by David Ellis
I know how she feels. I’ve known it from the moment we made the decision to split, the expression on her face. She’s not sorry about the divorce. She just wants to know that I’m okay with it, too.
Come back to me, Tracy Soliday. Let me show you how important you are to me. Give me the chance to make up for all that time. Let me run my fingers through your hair and hold you and caress you and dote on you and make you giggle. Let’s have children and grow old together. Let’s hold hands on the beach and cuddle each other to sleep.
“I will always love you, Tracy.” I grip her hand, which she returns. This is, in many ways, one of the most brutally honest moments of our relationship, and in many ways one of the phoniest. “Go on with your life. Just keep me posted once in a while. Be happy.”
She breathes in. This is relief. It’s what she wanted to know from day one, what she wanted to ask me, but couldn’t, when she first came to town. She got the answer she wanted.
“I love you, too,” she says.
“I know.” I nod outside. “Go catch your plane.”
She doesn’t smile. She leaves the booth, luggage in tow. She looks at me one last time. And when Tracy Stearns walks out of the diner, she doesn’t look back.
61
“WITH SIXTY-FOUR PERCENT of the precincts in, Newscenter Four is prepared to project a winner in the race for governor….”
This election day has been a lonely one. As the chief Democratic lawyer in the state, I am typically fielding phone calls and putting out fires from the moment the polls open at six in the morning. A voting machine is broken. An election judge isn’t letting our poll watcher into the polling place. A cop is pulling up our signs. Republicans are handing out palm cards or leaflets within one hundred feet of the polls. There’s a line of voters out the door at such-and-such precinct, and we need a court order to keep the polls open there.
This year, nothing. I don’t know who is handling such things for Grant Tully or the myriad of candidates for the state house or senate. I just know that it isn’t me.
Anyway, this election, at least at the top end of the ticket, has lacked suspense. It’s not nine-thirty and they’re already calling the gubernatorial election. A landslide. It was a foregone conclusion. He probably wouldn’t have won anyway, but the sordid details of an encounter with a defenseless girl in 1979 and the prosecution of his top aide for murder—to say nothing of the allegations of his own involvement in that murder—doomed State Senator Grant Tully.
Give or take depending on how the final votes tally, Grant will receive just over thirty percent of the vote. The independent candidate, Oliver Jenson, who has benefited remarkably from a trial that potentially implicated both major-party candidates for governor, will get close to twenty percent. And Attorney General Langdon Trotter should clear fifty percent.
Senator Grant Tully will be recorded as receiving the smallest percentage of the governor’s vote for a major-party candidate since the Reconstruction era. To state the obvious, he will never receive his party’s nomination again.
Grant was depending on the Democratic turnout in the city and the downstate union vote. On paper at least, he had all the right endorsements, but I understand there was whispering. Grant was damaged goods. The pre-election work lacked its typical urgency, particularly what you would expect on behalf of the man who controls the state senate.
Grant should be lucky he’s not prosecuted for the rape and murder of Gina Mason. But there’s really no proof. Lyle Cosgrove and Brian O’Shea are dead. Gina Mason is dead. Her brother/cousin Bennett is nowhere to be found. The underwear found in Lyle’s apartment, placed there by Bennett, does not contain any DNA. Bennett was bluffing.
Because Grant ran for governor in midterm, he doesn’t have to seek re-election for his senate seat for another two years. Two years is a lifetime in politics. Besides, with the organization he has in place, he could win re-election with his eyes closed. If that’s what he wants.
My pugs, Jake and Maggie, have had a good couple of weeks with me home. Maggie has her smashed face right in mine now, trying to wake me up to get me to let her out. Jake is about ready to jump off the couch. “Okay,” I tell them, the only word they needed to hear. I look at my watch. It’s close to midnight now. Election reports are still coming in on the tube. Used to be, this was one of the most electrifying nights of my life. Now, I couldn’t even stay awake.
When I’m returning from letting the dogs out, my doorbell rings. I can see through the picture window. I certainly recognize the car.
I open the door to Grant Tully. We haven’t spoken since that day at trial. He didn’t call me, I didn’t call him. I didn’t shit on him to the press, either. I just clammed up.
“Have a minute for an old friend?” he asks. He looks better than I would expect. At least now, it’s over, I guess. All of it.
“Sure,” I say. “If I see one, I’ll let him know.” But I open the door.
Grant walks in but doesn’t take a seat. We stand near each other in the threshold.
He frames his hands. “I let you take the fall,” he says. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear those words from Grant. “You could have told me.”
“Not then, Jon. The son of a senator? It wouldn’t matter if I was guilty or innocent.”
“You let me think awful things about myself. If it hadn’t been for Bennett, I always would have thought that way. I would’ve gone through life wondering whether I’m a killer.”
“I know the feeling,” he says.
“What does that mean, Grant? Tell me the truth.”
His eyes break from mine. “I’m not sure, is the truth.” Grant’s tie is pulled down, his collar open. He is defeated, in more ways than one. He looks at me again. “I remember being there. I don’t remember if—” He throws his hands up. “I don’t know. All I can say is, at the time, it was like—like a big party or something. Christ, she certainly didn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d mind.”
My stare freezes him. “Why don’t we strike that last comment from the record, Senator?”
“It’s Grant,” he corrects. “It always has been. Come back to work, Jon.”
I don’t answer.
Grant invites himself to the couch and gathers himself a moment. “I swear, Jon—I don’t recall anyone doing anything like—like—”
“Like strangling her?”
“God.” He sighs, shows some hint of remorse but quickly leaps to his own defense. “Look, keep in mind the circumstances. None of us was even close to being sober.”
I don’t respond. I will wait him out.
“It wasn’t me, Jon. I never touched her. I believe it was Rick. They were going at it on the floor. It’s not like I was watching.” Grant loses himself in the memory. All of a sudden, he’s not speaking to me but simply reciting the events. “Yeah, it seemed kind of rough. Maybe she didn’t want him on top of her. And then, all of a sudden someone was saying, ‘Oh, shit.’ Gina, she was—” Grant turns his head sharply, closes his eyes.
“She was vomiting.”
Grant nods. “I don’t know. Maybe Rick had his hand on her throat. In hindsight—yeah. She got sick, started choking….”
“And you all got the hell out of there.”
Grant nods. He gets off the couch and walks in a small circle.
“With me asleep in the back of the car.”
An audible sigh from Grant, his back turned to me. Slowly, he turns back around, looking me in the eye.
“I swear, I didn’t lay a hand on that woman. I was just left to clean up the mess. I’d go down with those guys, and it would be a big scandal for my father. You can imagine.”
“Sure I can,” I answer. “So you just put it on me.”
“I knew I could keep you in the clear.” After a lengthy moment without comment from me, he continues in a more pleading tone. “Look, I fucked up, okay? I’m sorry.”
That’s supposed to be enough for me, I suppose. A st
ate senator doesn’t take to groveling easily. The fact that he’s making the effort is supposed to be all I need.
I will say this much. He did post bond for me when I was arrested. He did keep me on his staff, and unabashedly so. He was willing to risk votes to stand by my side. He didn’t recognize the name “Brian O’Shea” any more than I did. He didn’t know what Bennett was up to. Helping me wasn’t selfish of him. He was doing it as a friend.
But I’m still feeling a little mean and angry. I don’t know where my future lies, or Grant’s. All I know is that it won’t be decided tonight.
I step to the side, clearing a path from the senator to the door. Grant catches the point.
“Maybe I wanted you to look up to me,” he says. “I was the guy who came through for you. Saved you. Yes, I admit it. I liked that. Okay?”
I open my hand to the door.
“Take a swing at me or something,” he says.
This is really bothering him. He needs my forgiveness. He can find other lawyers. Anyone can learn the election laws. But he’s feeling a real loss here. He just suffered the greatest political defeat of his life and he’s worrying about our friendship.
“Go home,” I say. “I have to get my dogs.” I nod to him, the first softening in my armor.
“I’ll talk to you later?” he asks.
“We’ll see,” I say, walking away from him.
62
THE DEMONS ALWAYS come at night. This is when I hear Gina screaming, even when I never heard it to begin with. This is when the echoes of fear rise within my chest, creating such a deafening crescendo of panic that for a moment, I forget where I am.
But all is quiet in the cemetery where Gina Mason lies forever. It’s a nice enough place but not well-kept. It’s the kind of place where someone with no money buries her daughter.
Gina Mason. 1960–1979. A beautiful soul.
She was nineteen when she died. That’s all I knew. I didn’t know anything else about her, all of the things that made her human. I saw sex and lust. Maybe I saw promise, too, in both of us.
I reach down to the tombstone for no particular reason, run my fingers over the words her family left the world to know about her. My hand grazes down to the grass, and my finger catches on a thorn. A single rose has been placed on the grave. Freshly picked.
Probably placed there today.
That’s not smart. The police may think Bennett drove north when they found that abandoned rental car, but that won’t stop the local cops, maybe even the FBI, from making the occasional pass by the cemetery. They find any hint that Bennett stopped by for a visit, they’ll be crawling all over the region. His aunt, the one who raised him, died from liver failure four years back, one of many details of Ben’s life that came out after this whole charade. Ben is the only remaining family for Gina. He might as well have left a business card on her grave.
I pause a moment as a shiver courses through me. If there is nothing else to learn from everything that happened, I should know not to underestimate Bennett Carey. And as I think about it, it seems obvious. Of course. There is a part of him, at least, that wants to get caught, that always did. After his successful escape, the story is left hanging, not fully explained. The public, the carnivorous media, is left with Grant Tully’s denials, with my new lawyer’s assertion that the evidence is “inconclusive.” With Bennett in custody, the press will hang breathlessly on his every word, his entire account of what happened. And in truth, there is little downside. He’s not concerned with his own fate. Bennett was given a life sentence at age eight, and he will serve it faithfully, even now.
I fish through my jacket pocket and find an empty envelope and a pen. I scribble my message to Ben and place it next to the rose, with a small rock on it to hold it in place. Two simple words that Gina would utter, I’m quite sure, if she could. But as I head back to my car, navigating through the enveloping darkness and misplaced shadows, I realize that Ben will never follow my advice, and that if I were honest with myself, I would admit that I have never done so, either. Maybe it’s time now, for both of us.
Move on.
Acknowledgments
MY TIME WORKING as an attorney for the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives was helpful in providing me with background and context for this novel. From that background, I have created anecdotes and stories that are entirely of my own imagination. This is a work of fiction. Nothing in this novel actually happened.
There are many people to thank for their direct or indirect participation in the drafting of this novel. Mike Kasper, a friend and sometimes mentor, looked over a draft of this novel and provided excellent feedback. Ed Nystrom, my future father-in-law, read the first draft and provided outstanding insight that changed the novel. Jim Jann once again provided criticism that gave a depth and perspective to the novel that was lacking.
Dr. Ronald K. Wright, an internationally renowned forensic pathologist, provided creative and insightful information for the scientific aspects to the crimes that take place in this novel. Thank you for your time and your enthusiasm.
Many of the usual suspects looked over early drafts and provided critical commentary and encouragement: Dan and Kristin Collins, Jim and Jill Kopecky, and Jim Minton. Thanks to each of you for the impact you made on this book. My mother, Judy Ellis, and my sister, Jennifer Taylor, once again played the roles of critical readers and loving, supportive family members.
Thank you to my law partners, Lisa Starcevich, David Williams, Doug Bax, and Dan Collins, for your support and enthusiasm for my “other job.”
The lawyers and friends on the eleventh floor of 111 West Washington could not realize how much they have influenced me and this novel. Thank you in particular to William Harte, a legendary Chicago lawyer, for everything you have taught me about the practice of law in Chicago.
Thanks again to my agent, Jeff Gerecke, for keeping a steady hand. Thanks to my editor, David Highfill, for your excellent critique and for your friendship.
As always, the final word goes to my future bride, Susan, for the beauty that you bring to my life. None of this would mean a thing without you.
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