by Angela Hunt
She struggles to place the name. “Mr. McKee?”
“From Roger Wilson’s group home. Listen, we tried to keep Roger away from the TV, but this morning a special report caught us by surprise. Mrs. Tomassi was on the news and Roger saw everything. He’s been upset ever since, and since he can’t call the jail, I thought maybe you could say something to comfort him.”
Briley presses her hand over her face. What does she know about comforting childlike men? And if Joseph Franklin is right about her chances of success next week, she ought to tell this man that his sister will be going away for a long time…maybe forever.
“Floyd, I don’t think—” She stops when she realizes no one is on the line. She hears shuffling sounds, a soft murmur, then a thick voice. “Lo?”
“Is this Roger?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Briley, a friend of Erin’s. Do you remember me? I helped you with your puzzle.”
Roger remains silent for a moment, then a torrent breaks forth. “I saw Erin on the TV and she was crying with her hands tied up with bracelets and the police were taking her away.” He is weeping now, the sound awful enough to break a heart of granite. “I don’t want Erin to go away to jail. That’s where bad people go, and Erin is not bad. Erin is good. She is kind and she brings me cookies and puzzles.”
When these words are followed by a loud clunk, Briley assumes he has dropped the phone…or thrown it.
She hears the muffled sound of tortured sobs, then Roger is back on the line. “Please, lady, will you help Erin? Don’t let them put her in jail.”
She listens, tears welling in her eyes, until she regains control of her voice. “I’ll try my best, Roger. I’ll do what I can for your sister.”
“You promise? ’Cause it’s not good to break a promise.”
“I promise. I do.”
“Mr. Floyd wants to talk to you.”
Briley inhales a deep breath as the older man comes on the phone. “Ms. Lester, I hate to bring this up, considering the circumstances, but I’m concerned about Roger’s account.”
“His what?”
The man clears his throat. “A payment of twelve hundred dollars a month. We usually received it from Mrs. Tomassi’s accountant, but we haven’t recorded any payments for this calendar year. The account is now thirty-six hundred dollars overdue. I hate to say anything, considering the circumstances, but if we’re not able to bring this account up to date—”
“Wait a minute—Your home is privately funded? I thought you were affiliated with a public agency.”
“We do receive some support from the community, but not much. Our residents are primarily supported by relatives or trustee accounts.”
Briley groans. All of Jeffrey’s and Erin’s accounts were frozen at the time of Jeffrey’s death. They will remain frozen until the end of Erin’s trial, and if she is sent to prison, the monies will go to the Tomassi family.
Briley doubts Antonio Tomassi will want to support Roger Wilson.
“What happens,” she asks, “if Roger’s support is cut off?”
Floyd draws in a quick breath. “I—I guess he’ll have to leave. Seems a shame, since this has been his home for years, but we have continual expenses and a waiting list. The medical bills alone…”
“I understand.”
After clicking off the phone, Briley sits in a melancholy fugue, feeling as though she has swallowed some lumpy object that keeps pressing against her breastbone.
What will happen to Roger if Erin is sent to prison? Without her financial support, he’ll have to rely on the state—not the kindest or most accommodating provider. Though Floyd McKee is a nice man, he can’t afford to run a charity. Roger has found a nurturing home, a place where he can watch I Love Lucy and enjoy Christmas lights in March. Wresting him from that home would be cruel.
Briley walks to the kitchen and stares into the refrigerator, but food will not assuage this pain. She needs to talk. She needs Timothy.
Without thinking, she dials his cell phone number. He answers on the second ring.
Thank goodness.
“Timothy.” She smiles from the sheer joy of saying his name.
“Bri?” Surprise rings in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing…I’m just sitting around the house. If you have some free time, I thought maybe we could get together this weekend—”
“I’m in L.A., Bri. Dax is filming a commercial out here.”
His answer is a stab in the heart.
“We’ve been in California a couple of weeks,” he continues, obviously unaware of her stunned response. “I’m not sure when filming will wrap up. They keep coming up with alternate ideas.”
Her face twists. “Okay, then. I’d better let you go—”
“What’s wrong?”
Of course he’d realize she was upset. He knows her voice, knows the peaks and valleys of her moods. He doesn’t have to see her to know that something is terribly, awfully wrong.
Her eyes clamp tight to trap a sudden flood of tears, but they overflow and spill over her lower lashes. For a moment she can’t speak, then she throws dignity to the wind and tries to verbalize her feelings. “It’s…this case. I really blew the pretrial hearing, and the judge ruled against my motion to take the death penalty off the table. The trial starts Monday and everyone expects me to lose. And Erin has this brother in a home for adults with Down syndrome. If she goes to prison, he’ll have to leave. And I have no idea where he’ll be able to go.”
She hiccups a sob, waiting to hear Timothy say that she shouldn’t expect to win her first murder trial.
“You’re going to do a great job,” he says instead.
She hiccups again. “What?”
“I believe in you, Bri. I’ve always believed in you, because you care about people. You care about your client.”
“But the evidence is stacked against us. And Erin hates the only credible defense I’ve been able to develop. She keeps saying she didn’t do it.”
“Do you believe her?”
Briley swallows the next hiccup as she considers his question. Does she believe a woman who hears voices in her dreams? She’d sooner believe in the tooth fairy, but maybe Timothy has a point. She hasn’t accomplished anything by openly doubting Erin’s story.
“If everyone in Chicago thinks Erin Tomassi killed her husband,” he continues, “she doesn’t stand a chance. Everyone in Hollywood thought Dax would slip back into addiction, but you know what? He didn’t…because someone believed in him.”
Briley draws a deep, trembling breath. “I want to believe her. But the evidence—”
“You’re a preacher’s kid,” Timothy says, a smile in his voice. “Don’t you remember what faith is? It’s believing in something when everyone around you doubts. It’s believing in someone because you know they wouldn’t lie to you.”
With a shiver of vivid recollection, the mention of her father carries Briley back to December 1994 and the awful months that followed. She stopped reading newspapers then, too, because every day brought new stories about her father’s murder, his relationships, his involvement with addicts and ex-cons. Reporters broadcast the murderer’s side of the story on television and in the papers, while no one listened to the brokenhearted girl who found herself all alone in the world.
Her blood soars with the unexpected memory. Years have passed, but the passion to make things right still flames within her breast. And this time, Erin Tomassi is her client. Like Briley’s father, Erin tells the truth, even when the results are disastrous.
“Can you have faith in Erin Tomassi?” Timothy asks. “Because I have faith in you.”
“You know,” she whispers, closing her eyes, “I think I can.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
After leaving her car in the five-story parking garage across from the Cook County courthouse, Briley crosses to the hulking gray stone building at the corner of Twenty-sixth and California. A fleet of news vehicles is parked along
the curb, each van sprouting cables that snake across the sidewalk and up the courthouse steps.
Briley slips on her sunglasses and keeps her head down, not wanting to attract media attention while she’s trying to focus her thoughts.
At the courthouse doors, a veritable flood of humanity merges from all directions, the somber suits of government employees and lawyers mingling with the street clothing of jurors, witnesses, and reporters. Briley lingers at the edge of the courthouse steps until she spies William Hughes in the crowd. Somehow he has obtained the firm’s permission to attend the trial. He won’t be entitled to sit at the defense table—an honor reserved for those who have passed the bar exam—but he can sit in the first row of the gallery and offer any assistance she might need.
She smiles, finding comfort in the sight of a familiar face. “William!” She waves to catch his attention, then falls into step beside him as they move toward the entrance.
“So?” He gives her an uncertain smile. “Did you sleep at all last night?”
She shakes her head. “I tried to put the trial out of my mind this weekend, but I couldn’t stop revising my opening statement. Last night I ended up drinking warm milk to help me sleep, then I dreamed of Napoleon and Waterloo.” She takes him in with one glance. “You look nice, by the way.”
“Thanks.” He lifts the edge of his overcoat and pats the lapel of the suit beneath. “Thought maybe it’d be best to leave the cardigan at home, seeing as how I’ll be representing the firm.”
They slow their steps as the crowd funnels through a single hallway that ends at a pair of metal detectors. The people around them begin to remove watches, shoes, and heavy jewelry. Anything metal must be placed in a plastic bin.
“Just like the airport,” William jokes as he takes off his belt. He pulls his cell phone from his coat pocket and drops it into the tray with his belt and shoes. “Americans strip down pretty easily these days.”
Briley gives him a quick smile, but she’s not feeling up to small talk. They probably won’t accomplish much more than seating a jury today, but the right jury can make all the difference. She’s never selected a jury for a murder case, but the firm still wouldn’t approve funding to hire a jury consultant. So she’ll be on her own, with only William and her instincts to help her choose the best jurors for this trial.
She slides off her shoes and drops them into a plastic bin, then sets it on the conveyer belt beside her briefcase. Ahead of her, a security guard barks commands and instructs all arrivals to remove their outerwear and jackets. She slips out of her coat and suit jacket, noticing that the young man behind her, sans coat, is wearing obvious gangsta attire.
She hopes he’s not heading toward her courtroom.
William’s smile vanishes when the security guard gestures to him. With the posture of a brigadier, William marches through the machine and waits for his bin to roll through the X-ray machine.
Briley follows, nodding in relief when she passes through without setting off the alarm. When she and William have collected their belongings, she leads the way past the snack shop and the bulletin board where printouts of the day’s court calls are tacked in fifteen rows, three pages deep. While they wait outside the elevator, a single-file line of prospective jurors passes, their eyes wide as a deputy herds them from one holding pen to another.
“Seventh floor,” she tells William when they enter the elevator. “Judge Trask’s courtroom.”
They ride up in the heavy silence generated by a group of somber strangers, and exit at the seventh floor. But when she steps into the hallway, Briley grabs William’s arm as her knees turn to gelatin.
Standing before the courtroom’s double doors is Jeffrey Tomassi.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
In a surge of fierce satisfaction, Antonio smiles as he watches the defense attorney’s knees buckle. “Look.” He nudges Jason. “The woman is nervous. She knows her client is doomed.”
Jason glances at the man and woman huddled in the hallway, then he takes his father’s arm. “Come, Papa. We should go inside.”
Antonio jerks free of Jason’s grip. “We have all day to sit. I want to stand here…and let them know Jeffrey will not be forgotten.” He lifts his chin as a photographer approaches, camera in hand. He stares, silently granting the man’s unspoken request for a shot, but a deputy runs over and reminds the stranger that photography is not allowed in the courthouse.
Antonio sighs in resignation. He glances behind him to be sure his daughters have come out of the restroom where they went to repair their makeup. The youngest is pale; the oldest has red-rimmed eyes. All of them look like grief-stricken women, as they should.
“No tears,” he reminds them. “Keep your chin up and pray for justice. Now…let us go inside.”
Like the stately patriarch his father once was, Antonio leads his children into the courtroom.
Chapter Forty
William pats Briley’s hand. “Are you all right?”
She pulls herself off the wall, hoping that no one else noticed her stumble. “Is that…? That’s not…?”
“The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?”
“But that’s not Jeffrey.”
“It’s Jason Tomassi, Jeffrey’s brother.”
Briley straightens and releases William’s arm. “Amazing likeness.”
“Almost close enough to be identical, but I hear they were fraternal twins.”
Briley takes a deep breath to calm her leaping pulse. “I did some checking up on Jason, just to be sure he didn’t have any reason to profit from his brother’s death. They went to college together, and apparently they had some kind of secret language. Used to drive their frat brothers nuts.”
She steps forward on legs that threaten to tremble beneath her weight.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” William asks, walking beside her.
“I’m fine. I…had forgotten how alike they were.” She pauses several feet away from the courtroom doors, allowing the Tomassis to enter undisturbed. When Jeffrey’s family has moved down the aisle, she grips her briefcase and steps through the doorway.
After they pass the family, William jerks his head toward the Tomassi men. “Could Jason have a reason for wanting his brother dead?”
Briley shakes her head. “Not likely. Jason was with his girlfriend the night Jeffrey died, so he has an alibi. Don’t worry, I made sure the police checked him out. If Erin is convicted, Jeffrey’s estate goes to his brother.”
“I assumed Jeffrey’s lavish lifestyle was financed with his daddy’s money.”
“That’s a good assumption. Apparently the Tomassi family patriarch gives his children a lump sum when they get married. Jeffrey used his to buy the house in Lincoln Park and still managed to invest a good amount.”
William grins. “Mr. Franklin always says you should follow the money.”
The comment hangs in the air as Briley makes her way to the counsel table. Has she done enough to follow the money? The estate leads directly to Jason, but there’s no evidence to implicate him in the crime. Furthermore, at this point it’s not her job to play Columbo. Her job is to defend Erin.
She steps through the swinging gate set into the wooden bar and sets her briefcase on the defense table. William sits in the gallery behind her, and she reminds him to reserve that seat for the duration of the trial. “If I need something,” she tells him, “I want to be able to glance over my shoulder and know you’re there.”
She looks up, distracted by the sight of a familiar face in the crowd. Shirley Walker, wearing a dark suit and heels, is heading straight for her.
To spare the woman the embarrassment of being stopped by a deputy, Briley steps into the gallery. “Mrs. Walker. Did you get my message? We won’t need you today. We probably won’t need you until later in the week.”
The housekeeper takes Briley’s hand. “I didn’t come down here to testify. I came to give Erin my support. And to give you a message for her.”
“What’s
that?” Briley smiles, though an inner alarm bell begins to clang. If the woman has just remembered something important…
“I had Erin’s calls forwarded to my house, so when Mrs. Tomassi’s doctor called again, I picked up the phone and spoke to Dr. Phillips. He said it’s important that Erin call him as soon as possible. I didn’t tell him, of course, about her being locked up. Apparently he doesn’t watch the news.”
Briley sighs, remembering the slip of paper in her briefcase. It had been among the letters she carried to the jail last week, but the note must have dropped to the bottom of her bag. “Thank you, Mrs. Walker. I’ll give Erin the message.”
“Thank you, dear. We can’t be too careful about our health, you know.” The woman pats Briley’s shoulder and moves to a seat on the second row.
Briley looks up as a door to the left of the judge’s bench opens. A bailiff appears and leads Erin into the courtroom. She has been allowed to trade her orange uniform for the ivory suit Briley bought her, and today she has chosen the bright blue blouse to provide a spot of color. As her client walks forward, Briley notices that the blue is a perfect match for Erin’s eyes.
“Nice choice on the outfit,” she says, meeting Erin at the defense table. “I was hoping you’d like the clothes I picked out.”
Erin runs her hands over the pencil skirt. “This is a lovely suit, but I’m afraid it’ll be dirty by the time the trial is over.”
Briley smiles, preferring not to explain that she chose ivory for a reason. She wants her client to appear virtuous, and an ivory suit is a tad more subtle than Virgin Mary robes.
“I can pick up something more practical later,” Briley says. “Maybe something in yellow.”
“Can’t you get something from my house?” Erin’s eyes fill with helpless appeal. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the outfit, but it’s not mine. I’m so out of my element, it’d be nice if I could at least wear my own clothes.”