31
The parking lot was near deserted when Ian climbed out of the Jaguar and crossed the street at the light. Elvis was standing alone on the corner, puffing on the oily stub of a sneaky joint and strumming a pawnshop guitar. His coal-black wig was sitting lopsided, but he didn’t seem to mind.
The air was thick with the threat of rain and the evening sky hunkered low as dark clouds swallowed the tops of every building over six stories. In the distance, thunder rumbled like a dying rhino calling to its mate.
“Where’s your usual fan club?” Ian asked. “They can’t visit Portland and be afraid of a little weather.”
Elvis wriggled the padded shoulders of his white jumpsuit. “Maybe they’re … all shook up.” He emphasized a lip-curling Memphis drawl and flipped the joint inside his mouth on the tip of his tongue. Sweet smoke drifted from his nostrils as he immediately took his own cue and broke into a guitar-heavy version of the song.
“Keep an eye on the car, will you? It’s borrowed.”
Ian dropped a crumpled bill into the open guitar case and moved to the lobby doors of Children First. Before entering, he scanned the street again, but even the Chinese restaurants looked deserted. Once inside, he relocked the street door behind him, climbed the stairs, and walked down the hall. The only light was an amber glow that pulsed from several emergency lights spaced along the corridor that were tied into the fire alarm system.
The empty building creaked and groaned, like a galley ship trying to find its rhythm against a changing of the tide.
Inside the office, he left the main lights off and headed straight for his cubicle. Snapping on the desk light, he settled into his smoke-scented chair and opened the first of the filing cabinets in the corner.
When he looked through the files days before, he had been relying on instinct and simply hoping that something, someone would jump out. This time, he had a stronger inkling of what to look for. Mrs. Annabelle Fairchild had called her an “African whore,” but that was misleading.
Ian had supervised numerous visits between black prostitutes and their children, but he couldn’t recall any that left the parent in such a state of anger where they blamed him for the mess of their lives. Over time, a few had cleaned up their act and managed to patch together a life, while others had been sucked inside a needle and lost their way. In Portland, there was no retirement plan for junkies or hookers. Fourteen was middle-aged and even that median appeared to be dropping.
He also had the feeling that “African” didn’t refer to someone of color. For the degree of anger that Annabelle spewed, the term just wasn’t insulting enough. There were so many words that were much more offensive to define skin color. Plus, she said the woman didn’t want money, which meant even “whore” couldn’t be taken literally.
There was one case in his past that might fit, but Ian had been such a small part of it that he hadn’t given it much thought. And yet, he had screwed up. That sneaky, two-faced lawyer never left his mind, but—
He hurriedly flipped through the files, digging back two years, needing to refresh his mind of all the names involved. When he reached the end of that year’s files without success, he frowned and went back though them at a slower pace. In March, he found what he was looking for. The files jumped from 200807 to 200809. The folder in between was missing.
His chair squeaked in protest when he leaned back and kicked the filing cabinet in anger. Someone had beaten him to it. The office didn’t have the budget to computerize their old records, which meant all traces—
A second squeak made him stop breathing. It hadn’t come from his chair.
Springing to his feet, he spun around. A silhouette stood in the doorway. A woman.
He snapped up the desk light and shone it at the door just as the woman reached out and flipped on the overhead lights.
Linda McCabe, his business partner and one of the few people he called a friend, stared back at him with a look he had never seen before on her face. Fright.
“I guessed you’d come here,” she said.
His brow wrinkled, confused. “I needed to look through my old files. One folder is missing.”
Linda absently touched a wide canvas bag slung over her shoulder. “The pieces didn’t fit until I phoned Royce. His wife was hysterical and started screaming obscenities in the background. She believed I was someone else.”
“The African whore?”
Linda flinched. “Her choice of words, I’m ashamed to say, brought someone to mind.” Her gaze shifted, but not enough to look Ian in the eye. “You attacked Royce?”
“He’s covering for a murderer. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him.”
“And Deputy DA Aguilar is in the hospital.”
“Same story. Same sentiment.”
Linda’s lower lip quivered. “And what will you do to me?”
Ian’s eyes hardened. “Depends what you’ve done.”
Linda reached into the canvas bag and lifted out a thick brown envelope large enough to hold the entire contents of a case file.
“She told me to destroy it, and I promised I would. We—that is, Children First—were … are struggling to keep afloat, as you know. She came to me and wanted to be a private supporter. She assured me that she didn’t blame us, didn’t blame you. In fact, she saw the incredible value of what we did and wanted to help. All I had to do was this one small favor. ‘Erase her embarrassment,’ she said. The case was too painful and she didn’t want the records around for strangers to poke through at some time in the future. It seemed …”—Linda’s voice broke—“harmless at the time.”
“When was this?” asked Ian.
“About two years ago. That’s why I didn’t connect it with this. She came to me months before Emily’s death. I had no idea that she could possibly be involved. I never would have done anything to … to …”
Ian reached out and took the folder from Linda’s hand. “None of us knew.” His eyes softened as his fingers gently brushed the back of her hand. “I didn’t know. Until Young tried to contact me, I believed Emily’s death was an accident. A horrible, pointless, preventable accident, but still … you couldn’t have possibly known.”
Tears pooled in Linda’s eyes and began to overflow.
“You d-don’t hate me?”
“You didn’t shred the file.”
The smallest flicker of a smile. “No. It was never really mine to destroy. I removed it from your office and took it home. I told her it was gone, but I still felt guilty when I accepted her check. And now, to think that she funded us after … everything. It’s like she’s been laughing at us all this time.”
“She wanted to watch me suffer.” Ian felt the envelope burning in his hands. The final pieces of a puzzle that had been carved out of his life, the box shaken and tossed with full knowledge that it could never be made whole again. “Her funding helped to keep all those children coming through my door, each one asking for help, for protection and comfort.” The fire moved up his arms, through his veins and behind his eyes. “She knew I would see Emily in each of their faces and I would know that what these children were asking for was something I had failed to give my own daughter. And she knew how that would rip into my soul and destroy me.”
“But it didn’t,” said Linda, her voice revealing deep pride. “You carry that weight, and I wish there was something I could do to help lighten the burden, but it doesn’t break you. You are unique and strong and kind. Your clients love you because they know exactly how much you care. And until her dying breath, Emily knew that, too.” She glanced over at a crowded corkboard on the wall. “How many cards have you received this year?”
Ian had trouble focusing on the wall, but still he felt the pain in his heart ease. There were at least a dozen cards pinned to it. Random, unsolicited, just kids wanting to express their appreciation in crayon. Molly’s handmade card had a drawing of a tropical fish on its cover and a bright red heart inside. He would trade them all for a new one from Emily, but Linda w
as right. There were still some people in his life he hadn’t failed.
Ian returned to his chair and spread the contents of the envelope across his desk.
The African whore stared back.
THIRTY MONTHS earlier, Ian, Helena, and Emily leapfrogged Middle America in the belly of a Boeing 737 to spend two weeks exploring the opposite coast. They landed in Boston and rented a car, following the coastline north to visit the historic crooks and crannies that had been settled more than a century before Helena’s distant relatives had a hankering to head west.
Apart from two semidisastrous weekend camping trips, it was the first true family vacation they had undertaken since Emily’s birth. Giving up a three-man nylon tent and portable Coleman stove for a collection of highly recommended bed and breakfast spots had been an easy decision. Leaving his clients in the hands of unknown and untested contract workers had not.
Thus, Ian was irritated but not surprised when his phone rang for the third time that day while he was relaxing on the beach with pant legs rolled to his knees, socks stuffed in his pocket, and his ever curious daughter making him laugh.
Emily had become distracted from building a sand castle when she discovered a buried nest of pearly white clams. She had instantly dug them up and began to name them according to size. There was Daddy Clam, Mommy Clam, and Baby Clam, plus Uncle Clam, Auntie Clam, and Hammy Clam, named after an apple-cheeked boy in kindergarten who reminded her of a whiskerless hamster, and—
Emily shrieked in near terror when the annoyed clams began to ooze out of their shells in an effort to return beneath the sand. The slimy mollusks couldn’t have looked more alien and disgusting to her than if she discovered she was playing with dog poop. And Helena’s matter-of-fact declaration that they were actually very delicious had made Emily shriek even louder.
Still laughing, Ian had excused himself and walked a few steps further down the beach to accept the call.
The young woman on the other end sounded completely frazzled as she hurriedly tried to explain that she was due to supervise a visit between Dirk Knowles and his son, but that the mother, Petra van Niekerk, had been calling all morning demanding to know where Ian was and why he wasn’t handling the visit personally.
“I told her you were on vacation, but she just won’t see sense,” blurted the woman. Obviously new to the pressures of the job, she sounded on the very edge of hysterics.
“It’s OK,” Ian quickly assured her. “Listen, Petra’s a homophobic paranoid who thinks her husband is the next Jeffrey Dahmer. Ever since she found him in bed with another man, she’s become obsessed with the idea that he’ll soon be chopping up his lovers and turning them into soup. Her family’s old-school South African, so it’s all that Great White Hunter, macho bullshit that dominates over there, and the fact he prefers sucking dick to sucking up has gravely injured her pride. She’s also the one with all the money in the marriage, but sex is her true currency, and she doesn’t take rejection well. She’s used to men falling all over themselves to do her bidding, but Dirk is a nice guy and, from what I can tell, a good father. Do your best to soothe her worries; she only wants to protect her son, but remember your job is to make sure the boy has a quality, safe visit with his dad. So long as Dirk behaves himself, and I have seen no reason to believe he won’t, there’s nothing more we can do. Does that help?”
There was a tiny click. “Yes,” said the woman, her voice no longer frazzled. “That was perfect.”
Puzzled by her new tone, Ian said, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“No,” she said, “you didn’t.”
The line went dead.
Although the call bothered him, Ian soon forgot about it when Emily came rushing up to grab his hand. She had found a red crab, only it was sleeping on its back and she wanted to know why it didn’t need a pillow, and if someone knitted it slippers, how many slippers would it need?
Three months later, the candid conversation came back to haunt him. What he believed was an informal exchange between colleagues turned out to be a ruse. The woman didn’t work for Children First at all. Her name was Camille Vesna and she was Dirk Knowles’s lawyer.
During the heated custody hearing, Vesna used an edited recording of Ian’s words to paint Petra van Niekerk as a controlling, paranoid witch who had demanded court-ordered supervised visitation of the child merely as punishment against her cheating husband rather than over any true fear for the boy’s safety.
Despite his stance to focus on the child and always appear neutral in both his written reports and when testifying on the stand, Ian’s recorded words were damning. It was a lesson he never forgot, but he had no idea at the time just how high a price he would have to pay for that carelessness.
Dirk Knowles was awarded joint unsupervised custody. And with his services no longer required, that was also the last day of Ian’s involvement.
IAN READ through the file carefully, his finger tracing line by line until it stopped at another familiar name. Before joining the district attorney’s office, Rolando Aguilar had been a junior member of the law firm hired to represent Petra van Niekerk in her custody battle.
Aguilar’s face hadn’t registered in Ian’s mind, as he was just one of three lawyers at Petra’s table and hadn’t been involved in any of the cross-examination. His main job had seemed to consist of passing notes and glasses of water to the senior member of the team, a gaunt-faced lawyer with a penchant for bow ties named Alexander Harris.
The only reason Harris’s name lingered on the fringe of Ian’s mind was because of the way he died. Although the law profession has always had one of the highest suicide rates in the country, lawyers tended to stick to the basics: guns, cars, booze, and pills. Harris, however, jumped off Portland’s Steel Bridge with a noose around his neck.
His body hung on full display for nearly an hour, fifty feet above the Willamette River, before it could be recovered. Amtrak passengers were warned to look away as the train drew near the lower level of the bridge where the body swung at eye level.
Petra van Niekerk—who owned the upscale nationwide Niekerk Diamond chain—never needed to do anything quite as drastic to garner attention. When she entered a room, all eyes were instantly drawn to her.
Every hip sway, eye flutter, or finger caress contained pheromonal electricity—and she knew it. With a narrow waist, generous breasts, and a Stairmaster behind, she kept her blond hair short to accentuate high cheekbones, a slender nose, and lips that seemed to be in a perpetual pout. She also knew how to dress with a revealing fashion sense that gave men décolletage whiplash and made women green with envy.
In short, she was exactly the kind of woman who could make a young, up-and-coming lawyer—or a foolish old one—do anything she asked, until her hooks were sunk so deep it was impossible to wriggle free.
It made Ian wonder if Rolando’s move from private practice to the district attorney’s office was his own decision or just another chess move by Petra. She had already proven herself to be someone who planned ahead. And if that was the case, Ian pondered, what about Helena? Had Petra moved those pieces, too? Could Helena’s relationship with Rolando been arranged as a wedge to further divide Ian’s failed marriage?
Plus, Rolando would have had access to Helena’s keys. If he made a copy for Petra, it would explain why there was no sign of forced entry at Helena’s condo when the bathroom was staged.
Ian lifted a troubled gaze from the pages of the report to see Linda still standing stiffly on the other side of his desk as if she hadn’t dared move.
He offered a gentle smile in the hope of easing the tension. “You saw Rolando’s name in the file?”
Her head barely moved in the affirmative.
Ian pinched the bridge of his nose. “The pieces fit, except Petra didn’t lose custody of her son. That stupid recording was damning, I admit, but the judge still awarded joint custody. So why would that decision make her hate me so much that she had my daughter killed?”
Lind
a swallowed and removed a small tablet computer from her canvas bag. She flicked her finger across the screen and handed it over to Ian.
“I ran a search on her name, and that came up.”
Ian read the news story that dominated the screen, every word making the platelets in his blood turn to slivers of ice. Twelve weeks after being awarded unsupervised joint custody, Dirk Knowles fed his young son a glass of warm milk laced with crushed sleeping pills. When the boy was unconscious, Dirk removed all his clothing and crawled into an empty chest freezer. Cradling his son to his bosom, he pulled the lid closed and went to sleep.
When Petra arrived in Seattle the next day to retrieve her son, it was too late. A note left on top of the freezer read: “You will make him hate me. Now you can’t. We will be together forever.”
Either the Seattle Times story never made the Portland papers, or Ian had been too wrapped up in his own life at the time to notice. Either way, he had missed it.
Ian wiped a stray tear from his eye and shook his head. “That isn’t my fault. How can she blame me for …” He swallowed. “It’s madness. Even without the recording, my report made it clear that I didn’t witness anything that prevented Dirk from being a good father. If I’d had the slightest notion—
“I know that, Ian,” said Linda. “Maybe if you could talk to her. Explain.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed into hollow points and his upper lip curled in a snarl. “It’s too late for talking. No matter the reason, this bitch killed my daughter, and I don’t care if she’s crazy or sane—she’s going to pay.”
Returning to the tablet, he jabbed the Internet search box with the tip of his finger. A virtual keyboard popped up on the screen and he quickly typed in the name of the unscrupulous lawyer who had so easily tricked him into dropping his guard.
The top headline was dated just one day earlier. It read: Second hit-and-run kills city lawyer.
Ian rubbed his face, feeling the grit and grime coating his weary flesh. If he had taken the time to pick up a newspaper or catch the evening news, he might have put things together faster. If he had, he could have spared Helena from more pain.
The Fear in Her Eyes Page 19
