A knock came at the door—Roy was genteel enough to always knock—and I said, “Come in.” When I looked up, it wasn’t him; it was Mazie.
“My goodness,” I said, unfolding myself from my habitual slouch and standing up to gesture her to a seat. “Hello. What can I get you? Water? Coffee?”
For once she wasn’t wearing a waitress uniform or her other staple, sweatpants plus some decorative T-shirt featuring kittens, flowers, or both. She had on a skirt and blouse. It looked like she’d dressed up for this visit. I could see she was intimidated by the surroundings.
She wanted coffee, so I hit the button for Laura’s phone to ask her to bring a cup.
“Oh, no,” Mazie said, waving her hands like she was trying to erase what she’d just said. “I don’t mean to be any trouble. Forget it. I had coffee already.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said. “Besides, we got to finish the pot. The day’s almost done.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” she said. “If it’s no trouble.”
“Not at all.”
When the drink was brought and Laura shut the door on her way out, I asked, “Everything okay? Is something going on?”
“Well, I just visited Jackson at lunchtime,” she said. There was pain in her face. “Leland, what’s happened to him? He ain’t himself. I thought he’d feel better when his jaw got healed up, but he’s still so low. It’s like the fight’s gone out of him.”
I nodded. “It’s taking its toll.”
“How long does he have to be in there?”
“Well, the solicitor’s office is pushing to fast-track his case—”
“Oh, good,” she said.
“So that means his trial could begin as early as December.”
She stared at me. “That’s fast?”
“For a murder trial, yes.”
She shook her head and slumped in her chair, looking at her hands in her lap.
I reached back to my bookshelf to get the box of Kleenex I figured she was going to need and set it on my desk so she could reach it.
“Leland, he’s so thin,” she said. “He barely talks, and he’s had bruises on his arms the last couple times I was there. Something’s wrong in there. I have got to get him home.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was no way of getting him out of jail short of waiting for trial and then winning when it finally rolled around. And, based on the evidence we had today, I wasn’t at all sure we would win. On top of that, Ruiz hadn’t reached out with so much as a hint at any kind of plea deal. I didn’t know what he was playing at.
While I was contemplating the whole sorry situation, she opened her purse, found a folded dollar bill, unfolded it, and pushed it across the desk to me.
“You’re my lawyer now, right?” she said. “That makes you my lawyer, so everything’s confidential?”
“Uh, well, it don’t really work that way outside the movies. But what’s going on? You need legal advice?”
“If it’s just between us.”
“Well, look,” I said. “Your son’s my client, so on the off chance you tell me something that goes against his interest, we got a problem. But otherwise, I guess, fire away.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, like she was preparing to get something bad off her chest.
“Okay. I don’t know what it was,” she said, “but Karl was doing something. I mean, something illegal.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, that don’t surprise me. What all did you know?”
“Can this be used against me? Or my boy?”
“I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m not telling anyone unless it helps him.”
She nodded nervously. “What I know,” she said, “is that he had money all of a sudden. A lot of it. I don’t know from where, if it was drugs, or stolen… whatever people steal and sell, I have no idea. But he was doing something, and he was real proud of it, almost. I mean, like he was getting away with something.”
“He tell you he have money?” I asked. “Or show you? Or what?”
“My washer died,” she said. “Back in the springtime. And he heard—from Jackson, I guess. He came around with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills for me to buy a new one. He was real cocky about it, but I took it. I mean, I can’t live without a washing machine.”
“Course not.”
“And then he bought Jackson a new bed,” she said. “Because he was still sleeping on the little, you know, the twin bed we got for him when he was maybe six years old.”
“So Karl was stepping up? Trying to make up a little bit for what he hadn’t done before?”
“That’s how he saw it,” she said. “And he thought, you know, since he was buying things we needed, I should—” She winced and looked away. “Like, he’s stepping up as a father, for once, so I ought to be… you know… available.”
I shook my head, angry at him and at the same time feeling like it was a waste of energy to be angry at a dead man. I wished to hell he could’ve just fallen off his boat and drowned, instead of causing his family even more problems in death than he had in life.
She said, “That’s what the fight was about. I mean, the night he died. Or part of what it was about.”
“Oh,” I said, connecting the dots at last. “That’s why he was there yelling that you owed him money?”
“Yeah. He figured if I wasn’t going to… you know… then he wanted his money back.”
“Goddamn him.”
She took a Kleenex and blew her nose. I looked at my Redwelds of papers about Jackson’s case. Everything she was saying made sense, but I wasn’t sure it helped. If anything, it could make a jury think Jackson had all the more reason to go after his daddy that night.
When she’d dabbed her eyes and pulled herself together, I asked, “You were saying that’s part of what the fight was about? Was there something else?”
She looked at me and said, “Leland, this cannot leave this room.”
I nodded. “It won’t.”
“The reason I kept this to myself before is that I didn’t know—I still don’t know—if Jackson was involved at all. I mean, in whatever illegal things Karl was doing. When Karl came into money, he started coming around a lot, asking Jackson to hang out with him. They went places together. And it seemed like Jackson had a little more money too.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Any idea what they did together? Or where they went?”
“I heard,” she said, “not from them, but from a lady I know, that they went to the Broke Spoke a couple times.”
“Oh? Huh. You ever talk with Jackson about that?”
“No. I told Karl off. I mean, my son is—he was eighteen years old at that point, and that man was taking him to a strip club? That’s how he steps up as a father? I told him to cut it out or stay the hell away from both of us. But, I mean, I couldn’t control what Jackson did with his time.”
“Nope,” I said. “You can’t, can you. I know exactly what you mean.” I thought for a second and then added, “Jackson ever mention any card games or trips to Charleston with his dad?”
She shook her head.
“He ever say anything about Dunk McDonough? Or any of his bartenders, or anything?”
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, you hear about Dunk, just around, but I don’t think I heard anything from him. It’s not like he was gonna tell his mama what he was up to down at the strip club.”
“No, I suppose not.”
She took a sip of her coffee and looked out the window. Some of the fronds on the palmetto were brushing against the glass.
“I did hear him arguing once, though,” she said. “On the phone with Karl. He was in the backyard, and I don’t know why he was so riled up, but he said something about somebody named Pete.”
I froze. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” She was shaking her head, with her eyebrows screwed up like she couldn’t quite make sense of it. “He said, ‘You keep Pete the hell away from her.’ I don’t know who he meant, though. I mean, I
don’t know who Pete or the woman were.”
24
Friday, September 27, Afternoon
I was glad I’d decided to get lunch at the ’50s-style diner downtown. Roy’s advice to “get out there more” had led me to bring peanut butter sandwiches to work most days so that once a week I could afford to head over to the diner where judges and successful lawyers liked to eat. Apparently Ruiz was one of those lawyers. When I walked in I saw him a couple booths away, sitting by himself, and gave him a nod.
Jackson’s second appearance, where he would enter a plea on the murder charges, was two and a half weeks away. I still hadn’t heard word one from Ruiz about a possible plea deal, which was strange. It was a good time to run into him.
I gave him a Mind if I join you? gesture, and he shrugged. Not a real welcoming shrug, but I wasn’t going to be picky.
He had a cup of coffee but no plate yet. As I sat down, the waitress came over to top up his cup, pour me one, and hand me a menu.
Ruiz said, “You going to the shrimp fest tonight?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Shrimp is my weakness. I’ve yet to taste a way of making it that I don’t like.”
He smiled and stirred two packets of sugar into his coffee. “You are a local boy,” he said, “through and through. And I hear you. Me too.”
I looked at the menu. “I guess for once I won’t have it for lunch,” I said. “That’d be kind of overkill, with what’s going to be on offer tonight.”
He sighed. He had something on his mind. After a second, he said, “You know, Leland, this ain’t my business, but I can’t help wondering. Did you want to come back home, or did you have to?”
“Uh, how do you mean?”
“Well, would you still be up at the solicitor’s office if what happened there hadn’t happened?”
I wasn’t sure how much he knew, but I figured there was no point being cagey. We were part of a small legal community in a small town; privacy was hard to come by. And maybe being straightforward with him would encourage him to do the same.
I said, “You mean if I hadn’t gone over to the wrong side of the law trying to protect my wife?”
He nodded. There was not a flicker of surprise. Evidently word had reached him, most likely from someone he knew up at the Charleston solicitor’s office. I had misused the powers of my office to keep Elise from being charged with a DUI, more than once. I’d put lives at risk trying to protect her from consequences. I’d been lucky to be allowed to resign in lieu of facing an ethics complaint.
I thought back to his question. “Would I still be there? Yeah, I guess. It’s almost addictive, isn’t it. You know, the caseload, the fast pace, the sense of putting bad guys away. On good days it feels like you’re saving the world.”
He smiled and shook his head. I got the impression it had been a long time since he’d felt that way.
I said, “Why do you ask? You thinking of moving on yourself?”
The waitress came back to set down his burger and fries and take my order. I didn’t want him to feel obligated to sit there waiting for me, so I asked for a ham sandwich, hoping it’d be out quick.
He poured himself a mound of ketchup, started in on his fries, and said, “Maybe it’s a small-town thing, but it ain’t often that I get the sense of fighting the good fight. You know, I put some domestic abuser away, and a year later he’s back out doing it again. To the same woman or a new one, it don’t hardly seem to matter to those jackasses.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Although I guess you still spare somebody a year’s worth of pain.”
He shrugged. “I might as well smack one mosquito down at the swamp, for all the difference it makes.”
I nodded and took a sip of coffee. Then I asked, “You still on board for Jackson’s trial, though? Hope you ain’t going to leave me in the lurch.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. He sounded tired of Jackson’s case, tired of pretty much everything. “I got nothing lined up. I ain’t even started looking yet. It’s just, you know, something I’m thinking about.”
On a hunch, I said, “I don’t blame you. I ain’t heard good things about your boss.”
He laughed. “There ain’t much in the way of good things to hear. Let’s see, uh… he drives a nice car? He still has all his own hair, I think, although he might just have a really good hair-plug surgeon. After that, I kind of run out of compliments.”
I laughed and thanked the waitress, who’d come by to set down my sandwich.
“I was wondering,” I said, “if your Mr. Hair Plugs is the reason you ain’t run a plea offer past us yet.”
He dragged a fry around in his ketchup like he was painting a picture. “Uh, he’s the reason for a lot of things. What, that totally innocent client of yours might take a plea?”
I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “Oh, you know how it is. Given the possible sentence here, it’s something I’m duty bound to consider and advise him on. And I know every solicitor’s office runs a little different, so maybe it’s nothing, but up in Charleston, that’d probably be on the table by this point.”
He nodded slowly, still drawing with his fry.
“It’s hard to know sometimes,” he said, “why Mr. Hair Plugs picks one case to be a hard-ass on and not another. But that’s his call, not mine.”
“Him and Blount,” I said, and he nodded. I could see he knew some of the pressure was coming from Blount, and maybe he even had some sense as to why, but he didn’t say anything.
To fill the silence, I said, “It’s like they think they got Osama bin Warton locked up in the county jail.”
He laughed.
“By the way,” I said, “that forensic report was interesting. What’d you make of the trace amount of heroin they found on the boat?”
He tossed his fry in his mouth and said, “Somebody went out for a sea cruise and got high. Party on the motorboat. You’d be surprised”—he looked at me with wide eyes, his voice dripping with sarcasm—“but people in Basking Rock get high all the damn time.”
I laughed. “Up in Charleston, we used to joke that at some point they were going to have to declare that the winner of the war on drugs was drugs.”
He picked up his burger, said, “You might as well declare war on the goddamn sun,” and took a bite. After chewing for a second, he added, “No matter what you do, it’s going to rise again tomorrow.”
“It ain’t rising by itself, though,” I said. “I mean, oxy, meth, whatever—people make that or get it from a doctor. But who’s bringing pure heroin into Basking Rock?”
He washed his burger down with a sip of coffee and said, “Where there’s roads, there’s smugglers. If there’s a harbor, there’s smugglers. People will do anything to make a buck.”
He seemed so lost in his cynical mood that I felt I should join him there. I nodded and said, “Ain’t that the truth.” It seemed wise to get on his wavelength if I wanted him to keep talking frankly with me.
“It’s just a game of whack-a-mole,” he said. “You catch one guy bringing it in, a week later some other guy replaces him.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “I know the feeling. You guys catch anybody lately?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. His voice told me it didn’t hardly matter to him at all. “You see that bust-up outside Charleston? Third-biggest in South Carolina history?”
“Yeah, I saw that on the news. I used to work with that guy.”
“Oh yeah? Well, anyway, we helped with some intel on that.” He shrugged. “So they whacked a mole, and now another one’ll pop right back up.”
It didn’t sound like I was going to get any specifics from him. He knew where the lines were, in terms of what he could say to anyone outside the office, and he wasn’t going to cross them. Ruiz had never been a line-crosser.
In his current mood, I thought, he might be receptive to my own suspicions. It couldn’t hurt to drop some ideas on him and see where they landed.
“You ever think,” I said, “that maybe K
arl got caught up in any of that? And maybe that’s what got him killed?”
From his frown and the tilt of his eyebrows, I could see he thought that was entirely possible.
“Of course, that ain’t where the evidence is pointing.” He looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t try a case on evidence I don’t have.”
It might have been hope or desperation making me read more into it than he meant, but I got the impression that what he’d said was code. It seemed to mean that he wasn’t going to dig into this, but if I did, if I could walk into his office and throw evidence on his desk that said the prosecution’s theory was wrong, he would listen. He would do what he could.
He was an honest man, and a fair one. He always had been.
Which was probably why he didn’t get along with his boss.
25
Friday, September 27, Evening
I parked around a corner two blocks from the beach, trying to find a compromise between avoiding shrimp-fest traffic and walking farther than Noah could comfortably manage. He insisted a few blocks was fine, and while I wasn’t sure I believed him, I knew telling him so would spoil the good mood that the prospect of the event had put us in. We’d driven there with our windows down, since it was still nearly seventy degrees, and before we could even see the beach—before we saw the crowd and the lights of a Ferris wheel twinkling against the dark sky—we could smell frying shrimp. His deep breath and relaxed smile reminded me that he had inherited my tastes in that regard: the aroma gave both of us an immediate sense of well-being.
As we headed down the sidewalk, I said, “I’m sure glad Basking Rock’s got this tradition now.”
Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1) Page 17