CHAPTER 17

Eventually, I got to my feet. I walked outside and found the wind; it gusted against my face as if to scrub it clean. Behind me, the courthouse rose up, pale against the monolithic sky. The light was silver and wan, a cold light, and people streamed past on the sidewalk below me. Normal people doing normal things, yet they seemed to bow beneath the pressure of the sky, leaning into the sidewalk as they forged uphill toward the restaurants and shops. None of them looked at the courthouse as they passed. They probably never gave it a thought, and in a way I hated them, but it was more like envy.

My eyes traveled up the street to the faded door of the local downtown bar. I needed lunch but wanted a drink. I wanted it so badly, I could actually taste it. Standing there, fantasizing about a cold beer, I realized just how much I’d been drinking the past few years. It didn’t bother me. It was the least of my problems, a small revelation among the ugly multitude. But I decided against it. Instead, I turned for the office, moving down the broad courthouse steps.

I stepped onto the sidewalk and turned toward lawyers’ row. I watched my feet, so it took several moments before I noticed the strange looks, but eventually I felt them. As I walked, people stopped and stared, people I knew: a couple of lawyers, a lady from the clerk’s office, two patrolmen walking to court for trial. They all stopped to watch me pass, and it felt unreal, like they were frozen in time. I saw every expression with great clarity: disbelief, curiosity, disgust. There were whispers, too, as lawyers I’d known for ten years refused to meet my eyes and spoke behind raised hands. My steps faltered and slowed as I moved through this strange scene, and for a moment I thought that I’d been mumbling to myself or that my fly was open. Yet as I turned the corner onto lawyers’ row, I saw the unbearable truth, and thus came to understand.

The police had come to my office, descended upon it. Patrol cars strobed at my front door. Unmarked vehicles leaned drunkenly, two wheels on the sidewalk, two on the street. Officers moved in and out of my office, carrying boxes. Bystanders stood in loose groups, and I recognized almost every one of them. They were the lawyers who worked all around me. Their secretaries. Their interns and paralegals. In one instance, a wife, her hand to her throat, as if I might steal her jewelry. I froze, yet somehow I clung to my dignity. Only one lawyer met my eyes, and it was as I’d imagined it would be. Douglas was distant, massive in a long gray coat that hung on him like a sack. He stood at the door and our eyes met in silent accord. Then he shook his head, and parted the crowd to walk toward me. It took an effort of will, but I moved forward to meet him on even terms.

He raised his hands, palms up, but I spoke first. People kept their distance and watched in silence.

“I assume you have a search warrant,” I demanded.

Douglas took in my appearance and I knew that he saw what he expected to see. Red-eyed, haunted. I looked guilty. When he spoke, there was no sadness in his eyes. “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Work, but you left me no choice.”

Police officers continued in and out of my office, and, looking over Douglas’s shoulder, I saw my secretary for the first time; she looked small and beaten.

“There’s always a choice,” I said.

“Not this time.”

“I’d like to see the warrant.”

“Of course.” Douglas produced the warrant and I looked at it without seeing it. Something was wrong with this picture and I needed time to figure out what it was. When it hit me, it hit me hard.

“Where’s Mills?” I looked around. Her car was nowhere to be seen.

Douglas hesitated, and in that hesitation I saw the truth of it.

“She’s at my house. Isn’t she? She’s searching my goddamn house!”

“Now, take it easy, Work. Just settle down. Let’s do this by the book. We both know how it works.”

I stepped closer, noticing for the first time that I was taller than Douglas. “Yeah. I know how it works. You get frustrated and I get screwed. Do you think people are going to forget this?” I gestured. “Look around. There’s no going back.”

Douglas was immovable and unmoved. He stared at my chin, so close that he could have stretched out his lips and kissed it. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Okay? None of us wants to be here.”

I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “You’re forgetting about Mills.”

Douglas sighed, the first sign of emotion. “I told you not to piss her off. I warned you.” He hesitated, as if debating. “You shouldn’t have lied to her.”

“What lie?” I demanded, my voice rising higher than I’d planned. “Who says I lied?”

In shock, I saw his face shift. It seemed to soften. He took my arm and turned me away from the watching crowd. Together, we walked down the sidewalk until we were out of earshot. Seen from a distance, it would have looked like any normal day on lawyers’ row, two attorneys consulting over a case or sharing a tasteless joke. But this was no normal day.

“I’m telling you this because it’s on the affidavit supporting the warrant, and you’d have gotten around to it eventually. We couldn’t get the warrant without probable cause…”

“Don’t lecture me on the law of search and seizure, Douglas. Just get to the point.”

“It’s Alex Shiften, Work. She contradicts your alibi. You told Mills that on the night your mother died, you, Jean, and Ezra left the hospital and returned to Ezra’s house. You also told her that after you left Ezra’s house, you went straight home and were there all night with Barbara. Alex says that’s not true; she swears to it, in fact.”

“True or not, how the hell would Alex know that?”

Douglas sighed again, and I realized that this was the part that pained him. “Jean told her. Jean went to your house later that night. She wanted to talk to you, she says. She got there in time to see you leave. This would have been late, sometime after midnight. She watched you drive off and then she went home and told Alex. Alex told Mills, and here we are.” He paused and leaned in toward me. “You lied to us, Work. You left us no choice.”

I lowered my eyes and closed them. The events of that night were becoming clear to me. Jean followed Ezra to the mall and killed him. Then she went to my house in time to see me leave for Stolen Farm. She knew that I’d left. She’d told Alex as much. But they did not know where I’d gone or what I’d done. What I wondered was why. Why had Jean gone to my house? And did she still have Ezra’s gun when she got there?

When I looked up, I saw that Douglas had settled into a posture of patient complacency. I gave him a cold smile. “Your warrant’s grounded on hearsay, Douglas.”

“I don’t need a lecture, either, Work. Alex came forward first; then we talked to Jean. She was reluctant-you should know that-but she corroborated Ms. Shiften’s story.”

I felt ill all over again as cold sweat explored my neck and rolled down my spine. I saw Jean’s face, the wild abandon in her eyes as she’d sobbed. “Daddy’s dead… and done is done… Right, Alex?… That’s right, huh?” What crushed me, however, was the knowledge that she’d told the police about it. Douglas knew that; it was in his eyes.

I felt Douglas’s fingers around my arm. “You’re not going to tell me that Jean lied, now are you, Work? Jean wouldn’t lie. Not about something like that.”

I looked past Douglas, watching the crowd of people who had been colleagues at worst, friends at best. Who now were what? Lost to me. Gone, as if I were already in prison. The fear snake uncurled in my belly, but I ignored it as I answered the district attorney as best I could.

“I can’t imagine that she would make that up, Douglas. Not Jean.”

It was true. I had left in the middle of the night, and apparently Jean had seen me. But what did she believe? Had she convinced herself that I’d killed our father? Was she that far gone? Or was she setting me up? If death was sufficient punishment for the man who killed her mother, what was appropriate justice for me? I’d made Ezra’s truth my own. How badly did she hate me for that?