Aftermath

by Terri Blackstock

  Louis Dole, the prosecutor she’d spoken to this morning, stood in the gallery, talking to another attorney.

  She took her seat on the second row as the door opened and a bailiff escorted the incarcerated defendants in to sit on the front two rows of the gallery. She saw Dustin walk out in that brown jumpsuit. He kept his eyes downcast, as if that could make him disappear.

  The very sight of him walking out like that in front of everyone incited outrage that she had to swallow. It wasn’t right. He’d done nothing wrong, even though he’d had a tough start in life. He had made something of himself, and he didn’t deserve to be treated like a common criminal.

  The bailiff walked them to the front row, right in front of her, and the inmates took their seats. As Dustin walked past her, their eyes met. She hoped he didn’t see the tears pooling in hers. That was so unprofessional. She told herself the emotion wasn’t acceptable, not in front of the judge and prosecutor, not in this courtroom.

  They waited through a number of other cases. Finally Dustin’s name was called, and Jamie got up and hurried to the front. Dustin came and stood beside her at the lectern where a microphone would pick up their voices for the judge. She pretended to adjust the mike, but turned it off as she did. It would keep people behind them from hearing their conversation.

  “In the case of Dustin Webb versus Decatur County, what is the charge?”

  Louis, who stood to the side, answered, “Felony possession of explosives or incendiary devices.” He didn’t go on to ask that the judge deny bond, so when he said nothing more, she took that as her cue.

  “Your Honor,” Jamie spoke up. “I’d like to ask you—”

  “Is that microphone out again?” the judge cut in. “Never mind, I can hear you.”

  She went on. “I’d like to ask you to post a low enough bond that my client can get out today. I’ll take him into my own custody.”

  Dustin frowned at her. She kept her eyes on the judge.

  “Ms. Powell, why would you do a thing like that?” the judge asked.

  “Because I know him,” she said. “I’ve known him for many years, and I’m confident of his character.”

  “And you’re willing to go out on a limb and put your reputation at stake?”

  “Absolutely, Your Honor.”

  The judge studied the paperwork for a few minutes, then finally looked up. “This is a very serious charge,” he said to Dustin. “I can’t set a low bond. I’ll set it at $500,000, but Mr. Webb, if you post it, you need to stay in town.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” he said.

  The judge finished the case, and Jamie led Dustin back to the gallery. “What happens now?” Dustin whispered. “I don’t have $500,000.”

  “You only need 10 percent,” she whispered. “Is $50,000 possible?”

  He hesitated. “I have a line of credit for my business. I need to talk to my partner, but I think I can get it.”

  “Give me his number. I’ll call him and get the money.”

  He told her the number. She tapped it into her phone. “Where did the custody thing come from?” he asked. “Was it really necessary?”

  “Yes. We’ll discuss that later. They’re going to take you back to the jail, and when I have the money, I’ll call a bail bondsman and get everything started.”

  “So I’m getting out today?” he asked.

  “That’s the plan,” she said.

  The guard took his elbow to escort him back to jail, and Jamie slipped out of the courtroom.

  She went out to her car and called the number Dustin had given her for Travis. He didn’t answer, so she left a message telling him who she was and that it was urgent that she speak to him. But how long might that take? She couldn’t wait. She drove toward the hospital. She would find him there if he didn’t call back.

  She was halfway there when her phone rang. She picked up on her car’s bluetooth. “Jamie Powell.”

  “Hey, this is Travis. I got your message about Dustin.”

  She pulled into a parking lot and stopped her car. “Travis, thank you for calling me back.”

  “Is this the Jamie?” he asked. “The one who lived next door?”

  Her face flushed warm. “He told you about me?”

  “About a thousand times,” he said. “I’m glad he called you.”

  She pushed that aside. “He’s in a lot of trouble. I’m not sure if you’re aware that he was arrested yesterday and he spent the night in jail.”

  “I knew,” Travis said. “He called from the payphone in the cell. Do you think you’ll be able to get him out?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you,” Jamie said. “The judge set $500,000 bond.”

  “Five hundred thousand?” Travis asked. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It is what it is. He only has to come up with fifty thousand to get out today.”

  “Only fifty thousand?”

  “That’s right. He said that you and he had a line of credit at the bank for your business. He needs to use that for his bond. After he appears in court, he gets it back.”

  “Of course,” Travis said. “We can get that money. I just can’t leave the hospital right now.”

  He gave her instructions, and a short time later Jamie pulled up in front of Travis’s house. Wendy, Travis’s mother-in-law, came to the door trailed by two toddler boys. Jamie followed Wendy into the house and watched as she searched the drawers in Travis’s desk for the business checkbook. “He said it’s in his desk, that it’s camel-colored. Not here.” She tried another drawer.

  Something crashed in the living room, and Wendy rushed into the hallway. “Come on, guys. You trying to scare me to death?”

  Jamie stepped out of the small study and saw that the crash had been the toy box, now turned on its side.

  Wendy sighed. “They don’t play with one toy. They play with thirty-five, all at the same time. We were just over here getting a few things. It’s easier at my house.”

  She went back into Travis’s office. “Here it is! Why didn’t he just say the bottom left drawer?”

  Jamie took the checkbook. “I’ll take this to him and get him to sign it.” She studied the frazzled woman. “Are you okay?”

  Wendy waved her off. “Twin two-year-olds . . . What do you think? But they’re good boys. They’re just really, really busy.”

  “It must be hard when your daughter is so sick.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “But we’re optimistic. They changed her treatment, and we’re hoping this does the trick. She’s going to get better. She just has to.”

  Jamie nodded. “Well, I’d better get going.”

  “Is Dustin going to get out today?” Wendy asked.

  “Yes. We just have to pay his bond.”

  “Good. Of all people . . . literally . . . of all people, Dustin Webb shouldn’t be locked up. He’s salt of the earth, that man. He would never do any of this.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. “Sometimes it feels like the whole world is going stark raving mad.”

  “I’m right there with you.”

  One of the boys started to cry, and Jamie took the opportunity to wave and slip out. She drove back to the hospital and texted up to Travis. A few minutes later, a guy with longish blond hair and a beard came out. She got out of her car and met him. “Travis?”

  “The famous Jamie,” he said with a smile.

  She started to shake his hand, but Travis reached for a hug.

  “I feel like I know you.”

  Jamie didn’t touch that. “Thank you for helping out with this. The check needs both of your signatures.”

  “Yeah, keeps us both accountable. It’s his money, too,” Travis said. “Are you sure they’ll take a check?”

  “I have a bondsman who works with my firm. As long as we have a credit card for them to charge if he doesn’t show up in court, we’ll be fine. I can get that from Dustin.”

  He wrote the check and signed it, then tore it out. Jamie took it.

&nbs
p; “I’m glad he called you, even though he said he never would.”

  She frowned. “What? You mean as an attorney?”

  “No, just in general. When he talked about you, I’d tell him to call you, and he’d just clam up.”

  “Why, do you think?” she asked. “I mean, I tried to get in touch with him, but he never answered.”

  “Some noble sense of honor, I’d imagine.”

  She frowned. “Honor? How?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve probably said too much already. Just . . . I’m glad he got over it.”

  She decided not to take the time to press him more. As she drove to the police station, she couldn’t block the thoughts filing through her mind. Why would he have resolved not to call her all these years, even though she was on his mind? How did he attribute that to honor? The thought hurt, but she tried to push it out of her head.

  A little later, Jamie stepped into the police department where the bail bondsman was to meet her. The plan was for them to walk over to the jail across the street together. He’d been in a neighboring county when she called him, so it would take him some time to get here.

  She sat down in the waiting area and took a moment to catch her breath.

  A girl sitting a few seats away was talking on the phone. “Detective Borden, this is Taylor Reid. Yes, I know they did. But we’ve been waiting for two hours. I was thinking if you couldn’t come, maybe I could come back later. Yes, I want to talk to you, too. Yes. The truck was going under the building. The time stamp on the picture? Let me see.”

  Jamie looked over at the girl as she fumbled around with her phone and found a picture. She clicked on it to find the time. “It was at 5:08. The rally started at six. Another hour? Yes, I guess I can wait.”

  Detective Borden? That was the lead detective on Dustin’s case. She wondered what the picture was. The girl had said something about a truck.

  When the girl got off the phone, the woman next to her asked what he’d said.

  “He said he got the picture and that they’ve already sent people to the U-Haul stores around town. They’re working on it.”

  Jamie leaned toward her. “Excuse me. I couldn’t help overhearing. Did you say you’re a witness to what happened yesterday?”

  The girl hugged herself, as if she was cold. “I mean, I was there,” she said.

  “Who are you?” the other woman asked boldly.

  She got up and moved closer to them. “My name’s Jamie Powell. I’m an attorney working on the case.”

  “I’m Taylor,” the girl said. “This is my sister, Harper.”

  “Do you mind if I take you guys for a cup of coffee across the street?”

  “I don’t think I need an attorney,” Taylor said. “I’m not in any kind of trouble. They just want to talk to me about a picture I took yesterday.”

  “He said he wouldn’t be back for an hour, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I’m waiting for someone who’s probably not going to be here for another half hour or so. Please, it would be so helpful if I could talk to you.”

  The women looked at each other, then Taylor shrugged. “Okay, I guess I could use some coffee.”

  Taylor told the sergeant where she was going, then she and her sister followed Jamie across the street to a coffee shop half a block down from the jail. They ordered their coffee and sat down at a small table.

  Jamie leaned forward and locked in on the girl, whose hair looked tousled, as if she hadn’t brushed it today. She had dark circles under her puffy eyes and red mottled skin around them, as if she had been crying until her lids were raw. “I know this is hard to talk about over and over, but can you tell me what you were talking about? Something about a truck?”

  Taylor swiped to the picture on her phone. She turned the phone around and showed Jamie. “They’re saying the bombs came from underneath the building. And I remembered that we had taken these selfies out by the VIP entrance before the concert. And there was this U-Haul truck in the background, pulling under the building.”

  Jamie caught her breath. “This could help them find the perpetrators. Do you mind if I send this to myself?”

  “I guess not.”

  Jamie forwarded the picture to her own phone and handed the device back to Taylor. “Did you have any other important information for the detective yesterday?”

  Her sister spoke up. “I don’t think it’s good for her to be dragging all this up.”

  “No,” Taylor cut in. “I don’t mind. I need to talk about it. It’s all I can think about.”

  Harper seemed hypervigilant as Taylor described how she and her friends had relished the concert. She told how they’d applauded when Ed Loran came onstage for his rally, when suddenly the explosion happened.

  Halfway through the story, Jamie pulled a legal pad out of her briefcase and started taking notes. “So you were in the third row, you said?”

  Harper looked suspiciously at her note-taking. “You said you’re working on the case? In what way?”

  “I’m just gathering facts,” Jamie evaded. “So how did you get out?”

  Taylor told her of her frenzied exit. “I was in such a panic to get out that I didn’t even look back for my friends. They were injured. They needed me and I abandoned them.” Tears took over again.

  Jamie touched her hand. “You didn’t abandon them. You did what you had to do, what anyone else would have done. What hundreds of others did.”

  “Still, I didn’t even—”

  “No, you have to believe this,” Jamie said. “You didn’t make a choice to leave them. You were on autopilot, just trying to get to an exit. Your fight-or-flight instinct kicked in. God put that in you for a reason.”

  Taylor looked up at her through wet eyes.

  “She’s right,” Harper told Taylor, then she looked back at Jamie. “I’ve been telling her that all day.” But Jamie could see that Taylor wasn’t buying it.

  When Taylor finished her coffee, Jamie got up. “Can I get your phone number, in case I need to talk to you again?”

  Taylor texted it to her after Jamie gave her own number.

  “So, you said you were fact-gathering,” Harper said. “What are you doing in the case?”

  Jamie knew that Harper was only protecting her sister. She didn’t want to lie to her. “I’m actually representing a client. I can’t really go into it right now, but I’m trying as hard as the police are to find the killer or killers. The information you’ve provided could turn the case. I know it’s taking a long time, but I hope you’ll wait at the station long enough to talk to the detective. He might be able to jog your memory for other details. This could change everything about the case.”

  “Yeah, so I’d better get back,” Taylor said.

  Jamie walked her and Harper across the street. When they stepped inside, Jamie saw the bondsman already there, standing at the sergeant’s desk, probably getting the information he needed for the paperwork.

  She thanked Taylor and Harper, then went to do what needed to be done to get Dustin out of jail.

  18

  Jamie was finishing the paperwork with Jack, the bondsman, when Dustin was brought to the desk at the jail. He was back in the clothes he’d been wearing yesterday, and he looked more like himself than he had this morning. She got up from the bench where’d she’d been sitting with Jack. “You ready to bust out of here?”

  “Yeah, the institution no longer has anything to offer me.”

  Jamie couldn’t help the grin stealing across her face at his reference to the movie Raising Arizona, which had been one of his favorites when they were younger. For a second, it was as if they’d picked up where they left off. He gave her a knowing wink.

  Jack handed him the paperwork to sign, breaking the moment. As Dustin scanned the paperwork on the counter, Jack shot the breeze with the officer in charge.

  “What address is this?” Dustin asked her. “It says this is where I’ll be residing.”

  “I
t’s an Airbnb,” she whispered. “Avery and I will be staying there, too.”

  His eyebrows came together. “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, keeping her voice low, “I said I’d take you into my custody, but it’s easy for the media to find my house. So I rented this. I gave my word to the judge and to the DA, and now to the bondsman, that you’d be with me. So you’re stuck.”

  Dustin’s eyebrows knitted together as he stared at her. Finally he turned back to the paper in front of him. “Sounds to me like you’re the one who got stuck,” he muttered.

  Hesitating one last time, Dustin sighed loudly, then finally scrawled his name. He thrust the paper at Jack, then cosigned the check next to Travis’s name. “So we get this back after we go to court?”

  “That’s right,” Jack said. “If you don’t see the credit to your account, just get in touch with me after you appear.”

  “All right.” He shook Jack’s hand and thanked him. Jamie led him to the exit door. They waited as the officer unlocked it. Jamie pushed through the heavy metal door, and Dustin followed her.

  The air was humid and heavy with the smell of rain. “What now?”

  “We get to work,” Jamie said.

  Dustin didn’t argue with that. As they walked out to her car, she could see the weight of the accusations against him crushing him. She prayed as they got into her Lexus that she would be able to get the charges dropped before the whirlwind of public rage blew him to pieces.

  19

  “I have to help her . . . help her . . . help her . . .” The words twisted over and over in the depths of Travis Grey’s dream, turning like a knife lodged in his heart. He jumped, shaking himself from his shallow, stolen sleep. Opening his eyes, he saw the dusty streaks of sunlight cutting between the blinds in the sterile hospital room. Oh no, he thought, sitting straight up in the vinyl recliner he’d slept in more than his own bed lately. I fell asleep again.

  His bloodshot gaze flashed to his wife on the bed, a small, limp figure buried in sheets and tubes beneath a light as dim and fading as her life. She’s still breathing, he noted with relief.