CHAPTER 9

I stopped at the paved road, as sick as if I’d just stepped on a baby bird. I couldn’t bear to think about what had just happened, but it was in me now, inescapable. I felt her tears, her fingers, so light on my neck, and the plane of her cheek against my back. I reached for something solid: the wheel, the dash, the clock that read just after four. I took a deep breath and put the car back into gear. Then I remembered Detective Mills and our three o’clock meeting. Somewhere between cheating on my wife and destroying the woman I loved, I’d forgotten about it.

I stepped on the gas. The road ran black beneath me. I recognized a song on the radio and wondered when I’d turned it on. I punched at the button as hills rolled past on greased tracks and farmland fell away. Trailer parks and strip malls sprang up to follow me as I drove back into town, the smell of sex on me like a scarlet letter. I called the house to see if Barbara was there and hung up when she answered. Her voice was like syrup, and I considered speaking, just to see if it would sour; but if so, it would sour with questions I was not prepared to answer. I needed to calm down, get a grip. Chill the fuck out.

At the office, I used Ezra’s shower to rinse sin from my flesh and wondered how many times he’d used it for the same purpose. Never, I thought. Ezra knew women but never knew guilt. Did I envy that in him? No. I nourished my guilt for the soul that it implied, and as I left, I gave Ezra’s safe the finger. Fuck everybody. I needed some Work time. Maybe I’d get a dog after all.

Outside, I made it to my car before I saw movement from the corner of my eye. I spun around.

“I saw your car.” It was Douglas, the district attorney. He looked tired, his eyes puffy above a nose the color of old wine. He looked at me strangely and I wondered if he’d been drinking. “You didn’t answer my knock, so I waited.”

I said nothing. For some reason, my heart refused to slow down. He walked across the ten feet that separated us, stopping just before he got too close. His eyes moved over me, taking in my wet hair and disheveled clothes. I felt heat in my cheeks but couldn’t stop the flush. Douglas was a hard man to lie to. “Everything okay?” he asked, shoving a piece of gum into his mouth.

“Yes,” I said, finding my voice. “Yes.” I knew I was repeating myself.

“I ask because I just got off the phone with Detective Mills. She says you’d better be dead already. It’s the only excuse that she’ll accept.” His eyes glittered more than twinkled and I realized they were his black eyes, his courtroom eyes. “Are you dead?” he asked.

“Close,” I said, and tried a smile that died on the vine. “Look, I’m sorry about not meeting Mills. I had my reasons.”

“Care to share them?” Douglas asked, crowding me without taking a step.

“I do not.” He was unimpressed by the anger in my voice. He shoved his hands into his pockets and studied me. I tried to give him my poker face, my lawyer face, but there in the shadow of my dead father’s building, it was hard. I had no idea what he saw, but I knew it wasn’t the calm, collected face I’d once practiced in the mirror.

“I’m going to tell you something, Work, and I want you to listen well.” I didn’t even blink. “This is the last thing I can tell you as a friend. It’s good advice, so you should take it.” He paused, as if waiting for me to thank him, and sighed when I didn’t. “Don’t fuck around with Mills,” he told me. “I mean it. She’s pissed-off and frustrated. That makes her the most dangerous person in your world.”

I felt a horrible chill move over me. “What are you saying, Douglas?”

“I’m not saying anything. This conversation isn’t happening.”

“Am I a suspect?” I asked.

“I told you the other day that everybody is a suspect.”

“That’s no answer,” I replied.

Douglas rolled his shoulders and looked around the empty lot, up at the roofline, then put his eyes back on mine. He pursed his lips. “Ezra was a rich man,” he said, as if that explained it all.

“So?” I didn’t get it.

“Jesus, Work.” Exasperation was in his voice, and he sucked in a deep breath as if to cool his temper. “Mills is looking for a motive and going through the usual suspects. I assume Ezra had a will.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “Are you kidding me?”

“Barbara has expensive tastes, and the practice…” He paused and shrugged.

“Come on, Douglas.”

“I’m just stating the obvious, okay? You’re a brilliant tactician, Work. You have one of the sharpest legal minds I’ve ever known. Hell, you’re even decent in the courtroom. But you’re no rainmaker. You won’t take personal injury cases anymore and you won’t kiss ass to get big clients. That’s what built the practice and made Ezra rich. But a law practice is a business. Even Mills knows that, and she’s been around enough to know that yours is barely solvent.

“Look. I know you didn’t kill your father. Just don’t give Mills a reason to look your way. Cooperate, for Christ’s sake. Don’t be a goddamn idiot. Give her what she wants and get on with your life. It’s not complicated math.”

“It’s bullshit math!”

“One plus one is two. Add six or seven zeros and the math gets even more compelling.”

I was stunned by his words, and his face had a sharp edge, as if he could cut me open and tell the future in my guts.

“Ezra had a lot of zeros,” he concluded.

My insides twisted as if already between his thick, meaty fingers. “Has Mills discussed this with you?” I asked, needing to know.

“Not in so many words,” the DA admitted. “But it doesn’t take a genius, Work. I know where her mind is going with this. So do yourself a favor. Bend over, take it like a man, and move on with your life.”

“Did Mills tell you that someone tried to kill me last night?” I asked.

He frowned at the interruption. “She may have mentioned something about it.”

“And?”

Douglas shrugged, his eyes far from mine. “She doesn’t believe you.”

“And you don’t, either.” I finished his unspoken thought.

“She’s the detective,” he said flatly.

“You think I made it up?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” A simple statement.

“Somebody pushed that chair down the stairs, Douglas. If they didn’t mean to kill me, they sure as hell meant to do bodily harm.”

“And you’re saying it’s connected to your father’s death?”

I thought about the safe and the missing gun. “Maybe. It’s possible.”

“You should know that Mills doesn’t buy it. She thinks you’re generating confusion, clouding the issues. If I thought you did it, and I’m just saying if, playing devil’s advocate, then I’d be inclined to agree with Mills. It’s Occam’s Razor, Work. The simplest explanation is usually right.”

“That’s crap, Douglas. Somebody tried to kill me.”

“Just give Mills your alibi, Work, and whatever else she wants. Let her check it out and be done with it.”

I thought about what Douglas was asking me to talk about. I could hear the sound of a neck breaking under terrible force. “You know what happened that night, Douglas.” It was a statement, a novel writ large.

“I know your mother died in a tragic fall, but that’s all I know.” His voice was unapologetic.

“It’s enough,” I said.

“No, Work, it’s not. Because it’s also the night your father disappeared and for all Mills knows, you and Jean were the last ones to see him alive. It’s important, and no one’s going to dance around your tender sensibilities. Your father was murdered. This is a murder investigation. Talk to her.”

I thought that if he said murder one more time, I’d murder him. I didn’t need a reminder. I saw my father’s flesh-less jawbone every time I closed my eyes, and even now I fought the image of his remains under the knives and saws of the medical examiner in Chapel Hill.