Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  A soft exhale. “Yes.”

  “You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”

  “What?” His voice was tinged with panic. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you’re being all weird and evasive.”

  “It’s something I’d rather discuss in person, that’s all.”

  “But I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  He was quiet for almost fifteen seconds, then exhaled. “It will wait. Call me and let me know how your conversation with Boone goes. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And if you need me, for any reason—”

  “I’ll call you. Without hesitation.”

  Another exhale, this one of relief. “Good. Very good.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  This time around, the detention center accepted my appointment. The same guard I’d seen the day before told me to cover my cleavage, which meant I had to button the shirt all the way past my larynx, but otherwise I was good to go. One of the benefits of video visitation, I supposed. Jasper and I wouldn’t actually be face to face—he’d be on a video monitor, like the world’s worst reality television show—which made the security procedures much more streamlined. Easier than flying out of Hartsfield, that was for sure.

  I took a seat in the waiting area. People fidgeted in the metal chairs, some in work clothes, some in Sunday dresses. Wives twisted wedding bands, bounced babies. Visiting, I thought. What a nice polite word. More like tea cookies and front porches than this place, which was as no-nonsense as the DMV.

  At every stage of the process, I felt as if I were going to be shut down and frog-marched back to the parking lot. Which would have been the opposite of useful, but damn, did I want out. I couldn’t shake the fear that once I got in that separate room, I wasn’t coming back out, and I couldn’t decide if it was because I hated places of captivity or hated Jasper.

  I needed to have questions ready, I knew this. Goals and objectives. Was he threatening Hope? If so, why was John involved? Had he found a new hate group to take him in? Did he really think he was gonna squeeze several million out of Trey and me or was this part of some larger scheme? And why was he picking fights with skinheads after months of “good” behavior?

  I knew Jasper wasn’t going to cough up answers, especially not with video cameras running. But I also knew that he was one of the smuggest human beings walking the Lowcountry. If he thought his machinations had me in the corner, he wouldn’t be able to resist gloating about it. It would shine on his face like a sheen of sweat.

  I twisted in my creaky chair and tugged at my collar. The woman seated down the row from me lowered the fashion magazine she was reading.

  “You okay?”

  I sent a tight smile her way. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  She looked like Shirley Temple’s disreputable older sister, with piercing china-blue eyes and blond bedhead waves. Her skirt was barely long enough to be within the visitation guidelines, and though she exposed not an inch of cleavage, the bright yellow sweater was tight enough to give anybody with half-assed eyesight plenty of ideas about what was going on underneath it.

  She leaned closer. “You’re here to see Jasper, aren’t you?”

  I couldn’t hide my astonishment. “Well, I…yes.”

  “I thought so. They try to keep things like that on the hush-hush, but I heard you say his inmate number.”

  “I see.”

  “Yeah. It gets ugly here sometimes, girlfriends and wives showing up at the same time. But I know who you are, I’ve seen your picture.” She tilted her head, assessing. “You’re prettier in person.”

  I turned in my chair and gave her my full attention. “And you are?”

  “Ivy Rae Newberry. Jasper’s fiancée.”

  She drew out the final word, exaggerating the syllables. Then she held up her left hand and waggled her fingers, showing off a fat hunk of diamond. Nobody at Boone’s place had mentioned a fiancée. But then, I was pretty sure that Jefferson had left out a bunch of things and downright lied about a bunch of others.

  And then it hit me—Ivy. How closely she twineth, how tight she clings. I didn’t need Rico’s literary analysis to know I’d been warned about this girl, a piece of information I intended to take seriously.

  She kicked her foot up and down. “They won’t let me see him again, not this week. They said I caused a disruption last time.”

  “Oh?”

  “I suppose I did. I wore a longer skirt this time, but they still wouldn’t let me in.”

  She folded her hands in her lap on top of the glossy magazine, but the restlessness remained. Jonesing for her phone, I suspected, for the need to check in, text back, look up. Any second she’d start biting her nails in withdrawal.

  She adjusted the strap on her shoe. “His lawyer told me to keep a tight lip. He said that I was to treat everyone who worked here as an informant. Is that why you’re here? You looking to inform?”

  “I’m looking to set some things straight.”

  “Oh. Right.” She nodded sagely. “He told me about the civil suit. Between you and me, though, I don’t think he means to follow through. He’s had a hard life, and now he’s trying to hurt others as he himself has been hurt.”

  I wanted to shake her. I wanted to tell her, in clear lurid terms, what her fiancé had tried to do to me, had ordered done to Trey, how he’d tried to kill his own father and brother. I wanted to rewind my memories and open up my brain and show her the Jasper I knew, the one with the gun in his hand, soaking wet and burning with psychotic rage. Jasper red in tooth and claw.

  I kept my voice neutral, however. “How exactly did you meet Jasper?”

  “He answered my Friends Behind Bars ad. We hit it off right away, but we didn’t stay friends for long.” Her foot kept bobbing. “Does his lawyer know you’re here?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Ivy looked over my shoulder into the visitation room and smiled. “He knows now.”

  I turned. Two people were returning into the waiting area from a far corner cubicle in the visitation room. The man was medium height, medium build, medium coloring, as utterly mid-spectrum an individual as I’d ever seen. Tan suit, ivory shirt, ecru tie, all of it high quality but rumpled. His mouse-brown hair dipped over a pale forehead, almost obscuring his eyes.

  The woman at his side matched him in tone. Her slacks and shirt were immaculately pressed, however, and precisely fitted. I’d learned to recognize the hang of properly tailored clothes, and the sharp creases and break of the cuffs revealed the care in hers, especially when contrasted with the lawyer’s too-long jacket and wrinkled shirt.

  He stuck his hand out when he saw me. “Well, hello there, Ms. Randolph! When my client told me you were on his visitor list, I didn’t quite believe him. Ainsworth Lovett, pleased to meet you.”

  I took his hand. He had soft skin and a firm get-down-to-business grip. The woman slipped the notebook she held into a messenger bag. She didn’t extend her hand.

  Lovett flipped his hand in her direction. “My investigator, Finn Hudson.”

  I did a double-take. This was no paunchy middle-aged former G-man. This was an athletic young woman with a peaches-and-cream complexion and spiky terrier hair, her slanting eyes bird-of-prey sharp. I saw humor simmering in her expression, and I knew she knew why I was staring slack-jawed at her.

  Lovett’s manner was disarming. “I cautioned Jasper this was a bad idea.”

  Ivy Rae piped up. “I did too.”

  He acknowledged her with a papery, all-purpose smile. “And yet he insisted.” The smile flickered my way. “What’s my fine opponent up to, Ms. Randolph?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Madam Olethea. I cannot imagine the circumstance that would have anyone at the prosecutor’s office allowing you within fifty feet of my client. But I’m s
ure there is one. I’m sure it’s positively devious.”

  I folded my arms. “You’re the one defending the cold-blooded, racist, murdering—”

  “Alleged.”

  “—lying sack of deviousness that is Jasper Boone.”

  He wagged a finger at me. “Tut tut, Ms. Randolph. I shouldn’t have to remind you that it’s people like my client who need the most protection under the law. The court of public opinion would have him swinging in one of those beautiful squares this very afternoon, not because there’s any proof he’s guilty of his charges, but because he reminds them of every awful thing about humanity that they want to erase. So erase him they would.”

  “I’m supposed to believe you’re in this for truth and justice?”

  “I am.”

  “Then why aren’t you doing it pro bono instead of helping Jasper sue me for millions in civil court?”

  He sighed extravagantly. “You’re speaking of the civil matter, of course. That was Jasper’s idea, not mine. I assured him we were working on a contingency basis, that I’d taken him as a client on principal, not for financial gain.”

  “I don’t believe that for one second.”

  “That is certainly your right. But it changes nothing.”

  The guard behind the deck stood up. “T. Randolph!”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” I shook my head at the lawyer. “Look, you can throw your ideals and your money into the toilet if you want, but I don’t want to see any more letters from you or your investigator. I am declining to be interviewed, as is Trey, as is Phoenix, as is Detective Garrity, as is everyone. Don’t contact any of us anymore.”

  “Don’t worry, those letters were a courtesy which will not be coming your way again. And I’ll be counseling my client to have no further contact with you, counseling him firmly. Oh, and one more thing.” He stepped closer, dropped his voice, and his eyes went hard as marbles. “If I get even a whiff of your trying to bribe anyone here at this facility into delivering false medical statements, my next call won’t be to the prosecutor, it will be to the authorities. That’s a federal crime, Ms. Randolph.”

  I was so mad I could spit. “I’ll have you know—”

  “T. Randolph, last call!”

  I turned my back on Lovett and headed toward the metal detector. He was already walking out the door, but I felt the eyes of his investigator on me. Had she spotted me during my conversation with Shane yesterday and ratted me out to Lovett? Or had Shane been talking to them as well, throwing fuel on the rumor fire? Had he hinted to them as strongly as he had to me that his testimony was for sale?

  Ivy joined the two of them, chattering like a blue jay, as they filed out the front door. And it wasn’t until that second, until I saw Finn Hudson from the back, her boy-short hair catching in the sunlight, that I recognized her.

  She was the woman in the photo with Hope.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I took a seat on the metal stool in my assigned cubicle, pressed my knees together. The long narrow window to my right showed a slice of blue sky, the razor wire gleaming against it. My head felt swimmy-light, almost giddy, and I pressed both hands flat against my belly. I conjured Trey as clearly as I could, not the bossy lecture-y Trey, the solid comforting Trey.

  I felt the breath go in, the breath go out.

  The screen flared to life, but all I saw was the white-sheeted corner of a hospital bed. I heard voices, a muttered complaint about squeaky wheels. A timer started in the upper right-hand corner—twenty minutes and counting down. The view went shaky as a hand dipped in front of the camera, which then started a slow pan up the bed.

  Jasper reclined there. He wore a jumpsuit the color of half-dead leaves. I made myself meet his eyes, which were snake-green, almost metallic. He eased closer to the camera, lean to the point of gauntness, his blond hair dull under the fluorescents. His lower lip was split like a ripe melon, and a shiner the color of a thundercloud darkened his left eye.

  He wiggled his fingers at his forehead. “I apologize for my appearance today. The American incarceration experience is brutal at times.”

  Despite the injuries, he was enjoying himself. He folded his hands over his stomach, a half-smile twisting his mouth. I opened my hands, not remembering when I’d clenched them into fists. On screen, the image jerked to the side, and I saw Shane there, all official in his scrubs. He didn’t look my way, not even when he adjusted the camera back on the hospital bed. I knew he was listening, though, collecting every single word.

  “I heard you picked that fight yourself,” I said. “Practically volunteered to be a human punching bag. That true?”

  “Is that why you’re here? To ask stupid questions?”

  “I’m here to get some answers.”

  Jasper examined me cannily. “My lawyer says the only reason you’re here is that the prosecutor is pulling some strings. Is she pulling your strings, cuz? Like a puppet?”

  “Did your lawyer also tell you that there’s a police report filed? That we are onto you and whoever you have on the outside threatening Hope Lyle?”

  “What makes you think that’s any of my doing? If I’d wanted to threaten that woman, I coulda done it while she was over in the women’s. Where she made a right nice sitting duck.”

  “Who’s saying you didn’t?”

  Jasper leaned back, spread his hands behind his head. A bandage wrapped his left forearm, obscuring the Blood Drop Cross tattoo he had there, along with most of the Confederate battle flag. I could barely see the red and blue peeking out from beneath the gauze.

  “As much as I’d like to establish my innocence, my lawyer said I shouldn’t be answering any of your questions. He said anything I say can be trotted right down to the prosecutor’s office, that talking to you will hurt my defense and perhaps prejudice later juries when the civil case comes to trial.”

  He recited the words fluidly, as if quoting Ainsworth Lovett himself. I edged closer to the screen and folded my hands on the tabletop.

  “Oh yes. The civil case. That load of bull puckey.”

  Jasper looked surprised. “Your boyfriend did with malice aforethought bring his foot down on my wrist, shattering the…what are those bones called?”

  “Radius and ulna,” Shane supplied off-camera, “with attendant damage to the scaphoid.”

  “Right. This was after he shot me in the ankle. And I don’t even want to talk about what we had to do to fix this shoulder. At least I didn’t have to pay for the PT, thanks to the good taxpayers of Georgia.”

  My hands curled into fists again. “You were reaching for your weapon.”

  “I was reaching out for mercy, begging him to stop. Haven’t you seen the camera surveillance?”

  “I have. That’s not what it shows.”

  He shrugged. “My lawyer says the sequence of events is open for interpretation.”

  “That bullet you sent whizzing by my head was pretty clear.”

  “All I remember is you suddenly kicking me in the knee and taking off into the woods—damaging my patella, this PT fellow says—and I limped myself after you because I was worried about you, because I’d heard bullets too.”

  I clenched my jaw. Talk about revisionist history. I wanted to crawl through the camera and shake Jasper until he rattled and then do the same to Shane, who’d obviously picked a side in the upcoming trial.

  “I don’t care what your best buddy in scrubs there says, you tried to kill me. And then you tried to kill Hope.”

  He shook his head. “No, I was simply coming to claim what I’d purchased from her. I had a huge investment in that piece of paper she was carrying.”

  “Hope tells it different.”

  “The way I hear it, Hope ain’t saying shit.” He shrugged again, but his eyes glittered. “I mean, I haven’t had anything to do with such, of course. Rumors spread like athlete’
s foot in this godforsaken place.”

  “Any of those rumors about John?”

  “John who?”

  “Don’t play stupid. Hope’s gone, he’s gone, and I know you’re behind it.”

  His eyes widened. “Wait a minute, that John? He’s missing? Seriously? You want I should get one of these nice correctional officers to call up the law for you?”

  I ground my teeth together to keep the expletives in my mouth. The timer in the corner of the screen had counted down to ten minutes. I was supposed to have gotten more time, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage another second of Jasper’s infuriating act, much less thirty more minutes.

  “You know damn well John’s missing. I want to know why considering John’s got zero testimony to offer against you.”

  He scratched the back of his head, cutting his eyes first at Shane then back at me. “Then why would I be messing with him? Seems if I was that kind of man, I’d start with you and Trey.”

  My blood went cold. “Is that a threat?”

  “What? Lord no! I was just pointing out the inconsistency. Jeez.” He shook his head, like this was a big old misunderstanding. “Calm down. Maybe you’re a little confused about how things went down that night, but we’re family, cuz. And blood is thicker than water, Daddy always says.”

  “You don’t have any family. Your daddy disinherited you. Your brother denounced you. Even the KKK has turned its back on you. You are all alone now except for that pie-eyed lawyer, and he cares more about pissing off his own family than he does your mangy hide.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong about that. Mr. Lovett says he has to champion the cases of people like me—Southern, poor, of limited formal education and with a notorious family.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I am entirely grateful he stepped up too, let me tell you, considering how Daddy cut me off.”

  “Considering you tried to kill him too, you’re lucky Boone didn’t cut you down.”

  “We both know he’s trying. He’s still got his fingers on the buttons, especially in here. Him and Jefferson, they got reach and pull. Skinheads, Klan junkies, Nazis. Waiting on a word. You think I picked that fight what put me in this bed? Seriously?” He laughed and looked Shane’s way again. “The boys in the medical unit got the betting pool up—when will old Jasper Boone finally catch a shiv? Even Shane here’s got skin in that game. Ain’t that right, Shane?”