At Close Range

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Filled with HGH.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  That made two of them.

  “Was Cynthia there? What did she say? Did she see anything? Someone could’ve posed as a landscaper maybe…”

  “Cynthia’s gone. She left me on Saturday.”

  “Oh, Brian. Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. Why? I thought she was one-hundred-percent supportive. Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I don’t know. I figured you’d be with William.” Conscious of where he was, and the time, he quickly told her how he’d found the house empty when he’d come home from the grocery store. “I think it might’ve been because I didn’t ask her to marry me. It had kind of come up the night before and I dropped the ball.”

  It seemed so long ago now. And while he’d missed Cynthia on Sunday, he’d missed Joseph a whole lot more. Had worried about the boy all day, concerned with how this change would affect him. At some point, he wasn’t going to be able to bounce back.

  “Joseph had just told me he loved me,” Brian said, mostly because he had no one else to share his thoughts with.

  And they were jumbled. Confused. Overwhelming.

  “Well, if she managed to pack up and leave in the time it took you to grocery shop, it’s obvious she’d been planning to go,” Hannah said.

  He didn’t think so. “She didn’t have much.” And at the moment, Cynthia’s leaving was irrelevant. “I’m in deep trouble, Hannah.” He’d already been booked—again—the whole procedure. So far, he was in a cell by himself, but there was no telling if that would last. If he’d have even that security. “Please, do what you can to get me out of here.”

  “I’m assuming, since you only had the one call, you haven’t spoken with Tanya?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll call her. And then I’m coming down. We can talk more in person.”

  The promise was a lifeline. He held on to it rigidly as he was shown back to the cold hole of cement with a skinny excuse for a cot and absolutely nothing else.

  He had no possessions. No freedom. And no dignity left, either.

  Hannah didn’t get to sleep until early the next morning. She’d canceled her dinner with William as soon as she’d heard from Brian—telling him only that something had come up. She still needed to deal with her long-time friend—and recent lover. But in light of Brian’s crisis, her own upsetting day had seemed trivial at best.

  She’d spent the evening with Tanya, and in an interview room speaking with Brian.

  And then, after crying most of the way home, she’d poured herself a glass of wine and sat in the living room with Tay, with every light on, and tried not to think about her gentle friend, hunched over in handcuffs, or the stark, lost look on his face as they’d led him away from her and back to his cell.

  And she prayed that Brian would be kept safe. Hard. As hard as she’d prayed when Jason took his final turn for the worst.

  Tuesday morning, for reasons completely unknown to her, Hannah turned on the news as she waited in the kitchen for her coffee to drip. She wasn’t a news watcher, preferring not to hear sensationalized versions of the evil in the world when she spent her days with the real thing. But this morning she needed company.

  This morning, bad news seemed to be all there was. Having it on the television set as well as in every other aspect of her life, was almost comforting.

  She and the rest of the world were in the same boat.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Brian wasn’t alone.

  She poured a cup of coffee and took a sip. A second. Was contemplating possibilities for injecting the hot liquid directly into her veins when a name on the television set caught her attention.

  “Robert Miller,” the male announcer was saying, “a former Tucson police detective, who was rumored to have been in the state’s protective custody waiting to testify at a trial in Phoenix later this month, was found murdered this morning, shot at close range outside a Wickenburg motel room…”

  Hannah’s coffee cup shattered against the cool tile floor at her feet.

  22

  B y five o’clock Wednesday afternoon, Bobby Donahue was free. With no evidence, and their key witness dead, the state had to drop all charges against him.

  There were no clues in Miller’s shooting, but Hannah knew as well as anyone that Donahue had had something to do with it.

  The only bright spot was that the D.A.’s office had managed to get Miller’s family safely out of the state. Whether or not they’d stay safe was anyone’s guess.

  Hannah had no idea how she made it through the rest of the week. She did her job, stumbling her way through paperwork with a temporary court-appointed JA after having put Susan on leave. She went to dinner with Maggie Murphy and Donna Jasmine, the only other two judges she’d ever felt a kinship with. Another night she had drinks with a couple of her and Brian’s mutual college friends. All were stunned by the turn of events in Brian’s life. All wanted to help.

  She visited Brian daily. Nagged Tanya incessantly. Avoided William completely. And waited to be murdered.

  As melodramatic as that sounded, even to her, that was precisely what she expected. Even to the point of telling Maggie and Donna about Tay, and asking Maggie to take her in if something happened. While Maggie had assured her she’d be fine, she’d also agreed to take the cat.

  While the evidence against Brian was still circumstantial—there were no fingerprints or DNA to definitely tie him to the HGH found in his home—on Friday the state charged him with one count of first-degree murder, with other charges possibly to follow.

  The one good note of the week—they weren’t going for the death penalty.

  Hannah knew it was because they didn’t have enough on him to prove his guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. In a non-capital case, they only had the burden of reasonable doubt.

  The semantics could cost a man the rest of his life.

  “Funny, really,” she said to Brian on Friday afternoon, having left work immediately following her afternoon calendar. “I lived in fear all those weeks, and now, with Donahue out, I’m not even afraid. He can do his worst. What have I got left to lose?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Brian said, sitting with her at a table in a private consultation room usually reserved for attorneys and their clients. She’d shamelessly pulled strings. And didn’t care about that anymore, either.

  “Your life is precious, Hannah. You’ve got so much ahead of you, so much to do.”

  “As do you,” she said, tears in her eyes as she looked at him, cuffed wrists on the table between them. “So why does life keep turning us down?”

  Brow furrowed, he stared at her. “Maybe because we weren’t aiming in the right directions.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “How long have you been seeing William as more than a friend?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, thinking back. And trying not to. She hadn’t told Brian about her visit from the presiding judge the previous week. It didn’t even seem to matter anymore. “We’ve been partnering up for social events for a couple of years, I guess. Ever since Patsy first left him. But it didn’t really get romantic until recently.”

  “And I was considering asking Cynthia to marry me.”

  She wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but his intent expression was making her heart pound.

  “Yeah. So?” Her mouth was so dry she almost choked on the words.

  “How long have we been friends?”

  She didn’t need to count. “Twenty years.”

  Brian held her gaze. “My time in here has done one very good thing for me.” His words weren’t what she’d been expecting.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “It’s shown me that the happiness I’ve been trying to find all these years has been right in front of me. I was just so caught up in who we’d been, in Cara’s death, in carrying around the guilt for her death…”

  “But, Brian, it wasn’t your fault! T
hat kid crossed over into your lane and—”

  “I know,” he said, sounding oddly at peace now. “But I was the man, the husband, the driver. I’d sworn to love and protect her. I lived and she didn’t.”

  “Oh, Brian, Cara wouldn’t ever have wanted you to feel badly about that, to waste one second of your life thinking you could’ve done anything differently.”

  His gaze grew momentarily distant. “Well, that’s the other part of it,” he said. “I know that I was told I wasn’t to blame. I know I wasn’t charged or ticketed. But I can’t remember the actual impact. I remember approaching the intersection. And then I remember sitting in the car and hearing Cara cry out—”

  “The bastard who hit you was convicted of aggravated vehicular manslaughter. He went to prison. You know that.”

  “Yeah.” Staring down at the table, he grew quiet and Hannah thought they were done, until he raised his head again and looked her in the eye. “At first, my sense of guilt was very real, incapacitating, but over the years, when it would’ve dissipated, I think I subconsciously held on to it. I used the guilt to protect myself,” he said.

  Confused, she frowned. “From what?”

  “You.”

  “Me?” Hannah drew back, shocked. “Why?”

  “Because how could I possibly chance falling in love again when I knew how horribly it hurt to lose it?”

  “Falling…”

  “You see, Hannah, with nothing to do this week but think, with no one to listen to but myself, I’ve had to stop running and admit that I’ve been in love with you for years.”

  Her heart raced. Her mind couldn’t settle. “But you never said…”

  “How could I? Even to myself? We were set in our roles. I was Cara’s husband. You were her best friend. We’d both lost our true loves. We were comfortable. It worked.”

  He was right, of course, but…

  “But then it didn’t. It doesn’t work for me anymore. I know now that’s why I couldn’t love Cynthia. I told myself it was because my heart died with Cara. When, in truth, it’s because I’d already given it to you.”

  Hannah didn’t know what to say. What to do. Receiving a declaration of love in a jail conference room from a man in handcuffs wasn’t in her repertoire.

  Receiving one from Brian, even less so.

  “Anyway,” he said, waving through the window to the guard, signaling that he was ready to return to his cell, “I won’t bring this up again. I have no expectations. I don’t want it to change things, or make it awkward between us. In light of all that’s going on, with both of us, I just wanted you to know.”

  The door opened, the guard entered, and Brian was gone before Hannah could form a coherent thought.

  It took Bobby Donahue four days to find the only woman he’d ever loved. To find his son. Because, during his search, he found far more than he’d been expecting. Another Ivory Nation job that hadn’t been ordered by him. Hadn’t been handed down from God. What he found made him sick at first. Until he realized what it meant.

  Bobby was being called home to his Maker.

  At last.

  Everything came and went in cycles—the planets, the suns and moons, the civilizations. They rose and then they fell. For every good there was a bad.

  The Ivory Nation had been good. The Heavenly Father’s tool. But power corrupted. Greed and hate took the place of service to God. Greed and hate twisted faithful followers until those followers believed they were more powerful than the Father who’d called them. Thanking his Heavenly Father that he’d been spared such a fate, Bobby spent hours on his knees, seeking direction for the coming days.

  Ivory Nation brothers were no longer listening to God. They were acting on their own initiative and hurting the cause in the process. Killing babies was not the way to white freedom. They’d used God’s tool for senseless destruction.

  And so the tool must be delivered up.

  If he’d ever imagined this moment, Bobby would have expected to be saddened. He loved the Ivory Nation. It had been his salvation.

  But he wasn’t sad.

  This earthly life of pain and turmoil, of despair and betrayal, would be traded in for paradise. He’d finally earned his rest.

  Or he would very soon. After he fulfilled God’s final orders.

  Bobby would have said, if ever questioned about finding Amanda, that he’d be racing as fast as he could to get her. To do his duty to God once and for all. To rescue his son. Another very special soul.

  Luke. One of God’s most special chosen.

  Much like their brother, Jesus.

  Instead, as calm as a summer afternoon, Bobby sat at the desk in his home office, the wood from the serviceable chair digging into his back in a way that was familiar to him, comforting, and dialed his cell phone.

  Didn’t matter that it was Saturday. The man would answer. Some things didn’t change.

  Anybody else might have been amazed that he could remember the number after not using it in almost a year, but Bobby knew from whence his thoughts came. Bobby hadn’t remembered the number on his own. The Lord had been putting thoughts in Bobby’s head for almost two decades.

  Just hang on, son. He’ll pass out soon. I love you. He’d been ten when God had first whispered to him.

  And another time. It’s okay, son. You aren’t alone. I love you.

  He’ll pay for this, son. You have my assurance. I love you.

  You aren’t bad, son. You’re one of my special souls. I chose you….

  I chose you, Bobby. Don’t ever forget that. I have plans for you….

  The words went on and on. Replaying themselves, a ritual Bobby had been repeating for years…until they were interrupted by a voice on the other end of the line.

  “Boyd.”

  “Detective, how are you?”

  “Donahue? Is that you?”

  “You saw my number on you caller ID, Detective. You knew it was me when you picked up the phone.”

  “You think I know your number by heart?”

  “I know you do.”

  The cat-and-mouse game was kind of boring now that Bobby was filled with light.

  “What the hell do you want?” the grizzled detective grouched.

  “Marriage apparently hasn’t improved your disposition,” Bobby drawled, just because it was expected of him.

  “You fucking bastard. If you’ve done anything to my wife, I’ll—”

  “Calm down, Detective.” The games were over. “I have no beef with your wife. I’m calling on official business.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m dead serious, Detective.”

  “About as dead as my ex-partner is, right? We both know you ordered Miller killed. I even know why. You tricked him. You let him think he was working for you when, all along, you were planning to kill him for betraying you last year.”

  “You have a vivid imagination, Detective.”

  “You just bided your time until his death could benefit you,” Boyd continued. “You courted him, let him think that he had earned God’s favor by ridding your ‘church’ of two traitors, but in truth, you hated him for shooting Tony Littleton. You should’ve had the right to do that yourself.”

  Bobby couldn’t get upset. None of this mattered anymore.

  “You lured him up to Phoenix to use him as a pawn in your game, knowing you were going to kill him before he could testify. He got Kenny out and then, by dying, got you out, too.”

  The man was good. But Bobby already knew that. Hence the phone call.

  “You’re going to die, Donahue. You mark my words and when you do even hell will reject your sorry excuse for a soul.”

  “I love you, too, Detective,” Bobby said, feeling his heart expand as he spoke. “And I want to help you.”

  “Help me how?”

  “I’m going to hand you what you’ve been wanting for years.”

  “Your head on a platter?”

  “Better.” He was ready. Peaceful. There was no pain.


  “What could be better than that?”

  “I’m going to help you bring down the Ivory Nation.”

  And all he wanted in return, though God had expressly instructed Bobby to keep this last to himself, was to take his son with him. Their earthly work was done.

  Hannah spent Saturday at home alone. While she screened calls in case of emergencies, she didn’t take any. Or return a single one, either. Not even when William’s frantic tones came through her answering machine just after noon.

  “Hannah, please pick up. I have no idea what’s going on with you,” he said. “I understand you’re spending time at the jail, trying to help Brian, but there’s only so much you can do. I need you, Hannah. Please at least let me know you’re okay.”

  She thought about answering. Almost did. Compelled by guilt and a relationship that spanned most of her adult life. And then she heard Susan’s words as she’d tearfully packed up her belongings Tuesday morning in preparation for her perhaps permanent leave.

  “It’s not me, Judge,” Susan had said, hurrying through the office in an effort to be gone before the rest of the staff arrived. “I’m careful. I never repeat a word you say to me. Not unless you specifically tell me to pass it on. Not even to Tammy or Jaime when it’s about our chambers. I wait for you to tell them.”

  Hannah had been struck by the truth of that statement. Many times over their two years together Hannah had assumed that the others knew something—vacation days, plans for their annual Christmas lunch—only to find that Susan didn’t pass on the information without Hannah’s instructions to do so.

  Even so…

  “Judge Constance couldn’t have gotten that information any other way,” Hannah had told her.

  Susan had stopped, her eyes filled with tears, but no longer crying. “Did you tell Judge Horne about your decision?”

  Hannah had said nothing. Her conversations with William were none of her assistant’s business.

  “If you did, there’s your answer,” Susan persisted. “I’ve seen him lurking in the halls, Judge, more than once, and then later he acts as though he just arrived. And a couple of times the expression on his face changed completely when you turned around. He’d be all smiles, and then the second you couldn’t see, his face straightened and he looked, I don’t know, almost depressed. Or cold…”