He had to make sure she let him go.
Kelly had been a cop for seven years and he had seen many women ruin their lives waiting for men who were lost causes, who were never going to get out of jail, turn over a new leaf, find rehabilitation. The time passed and the women got grayer and older and more disappointed while nothing changed. He would get significant jail time for an attempted murder conviction. Even if he entered a plea bargain he would go away for years. Either way he was unemployable in law enforcement, and that was the only thing he knew and the only thing he wanted to do. That “waiting for a felon” game was not going to happen to Amanda. She’d had an education and a strong family and many resources before she met him and all that was still available to her. If he cut her off abruptly and finally she would be hurt but she would get over it. A surgical strike was the best way.
Kelly heard the duty officer unlocking the cell next to him and hoped they were going to clean up the mess. The smell was getting to him, it reminded him of the field hospital in Muyatollah. He rolled over and tried to banish the image of Amanda from his consciousness, but she was still there, this time clinging to him as they made love for the first time. He had watched her face, watched as she closed her eyes and moaned as they came together, then clutched him tighter as if she could forge their connection permanently through the force of her ardor. Why did she love him so much? He didn’t know, but she certainly did. He had come to count on that the way he counted on his ability to breathe, knowing that it was necessary to him but not giving the daily miracle much thought. Now his world had shifted on its axis and he would have to go it alone.
He could do it if it meant protecting her. He would do it.
The odor of disinfectant drifted his way and he inhaled deeply, wondering how long he would be kept in the jail before the transfer for his arraignment. He had shepherded many others though this process and now he was experiencing it himself.
Sooner or later the routine would commence, and he had nothing at all to do but wait for it.
* * * * *
Thirty-six hours later Amanda was sequestered in her condo surrounded by stacks of printouts, going back and forth between two computers, her home desktop and the laptop she used for work. Half empty styrofoam cups of coffee sat on her end tables in the living room. The dining room table was covered with softcover statute books, and their updates, which changed every time the legislature voted. Amanda was not an expert in the fine points of criminal assault and she was trying to become one overnight. She was poring over the distinctions between aggravated assault and attempted murder when her doorbell rang.
She opened the door to admit Karen, who was carrying two takeout bags and wearing a worried expression.
“Are you still at it?” she asked, glancing around the cluttered room.
“Of course. Kelly’s still in jail so I’m still at it.”
Karen sat on the couch and sighed. “Amanda, what are you doing? Give up on this guy. He’s a loser. First he was a rogue cop even the police wanted to hang by his thumbs and now he’s in jail for putting your ex fiancé in the hospital. What else do you need to get you to say sayonara?”
“Karen, I am not going to have the same debate with you that I’ve had with my parents. Kelly is in this mess because of me and I’m going to get him out of it.”
“He’s in this mess because he’s an emotional basket case. He fell over with an illness when he thought you had rejected him because he can’t handle adult interactions. Why do you think he has such a reputation with women? I’m sure he would run away any time a woman got close to him and eventually he chose his partners for their disposability.”
“Then what is he doing with me?” Amanda opened a code book and searched for a page.
Karen shrugged. “You fooled him, came in through his job and not his social life. You got to him before he realized what was happening. And he is aware enough to try to hang on to the first decent person fate sent him after all those bustier bunnies. He’s a survivor, he knows a good thing when he sees it, but he’s having some trouble living up to your image of him, to what you want him to be.”
“I want him to be free and happy, that’s all.”
Karen chuckled softly. “You want a lot more than that, Amanda Rose. Don’t you see that the pressure you’re putting on him to provide it is causing him to blow? These incidents are like the release valve on a steam engine, he has to act out even as he’s trying to make you happy. First he hits the booze so hard he’s the best conditioned person ever to get the senior citizen flu, then he pulls the stupidest stunt on record by clocking the Congressman when he knows the guy hates him and wants to take him down. Self destructive? What do you think? Kelly’s a textbook case.”
“I think you should be serving a residency in psychiatry, not emergency medicine,” Amanda said dryly.
“You know it’s true. He needs a lot of intervention to put him on the right road.”
“I’ll make sure he gets it once he’s out of jail. First things first, as my dear mother likes to say.”
Karen grinned. “Speaking of Margaret, she must be turning blue over all this.”
Amanda ignored her and scanned a page in the criminal supplement she was reading.
“I know he’s beautiful, I’ve seen him, but there are plenty of other gorgeous morsels out there who don’t come with his problems,” Karen added.
Amanda made a margin note with a pencil.
“He’s damaged, Amanda. You told me he had an alcoholic father, which is always bad news for a kid. You’ve also said he has really bad nightmares, a lot. That’s almost certainly post traumatic stress from Iraq.”
“I know that, Karen. I experienced the same thing after my car accident in law school. I recognize the signs and I have been planning to get him help for it. I was working up to talking to him about it when this happened. Now I have to get him off this attempted murder charge and that takes priority.”
“So you are going to revamp his whole life to suit you? Do you realize how delusional you sound? You’re going to make everything right for him just as soon as you get him out of jail?”
Amanda didn’t reply.
“Are you listening to me?” Karen asked.
“No.”
Karen shrugged. “Okay. I brought the food you asked for and I’m going to leave to start my shift before I say anything else offensive.”
“You’re not offending me. I just don’t have the time or the energy to go through the same arguments again. Nothing you can say will make me give up on getting Kelly out of this jam.”
“Doesn’t he have a lawyer?”
“Doesn’t want one, a real one anyway.”
“Especially not you.”
“That’s right. He won’t talk to me. He has some public defender appointed by the court, a kid fresh out of law school who’s taken the job to get experience and doesn’t know a writ from a riot act. Kelly’s brother is supposedly hiring a replacement soon. Since Lieutenant Manning is the only one communicating with me that’s all I know.”
“Does Kelly think you’ll just go away and let him drown in this?” Karen asked doubtfully.
“He should know me better than that. He probably thinks there’s nothing I can do without his cooperation, but he’s wrong. I am trying right now to bone up enough on the state laws to find a direction for his defense, but it’s hopeless.”
“Why?”
Mandy sighed heavily. “As far as the law goes Kelly is screwed. The standard is that he knew or should have known that any blow from him was capable of killing Tom. I can’t argue that he didn’t know that because he just killed James Cameron three months ago in much the same way, with two single strikes, either one probably fatal. I can argue that he didn’t have the intent to kill Tom, but the prosecution will argue that he did mean to kill Tom but just fell short of the mark. All that’s needed to charge him with attempted murder is the intent.”
“You’re right, that doesn’t sound good.”<
br />
“It’s not. I was hoping to do this legitimately and be able to defend Kelly legally, but I can see that my first instinct to go after Tom below the belt was the right one.” Mandy closed the book and reached for one of the bags Karen had brought, unwrapping a tuna sandwich and taking a bite.
“What on earth does that mean?” Karen asked, her eyes widening in alarm.
“Nothing that you have to be concerned about,” Amanda said shortly. “I’m just waiting for a couple of e-mail attachments to come through from my father’s assistant Jane and then I’m going to see Tom.”
“Amanda, what are you planning to do?” Karen demanded worriedly.
“What I have to do,” Amanda sighed. “ Fight fire with fire, use the same tactics on Tom that he uses on everybody else.” Her tone was blunt and determined. “Tom thinks he has this all tied up, I’m sure he’s paying some powerhouse lawyers to burn down Kelly’s life. I’m going to stop the Congressman in his tracks.”
“Be careful,” Karen said. “Tom is gray practice if I ever saw it. He has powerful friends.”
“He doesn’t have me, and Kelly does,” Mandy replied flatly. She stood abruptly. “I can’t read any more, I’m going blind from parsing case notes. Tom will be at his office, he has committee meetings on Mondays. I should get there now.”
“Are you sure you want to go out on this limb for Kelly?” Karen said, trying again.
“I’m sure.” Mandy put down the sandwich she didn’t want and looked at her friend.
“Karen, I know you’re trying to help me. I know you’re worried about me. But I am certain about this. I had many years of looking for Mr. Right and a lot of bad dates and worse boyfriends before I met Kelly. He has issues with authority and a rocky past but he never has issues with ME. Do you understand the difference?”
Karen was regarding her skeptically.
“You know those guys who, when they realize your IQ is higher than 76, are late for the door?”
Karen nodded. She was a doctor and she knew.
“I have gone through too many of them to count. The ones who are taken aback if you have anything to say. The ones who want you to have a career but don’t want you to meet the demands of that career because it competes with the attention you can give to them.”
“And Kelly is different?”
“Yes. He respects my abilities but is not focused on them. He’s not looking for a mommy or a servant or a lap dog or a slave.”
“So what does he want?”
“He wants a partner. He wants the same thing I do. He’s tired of restless bimbos and I’m tired of overeducated nerds. He’s intelligent but not an intellectual, thank God. He asks questions if he doesn’t know something and he listens to the answers. I know he seems macho because he takes charge and is calm in a crisis and fiercely protective of me. But he’s not dictatorial or controlling, or resentful of capable women. He’s not threatened by female success. He doesn’t care that I can’t cook and don’t want to learn. We both let dishes and laundry pile up and he doesn’t care about that either. We clean up the mess together, eventually. He’s funny, but not hilarious. Sometimes you have to think about what he just said in order to get it. When that happens and I look at him I can see that he’s been waiting for me to get it and then we both laugh. And he’s loyal and very sweet in an understated, masculine way….” She stopped when she realized that she was crying, then added in a whisper as she wiped her cheeks with her fingers, “His absence is so hard to bear, you can’t imagine.”
“All right,” Karen said. “You can stop talking now.” She pulled Mandy into a fierce hug. “I understand, I’m on board, you’ve convinced me. You love him and nothing matters to you except getting him out of this. My job as your friend is not to knock him and repeat what you’ve already heard but to support you in trying to help him.”
Mandy swallowed hard and then took a deep breath. “The thought that I’ll never be with him again makes me want to curl up into a ball like wounded animal.”
“You’ll be with him again. Even if he’s convicted he won’t be dead.”
Mandy nodded slowly. “Yes, he will. He’ll be dead to me. He won’t even see me if this goes against him, he’ll convince himself that he’s doing me a favor by dropping out of my life.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know him, I know how he thinks. He won’t see me now because he’s being held without bail and he doesn’t want me to get involved in his defense.” Her shoulders slumped hopelessly. “I didn’t know it was possible to miss anybody this much.”
“It’s new territory for you,” Karen said quickly, still shaken by the emotional response she had provoked. “You like him as much as you love him. Your friend and your lover are both gone.” Karen shrugged. “The truth is that I’m probably jealous. You’ve found that with Kelly and I haven’t found it with anybody.”
Mandy blinked rapidly, touched by Karen’s admission. “I can’t throw it away, and throw Kelly to the dogs, because I was engaged to somebody who wanted revenge when I broke up with him. This was all caused by my bad judgment in letting the thing with Tom get as far as it did when I knew in my heart that I didn’t love him. Kelly is paying the price for my stupidity and I have to fix that.”
“Okay,” Karen said with finality. “No more objections from me, I promise. Good luck. I have to go to work. Is there anything else I can do before I leave?” She was shouldering her purse.
“Say a prayer that I can call Tom’s bluff,” Mandy said simply. She picked up two manila folders sitting on the sofa and stuffed them into her carryall. “I’ll walk out with you.”
The two women headed for the door together.
14
Congressman Thomas Henderson’s office was located a few blocks from the courthouse building and on a workday in late afternoon the traffic was heavy. Mandy threaded her way through the swarming cars and parked in the high rise garage across the street from Tom’s building. She had dressed for this mission in the morning, anticipating her visit and the stir it might cause in Tom’s office. She was wearing her “summary for the jury” suit, navy summer wool with a light gray silk blouse, and low heeled “I’m a serious lawyer” shoes.
She felt confident that she at least looked the part of somebody who could take on a state representative and win.
The lobby of the local state office building was bustling as everyone prepared to leave for the day. Amanda may have imagined it, but she thought that a hush fell over the crowd as she walked through the entrance. She was hardly famous, but some of the people who knew her as Tom’s erstwhile fiancée had to be curious about her sudden reappearance in Tom’s territory. Several of them stared at her openly.
“Is that her?” Mandy heard one woman say in a low tone behind her.
Mandy felt like she should be wearing a scarlet letter, or at the very least a sign reading, “Stalking Victim Who Prefers Cop to Congressman.”
She ignored the whispers and went up one flight to the waiting area outside Tom’s office. It was a marble floored foyer with a series of rosewood benches surrounding an oak coffee table scattered with magazines. She said to the receptionist who was seated at a desk next to the office door, “Hi, Carol. Is Tom available or is he still in committee?”
“He’s still in the meeting,” Carol replied, nonplused by Mandy’s unexpected advent. “And he has several appointments afterwards…”
“I’d like to see him now, as soon as he comes out of the caucus,” Mandy said firmly, not waiting for Carol to put up the standard secretarial roadblocks while she figured out what to do. In Carol’s universe if the boss’s ex showed up unexpectedly it could spell trouble for the unfortunate assistant who admitted the old girlfriend.
“I don’t need to go into his office to wait,” Mandy added. “The reception room will be fine.”
Carol was uncertain about Mandy’s current status with Tom and afraid to annoy the wrong person. She said, “I’ll have to check. I don’t kn
ow if he has anyone with him now.”
Mandy took pity on Carol and said, “Go talk to him and tell him it’s urgent. I’m sure he’ll want to see me. I’ll take responsibility for the interruption.”
Carol surrendered and whisked down the echoing hall rapidly, her heels clicking on the glossy tiles as Mandy walked in the other direction. Mandy entered a small room furnished with a conference table and chairs used for Tom’s more intimate meetings when the larger chambers were occupied. It was private and she knew the door could be locked.
She didn’t want to confront Tom in public or at his apartment, and she didn’t want witnesses to their interaction.
Carol returned in a minute and forty-five seconds, a sure sign that Tom was eager to engage his former fiancée in the conversation which would flaunt his victory. He’d put Kelly on the ropes and now had Mandy as a supplicant, and he was going to savor a position of dominance he had not enjoyed in some time.
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