Chapter 44
After Irwin was taken into custody and Vivian was zipped into a body bag, it seemed to Sasha that time somehow both sped up and slowed down. In the immediate aftermath of flashing red lights and local reporters thrusting microphones at her, she remembered only Connelly, shouldering through the crowd in front of her and handing her off to Naya, who’d somehow gotten word to come out to Sewickley.
Naya and loyal Carl drove her home. Naya tried to stay, but Sasha just wanted to sleep.
Once Sasha convinced Naya to leave, she changed into warm pajamas and collapsed into a pile on her bed. It was three thirty in the afternoon. She slept until morning but did not dream.
Connelly let himself in with her spare key and found her still curled up under the covers on Friday morning. He had an Einstein Brothers’ bag with bagels and cream cheese in one hand and a takeout coffee in the other. He looked well rested.
Sasha fought through the syrup covering her brain and struggled to a seated position. She stared at him blankly.
“Hi,” he said, handing her the coffee. “Do you need to call your office?”
Sasha looked at the clock. Eight thirty. In nearly eight years at Prescott & Talbott she’d never arrived after eight. Not once.
“I guess.” Her voice came out in a croak. She pushed the hair out of her eyes and picked up the phone. She didn’t know what she’d say. Everyone would say they didn’t expect her to come in, that she should take some time.
That’s what they always said—after a trial or when a lawyer had a family emergency. After all, the firm’s lawyers were entitled to five weeks of vacation and unlimited sick and personal days. But, the reality was, at least for the trial attorneys, machismo demanded no rest. No one used their vacation days. It was a badge of...something.
Sasha knew male attorneys who hadn’t taken the day off to be present when their children were born. The female attorneys had to be present for their children’s births, but they made up for it by spending their labors sending e-mails from their Blackberries and calling in to participate in unimportant conference calls during their transition to active labor.
The associate in the office next to hers had convinced his siblings to put their mother in cold storage when she had the bad timing to die while he was in the middle of a trial. They buried her afterward, when it was more convenient for him.
An income partner whom Sasha liked a great deal had come to work every day during her chemotherapy treatment. Never mind that she’d spent most of each day vomiting and shaking—she came to work.
Sasha put the phone down. “No.”
She wasn’t going to call because she wasn’t going in.
She sipped the coffee and studied Connelly. “Are you on the clock?”
He nodded. “I’m wrapping this up today and then I’m taking the rest of the month off.”
He stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed.
“They grabbed up Harold Jones and talked to Bob Metz out in Seattle. Jones is cooperating, but he doesn’t know anything. Irwin is, too. He’s hoping it will impress Laura somehow. His story is they hadn’t planned to kill Noah. Vivian was supposed to tell Metz about the RAGS link with the hope he’d confide in Noah.”
“And he did,” Sasha said.
“Yeah, but it was just to establish Metz had knowledge. Somehow, Vivian thought she’d be able to pin everything on Metz after he died in the second crash. But, Noah pressured Metz to go to the government, and Vivian had to stop him. The coroner is reviewing Noah’s autopsy to determine how she killed him.”
Sasha looked up at him. “I was driving that train. I pushed Noah to push Metz. Are you saying I got Noah killed, too?”
Connelly sat on the edge of her bed. “Look at me. You saved several hundred people, Sasha. You stopped them.”
She shook her head. Warner. Noah. Their blood was on her hands.
“Did Irwin say why she did it?”
“Vivian?”
Sasha nodded.
“Money. She was going to invest in a startup that would compete with Hemisphere Air on its northeast routes. She figured the crashes would hurt Hemisphere Air’s business and drive customers to the new airline. Her cut of Irwin’s auction was just gravy. For her, it was plain old vanilla greed.”
“You think it was something else for Irwin?” Sasha asked.
“I think it started out as greed. And ego. Then he fell in love with Laura. He’s deluded, no doubt, but he really thought they would move out of the country and live off the money and she would never know.”
Sasha suddenly felt strangely sorry for Jerry Irwin. And tired again.
“Thanks for the coffee, Connelly. I think I’m going to take a nap. Let yourself out?”
He frowned down at her. She put the cup on her bedside table, rolled over, and pulled a pillow over her head.
Irreparable Harm (A Legal Thriller) Page 60