Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth

by Joel Goldman

"State v. Hackett," the judge announced. "State your appearances."

  "The State appears by Alan Walker, assistant prosecuting attorney."

  Mason hadn't dealt with Walker previously, but knew he was a good lawyer since Patrick Ortiz had hired him. Since being elected prosecuting attorney, Ortiz had upgraded his staff with career prosecutors. Unlike his predecessor, who was more politician than prosecutor, Ortiz was all prosecutor, all the time. He required the same from the lawyers who worked for him. Mason wouldn't get any breaks.

  Mason rose to announce his appearance, surprised that Brandon Potter rose alongside him. He was more surprised when Potter joined him in telling Judge Pistone they were representing Jordan Hackett, their duet bringing the judge's head up.

  "You gentlemen rehearse that before you came down here?" he asked, frowning with disappointment when no one in the audience laughed. Judge Pistone could kill a punch line just by letting the words collect in his mouth.

  "Your Honor—" Mason began.

  "He is no longer representing Miss Hackett," Potter said, interrupting Mason. "The family retained me last night after Mr. Mason quit the case. I wasn't able to reach Mr. Mason to inform him of the change in counsel."

  "Gee, Brandon," Mason said. "You were sitting right next to me while we were waiting for this case to be called. You couldn't have been any closer to me if you were doing a lap dance."

  The spectators laughed and Judge Pistone gaveled them into silence, reminding Mason that he had broken one of the cardinal rules of the courtroom—never be funnier than the judge.

  "Okay, Counselors," Judge Pistone said. "Who's it going to be?"

  Mason beat Potter out of the blocks. "Your Honor, the defendant's father has been paying my fees on behalf of his daughter. Yesterday, I told him that I couldn't accept any further payments from him, but I didn't quit the case. Jordan Hackett is my client, not her father. My client is indigent and I ask the Court to appoint me as her counsel."

  "If I may, Your Honor," Potter began.

  "You may not, Mr. Potter," Judge Pistone replied. "Miss Hackett, which of these two lawyers do you want to defend you?"

  Jordan looked at her parents. Carol Hackett hid behind dark glasses, concealing her response. Arthur Hackett burned his unspoken demand with a steel-eyed glare. Behind them, Centurion Johnson opened his beaming smile for business, holding up one hand, the thumb and forefinger in the shape of an L.

  "I want Mr. Mason," she said. "But I don't have any money and I don't have a job."

  "Very well, Miss Hackett," Judge Pistone said, banging his gavel like an auctioneer. "Mr. Mason it is, for fifty dollars an hour, courtesy of the taxpayers."

  Brandon Potter shrugged off the defeat, mentally dividing his fee by the cost of a fifth of gin, and left the courtroom. Mason waited for Potter to exit, punctuating his victory.

  "We'll waive reading of the charges, Your Honor, and enter a plea of not guilty. We request a reasonable bail. The defendant is a lifelong resident, not a flight risk or a danger to others. She surrendered voluntarily. She needs psychological counseling she can't get in jail."

  Judge Pistone asked, "What's your position, Mr. Walker."

  "The defendant confessed to killing Gina Davenport. She is charged with first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances. If convicted, she'll be sentenced to life without parole or death by lethal injection. She shouldn't get bail at all. If she does, the State insists on a million dollars."

  "Mr. Walker," Judge Pistone said. "I'm the only one who insists on anything in this courtroom. Everybody else asks. Bail is set at three hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Mason, can your client post bail?"

  Mason looked first at Jordan, then her father. Arthur Hackett rose from his pew, took his wife by the arm, and left the courtroom. "I don't know," he said.

  "Excuse me, Your Honor," Rachel Firestone said. "May I have a word with Mr. Mason?"

  "Don't tell me the Kansas City Star is going into the bail bond business, Ms. Firestone."

  "No, sir. We're sticking to newspapers," Rachel said as she approached the rail that divided the lawyers from the spectators, leaned over, and whispered to Mason.

  "The bail is taken care of. Get Jordan out of here," Rachel said.

  "Mind telling me who her fairy godmother is?" Mason asked.

  "More like mother than fairy godmother," she answered, hiking her thumb at Abby and handing Abby's business card to Mason.

  Mason took a deep breath. "I wouldn't put my money on that quite yet."

  "It's not your money, Counselor."

  Abby stared at Jordan, biting her lip and holding her elbows in her palms. Nothing complicates a family reunion like murder, Mason thought. "We can post the bond," he told the judge.

  "Very well. Given the defendant's history of psychological problems, I'll require that she be supervised as a condition of her bail. Who will be responsible for her?" Judge Pistone asked.

  "I'll take her," Centurion Johnson said, rising slowly so everyone had time to turn around. "She was living at Sanctuary when she asked me if she should turn herself in. I told her that the courts and police would do the right thing and I was right. You let me take her back to Sanctuary, Judge, and I'll make sure she stays put until you're ready for her to come back. And believe me, Judge, I know how to find the courthouse."

  Judge Pistone rapped his gavel again, silencing the crowd, who were thrilled with the show they'd seen.

  "The Court is very familiar with both you and Sanctuary, Mr. Johnson. Any objections, Mr. Mason?"

  Mason looked at Jordan, whose grin was all the answer he needed. "None. I do want to make one thing clear on the record, however. Jordan Hackett is innocent. She recants her confession."

  "Save it for the preliminary hearing, Mr. Mason, which I'm setting for two weeks from today." Judge Pistone said, his head down. "Next case."

  Mason caught up to Abby and Rachel on the sidewalk outside the courthouse. Centurion Johnson was holding a press conference inside, keeping the reporters from chasing Mason.

  "Nice closing, Lou," Rachel said. "Jordan Hackett is innocent. She recants her confession. Very good. I'd lead with it if I was writing the story."

  Mason said, "Thanks. Tell your editor anyway. Make sure he spells recants correctly." He took Abby by the arm, "We need to talk," he said, leading her away.

  "Hey," Rachel yelled.

  "Alone," Mason said over his shoulder.

  They stopped at the corner of 12th and Oak. A city bus wheezed to a stop and a dozen people climbed out, stepping around and between them, leaving them to decipher each other's body language. Mason's hands on his hips said he was serious. Abby's cocked head, chin in her hand, one finger over her lips, said she was amused that he was so serious. Their eyes never left one another, signaling more than either would say on the street.

  "Abby, that was a very generous and dumb thing to do."

  "Because she might not be my daughter?"

  "Because she's a head case charged with murder living with a con man who was a dope dealer in his last job."

  "You said she was innocent. Who's the con man now?"

  "That's different. A trial starts before the jury ever sits down in the box. You're asking for trouble. What if she's not your daughter? What if she is your daughter and she's a murderer?"

  "Then she needs me."

  "She doesn't even know you. You show up out of the blue and say let's catch up after twenty-one years, what do you think is going to happen? Jordan is filled with more anger at her parents and the world than you can imagine. You think she's going to throw a welcome-home party for you? Wrong. You'll be her next lightning rod. As far as Jordan's concerned, you're the woman who abandoned her and left her to be raised by wolves.

  She'll be so pissed at you, she'll jump bail just to screw you out of the three hundred grand."

  Abby's face began to tremble, her finger sliding off her lips as her mouth crumbled. "I did abandon my daughter. Every day since they took her away from me, I told m
yself that it was the right thing to do, but it was a lie. Giving my daughter up was a horrible thing to do. If Jordan's my daughter, I won't abandon her again."

  Mason ran his fingers through his hair, tilted his head skyward, more to relieve the tension in his neck than to find a sign from above, though he wouldn't have turned down the sign.

  "We'll get a DNA test. It only takes about ten days to get the results. Then you'll know."

  Abby shook her head. "No. Not yet. You're right about the timing. Just tell Jordan that a friend posted the bond."

  "It may not be that simple," Mason said. "You told the cops about your call to Gina Davenport. The phone number was for Jordan's cell phone. If the cops don't know that yet, they'll figure it out eventually. Someone was trying to connect you, Gina, and Jordan. I don't know who and I don't know why. But I do know one thing. The courtroom is the wrong place for Jordan to find out that you are her mother."

  Chapter 12

  Family ties come with more knots than any sailor ever tied, Mason thought as he drove south from the courthouse toward the Kansas City Art Institute. Even his truncated family entwined him with love, duty, debt, and regret, among other assets and liabilities. He hadn't shown any talent for family building during his marriage to Kate, and couldn't imagine trying to salvage a mother-and-child reunion from the lost and found, as Abby was determined to do.

  He'd asked Rachel once how she felt about missing out on creating her own nuclear family.

  "Only seven percent of households still fit the two-parent Mom-stays-at-home-with-the-kids-while-Dad works profile. Everyone else is blending and separating. I figure the straight world is missing out on my world, not the other way around," she told him.

  Robert Davenport was the only member of anyone's family who'd skipped the arraignment. Mason wanted to know why and he wanted to know how cocaine ended up in Gina Davenport's office since that was her husband's drug of choice. The trail that tied this case together, Mason suspected, was sprinkled with white powder.

  Mason found Robert in his studio, a high-ceilinged, bare-walled box of a room, pungent with paint thinner and littered with easels and canvases. He walked in as Robert was putting the finishing touches on a nude model—without brushes or paint. The model, a young girl with broad hips, Earth Mother breasts, and hair down to the middle of her back, stood on a low platform, holding Robert to her nipple as he grappled with her bottom, his back to Mason. The girl giggled at Mason and clutched Robert's head tightly to her.

  "Which one of you gets extra credit for that?" Mason asked.

  Robert shoved the girl away from him and she stumbled off the pedestal, still giggling as she landed bottoms-up on a beanbag.

  "Who the hell are you?" Robert demanded.

  He was all elbows and joints, his bony arms sticking out of his paint-splattered T-shirt like sticks on an all-day sucker. He needed rocks in his pockets to keep anchored in a stiff breeze. A three-day growth of his salt-and-pepper beard rounded out his cocaine-diet glow.

  "Lucky for you, Professor, I'm not on the tenure committee," Mason said. "Tell teacher's pet school's out."

  The girl got to her feet, gathering her clothes, putting them on a piece at a time, wandering about the studio like she was on a treasure hunt, her giggles subsiding as she covered more of her body. After donning her sandals, bra, and dress, she reached behind a stack of blank canvases and retrieved her panties.

  "Ta-dah!" she said, then, "What the hell," as she stuffed them back where she found them. "Later," she promised, leaving with a last laugh.

  "Get out," Robert told Mason, wiping his face on his sleeve, pretending to organize his paintings.

  "Come on, Professor," Mason said. "Next time you want to bang the model, lock the door."

  "Fuck you," Robert said. "Get out or I'll call campus security."

  "No, you won't, because I'll tell them that you and your model were playing let's-mold-the-clay. Besides, when they search for evidence, they might find your dope tucked behind your girlfriend's panties."

  "Who are you and what do you want?"

  "My name is Lou Mason. I represent Jordan Hackett. She's been charged with killing your wife. You do remember your wife, don't you? Dr. Gina Davenport? Had her own radio show until someone threw her out the window?"

  Robert retrieved the model's panties, holding them over a metal trash can, lighting them with a butane lighter, dropping the flaming fabric into the can. "The police told me your client killed my wife. What do you want from me?"

  "You don't seem too upset that someone murdered your wife, Professor. Is that because you're too coked up or are you just not the emotional type?"

  "Excuse me for not sharing my grief with you, but it's none of your fucking business. Besides, my marriage was over a long time ago."

  "Why? Dr. Gina was too busy solving everyone else's problems, she didn't have time for yours?"

  Robert sat down on a stool, his feet tapping a nervous beat on the concrete floor. "No. She was too busy solving everyone else's problems and didn't have time for our daughter's. So Emily solved her problems by killing herself."

  Mason took the head shot but counterpunched, knowing that Robert expected him to fold out of pity. "So you took the hard road, blaming her and stuffing your nose with a few extra lines of cocaine."

  "I took the road I knew. I'm not bragging about it, but I'm honest about it. Unlike my late wife."

  "Meaning what?" Mason asked.

  "Meaning Gina sold the public a bill of goods with a phony-baloney do-the-right-thing morality. She only cared about her show. When Emily got to be too much, Gina dumped her at Sanctuary. When Emily killed herself, Gina turned it into a radio show, not because she wanted to share our grief with her listeners, but because it was a fucking ratings sweeps month. She rode my daughter's death all the way to a national syndication deal."

  "What made you hate her more—that she was more successful than you or that she cashed in on your daughter's suicide?"

  Robert bounced off his stool. "Look, Mason. I'm a decent artist, not a great one. I make a living doing what I want to do. I screw around with co-eds because it's easy. But I'm not applying for sainthood, and I didn't build my career on my daughter's grave."

  "Who supplies your cocaine?" Mason asked.

  Robert made a squealing sound that Mason guessed passed for laughter. "Sure. Let me write down the name and address. Would you like a letter of introduction too?"

  "The cops found cocaine in your wife's office after she was killed. Did you put it there?"

  Robert fished a cigarette from the pocket of his T-shirt, using the butane lighter, drawing hard, shaking his head as he released the smoke. "Wasn't me. I wouldn't have wasted it on Gina."

  "How much money will you inherit from your wife?"

  Robert flicked the cigarette onto the floor, grinding it with his heel. "I don't know. She had her money and I had mine. Except she always had more."

  "Do you have an alibi for the night your wife was killed?" Mason asked.

  "You see this body, Mason," he said, turning sideways and flexing his emaciated biceps. "I can hardly throw out the trash. How am I going to throw my wife out the window? Besides, I do have an alibi. Her name is Belinda. You met her when you forgot to knock. Sorry I skipped the formal introduction."

  "Did Gina mind that you screwed around?"

  "No more than I minded her screwing around. Satisfied?"

  "Disgusted," Mason said. "Who was Gina seeing?"

  Robert shoved his hands in his pants pockets, studying the cigarette butt before he kicked it across the floor. "I don't know," he said. "But she'd been real bitchy lately. I think whoever the guy was, he dumped her."

  "Is David Evans handling Gina's estate for you?" Mason asked.

  "He may be handling the estate, but he sure as hell isn't representing me."

  Mason asked, "Why not?"

  "You're a lawyer, Mason. Would you want to be represented by the same guy who served you with divorce papers
last week?"

  "No, Robert," Mason said. "I don't think I would. If I was a cocaine addict whose wife was murdered and my favorite drug was found in her office and she was divorcing me and my alibi was the co-ed I was banging in my art studio—I'd like to be represented by a good criminal defense lawyer."

  "Don't need one of those, Mason. I'm innocent and your client confessed."

  "My client is out on bail and she's recanted her confession. You might want to reconsider."

  The Art Institute is east of Main, just north of the Country Club Plaza, a shopping, drinking, and eating district that was prime Friday afternoon grazing territory for upwardly mobile beautiful people. Mason's office was farther north and west on Broadway, back toward the grittier side of the city.

  He wasn't in the mood for either destination. Still beat up from his elevator escapade, and beaten down by the pathetic Hackett and Davenport clans, he had no interest in single bars or solo practice at the moment. The top was down on his TR-6, but his spirits were lower.

  He sat in his car in the Art Institute parking lot, thinking about taking a drive wherever the TR-6 felt like going. Reaching into his jacket pocket for his keys, he found Abby Lieberman's business card. It was lilac-colored with the name of her company, Fresh Air, engraved in silver and black. The mix was feminine and tough at the same time. Abby understood public relations.

  Mason hoped she understood human relations as well. He and Abby had connected—that was clear to both of them. Yet instead of doing something about it, he was ducking it, using Jordan's case as a reason to step back.

  The reason wasn't an altogether bad one. Then again, he told himself as he dialed her number, it wasn't an altogether good one either.

  "It's Abby," her answering machine said, "leave a message." Mason was tempted to hang up and dial again just to hear her voice invite him to leave a message a second time.

  "Abby, it's Lou Mason. I was too hard on you today. You did a good thing and I hope it turns out well. Listen, if you're not doing anything for dinner, give me a call."

  He left his cell phone number and called his office to check for messages. When he finished, his phone beeped, signaling that he'd missed a call. He listened to the message. It was Abby.