by Ace Collins
Yet, she’d never thought of herself as beautiful until Steve pointed it out to her in college. After that, it made her feel all bubbly when he’d whisper that she was the belle of the ball or queen of his kingdom. Thus, suddenly looking good became so important to her because of how important it was to him. Still she knew he and everyone else really loved her because of her personality. Even as a child she’d been outgoing, warm and caring. She had been the girl who’d save the lost kitten or find the words to mend a friend’s broken heart. And a mirror couldn’t catch that part of her; it had to be experienced.
But now the loving nature that had seemingly been born into her was getting hard to find. Even her thoughts and motivations were now disturbing. Why had she gotten so much satisfaction from the daydream of watching Jim Thomas die? And why didn’t she want to race down the hall and visit with Jamie? Where was that old Meg now? When she’d lost Steve had that Meg, the one everyone loved, died? If she hadn’t had a pulse, Meg would have guessed that was the case, but her heart was still beating. And the image she’d briefly glimpsed in the mirror reflected the person people knew. But she wasn’t sure she knew that Meg anymore.
“I have a right to be different,” she whispered.
“What did you say?” A tall man in a dark suit asked.
Meg looked up and forced a smile. “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.”
Embarrassed, she moved quickly forward and exited the cafeteria. Yet, like baggage she didn’t need or want, she brought her worries with her.
“Hey, girl, slow down.” Meg stopped as she heard Heather’s voice. When her friend caught up, she lowered her voice and quietly asked, “How are you doing? Really? I find it hard to believe that anyone, even you, could be holding it together this well.”
Meg leaned against the hallway wall and sighed. “I really don’t know how I’m doing. My focus is fine, so my job’s not a problem. But I don’t know who I am anymore.”
Heather moved closer. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
Meg shook her head. “I don’t understand either. Aren’t I supposed to be sad? In truth, I’m more angry. I’m so mad I want to punch everyone. That’s not the way I was, but I’m thinking the old Meg was a sucker.”
“You were never a sucker,” her friend assured her. “You just cared about everyone.”
“And that’s just it—I don’t think I care about anyone anymore.” She paused and looked into Heather’s deep eyes. “I don’t know if there is room for the old Meg and this new Meg in my heart or head. One of them is going to have to move on. And I find myself rooting for the angry one.”
“You’ll work through it,” Heather assured her.
“Could you work through knowing your husband had been murdered?” With those final cold words, Meg turned and strolled resolutely up the hall. Within seconds the wondering as to who she was had been forgotten. The all-consuming image in her head was that of seeing Jim Thomas going over the cliff.
“Your lunch break’s not over for another fifteen minutes,” noted Jan as Meg arrived at the station.
Her trance now broken, Meg offered, “Why don’t you go early and catch a little extra time?”
Evidently not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jan quickly shot out from behind the desk, saying only, “I didn’t know Christmas came on Thursdays in March.”
Initially, Meg didn’t take note of what the other nurse had said. The words had no meaning and made no impact. Then one of those words rang out and began to bounce around all the corners of her mind. Thursday! Why did that day seem so significant? What did she have to do today? What was it about Thursday?
Sitting in a chair behind the counter, she tried to refocus on her work, but Thursday wouldn’t leave her alone. Why couldn’t she think? Why couldn’t she remember what made this day important? Her mind had been numb since watching Jim Thomas outside his house on Monday night. The desire for revenge, coupled with a feeling of overall helplessness, had made her even more depressed. Still, seeing him, knowing who his parents were, hearing him talk, and finding nothing of redeeming value in what he said had given her something on which to focus her thoughts. And those thoughts had crowded out everything that wasn’t written on charts or appeared on iPad screens. And there was nothing on either that suggested Thursday was important for any reason at all. It was just another long day.
With the frustration of not being able to remember what she felt was so important, Meg realized how much each day seemed like the one before it. Even though this was only her fourth day back at work, the routine, filled with the same questions, the same requests, the same duties, began to run together. In the near past—a time that seemed years ago, a time before Steve had been killed—she had enjoyed her job. Each day had seemed fresh and alive with new faces and new challenges. And when the day ended, she knew that each evening with Steve would also be filled with new discoveries and newfound passions. Now, each day seemed to last forty-eight hours and each night, an eternity. As she glanced at her watch for the fifteenth time in half an hour, she wished she could turn back the clock. But that wasn’t possible. Death had changed everything.
In this new life, the daydreams had become the reality and life was nothing more than a place to stumble through. She felt no real emotional attachment to her job, her mother, or her friends, and talking with them, answering their questions, even taking care of the patients was accomplished through little more than memorized mechanical reactions. Even things like cooking, cleaning, and putting on makeup were just time killers. They seemed to serve no purpose. Life had no purpose.
Yet, when she allowed herself to dream, her feelings and senses were brought back and the world again had color. From the time she had found out about Steve’s murder—she refused to call it an accident—until the day after the funeral, she had dreamed about him. In those dreams, he brought her surprises, said funny things, and made love to her. He was alive. But now, since the moment she saw Jim Thomas, her dreams were filled with passionate plans for revenge. For now, Meg’s world was one where reality and fantasy had somehow changed places, and this was the way she wanted it until life offered her some kind of personal satisfaction. That satisfaction could only be fully realized when her sworn enemy was brought to justice.
A ringing phone prompted her to look up from the chart she’d been staring at but not really seeing and move across the small cubicle to the counter separating her from the wing’s hallway. “Wing Three,” Meg answered tersely.
“Yes, I’m looking for Nurse Richards,” a man explained.
Pausing for a moment in an attempt to remember where she had heard this voice, she replied, “I’m Meg Richards.”
“Mrs. Richards, this is Webb Jones, your district attorney. My secretary said you called while I was out of town.”
Suddenly, Meg was alive again. Here was the reason she had mentally marked Thursday as important. This was the day that the district attorney was to return. This was her bridge to hope! Now she had someone who could give her some answers. How had she forgotten about Thursday?
15
TALL, HANDSOME IN AN IVY LEAGUE SORT OF WAY, WEBB JONES WAS THE cookie-cutter image of a Hollywood district attorney, with his green, wide-set eyes, wavy, dark hair, and strong, firm jaw. Yet what was most impressive about the man was his deep voice. And he used it effectively on the street and in the courtroom.
Jones had worked his way up from nothing. His father had been a clerk in a hardware store. His mother cleaned other people’s houses. He was the only one of his four siblings who went to college. Pushed by a desire to escape a world in which he was always the poorest kid, he’d not been satisfied just to earn a college degree. He yearned for much more. He wanted to be the guy who lived on the right side of the tracks, drove the big car, and wore the expensive suits. He wanted to be important. And he felt the best way to earn this status was through law. His degree from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law brought him a sense of satisfaction. From
there, he clerked for a federal judge and then became a part of the state attorney’s office. While working in the capitol, he focused on a twenty-year plan. The first step was realized when he was elected district attorney. The second was when he married a daughter of a wealthy and influential stockbroker. Now six years after leaving to become the area’s top prosecutor, he was primed for the next move—the governor’s office. But that meant he was going to have to avoid the pitfalls that trapped many aspiring politicians. This case could be one of those traps, so he had to be very careful.
“Mrs. Richards. How I wish I had been in the office when you called. I’m so sorry I was out of town on business.”
“Mr. Jones”—her voice was now filled with an excited tremor and she wasted no time making her point—”I want to know what you’re going to do about my husband’s death.”
Jones was prepared for her question. The widow’s response was not atypical in cases like this. The victim’s family always wanted swift and hard justice. Even as he’d placed the call, Jones felt sure the conversation would quickly turn in this direction.
“Pardon me for not saying so earlier,” Jones began, choosing each word with special care to hit the right note, “but I was very deeply saddened to find out about Mr. Richards’s accident.”
“It was no accident,” Meg cut in.
The woman was combative. There was no mistaking that. She seemed primed and ready for a fight, and she would be in for one. This would be no easy case, not with the Thomas family and their money and power on the other side. And that was the problem. This case was one of those pitfalls that could kill a career. Thus, Jones would really rather avoid it all together. The best way to defuse this bomb was to get the family to cover medical and funeral costs, pay a few thousand in a settlement, and maybe have the kid do a bit of community service. But this woman’s tone indicated she would likely not be satisfied with that answer. Still, he had to try.
“Mrs. Richards, bringing a case like this to trial can be very, very painful. You can’t begin to imagine what you will have to go through. It could take months and that means you’d be forced to relive your husband’s death over and over again. The toll it would take on you could be enormous and the end result would not bring your husband back. When dealing with a case like this, where a widow is left alone, it might serve your interests best to cut a deal.”
“A deal?” Meg asked. “I don’t understand.”
Jones took a deep breath as he shifted into a tactic he often used when faced with a situation like this. It was time to gently present himself in the role of a big brother. “Mrs. Richards, what I’m going to suggest is for your own good. I can probably get the driver to plea guilty to a charge that would require him to do some community service, pay a fine, and serve a long probation. And then, in a separate agreement, his family would pay you a large settlement.”
Her response was immediate. “I don’t care about money. That won’t bring Steve back. I want the kid to know the kind of pain he has caused me. I want the satisfaction of watching him convicted and sent to jail. He has to serve time. He killed my husband!”
It was so much easier when money could buy influence. And a lot of the time it could. But the tone in this woman’s voice assured him she couldn’t be bought off. Her pain was too deep, her resolve too strong. So that made things much more complicated. With the elections coming up in the fall, this case needed to disappear, but it appeared she wasn’t going to let it. How much money would it take to change her mind? Did she have a price?
“Mr. Jones, are you still there?”
What to say now? He was far too pragmatic and logical to get emotionally involved in his cases and he’d never been very good when it came to sympathizing with or understanding grief. Still, at least for the moment, he had to give the appearance of caring. Find a safe, noncommittal reply and then, after he got the woman off the phone, come up with a game plan that would not include his going up against the Thomas family.
“Mrs. Richards,” he began, “as I started to say, I had the good fortune to meet your husband on several occasions and I can’t begin to explain how deeply saddened I was by his senseless death. It was tragic, simply tragic, and it shouldn’t have happened.”
Surely this was what the woman wanted to hear. Those words would assure her Webb Jones was a man who wanted justice. After all, he had just indicated how wonderful Steve had been.
“So, what do we do now?” Meg inquired.
“Well,” Jones quickly answered, maybe now that he was on the familiar turf of law he could spell out in language the woman would grasp why this case didn’t need to go to trial. “We are dealing with a juvenile and the initial thing that will have to be done, if we try him, is have him certified as an adult. If there is no problem in Justice of the Peace Court, I’ll present the case to a grand jury. If that jury decides to indict him, then we’ll try the case.”
“Mr. Jones, what do you mean if the jury decides to indict?” There was a certain desperation now obvious in the woman’s tone that grew stronger as she continued. “He was drunk, he killed my husband, and he is guilty.”
“I agree with you,” Jones answered defensively, “but sometimes justices of the peace and grand juries have strange ways of looking at things. Still, don’t worry about that.” Jones paused before coming back with what he considered a small fib. “I want justice, Mrs. Richards, and I’ll do my best to get justice.”
Jones had figured that his strongly phrased promise would bring the woman the satisfaction she needed and allow him to end the phone call on a high note. Yet Meg’s next demanding question quickly convinced him of one painful fact. This woman would not be intimidated by his voice, knowledge, or promises. He hated working with people like that!
“Does this mean,” Meg demanded, “that you’ll go after my husband’s killer with all the power you can muster, even though his father is who he is? I mean the Thomas’s are important people in this town.”
He was stunned. The woman knew much more than he figured. That information hadn’t been in the paper. Where did the leak come from? Leaning back in his leather desk chair, Jones attempted to recover from the bomb that had just been dropped. With this new card in play, he only had one recourse—he had to buy some time.
“Mrs. Richards, would you hold on just a second? My other line is ringing.” Before the woman could reply, the district attorney pushed the hold button, got up from his desk, and stormed into the outer office, stopping only when he stood over his administrative assistant’s desk.
“Who told her that Judge Thomas’s son was driving that car?”
“Told who?” Jo Blount quickly asked.
“Meg Richards, you know, the other driver’s widow.”
“Well, don’t accuse me. I didn’t.”
The woman’s tone assured Jones he had not been betrayed, at least not by her. She had been with him for ten years, first in state office and now here. She knew better than to release the name of a minor or give anyone any information that might make his job more difficult. But who did it then? Groping for answers, he scratched his head, turned back to his office, and then, just before reentering his office, looked over his shoulder and asked Blount one more question.
“The news media didn’t get a hold of it, did they? If they did, I’ll go after them—”
The woman didn’t let him finish. “No, the press did not get it,” she paused before adding sarcastically, “Not even your favorite, Robyn Chapman, from Channel 10.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put that woman above it,” Jones barked. “You know what she did to us on that Morris affair. Anyway, we’ve got a leak somewhere and I want it found!”
Marching back to his office and slamming the ten-foot high oak door, Jones took a deep breath and punched the hold button. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Richards, an important call came in on the other line. I hope that you will forgive me.”
“No problem,” Meg answered. “Now what about my question?”
“No matter who the person is on the other side of the courtroom,” he firmly assured her, “I’ll do my dead-level best. The law doesn’t play favorites around here.” After pausing a second to sense if the woman seemed to be accepting his promise, he asked, “Mrs. Richards, the other party in this case is a minor. How did you find out his identity?”
“Not from your office,” she replied.
“Did someone in the media tell you?”
“No,” she shot back. “No one told me. I just found out.”
Concluding she wasn’t going to volunteer how she uncovered the information, Jones wound up his call with a promise to keep Meg informed. He added as an afterthought, “Justice will be served.” Before the woman could press him anymore he finished with a quick, “I’ll be in touch and good-bye.”
After putting the handset back in the cradle, Jones brought his fist down hard on his desk. Who told her? Who gave the woman confidential information. A knock pulled him out of thought.
“Come in,” he barked.
“What was that all about?” Blount asked as she entered.
“We’ve got a problem,” he admitted as he turned toward the window overlooking Springfield’s town square. “The Richards woman is a deeply wounded animal, and the Thomas family will expect me to fix this for them just like I and all the locals have always done in the past. This might be one that really blows up in our faces and I can’t let that happen.”
16
AS HIS ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT LOOKED ON, A WORRIED WEBB JONES got up from his desk and crossed to his third-floor window. With his hands shoved deeply into his pockets, he studied the courthouse square. Except for the storm that had just entered his world, everything looked normal. But this storm was dangerous and the damage it could do might wreck his political aspirations. It was time to trust his instincts.
“Jo,” he said, his eyes still studying the scene below, “this case is a time bomb.”