Blood Orange (35 page)

“What happened?”

The director shook her head. “As far as I can tell, she just
started, no reason.”

“Baby, baby,” Dana soothed as Bailey fell into her arms, hot and
sweaty and coiled with tension. “Never mind, Bay, Mommy’s here.
Nothing’s going to happen.”

Laura said, “Last week I thought she was improving.”

“She is, every day.” She kissed Bailey’s forehead. “But some days
are better than others.”

“Sounds like a description of normal life, doesn’t it?”

Laura left them alone, and Dana settled into the soft cushions of
the storybook chair with Bailey nestled beside her. She glanced at
her watch and saw there were twenty minutes until the end of the
service. They would stay put.

Later, Beth Gordon’s voice broke into Dana’s thoughts. “You
two make a beautiful picture. I wish I had my camera.”

Jason stood beside her, still robed as the crucifer. “I got one of
those disposables in the van.” He brushed the top of Bailey’s head
with his hand. “Hi, there, Bailey.”

“Jason, you’re huge.” Dana got a crick in her neck looking up at
him. “You must have grown since last week.”

“Nothing fits him, of course.” Beth smiled at her grandson with
such unabashed devotion Dana thought it must embarrass the boy.
“Run get that camera, will you?” As he took off Beth said, “We’ll
put you two on the front page of next month’s newsletter.”

After church David went to work, and Bailey napped on the
couch with her favorite blue and white blanket, her thumb in her
mouth. Dana walked around the house, unable to settle down to anything. She turned on the television to check the score, saw the
Chargers were losing, and turned it off. She took meat from the freezer
for dinner, peeled potatoes and put them in a bowl of cold water. She
sat down, tried to read a magazine, stood up, sat down again. She
called David and hung up before he answered. Called him again and
told him the score of the game. He had the radio on in his office. She
stood at the sink and looked at the garage apartment. Something
about the church’s newsletter gnawed at a corner of her mind.

She walked into the entryway and sat on the lower step, where
she had been letting the mail accumulate in a basket. Sorting through
the junk flyers and one-time-only offers, the ads for contractors and
cut-rate dentists, she tossed them into a pile to be recycled later and
made a separate pile of catalogs and another of periodicals like The
New Yorker and Better Homes and Gardens. The front page of that
month’s church newsletter had a picture of Lexy and the landscape
gardener St. Tom’s had hired to rehabilitate the garden in front of
the offices.

Dana stared at the picture a long while. As she did, a thread of
perspiration slipped from her hairline down her cheek.

The week after Bailey came home, the church had printed a special one-page bulletin. Dana knew that if she looked she would be
able to find it somewhere in the house. Not that she needed to see it
to remember. It was a sheet of ordinary print stock with one word
written across the top in bold block letters: FOUND. Below this
was a picture of David with Bailey in his arms. This was the picture
that had come through the mail slot in a manila envelope with a
noose drawn around David’s neck, the picture Jason had taken. She
remembered Beth saying he was making copies of the bulletin at the
copy shop where he worked. He would deliver them in his friend
Bender’s van.

Dana reached for the phone and called Lieutenant Gary.

avid tried to work, but even when he turned off the Charger
game he could not wrestle his thoughts into order. Finally he
capped his pen and turned his chair toward the window. Through
breaks in Little Italy’s skyline of partially constructed buildings, the
San Diego harbor was the color of blueberries and dotted with
white sails. When he moved to San Diego he had imagined sailing
on the bay, even though he did not know a jib from a spinnaker.
Sailing, like tennis, and afternoons at the beach, and a Spanish colonial home, was part of the dream life he and Dana had envisioned.

A client like Frank Filmore had never been part of his dream.

He had begun the practice of law with high ideals and believing
that every individual deserved the best defense. He remembered
once telling his brother, a corporate attorney in Wheeling, that when
he paid attention to the circumstances of a client’s life he could not
say that anyone was all bad or all wrong. In his practice he had dealt
with sociopaths and lowlifes he didn’t want within five miles of his
family, but in all of them he had tried to discover at least one redeeming quality-a sense of humor, an admirable resilience, something that would enable him to put his full effort into their defense.

He had a framed sign in his office: YOUR DEFENSE ATTORNEY, LIBERTY’S LAST DEFENSE.

He hated to admit how naive he had been when he imagined
himself a hipper, thinner, and much better dressed Clarence Darrow defending the powerless.

Frank Filmore was far from powerless. He had enough money to
buy himself any five-star attorney in the country. By contrast, Darrow’s
constituency-the desperate men and women crowded into downtown holding cells-were lucky to get the services of an underpaid,
overworked, and minimally qualified ninety-day wonder.

David thought of the bills piled up in the basket by the stairs, of
the debts the firm incurred just by turning on the lights every day.
He and Dana had talked about a trip to Fiji when they couldn’t
even afford a weekend in Las Vegas.

He needed Frank Filmore to pay the bills.

David flashed on a mental image of Shawna Filmore at the bottom of a well. He blinked and it was Bailey’s elfin face he saw staring up at him from the green water. A sick nausea arose in him. He
did not want to defend Frank Filmore for any amount of money. He
wanted to throw him in jail and, make him fight with the rats for
bread and water. But if he went to the presiding judge and said he
hated the s.o.b., the judge would chuck him out of chambers.

Liking your client was not a requirement of a good defense.

He could hand the job over to Gracie and Larry, but the judge
would object to that, too. More to the point, it didn’t matter who
took the case; David knew what he knew. Filmore had killed two
children and would probably kill a third.

He opened his middle drawer, took out the Owens Garage receipt, and spread it smoothly on his desktop. This was the evidence
that would take Filmore down, but there was nothing David could do with it that did not compromise his ethics. He might as well toss
it away.

He tipped his chair as far back as it would go and tried to relax;
he counted his breaths and imagined his mind with branches like a
tree and roots that spread wide and deep. Eventually, gratefully, he
slipped into a drifting state of half-sleep.

The ringing of the phone woke him. No one called him on the
back line except Dana. He didn’t want to talk to her until he’d done
something with the information Marsha had given him the day before.

Just after three he sat forward and stood up. He gathered his
jacket and briefcase, locked the office, walked downtown to the jail,
and asked to see his client. After a short wait a guard escorted
Filmore into the interview room. He looked healthy and fit; every
black hair was slicked back and perfectly in place.

“What’s up?” he asked in his phony accent. “Has the prosecutor
finally figured out I didn’t do it?”

“No,” David said. “I’ve figured out you did.”

Frank cocked his head to one side.

“And if I know, by the time we go to trial next month, Peluso
will, too.”

“I’m innocent. There’s no way they can prove I did it.”

David wanted to point out that the two claims were not necessarily connected.

“I took my car to be serviced the other day.” It was the kind of
statement it would be easy to disprove if Filmore decided he wanted
to sue David for ineffective assistance of counsel. “And guess what?
You and I have the same mechanic, Floyd Owens over on Washington Street.”

“So?” Filmore’s right eyebrow twitched.

David leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table between
them. “If Floyd’s talking to me about loaner cars, it’s only a matter
of time until he talks to the cops.”

David was spinning Filmore. Though it might happen that way,
the odds were against it, because ordinary law-abiding citizens were
notoriously reluctant to get involved in high-profile cases.

“And you want me to be worried about this?” Filmore asked the
question with the slightly ironic, British inflection that made David
want to pop him.

“What I want is for you to plead out while you still can. I think
Peluso’ll settle for life if I can burn the deal before the police find
out about Floyd Owens.”

Frank looked amused. “Your lack of confidence astounds me. I
really expected better of you. I’m going to walk out of here. The
prosecution’s got no case, and I’ve got the hardest working lawyer
in town.”

“Did you hear what I said, Frank? He hasn’t got a case now, but
he will by the time we go to trial.”

“I think I’ll take my chances.” He rubbed his eyebrow with the
side of his thumb. “I’m feeling rather lucky these days.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. I can smell the gas on this one.”

Filmore sat back, scowling.

David said, “Here’s what you need to know. Peluso is an ambitious man, and he wants to be mayor. After that, who knows, I
wouldn’t be surprised if he dreams of being governor one of these
days. And you’re his ticket. He won’t rest, and neither will the police, until they find evidence that links you to the crime conclusively.” David paused a moment to let his words sink in. “But you’ve
got more to worry about than that. Even if Peluso ends up going
forward with a nothing case, I still don’t like the odds.

“It’s the nature of the crime, Frank. Most people when they hear about a child being killed, tied up in a plastic bag and dumped over
a hill, they react from their gut. There’s pretty much no one in the
city doesn’t want to see you go down.”

David paused again to let his words register. Filmore was vain
and arrogant, but he was also smart. David counted on his intelligence to cut through his ego.

“In a case like this Peluso doesn’t need much to get a conviction,
because there’s no way to impanel an honest-to-God neutral jury.
Jurors are supposed to assume you’re innocent until proven guilty,
but they don’t. Jurors think because the cops arrested you and the
judge refused you bail you must be guilty.”

David counted five breaths. When he spoke he sounded like a
man deeply grieved to bring up a painful topic. “They know about
Shawria.”

“But you’re going to keep that out of the trial, right? It’s irrelevant or prejudicial or something. And even if you can’t, subpoena
the records. Get someone to translate for you. The Mexican cops
said it was an accident.”

“Mexican cops don’t have a lot of credibility in San Diego.”
David rubbed his jaw. The joint below his ear ached with tension.
“You see how it looks? A lousy case, but-“

“I didn’t kill her.” No English accent now.

David said, “The way this city feels, I could put God Almighty
on the stand to vouch for you and it probably wouldn’t help. The
jury is going to want to convict you, Frank. And when Peluso talks
to Floyd Owens, he’ll send the cops to go over that other car with a
microscope.” David shrugged. “Once they come up with DNA evidence there won’t be much I can do for you.”

“My wife had the car. The police’ll arrest her.”

“She was at work all day. Dozens of witnesses.”

Frank chewed his thumbnail, and sweat popped out on his fore head. David remembered Marsha saying her husband never perspired.

“Now I get it.” Filmore’s eyes narrowed. “She told you. You
probably never heard of Floyd Owens before the bitch opened her
mouth. But she paid cash; we always pay cash. There’s no credit
card receipt, so there’s no way the cops’ll find out. All I’ve got to do
is sit tight.”