Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  After a few moments of silence, Mark added, see you around.

  He just didn’t respond to that. Of course they’d see each other around. That was the problem. They had the trial coming up, if nothing else.

  It was an impasse. Mark might be an irresistible force, but Lukas did a pretty good imitation of an immovable object.

  Chapter Twelve

  Mark was snappy all Monday morning. He could feel it, and he tried not to take it out on the clients, but it was hard. It seemed like the whole batch of arraignments that morning was there just to spite him. His own clients kept leaving messages about things that weren’t even his job, and things they could have easily taken care of for themselves but had very obviously chosen not to.

  He kept thinking, in stray moments, of the way Lukas had looked when Mark was leaving. If Lukas had his moments of seeming to unbend—thaw a little from the ice-king image—that had been all the walls up, frozen through.

  The week passed quickly, not much to show for it besides the ever-revolving stack of files. He did another day of arraignments but at least, thank God, it wasn’t Monday again. He kept finding himself glancing at his phone, thinking about sending text messages he knew he shouldn’t. He didn’t. He was a professional.

  By Friday he was having sneaking, nagging thoughts about how people could be adults, they could spend time with each other without having it be, be something. He managed to crush those down. He knew himself too well to buy that line for a second. It would be easy, very easy, to manufacture excuses to hang out with Lukas; to see him alone; to go back to one of their apartments. That kind of ease led to the world’s oldest slippery-slope argument. And generally, Mark couldn’t give less of a shit about slippery-slope arguments. They were virtually always logically unfounded. But this one was about a slope that led right from good intentions to slippery good times, and he wasn’t going there.

  Travis came into his office, late in the afternoon, with a look on his face that had Mark vaguely worried. Travis sat in the chair and twisted back and forth, distracted. “How’s it hanging?”

  “Not bad. You?”

  “Ugh, got a new case.”

  Travis looked grim. Mark raised his eyebrows. “Yeah? What kind?”

  “Drugs. The cops arrested somebody they think is in charge of a lot of dealing, so he’s up on conspiracy, plus all the dealing, plus the feds might get in on it.”

  Mark whistled softly. “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  “Yeah. And there’s a lot of pressure, and I was just hoping for once we’d have some peace and quiet around Christmas.”

  Mark laughed out loud. “You should have known better than that!”

  “I really fucking should have.” Travis shook his head ruefully.

  “Is this somebody you’ve defended before?”

  “No, it’s kind of weird, I don’t think he’s part of any of the usual suspects.”

  “Huh. New gang moving in or something?”

  “Or something. I’m not even sure yet what the cops think, I just got the case yesterday.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah.” Travis sighed as the chair gave another long, despairing creak. “Anyway, my niece is selling candy bars for a fund-raiser. Think you want to buy any?”

  “Isn’t hitting me up for that technically illegal in a state-funded workplace?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much?”

  “Five bucks a box.”

  “Sign me up for four.”

  *

  Lukas sighed, cradling his cell phone against his shoulder as best he could. “Mom—I’m telling you, it’s going to be fine.”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. What if she hates it?”

  “She won’t.”

  “She hasn’t had it before.”

  “She’ll be thrilled it’s in her stocking. People like new things.”

  The discussion of his cousin’s girlfriend’s probable reaction to red wine hard candy in her stocking was one he could have lived without, but his periodic calls to his parents had the double benefit of letting him out of talking to his father much and getting him out of in-person visits.

  His mother heaved a gusty sigh. “I just worry, you know.”

  Of course he knew. She’d been worrying about things for his entire life. Why stop?

  “It’ll be great, Mom. It’s always a really nice Christmas.”

  Which was, by any stretch of the imagination, an exaggeration. Christmas with the Nystroms tended to be a large affair—multiple branches of the family would descend on the house, bringing casserole dishes and handmade fudge and gluey pecan pies—and there was inevitably at least one major feud. There would be the predictable frosty chill in the air, and they’d all smile politely at each other through their teeth, and when everyone finally left it would be a relief.

  But his mother would worry incessantly over whether the hand towels were clean and dry and appropriately festive. She’d worry over whether the stockings were hung perfectly straight. Like any of that was going to keep his father from being an asshole, if and when he took it into his head to be.

  He could hear a tentative smile in his mother’s voice. “Thank you, dear.”

  After he hung up with her, he finally put the last of the dishes into the dishwasher and pushed the button. It came to life with an unsettling grinding sound and dutifully cranked through its cycle. The faint smell of hot detergent filtered through the apartment.

  He settled back on the couch, flipping the TV on. He found a rerun of Perry Mason; for a minute, he wanted to laugh at himself, but whatever. He left it on. Perry could do worse than Paul Drake. And at least it wasn’t a Christmas episode. The rest of the channels were back-to-back “heartwarming stories of Yuletide cheer” and if he had to watch another one he was going to kill somebody.

  He was starting to doze off, and the character he had figured for the murderer was just ascending to the witness stand, when his phone buzzed. He pulled it out, frowning; he was pretty sure he hadn’t forgotten about any gigs or missed any deadlines.

  Why do people get so fucking Better Homes & Gardens around Christmas?

  It was Mark. He felt a complicated rush of several different things and immediately buried them all.

  don’t know but it’s the truth

  You remember Jen from the office and Mary Lynn?

  yeah

  They had a Christmas party, it was ridiculous

  good or bad?

  Just like a fucking magazine

  that sounds interesting, he said, even though it didn’t, for lack of anything better to say.

  I brought them a candle

  no wine?

  Was instructed not to bring wine

  I see

  Too much wine already

  so you went with a candle

  Do you think that was a bad call?

  I have no idea, he lied. He knew candles were fine, on the hostess-approved-gifts list of the ages. His mother always ended up with about fifty of them after the holidays.

  What are you up to? asked Mark. That felt loaded. He let it sit for a few minutes. Mark eventually added, sorry, without specifying why.

  just chilling

  Not hanging with the guys?

  no

  Not getting dragged to any parties?

  no

  Jen thinks I need to make friends

  Lukas had time to wonder whether Mark was actually drunk. most people do, he settled on.

  I’m heading to Cleveland for xmas

  cool

  When I get back would it be cool if I came to another game with the guys?

  yeah sure

  Thanks

  no prob

  *

  They were just a couple of days out from New Year’s when Lukas woke up, groggy, to the insistent buzzing of his phone.

  “’Lo?” he mumbled into it once he’d picked up.

  “Lukas! Get a fucking load of this! Guess who totally had a prescription for Val
ium!”

  He straightened up, blinking. “Who?”

  “What, are you asleep? It’s ten a.m.”

  “I was on surveillance last night.”

  “The widow! The fucking widow had Valium.”

  “Oh shit,” said Lukas, starting to get the picture.

  “So we’re pitching a fit at the DA’s office, right, on their ass about why they didn’t investigate her further before charging our client. And it turns out there were sexts between our client and the victim, and there weren’t credit card receipts from when she supposedly went shopping with her friend.” Self-satisfaction was radiating from Mark’s voice. “Anyway, I told you I’d keep you in the loop, thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah. No, I did, I do.”

  “Sorry I woke you up, though.”

  “No, it’s all right, I have an appointment in a couple of hours anyway.”

  “Go back to sleep! Just wanted to let you know.” And suddenly it was like Mark realized—remembered everything that had happened without happening, between them, and hesitated. “Uh. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”

  “Yeah, you do that.” Lukas didn’t want to feel this good, hearing Mark’s voice, knowing Mark had thought about him before he had time to remember that things were awkward. But he had a feeling his voice was too fond, despite that.

  “Okay. Uh. Bye.”

  “Bye.” Lukas hung up and stared at the phone for a minute before letting it fall and drifting back off to sleep.

  *

  An idea started itching at Lukas. He couldn’t quite shake it. Something about the Valium, something about how tidy it would have been if the fire had gotten worse before it was put out. Someone who didn’t know much about forensics might have yanked the plastic bag off Kupfer’s head once he was dead and set the fire, figuring it would eat away the evidence. It wouldn’t have been shocking if the drugs and alcohol were blamed for the death—medical examiners had missed more than that before—although it was still stupid that they’d pulled off the bag. Unless they’d meant for him to breathe in some of the smoke, hadn’t realized he was completely dead? Maybe it had been botched, somehow, even though it looked deliberate. Force him to take the pills, force him to drink the liquor, put the bag on his head and wait for him to suffocate. It felt premeditated. Kupfer kept, what, whiskey on hand, not Everclear. Kupfer didn’t have a Valium prescription. And maybe poisoning would appeal to someone who didn’t want to get their hands dirty, but then there was the fire.

  And why kill him? Personal reasons? Lukas had been around and around this in his brain. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman killed over a man. Hell, with the way Ron Williams had been hovering over the widow, maybe a man killing over a woman. But the too-tidy books, Williams’s shifting eyes during their interviews—it didn’t quite work for him.

  Not insurance. Insurance didn’t make sense if the finances were as good as they seemed. And if the finances were as good as they seemed, they were almost certainly shady, crooked somehow.

  Shipping companies were an obvious vehicle for drugs. The warehouse manager would have to know about it. Lukas kept coming back to it.

  He was thinking about it on an evening stakeout (not, thank God, an overnight), slowly and mindlessly eating unsalted popcorn, waiting for a cheating trophy wife to emerge from the hotel room she’d walked into two hours before. It hit him: just because they weren’t paying him to do anything else didn’t mean he couldn’t.

  It was an objectively very, very stupid thought. He kept thinking about it.

  He could—well, he’d already done some poking around in the library; maybe a little more digging, find out as much as he could about Ron Williams’s personal finances in addition to the business itself. It wouldn’t be that big a jump. He wouldn’t do anything extreme, like stake out the warehouse, or try to track down the drug dealers who hadn’t reappeared at the parking lot since the fire. Not that he’d driven by on occasion to check or anything.

  He wasn’t that busy. He had a little time. He could just take a look.

  *

  “Hey, Mark.”

  “What’s up?” Travis, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, was standing, arms akimbo, in his doorway.

  “What was the name of that company your arsonist worked for?”

  “West Cascades Shipping and Transport, Limited. Why?”

  “See, funny coincidence. Turns out my new defendant worked for them too.”

  “What? Which one? The drugs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That...seems awfully suspicious.”

  “Couldn’t agree more.”

  “Is he implicating anyone else?”

  “No. He keeps insisting he just had some drugs for personal use. The cops made the point, very fairly, that he had enough amphetamines to stay awake until the Second Coming.”

  “So you’re going to try to plead?”

  “I am trying like hell to convince him.” Travis heaved a deep sigh. “He seems to think we’re going to get a better offer. I’m really not sure we are.”

  “What’s the DA offering?”

  “Half the prison time he should rightly do. They’d go better if he gave them more people.”

  “Not snitching?”

  “I’m told snitches get stitches. This guy doesn’t seem like the brightest bulb in the box. My guess is somebody told him if he sits tight and keeps quiet they’ll take care of him.” Travis made a face.

  “Well, that’s not new, is it?”

  “No, but it’s kind of new that it’s not really connected to anything we know about. I mean, the cops don’t even seem sure who they want to accuse him of associating with.”

  “Weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mark drummed his fingers on the desk. “You think the arson case is about drugs after all? Not the widow, like we’re thinking?”

  “I’m just saying, I think it’s pretty fucking suspicious. Two crimes in one two-bit company in two months? Unrelated?”

  “Doesn’t seem statistically probable.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “You talk to the cops about it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Think we should?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “I’ll talk to Lena. She’ll have a better idea of where to go with this, if we want to go somewhere at all.”

  Once Travis had gone, Mark leaned back, mind flying back over the case with the new information to consider. So there were drugs involved in the company somehow, tangentially or not.

  He called Lukas.

  “Yeah?” That familiar deep, gruff voice.

  “Hey. I wanted to spitball about something.”

  “Yeah?” Different, perking up, more interested. “About the arson case?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look, Travis—you remember Travis—”

  “Senior attorney.”

  “He says he’s got a new client on drug charges, but they work at the same company.”

  Lukas whistled softly. “Well. That’s something.”

  “I know, right? It’s fishy as hell. And it’s not drug charges like he was smoking up or had something for personal use. He was dealing.”

  “Okay. So. I may have, uh, done a little digging.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, what do you mean a little digging? You’re not going Murder, She Wrote on me, are you?”

  “Nah, nah, I just—I was thinking about drugs, with this company.”

  “I know! You were telling me. It was on my radar.”

  “So, here’s the deal, right? If there’s drugs involved, maybe that’s how the company’s financials looked so steady through the crash, but what about the owner’s personal finances?”

  “You can look into that shit?” Mark paused. “You know we’re not paying you for that, right?”

  “I know, I know. I’m not billing for it. I was just...wondering.”

  Mark huffed out, half-annoyed, half-amused. “You wanted to be a d
etective, didn’t you?”

  There was a moment of very awkward silence before Lukas said, “I thought about it.”

  “Sorry, none of my business, go on, you were saying.”

  “Anyway, what I can find that’s public is kind of limited, but he is loaded. Fucking loaded. Which you’d expect, right, if his business is doing well.”

  “Right, right.”

  “But you know who else is loaded? Kupfer.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. His house—he bought it a couple of years ago, not that long—is worth probably 1.1 million.”

  “A bargain at Seattle real estate prices.”

  “Yeah, but comparables for his salary do not make it look like something he should be able to own.”

  “So you’re thinking maybe dirty money he’s splitting with Williams?”

  “Or he started a sideline and Williams found out.”

  Mark exhaled hard. “Great. This is going to be a tough sell for Lena, let alone the jury.”

  “What about the forensic accountant?”

  “Report’s due—uh. They pushed back the deadline on us. Not for another month.” Mark grimaced down at the schedule.

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah, it’s not ideal.”

  “You know—” Lukas stopped. “Hmm.”

  “What is it? Come on. Tell.”

  “If it is drugs, do you think he’s stopped?”

  “What, since Kupfer bit it?”

  “Or since his other guy got arrested.”

  “No.” Mark didn’t have to think about it long. “If he’s got a network—if he’s got suppliers—he needs to keep it coming.”

  “So if somebody set up an investigation—”

  “They might be able to catch him, but the cops—”

  “Do we really need them?” Lukas’s voice sounded sensible, if you didn’t know that what he was proposing was— “You really want to do an unpaid, unapproved investigation on a possible drug-dealing ring?” Mark hoped his voice was adequately conveying his level of disdain for this idea.