The Witness Series Bundle

by Rebecca Forster

  "Oh, man, I'm sorry, Josie, I thought you knew?"

  Josie shook her head, "I figured he bought before the market went nuts."

  "Naw, Lexi got it in her divorce settlement," Burt said.

  "And Archer told you about that but not about the accident with the kid? That sounds kind of chatty to me." Josie mused uneasily as the columns of this balance sheet weren't adding up.

  "Lexi told me she was leaving Archer really well fixed for the beach babes. It was kind of sweet, you know. It was like Lexi was looking out for him." Burt ran some water in the sink and added a spritz of detergent. "She'd sure as hell be happy to know you're here for him now. She'd be happy he didn't sell the building."

  Burt was gone again, called by some chore in the kitchen. Josie heard him speaking to someone in Spanish. A deliveryman was at the backdoor; then a person needing a handout. When Burt reappeared with another tray of glasses he had a smile on his face and a thought in his head that turned Josie cold.

  "Or, you know, maybe we've got this all wrong. Could be Archer's been keeping to himself so much because of this thing with the kid. Wouldn't that be something if he really did it and he was hiding out? Hey Josie, who was that guy that murdered his whole family? He was like an accountant and he laid 'em all out and then went away and got a new wife and everything? Who was that Josie?"

  Burt filled the ensuing silence with his chatter, spinning conspiracy theories, amused at his own imagination while Josie sat stone still. What Burt implied was stupid and thoughtlessly uttered. Yet, she had not instantly dismissed the idea that Archer could have done just that. Even now Josie found no quick voice to stop Burt and so he went on.

  "John Wayne Gacy? Naw, he was the guy who dressed up like a clown. . .Killed boys. . .I think that was him. . .But the other guy. . .What was that guy's name?"

  "Burt, stop. That's ridiculous. You don't really think Archer could have done anything like that."

  Burt raised his eyes. He rested his arms on one of his knees as he balanced on the ground with the other. He opened his mouth, but before he could answer, someone else joined the conversation.

  "Did you really need to ask that, Jo?"

  Slowly, Josie turned her head. Archer stood behind her, taking up more space than she ever remembered. Archer removed the sunglasses he wore despite the unremarkable day. Burt stood and Josie heard the tinkle of glass as if Burt backed into the bottles on the bar, shocked when he saw the damage to Archer's face. But it wasn't the bruising and cuts Josie saw. She was looking Archer in the eye. Those eyes – once level playing fields – were now hard and desolate and as uninviting as the Tundra.

  CHAPTER 7

  "How's Hannah?"

  "She's okay. She's in school."

  "What did she say about me?"

  Josie rested her arm on the back of the chair. They had moved from the bar to a corner table. More coffee for Josie; a first cup for Archer. From the looks of him, he had breakfasted on aspirin and that, it seemed, had been a less than satisfying meal. His face was a bright and shiny pallet of purples and reds, black and teal, the skin stretched tight as the tissue beneath swelled to unnatural proportions. His left eyelid looked like patent leather; the cut above it had scabbed. All in all, Archer was not a pretty sight so Josie stared out the window until he insisted she pay attention.

  "Did Hannah say anything about me, Jo?"

  "Nothing," Josie lied easily, reluctant to add more to Archer's misery.

  "Bullshit," Archer responded. He drank his coffee with one hand wrapped around the cup, the handle turned inward. When he drank, he stared over the rim at Burt.

  Josie crossed her arms on the table and tried hard not to show how annoyed she was. Burt's joke had been in poor taste, his speculation completely ridiculous, yet Archer hadn't seen it that way. He had turned his back on Burt, his good friend, and now he was bullying Josie into some loyalty game that smacked of destructive, macho self-pity. It was the last thing she would have expected and she dealt with it the only way she knew how.

  "Okay," Josie said flatly. "Have it your way. Hannah said I should be careful. She said I should have learned that adults do bad things to kids. She said there was always a chance you could be like that. Does that make you feel better?"

  "Out of the mouths of babes," Archer said sarcastically as he hung his head and put his hand on the back of his neck. "You took in a damn expert on freaks who hurt kids."

  "What would you expect, Archer? You didn't exactly welcome her with open arms when she moved in with me. You can't expect her to come to your defense."

  "Hey." His hand came down hard on the table and the coffee cups jumped. "You didn't exactly ask if I wanted to be part of the Brady Bunch. I respected you taking her in, but I didn't think she would change things the way she did. I didn't want anything to change. I didn't think you did either. . ."

  Josie cut him off, tired of the old tune he was singing.

  "What's happened between us because of Hannah isn't in question, Archer. I just want to point out you shouldn't expect any sympathy from her until you earn it."

  "I don't want it," Archer snapped. "I don't want any from you either."

  Josie stiffened, hearing a whole lot of frustration talking that had nothing to do with his arrest. It was Hannah and had been Hannah since Josie announced the girl was going to live with her. Conceptually, it had been a fine and noble move. Reality was another matter. Archer argued that Hannah had seen more in sixteen years than Josie had seen in forty. She could fend for herself. Josie wondered why she should have to. Archer countered, pointing out that Josie couldn't make peace with her own mother's desertion by pretending she was Hannah's. He might as well have slapped her with that one. To his credit, he apologized for crossing that line so Josie chalked Archer's basic objections off as selfish and male and assumed he would come around. Now she had to wonder if there was more to his desire to be rid of Hannah than met the eye. Maybe Burt had hit on something. Just maybe Archer had something to hide. Perhaps Hannah, with all her knowledge of sordid human behavior, saw something in Archer Josie didn't. That, Josie decided, was plain idiotic.

  "Okay, sorry. I'm as edgy as you so let's forget Hannah." Josie reached into her bag, got her tape recorder and put it between them on the table. "What about Tim Wren, Archer? Was there any love loss there or is it just Hannah you object to?"

  "You don't need that thing." Archer's voice was ice. His head jerked with the insult of the recorder.

  "I do if I'm going to defend you," Josie answered sharply. Just as sharply she looked at him, sending a warning. No more games. They didn't have the time. "Be truthful, and it won't matter what's on this tape."

  "Screw you, Jo," Archer muttered as he leaned away from her.

  Josie was quick, punching at the small recorder and turning it off with one hand as she grabbed Archer's arm with the other. Her grip was tight and hard, her nails too short to dig in. She bent forward, close enough to smell the ocean on him and see that his arm was sunburned where he leaned it out the window during his surveillance. Any other day, these things would have endeared him to her. This wasn't any other day; this wasn't even Archer.

  "Don't you ever say that to me," she hissed. "And don't make me work so hard to help you. You can be angry because you don't like Hannah being at my place, you can be mad because I don't squeeze the toothpaste out right, but there is no you and me when it comes to this. There is no assumption of truth or innocence just because we sleep together."

  Slowly Josie sank back in her chair, easing her grip just a bit.

  "You're not thinking straight, and I'm not exactly top of my game so I will use whatever helps. If I say it's a tape recorder, then it is a tape recorder. I'll call the shots and I'll ask the questions. Any other attorney would do the same thing, but no one else will care as much as I do about finding out what in the hell is going on. Nobody."

  The hand that had held Archer was shaking as she let go of him, her voice had
trembled and that shamed her. If she was going to help Archer, or stand up to an ugly truth, then Josie had to be as tough as her talk.

  "Do you want to start again or do you want me to walk?"

  The minutes ticked by. Archer didn't speak. A woman came in asking to use the bathroom. A boy dropped a stack of Beach Report newspapers on the floor with a thunk. She felt Archer's anger hot as the August sun and realized that it wasn't just the recorder that set him off, it was his own impotence.

  The cop was now the perp.

  Finally, he picked up the recorder. It looked so insignificant in his big hand, so unworthy of the scrutiny he gave it. Josie heard the click. The recorder was back on the table. He spoke about Lexi's boy and the first words out of his mouth were cruel.

  "Tim Wren was nothing to me, Jo."

  CHAPTER 8

  "Tim was thirteen when he died. He wasn't like his mother at all. He was big and Lexi was so small. He was dark. Lexi was light. She was so bright and smart and that kid was just broken. Nothing worked right on him. How could a woman like that have a kid like him?"

  Briefly Archer put the palm of his hand to his brow as if that would help him think. His fingers curled as if his head hurt. He breathed deep through his nose and then continued.

  "Tim had a degenerative muscle disease. There were some problems with his heart and his lungs but it was his mind that was really screwed up. He was a big, hulking kid who went through puberty early and fast, had the mind of a five-year-old. I couldn't stand listening to him or watching him jerk around knowing there was no way to stop him. Every time he jerked or threw a tantrum or drooled it killed Lexi; just destroyed her. I could see it in her face."

  Archer's fist pounded the table lightly, underscoring his long ago frustration and aversion to Tim's disabilities – reactions a jury would only see as callous. His chair was close enough to the window so he could rest his head against it when he tipped it back. Archer looked at the ceiling, at the business cards that people had tacked up over the years, but Josie knew the only thing he saw was Tim Wren.

  "Why didn't you tell me about him?" Josie asked quietly.

  "I haven't told you about a lot of things." Archer lowered the chair to the floor, and slid his eyes toward Josie with a look she could only describe as pity that she had misunderstood. "Wasn't that part of the deal between us? Our time started when we met. I had pictures of Lexi. You asked about her. I told you. You never asked about Tim."

  "I asked why you never had children," she reminded him. "You didn't talk about Tim then."

  "I didn't lie, Jo. I said if Lexi and I had kids, they would have been beautiful. The bottom line, Tim wasn't ours. He was hers. There was no reason to talk about him. Why should I want to talk about him when he represented a terrible time in my life? I didn't even think about Tim again until yesterday. But Lexi? I've thought of her every day since she died."

  Josie toyed with her cup feeling her own anxiety but unable to detect any from Archer. He touched her hand and stopped her fidgeting. Time and memory and Josie's attention were softening him. Or, like a good actor, Archer knew when to change the pace and the tone to draw his audience into the web of his fiction. Either way, Archer would make a fine witness if it came to that.

  "Jo, you're looking for me to say Tim was like a son to me but I won't lie. Tim was so damaged it was impossible to have a relationship with him. I didn't grieve for him when he died, but I hurt because Lexi hurt. That's not a bad thing, Jo. It's an honest thing. It's what I did. It's who I am. You know that."

  Josie eased her hand from under Archer's. Okay. She believed him, but Archer's explanation wasn't good enough. Josie detected half-truths lying dormant, waiting to be brought to life by a prosecutor.

  "It must have been hard to live with this boy if he was as bad off as you say. You must have been frustrated. Were you angry all the time, Archer?"

  "Lawyer tricks, Jo? Christ, I haven't been retired that long." Archer laughed in disappointment. "If you want to know if I was ticked off enough to do something to that kid, ask me."

  "Were you?" There. It was on the table. Archer sent it right back at her.

  "No. And if I were I wouldn't have waited five years to take him out. I wouldn't have done it in an amusement park with ten thousand people around to watch and his mother sitting right next to him. There would have been better ways, easier ways, to get rid of him."

  "Then tell me what it was like to live with a boy who couldn't control his body, who couldn't carry on a conversation, who probably needed to have his diapers changed even though he was almost as big as you," Josie insisted.

  "It sure as hell wasn't as peachy as having Hannah hanging around," Archer scoffed. "Tim needed twenty-four/seven care by the time he was seven so he didn't live with us. Colin left Lexi when Tim was three, when they figured out he was never going to be normal. What a pisser, a guy like him making a buck off a kid he hasn't seen in what, ten years?" Archer's bottom lip disappeared under his teeth for the briefest moment. When he spoke again his voice was steady but still colored by bitterness. "Lexi worked her butt off to pay for a place out in the Valley. She went to see Tim every week. She took him out as often as she could. She didn't ask me to go with her until the kid started getting too big for her to handle. She never asked for Tim to live with us because that would have been a deal breaker. I told her straight out I wouldn't marry her if that's what she wanted."

  "Did she resent you for that?"

  "Lexi was practical. She married me hoping I'd have a change of heart but she knew I wouldn't. She lived with it," Archer said matter-of-factly.

  "Then why would the district attorney think you killed Tim Wren?" Josie pressed.

  "I don't know." Archer threw up his hands. "Christ, Jo. I swear, if I knew I would tell you."

  Archer's admonition was the cry of an animal suddenly wounded by a hunter he did not see coming; the one he failed to smell, the one he couldn't outrun. Josie saw Burt reflected in the bar mirror. His hand was on the phone. He was ready to call for help if trouble came. Josie tore her eyes away from the mirror, needing to see every flicker and tick in Archer's face when he answered her next question.

  "Did you know you were under investigation?" Josie lowered her voice, Archer followed suit.

  "I would have heard something, seen something if it had been going on for any length of time. No." His voice skidded into a harsh whisper as the heel of his hand went to his good eye. "Whatever went down, it was fast. If Lexi were here she could tell them I didn't do anything. If Lexi were here-"

  "But she's not. I am."

  Josie laid out the obvious like she was fanning a deck of cards. Pick one, Archer. Her. Me. The truth. Lies. Your pride or my hurt. All of it could be compromised and that was where the skill of the game came in. Josie couldn't force Archer to be honest; she could only hope she wouldn't be blinded by her feelings for him. Archer's life before her had been held so close she didn't know it still clung to him. His secrets may have been kept out of consideration for her, a need to leave a hurtful past behind, or it could have been something else. It could have been something sinister. Archer's reticence could have been the self-serving silence of a man with something to hide.

  Josie turned off the tape recorder just as Burt flipped on the television above the bar. Startled by the sound of the TV, Archer's eye went to it and then scanned the rest of the place as if he wasn't quite sure where he was. Josie collected herself. It was time to go. The day would happen but in Hermosa Beach it would have to happen without her. She gathered her things. This was just the beginning, not even the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot to do.

  "I have an appointment with Jude Getts. I better hit the road if I'm going to get to Brentwood before noon."

  "I don't want you to go, Jo." Archer stopped her.

  "I have to. You'll be fine here. Stay with Burt for awhile." Josie directed as she palmed her keys and looked at Archer one last time. "I'll be back as soon as I ca
n."

  "I didn't mean it like that," Archer said. "I mean, I don't want you dealing with that bloodsucker: him or Colin Wren. I'll sign over the apartment building to him. I'll pay back every cent of the bail money, but I don't want to be beholden to either of them for anything. Do you understand?"

  Josie hesitated. Above her the air-conditioning had kicked in and the draft of cool air tickled her bare neck. It was as annoying as Archer trying to tell her how to do her job.

  "Don't be a fool, Archer. If Jude Getts has information that will help us, I want it. Your ego isn't going to get in the way of that. It's not good business; it's not good lawyering and if we come up with something that will help him, I'll reciprocate."

  She got up and slung her purse over her shoulder.

  "When I get back I want a detailed account of what happened the day of the accident. From the minute you got up that morning to the minute you brought Lexi home. Do you understand?"

  Archer's petulant silence gave Josie pause. Pushing her chair out of the way she leaned over the table. Defiant, hurt and angry, every bad thing Archer was feeling was directed at Josie as if she had brought this on him. It would take a whole lot more than that to make Josie bend, but it was just enough to really tick her off.

  "Do you understand me, Archer?" Josie asked.

  A muscle in Archer's jaw quivered. Finally, he nodded. Josie wasn't going to ask for more. An hour later she was walking into Jude Getts' office. She hoped Archer was at home reconstructing that fateful day. He wasn't. As a matter of fact, Jude and Archer were doing the exact same thing. They were tuned into the noonday news and Archer was the headline du jour.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jude Getts' office was nice: leather furniture, smooth and soft as a baby's bottom, lush green plants, and carpeting thick as a southern whore's accent. Josie took a minute to miss what she'd left behind when she abandoned her high stakes private practice a few years ago, when it occurred to her that not everyone with money to pay for it deserved a defense. But a minute was all she took. The price to get and keep a place like this was just too damn high: ridiculous billable hours, no time to call your own, clients who turned your stomach or broke your heart or tugged at your conscience, colleagues who wanted everything you had and more, lovers who faded into oblivion in the face of a trial that lasted longer than a relationship ever could. Being sought after, smart and rich made for a tough life. Only a few were cut out to make it big and it was evident that Jude Getts was one of the anointed. Josie could feel his energy before she even crossed his threshold.