind the glass at
the jail, I’d bet money he was the mysterious boyfriend. Could Ashley have killed Michael because the man she loved didn’t want him?
It had happened before. A famous case about a woman who’d
drowned her kids in a lake drifted into my mind.
The bell rang again and Brandi took my hamburger and chips
from the window and set the plate in front of me. “Enjoy,” she said,
and went to take an order at a table. It dawned on me that she was
very busy, working alone in Ashley’s absence. I wondered how long
the manager would let that go on before hiring a replacement for Ashley. Not long, I would imagine. Too bad, because Ashley had really
enjoyed this job.
My hamburger was tasty in that greasy-junk-food kind of way,
but I ate less than half and only a few chips before asking Brandi for
a box. She brought me one and watched as I loaded what was left into
it, then clasped the lid closed. Wiping my hands on a napkin, I asked,
“Will you call me if Ashley says anything about what happened the
night Michael died?”
“Sure. I’ll see if I can get her to talk to me.”
“And if Jimmy Shelton shows up here call me, okay? And give him one of these?” I fetched two business cards from the holder in my purse and handed them to her. One for her and one for Jimmy. My
cell number was handwritten over my name.
“Anything else?”
“I’m going to go by and see her next week. Monday, I hope. I want
to see if she’ll let me look around her apartment. Maybe I can get
some idea of what might have happened.”
“Monday’s a holiday. I wonder if they’ll have visiting hours? And
I have a key to Ashley’s place.”
She was right. Today was Friday, July first, which meant Monday
was the Fourth. I had a long weekend.
“Do you want the key now?” Brandi asked. She pulled a dense
cluster of keys from her apron pocket and began to unring one. “No, that’s okay.”
“Okay.” The keys went back in her apron.
“Michael’s funeral is Tuesday at Harris and Sons. It’s at eleven.” “Dang, I have to work. There’s nobody to cover. Do you think
they’ll let Ashley go to it?”
“I don’t know.”
Brandi reached again into her pouch and tore off my check.
“Here. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“Thanks.”
“You really think she’ll go to prison?”
“I’m sure of it, unless someone finds a way to prove she didn’t do
it.”
I paid the cashier with a twenty and left Brandi a generous tip. I
decided to leave my car where it was and walk to the Criminal Courthouse. It was just a few short blocks away and driving would be more
trouble than walking. I put my leftovers in the car and fed the greedy
meter fifty cents for another two hours.
The familiar logo-covered television station vans were clustered outside the courthouse. I took off my ID, ducked around them, and walked as quickly as I could through the door. I had my bag X-rayed at security and, after asking the guard to check the docket, made my way to the Honorable Charles Rollingwood’s courtroom. I appeared often at family court, and on rare occasions at civil court in custody battles, but this was my first trip to a criminal court. I had no idea what the rules were. At family court everything was pretty casual, with social workers, probation officers, and attorneys coming and going in and out of the courtroom as they pleased, so long as a trial wasn’t going on. Here, I figured I’d go in and sit down and if I wasn’t supposed to be there, someone would let me know.
I opened the heavy wooden door to the courtroom and saw the judge’s tall bench was empty. Four pew-like rows of oak seats were to the left, and I immediately spotted Dee and Nona, sitting together. Dee had on a blue-gray tweed jacket over a brownish-black dress. The jacket and dress didn’t quite match. Her long hair was rolled at the ends into soft curls that she fidgeted with, twirling them around her fingers. Nona was in one of her usual African-inspired prints, a somber black and olive green outfit with a matching turban over her hair. She smiled a greeting when she saw me and I sat down next to her.
“Hi,” she said. “How are you?”
“Hi, Dee. Hi, Nona. I’m hanging in there. How about you?” “Staying busy,” Nona answered. “You got my message about
Michael’s memorial?”
“Yeah, thanks again for doing all that.”
“Reverend Croft is doing the ceremony. He’s good.” A man in a trendy suit sat down on the bench in front of us.
I
vaguely recognized him from the TV news. Lawyers began to trickle in and out, conversing, and Samuel Hamilton came in and took a seat at one of the two tables that faced the bench. The D.A. entered and sat at the other.
A uniformed guard brought Ashley in, handcuffed. She was dressed as I’d seen her before, in the orange stripes that hung off her small frame and made her look so tiny and vulnerable. The handcuffs were removed and she sat by her lawyer, only turning once to see the three of us sitting there and giving us a small nod. She was poised on the edge of the chair, rigid, as though by holding herself tight she could keep it together.
I turned, hearing the door open again, and saw Jimmy Shelton ease in and quietly sit two rows behind us. He had tamed his wild hair a bit, and wore a striped tie. As Ashley turned around and spotted him, the corners of her mouth curved up in a small smile as if to say she was okay.
I was on the verge of getting up to go sit with Jimmy and introduce myself when the door opened yet again and in walked — surprise, surprise — Kirk the Jerk. He saw me, slid down the bench, and nudged my arm playfully with his elbow. “Long time no see.”
My instinctive reply was to tell him to go straight to hell, but I didn’t. Instead I ignored him.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”
“Sure.” I turned to Dee and Nona. “Ladies, this is Kirk Mahoney. He’s the man who’s been writing all the lovely articles in the paper lately about Michael’s case.”
Nona looked at Kirk like he was something dead that had washed up onshore. Dee didn’t know what to do, and muttered “Hi.”
“Gee, thanks,” Kirk said to me. “I’m sorry I upset you earlier.”
There was no point in responding to that, so I opted for stony silence again. He said, “I don’t understand why you’re so upset. I’m just trying to tell the truth.”
I faced him and said in a fierce whisper, “Really, Kirk? Is it really about the truth? Or is it about finding the most convenient person to blame? Making everyone believe that it’s the government’s fault instead of focusing on what really killed Michael. The drugs. And all the horrible things that people do to each other. The cycle of abuse that makes people want to get high.” I glanced at Dee, making sure she couldn’t hear me. “Ashley’s problems started long before DHS got involved. They started the day she was born. But you never hear about that, because there’s no easy solution.”
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