Allison slumps. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You shouldn’t have to be subjected to something like that. You have a perfect right to get out of this if you want to.”
Luke stares at his client. “I’m not dropping out.”
Allison looks up, startled. “You’re staying on?”
“I have no choice.”
Allison doesn’t know how to react. All he manages to say is “Thanks.”
Luke shakes his head. “I’m not staying on for you, so don’t thank me.” Off Allison’s perplexed look: “I’m not going to get into the particulars, it’s none of your business and it doesn’t matter, but I was driven out of this town once. I did it to myself, and I’ve been unhappy with myself ever since.” He leans in. “I’m not going to be driven out of town again, for you or anyone else.” He eases back. His body’s throbbing. “One important thing,” he says. “Listen up now. You listening?”
Allison nods.
“No more lies from you, by commission or omission or any other excuse. If there’s anything else out there I should know about, I want you to tell me—right now.”
Allison nods. “There’s nothing else, I promise.”
Luke rises. “All right, then. Let’s keep going on like we have been.”
Behind Allison, the door leading back to the jail interior swings open. A guard awaits his exit back to his cell. “Thanks,” he says softly to Luke.
Luke shakes off the thanks. “I’m doing this for me, Joe. You’re incidental to it now. But I’m still here, and that’s all you need to be concerned with.”
Sheriff Williams has left four messages on Luke’s phone service, asking him to call. He will. But first, he decides, he’ll talk to the press.
He stands in front of the courthouse across the street from the jail, recently remodeled and enlarged, where Joe Allison, now the most notorious person they’ve ever incarcerated, is being held in his solitary cell. Luke has positioned himself so that the lenses of the television cameras will capture both the courthouse and the jail: the ornate, almost rococo building where justice, however one interprets that, is dispensed, and the practical building where the police do their work and the people who are deemed criminals are locked up until said justice is dispensed and are then, almost all of the time, sent somewhere worse.
Luke is dressed for the occasion, with Riva’s help struggling into a white shirt, string tie, sport coat. He talks about the attack on him. “It was a cold, premeditated attempt to kill me, Luke Garrison, a specific person. Whoever was shooting at me wasn’t doing it because he doesn’t like the way I put ketchup on my fries. He was shooting at me because I’m representing Joe Allison, a man accused of a heinous kidnapping and murder, a man this city wants to bury. We all know what that’s about, I don’t have to elaborate on it.”
He looks off to the side. Riva’s standing there watching intently, her face a troubled mix of confusion, worry, love. He stares at her for a moment, then turns back to the cameras.
“There is a good reason that someone would want to eliminate me. It’s that Mr. Allison is not the murderer, and whoever did kidnap and murder Emma Lancaster, who’s still at large in the community, knows that I might uncover material that could not only undermine a guilty verdict on Mr. Allison but implicate him, the real killer.”
He pauses for a moment. “I have one job. To make sure an innocent man does not get convicted. I am not withdrawing from this case, despite the concerns of my friends and even of some of my foes. Now, more than ever, I’m determined to see this through to the finish.”
He turns and walks away, without a whisper of a smile.
His meeting with Sheriff Williams and Ray Logan is tense, as he knew it would be. Indeed, he’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t. They meet in Williams’s office, a standard-issue corner room, the walls festooned with plaques and pictures, awards and encomiums. The sheriff sits behind his desk. Luke has the seat opposite. Logan’s off to the side. He’s a party to the show, not a participant. The door is closed. The sheriff has instructed his secretary to hold all his calls, without exception.
Luke feels the tension. That’s okay—that’s what he wants.
“That was a nice performance you gave out there,” the sheriff remarks dryly. He and Luke go back a long way. They worked closely together for more than a decade, when Luke was an assistant DA, the rising star in the office, and then after that, when he won the election and became the boss. They were a good team. Now they’re opponents, and it doesn’t wear well.
“Somebody put a bullet in my side, Bob, in case you’ve forgotten,” Luke replies. In a funny way he’s in the catbird seat, for the present at least. They have to take him seriously now, and they have to treat him well. “I assume you’re trying to find out who it was.”
Williams’s reply is serious indeed. “You don’t have to assume, Luke. We have a dozen detectives out in the field, trying to work some leads.”
“I’m impressed.” Then he asks the harder question: “Any hints on who you think it is?”
Williams fidgets in his chair. “Who do you think?” he counters.
“Doug Lancaster, who else?”
The name hangs in the air like stale cigar smoke in a closed room. Williams looks at Logan. “He’s on the short list.”
“Do you know where he was?”
“He says he was at home. We’re checking it out.”
“Like you checked out where he was the night his daughter was kidnapped?”
Williams looks uneasy.
Luke glances at Logan, who’s sitting uncomfortably in his corner, then fixes his stare on the sheriff. “You didn’t handle this right, Bob. In a crime like this, the immediate family is automatically under suspicion and you check the hell out of their alibis. That’s a given, you and I did a hundred cases like that. But in this case, you didn’t—or if you did, you didn’t pursue it with any vigor. You let the Lancasters’ position and power in the community cow you. You set it up so they’d be off the hook almost immediately.”
“I resent that,” Williams says angrily.
Luke has to stand. Sitting in one position is too painful. “I didn’t say it was a whitewash, Bob. I’m saying it looks like it. The fact is that Doug Lancaster’s whereabouts on the night his daughter was kidnapped can’t be accounted for between one and nine in the morning. I know that, and I assume you do.”
Williams looks over at Logan—how much of their hand should he show?
Logan answers. “We know he wasn’t in his hotel, like he told us he was—which is a mark against him, I’ll admit that.”
“Do you know where he was?” Luke asks. “Some physical proof?”
Logan draws a breath. “No.”
Luke thinks a moment. “He made a late-night call to a number in the Malibu area. Do you know about that?”
Logan nods. “Yes.”
“Have you interviewed the party he called?”
Another nod. “He wasn’t there.”
“So the call didn’t go through?” Luke asks, surprised. This feels weird. If the call wasn’t connected, why would the hotel have a record of it? Of course, the phone would be connected to an answering service. Doug could have left a message.
Logan shrugs. “The man, whose name is Buchinsky, gave us a statement. I’ll fax it over to you. He wasn’t at his beach house the night in question. He wasn’t even in the country, he was in France.”
“So it’s not an alibi for Lancaster. He wasn’t there.”
“No. But that in itself doesn’t make him a suspect,” Logan says doggedly.
“No,” Luke agrees. “It doesn’t.” Then he asks, “Do you mind if I talk to Buchinsky?”
“Not at all,” Logan says. “I’ll call him and let him know you’ll be in touch.”
“I appreciate that, Ray.” Being a crime victim yourself, especially of the crime of attempted murder, opens doors that would otherwise be locked.
“You know we’re sorry you were a target,” L
ogan says lamely.
Luke shakes his head. “Someone tried to kill me,” he reminds his successor. “Someone is desperate to get me out of the way. Doug Lancaster has been trying to get me off this case from day one, way beyond a father’s grief and desire to avenge his daughter’s death. He tried to warn me, he tried to scare me, he threatened me.” He still doesn’t tell them about the bribe—that’s too precious to waste now.
Williams and Logan both look somber. “I hear you,” Williams says finally.
Logan turns to Williams. “What about protection?” He’s Mr. Efficient now.
“Around the clock,” Williams says without hesitation. Before Luke can utter a word of protest, his big ham-hand goes up like a traffic cop’s. “Someone out there did try to kill you. I’m not going to let them have another shot. I have a job to do, just like you do, and taking care of the citizens is it.”
It’s a reassuring feeling, although Luke won’t give Williams the satisfaction of telling him. Riva will appreciate it. She’s going along with his decision, but she’s unhappy and scared about it. This will give her some comfort.
“Okay,” he answers. “But only at the house, around my lady. I can’t conduct my case properly if your men are always watching me. I have witnesses to interview, some of whom I don’t want you to know I’m interviewing. But I won’t let myself be alone like that again.”
Williams nods sourly. “I wish you were on the right side on this one,” he says.
“I am.” He pats the sheriff on the shoulder. “We’re all on the side of justice, Bob.”
What can be good about someone trying to kill you? Simple answer: They have to take you seriously now. Joe Allison might be guilty as charged, and the odds are he’s going to be convicted no matter what you do. But someone wants you off this case so badly they will kill you to get you off—which makes what you’re doing legitimate, and makes your opponents nervous.
There will be plenty of publicity about this. It’s already started. You keep it going, fan the flames. Give interviews, hold press conferences, demand to know why the authorities haven’t caught your would-be murderer. Are they part of a conspiracy to push this entire thing under the rug, cover it up? Is there a cover-up, and if so, what are they covering up? Could the cover-up be about some doubt on their part now about Joe Allison’s guilt? That maybe they’re not a hundred percent sure anymore but can’t admit it, because they have too much invested in this to back down?
Joe Allison isn’t as guilty as he was the day before yesterday. Now, because someone was desperate and crazy enough to try to kill his lawyer, Allison has a chance. He may be found guilty in the end, but for now he’s more like he should be, a man innocent until proven guilty. Beyond a reasonable doubt.
Someone tried to kill Luke Garrison, Joe Allison’s lawyer. And everything changes.
Except no one tried to kill me.
He’s been pounding his brains over that since he got home from the hospital and his subsequent discussion with Ray Logan. What has been tearing up his mind is his certain knowledge that the getting hit was a fluke. It was a lucky one, in that he wasn’t killed. But he wasn’t supposed to be hit at all. He was supposed to be warned. Those were shots across the bow, calling cards, one last, ultimate warning: I can knock you off, man, anytime I want. So back off. Now.
But he isn’t backing off. So he has to assume something else is coming, down the line. He has to be prepared for it, he has to be vigilant.
If he survives all this, Luke thinks as he pops another pain pill, getting shot will be worth it. But only the one time. He’s willing to risk his career—he doesn’t have enough of one left anymore to have that much to risk—but he isn’t willing to risk his life again. Even if it was only a warning, once was enough. Because the next time, the shooter won’t be aiming to miss.
Ted Buchinsky’s interview with one of Logan’s assistant D.A.’s is on Luke’s desk when he arrives at his office. He reads through it. It was a short interview, only two pages. Buchinsky had seen Doug Lancaster the day before at his home in Beverly Hills, they had some business dealings, talked about continuing the discussion when he got back from Europe. He had flown out the afternoon before the night of the kidnapping, so he obviously wasn’t around when Doug had called. End of interview, end of story.
Luke tosses the interview on his desk. Doug wasn’t with the man.
He starts to go over some other material, then something clicks. He picks the pages up again, scans them. The telephone number on the interview, Buchinsky’s house—it’s a 310 area code, all right, but it’s a Brentwood prefix, not a Malibu one. Doug hadn’t called Brentwood, he’d called Malibu.
Pulling the hotel sheet out of his file, he checks the number Doug called that night. It’s a different number from the one on the interview sheet.
He dials the Malibu number. The phone rings. One, two, three times. He doesn’t want to leave a message. He starts to hang up.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Is this the Buchinsky beach residence?” he asks.
“Yes?”
It hits him. How could he have overlooked something so obvious?
“Is this Mrs. Buchinsky?”
The woman opens the door. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” he says as graciously as he can. She’s wearing a cotton shirt over her two-piece Lycra bathing suit. “Luke Garrison.” He offers his hand.
His name doesn’t seem to register with her. “Helena Buchinsky.” She shakes, a firm grip, gives him a good eyeballing. “You don’t look like a D.A. type.”
He smiles. “I don’t? How’s a D.A. type supposed to look?” What an accent! he thinks. It gives her an offbeat charm—not that her casual, natural voluptuousness isn’t itself offbeat in the land of anorexic blondes with pumped-up breasts.
“Buttoned-down. Conventional.” She stares at him again, smiling.
He’s dressed pretty conventionally. Still, there’s the goatee, the ponytail. Not regulation district attorney mufti.
She’s liking what she sees, he thinks, feeling the flirtation, which comes as naturally to her as breathing. This is a woman who goes after what she likes, he bets himself. “The times they are a-changin’,” he tells her.
“I’m all for that,” she says. “Come on in.”
She leads him through the house towards the covered sundeck out back. “You want a Coke or something?”
“If it’s no trouble.” He’s walking stiffly; his body, still sore from the bullet intrusion, froze up on him during the ride down.
“No trouble at all.” She veers off into the kitchen, comes back a moment later with two cold cans of Coca-Cola. Handing him one, she leads him out onto the deck.
They sit opposite each other in white Adirondack chairs. Everything in this house is white or off-white: the canvas-covered sofas, the wicker chairs, the bleached wood floors. An extension of the outdoors, of the sand and the sun. She runs a hand through her thick long hair, which has been recently highlighted, golden streaks running through the black. Her tanned, oiled legs are crossed, but not primly—he has a clear shot all the way up her thighs. She has a bikini wax.
He takes his eyes off her legs and looks at her face. Not elegant, but open. “Cheers,” he says in toast, raising the sweating can.
“Cheers to you,” she answers. She looks at him a moment, a questioning look on her face. Like she’s onto him?
He didn’t lie to her. He didn’t tell her the whole truth, either. He didn’t tell her he isn’t a district attorney; he didn’t correct her now, when she brought it up. She hadn’t asked him point-blank, so he didn’t have to lie or make up some convoluted answer.
He had called the number, told her he was given it by Ray Logan, the district attorney in the Emma Lancaster murder-kidnap case, that he was another lawyer working on the case (implying that he and Ray were working together, but not stating so directly), that they were interviewing everyone who knew any of the principals in
preparation for the upcoming trial—such as her and her husband, who were acquaintances of Doug Lancaster. “And Glenna Lancaster,” she had told him during the call. “I’ve met her a couple of times. While they were still married.”
He went on to say he needed more information, could he come down and talk to her briefly?
She said sure, and here he is.
“How long have you known Doug Lancaster?” he asks.
“Several years. He and my husband are both in the business.”
The television and film business. To her, there is no other. Languidly, she recrosses her legs. They’re fine, and she knows it, playing with him easily.
And how long have you been fucking your husband’s friend? he thinks. Doug is a philanderer deluxe, and if you’re not after the baby-fat stuff, this is as good as it gets.
Doug Lancaster was with her that night. He’d bet the farm on that. Doug knew the husband was out of town. He called—he could even have been returning her call—she told him to come on down, and he did, at a gallop.
Which he could never tell the police. The dead daughter’s pregnant, that same night the father’s out fucking a friend’s wife, God knows what the mother’s doing, she could be getting it on with the murder suspect. A nice picture to put in front of a jury.
Luke opens his notebook. “Doug Lancaster placed a call to this residence on the night of his daughter’s kidnapping, at approximately one in the morning.” He looks up at her.
Her composure isn’t ruffled. “Yes, I recall that.”
“You spoke to him?” That’s a surprise, that she admits it so readily.
She nods. “I did.”
“Could you tell me the gist of the conversation, how long it lasted, and so forth. Isn’t that late, getting a call at one in the morning?”
She stares at him like he’s from Mars, then breaks out laughing, a real belly laugh. “In this business you get phone calls around the clock. If Roseanne or Dustin or Jeffrey or Steven wants to talk to you, it doesn’t matter what time it is. One o’clock’s pretty reasonable.”
“So you were up?”
The Disappearance Page 25