DONE GONE WRONG

by Cathy Pickens

  “Certainly not. I, sir, am a professional. I’m trained to be objective. I—”

  “Certainly, Dr. Hilliard.” Jake’s tone should have sounded a warning bell for Hilliard. “Dr. Hilliard, you testified that you’ve conducted drag trials for countless drags for many companies for many years. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, I have.” Hilliard gave a short answer, hoping to make himself a small target while he figured out where this next tack was headed.

  “But this drag you’ve developed is the first drag you’ve taken completely through the approval process yourself, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve watched other physicians, at Barnard Medical and elsewhere, make lots of money on drags or medical devices they’ve developed, haven’t you? It can be very lucrative, if a new drag is successful, can’t it?”

  “Yes, but it’s also very expensive to get it through the process. Not all drags make it through. Not all drags are successful.”

  “I’m sure it’s very expensive—which is why you desperately needed Rabb & Company to bankroll your project. That’s why that licensing contract is so important to you, isn’t it?”

  Hilliard paused before answering. “Yes. The financial support will be helpful.”

  “More than helpful. It’s vital, isn’t it? You don’t have the money on your own, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Dr. Hilliard, you’ve watched others get rich while you collect paltry fees at a hundred dollars a pop, haven’t you? This project of yours is your one big chance, isn’t it?” Jake emphasized each word. “It’s your one chance to play with the big boys, isn’t it?”

  Hilliard paused too long.

  “Isn’t it?” Jake’s voice was quiet, persistent.

  “It’s important, yes.”

  His grudging reluctance was what Jake wanted the jury to see.

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  After I’d blundered all over Atlanta, I was surprised Arthur Vendue had allowed Jake to pursue the Rabb & Company link so rabidly. Vendue’s questions on redirect drilled in the fact that Pendleton Rabb really didn’t run Perforce Pharmaceuticals, trying to raise doubt about the implications Jake had drawn. But Hilliard knew so little about the corporate stracture that his replies did little but muddy the picture even more for most of the jurors.

  Had Jake been too subtle about Hilliard’s conflict of interest? In the jury’s mind, would Hilliard’s greed outweigh Ivan Gretel’s sexual perversions? I doubted it. Sex tramps money most of the time.

  Could the jurors really grasp what Hilliard’s conflict of interest might mean? If one of those jurors’ doctors got a kickback for prescribing a drag or if the drag company took the doctor and his family to Hawaii and charged the juror higher prices to pay for the trip, the doctor’s conflict would seem real. But patients never find out. “Conflict of interest” always sounds sterile and distant—until you know it’s taking money out of your pocket or putting you in danger. Was Jake making that clear to the jury? Studying their faces, I wasn’t sure.

  I scribbled some notes to myself. Jake’s closing argument needed to hit the greed factor harder. It was all he really had. He hadn’t tried to introduce evidence about Tunisia Johnson’s death. Not much he could’ve done to get that in, but I would’ve loved watching Howard squirm, trying to explain his relationship to a dead black prostitute. Former prostitute.

  I winced inwardly at my callousness toward Tabbi Johnson’s mama and wondered if Cas Kirkland knew anything yet about the autopsy results.

  26

  WEDNESDAY NIGHT

  That evening after another late adjournment, Jake slumped at his office desk, its usually spotless expanse littered with paper. In the dim lamplight, he rocked his heavy gold fountain pen over his thumb, repeatedly thumping it on the legal pad in front of him. His head rested in his other hand. He didn’t notice that I’d entered until I cleared my throat.

  “Jake, I’ve got a few notes. For your closing.”

  Jake tilted his head to look at me, but didn’t straighten up or untangle his fingers from his hair.

  I knew where he was. Arthur Vendue had rested his case. Tomorrow the attorneys would make their closing arguments. It all came down to this, the power of his words, his ability to tell a story so the jury could write the ending he wanted. In his heart, he would feel it rested with him alone. My stomach knotted at both the memory of past trials and at the projection of me sitting in his seat now.

  A lot of people were counting on him. His clients needed money for medical care or for retirement benefits they were no longer able to earn. For all of them, more than money, they needed vindication. They needed someone to acknowledge that having their world torn apart had been unfair, that it hadn’t been their fault. They needed to hear someone say, “You didn’t deserve this.”

  Judging from the pale yellow circle of light around him and from Luc’s absence, I surmised Jake and I had one thing in common. Some attorneys like to have folks around, circling in orbit as they prepare their closings, providing energy from which they can draw. Jake apparently preferred solitude, the long, dark night alone to search for the words. I intruded anyway. I wanted to earn my keep.

  “Greed, Jake. Highlight their greed. You’ve laid the groundwork. The jury can understand it They’ve seen Perforce’s attorneys, all the dark suits on their side of the room. They’ve seen your clients, their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, a couple of canes, a wheelchair. Lots of Kleenex tissues. They know what you need them to know, Jake. You just need to make it simple. You know how to do that Greed.”

  Jake slumped back in his chair, his pen still. “Yeah.”

  “You need anything? Food? Liquor? I could find you a loose woman.”

  That earned a small smile and a wave of the hand. “No, but thanks for stopping by. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Get some sleep, Jake. Greed.”

  He nodded, and I left.

  I never could pull all-nighters. Finding all the best words wouldn’t help if I were too sleep-stupid to utter them. Jake didn’t need my advice about that, though. He knew his own rhythms, what worked for him.

  I had no idea where to find a Moon Pie, so I wandered toward Market Street in search of some warm pralines. Good thing about a tourist town, the sweet shop stays open late.

  Jake knew what neither of us would say out loud: his case stunk. He had clients with horrible injuries, but he had a dead bad guy with no money. Even though too much about Perforce raised questions, the jury probably wouldn’t stretch distrust of Perforce into money for his clients.

  The jury had to decide whether Ray Vincent Wilma was crazy or Uplift made him crazy. To defend Perforce, Arthur Vendue had done a good job painting Wilma’s craziness. Vendue had worked hard, dug deep into Wilma’s past. Jake could question Perforce’s shenanigans with Tixtill and its willingness to work with a slimeball (or dinosaur, depending on your perspective) like Hilliard, but it was just smoke. We hadn’t had time to find the fire itself. I had to admit Jake had Szeged the smoke early and had finally gotten my attention. If Perforce would lie and falsify results with Tixtill, why not with Uplift? This deal with Hilliard Szeged bad. How could they be trusted? Too many oddities floated around Perforce and Rabb.

  I could also see the argument on the other side: the relationship between Tixtill and Uplift was tenuous. Perforce had paid for its Tixtill sins and shouldn’t have to keep paying just because Jake Baker wanted Uplift tarred with the same brash. No matter how many lives Ray Vincent Wilma ruined, sometimes stuff just happens with no deep pockets to pay for picking up the pieces.

  The pralines—I’d treated myself to two—were warm and buttery and comforting. I nibbled slowly, strolling down the almost empty sidewalk. While I was arguing with myself, how much of my “objective” analysis was colored by my defense attorney days? Could I ever really believe in a plaintiff’s case? If not, working with Jake long term would be a fraud. I also had to admit no defense firm would ever hire
me again. Defense firms rely on the fat checkbooks of corporate defendants and insurance companies, and they don’t take risks. Blowing that medical malpractice trial in October and now hooking up with Jake Baker—even temporarily and even on a losing case—wouldn’t make me less of a risk.

  In my mind, the rambling, turreted Victorian on Da-cus’s Main Street and its gingerbread trim and shaded wraparound porch had grown into something of a symbol, a reassurance that I had somewhere to go, that I wasn’t entirely adrift, marginally employed, and without a clue about what came next. Growing up in Dacus, I’d known the monstrosity perched on a slight rise above the sidewalk as the Baldwin & Bates Funeral Home. Melvin’s family had moved out long before I was old enough to pay attention to much beyond the toy department at the five-and-dime store, so to me, it had always been a funeral home.

  I’d long resisted any suggestion about moving back to Dacus, to a small-town general practice. I was surely destined for grander things, with leased BMWs and retainers with lots of zeros on the end. Now that Melvin might be reconsidering his offer of an apartment and an office, I was surprised at my melancholy.

  I wasn’t sure I could go home again, though I did miss my family. And, during the last few months camping out at my grandfather’s lake cabin, I realized I missed the mountains in a visceral way that surprised me. The cinnamon smell of damp rotting leaves, the ice in the morning air, curvy roads, red clay, people who talked in slow, twangy (bawls. I’d discovered you can go home again—and home is a place as well as people. Places can, despite changes, stay reassuringly the same. Some people unfortunately are also the same, but it was the ones who wouldn’t let me change that I worried about. The place couldn’t be separated from the people—and all the people weren’t my family.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Back at the inn, I couldn’t watch TV or read, and it was too early to sleep. I put on earmuffs and bundled into my jacket and sat on the porch, watching the dwindling traffic pass the Battery. A misty rain shower came up, just enough to make the street shine in the reflected lights and to bring out Charleston’s dank, seafront smell.

  I might have dozed off amid my daydreams and random thoughts. The street below became just another shadowy dream—the pavement shiny wet, dim streetlights, no traffic, something out of an old movie in black and white and grays. A figure turned the comer, a baseball cap low over his eyes, his face upturned.

  I knew he was scanning the upper floor of the inn.

  I moved from half sleep to adrenaline surge as I watched him study my windows. The time that passed couldn’t have been more than seconds. He must have seen movement on the porch because he stepped off the curb onto the glistening street about the time I recognized him. Cas Kirkland.

  I wrestled myself out of my cocoon of chair and blanket and lumbered down the dark stairs to the side door.

  “You always let strangers in off the street at this hour?”

  I couldn’t read his eyes under his baseball cap.

  “I don’t know. What hour is it?”

  He followed me, the stairs creaking heavily under his weight.

  “Coffee?” He offered me one of the two cardboard-sleeved cups he carried.

  “Thanks.” Black. Not my favorite, but it was the thought that counted.

  He shucked off his coat and fumbled in the pocket. “Here’s some cream and stuff. Didn’t know what you liked. And it’s decaf.”

  “Thanks.” And I meant it. A guy who thinks of everything. The room wasn’t set up for making coffee. Fire codes were probably strict in eighteenth-century mansions, so this was a real treat.

  As large as the room was, it also wasn’t set up for someone Cas’s size. He claimed the wing chair, looking out the bay window. The coffee warmed me; I’d sat outside too long and gotten chilled.

  “You always roam the streets this late?”

  “Just finished a shooting at a liquor house past the bridges. That was so much fun, I knew better than to try to sleep.”

  He stopped talking, but he had more to say. I didn’t interrupt.

  “Kids. They actually had kids living in that cesspool. Neighbor said they thought it’d decoy the cops, keep suspicion off ’em. Sad thing is, it worked for too long a time.” He took a long swig of his coffee. “So, where’ve you been?” His voice was almost too casual.

  “In a trial.”

  He didn’t respond and I didn’t elaborate. Reminded of it, a small wave of melancholy returned. “And what have you been up to? Besides liquor house shootings.”

  We sat with our backs to the carefully made bed. I had dimmed the lights, so we could see outside, but then had to tamp down the awkwardness I felt sitting in such an intimate space with a stranger.

  “The preliminary autopsy report on Tunisia Johnson came in today.” He still wore his baseball cap—the Toledo Mud Hens.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked calmly. I wanted to shake him. So? What’s it say?

  He sipped his coffee. “Lots.” He kept staring out the window. “For starters, that scene was staged. Somebody moved her body after she died. Lividity patterns are harder to mark on black skin, but the autopsy showed pressure markings on her buttocks and back that didn’t correspond to her position at the scene.”

  “So she was killed somewhere else?”

  “She probably died somewhere else. The time of death has been screwed up, so now we’re not at all sure she was murdered.”

  “What?” I turned in my chair to face him. He didn’t look over at me.

  “The ME says she died of a thromboembolic stroke.”

  “A stroke? So it’s not a murder?”

  “Maybe not, but we’ve got a hell of a suspicious death scene. Somebody moved the body, staged that kinky stuff. And,” he paused, “something else odd happened to that body between the time she died and when we found her.”

  He took a gulp of coffee, building suspense. A bom witness.

  “The ME can’t be sure,” he said, “but the body may have been put on ice for a while.”

  “On ice?” I sloshed a drop of coffee on my hand.

  “Refrigerated. The decamp hadn’t progressed as far as we’d expect, given the time since she disappeared. They’ve called a bug guy at Clemson to look at the insect deposits, to help us narrow the time frame. But that’s a long shot.”

  He stared out the window. “The last time her family saw her may not help much. She could have been on the street for a while before she died. Or she could have died the day she disappeared and been iced down before she was put in that room for us to find. Without something to better pinpoint her whereabouts, we may never know for sure when or where she died.”

  “How about her stomach contents?”

  “Only fluids, mostly coffee, in her stomach. That won’t help much.”

  “Where the heck would somebody refrigerate a body?”

  He shrugged. “She was small, she could fit in somebody’s deep freeze. Or a meat locker. A commercial refrigerator. Even a refrigerated track. Or a deer cooler. Deer coolers aren’t abundant in downtown Charleston, but they’re sure plentiful a few miles north of here. That’s deer-hunting territory. Just say there’re plenty of places around to keep a body cold.”

  He leaned his head back on the chair, his chin in the air, his throat exposed.

  “You said the sex scene was staged.”

  “Yep. The Avidity patterns are one key. But no sign of recent sexual activity—no semen, no braising. Of course, with Tunisia’s history and with the impotence rate of a lot of sex sicks, the absence of signs may not mean much. The chafing from the ropes occurred after death. No braising under the skin.”

  This clinical discussion of the death of a woman I’d never met made me queasy. Tunisia Johnson had probably done plenty of kinky sex in her former line of work, but I couldn’t believe—didn’t want to believe—that she’d left the white-fenced yard and, more important, little chocolate-eyed Tabitha, to hit the streets for more of that.

  “She was so y
oung, how could she have a stroke?”

  He shrugged. “The ME says she needs more time on that one.”

  The coffee burned into my empty stomach. “She’s sure that’s what killed her?”

  “The ME said that without something clean, like a gunshot wound, cause of death becomes a process of elimination. Doc loves to lecture me while she slices and dices.”

  “Can she eliminate anything else?”

  “Doc will check the victim’s family history. Got to wait on the tox screen. That’ll eliminate alcohol and a raftload of drags. They took bladder urine and heart blood at the autopsy, but the screen takes time, and it won’t eliminate everything.”

  “Any leads on who might have—I started to say killed her. This is so weird. Who would have staged something like that?”

  “Not a clue. Some of the street cops are asking around her old neighborhood. Until the autopsy is complete, we can’t really afford a lot of time on this. It’s likely not homicide, so we can’t work it long. We got too many of the real thing to fool much with this one.”

  “It’s—scary. Warped. You might have a real sicko on your hands here.”

  In the faint light from the window, he shrugged.

  We both sat there in silence. A car bushed by outside, slowly.

  “Cas.” I wasn’t sure he was awake until he stirred slightly. “Surely she would have had some warning signs of a stroke?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  I glanced at him, my guilty conscience stinging. Talk of a stroke had reminded me I’d never really talked to Cas about Mark’s research journal. Before, I thought it was a crazy tangent, of no use to him. Finding Tunisia’s body changed the equation. Cas didn’t stir as I swung my legs off the window seat and padded over to the desk where I’d left the journal and Tunisia’s records in a stack.

  On Tunisia’s first study visit, Mark had noted her vital signs in his research journal: height, five feet one inch; weight, one hundred pounds; blood pressure, 138/88. An idea formed, something I should have recognized earlier.