Local Rules

by Jay Brandon

  Laura wiped her hand across her eyes. She sorted through the pictures and found one of Jenny close to the age she was talking about, a little more than a year old. Joan Fecklewhite was holding the little girl in that photo.

  “But they won’t do it on cue at that age, you know,” Laura said. “I had to stay there all afternoon. After her nap, as soon as she opened her eyes, Jenny saw me and said, ‘Ma-ma.’ ”

  Laura had to stop talking. She even put the picture down on the floor, so she could clench her fists. She lowered her head onto them.

  Jordan wanted to hold her, but he felt excluded by Laura’s past and by what he knew about her. He didn’t think she would have recognized him if she had turned.

  After a minute, her muffled voice came. “Joan told me it was her first words. I knew she was lying— How could she have known she was going to say it if she hadn’t said it already?—but I pretended.”

  Jenny’s learning to talk must not have been entirely happy for Laura. As Jenny had become more aware, Laura had had to withdraw to preserve the secret. Jordan could see it in the progression of the pictures. From baby pictures of Laura holding Jenny, they passed to pictures of them stand­ing side by side or of Laura only in the background or not in the picture at all.

  “But I was always there,” Laura said. She was kneeling amid the pictures but no longer looking at any of them. She was still crying, but the racking sobs had passed. She was staring across the room. Laura drew a deep ragged breath that was rich with release. This might have been the first time she had ever talked to anyone about Jenny. “When she graduated from kindergarten, from elementary school, from middle school. I would’ve been there—”

  Another sob stopped her, not as strong as the first but just as wrenching, because Laura was weaker now. She crawled away, careful not to touch any of the pictures, and pulled herself up onto the couch. Jordan looked down at the array of pictures of the pretty girl turning beautiful. There, he noticed for the first time, was a copy of the one Evelyn Riegert had given him, the picture of laughing Jenny from her hospital file. Maybe he hadn’t been the first to guess Laura’s secret.

  “I thought it wouldn’t be so bad,” Laura said. She might have thought she was speaking in a normal tone, but her voice had lost its rich confidence. It squeaked. “When Rich­ard told me it was what we had to do, I told him no”—it was the first time Jordan had heard her call Judge Waverly by his first name—“I told him I’d run with her, I told him if he dragged me back, I’d tell everyone. And all he said was he’d fight me for custody and he’d win. And he would have. He had so much more to give her than I did.”

  And it wouldn’t have been a fair fight, Jordan thought. Richard Waverly would have pulled every legal string he had, and he had them all, even that long ago. Laura would have known that, too.

  “He told me this was the only way we could both have her, we could both stay close to her. And I agreed, and I came back, and I let them—take her.

  “I should have run!” Laura suddenly screamed, driven to her feet. “I should have taken her to France. To Australia. Somewhere where she’d still be alive, where I’d still have her! I should have—”

  “You can’t know,” Jordan said quietly. “You might have lost her anyway, another way. She would have wanted to know where she came from. She might have ended up hating you for taking her away from the life she could have had here.”

  Laura’s face twisted. She was trying to make the compari­son—Jenny’s hating her versus Jenny’s being dead—and the choices were so horrible she was lost again.

  Jordan was across the room in two steps, holding her. He shouldn’t have, he’d been consciously resisting comforting Laura, but when her face turned tormented again, it was no longer a matter of volition for him. He was just there, holding her.

  Laura wasn’t used to comfort. She just stood with her arms at her sides for a long minute. Then she put her arms around Jordan and held him so tight he lost his breath. She sobbed harder for a minute, but she didn’t have the strength for that any more. Her arms loosened as her cries dimin­ished. Jordan let her go. She slipped down to the couch again. Jordan took a few steps away, toward the door.

  “The worst part is you start to forget,” Laura said quietly. “I actually had a life sometimes. After a while I’d go for a day or two without even thinking about her. Well, after they get to be teenagers, you start losing them anyway. Don’t you?” she asked with the anxiety again cutting through her voice.

  “Yes,” Jordan said as if he knew.

  Laura looked at him, maybe for the first time since she’d pulled out the box of pictures. She was coming slowly for­ward out of the past.

  “When I realized your secret,” Jordan said, “I realized that’s why you’d gotten close to me. So you could keep up with what I was finding out, and guide me, too, if I got too close to the truth.”

  “That’s why,” Laura said. She was past lying.

  And maybe once she’d learned a little about him, the losses Jordan had suffered had appealed to the emptiness in Laura. Maybe she’d been surprised by growing fond of him. Remembering their times together, Jordan couldn’t help but believe that. Couldn’t believe it had all been artifice and deception.

  “Because you had another secret to protect, didn’t you?” Jordan said, watching her face. Laura didn’t look startled. She winced slightly as if with a twinge of physical pain, but she didn’t look away from him. “So you can tell the judge I know,” Jordan continued slowly, “if you think he should know. Or does he already know all of it? Did he send you to see Kevin in the hospital?”

  Laura took a deep breath, but she didn’t say anything.

  “That’s what I suddenly knew during trial when Evelyn Riegert handed me her list. Your old friend Evelyn who had learned Kevin’s time of death and realized it was the same time when you had come to see him. Because the first time I talked to Evelyn she didn’t know the time of death yet— she hadn’t been on duty—and she made a mistake and told me someone from the court had come to get a statement from Kevin. That always bothered me, because it was way too early in the process for anyone from the court to get involved. A police officer would have tried to get a state­ment, but no one else. But if someone from the court did come, it would be someone who could take a statement. It would be the court reporter. At least that’s what you would have told Evelyn when she asked why you’d been there. And she believed you until later when the autopsy had es­tablished Kevin’s time of death and Evelyn realized it was during your visit. So she covered up for you because you were her old friend. That’s what I realized when she handed me her list in court and your name wasn’t on it and neither was the name of anyone else from the court.

  “You were Kevin’s last visitor, weren’t you?”

  Laura stayed quiet for a moment, as if she would let si­lence deny his accusation. Jordan became aware again of the photographs arrayed on the living room rug. Laura didn’t glance in their direction, but her thoughts did.

  “He killed my baby,” she said. Her voice shook. “I knew he did as soon as I heard that Jenny was ...” When she hesitated, her voice turned questioning, as if she still couldn’t believe it. “... was dead? Dead? Murdered? And Kevin was in the hospital and Wayne in jail for beating him up. Like you said, it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. I knew what Kevin was like, and I knew the confrontation he and Jenny’d been headed for. Some people were saying Wayne, but Wayne didn’t have any reason for killing Jenny.”

  The last phrase made her lips clamp down. Jordan’s hand twitched. But he felt immobilized by the contradictions of his obligations.

  “And I was hearing in the courthouse how hard the case against him would be,” Laura continued. Her hands moved slightly. She held herself back, then made the gesture after all, reaching with empty hands for options that weren’t there. “And the judge just seemed paralyzed, I could see he wasn’t going to do anything but let the law take its course.”

  “And
I helped, didn’t I?” Jordan said. That first day in court, in his short pants, when he hadn’t known anything, when he was just tossing out possibilities, he’d hit on a real one, that after Kevin recovered, he and Wayne might refuse to testify against each other, so that a case couldn’t be made against either of them. Laura had sat there in the courtroom copying down his words, understanding them completely: that her daughter was dead and the “justice system” wasn’t going to do anything about it. It was the next day that Kevin had died.

  “Maybe it was more an accident than anything,” Jordan said slowly, spinning out possibilities the way he had that day in court. “You didn’t realize how weak Kevin was, how even a little touch might be enough to—”

  Laura interrupted him. “It wasn’t an accident. It didn’t take anywhere near the effort or time I’d been afraid it would. Maybe if it had, I would have lost my nerve. But I did what I intended to do. And I’m not sorry.”

  Jordan couldn’t blame her. If someone hurt his daughter, he thought he would do the same thing Laura had done. But Laura was looking at him as if she didn’t understand that. She looked ready to be taken away. Laura was reas­sembling herself. She crossed her arms and stood in a pos­ture that showed her strength, the strength that had carried her through her daughter’s life and death and the mother’s revenge Laura had taken for her.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Laura asked, watch­ing Jordan as if that weren’t her real question.

  He spoke with assurance, which was strange, because he hadn’t known what he was going to say until the words were out of his mouth. “I’m not a law enforcement officer and it’s not my case. I’m not going to do anything. I don’t even live here.”

  He turned away.

  “Jordan?”

  He was standing inside her screen door, looking out at the dazzle of day. Laura’s voice came more softly.

  “You know what happened between the judge and me was a long time ago, and it was over a long time ago.”

  He nodded.

  “You guessed right,” she said. “I got close to you so I could find out what you were learning. That’s why I started. I didn’t know what would come of it. Did you? I didn’t know how I’d start to feel about you. As if when everything had crashed and burned and there was nothing left and I saw that my life was over, suddenly here came my life, speeding by on the interstate and getting dragged right into my courtroom, like I’d ordered you up.”

  It would be nice to believe that. He did believe her, be­cause when Laura spoke, Jordan couldn’t disbelieve. It was like part of himself talking. He yearned toward her even as he stood rooted to the spot.

  “I love you, Jordan.”

  He believed her. She had no reason to lie to him now that he had already said he wasn’t going to betray her. But how could he stay with her? How could they get over their origins? That she had come to him only to lie to him, to cover up the murder she’d committed. Would she ever be able to forget that he knew that? How could they discard their separate pasts: his daughter, her dead daughter, the judge? Jordan had had time to think it all out and decide what he had to do, which was to walk away, to try to let both their lives heal. He was determined to leave, but he couldn’t make himself move. He was looking out at the street, picturing where it led: down to the corner, turn at Mrs. Johnson’s house, onto Main Street, past the Texaco where Wayne pumped gas, past the courthouse. Away from Laura.

  And in a few short blocks the street would take him to the interstate.

  A long, boring highway with nothing much at either end.

  The decision to leave had been a theory, and Laura was real. He pictured her perfectly behind him as if he hadn’t turned away. He saw her lifting her hand, and he knew which fingernail she was biting.

  “I don’t even belong here,” he said. “What a fluke.” His voice became firm with sudden resolution. “I was on my way to the beach when I hit this town. I am going to the beach.” He nodded, approving his decision.

  He turned around. Laura was standing just as he’d pic­tured her. Another tear hung on the rim of her eye, but she wasn’t trembling. She was looking at him steadily, regret­fully, but with determination in her posture. Looking at her full on, he saw again the slight unevenness of her face, so slight that Jordan was probably the only person who had ever noticed it.

  “How long will it take you to pack?” he said.

  POCKET BOOKS PROUDLY PRESENTS

  DEFIANCE COUNTY

  JAY BRANDON

  Coining mid-May in Hardcover from Pocket Books

  The following is a preview of Defiance County....

  It was Thanksgiving week. No prospective jurors had been called, the courthouse was quiet. In Judge Saun­ders’s courtroom a few lawyers halfheartedly argued mo­tions that wouldn’t take long to dispose of. When Kelsey’s turn came the court’s business was done, at ten- forty-five in the morning, but a couple of the lawyers lingered. Kelsey could feel their eyes on her back.

  Judge Saunders sat back in her tall chair. The zipper of her black robe was pulled down several inches below her neck, displaying the cream-colored scalloped collar of her blouse. The judge raised one eyebrow at Kelsey. “Should I have Clyde Wolverton come over for this?” she asked.

  “It isn’t an adversarial proceeding, Your Honor. But I’m ready to make it one. I’d like you to convene the grand jury you told me I could have when I was ready.” In the pause that followed, Judge Saunders seemed to be studying Kelsey rather than what the prosecutor had said. Kelsey watched the judge as well. Linda Saunders and Morgan Fletcher had dated when they were young. That past could cover wide ground: forgotten minor inci­dents, lifelong lingering love, everything in between. Kelsey had seen that some affection remained between. Morgan and the judge.

  “Actually, there’s a grand jury finishing up its term today,” Judge Saunders said. “But maybe you’d like to wait to convene a new one, even a special—”

  “No, thank you, Your Honor. I wouldn’t want to put the court to any special trouble.” Of hand-picking a grand jury for me to try to sell on indicting Billy Fletcher. Better to try her luck with leftovers. As it was, it proba­bly wasn’t possible to convene a grand jury in Galilee that wouldn’t include friends of Billy’s.

  “I was going to dismiss them this afternoon,” Judge Saunders said. “I could give them to you instead. To­morrow morning.”

  “I’m ready now, Your Honor.” Time was not Kelsey’s friend. She knew in a matter of moments word of what she was about to do would start spreading, and the grand jurors would start getting phone calls.

  “After lunch, then,” the judge said. “Two o’clock. Does anyone else have business with the court? We’re adjourned, then.”

  When Kelsey returned from a solitary, distracted lunch, the story had spread quickly. A glaring Clyde Wolverton, accompanied by his client, met her on the first floor of the courthouse. “I understand you think you have something worth taking to a grand jury,” he said. He sounded restrained, but his face was red.

  “Yes,” Kelsey said shortly, and started past him, but Wolverton grabbed the prosecutor’s arm to stop her. “Doesn’t it offend you to prostitute yourself like this? Everybody in Galilee knows who is behind this prosecut­ion! Before I’m done, everyone in the state will know you are just the puppet of a vindictive woman. The attor­ney general will have no choice but to fire you in dis­grace. Such blatant disregard for truth—”

  Kelsey had resolved to let him talk himself out, but as he did she got mad, until she leaned forward and blasted him back. “If she’s vindictive, it’s because Billy Fletcher murdered her child! I don’t have any personal stake in this case. The truth is all I care about. Personal motives don’t matter as long as I have the evidence. And I do, Mr. Wolverton. You ask your client whose blood is in his car!”

  Billy started to shout something, but his attorney, fi­nally controlled, put a hand on Billy’s chest and quieted him. Wolverton looked stonily at Kelsey. “I hope
some other profession interests you, Ms. Thatch. After this proceeding you will be such damaged goods that no one will hire you to practice law anywhere in this state.” Well pleased with this exit line, the defense lawyer turned smartly and took his client in tow. Billy Fletcher was furious, but expostulations so crowded his throat he couldn’t say anything until he was almost out of sight down the corridor, when he screamed, “Don’t you have a conscience?”

  Kelsey didn’t reply. As she stood watching Billy and his lawyer disappear out the doors of the courthouse, she realized someone was standing just behind her. She felt his presence as a blocky warmth, and knew who it was even before Morgan Fletcher put his hands on her shoulders. “Of course you do,” he said of Kelsey’s con­science. “Don’t mind—”

  “I don’t,” Kelsey said. There was something frighten­ingly alluring about Morgan standing close behind her, so that she was immobilized. She knew she should step away from him, but she wanted more to put her hand over his. Obviously sensing her feeling, Morgan kept his hands on her shoulders, holding her for a long minute in the empty hallway.

  There was another surprise visitor to the courthouse, sitting on a hard bench outside the grand jury room. “Mrs. Beaumont,” Kelsey said. “Can I help you?” “No, thank you. Move aside, please, dear.”

  Kelsey did so, puzzled, and saw that Mrs. Beaumont was craning her neck to watch the grand jurors ap­proach. They did so in straggling order, in no hurry, men in suits, women in dresses nice enough for church. Some of them were chatting as they came down the courthouse hallway. Each stopped or glanced nervously upon sight of Alice Beaumont.