The Proviso

by Moriah Jovan

  “Wait, Betty—”

  “Don’t wanna talk to you.”

  “There’s a note on the teddy bear, Ma,” Billy Junior intoned. “What’s it say?”

  Betty looked down at the bear in her hand absently, then her brow wrinkled as she took a closer look. “What’n the hell’s this?” she muttered as she plucked at the back of the toy, then gasped as she drew out a piece of green paper. “Oh, my good Lord,” she whispered in awe as she held up a soft, worn hundred dollar bill and relaxed back into the booth. She looked back at the animal and poked through it. “It’s full o’ them puppies. Hunnerd dollar bills.” She glared at Chad then. “Where’d you git this, youngun? I won’t be havin’ you takin’ after your pa an’ thievin’.”

  “Big gold man gimme.”

  There was only one “big gold man” in that courthouse and Justice thought she might cry right there.

  “What’s the note say, Ma?”

  Looking abashed, Betty said, “Well, I forgot my readin’ glasses. Don’t know what it says.”

  “I’ll read it for you, Betty.”

  She glared at Justice. “Mind you, I kin read. I just don’t got my glasses handy.”

  “I understand.”

  Reluctantly Betty handed the note to Justice and Justice gulped at the computer-generated message. “‘Dear Miss Dawson,’” Justice read aloud. “‘Please take this bear and go away from here, away from Billy. Start a new life. Go to school, get some skills. You don’t have to depend on anyone but yourself.’”

  Betty sat dumbfounded. “Oh, my,” she whispered as tears came to her eyes. “The good Lord’s done answered my prayers at last.”

  Justice didn’t even care that she got back to the office at 4:30. Knox didn’t give her a chance to explain, so she got chewed up and spit out in front of everybody.

  But she held her head high and stared straight back at him while he yelled at her, letting him know she knew what he’d done.

  His eyes were a deep blue.

  * * * * *

  88: WIPEOUT

  For the first time since she’d moved in, he was actually in the house and, better yet, upstairs when she came home. He watched her speculatively, as if he were deciding what to say to her first.

  She didn’t say a word; she just went about the business of cooking dinner for both of them, since he’d had the presence of mind to show up.

  “All right,” he snapped. “Let’s have it. Where’d you go today and why?”

  “We’re not at work and you could’ve asked me that before you started in on me.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  She huffed. “Took the defendant’s family across the street and fed them.”

  He grunted. “Why?”

  “Because they were starving and I thought that was more important than watching you do what I’ve seen you do a gazillion times if I’ve seen you do it once.” He had nothing to say to that, and she looked over her shoulder at him and drawled, “And don’t act like you’re all mad. You gave them a teddy bear stuffed full of cash.”

  Knox rolled his eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar.”

  He said nothing for a long while and Justice threw the vegetables and meat into a wok. She plugged the steamer in and threw some flour tortillas in it. She heard a low meow and the swish of cat against denim.

  “It was a dumb thing to do,” he finally admitted.

  She tossed the stir fry and glanced at him where he sat at the table, Dog stretched up with his front paws on Knox’s thigh to get his face scratched. Knox obliged absently and she bit back a smile. “I don’t think so. I thought it was sweet.”

  “Eh. She’ll blow it all and go back to Billy as soon as he’s released.”

  “No, she was pretty graphic about the way he treats her and now she has the means to do something about it. With women like that, it always comes down to means. You pulled me out of a bad situation and then you gave me the means to leave you.”

  “And you came back. There you go.”

  She looked at him sharply. “You don’t beat me. You don’t rape me. You don’t get bastard children on me. You don’t cheat on me. You take care of me and give me everything I need; in fact, you’d give me anything I wanted if I asked—and don’t tell me you wouldn’t. Not only don’t you make me slave my life away and make me look like I’m forty when I’m actually twenty-five—you pulled me off that farm, where that’s exactly what would’ve happened to me. I can ditch you any time. I’m free to do what I want, when I want, how I want as long as I’m to work on time—and even that’s negotiable.”

  Knox laughed reluctantly, but said nothing else and she finished dinner. She put the tortillas on a plate and divvied up the stir fry, giving herself as much as she knew she could eat and him the rest.

  He put his fajita together and took a bite. “This is really good.”

  “Thanks.”

  They ate in silence for a moment as he hand-fed Dog bits and pieces of beef and tortilla. Finally, Knox muttered, “I’m sorry I was an ass today.”

  “Which time? I counted three or four.”

  He chuckled, again reluctantly.

  “I want to know something. Were you born grumpy?”

  “No, Iustitia,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tongue. “Believe it or not, I wasn’t. I was a semi-professional surfer in college. You can’t surf and be grumpy.”

  Her mouth would have dropped open if she didn’t have food in it. She swallowed it so she could speak. “You were?”

  “Yes. Surfing is probably the most—” He stopped to think, to look for a word. “—joyous experience in the world. Man communing with ocean via fiberglass.”

  There was so much she didn’t know about this man and suddenly, her heart hurt because of that. “So . . . what happened that made you grumpy?”

  He paused mid-chew. Then, softly, “I’d rather not talk about that.”

  “Oh. Okay.” They ate in silence that felt tense to Justice because she had so many things she wanted to ask and didn’t know where to start. She cleared her throat. “Um, Knox . . . ”

  Knox suddenly watched her intently, waiting for her to finish.

  Justice stared down at her plate as if it would give her courage. “I wanted to know if you would rather not sleep on the couch anymore?”

  He said nothing for a long time, but she couldn’t bear to look at him. She felt his fingers on her chin, lifting her face so she would meet his gaze. “I don’t know if I can just sleep with you, Iustitia. Are you asking me for more than just sleep?”

  I want anything you’ll give me, but I’m too embarrassed to ask.

  “I just feel bad that you love your bed so much but you’re sleeping on the couch.”

  That surprised him, taking him out of the moment. “How do you know I love my bed?”

  “It’s well taken care of. You have very fine linens on it that are custom made. The rest of your house—” She waved a hand. “It’s a wreck. Chipboard furniture from Wal-Mart, even.”

  He laughed outright then.

  “You love your books and your cat.”

  Love me, Knox, please.

  Knox took a deep breath and said, “Probably not, Iustitia. I need to—” He stopped. Cleared his throat. Wouldn’t look at her. “Um, probably not.”

  Justice raised her eyebrow as she watched him, and she pulled in a long, soft breath. Oh! It wasn’t about Justice’s readiness at all; it was about his, and suddenly, she felt yet another heavy weight lift from her shoulders. The weekends alone—not about her. With her curiosity bursting inside her so violently it nearly hurt, she only said, “Okay.”

  Knox offered to clean up, so she went into her—well, their—bedroom to blog. No hamlet. She swallowed and gritted her teeth, trying to keep the tears at bay. It’d been a month and a half. He wasn’t going to come back.

  At ten, she heard the driveway gate open and watched out the mullioned window as his SUV backed out and drove
away. She didn’t have to wonder where he went at night. The evidence was all over the courthouse every morning: the dozen or so discarded orange juice bottles; files that hadn’t been signed off on the evening before but were come morning; prosecution tables that had been clean the night before but grew exhibits overnight.

  Justice closed her laptop then, not having the stomach for more words. She wandered into the kitchen to get something to drink and saw an old yellowed newspaper on the kitchen table that hadn’t been there before.

  It was dated August 30, 1994, and in the middle of the page was a picture of a very, very young, though no less hard and cold, Knox Hilliard as he walked into the courthouse. The headline next to the picture read “Prosecutor not charged in slaying.”

  Assistant Chouteau County prosecutor Knox Hilliard, 25, was cleared today in the execution-style murder of Tom Parley, 43, after Parley was acquitted of 19 counts of homicide over the course of three years.

  Hilliard, who prosecuted Parley for serial murder, was the lead suspect in the FBI’s investigation, but federal prosecutor John Riley cited lack of any credible evidence linking Hilliard to the murder. “Our investigation has taken us in another direction,” said Riley.

  Hilliard, who has been on administrative leave from the prosecutor’s office while under investigation, returned to work today. When asked for comments, he said only: “It was a gross miscarriage of justice and my only regret is that I wasn’t able to convince a jury of Parley’s guilt. I offer my heartfelt apologies to the people of Chouteau County and the state of Missouri for not doing my job well enough.”

  There was more. Justice didn’t bother to read it; she knew what it said. She threw it in the trash and sighed, a tear rolling down her cheek. “Oh, Knox,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  She went to bed and stared out the mullioned windows at the fractured moonlight. Her age. He’d been her age, just out of law school. So much she hadn’t wanted to believe about her husband, so much she didn’t know . . . His pain, his joys—if he had any left. A man who loved to surf more than anything in the world living sixteen hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean.

  You’re an AP in a backwater county on the outskirts of Cowtown. Why? Is what you wanted in any way similar to the reality?

  So. Giselle’s question to Justice at the beginning of her journey with Knox applied no less to Knox himself.

  None of this had figured in her girlish fantasies; she had thought nothing of who he was as a man, a man with almost forty years of life already behind him, a man who apparently didn’t have much to laugh about at all, a man with no joy behind that radiant smile he used as a weapon in court, a man who hurt and bled more than most.

  Knox Hilliard: Not the most powerful force in the universe. Who knew?

  A semi-professional surfer who had come home to spend his best years fighting for an inheritance he didn’t want but felt honor-bound to claim because of the lives it had cost.

  Dog jumped up on the bed, and she held onto him, unable to sleep. It was 12:30 when she heard Knox come in the house. She listened as he threw his keys on the table, opened the refrigerator door, poured a glass of orange juice (she didn’t have to see him to know what he’d chosen to drink), then silence. After a minute she heard the rustling of a trash bag and the crackle of an old newspaper, then the opening of the basement door and footsteps clipping down the stairs. She heard the water run when he turned on the shower in the basement bathroom, then heard it stop a bit later.

  At 1:15, she threw the bedcovers back and padded down the hallway, to the basement door and down the stairs. She came to a halt behind the couch where Knox lay, on his side, clad only in his short cycling shorts, asleep in the light from Wakko, Yakko, and Dot’s world.

  Justice stood and watched him, as she had before. He looked so very young, so innocent as he lay with his head on his outstretched arm, his hand still clutching the newspaper. She took the remote off the arm of the couch and clicked off the television, then touched his muscled shoulder.

  “Knox.”

  His eyes fluttered open and he turned his head to look up at her. “Iustitia?”

  “Come to bed.”

  She sensed his flicker of surprise, but she only turned and walked back upstairs.

  The clock had marked thirty minutes before she felt the cool wash of air on her back, and the depression of two hundred pounds of raw male muscle on the bed. She heard the soft thud of four paws on the floor and the baritone voice she loved say, “Go away, Dog.”

  Justice smiled a little when Knox’s arm curled around her waist and pulled her gently into the curve of his body. She felt his face burrow into her curls that lay on her pillow.

  “I murdered that man, Iustitia,” he murmured, as if she didn’t know, hadn’t known for three years, hadn’t deliberately blocked it out of her mind.

  Daring more than she had ever dared before, she reached behind her and spread her hand over Knox’s thigh, stroked slowly upward to his jersey-covered hip, and squeezed.

  “I know.”

  They were silent for a long time. Then, “I made him get on his knees and put his hands behind his head,” he said, his voice gathering strength and Justice understood that though this was a confession, it was far from an apology. “I put my gun between his eyes and I made him beg for his life. Then I blew his head off.”

  Justice was very aware of his chest against her back, his ragged breathing, the thundering pace of his heart as he awaited her condemnation—if not for what he’d done, then that he felt no remorse.

  “Well,” she sighed. “It needed done.”

  He froze for a second then took a deep breath, released it slowly. His breathing and heart rate eased. His hand drifted across her cheek and into her hair, and Justice felt safe and protected for the first time since her grandfather died.

  * * * * *

  89: HAPPY PAPER TRAILS

  “I don’t know what to do, Justice. I mean, I just can’t seem to make my paycheck stretch all the way to the next payday. So when I get the next paycheck, half of it’s already spent. Alisha’s medical bills are paid, but her medicine is sky high. I mean, if I could get a night job or something—just to pay the bills that overlap, get some of them paid off, maybe.”

  Justice nodded in understanding, her mouth full of a bite of the burger she’d bought. She took a sip of strawberry shake. “I know what you mean about the bills. A farm’s always like that. We were always almost barely hanging on.” She paused. “Tell me something, Richard. How come you’re not interested in the widow’n’orphan fund?”

  He snorted and stuffed a French fry in his mouth. “Are you kidding? I see all that money come through here and sometimes morals don’t mean a damn thing—especially in the beginning, when Claude was the prosecutor. There’ve been times when, you know, Davidson will toss me a bundle and I’ll look at it and think of all the things five thousand dollars would buy that my kids need. Shoot, even if they didn’t need anything, it’d be nice to buy my wife a huge diamond ring just because she deserves it.”

  “So what keeps you from taking it?”

  He shook his head and he stared at his food. He looked up at Justice. “I don’t know, Justice. Sometimes I just really don’t know.” His gaze didn’t stray from hers and her eyes flickered in question. “What keeps you from doing it?”

  She shrugged. “What’s the point in that? I get to keep my whole paycheck and my other earnings. Knox pays for everything, probably with that money. I don’t have to clean or do laundry or mow the lawn or fix stuff around the house. He gives me money for the things we need and he’d give me more if I asked. I have all the time in the world to write and for the first time in my life, I’m accountable to no one. If I wanted that kind of money, I’d take a radio show. So . . . I just don’t feel a need to. But,” she went on, slowly so as to make her point as clearly as possible without saying it outright, “if nobody knows where it comes from, how do you know it’s hot?”

  Richard look
ed up at her then, and sat back in his chair. “Justice, I never fixed cases when Claude was here, but that wasn’t his only racket. There are a dozen illegal things he could be doing. Where else could it come from?”

  “Think about it. We presume people to be innocent—well, no, we really don’t, but that’s the theory. But even if we don’t think they are, we still have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. So until you can tell me where it comes from, why it’s hot, I’m not going to assume anything.”

  “Justice, I’m telling you. This office has always worked this way.”

  “Oh, okay. Then what do you think he’s doing?”

  Richard said nothing for a long while, then, slowly, “Knox hated Claude. He didn’t bring a dime into this office.”

  “Did Patrick?”

  “No, nor Hicks. I remember when Knox came here. He latched onto Hicks, but all three of us were good at hiding what we were not doing.”

  “And you’re still not. I mean, everyone who puts his hand in the till has to contribute. That’s the way a widow’n’orphan fund usually works, right?”

  He stared at her. “Are you saying it’s all Knox’s money and he’s just . . . giving . . . it away?”

  “Follow the money. There’s only one reason the FBI wouldn’t be able to find a paper trail and that’s if there wasn’t a paper trail at all. Knox is the best white-collar prosecutor in the state. He would know how to hide money in plain sight.”

  “He can’t possibly make that kind of cash here.”

  “With Sebastian Taight managing it?”

  Richard’s eyes widened. “I always forget about that.” He looked around the room at the men milling about, yelling as always, turning the air blue. “They’ve already figured it out,” he murmured.

  “Right. And they’re willing to play whatever game Knox has on the table, especially because it involves free money. The residents? It only matters what they think insofar as they spread the rumors of the nefarious goings-on in the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office far and wide, initiated by the thirty-year reign of Claude Nocek.”