Justice

by Karen Robards

  She had to admit it. She looked good.

  “I knew it. It’s perfect.” Grace dropped a pair of shoes on the floor in front of her. “Slide those on.”

  “Those” were sparkly pumps with built-in platforms and heels so high that Jess was taller than Grace when she put them on, but only because her sister had kicked off her own shoes.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s still a little long.” Frowning, Grace gave Jess a thorough once-over through the mirror. “That’s an easy fix, though. I’ll just tack up the hem.”

  “How much is it?” Jess fingered the heavy silk with some awe. She was still getting used to the idea that she made good money, good enough to the point where she didn’t have to count her pennies any more. Walmart and Target had been her clothing stores of choice for so long that adjusting to spending what it took to keep up with the Mary Jane Cateses and Hayley Marcianoes of the legal world required a real effort. But the kind of success she wanted required looking the part, too.

  “Three thousand dollars retail. At Past Perfect, six hundred, and somebody will snap it up and think they got a bargain. For you, nothing, primarily because you’re just going to be borrowing it. Also because you’re my silent partner. And my sister.”

  “I knew this shop was a good idea.”

  Grace grinned at her, then handed her a pair of earrings: dangling diamond drops as big as raisins. Jess’s eyes popped as she looked at them.

  “Wow.”

  “They’re CZ. Cubic zirconia. What did you think?” Grace said. “Nobody brings in real diamonds. But wear them at night, with this gown, and I guarantee you nobody can tell.” She watched critically while Jess put on the earrings. “Look at yourself. You look gorgeous. I think I’m going to go for a second career as a stylist.”

  “I like it,” Jess admitted. “I’m not going to be able to sit down, but I like it.”

  “You’re not supposed to sit down. A gown like that is made for you to swan around and be seen in.” She tucked Jess’s hair behind her ears, then nodded. “Wear your hair like that to show off the earrings. Do a soft eye and a bold mouth.”

  Jess nodded solemnly, but Grace gave her a skeptical look. As far as makeup was concerned, Jess tended to flick her lashes with mascara and dab on some lipgloss and call it done, which Grace had been decrying for years.

  Grace picked up something from the bench behind them—a silver clutch purse with a jeweled clasp, Jess saw—and handed it to her.

  “I put the right makeup in here. Wear the eye shadow, wear the lipstick. Powder your nose. How wrong can you go?”

  Jess met Grace’s eyes through the mirror. Grace sighed.

  “I’ve got to hem it anyway, so I’ll drop the dress off and do your makeup. What time do you think? About five?”

  “Six,” Jess said. “I have to work until at least five thirty, and then I have to get home. But you don’t have to do that. I can do my own makeup perfectly well. And I can stop by and pick up the dress.”

  “We’ll talk.” That was sister-code for an argument to be deferred until later. “Here, let me mark this hem.”

  When they emerged from the dressing room some ten minutes later, it was to discover that Mark and Ronnie had bonded, while unpacking and shelving the sweaters together, over the fact that neither of them had eaten yet. Related by Ronnie, that information conjured up a mental image that made Jess giggle inwardly. She grinned at Mark, who gave her a hard look in return. But some of the semihostile vibes she’d been picking up from him earlier seemed to have faded. He was, instead, in an almost thoughtful mood as he followed her out into the once-again pouring rain. The four of them ended up having dinner together at Bourbon Steak House a couple of blocks from the shop. While Jess and Grace exchanged family gossip the men, from what snippets Jess overheard, talked mainly martial arts and action movies. When they parted ways, Mark remarked that Ron seemed to be a pretty good guy.

  “Too bad he has no idea that where boyfriends are concerned, your sister has the approximate attention span of a gnat. This time next month, she’ll barely remember his name.”

  Even though Jess had thought pretty much the same thing earlier, she bristled. “Talk about my sister and die.”

  “Face it, she has issues. Just like you do. You both—all, Maddie and Sarah included—have totally fucked-up attitudes about men.”

  “That is not true.” Jess was outraged.

  They had reached her apartment by that time. Damp and disgusted, Jess unlocked the door and Mark followed her in. The routine seemed automatic by now: Mark did a walk through, flipping on lights, conducting a quick search. Not that Jess really expected an intruder anymore. She was just about ready to chalk up the attack on her to a real, honest-to-God mugger, wrong place at the wrong time, typical D.C., nothing more sinister than that. Probably, she reluctantly acknowledged to herself, because that would be the easiest thing to believe.

  “Yes, it is. And you know it, too,” he called back over his shoulder.

  “Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Jess replied with heavy sarcasm, and before the exchange could deteriorate into a real quarrel, or alternatively maybe heat to the kind of unfortunate situation that had occurred between them the previous night, she stalked off to her bedroom to get out of her wet clothes. Firmly closing the door, she did just that, popped a couple of Advil, then took a shower and went to bed.

  He’d hit the nail on the head, Mark realized sourly as he stripped down to his boxers and sacked out on the couch. It had been watching Grace in action that had opened his eyes to the big picture. Jess was scrambling away from him like a quarterback dodging a blitz because she and her sisters had experienced nothing but broken relationships their entire lives. Maddie was about to become an unwed teenage mother, Grace attracted and discarded men like he changed his socks, Sarah’s marriage was perpetually on the rocks, and Jess just avoided the whole problem by avoiding relationships completely. So it wasn’t just Jess. The whole quartet of sisters was emotionally fucked up. As soon as he got the all clear, he was going to run screaming for the nearest exit before he got any more enmeshed with the whole emotionally fucked-up family.

  Not that his family didn’t have its own problems.

  Females in general were a minefield, but his daughter at least had the excuse of being a teenager. His ex-wife, Heather, had called him earlier in the day to inform him that Taylor was going to a Lady Gaga concert this coming weekend with the boy he had chased out of his house the other night, and would be spending the weekend with her for that reason. Not to ask his permission, or even his opinion, mind you, but to tell him that this was going to happen. Since he really hadn’t wanted Taylor and Jess joining forces against him, which was what would have happened if he’d been babysitting the one while the other had spent the weekend with them, he hadn’t objected. Not that objecting generally did him any good, because Heather’s invariable reply to any claim of custodial interference was, “Take me to court,” which she knew perfectly well he wasn’t about to do. He’d compromised by telling her again about finding that particular boy climbing in his window, and he’d warned her that he suspected their daughter was flirting with the idea of indulging in S-E-X.

  Heather’s reply? “Oh, lighten up. Of course she is. She’s fifteen.”

  After which she had disconnected.

  Taylor had called him later to ask if she could charge two hundred dollars to the credit card he had given her for emergencies. For what? An outfit for the concert.

  What could he have done? After a series of parental warnings covering everything from personal safety at concerts to the dangers of boys, he’d said yes.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she’d squealed, ignoring everything else he’d said and reacting solely to the bottom line, after which she’d taken off, presumably to shop.

  Remembering, he felt both good and bad. Good to know that he and his daughter were once again on friendly terms, although when he reflected that getting back in Taylor’s good graces had c
ost him two hundred dollars, a little of the edge was taken off his attack of the warm and fuzzies. Bad to know that his daughter was growing up fast, and by trying to slow her down a little he was basically fighting an incoming tide.

  Fortunately, he had other things to think about besides personal relationships. Things like murder, which it was his job to both ferret out and prevent.

  With that aim in mind, he checked his e-mail. There was a message from the office, just as he had hoped. He opened it.

  “Hey, buddy. The medical examiner is going to be coming back with an official ruling of suicide next week, and at this point we’re satisfied with that. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.” It was from Keith Woolridge, an old friend who was overseeing the Service’s under-the-radar investigation into Leonard Cowan’s death. The official investigation, carried out under the auspices of the medical examiner’s office, was for public consumption. Nice to know that they dovetailed so neatly.

  In fact, if he hadn’t made that completely unauthorized call to Rothenberg that morning, he’d probably have been heaving a sigh of relief and mentally packing his bags about now.

  As it was, he called Rothenberg.

  Who greeted him with a surly, “Don’t you ever sleep? It’s almost midnight.”

  “This morning you told me that Cowan’s death wasn’t looking like suicide. Your thinking changed on that?”

  “This afternoon I was ordered not to talk to you. And since it’s a hard, cold world out there job-wise, I’m going to have to honor that.”

  “Shit,” Mark said. “Come on, Randy. This is important.”

  “What I told you this morning still stands. Not looking like suicide from this end. But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Thanks,” Mark said even as Rothenberg hung up on him. For a long while after that, he lay there frowning up into the darkness over his head.

  By the time Lucy was able to coax Jaden out of the Laundromat where she’d taken refuge, it was after midnight. Lucy had almost had a heart attack when she’d emerged from the Quik-Stop that morning to find Jaden gone. Sweating bullets, racing up and down both sides of the block, trying to stay under the eaves to avoid getting wet as buckets of rain had begun to fall, Lucy had searched every open store and looked in every possible hiding place while hideous visions of her friend being nabbed by the cops, grabbed by the killer, or snatched by some other random sicko had played out in her brain. Her terror had been such that she’d been on the verge of stopping the next passing cop car herself and to hell with the consequences when a woman waiting at the bus stop near the corner had called out to her.

  “Hey, you hunting for a girl with black hair?”

  Lucy had looked toward the voice, spotted the woman sitting in the Plexiglas-sided shelter, and run over, ducking her head against the rain. The woman had looked like a bag lady. She’d worn a kerchief around iron gray hair, a man’s white shirt, and a long floral skirt that had just skimmed her tennis shoes. Plastic grocery bags bulging with stuff had crowded around her feet. With so many people rushing along the sidewalk trying to get in out of the rain and so many vehicles cruising the street, Lucy wouldn’t even have noticed her if she hadn’t spoken up.

  Stepping under the roof that had been just wide enough to keep a four-by-six-foot area containing the bench dry, Lucy had looked warily at her. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “She went in that Laundromat over there.” The woman had pointed. “Went like her tail was on fire, too.”

  Lucy had seen the Laundromat sign stenciled on a glass storefront on the block perpendicular to the one she had been searching. With a mutter of thanks, she’d braved the rain and darted toward it. Jaden had been in there, all right, huddled on a bench in the very back, where she’d been all but hidden by the rows of washers and dryers. A middle-aged woman had been doing laundry a row over while two little kids had played near her. Another, younger woman had folded clothes on a table up near the front. The thump-thump of clothes tumbling in the dryers had been loud enough to block even the sounds of the kids’ game. The scent of detergent and fabric softener sheets had been strong in the air.

  “What happened to you?” Lucy had demanded, exasperated, as she’d plopped down beside Jaden.

  “It was him, Lucy. It really was, this time. I saw him. I saw him driving past.” Jaden’s voice had been a terrified whisper. She’d been trembling all over, and her eyes had kept darting fearfully toward the door.

  “Oh, Jaden.” Lucy had still held the coffee and doughnut, which fortunately the Quik-Stop clerk had put in a plastic bag for her, which had kept the rain off of it. The coffee had been protected by a plastic lid. When Jaden hadn’t taken the coffee, Lucy had sat it on the bench between them and broken off a piece of doughnut, which she’d offered to Jaden, who’d shaken her head, before eating it herself. Mother Mary, it had been good, so sweet and chocolatey that she’d just wanted to cram the whole thing in her mouth.

  “It was him. I swear it was. I saw him plain as day. He saw me, too. I know he did. Our eyes locked. Oh my God, what are we going to do?”

  What were the chances that Miss Howard’s killer would have been driving down the very street where Jaden had happened to be standing outside a convenience store? After one moment in which her heart had practically stopped, that was the question Lucy had asked herself, had gotten her blood pumping again. Jaden had seen a guy who’d borne a vague resemblance to the killer and panicked, just like the cop in College Park had caused her to panic. But nothing Lucy had been able to say had convinced Jaden that she might have been mistaken. As a consequence, Jaden had spent the day in the Laundromat, huddled on the bench, refusing to leave. Worried that her friend had been on the verge of really losing it, Lucy had done her best to look after her. She’d made a few forays forth, timed to coincide with breaks in the rain, hunting down Jaden’s ex-stepdad’s apartment only to discover he’d moved, buying a chili cheese dog from a stand in nearby DuPont Circle for them to split (not that Jaden ate more than a bite), and checking out bus schedules. With the flyers hanging all over the metro, traveling on the subway had just gotten too risky. Their best bet, Lucy had decided, was the bus.

  Based on the route map, and her own knowledge of various sections of the city, Lucy decided they were going across the river to Alexandria, Virginia, where she had once stayed in a foster home. She knew the area, knew there were lots of fast-food places and strip malls and parks and also a community college branch, which meant it shouldn’t be too hard to find a place where they could get some sleep. After that, they should probably forget California for the time being and just focus on getting as far away from D.C. as they could. Much as she hated to do it, hitchhiking was looking like the answer. Maybe they’d look for a family or an older couple at a McDonald’s, somebody who looked safe, and say they were college students trying to get home on the cheap or something. Wherever they ended up had to be better than here. They could maybe rent a room, get jobs, pretend to be eighteen until they really were eighteen and the system couldn’t touch them.

  The problem was, to do all that they needed money. And ID’s. The money was the kicker; you needed money to get the IDs, but she wasn’t going to worry about how to get more money until she got Jaden out of the Laundromat and on that bus to Alexandria.

  Jaden agreed with every proposal Lucy ran past her, but she steadfastly refused to leave the Laundromat until it closed at 1:00 a.m. and she was left with no choice. Shooed out into the pouring rain, armed only with plastic garbage bags that they’d found on a shelf and now held over their heads to keep from getting soaked, they dashed for the bus shelter. Streetlights glowed valiantly on the corners, but the rain made the streets unusually dark. No one was around, probably due to the rain. Almost all the shops were dark. Splashing through puddles that had formed on the sidewalks, her eyes on the bus stop, which was presently deserted but where the next bus should be pulling in at any moment, Lucy was a stride ahead of Jaden. A long black car parked at the curb at the front of
the line of parked cars at the meters only attracted her notice as she ran past it because it seemed to be too close to the intersection, not in a designated parking place at all. She was just thinking that the driver would be lucky not to be towed during the night when, behind her, Jaden gave a sharp cry.

  “Jaden?” Frowning, clutching the garbage bag tight around her head and shoulders, ears full of the drumming of rain against the flimsy plastic, Lucy turned to see what was up. She barely got a glimpse of her friend sprawled motionless on the wet pavement while the rain beat mercilessly down on her before a shadow—a man—lunged at her out of the dark.

  With a sense of shock, Lucy felt a crippling jolt hit her in the center of her chest.

  “Ahh!” Her cry was as sharp and truncated as Jaden’s had been. Then the world fell away into nothingness and she crumpled to the ground.

  Like Jaden, Lucy was unaware of what was happening as her limp body was scooped up and deposited in the trunk of the long black car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “On the good news front, murder charges against our client Roger Whitney have been dismissed.” Sitting at the head of the oval table in conference room 6A, Pearse drummed his fingers against the polished wood surface. Beyond him, gray clouds so low it looked like they were right on top of the city leaked rain on the busy street below. It was nearing the end of their morning conference, and those present—Pearse, Andrew, Hayley, and Jess—had cups of coffee in various stages of consumption in front of them alongside their yellow legal pads. Lenore had left doughnuts on the credenza at the rear of the room, but those were long gone. Andrew, in particular, was a fan of doughnuts. Pearse seemed relaxed, cheerful even, his mood brightening what otherwise would have been a gloomy day. “Kathleen Keeler, the victim’s wife, is pleading guilty. Andrew, you’re taking depositions in the Shively case today, Hayley, you’re due in court at ten for a hearing on Carlucci. Jess, you’ve got those background checks on the witnesses in the Jameson case. Trial date on that’s October first, so chop-chop. And we’re all going to meet up here at—”