Devlin's Light

by Mariah Stewart

  August leaned on the wide window ledge and looked out toward the bay. Prima lux. First light. She had never missed this favorite moment of each new day. It was hers, and she cherished it and gave thanks for it. One more morning. One more day.

  One more day to be there for Corri, for India. One more day to mourn Ry, to carry the void her beloved nephew had left. One more day to anchor the Devlin family, to breathe the salt air and to hear the gulls cry, to watch for the herons, to listen for the call of the geese as they passed overhead, heralding the coming of fall.

  Tempus doth indeed fugit. She sighed.

  Twenty minutes later a red-eyed India came into the kitchen, suitcase and travel bags in hand, and kissed August goodbye before leaving. Watching her from the doorway, August said a little prayer that the trial would go quickly so that India could be back in Devlin’s Light before Corri might begin to wonder if India, like her mother and Ry, had vanished from her life for good.

  “Hey, Indy, welcome back.” Barry Singer, a detective from the city’s vice squad, greeted India as she plowed through the ever-crowded space allotted to the district attorney and his staff in the basement of City Hall.

  “I told you I’d be here for the trial,” she told him.

  “Indy,” Singer said, laying a hand on her shoulder, “we’re all sorry as hell about Ry.”

  “I know, Barry. And I want to thank you guys for the flowers. I appreciated the thought. So did Aunt August.”

  “How’s she taking it?” Singer, himself raised by an elderly grandmother, had been extremely solicitous to August on those few occasions when she had visited India at the office.

  India paused in the doorway of her assigned workplace and reflected. “Aunt August is strong. She is the backbone of the family. Even my dad acknowledged that, that it was August who kept us all together over the years. But she adored Ry, and frankly, I am concerned about her. She is terribly sad. As we all are. And of course, now there’s Corri …”

  “Did Ry appoint you as her guardian?”

  “He didn’t spell it out in a will, if that’s what you mean. But of course, between Aunt August and me, Corri will have all the loving family she could want. And since Ry had formally adopted her, Corri will inherit his share of the family trust. She’ll be well provided for, in any event.”

  “Anything we can do, me and Liz”—he made reference to his wife—“we’re there.”

  “Thanks, Singer.” India acknowledged the kindness with a half smile, then turned the corner of the gray divider used to create cubicles for the assistant district attorneys in the basement of City Hall.

  “So”—India plunked her pocketbook and briefcase on the floor next to her desk in the overcrowded and chaotic cubical and was suddenly all business—“did you get a statement from that kid who was hiding behind the swings when Axel scooped up the Melendez girl?”

  “His mother won’t let him talk to me. And Indy, I don’t know that I blame her. Axel Thomas is a really nasty guy. Between you and me, I don’t know that I’d want to bring my little boy to his attention.”

  “Maybe I could give it a try.” Indy flipped through a pile of messages on her desk. “Do you have their number?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you can convince her to let her five-year-old come in to open court and make an I.D. on a child molester who may or may not go to jail. You are smooth, Devlin, but if it was my kid, I’d tell you to—”

  “The number, Singer,” India deadpanned, “or I’ll tell everyone that ‘Barry’ is short for ‘Bardolf.’”

  “That’s low, Devlin. Real low.” The short, stocky detective turned pale.

  “That number was …” She batted her eyelashes expectantly.

  The detective wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “India, I really don’t think—”

  “Look, Barry, it won’t hurt for me to talk to her. I want this guy.” She dialed, then looked up at him. “I’m not going to try to talk the parents into letting their son testify, if that’s what you’re worried about. I would not jeopardize a child’s welfare for the sake of a conviction. I just want to talk to him, maybe get just enough information so that we won’t need to have him on the stand—Hello, Mrs. Powell? This is India Devlin, Paloma district attorney’s office. I’d like to stop in this afternoon to speak with you about Axel Thomas …”

  By seven-thirty that evening, India had met with the Powells and, through careful questioning, discovered that there may have been another witness. The Powell boy had described a woman who had been leaning out the second-floor window of an apartment overlooking the park at the same time that he had seen Thomas take off with the little girl. India called Singer and asked him to try to track her down and see if he could get a statement.

  Returning to her office, she read through piles of statements that had been taken while she had been in Devlin’s Light pertaining to yet another case before pulling out the files on the Thomas case. She would need to refresh herself on the facts if she was going to go to trial on Monday.

  Welcome back. India rotated her neck in a full circle to unkink it and glanced at the clock. Eleven-forty. The night had gone by in a blur. It was too late to call Aunt August and Corri. She would have to call them first thing the next morning. She packed three files into her already overstuffed briefcase. Frowning when she could not get the brown leather satchel to close, she pulled out one file, tucked it under her arm and hoisted her shoulder bag over her head to hang from her neck, thereby freeing up both hands for carrying.

  The hallway was darkened except for the lights over the doors and the exit sign. Walking past the double doors leading to the annex housing the city morgue always gave India a severe case of goose bumps, and tonight was no exception. Her heels made muffled popping sounds on the old tiled floor as she struggled down the hallway to the elevator, where she pressed the button for the lobby with an index finger. The old lift groaned as it slowly ascended, reminding her once again that the slowest elevators in Paloma were, in fact, in City Hall.

  “Can I give you a hand there, Miss Devlin?” Paul, the night guard, who pronounced her name Dev-a-lin, rose from his wooden chair, which stood right next to the elevator, halfway between the front and back doors of the building.

  “Oh, I’ll make it to the car if you can open the back door for me.”

  “Certainly, Miss Devlin.” He nodded and walked briskly, with purpose and importance, to the back door, his heavy ring of keys clanging loudly in the silent building.

  “Thank you.” India smiled at him gratefully as he held the door open for her to pass through. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll just wait here till you get to your car.” Paul stood on the top step, his right hand on his gun, as if daring some unseen felon to jump out at India. As she reached her car, he called to her across the quiet night: “Miss Devlin …”

  “Yes?” she called back as she hit the security button on her key ring to open the car door with a “beep.”

  “I was sorry about what happened to your brother.”

  “Thank you, Paul. So was I. Thank you for remembering him.” India opened the rear door on the driver’s side and threw her heavy bundles onto the seat and slammed the door. She slid in behind the wheel and turned the key. Waving to Paul, the silent, shadowy sentinel who still watched from the top step, she pulled out of the parking lot and onto the rain-slicked streets of the city that had been her home for the past five years.

  Paloma was a city on the mend. At one time it had been a busy manufacturing center, but the textile mills moved south and those days were long past. Concentrated efforts begun ten years ago to revitalize the downtown area, however, had met with some success. The shopping district was coming back to life, the new shops having been joined by a variety of cultural attractions and fine restaurants; a music hall built at the turn of the century today served as a popular venue for plays as well as concerts. Over the years the university had grown on the north side of the city, bringing wit
h it a well-endowed library and a highly regarded museum of natural history.

  Driving through this, the oldest part of town, India rechecked the locks to reassure herself that all the doors were secured. It was dark and it was late, and this was not the best place in the city for a young woman to be driving alone. Old City had stubbornly refused gentrification and had seemed to decline as rapidly as other parts of the city had improved. There were pockets of Paloma that resembled a war zone, where crime was so common it was rarely reported. India always felt relieved when she reached her street, which was several blocks beyond Old City and on the fringes of a section of Paloma known as the Crest, a totally renovated area that had caught the fancy of upscale buyers ten years ago and was now the fashionable place to live.

  India’s townhouse was narrow and three rooms deep, three stories high. She had seen similar homes in Philadelphia some years before, but there they were called “Trinities.” Here in Paloma they were known as “treys.” Everest Place lay as still as a sleeping child as she pulled up to the curb, grateful to find her usual parking space in front of her house empty and waiting for her return. The slamming of her car door echoed through the neighborhood, a rude interruption in the night silence. She unloaded everything at once, piling suitcases amid work files on her front steps so that, once inside, she would not have to venture back out onto the deserted street. Unlocking the front door, which swung without a sound into the small foyer, she tried to step over the mail, which had been propelled through the mail slot for the past week and now littered the entire floor of the entryway. Some pieces had made it all the way into the living room, she noted wryly.

  Dumping the suitcase onto the floor at the foot of the steps that led to the second floor, she returned to the front door and retrieved the rest of her belongings, kicking envelopes, catalogs and other assorted mail out of the way. She turned on the light nearest the sofa, scooped up the mail and dropped it on the table in the entry. It could all wait until tomorrow. Tonight she was too tired to read another word.

  The light on her answering machine blinked incessantly. Too many messages to listen to now. The morning would be soon enough, she decided with a shrug as she turned the key in the deadbolt lock on the front door. Dragging the suitcase up the steps, she sought the peace of her bedroom, where she had created a little getaway of sorts for herself. She turned on the overhead light and sighed. It was good to be home. Tonight she was exhausted, the emotions of the past week having taken their toll on her mind and her body. Every inch of her craving sleep, she all but crashed face first onto her bed. Tomorrow she would read her mail and listen to her messages and call Aunt August. Tonight she would, for a while, put aside her work and all it entailed, all the dirty, ugly things that people do for reasons no sane person could ever comprehend, and she would lose herself to sleep.

  The rude buzzing of the alarm awakened a reluctant India at six. Through barely opened eyes, she took in her surroundings and was surprised to find herself, not in Devlin’s Light, as she had been in her dreams, but in Paloma. Instead of the faded yellow daisy wallpaper of her old room on Darien Road, this room was painted white, as was the furniture. The carpet was softest plush blue, the curtains a blue and white stripe. Across the foot of the white iron bed rested a blue and white floral comforter, which coordinated perfectly with the bedskirt, pillow covers, sheets, and a lightweight summer blanket. From the small wingchair right inside the door tumbled an array of pillows, all made by August from the hand-embroidered linens India had begun collecting as a young girl.

  India rolled over and looked at the clock, groaning when she realized that she did, in fact, have to obey its command. She swept her hair from her face and tottered into the bathroom across the hall and turned on the shower, hoping it would revive her. It did.

  She dressed hastily for work, pulling on a somewhat casual, totally comfortable pantsuit of soft gray and white pinstriped linen, since it was not a court day and she did not need to “dress.” That would come on Monday, with the start of the Thomas trial. Before closing the closet door, she checked to make certain that her favorite dark blue suit was clean. Smiling to herself when she saw that it was, she closed the door. She always wore that suit—her lucky suit—on the first day of a trial. She had never lost a case when she delivered her opening statement wearing that suit. India wasn’t going to take any chances. The suit was a go for Monday.

  Breakfast was a cup of coffee in the car and a bowl of fruit at her desk, lunch was less. Before she knew it, it was four o’clock and she still had two more briefs to read and respond to. Roxanne Detweiler, the inhabitant of the cubicle next to India’s, stuck her curly dark head through the doorway at seven-twenty and asked, “Want Chinese? Herbie is calling in an order.”

  Lost in thought, India nodded affirmatively.

  “What do you want?”

  Not raising her head from the file spread across the top of the desk, Indy replied absently, “Pepperoni, mushrooms, whatever you’re having.”

  Having seen India so immersed in her work in the past, Roxanne grinned devilishly.

  “You want a little sweet and sour bat wings on that, Indy? Maybe a side of frog toes and fried slugs?”

  “Sure, Roxie.” India waved a hand indifferently. “Whatever.”

  “What’s she want? Herbie’s waiting.” Singer poked Roxanne in the back.

  “Get us an order of hot and spicy chicken and an order of rice noodles with oriental vegetables and some steamed dumplings.”

  Roxanne folded her arms across her chest, well aware that India had no clue that someone was in her office. There was a joke circulating around the D.A.’s office that you could rob India’s office of everything except the file she was working on at that moment and you’d most likely get away with it.

  “India has been like that for as long as I’ve known her,” Roxanne once told the rest of the staff. “She has the enviable ability to block out everything and totally focus on the business at hand. She did it in college, she did it all through law school, and she’s still doing it. She says she tries to hear the person’s voice when she’s reading a statement, to see the scene as the victim did, to hear what they heard and feel what they felt.”

  “Spooky” was the consensus of India’s colleagues, but every one of them agreed she was the best at what she did. Her uncanny ability to block out what she considered irrelevant might be responsible for a good part of that success.

  It wasn’t until Roxanne called over the partition to tell her that her phone was ringing that India heard it. Searching through piles of papers, she finally located it and picked up the receiver.

  “Oh, hello, Aunt August.” India’s eyes sought the small desk clock. It was almost seven-thirty. “Oh, Aunt August, I am so sorry. I meant to call last night but it was so late when I got home, and then this morning just sort of got away from me and before I knew it …”

  “I understand, India.” Aunt August, as always, went straight to the point. “However, there is someone else to be considered now.”

  “Corri. Oh, damn, I meant to call her …” India dragged her hand through her hair and sighed deeply, berating herself for the oversight.

  “She’s right here, Indy.” August handed the phone to Corri.

  “Indy?” The sweet little girl voice poured like liquid sunshine through the wires.

  “Hey, sugar.” India tried to think of some excuse for not having called in the morning, as she had said she would do. “Corri, I meant to—”

  “It’s okay, Indy. Nick took me fishing,” she announced.

  “This morning?” India relaxed. Corri wouldn’t have been home if she had remembered to call.

  “No, this afternoon. To make me feel better.”

  Ouch.

  “Did you feel badly because I forgot to call?”

  “I just felt sad because you weren’t here. But Darla said that after you put the bad guys in jail you’ll come home.”

  “Darla is right, sugar.”

/>   “Indy …”

  “What, Corri?”

  “Do you have to put away all the bad guys, or just a few, before you can come home?”

  India smiled. “Just the ones that get caught in Paloma. I doubt anyone could put away all the bad guys.”

  “You could,” Corri said confidently. “Ry said you were the best prostitutor in Paloma.”

  “That’ss ‘prosecutor,’ Corri.” India laughed, and through the phone line, she could hear August laughing too. “Say the word, so you’ll remember it correctly.”

  “Posse-cutor.”

  “That’s a little better, but you still need some practice. Maybe you’ll have that down pat by the time I come home.”

  “When will that be? Tomorrow? It’s the weekend.”

  “I’m afraid not, sweetie. I have to get ready for Monday. I have a lot of reading to do between now and then.”

  “But when the bad guy’s in jail, will you come home?”

  “You can bet the ranch,” India told her.

  Corri giggled. “We don’t have a ranch.”

  “Oh, you’re right. Well then, you can bet the dunes.”

  “Will it be next week?”

  “Next week might be a little too soon.”

  “That’s what Nick said. He said he thought it might take a while. He said this was a really bad man and it might take a while for everyone to come in and tell the judge just how bad he is.”

  “Nick is a pretty smart fellow.”

  “He is, Indy. Oh, he said to say hi for him when I talked to you. So hi from Nick.”

  “Tell him hi back.”

  Roxanne called over the intercom that dinner had arrived.

  “Listen, Corri, I’m going to go and have some dinner.” India was suddenly starving.

  “We had dinner,” Corri told her. “We had fish that Nick and I caught. Aunt August let him stay for dinner. And Ollie and Darla and Jack too.”

  “You must have caught a lot of fish,” India noted somewhat wistfully, imagining them all in the Devlins’ old kitchen, crowded around Aunt August as she worked miracles with an old black iron griddle and some freshly caught fish. Her mouth began to water at the thought of it. “Is he still there? Nick?”