by Randy Singer
She shot a glance at Billy. “I mean, look at us. We can’t even leave the condo without some kind of protection. We need a new start.”
Landon was tired of new starts. He was tired of acknowledging to a whole new set of folks that he was the guy who had cheated on his teammates. Of trying to convince them that he had changed.
He couldn’t keep running. There was an old saying in Alcoholics Anonymous: “Wherever you go, there you are.” He knew it was true of him as well. Wherever he went, the point-shaving scandal followed. At some point, he had to just hunker down and prove to people that he could be trusted.
“Kerri, we can’t outrun this. Just like we’ve never been able to outrun what I did in college—”
“I’m not saying we can outrun it,” Kerri interrupted.
“Let me finish, okay?”
“I’m just saying, if this were about running, I wouldn’t have waited two years for you to get out of jail. This is about our family.”
Landon blew out a breath. “Is it my turn?”
“Yes.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“The only way we get out of danger is by finding out who’s killing the firm’s lawyers and why. And we’re not going to get that done by moving to D.C.”
“Whoa!” Billy said from the family room couch. It was a top-ten play on SportsCenter, an in-your-face-dunk by some NBA rookie sensation. “He posterized that dude!”
Landon shook his head. His life was like a bad sitcom. “Turn that thing off,” he said. “Get out here and join us.”
“I’m trying to be the Swiss,” Billy shot back. “The Swiss don’t take sides.”
“Get your fat Swiss tail out here!” Kerri said. “We need your help.”
Billy mumbled under his breath but lumbered to the table. If he was going to be the mediator, he said, he needed some paper and a pen. He drew two lines, dividing the page into thirds, and told Landon and Kerri to give him a list of the pros and cons for each of three options—moving to D.C., staying in Virginia Beach and taking the King case, or staying in Virginia Beach and not taking the case.
“A pro for moving to D.C. is that maybe Landon wouldn’t get killed,” Kerri said.
“Okay,” Billy said. He wrote down Landon stays alive. “You sure that should go in the pro column?”
Kerri didn’t smile, so he batted his eyes at her. “I’m just sayin’, with Junior here out of the way—maybe you and me?”
Billy’s offbeat sense of humor managed to lighten the mood a little and got Kerri and Landon talking in less threatening tones. The list grew lopsided in favor of D.C. even though Landon did his best to come up with alternative ways of making the same arguments against it. He believed in Elias King’s innocence. He wanted to help Jacob. And he wanted to prove that he was the kind of lawyer who would never turn his back on a firm or a client. “Plus, we’ve got the ocean here,” he said.
“When’s the last time we went to the ocean?” Kerri asked.
When Billy was done writing, most of the factors weighed in favor of moving. None of them knew for sure that moving to D.C. would make things safer for Landon, but their instincts told them that disentangling from the firm would help. Kerri could be a rock-star journalist on a big stage in D.C. With everything Landon had learned under the tutelage of Harry McNaughten, he could start his own firm. In fact, it might be easier to open his own shop than it would be to pick up the pieces at McNaughten and Clay.
Billy turned the page around so they could both see the list. The choice was obvious. It was time to bail.
“You want my advice?” Billy asked.
“Sure,” Kerri and Landon said in unison.
“You guys are both people of faith, and I respect that about you. So here’s what I’m thinking. Kerri calls this station in D.C. If the job’s still open and she gets it, then God wants you to move to D.C. If not, you stay here.” He looked down at the list. The column for taking Elias’s case was far longer than the one for not taking it. “And if you stay, you take the case.”
It felt like a cop-out to Landon—let the circumstances dictate what God wants. But Kerri liked the approach.
“Makes sense to me,” she said. “I think it leaves room for God to do his thing.”
She reached under the table and took Landon’s hand. He swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded his head. Billy was right about one thing—if God didn’t want them moving to D.C., he would close that door. But this took it out of Landon’s hands, and that was hard.
“I guess that works,” Landon said. He turned to Kerri. “I’d like to finish Elias’s case first, but if you’re not okay with that, then I won’t.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not with everything else that’s been happening.”
“Well then,” Billy announced. “I see my work here is done.” He stood from the table and headed back to SportsCenter.
///
The next morning, after Kerri had left, Landon came out and shook Billy awake on the couch. The big man grunted and rolled over. Landon shook his shoulder again, and Billy squinted, opened an eye, and muttered something like “lea’ me ’lone.”
“Kerri said she wants to stay in Virginia Beach,” Landon said. “She woke up this morning and said that she had prayed about it half the night. She said this was our home; that I needed to take that case; that God wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
Billy sat up, rubbing his eyes. He had a serious case of bed hair.
“Did you hear what I said?” Landon asked.
“Reverse psychology,” Billy said. “It works every time.”
///
The trial was scheduled to begin exactly six weeks from the day Landon was rehired as Elias King’s attorney. He worked fourteen-hour days. Seven days a week. Billy Thurston saw more of Kerri and Maddie than Landon did.
The only thing Elias King had in common with Harry McNaughten was his superb ability as a trial lawyer. His style couldn’t have been more different from that of Landon’s mentor. Elias was a control freak. He and Landon scrutinized every detail of the case. They wrote out their witness examinations question by question. They brought in witnesses and grilled them for hours, preparing them for cross-examination by Franklin Sherman. They took turns playing an adverse witness while the other one worked on his cross-examination. For Landon, it was a month of trial-advocacy boot camp with a drill sergeant who was pumping caffeine by the gallon and had his own freedom at stake. All of this while answering occasional questions from Detective Freeman and worrying about cash flow in his role as a new firm partner.
As the trial approached, Landon also worried about Parker Clausen. The man was becoming more unkempt, wearing the same faded jeans and T-shirts every day. A few times, Landon smelled liquor on Parker’s breath by midafternoon. His office, which used to be relatively clean, was starting to look like a scene from Hoarders.
But Landon didn’t have time for those problems now. There was so much to be done on the King case and so little time to do it.
On the bright side, each new day that passed seemed to lessen the threat of further violence against firm members. Billy Thurston was sticking with Maddie and Kerri. The Wolfman—or occasionally another operative from Cipher Inc.—was always hanging around someplace. Detective Freeman finally finished her analysis of the firm files and now only occasionally stopped by or called with another question.
“Any leads?” Landon would ask.
“I’m working on it.”
Two weeks before trial, Landon still didn’t know who had killed Erica Jensen. He had learned that Julia King had wrestled with depression her entire life and had been diagnosed as bipolar. But that didn’t make her a killer. Even if she was, that defense was off-limits.
The net result was that Landon and Elias were preparing a case of counterpunches—the precise strategy that Harry had once eschewed. “The jury will want to know who did it,” Harry had said, and those words kept ringing in Landon’s ears, haunting him.
&nb
sp; Elias, on the other hand, clung to the presumption of innocence. “All we have to do is create reasonable doubt,” he reminded Landon on numerous occasions.
Landon didn’t argue—since they had no alternative suspect, what was the point? But deep down, he suspected that Elias was wrong and Harry was right. If they couldn’t prove who murdered Erica Jensen, the jury would pin it on Elias.
“Reasonable doubt” was lawyer-speak. The jury just wanted to know who did it.
64
FOR A WEEK, the weather was hot and humid with highs reaching one hundred degrees, making global warming seem immediate and real. The forecast for Saturday, June 15, was no different. Possible afternoon thunderstorms. Light wind. Lots of sun and dripping with humidity.
Kerri wondered why anybody in their right mind would go to Busch Gardens on a day like this.
As it turned out, the park was jammed with thousands of people who could think of no better way to spend their Saturday than walking around on asphalt and standing in line with hundreds of other sweaty park guests, crushed together, winding their way to the front of the line, all to enjoy two or three minutes of bliss on one of the park’s big roller coasters.
As Kerri hustled through the park, heading toward the Festhaus at the far end, she looked with envy at the “normal” families. There were moms and dads with kids Maddie’s age, studying their maps and trying to decide what ride to go on. Eating cotton candy. Waiting in line at the water fountain. Watching the Clydesdales. Laughing together. Even arguing with each other.
Is this the way normal families spend a Saturday afternoon?
She and Landon were burning the candle at both ends, and Kerri was worried that Maddie was paying the price. The Elias King trial seemed to have Landon handcuffed to the office. Kerri’s job had its own set of unreasonable demands. Add to that their 315-pound live-in guest and a mysterious man in a black T-shirt from Cipher Inc. following them around all day, and you had the ingredients for an extremely dysfunctional childhood.
Since the deaths of Brent Benedict and Rachel Strach, Kerri had been feeling separation anxiety whenever she was away from her daughter. Even on days like today, when she knew that Maddie would be safe with Billy, Kerri couldn’t help thinking about the what-ifs. There was still a serial killer on the loose and no serious leads to find him, and Landon had been letting his guard down lately. “God will take care of us,” he would tell Kerri. She agreed with that, of course, but she didn’t think God wanted them to be stupid.
She was at Busch Gardens today because Sean Phoenix had called and requested a meeting. For reasons he didn’t share, the meeting couldn’t take place at the Cipher headquarters in northern Virginia. Instead, on the theory that the safest place to meet was in the middle of a crowd, he had set up this meeting at the theme park on a busy Saturday afternoon.
Landon and Billy knew that Kerri had to meet with a source, but she couldn’t tell them who. Landon didn’t like Kerri running off on her own like this, but he knew the Wolfman would be trailing at a distance. Given the amount of time Landon had been spending at the office, he wasn’t winning many arguments lately anyway.
The Festhaus was a two-thousand-seat festival hall where guests were entertained by dancers and enjoyed traditional German food. While the crowd ate, the dancers taught the polka and re-created a bit of authentic German Oktoberfest spirit. In other words, it was like a big German tailgate party.
The building had a Bavarian feel to it. When Kerri stepped inside, a wave of cool air hit her face as her eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. There were picnic tables scattered throughout the hall and a big stage in the middle. Kerri placed her sunglasses on top of her head and scanned the place. She was fifteen minutes late and didn’t see Sean Phoenix anywhere. She pulled out her phone and dialed his number.
“May I help you?” a deep voice said behind her.
Startled, she turned around quickly. “You about gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry about that,” Sean said, flashing a big grin and working the dimples. He looked relaxed in his shorts, T-shirt, dockside shoes, and baseball cap with his sunglasses propped on the bill. “You looked lost.”
Kerri hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and Sean talked her into going through the line with him. She grabbed some German bratwurst, a huge piece of chocolate cake, and a drink. She followed Sean to a picnic table at the far end of the hall. He placed his tray at the end of the long table, a good distance from the family of six at the other end who all looked exhausted.
Kerri sat facing the middle of the hall, and Sean squeezed in next to her, rather than on the opposite side. She looked askance at him, but he shrugged it off. “I never put my back to the crowd,” he said.
She thought about moving to the other side of the table but decided to slide down a little instead.
“I don’t bite,” he said.
“That’s what they all say.”
She thought about the fuss she had made over the pictures of Rachel and Landon and knew she would have a hard time explaining things if that same photographer was lurking about. But it was different, she told herself. There would be no touching or kissing or dropping somebody off at their apartment because they had been drinking too much.
Unlike Landon’s meetings with Rachel, this one was strictly business.
Yet Sean seemed determined to lighten things up and suggested a game where they would pick out a family and tell that family’s story. Sean was a gifted people-watcher, and he picked up on little hints that Kerri hadn’t noticed before. As they ate, he gave her an informal clinic on facial expressions and body language and even pointed out a few men who were stealing glances at other women when their wives weren’t looking. Including, to Kerri’s embarrassment, a guy they caught staring at her on two separate occasions. The man tried to pass it off like maybe he was just surveying the picnic tables, looking for a friend. But when his gaze lingered on Kerri, Sean lifted his beer in a mock toast, and the man looked quickly away.
Just when they had taken their first bite of German chocolate cake, having finished off the bratwurst, the music started. A band was lowered in a gazebo from the ceiling onto the stage, and brightly clad dancers, the boys in knickers and the girls in frilly dresses, came waltzing arm in arm down the middle aisle. They smiled and chanted and taught the crowd a few German beer songs. The audience, including Sean and Kerri, raised their glasses for a traditional German toast.
The second time the dancers scoured the crowd for volunteers, Kerri saw it coming. One of the guys eyed her and started weaving his way back to their table. She tried to shrink into her seat and duck her head, but it didn’t work. He bowed politely in front of her and asked her for a dance.
“No thanks,” she said. She scowled in case the guy was a slow learner.
“Nonsense!” Sean said. He took her by one elbow, and the persistent little German dancer took her by the other. Before Kerri knew what was happening, one of the female dancers had latched on to Sean as well, and the two couples were on their way to the dance floor to join in a German polka.
Sometime during that song, Kerri’s perception of Sean began to change. He was no longer just a sophisticated spy; he acted like a little kid, smiling and singing and twirling the girls around. He puffed out his chest, tilted his head back, and laughed. He was a terrible dancer, but he didn’t seem to care. Kerri, by contrast, felt stiff as a board and self-conscious, counting down the seconds until she could get back to her seat.
Toward the end of the song, Sean managed to extricate himself from his dance partner and grabbed Kerri’s hand, turning her around in a rough approximation of what the other dancers were doing. She had to smile in spite of herself, and she somehow managed to keep from tripping.
The German dancers smiled and thanked them when the song was over, and Sean let go of Kerri’s hand. Like a perfect gentleman, he escorted her back to her seat while the dancers started prowling around for their next set of victims.
“If you ever do t
hat to me again, you’re dead,” Kerri said.
Sean grinned, his eyes sparkling. “I’ve been threatened by less beautiful women.”
She ignored the comment but this time stayed on the opposite side of the picnic table.
65
WHEN THEY FINISHED THE CAKE, Sean leaned forward and lowered his voice. The smile was gone, the eyes serious. Because the band was still playing, Kerri found herself leaning forward as well, making sure she heard every word.
“Her name was Fatinah Najar,” Sean said. “She was a beautiful Syrian woman who was once part of the Hezbollah. I flipped her and she became one of my assets, which is a nice way of saying that we used her to get inside information from the terrorist organization and some high-ranking Syrian officials. Do you know what the name Fatinah means?”
Kerri shrugged. She was thrown off by this new direction. But her source was talking now, and she knew the number one rule: keep him talking.
“I don’t have a clue,” she said.
“It means ‘fascinating, alluring, or enchanting.’” Sean paused for a moment and looked down at the table. “She was all of that,” he said, lifting his eyes back to Kerri. “She had these beautiful almond eyes and this laid-back Mediterranean personality. As a little girl, she lost her dad during an Israeli bombing raid. One year later, on the anniversary, her mom died as a suicide bomber. Fatinah bought the Hezbollah party line until she turned twenty-five. That’s when I met her. We fell in love. Eventually she became one of us.”
This was, Kerri knew, the woman she had heard the rumors about. The reason Sean had left the CIA and started Cipher Inc. Sean did a quick visual sweep of the room before continuing, pain pulling at the edges of his mouth.
“A year later, the Syrians arrested us and put her in the cell next to mine. They released me unharmed but not until after they had interrogated me and made me listen to Fatinah being tortured and raped. After my release, we could have rescued her. We had enough agents and firepower to break her out of that place. But the guys in suits decided we couldn’t risk it politically.”
