Norman pulled his lips together like a llama getting ready to spit. His lower jaw moved back and forth. “I’m not buying this ‘no priors’ crap, excuse my French.”
Jake feigned exasperation. “The jury will. Lemme see … a young mother, two small children, helpless. You tell me how they’re gonna deliberate.”
Norman’s façade cracked. He knew Jake could be right. But still he made an attempt to brush it off. “Take a hike, Brooks.”
Jake clapped a hand on his chest as though he’d been stabbed. “You don’t mean that, Norm. And you know why you don’t mean that? Because I’m gonna save your butt.”
Kelly almost chuckled. She could practically smell the testosterone. The childishness of their exchange would have been amusing if it wasn’t her life, and her kids, they were sparring with.
The men stared at each other, estimating the weakness in their respective positions. Norman took just a little too long to respond, a subtle acknowledgment of his marginal disadvantage.
Jake seized the moment. “She gives you the MO—how he works, where he works, et cetera—and she walks.”
He’d pushed Norman just a bit too far. The prosecutor stood. “You’re dreaming, Brooks. We’re going all the way with this one. Get out of here.” He flung his hands girlishly at the door.
Jake knew the sound of an empty threat. He leaned languidly over to Kelly. “The acoustics must be bad in here.”
I hope to God you know what you’re doing, thought Kelly.
“Let me crank up the volume …” Jake raised his voice. “She’s a FIRST-time offender. This is the FIRST and ONLY offense that you’ve got on her as an adult. Furthermore, she’s just a PAWN, and I’m offering you a KEY to INFORMATION HEAVEN, which together with even a tiny bit of gray matter, results in a major BUST.”
Norman leaned forward on his desk to avoid the indignity of sitting down right away. “Yeah, yeah, but a conviction in hand would be good for me right now,” he said, attempting to effect a blasé expression to match his voice.
Jake slammed his open palm on Norman’s desk, appearing to be at the end of his patience. “Here I am, trying to give you the real criminal and save the taxpayers millions of reimbursement dollars, and all you do is threaten my client, who has already been victimized and used as a pawn in a major banking fraud. Give me a break. I can forgive almost anything but stupidity.”
Norman’s face was as expressive as a cow’s.
Jake abruptly stood up and took Kelly’s arm.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Jake responded over his shoulder. “To see your boss. I hear he’s got some brain cells left in his head.”
They were almost at the door when Norman growled, “Get your butts back in here. I want details, names …”
Kelly turned. She looked directly into Norman’s eyes. She had the plan. It would depend on so much going her way, but she had it.
“It’s Todd Gillis,” she said softly.
“Horseshit!” Norman yelled back. “Wait, what did you say?”
Son of a bitch, fuck … What the hell is she doing? thought Jake. She’s throwing out the carrot in full Technicolor. He had told her that in the gray zone you don’t reveal anything. It’s all about knowing when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to play your ace. He’d thought she understood: Think of something they’ll want to cover up. Threaten them with the media—that’s always effective. Was she even listening to me? he thought.
Aloud, he said, “My friends down at the Times might be very interested to know that the people’s representative is refusing to save their money. My client doesn’t need to risk her kids’ lives by snitching for you. In fact, she doesn’t have to help you with any information. She’s offering to be on your team and to cooperate. I have no doubt that the judge is going to look very favorably at her actions.”
Norman paused just long enough that Jake thought he’d overshot again. He looked at Kelly. “Gillis is the fish?”
Kelly looked deferentially down at her hands and nodded. Norman’s brown eyes blinked and he sat down. “Okay. If you’re saying you can deliver Gillis, you’ve got a deal. But you’d better fucking give him to me on a silver platter.”
* * *
As they left the federal building, Jake felt as though he was invisible. Kelly moved without looking back. Her steps were light and lazy. She didn’t say a single word.
What the fuck’s with her? Jake asked himself. She was shutting him out.
Kelly stepped into his car without thanking him for holding the door open. She was staring at something in midair. Her eyes never moved when he slammed the car into gear and drove off.
Jake laid into her for going against his plan, but crowed that her change of tactic had worked.
Kelly said nothing.
When they reached his office, she still wasn’t talking. When Jake finally asked her what was going on, she just shook her head and asked for the key to the restroom reserved for his clients.
Jake waited in his office, excited to get started. He wanted to nail Gillis, too, and now he knew they could do it.
Fifteen minutes went by. Finally, he asked Joyce to check the restroom. Kelly wasn’t there. She had disappeared without a trace.
CHAPTER 22
THE NEXT DAY, THROUGH THE OPEN BLINDS IN his office, Jake stared at the office workers streaming over the pedestrian bridge to the Century City mall. Kelly had been missing for almost twenty-four hours. Where is she? He’d called Jeanette Pantelli, but Kelly hadn’t arrived to check on her kids. Or at least, no one who fit the description of Kelly Jensen/Kelly Gillis/Natalie St. Clair had been in the vicinity. God only knew what Kelly could disguise herself as if she really wanted to sneak up to Tahoe, undetected, to see them. She was like water: She could take any form that suited her. And, like water, she was soft and silent, yet deadly if need be.
Jake was furious—with her, with himself. Once more the events of yesterday, after he’d discovered Kelly was missing, played out in his mind. He felt his pulse quickening now, just as it had when he’d raced to his apartment to see if she’d gone there. He had entered the guest room without knocking. It didn’t matter; she wasn’t there. She had left her duffel bag in the closet. Jake didn’t even hesitate. He dove into the bag as if it contained the secrets of the universe.
He pulled out a pile of scarves that smelled like her—not of perfume, but of fresh, crisp air, like it came from near the sea or a mountain peak. A couple of hats. Three pairs of sunglasses in different styles. Assorted vials and compacts and tubes in a small makeup bag, along with Q-tips in a plastic pouch and a substance the texture and color of Silly Putty. A Ziploc held Band-Aids, tampons, dental floss, mouthwash, adhesive tape, an instant cold pack, a roll of quarters, and a Power Bar.
Jake ran his hand around the bottom of the bag and pulled out a bottle. Tums, half empty. On the bag’s exterior, one side pocket was stuffed with used Kleenex smeared with beige makeup and red lipstick. The other pocket held a cache of fresh packets of Kleenex. That was all.
Jake sat down on the bed and turned the duffel upside down, shaking it hard. He hefted it with two hands. Something didn’t seem right. He felt all the way around the inside again. Nothing. No lumps, no bulges. He felt all the seams, tapped on the hard bottom. Nothing. Jake looked up guiltily, expecting Kelly to walk in, but his apartment was silent.
The cops would have X-rayed her bag when she was arrested, so Jake wasn’t sure what he was looking for. He was about to give up when a white thread on the bottom corner caught his eye. He pulled it, and the bottom of the duffel opened. The thick cardboard base slid out easily, and he tossed it aside. Jake slipped his hand all the way around the thin space, feeling carefully in the corners. Nothing. With a frustrated shout, he hurled the bag to the floor. It landed half on top of the cardboard—and that’s when he saw it. The layers of cardboard were just slightly separated. They came apart easily in his fingers, and out fluttered a photograph.
&nbs
p; Jake stared at it, curious. He spotted Kelly immediately. She was young, wearing a fake-looking smile. On either side of her were the Gordons, standing a little too close, pressing in on Kelly as if they thought she would fly away. The picture was a poignant reminder of Kelly’s tragic past. Jake wondered why she kept it with her. He glanced at the rest of the picture. Three other children stood on the other sides of the Gordons, presumably their other foster children.
Jake stared, frozen in disbelief. He looked harder, not able to comprehend what he was seeing. Could it be true? The other children were two boys and a girl. All three looked underfed and unhappy. But the girl looked out with a particular malevolence, and Jake found himself staring into the eyes of Stacy Steingart.
He exploded with rage, punching the wall. Kelly knew Stacy Steingart—Porter’s killer? They had been foster kids at the Gordons’ at the same time? He had been too quick to believe Kelly was innocent. He had fallen for her sob stories the same way Porter had. But the difference was, he had no excuse. Porter was the idealist, not him.
Not quite sure what he was doing, Jake carried the photo to the living room. His thinking up to this point had been smudged—he was aware of that now. Logic and strategy had been going up against compassion and attraction. He knew that the only sane thing to do at this moment was to take the photograph and everything he knew to the FBI and to Law Boy. He would let them take over, find Kelly, and do with her as they wanted.
Yet he stood in the living room deliberating. And as he opened The Sibley Guide to Birds and slipped the picture between pages eighty-nine and ninety, one thing was as clear as vodka: He was concealing evidence. He had just crossed the line from defense attorney to accessory.
Jake had spent the rest of the day and most of a restless night trying to track Kelly down. He was in too deep now. And to top it off, she’d been entrusted to his recognizance—her disappearance could mean the end of his career. The minute she disappeared, he should’ve had the cops, the sheriffs, the SWAT teams after her. After all, she was a potential accessory to murder.
Joyce’s voice pulled Jake back to the reality of his office. “Still no answer,” she said from the doorway. “I’ve been trying every fifteen minutes.”
Jake let the blinds clatter against the window. “I don’t fucking believe it,” he muttered.
Perching on the edge of his sofa and lighting a cigarette, Joyce watched Jake lift a portable ironing board from behind the door and carefully balance it on two stacks of law books. Then he took off his shirt and stuffed it into a laundry bag labeled DIRTY.
Hanging next to this laundry bag was another, marked CLEAN. Jake pulled out a shirt and fussily fitted the yoke over the end of the ironing board. Ever since college, Jake had done his own shirts. “Keep your dirty laundry to yourself”—it was a priority in protecting his privacy.
Joyce took a long drag off her cigarette and rested her feet on a stack of legal papers. For as long as she had worked for Jake, she’d enjoyed this ironing routine. It had become a signal that he wanted her input. Today, however, her enjoyment was marred by his evident distress over this Kelly woman.
Joyce exhaled a plume of smoke from the corner of her mouth. “Look at the positive side: First loss is best loss. That girl was a disaster ready to happen. Now maybe she’s not your problem anymore.” She had taken an instant dislike to Kelly and now had trouble disguising the pleasure in her voice.
“She intrigued me,” Jake said simply. He slipped the shirt off the board and started on the collar. He said nothing, in violation of their usual discussion rules. He was supposed to start thinking aloud, and Joyce would insert sage comments and advice. Joyce smoked silently, a little peeved. When she’d finished her cigarette and Jake still hadn’t spoken another word, she started to move toward the door.
“Well, you sure know how to pick them,” she said.
Jake looked up, iron in hand, and grinned. It was a hollow expression.
Joyce exhaled loudly. “You want me to keep trying?”
“Yes, every ten minutes.” Jake finished up the second sleeve and flipped the shirt to the back. “Thanks.”
He knew he had pissed off Joyce, but he couldn’t confide in her. He wasn’t even sure he could explain it to himself. Why was he continuing to protect Kelly? And risking his own career? To make up for the way the system had abused her and robbed her of her childhood? Why? Could he give her back her childhood or repay her somehow for what the justice system had stolen?
What justice? A child was torn away from her dead mother’s arms and thrown into a world of betrayals and abuse. The prisons were filled with Kellys—kids born into a world of little or no choice. Talked to mostly by cynics, among them Jake himself, these kids touched futility in every pathway of life and every encounter. But cynics made poor friends, as his ex-girlfriends would testify.
Jake felt a gnawing in the pit of his stomach—a sensation that had become so familiar to him since Kelly had entered his life. He tasted bile. Why was he choosing to walk her rocky road? Did it all come down to exploring his dark side? Was it that holding her hand through hell—what a clever wordsmith he was—would make her lean on him to the point of total dependency … maybe even make her love him? Or was it just his desire to become Jake the Explorer? Was capturing the intangible so exciting, or was it a mere obsession?
Jake was finishing the fourth shirt when Joyce burst into his office. He looked up eagerly. “Did you find her?”
Joyce shook her head, her lips pressed closed severely. “Your private line. It’s Todd Gillis.”
CHAPTER 23
“I’VE INVITED YOU HERE …” GILLIS HESITATED, AS if selecting the wrong words would be the verbal equivalent of clipping the wrong wire to defuse a bomb. He steepled his fingers in front of his lips and glanced down at his desk. “I asked you here because I have information that I’d rather not spill to the cops or the feds.”
Although keyed up, Jake said nothing. He resisted leaning forward. After years in his profession, he’d learned just to let people talk. Everyone, except for a skillful few, revealed more during a simple period of his silence than they would under harsh lights or meticulous questioning. He could see Gillis trying to gauge any reactive signals from Jake, any emotional buttons he could push. Jake had been down this road more often than Gillis knew. The intelligence level of his opponents changed, but never the intent. Sociopaths were sociopaths.
Gillis’s LA office was dark and stern, even though one entire wall was glass and high enough above the surrounding buildings to let in the sun. Mahogany paneling dimmed two other walls. The fourth contained floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with books so nondescript they could have been multiple sets of encyclopedias. Centered between the bookshelves was a fireplace, unlit. Gillis’s enormous, dark, ornately carved wooden desk was positioned on a raised platform, and Gillis sat behind it with his back to the wall of windows so that he was perpetually backlit and visitors were blinded. It was an affectation designed to intimidate, like the Louis XVI antiques in the reception area and the Renoirs and Monets in the lobby. Jake wasn’t falling for any of it.
Gillis creaked forward in his high-backed antique leather chair. “I don’t quite know how to say this … I guess I’m a little embarrassed.” He rubbed his jaw roughly. “The truth is, Porter Garrett’s mistress, Kelly Jensen, is my wife.”
Jake squinted. Gillis was trying to feel out what he knew, of course. Jake rearranged himself in the low-slung leather guest chair and molded his face into a mask of boredom.
“Really.”
Gillis’s smile was warm, almost sheepish. “But you’ve known that for a while. Even before you risked your career and said you’d supervise her recognizance. I have friends at the courthouse. And I’m a friend of Shrake’s, you see. He mentioned you’d shown some interest in Kelly.”
Jake scowled. “That asshole suffers from a severe case of verbal diarrhea. Who wouldn’t be interested in a beautiful, talented singer?”
Gillis
fiddled with a paperweight, a cube of shiny, bronze-colored metal, and smiled. “Take it easy. Shrake knew Kelly and I have a past. He was doing what comes naturally to people like him. Gossiping. You see, it was Kelly who left me …” Gillis paused and looked toward the dark fireplace. Jake watched him swallow a couple of times, his Adam’s apple straight in its track. He was surprised to see Gillis allowing himself this vulnerability and was intrigued that the man was capable of it. If that’s what it was. Could this ice man have a melting point named Kelly Jensen? Or was he that good an actor?
“Almost two years ago,” Gillis continued. “She left me. I know she was young when we got married, but I gave her everything she ever dreamed of, everything she wanted. You ever been married, Brooks?”
Jake shook his head. He was surprised to see softness in someone so hard, but at the same time, he didn’t trust Gillis’s “I am human” epiphany.
“Well, I loved that girl. Love her. She took my kids, too. No note. No forwarding address. I wake up one morning and she’s gone, vanished.”
“Look—”
Gillis held up his hand. “It’s alright. The thing is, I searched everywhere for her—wouldn’t you? A shrink would say I was addicted to my own wife. Maybe even obsessed. That may be true, but I also didn’t want the police involved. A man in my position—the press would have had a field day. I also … If another man …” Gillis paused again, spinning the paperweight by quarter turns.
“I also didn’t want her to get in trouble. There are other things she did—things I could have come after her for.”
Jake leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. He had to mask his growing anxiety about Kelly—her safety, her trustworthiness.
“It’s alright, Brooks,” said Gillis. “I know a lot of what you know already. But think about it. Taking our kids across state lines without my consent? Kidnapping? Also, she …” Gillis jerked to his feet. “Let’s take this outside. I need some air, and I have some things I want to tell you, more privately.”
The Gray Zone Page 17