Shadow of Doubt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery)

by Jonnie Jacobs

  I looked toward the phone in the kitchen while I weighed my options. George shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he croaked. “I promise.”

  In the end, I didn’t make the call. Instead, I had him hand over his wallet and ruby ring, for security in case his story didn’t check out. Then we walked together to his maroon Toyota, George in front, me following with the gun. He got in and drove away. I watched until the car disappeared from sight.

  Chapter 25

  It had been a long night. I was still asleep when the doorbell rang a little after eleven the next morning. Groggy and sore, I hobbled to answer it.

  Ken greeted me with a smug smile and a peck on the cheek. “Surprise!”

  “What are you doing here?” I squinted at him with my one good eye.

  He looked as though he were on his way to a polo match. Khaki slacks, crisp white shirt, blue pullover looped around his shoulders. It was a look he carried well.

  “You couldn’t make it to San Francisco, so I came here instead.” The tone was jaunty, but there was an unfamiliar tightness to his voice. Even the smile was more restrained than usual. “It was kind of a last minute decision. I tried calling last night, but I guess you were out.”

  We moved from the doorway into the living room. I got another kiss, but it wasn’t any more impassioned than the first. Ken sat and began drumming his fingers on the table top.

  “You have any coffee? I could use a cup.”

  “Actually, I don’t. I threw away my father’s jar of instant when I cleaned out the kitchen, and I’ve run out of the good stuff from home. I could make tea, though.”

  Ken stopped his drumming. “How about I take you out for lunch instead?” He paused and raised an eyebrow. “Or is it breakfast?”

  “I had a very late night,” I said, deciding to leave it at that. “And I’d love to go out for something to eat. I don’t think there’s much of anything in the house.”

  His gaze drifted away and then back again. He’d been casting surreptitious glances at my swollen eye and scraped cheek since the moment I’d opened the door. Finally, curiosity got the better of good breeding.

  “What happened to your face?” he asked, staring openly. “An accident? I saw the car window on my way in.”

  “The two things are unrelated.” It was an observation which offered little comfort. If George was telling the truth, there was still someone wandering around who wanted me out of the picture, one way or the other.

  Ken scrunched up his face and waited.

  I opened my mouth to explain, then shut it again. The truth required more explanation than I had energy for. “The car was an accident,” I told him. “As for my face, I fell.” I headed for the bedroom. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll be ready to go.”

  I left Ken to his own devices while I took a quick shower and got dressed. My face looked worse than it had the night before, and make-up didn’t help much. It hurt too, as did my whole body. I ached in places I didn’t even know I had.

  When I returned to the living room, I found Ken sitting on the sofa, right where I’d left him. He was rubbing his temples with his fingertips, but glanced up when I came in. “All set?”

  I nodded.

  Ken hesitated a moment, then stood, offering me a lightning quick smile. It came and went almost in the same instant

  Out front, we passed by the BMW. True to his word, George had had someone out already that morning. The guy must have come and gone while I was still asleep, like the shoemaker’s elf. But he’d done his job. The tires had been replaced, the broken window neatly covered with plastic, and the exterior cleaned. I was, however, able to detect a few new scratches.

  As we climbed into Ken’s car, which had not so much as a single nick or smudge anywhere, I tried to remember that in the great scheme of things, material possessions didn’t count for much.

  I directed Ken to Betty’s Cafe, the only local spot I knew. When we pulled up in front Ken frowned.

  I shrugged. “This is Silver Creek. We don’t have a Ritz Carlton.”

  The Sunday morning crowd had begun to thin out. Here and there stragglers dawdled over the morning paper, but we had no trouble finding an empty booth. I ordered ham and eggs, and a side dish of French toast having suddenly discovered that I was ravenous. Ken had an English muffin and black coffee.

  “It was nice of you to drive up here,” I said, smiling at the thought of it I was still having trouble believing he’d actually come. Ken’s life is tightly scheduled. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for spontaneity.

  He reached across the table for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. I squeezed back.

  I’d been waiting for that fluttery feeling I usually got around Ken, a feeling like butterflies beating their wings against my chest. It hadn’t happened, but it was good to see him all the same.

  “You want to go on a picnic this afternoon?” I asked. “The countryside is beautiful this time of year.”

  For a minute, Ken didn’t say anything. He simply looked at me, glassy-eyed. Then he withdrew his hand and lowered his eyes. “I’m taking a job in D.C.,” he said.

  I heard the words, but it took a moment for them to register. “You’re leaving the firm?”

  “The firm is breaking apart.” He looked up. “Wallace and Betts are going off on their own, Latham is retiring, Fisher and I are joining other firms. Turns out Goldman has been dipping into firm accounts, playing fast and loose with the funds. When our receivables went way up, it all came home to roost. He’s taking full responsibility.”

  “What about the associates?”

  Ken rubbed his thumbs against the side of his coffee mug. “I don’t know. I guess it depends on what they can work out.”

  “They don’t know?”

  “We’re going to make the announcement tomorrow.” I thought of my mortgage, my car payments, my student debt. I thought of the long hours I’d put into building my reputation, working my way toward partnership. I remembered the horror stories from friends who’d suddenly found themselves jobless in a tight market. I felt sick — truly, physically, nauseous.

  “Latham will give you a good recommendation,” Ken said. “And I’ll help in any way I can. You could probably even go with Wallace and Betts. They’re talking about taking one or two associates with them.”

  Wallace and Betts were the sort of attorneys people had in mind when they told lawyer jokes. Besides that, they were arrogant chauvinists. I’d wait tables before I’d go with them.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I start officially in D.C. a week from tomorrow, but I’ll be back and forth quite a bit initially. It’s hard leaving on a moment’s notice. I’ve got to sell the house, tie up a few loose ends. You know how it is.”

  I nodded mutely. I hadn’t expected him to ask me to go along. I wouldn’t have gone anyway. But it hurt that he hadn’t acknowledged leaving anything more than a house and a few loose ends.

  “It’s a good opportunity,” he said, looking enthusiastic for the first time all day. “The firm has good clients and solid political connections. It’s the kind of work I’ve always wanted to do.”

  Across the room a young family was packing up after their meal. The mother piled stuffed animals and baby bottles into a cloth bag, while the father jiggled an infant in one of those plastic rockers. I pushed away my uneaten food. I noticed Ken hadn’t touched his English muffin either.

  “I’m sorry it had to happen like this, Kali. None of us had any idea how bad things really were. Not until this last partners’ retreat. That’s when it all started to unravel.”

  I nodded again. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “I wanted to tell you in person, and before you heard it from someone else.”

  “Thanks.” I meant that honestly. A round-trip drive of six hours must have weighed heavily against a simple phone call.

  Ken paid the bill. We drove back to my father’s house and sat aro
und awkwardly for another forty-five minutes. We talked about other, more pleasant subjects, but there were still long periods of silence.

  I was reminded of the first time we met, a recruitment lunch in which we’d struggled to find enough in common to get us through dessert. Ken had been engaged then, to the daughter of one of the firm’s major clients. After the engagement was broken I never did get the full story about that he’d shown up at every firm function with a different woman. Slender, usually blonde, always attractive in that blue-blood sort of way. I never gave him much thought during any of that time; he was a different breed than the sort of man I usually dated, as well as a partner in the firm. But when he invited me to attend a black-tie dinner at the Stanford Court, I did exactly what I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do — I fell for the guy. Except that it had always been an uneasy infatuation.

  Finally, Ken looked at his watch and announced that he had to be getting back. He put his arms around my neck and pulled me close. I could smell the familiar scents of aftershave and laundry starch. Pressing my cheek against the nubby fabric of his shirt, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the other, better, times.

  After a moment, he held me at arm’s length and looked me in the eye. “You’re a good attorney, Kali. You’ll do fine. This may even be a blessing in disguise. You never did fit the Goldman and Latham mold. And what’s more important, you’re a good person. They’re even scarcer than good attorneys.”

  The words were nice, but they sounded too much like a eulogy to do much for my spirits.

  “Maybe you can visit me in D.C.,” he said.

  “Maybe.”

  Silence.

  “It wouldn’t have worked anyway, you know.”

  I nodded. I did know. I’d probably known all along.

  The doorbell rang just then. Ken went to get a drink of water, and I went to answer the door.

  Tom leaned against the frame, grinning. He was coated in dust and smelled of wood smoke and pork fat. In an instant, the grin dropped. “What happened to your face?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Before I could begin explaining, Ken returned from the kitchen. The two men scrutinized each other, poker face to poker face.

  I cleared my throat. “Ken, Tom.” No sooner had I made the introductions, than the phone rang.

  I recognized Jannine’s voice immediately.

  “Kali, I need your help. I’ve been arrested.”

  Chapter 26

  I left Tom and Ken to work out the “how-do-you-know-Kali” connections on their own, and headed for the county jail. I’d taken time to put in a brief call to a bail bondsman I’d worked with in the city. He was standing by, but I knew we’d never be able to get a hearing on Sunday. Even Monday might be iffy.

  It made me wonder. Had Silver Creek’s finest deliberately timed Jannine’s arrest for a weekend, ensuring her added time to think about “cooperating”? Or had the arrest come on the tail of some fresh bit of damning evidence? While the first explanation rankled my sense of fair play, the second was by far more worrisome.

  The street fronting the Hall of Justice was practically deserted. I parked, and out of habit locked the car. With the driver side window protected only by a flimsy sheet of plastic, it was a meaningless exercise.

  The building was relatively new. A three-story structure which looked, from the outside, like the cookie-cutter office buildings which had been springing up throughout suburban areas of the state. The inside wasn’t too bad. Austere and colorless, but not dreary. A definite step above its counterparts in San Francisco and Oakland.

  I gave my name to the guard, and he had someone usher me to an upstairs room. It was sparsely furnished, with a bare table and four vinyl chairs. Though window-less and stuffy, it was at least clean. A strong disinfectant odor permeated the air.

  Moments later, a police matron brought Jannine to the room and sat her at the table. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” the matron said to me. Apparently, Jannine’s needs didn’t count for much.

  When the matron left, Jannine looked at me and burst into tears. “Get me out of here, Kali.”

  I sat next to her and hugged her hard. “I will, I promise. But I’m afraid it might not be right away.”

  “When will it be?” Jannine’s shapeless prison-issue dress looked to be several sizes too large. Her face was shiny and scrubbed raw, her hair flew out in odd directions.

  I took her hand. “Tomorrow maybe. Or it might be a lot longer.”

  “Tomorrow?” Her voice broke somewhere in the middle of the word. “You mean I have to spend the night here?”

  “Probably. It might be Tuesday before we can even get a hearing. It all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “The court calendar, the DA.’s schedule, that sort of thing. They’ve got forty-eight hours to set a hearing, and weekends don’t count.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “I don’t think I can stand it that long.”

  “I’ll push for something as soon as possible, but I can’t promise.”

  Jannine slumped down in her chair and drew a hand across her cheek, wiping at the tears.

  “Have they been treating you okay?” I asked.

  She nodded. “It’s not that, it’s just . . . just that everything is so awful here. I want to get out. Please, Kali. I need to get out of here.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “The kids were so upset. They’re frightened and worried, and I can’t even talk to them.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “With Mom. The police were nice about that at least. They let me call her from home.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  She bit her lower lip, then shook her head.

  “Tell me what happened when the police came.”

  “Not much. They said they had a warrant for my arrest, and they were going to take me in. Like I said, though, they were nice about it. We waited until Mom got there.”

  “You didn’t let them question you, did you?”

  “No, when they said that stuff about the right to an attorney, I told them I wanted to talk to you. I don’t think they were particularly interested in asking questions anyway. They seem to think they already have all the answers.” She pulled herself up straight, and sighed. “So what happens now?”

  “There’ll be a hearing where you are formally charged and you enter your plea. That’s also when we deal with the question of bail and getting you out of here. Later, there will be another hearing where the DA will show that he has a case. Unless the judge throws it out at that point, there will be a trial.”

  Jannine blinked hard. “You really think it will come to that?”

  “I’m afraid it might.”

  The tears began gathering again in the corners of her eyes. “But I’m innocent. They can’t prove I killed him if I didn’t.”

  They could, though. And that’s what made the whole thing so frightening. “They’ll put together a scenario that fits with the evidence they have. It will all be circumstantial, but they’ll use it to paint the picture they want.”

  I didn’t bother to add that, from the state’s perspective, the pieces fit rather nicely. Jannine’s gun as the murder weapon, a witness who saw a blue car like hers in the vicinity of the murder, the fact she cleaned her car that afternoon, and the fact that she had no alibi. Add to it rumors of a rocky marriage and the neighbor’s account of the fight Jannine and Eddie had that morning, and it made a pretty convincing story.

  “The thing to remember,” I told her, “is that the state has the burden of proof. All you have to do is show that their case leaves room for reasonable doubt, that there just might be a different way of looking at the evidence.” She bit her lower lip again and nodded.

  “You should start thinking about your scenario of what happened. You need to make sure everything’s covered and that everything is consistent. You don’t want to be tripped up, and you don’t want your attorney to be surprised by new r
evelations.”

  She nodded again. “I’ve told you everything I remember.”

  “I’ll handle the arraignment and bail,” I told her, “but you’ll need someone else for trial.”

  Her face dropped. “Why?”

  “I’m not a criminal attorney, for one thing.”

  “And I’m not a criminal.”

  “All the more reason you need an attorney with solid criminal experience.”

  “How am I going to pay someone like that?” She looked up from wringing her hands. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I expect to pay you, Kali, it’s just that it won’t be right away. Not until the insurance is settled and everything.”

  “It’s not the money, Jannine. It’s that I haven’t handled a criminal case in almost five years. And I’ve never handled a big murder trial.”

  She closed her eyes against the tears.

  “You have the right to have an attorney appointed by the court, you know.”

  “A public defender?” Her eyes opened, and her mouth twitched. “Me and the junkies and the bag ladies.”

  The idea didn’t give me a lot of comfort either. There were exceptions, of course, but for the most part, public defenders were harried and overworked, more experienced at arranging plea bargains than aggressive trial defense.

  “I’ll stay involved,” I told her. “I’ll meet with the P.D., help out, see that nothing gets lost in the shuffle.”

  The matron stuck her head in. “Time’s just about up. Couple more minutes is all.”

  “I’ll see about getting you out of here today,” I told Jannine. “If not, I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning. You hang in there. And don’t worry, we’ll work it out

  Okay?” I reached for her hand and held it tight a moment

  Jannine smiled, a tentative, sad smile. “I’m sorry to have put all this on you. It’s just that I’m so scared. I don’t know who else I can turn to.”

  “I want to help. I’m happy to do whatever I can.”

  She stood to leave and then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. The man from the bank called yesterday, about that ten thousand dollar deposit. It’s the strangest thing. You’ll never guess where the money came from.” She shook her head. A bewildered half-laugh followed. “It was your father, of all people.”