Legally Dead

by Edna Buchanan

  Another door opened and a wild-haired obese woman in a shapeless nightgown stepped out.

  “Are you the social worker?” she bellowed.

  “No, dear,” Vicki answered. “We’re not social workers.”

  Her friendly tone apparently encouraged the woman, who began to pad barefoot down the hall toward them, mumbling to herself as she came.

  Venturi stepped out again, made eye contact, and without a word, pointed back toward her room. She wilted for a moment, then turned, plodded back inside, and closed her door.

  “Mrs. Barrett, we’d like to talk to you privately, for just a moment. Please?” Vicki said.

  Alone and apprehensive, Laura Barrett took the risk.

  She shut the door, removed the chain, and let Vicki in.

  “This is Michael,” Vicki said. “We’re here to help you.”

  Laura’s sidelong glance was edgy and narrow-eyed, but she admitted him as well, locked the door behind them, then kept her distance.

  Her husband was out looking for work, she told Vicki. They were trying to raise enough money to leave town and find another place.

  “This is all wrong,” Venturi said, taking in the sad, shabby, grim room.

  Embarrassed, Laura Barrett avoided his eyes but held her head high. “It’s not so bad,” she said, “compared to our next address, which will be a homeless shelter, if they accept us. People don’t—they won’t forget,” she explained.

  Thin and angular, about five feet six inches tall, with brown eyes and hair, she looked a good ten years older than her age. She was not sure when Casey would be back.

  Venturi had hoped to talk to them both.

  “Do you two plan to stay together?” Vicki asked sympathetically.

  Laura nearly laughed. “Because I was young and female they promised I’d get off lightly if I confessed and testified against my husband.” Her voice grew brittle. “There was nothing to confess to or testify about. Nothing happened. They wanted me to lie. They said if I didn’t cooperate I’d be in prison until I was an old lady. We loved that day-care center. We loved the children. We’d only been married a year. We were planning our own family. How could I lie and testify against him?”

  She perched tentatively on the edge of the bed, like a wary bird poised to take flight. Victoria sat in the only chair. Venturi stood near a window where he could watch the street.

  “We didn’t see each other for eight years. We weren’t allowed to write or call each other. So if none of that drove us apart, nothing, not even this”—Laura glanced bleakly around her—“will now. For better or for worse…” Her smile was sardonic.

  “We’re here to talk about better,” Venturi said briskly. “Here’s what I propose.”

  Casey Barrett came home ninety minutes later. Laura rushed to unlock the door. Victoria gasped. Barrett’s black eye was much more than a black eye—it covered the entire left side of his face, in shades ranging from black, to purple, to green. The cuts on his forehead had just begun to heal. He wore a cast on his right hand.

  “Did they arrest anybody?” Venturi asked angrily.

  Startled by the strangers in their room, Casey shook his head. He, too, looked older than his true age.

  “The police said they couldn’t do anything and don’t have enough manpower to protect us,” Laura said. “They said it would save us a lot of trouble if we just moved on.”

  “Laura? Who…?” Casey began.

  She stood up, her posture resolute.

  “I hoped you’d be back soon,” she said softly. “Any luck?”

  When he shook his head, she motioned to two battered suitcases, packed, and standing near the door.

  “Pick them up,” she said. “We’re going to Miami.”

  They hugged in the backseat of Venturi’s car, not sure exactly where they were headed, or with whom. All they knew as they raced south was that their future could not be worse than the past. And maybe, just maybe, it might be better.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The couple slept like exhausted children during the drive.

  Venturi woke them when he stopped at a restaurant off the turnpike. The Barretts exchanged nervous glances after studying the menu.

  “Order whatever you like,” Venturi said. “It’s on me.”

  They ordered comfort food: meatloaf with smashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese with vegetables and salad. They ate ravenously.

  Like inmates, they averted their eyes when people passed or a waitress approached, hesitated to smile back at a stranger.

  “These two need a lot of work,” Venturi warned Vicki as he paid the check.

  He took Casey and Laura home, to the room where Lyle Gates had slept. Vicki had brightened it up since then, adding a colorful rug, a fluffy comforter, cheerful curtains, and thick, thirsty, pastel towels.

  It was far from luxurious, but Laura loved it. “We have our own bathroom!” she gleefully told her husband.

  Venturi called Danny while they got settled.

  “I have a couple of guests you should meet,” Venturi said. “We need to brainstorm.”

  “You kidding me?”

  “No. You have a problem with it?”

  “Hell, no. I had a feeling you weren’t going to Orlando to see the mouse. I’m down with saving a few more starfish. See you tomorrow.”

  The more he, Laura, and Casey talked that night, the more Venturi believed that Vicki was right.

  Who more deserved a second chance? Somebody owed them something for their lost years. If he could provide it, why not?

  They were perfect candidates. They had no problem, they said, permanently cutting off contact with everyone they knew. Warned about no good-byes, they agreed without hesitation.

  “Once we get situated,” Casey said, “we can pay you back.”

  “No.” Venturi frowned and shook his head. “What did I just say about no contact with your past? That includes me.”

  “So why are you doing this?” Laura demanded skeptically.

  “I know it sounds corny,” Venturi said, “but because it seems like the right thing to do. So don’t let me down.”

  Speechless, Laura reached for her husband’s hand. “It’s like we won the lottery,” she finally whispered. “Only better. Because if we won the lottery, we’d still be us. And the people who hate us would despise us even more.”

  Danny arrived early the next morning with Scout, who had stayed at his place while they were gone. The dog ran from room to room, excited to be home, then stopped, ears alert, outside the Barretts’ bedroom.

  “I think they’re still in love,” Vicki said, pouring coffee. “Did you hear them last night?”

  Venturi nodded wearily.

  “No wonder they’re still asleep,” she said. “They were at it all night.”

  “Remind me to fix that headboard,” he said, “so the next time that bed sees action it doesn’t bang against the wall.”

  “Action? What action?” Danny asked eagerly.

  They filled him in.

  “What’s their mental condition?” he demanded, pacing the room. “What if they’re too institutionalized, too screwed up from bad times behind bars to pull it off? They have major decisions to make, serious information to absorb. It’s hard work. And being a couple is a negative. They’re easier to recognize together. That doubles the chance of a slipup.”

  “You’re right,” Venturi agreed. “I want to polygraph them first.” He saw Vicki’s expression. “I have to be sure we’re not making a mistake.”

  She nodded.

  “I know a guy,” Danny said. “He’s the best.”

  “I’m sure they’ll have no problem with it,” Vicki said. She began to think out loud. “Their appearances shouldn’t be difficult to change. She needs a good haircut. She’d look good as a blonde. Both need dental work. Put her in the hands of a stylist, a good makeup artist, dress her in the right clothes, and nobody would ever recognize her. Most of her published photos are from the arrest or
the trial. She was hardly more than a teenager. She grew up and became a woman behind bars. She won’t look like the waif she was back then. He can grow a little facial hair and buff up in the gym. We can change his hairline. She needs to add some weight and muscle tone. Their walks, their posture, and their body language all need major work. I’m excited,” she said, elated. “What a wonderful project!”

  “Mission,” Danny said. “It’s a mission. Let’s go wake them up.”

  Laura and Casey agreed to be polygraphed. They sat in the war room holding hands as everyone brainstormed and ultimately pieced together a plan. Casey especially liked the fact that they’d have the last word.

  Danny’s friend, Clay Ramsey, the polygraph expert, agreed to test them immediately. People never said no to Danny. He led them up a back staircase at Ramsey’s small downtown office so the Barretts would not be seen in the building. No one else was present. Ramsey had sent his secretary on an errand that would take hours. No names were used. The questions focused on a single issue. Did either of them ever commit a crime against a child?

  They aced the tests. Clay destroyed the graphs.

  That same day Vicki found the couple a tiny third-floor efficiency in North Miami. The apartment wasn’t much but had its own bathroom. There was a Murphy bed, a tiny two-burner stove, a room air conditioner, and a window view of treetops and open sky. They signed a year’s lease.

  The manager, from Honduras, did not appear to recognize their names or faces.

  At the driver’s license bureau, the line of Haitian, Spanish-speaking, and other applicants wound around the block. Casey and Laura studied the Florida handbook while waiting, applied for licenses, took their driving and written tests and passed.

  Laura lamented her driver’s license photo.

  “It’s horrible,” she told Venturi over the telephone.

  “Great,” he said. “That’s exactly what we want.”

  Later that afternoon at Metro Ford, a new dealership in the north end of town, they bought a trade-in, a ten-year-old Ford Taurus, off the used-car lot. They told the salesman, who tried diligently to interest them in newer models, that it was all they could afford. They paid cash.

  They shopped for clothes at Kmart that night.

  Each day Casey and Laura Barrett left their tiny apartment early and drove to Venturi’s place to work on themselves. Their choice of countries was limited since they were fluent only in English. They chose the last great frontier, Australia, a nation built by prisoners and criminals sent to colonize the country. They loved the irony.

  “Aussies are gregarious, fun-loving people with a frontier spirit and a big pub culture,” Victoria told them. “Go to a pub, start talking to people. Observe, and do as the locals do. Their football will take a while to get used to; it’s a mix of rugby and a few other things.”

  The couple hoped to work together, perhaps in the hotel industry or restaurant business. Both loved animals and dreamed of owning horses.

  Venturi called Jim Dance again, to tap into his ever growing portfolio.

  Laura and Casey applied for jobs almost every day. Neither ever had an offer, not even from Burger King. The eight-year blank in their résumés was too wide a gap. When asked, they were truthful. They had been in prison. The next query, of course, was, why?

  The sordid answer was enough to turn off any would-be employer, even when the couple presented paperwork confirming their ultimate exoneration.

  Casey even applied to the Miami Police Department and filled out all the forms. He was never contacted.

  They kept careful records of their job search.

  One morning at Venturi’s, Laura bolted to the bathroom at the first smell of coffee.

  “She’s nauseous, a little under the weather,” Casey mumbled.

  “And how long has this been going on?” Vicki asked.

  He looked concerned. “About a week.” He paused, then confessed. “We took a drugstore pregnancy test last night. It said positive. But sometimes they’re wrong.”

  Venturi got up from his desk.

  “Will this spoil it?” Casey asked, his expression stricken. “Does it ruin everything?”

  Venturi considered the question.

  “Has she seen a doctor?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Good. Don’t. Make sure she doesn’t. We’ll find her a doctor. If she is pregnant we don’t want records.”

  Laura emerged from the bathroom, red faced, wet eyed, and clearly uncomfortable.

  “I told them,” Casey said.

  “Is it a problem?” she asked, blowing her nose.

  “I don’t think so,” Venturi said. “We may have to speed things up, but it could be a good thing, a very good thing.”

  Venturi intended to keep Keri on a strict need-to-know basis. The less she knew the better.

  He took her to North One 10, a cozy and intimate restaurant, and over oysters topped with spinach and brie, asked for her help.

  To his relief, she readily agreed to examine and treat a possibly pregnant young woman.

  Over porcini-dusted sea bass, he mentioned that there could be no official medical records.

  She began to fire questions at him.

  “Why isn’t normal doctor/patient confidentiality good enough in this case?”

  He hesitated to answer.

  “Was she the victim of a sexual assault?”

  “Negative.”

  “Is she a fugitive? A celebrity? An illegal alien?”

  He shook his head.

  She drained her wineglass before her final question.

  “Are you the father?”

  A woman at the next table turned to stare.

  “No, no, no. Absolutely not.” He dropped his voice. “She’s just a girl, a young married woman…”

  He saw the skepticism in her eyes.

  “Look, it is what I do,” she said quietly, “but I value my license to practice. I have to know what I’m becoming involved in. All I know about you, Michael, is that you’re Danny’s best friend and he and Luz love you. You and he were Marine commandos. You went into law enforcement and Danny sometimes disappears for days or weeks. Luz doesn’t talk about it, but I know she worries. I assume,” she said, hitching her shoulders, “that he’s involved in something clandestine, undercover, or confidential. Miami has more than its share of such people. But do you actually think you can buy me a fabulous dinner and talk me into doing whatever you ask without questions.”

  Dismayed, he said nothing.

  “I mean, what was that thing?” She gestured impatiently with both hands.

  He had no idea what she meant.

  “That thing! When you and Danny went for the car. Instead of coming back with your hands in your pockets, you had your pockets in your hands! What the hell was that?”

  “Calm down,” he said, uncomfortably aware of the diners around them. “A couple, three guys with a knife and box cutters tried to rob us,” he whispered sheepishly. He quietly described the scene. “We only did what we had to do. Self-defense.”

  “Okay,” she said stoically. “Now, who’s pregnant? What’s her story? Is the baby available for adoption? Who’s the daddy? Is he in the picture?”

  He sighed. “I thought the Hippocratic Oath meant that you administer to patients, not interrogate them.”

  “You have no respect for me as a professional.”

  “I do,” he whispered. “That’s why I asked for your help.”

  She was unrelenting.

  “Swear this conversation goes no further, whether you help or not?” he finally asked.

  She nodded, dangly earrings bouncing. “I won’t do anything unethical, professionally or personally, which also means I won’t break a confidence.”

  “Did you ever hear of Laura and Casey Barrett?”

  She processed the names for a long moment, then gave a sharp little nod. “The married couple who went to prison? I interned in Boston. I read that they were released, that they were inn
ocent all along.”

  “Would you like to meet them?”

  She blinked. “Sure,” she said, her expression cocky, as if to call his bluff.

  He called for the check.

  Laura and Casey were working late. Laura in the war room with Vicki, studying Australian history, politics, newsmakers, lifestyle, and TV and radio personalities.

  In another room, converted into a gymnasium, Casey was taking martial arts, learning from Danny how to handle himself in a fight, protect his wife, and never again take a beating like the one he had suffered in Orlando.

  Their cars were parked out of sight, behind the shed.

  If Keri was startled to walk in on Danny and Casey, shirtless and sweaty, raiding the refrigerator for Gatorade, she didn’t show it.

  “Hello, Danny. Does your wife know where you are?”

  “Hi, doc.” He grinned and nudged Casey. “Meet the baby doctor.”

  They all joined Vicki and Laura in the war room.

  “It is them,” Keri whispered, as Casey planted a kiss on Laura’s forehead.

  “Would I lie to you?”

  Venturi introduced her to the Barretts, using her first name only. “Consider her a friend,” he said. “You can tell her anything.”

  “We’ll make an after-hours appointment at my office,” Keri told Laura. “But if you’re comfortable with it, I can take a history right now, in private, and answer any questions you may have.”

  “Now.” Laura nodded with a look of relief.

  Keri took a notebook from her handbag and everyone else cleared out. Danny watched the late-night news in the kitchen. Vicki and Michael drilled Casey on lesson material at the table.

  After nearly an hour, Keri emerged from the war room, notebook in her hand, tears in her eyes.

  Danny left. So did the Barretts. Venturi drove Keri home. “This wasn’t exactly the evening I expected,” she said softly, as he parked outside her Coral Gables town house.

  “What did you expect?”