Key Witness (56 page)

She had meant “use me” in the sexual sense, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. He might say something that would hurt more than she could stand.

“Well,” he said, calming down—he always knew how and when to throw that switch—“you did what you could. You’d better let me out of here. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble.” He headed for the door.

She stepped in front of him. “I’ll be okay,” she said with false bravado. “I can handle this. Those deputies out there are scared to death of me,” she boasted truthfully. “None of them would bust me. No one knows you’re in here, anyway,” she added cautiously. “I made sure of that.” With utter, insane, reckless abandon she moved toward him with carnal intent. This would be the last time they’d ever be together. She had to take one last chance. Fuck the sheriff and the horse he rode in on. Fuck them all.

He sidestepped her adroitly, his eyes bulging in alarm. “What’re you, crazy! In here? After just getting your ass reamed out?” He stared at her. She was round the bend, truly gone. “It isn’t worth it, Doris,” he said, forcing himself to be calm. “You’ve got your law career to think about. We have time.”

She stopped, deflated like a flat tire. “I suppose you’re right,” she said dully.

“They’re watching you, Doris. We have to be supercool.”

“As long as …” She didn’t dare voice her thought.

“We have time,” he said again, smooth as molasses. The room reeked from his insincerity. “The rest of our lives, once this is over. So let’s not jeopardize it now.”

She unlocked the door and sent him on his way. Then she sat down at her desk and cried.

L
ESS THAN SIX MONTHS
earlier Wyatt Matthews had been one of the most successful and prominent lawyers in the country. His income was seven figures, his picture was on the cover of mass-circulation magazines, he was the bright shining star of his nationally recognized firm, he was lionized by his peers, he had a comfortable, secure marriage, his child was fine. There wasn’t a cloud on the horizon.

Now he was working out of a makeshift office that couldn’t pass a building inspection, he was defending a mass murderer who had already been convicted in the press and the public eye, he had almost been killed, his daughter had been shot and almost killed, he and his wife were estranged, and he was, an adulterer. Not just the common, garden-variety type, either. He had slept with a major witness for the opposition, who by some miraculous negative force was the estranged sister of the state’s key witness.

How had this happened? What death wish did he unconsciously harbor to have allowed his life to get to this point? And could he get out alive, his marriage, career, and honor unscathed?

Not his honor. That was already compromised. For the rest of his life, no matter what happened, he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror and say, “you are an honorable man.” He had burned that bridge the night before last.

It was early morning, the crack of dawn. No sun yet in the sky, only a thin yellow-gray line stenciling the eastern sky. He stood in the guest-room shower, the needles scalding him, ferociously scrubbing his body with a rough loofah. He had already had a forty-minute run in the dark. Now he was washing off the sweat and as much guilt as he could.

The sweat went down the drain with the shower water. The guilt had been absorbed into his system.

He had to come into their bedroom to dress. Moira was awake, propped up on her pillows, watching the morning news on TV.

“How was your run?” she asked formally.

“Good. I needed it.” He pulled some changes from his drawers—underwear, socks, shirts. “I’m going to be spending some weeknights in the city,” he explained as matter-of-factly as he could. “I’m gearing up for eighteen-hour days. I might even sleep in the office sometimes.” He was turned away from her as he pulled out what he would need.

To his back, she coolly asked, “Are you sleeping with another woman?”

He paused before turning to her, wondering what emotions his face was revealing.

“That hot little paralegal of yours? The one who calls here whenever she feels like it?”

“Her name is Josephine, and I’m not sleeping with her.”

He looked at her, trying to maintain his composure. He hadn’t lied—not specifically.

“You wouldn’t tell me if you were anyway, would you?”

“I’m not sleeping with her. I’m married to you.”

“For what that’s worth.”

Bull’s-eye. “Maybe I should move out for a while, until this trial’s over and we can take a deep breath.”

“That’s up to you.” Her tone was unquivering, blunt.

“Although I don’t want to burden you with Michaela,” he said, feeling lame as the words came off his tongue, which felt like it was forked.

“She’s not a burden. And I should be her nurse, I’m the one who did it to her.”

“It isn’t just you. There’s enough blame for all of us to spread around.”

“You’re saying that, but you don’t believe it.”

They looked at each other across the room. “I want to.” The first honest statement he’d made this morning.

Emotional shadows played across her face. “Where did our life go, Wyatt?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything; he didn’t know what to say.

“That’s a good idea,” she said, alluding to his offer of moving out. “We do need to put some space between us.”

“I’ll come home some nights, and weekends,” he offered. “It’s a case, like any other.” He started throwing stuff into a soft suitcase.

She watched as he hurriedly finished dressing. “Be quiet when you leave. Don’t wake Michaela.”

He picked up the bag and grabbed a handful of hangers with suits on them from his closet. “I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons as usual, in case you want to call”

She stared at him blankly, as if he were speaking a foreign language she didn’t understand.

J
OE GINSBERG AND WYATT
were old acquaintances. Both were lawyers, roughly the same age. Joe was a partner in a nice, medium-sized firm, similar to Wyatt’s but on a smaller, less-stressful scale. Joe’s practice was eclectic, casting its net among the shoals of criminal defense, personal injury, and class action, among other areas. Over the years the combination of work, family, and different lifestyles precluded them seeing much of each other, but there was mutual respect and easiness between them.

It was the end of the workday. Wyatt and Joe were comfortably ensconced in a back booth at McGulligan’s, the oldest pub in the city, dating back over one hundred and fifty years. Schooners of draft Guinness and shots of Johnnie Walker Black sat puddled on the scarred wooden table. Joe lit up a cigar, a big Fonseca 10-10, the smoke drifting lazily up to the twenty-foot-high stamped-tin ceiling.

“You didn’t know I’ve been teaching at Fairfax?” Joe asked.

Wyatt shook his head. “Not until Darryl Davis told me the other day. Although I’m not surprised. How long?”

“Six years. I teach one course a semester. That’s all I can manage—it’s a load, but it keeps me on my toes.”

“I’ll bet. I’d like to try doing that someday. Seeing’s how I’m into the new and different.”

Most of the faculty of Fairfax Law School were men and women like Joe, working professionals with a love for teaching who brought real-life experience into the classroom, along with the academic side. Teaching for them was an avocation, a chance to merge their love for the law and the legal system with the practical workaday world. Wyatt had phoned Joe as soon as he discovered he had a personal relationship with someone on the faculty.

“I can imagine,” Joe replied. “That was a gutsy move, doing what you’re doing. A lot of guys’re envious of what you’ve done.”

“Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. I’ve had my sleepless nights.”

“Sure, that’s to be expected. How’s it going? The case?”

“We’re making progress. It’s going to be a struggle,” Wyatt admitted honestly. “But I’m holding some cards.” Bringing the conversation around to his purpose: “So do you remember a student named Doris Blake? Did you ever teach her?”

“Doris Blake.” Joe scrunched his brow, trying to put the name with a face.

Wyatt described her.

“Oh, yeah. Her, I remember. You don’t forget someone who looks like her.” He took a sip of Scotch, a swallow of stout. “What about her?”

“How was she as a student?” Wyatt replicated Joe’s pattern of drinking.

“Okay. Nothing special. I had her in procedures one semester and then another time I had her in environment law, I think it was. I could go back and check if you’re interested in the specifics.”

“No, that won’t be necessary. I’m interested in your overall impression of her. As a student, a scholar.”

Joe blew a smoke ring skyward. “She’s not a scholar. I’d describe her as a plodder, not much of an original thinker. Hard worker, I’ll give her that. She got by by working her tush off. I’d be in the law library sometimes late, she’d be there until the place closed and they kicked her out. Usually worked alone.” He took another hit of Scotch. “Why, you guys thinking of hiring her?” he asked, his tone expressing surprise.

Wyatt shook his head. “Not at the firm, no.”

“She wouldn’t fit in.” He meant, Wyatt knew, her appearance. “If she was a Larry Tribe, somebody particularly bright like that, you could justify her, but she’s going to be a ham-and-egger, the kind that’s always scrambling to make a living. Her best bet’ll be hooking on with some government agency.”

“I agree. I mentioned that she should look into applying to the Public Defender’s—not that I’d give her a recommendation. They’re way too classy for her.”

Joe polished off his Guinness, held his glass aloft to signal the barmaid for another round. “Why’re you asking about her?”

“She’s peripherally involved in my case.” He could talk freely with Joe. “Maybe more than peripherally.”

The barmaid took Joe’s empty glass. Wyatt finished his and handed it to her. “She’s got a history with this informant who’s the backbone of Pagano’s case against my guy.”

Joe whistled. “A
history
? That’s got a sinister ring to it, Wyatt.” He grabbed a handful of bar nuts from the bowl in the center of the table, threw them down.

“I know. Which is why I’m pursuing it.”

The barmaid set their fresh drafts in front of them, gave the table a cursory wipe with her dirty cloth to sop up some of the spillage. “I love the atmosphere in here,” Joe commented, loud so she could hear. “Surly and surlier.”

The barmaid kissed her fingers and shot him the bird. He smiled pleasantly at her as she lumbered away.

“She told me she got a seventy-six on her bar exam.”

“No way.” Joe sucked the collar off his fresh glass. “That’s too high. I’d be surprised if she passed the first time, a woman with her intellectual limitations. But a seventy-six? That’s … she’d have to be the luckiest lady alive. Which you and I know she isn’t.”

“That’s my impression, too.”

“Anyway,” Joe continued, “how the hell does she know what score she got? The earliest she could’ve taken the bar exam was this spring, and they haven’t been posted yet.”

“That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

“If she knows what she’s got, that’s illegal,” Joe said. “Not to mention immoral. Your first move out of the box from law school you do something illegal? Now that would really be dumb. You sure she told you her score?”

“Positively.”

“Well, I guess it’s possible to get your score without technically breaking any laws. But I guarantee you that woman didn’t get a seventy-six. She couldn’t.”

Wyatt nodded. “There’s all kinds of wrong things going on with her. This is only one of them.”

Joe thought for a moment. “I’ve got someone on the testing board I could put you in touch with,” he offered. “Off the record. He could find out if what she told you is accurate.”

“Thanks, Joe. That would be helpful. I’ll owe you one for that.”

“You’re buying the drinks, didn’t I tell you? Don’t sweat it, it’s no big thing. The more important thing, I’d think, is who got those results for her? If she’s telling the truth, that is.”

“She was pretty steadfast.”

“I don’t know.” Joe’s head was enveloped in a nimbus of cigar smoke. “I think she’s blowing smoke at you,” he dead-panned. “I’ll bet she doesn’t know her score,” he added, “and I’ll bet that when she does find out, it won’t be seventy-six. Ten points lower would be my guess.”

“Why would she do that?”

“To impress you, for God’s sake. Big-shot lawyer, condescending to talk to a small fry. She wants to make a good impression, so she says the first thing that pops into her head. She lies to try to build herself up. Of course it’s stupid, and people do stuff like that all the time. It’s human nature—I mean look at the poor woman, Wyatt. Doesn’t your heart go out to her?”

“Normally it would,” Wyatt agreed, thinking of Marvin, of how he would have inflated his importance to Dwayne Thompson to impress the seasoned con. “But if she’s part of a scam to put my man away? I’ll tear her heart out and feed it to the jackals.”

E
LVIS BURNSIDE, A THIN,
rapacious-looking man, had been tossing down a few after work. He was gainfully employed in a tool-and-die plant over on the west side, a journeyman grinder with a union card, $21.50 an hour plus guaranteed overtime. While nursing his third 7&7 he made the acquaintance of a woman who was hanging around the bar by herself. She was friendly, they worked out their arrangement, and they headed over to a nearby motel she knew about to consummate the deal. He bought a pint of Absolut from the bartender to make the encounter more convivial, and was driving a Toyota 4-Runner with a split flip-down backseat, which he’d bought off a friend who ran a chop shop; it came with legal papers and everything.

On the way to the motel Elvis decided he didn’t want to pay for a room, seeing as how he had plenty of space right here in his vehicle. He turned off the street they were on, pulling into a small commercial side street that was quiet now that business hours were over.

“I don’t feature throwing thirty dollars at some crater-faced motel clerk,” he explained of his sudden change of plans. “I’d rather pay you the extra money,” he said, leaning over and lowering the backseat.