Key Witness

by J. F. Freedman

  “Pray thanks to Jesus, you’re home!”

  “Yeah, I’m home, Mama,” Marvin said, picking himself up. “I’m home for good.”

  Jonnie Rae grabbed Wyatt in a bear hug. “I can’t never repay you,” she gushed, her heavy body pressed up against his, the smells of her sweat and her kitchen wafting off her. “There’s no way I can ever thank you for helping my boy like you did.”

  “It was my job,” he told her. “And I was happy to do it.”

  He was happy, he realized. Not only for the process, which he had loved; but also for the personal connection. He had saved a man’s life.

  A man who had tried to kill another man, over money. And might well do so again.

  That was the future, over which he had no control. He had to savor what he had now, this moment, because that was his life.

  “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Matthews,” Marvin promised as they said their good-byes. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “That’s good, Marvin. I hope you will.”

  He drove out of the project, watching the scene recede in his rearview mirror. These people had been the focus of his life for months; but as he turned onto the thoroughfare and headed north, toward the freeway that would take him home, he knew in his gut that he would never see any of them again.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY HE got a call from the police lab. They had found trace samples of blood from Elvis Burnside’s knife.

  It would be Paula Briggs’s blood on that knife—Wyatt knew that; he didn’t have to wait for weeks of testing to confirm it. Burnside was the murderer—finally, after months of chasing shadows, the authorities were going to get it right. And finally, after those shadows had been eluding him, dancing out of his grasp, he had caught them.

  HE AND JOSEPHINE CLOSED up their office. The leased computers, copiers, and fax machines were sent back, the beat-up surplus furniture was returned to storage, the phone company took their equipment, leaving bare wires. The photos and charts were taken down from the walls. The space was as bare and barren as it had been the day they’d moved in. All that was left were the ghosts.

  Walcott stopped by to say good-bye. “You did a hell of a job,” he told Wyatt with sincerity. “Better than anyone had a right to expect.”

  “We all did a good job,” Wyatt answered modestly. “We were a good team.”

  “We sure were.” The career public defender smiled. “I guess I can’t talk you into taking another one on? A couple juicy ones came over the transom this week.”

  “Not this time.” Never again, the way he’d done this one. It had been exhilarating, but he was too old to be a rookie again.

  They shook hands. “Thanks for the help,” Walcott told him. “It was a pleasure watching you work.”

  Wyatt and Josephine sat in what had become their booth in their local bar. “Cheers,” Wyatt said, touching his glass to hers. He didn’t sound particularly cheerful.

  “Yeah,” Josephine responded. She was flat, too.

  There was a letdown to all this; they both felt it, the exhaustion. Together they had brought forth a birth, a life, and now an end. The fact that the ending was a happy one instead of a disaster didn’t make everything feel all right.

  “I got all my paperwork for school in the mail this morning,” she told him.

  “That’s great. You looking forward to it?”

  “Yeah. It’s going to be a bitch, working a full-time gig and going to school at night, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.”

  “You’ll have to persuade your boss not to work you too hard.”

  She snorted. “Not a chance.”

  She was starting law school, at night. During the day she would be working for him as his personal assistant. The job would pay for her schooling and leave her enough money to live on. The unspoken but clear understanding was that she’d be working as a lawyer with him once she got her degree and passed the bar exam.

  “When are you going back to work?” she asked him.

  “When school starts.” Michaela would be home then.

  They had a couple of rounds, but didn’t talk much. They had talked enough already, all these months, and they would talk again, every day at work. Right now, they both needed some quiet time.

  He walked her to her bus stop. “I’ll call you in a couple weeks,” he said.

  “I’ll be here.”

  The bus cruised down the block and slid into the space at the curb. “Bye, Wyatt,” she said. “Take care.”

  “You, too.”

  They hugged—the strong, reassuring hug two friends give each other. Then she was on the bus, and the bus was into traffic, and he was slowly walking away.

  DWAYNE THOMPSON, WEARING THE same waist chains, handcuffs, and leg-irons he had been brought down in, was returned to Durban State Penitentiary. No more would he be a witness for the state. When his current sentence ended, he would immediately be brought to trial again, and everyone, especially him, knew that he would be convicted and would spend the rest of his life in one prison or another.

  He’d given it his best shot. And he had almost pulled it off. He had taken on the entire system and almost single-handedly brought it to its knees. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.

  As he was being escorted, under heavy guard, out of the jail to the waiting prison vehicle, he saw Helena Abramowitz standing near the sally port he would have to pass through. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a light top. Without makeup on, her hair pinned up in a haphazard bun, she looked ten years younger than she had all the times they’d been together. Her stare at him was intense and unwavering.

  Something to take back home, he thought as he was hustled through the locked doors and into the armed car. An image to warm him through the long, lonely nights.

  His keepers ducked his head down so he wouldn’t bump it against the car’s doorframe. As they were pulling away, he looked back at her through the rear window. She was smiling at him—but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a smile of relief; and the last he saw of her before the darkness took him away was her raised hand, triumphantly giving him the finger.

  WYATT SPENT THE NIGHT with Violet. He wanted to take a room at the Four Seasons, the biggest suite they had, a fancy dinner with champagne, but she nixed it. She wanted to spend the night in her own apartment, in her own bed, the bed where they had made love.

  They ate in. She cooked for him, a simple meal. Most of the evening was spent on her couch, alternating between talking and heavy kissing. When they went to bed it was the most natural thing in the world, as if they had been doing it for some time, but still with the passion and desire of new love.

  The sex was long, slow, sweet. They slept wrapped up in each other’s arms, legs, bodies. At three they woke up at the same time, as if keyed by a mutual, unconscious signal, and made love again. Then they slept until nine, and when they woke from that they made love for the last time.

  She had given her two-weeks’ notice. She was moving, to Portland, Oregon. “I’m going back into nursing,” she told him. She had a job, in a hospital intensive-care unit. They had been thrilled to get her application. “It’s what I should be doing. Helping people keep their lives going is better for me than killing animals.”

  “What about me? Us?”

  “There will always be an ‘us.’ It didn’t last forever—” She laughed. “It didn’t last hardly at all, did it? But there was definitely an ‘us.’ More than some people have in an entire lifetime, Wyatt.”

  As soon as she was settled in, she’d write.

  “Promise?” he asked. He was bleeding inside. They were ending before they were beginning.

  “I promise.”

  He knew she meant it. And he also knew, as he had known in a different context with Marvin, that he almost certainly wouldn’t see her again.

  They said good-bye at her front door.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  “And I you.”

  He walked down her steps. He was about to turn
and say something, one last time—but the door shut behind him, and he was alone.

  SUMMER WAS COMING TO an end. In two weeks it would be Labor Day weekend. Same as it ever was. Except nothing would ever be the same as it had been.

  He had no idea of where he was going. He’d worry about that later. He didn’t know if he was going back to the firm, and if he did whether he’d go back to his old practice or do more criminal defense. He might start a new firm, something smaller, on a more human scale.

  His marriage. Where was that? It had been a long run, most of it good. Maybe it didn’t have to end.

  He stood in front of the empty house. It was late, after eight—the sun, almost dripping red, was well into its slow western plunge. Taking some deep, cleansing breaths, he closed the door behind him and took off running.

  He ran around the back of the house and headed into the woods, the lush, dark trees enveloping him, listening: to the beginnings of night sound, his own breathing, the regular landing and lifting of his stride. Music he would play later came to his mind, Coltrane and Duke Ellington charts, his memory-ear hearing the baritone roundness of his trombone, the fat glissing mournful notes circling around and around the tubing and out the end of the copper bell like blooming flowers. Deeper and deeper into the woods he ran, and as he did women’s faces moved across his consciousness like living dreams: Moira, his wife; Michaela, his daughter; Josephine, his comrade-in-arms. Violet, his lover.

  The forest was getting denser with every stride. It was dark under the thick branchy canopy, he ran from memory and instinct, feeling the ground give under him. He pushed himself harder, his breathing came harder, he was sweating, dripping with his own cleansing water. On and on he ran, farther than he had ever run in this direction before. His muscles became more and more in tune with his mind and so did his heart, opening like it never had before, in a direction he didn’t recognize. And as he looked up over the tops of the trees, seeing shards of moonlight penetrating through, he felt a surge of energy, of hopefulness.

  He wasn’t sure where he was now—he was on unfamiliar ground. He thought about turning around and heading back, but he didn’t, he kept moving forward.

  He heard his breathing, he heard the night. He didn’t know where he was going, or where he was going to wind up. It didn’t matter, because where he was going felt right. He was going in what he knew was the right direction, and that was all that mattered.

  Acknowledgments

  DAVID A. FREEDMAN, J.D., was of great assistance in helping me with all the legal aspects of this book. In any cases where legal procedures are not strictly followed the decision was mine alone, for artistic purposes, and is no reflection on his legal acumen.

  San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey and his administrative assistant, Eileen Hirst, gave me a thorough tour of their various jail facilities, helping to illuminate for me how a contemporary big-city jail system operates. This story is not set in San Francisco, and does not reflect on the specifics of their program.

  Terry Lammers, J.D., Seth Kunin, the pathology department of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and the staff of the Writer’s Computer Store in Los Angeles were helpful in their various areas of expertise.

  Al Silverman, Elaine Koster, Markus Wilhelm, and Bob Lescher were of great assistance both in helping me shape the form and context of the book and in providing strong emotional and professional support.

  About the Author

  J. F. Freedman is the New York Times bestselling author of Against the Wind, The Disappearance, House of Smoke, and In My Dark Dreams, among other titles. He is also an award-winning film and television director, writer, and producer. He lives in California.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1997 by J. F. Freedman

  Cover design by Angela Goddard

  978-1-4804-2396-1

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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