Blood Defense (13 page)

TWENTY-TWO

I
wound up in my car
with no memory of having left the jail or walking through the parking lot. It probably wasn’t safe for me to be on the road, but since traffic was bumper-to-bumper and moving about three miles an hour, I couldn’t get into any serious trouble.

I barely noticed how I was inching along as my brain fumbled with the surreality of what I’d just heard. I remembered how I used to fantasize about who my father was when I was a kid. Especially during the dark time. I’d dream he was a martial-arts fighter or a Navy Seal or a Green Beret, who’d come to save me and never let anyone hurt me again. My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. I made myself take a deep breath. In. Out. Let it go.

And then another realization hit me. It was one thing to be the lawyer for the man who’d killed two innocent young women. But it was a whole different world to be his daughter. The gruesome crime-scene pictures flashed through my mind. Then Janet’s words came back to me—how she described his flashpoint temper, his fights with Chloe. I tried to square it with the man who’d looked at me with such pride and . . . tenderness. But he was charged with a brutal double homicide. And it looked like he’d done it.

I felt nauseous—like I’d just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl. My head swam with all the implications. It took me an hour and a half to get home, but I was so preoccupied, I didn’t notice. It was after seven by the time I got back to my apartment, and only then did it dawn on me that I was supposed to check in with Michelle. She’d left a message saying that requests were coming in for interviews, and reporters were looking for background information on me.

The irony hit me almost as hard as the fresh wave of panic. Now I had a whole new vista of “background information” to worry about.

The press hadn’t dug up the connection between Dale and me yet, but it’d been only two days. If they cared enough to keep digging, they’d figure it out eventually. I knew I should call Michelle, tell her what’d happened, and figure out what to do. But the thought of putting it all into words was more than I could handle.

I drew a hot bath, took a few sips of pinot noir, and curled up in the tub. I must’ve fallen asleep because when my phone rang, I couldn’t remember where I was, and my right arm had fallen asleep. By the time I pulled myself out, the call had gone to voice mail. I dried off, threw on my sweats, and listened to the message. It was Michelle. I looked at the number. She’d called from the office, and it was after eighty thirty. It wasn’t fair to go incommunicado this way. I had to call her back.

I took a deep breath and tried to make my voice sound normal. “Hey, sorry I didn’t check in. It’s been a bitch of a day and I was fried.”

There was a beat of silence. “You sound funny. Did it go okay with Dale?”

I guess it was partly the wine. But mostly it was the right person with the right touch at the right time. I began to cry. “I—I don’t know where to start.”

“I’m coming over. Have you had dinner?”

I’d forgotten about that. “Uh-uh.”

She hung up.

I wanted to make myself get some work done, but I couldn’t focus. My mind kept toggling between Dale’s apologetic expression and the crime-scene photos, between the man Janet described and the man I’d just seen. The killer—my father. I whispered the words.
My father
. I could barely choke them out.

I lay down on the couch, exhausted. I’d done all the coping I could stand for the moment. I turned on the TV and watched a rerun of
Friends
. Michelle showed up a half hour later. She pulled me into a hug and held on for a long time. I felt the spring in my chest start to uncoil and took a full breath for the first time since leaving the jail.

She stepped back and held me by the shoulders. “Ready to tell me?” I shook my head. “Okay, then try to eat something.”

She’d brought us two thick roast beef sandwiches and coleslaw. It looked delicious, but I had no appetite. I picked at the coleslaw and listened while Michelle chatted about media calls and office business, but I barely heard her.

She finished half her sandwich, then poured us both a glass of wine. “Have some. Do it now.” I took a long slug. “Can you tell me now?”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “God, Michy. It’s so crazy.” I told her the whole story. Just hearing myself say the words out loud made my head spin. “And now I don’t know what to do. If it’s true, I have to get off the case. I don’t think I can handle this. I mean, shit. My
father
.” For the first time in my life, the word wasn’t just an abstract concept. It belonged to a real person.

Michelle’s eyes had gotten wider and wider, and by the time I finished, her mouth was hanging open. She was silent for a few moments, absorbing it all. Then she frowned. “
Can
you even represent him? I mean, isn’t it a conflict or something?”

“No. If he wants to keep me, there’s no legal reason why I can’t stay on the case.”

I heard my own words as if someone else was speaking. I still couldn’t believe this was happening to me. It felt like a crazy dream, except I wasn’t waking up. “But I just keep thinking that I finally met my father—and he’s probably a psychopathic killer.” I put my head in my hands. “Who knew that Celeste would turn out to be the good parent?”

Michelle sat stunned for a moment. Then she gave a little giggle. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but another one escaped—then another. And now the giggles swelled into a long, rolling belly laugh. Between gasps, she said, “Celeste . . . the good . . . parent.”

Only then did it hit me what I’d just said. I started to laugh and didn’t stop until tears streamed down my face and I couldn’t breathe.

When we’d both recovered, Michelle stared down at her glass for a long moment. “Okay, let’s talk about what to do now. If you heard anything I said when I first got here, the media is hot after your ass. Someone’s going to find out about this no matter what you do. So if you’re thinking you can keep it quiet by stepping away from the case, I’d let that fantasy go.”

I knew she was right. “But if I jump out right now, the story will go away a lot faster.”

“That’s true. Drink your wine.”

“I already had a little before you got here.”

“Drink it anyway. You’re way too sober.” I smiled and took a sip. “If you get off the case, that’s a story in itself. The press will want to find out why, and once they dig, they’ll figure out who he is. How will that look?”

“Like his own daughter thinks he’s guilty.”

“Right. It’ll screw him hard if you get off the case. And if he really isn’t guilty and he gets convicted, will you ever forgive yourself?”

I thought about that. Probably not. Not even if he
was
guilty. “I guess I have to stay on, then.” But if I thought the case had been a high-pressure situation before . . . just thinking about it made my stomach ache. I agonize over all my cases, but the pressure of defending my own father was a bone crusher. Every little detail I missed, every mistake—no matter how small—would keep me awake every night for the duration of the trial.

And if I lost, every night for the rest of my life.

TWENTY-THREE

W
hen I woke up the next morning,
I thought about the paternity test. Dale was more than willing to take it, but it would cost money, and there was a much cheaper, faster way to find out if it was true.

I called my mother. “Why didn’t you tell me Dale was my father?”

There was a long pause. “So he told you.”

That did it. I’d pretty much already accepted that it was true. But any lingering doubt was gone for good now. Dale really was my father. “Yeah, he told me. Why didn’t
you
?”

“Because I hoped you’d get off the case. Or at least that he’d have the decency not to tell you.”

“The decency? Why
wouldn’t
he tell me? Some reporter was bound to figure it out eventually. Thank God he told me instead of letting me get blindsided by the press. But that never entered your mind, did it?”

Another long pause. “I just wanted to protect you.”

“From what? The truth was going to come out regardless. You weren’t protecting me. You were trying to protect yourself—and your image. As always.”

“Well, now that you know, you’re going to get off the case, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m most certainly not—”

“He’s a murderer!”

“You don’t know that. And why did you lie to me about your relationship? Dale wasn’t a one-night stand. You dated him for months.”

“I did what was best for you!”

“You mean like you did when we moved in with Sebastian?”

Sebastian. One of her many boyfriends before she married Jack.

She sighed. “Oh God. Are we really going to get into all that
again
?”

“Sure. As soon as you stop pretending you ever did anything for my benefit! And by the way, why
didn’t
you have the abortion?”

“Because I didn’t want one. I just told him that so he’d leave me alone.”

I knew I should let it go. I already knew the real answer, but for some reason, I needed to make her admit it. “You were too far along, weren’t you?”

There was dead silence for several seconds. When she answered, her voice was weak. “No.”

She was usually a better liar than this. I’d caught her off guard. Suddenly I was weary of this whole conversation. No. More than that. I was weary of all of it. Of constantly looking for someone who simply wasn’t there and never would be. “I’ve got to go.” I hung up.

The weird queasiness I’d felt when Dale told me he was my father washed over me again, and I bent forward, my forehead on my knees. When it passed, I sat up and looked at the clock on the oven. I needed to get to the office. But everything felt off somehow. I couldn’t feel the floor under my feet, and as I glanced around the room, nothing looked the same—my hands, the kitchen table, the phone. What was happening to me?

I looked at the phone again. And then it came to me. Something had broken free inside me—an awareness of who and what my mother was. It’d always been there, but I’d kept it locked away, where I wouldn’t have to admit the whole truth of it, what it meant. But now that I’d let it all in, I could never unknow it. My mother was a narcissist who’d never wanted me and didn’t even particularly like, let alone love, me. And it didn’t matter what I did, how many of her parties I went to, how many cases I won, how successful I might be. That would never change. As I let the reality of that settle in, a question slowly took shape: Then why keep showing up? Why keep taking her calls, listening to her criticize everything I did, wore, or said—deluding myself that a day would come when the loving mother would appear?

The answer was unavoidable: there was no point. Nothing good ever came from contact with Celeste. Even our phone calls were like crawling naked across a field of broken glass. Then why not stop? I barely breathed as the simplicity of that answer spread through me. I was an adult. I could choose to stop beating my head on the stone wall. I could fire my mother. As painful as it was to admit that my mother didn’t care for me and never had, I’d known it for a long time. But the realization that I didn’t have to keep trying to fix that, to keep showing up in the hope it would change, was liberating. I felt lighter. It was as though I’d cut the rope around my neck that’d been tied to a barge of misery. A barge I’d been dragging around my whole life.

I stood up and looked around the room—at the calendar of Mickey Mouse cartoons on the wall, the blue-and-red skull-head magnets on the refrigerator, the yellow oven mitts hanging above the kitchen counter . . . everything—the colors, the shapes—seemed more vivid, brighter. I knew it couldn’t really be this easy, that I’d crash from this strange high soon enough. But for now, I let myself enjoy this unexpected silver lining.

It was time to get to the office, but I wasn’t ready to see anyone. I needed to be with myself, make sure I knew how I felt. So I took drastic action: I put on my running shoes and went out for a short jog. I didn’t do it often. For me, it was like medicine; I did it only when I had to. But it worked. After the run and a hot shower, I was ready to face the world. I headed to the office.

When I dropped the bomb on Alex, he was momentarily speechless. His eyes big, he finally said, “Your
father
? Are you kidding?” I told him I wasn’t. “Are you okay?” I told him I was—sort of. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m staying on the case. But we need to handle this right. My guess is, with all the heat this case is getting, someone’s going to find out sooner or later. So I think we should get out ahead of this and release the story ourselves.”

“Probably so,” Alex said. “How do you want to do it?”

I knew what I didn’t want. “I don’t want to make this a six-part piece in
Vanity Fair
about Samantha Brinkman and her fucked-up life—”

“As if you’d get
Vanity Fair
,” Michelle said. “Probably more like the
PennySaver
—”

“Whatever.” I shot her a look—though I agreed with her. “The point is, the shorter the better. So I’m thinking television news, where I can squeeze it down to a ten-second sound bite.”

Michelle nodded. “And make a friend. Smart move. Which reporter do you like?”

“I’ll give this one to Edie. Tell her to meet me in front of the courthouse at eleven thirty.”

Michelle scrolled through the press contacts on her computer. “You heading downtown?”

I nodded. “I’ve got to tell Dale I’m keeping the case.”

I started to head out, but Michelle held up a hand. “Don’t you think you should call Lisa before this hits the airwaves?”

I paused, one hand on the doorknob. “Lisa? Why?” Then it hit me. Lisa Milstrom was my half sister. I actually had a sibling now. I’d so wished for a brother or sister when I was a kid. I remembered how jealous and lonely I used to feel when friends complained about being tortured by their younger this or older that. This wouldn’t be the same; Lisa and I hadn’t lived together and never would. But it was a connection, and I liked it. “Right. I’ll call her from the car after I talk to Dale.”

It felt strange, uncomfortable, to see Dale now. The problem was, I didn’t have time for these feelings. I had to focus. I was his lawyer, and defending him was going to take all my energy. I hadn’t told him that I’d met Lisa, and I decided that I wasn’t going to do it now. One revelation at a time.

I got into Beulah and tuned in to a jazz station. Wayne Shorter’s “Night Dreamer” came on, the perfect salve for my overworked psyche. And traffic wasn’t bad. I made it downtown by ten o’clock. I’d resolved to keep this meeting short and to the point.

Still, I headed into Twin Towers feeling a little shakier than I wanted to. When they brought Dale out, he looked pale and drawn. We picked up the phones.

He studied my face. “Are you going to stay?”

“Yes.” He closed his eyes and exhaled. I told him I was going to release the story myself. “I don’t know what that’ll mean for you in here, but brace yourself.”

“Thank you, Samantha. You told your mother?” I nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment. “That had to be terrible. I’m sorry . . . about all of this. Well, not all.” He gave me a warm look. “But I can’t imagine how this has been for you.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what Celeste said.”

“Really?”

“No. For her, the words
I’m
and
sorry
have never come up in the same sentence. So thank you. But now we’ve got to get down to work. Your preliminary hearing is next week. I’m going to go see the people on Chloe’s show today. Do you have any names I should look for in particular?”

Dale had been watching me with concern. But when I shifted into work mode and asked for names, he went along with it. “If you mean the names of anyone she had problems with, I don’t. But if you’re thinking about looking for her dealer . . .” He shook his head. “I still don’t. I’d just guess that it’s someone on the crew. I wouldn’t think any of the cast members would want to risk it.”

“Or be bothered. They make enough money; they don’t need to deal on the side. We might try to see Kaitlyn today, too. Any tips? Dos or don’ts?”

Dale sighed and shook his head. “I saw her only a few times, but she seemed very sweet. She’s a much softer person than Chloe. But good luck getting her to talk to you.”

“I know. We’ll see about her.”

I told him I’d be back tomorrow and headed for the courthouse. On the way, I called Lisa and told her she had a new sister. Hearing myself say the words felt almost otherworldly strange, and Lisa took a few beats to wrap her head around it. But she recovered and grooved into the idea pretty quickly. “Cool! Hey, maybe I can come watch you in court.” I wasn’t sure this case was the place to start, but for now, I just said that’d be great.