Tell No Lies (18 page)

"Where have you been?" she asked. She stood against the trunk next to him, a few inches away, facing the driveway in his same crossed-arm stance.

"We had a beer before I left downtown."

"Who's 'we'?"

It didn't seem worth it to mention Jenny and risk killing any chances of reconciliation.

"Earl and I."

She nodded. The neighborhood was quiet; everywhere seemed quiet tonight.

"Listen, Claire—"

"You know, you used to call and tell me when you were going to be late."

"I figured you weren't in any hurry to see me."

She pursed her lips and raised one eyebrow, as if to tell him he'd figured right.

He faced her, moved in close, and stood between her legs so they both leaned as one against the car. She wore sweats and he could feel the shape of her body through the loose fabric. With their bodies touching and their hips resting against each other's, he started to feel a little horny.

He reached down and took one of her arms by the wrist, placed it around his waist, and then did the same with the other arm. She left them there, limply, but he detected the start of a smile, if only in her eyes. "Come on, I know you want to hug me."

She pushed at him, trying to maintain a serious face. "Sometimes you make me so mad."

"That's good, don't you think?"  She still stared at something behind him. "It'd be really boring, otherwise, huh?" He moved his head to block her view, to make her look at him.

She shook her head. She wasn't ready to forgive him so easily.

"Hey, look at me." She did. He was close enough to see the blue speck in the green of her right eye. "I'm sorry, okay? I am. I didn't mean for it to happen like it did. I just wasn't thinking."

"No, you sure weren't," she agreed and looked away again.

"Claire, come on, look at me." He leaned his head in closer, stopped briefly to see if she was going to let him do it, and then he kissed her.

"You guys are gross." They both looked up to see Michael coming back up the driveway.

"Go finish your homework like your mom asked," Jack said.

"And do it quietly," Claire added. "Don't wake Jamie."

They watched him as he took his time going into the house. Jack turned back to Claire and tried to remember where they'd left off. She smiled a bit, but it was a smile about Michael. He touched her lips. "You know I wouldn't purposely do anything to hurt you."

"I know."

"How can I make it up to you?"

"Change your mind."

God, she didn't even hesitate. "I don't get it. I thought you supported me. I thought you were the one who told me to give it my best shot, if I really wanted it."

"Yeah, I did. But not the way you're planning to do it. What are you going to say when they start asking you the inevitable questions?"

"I'll worry about it when the time comes. I'll roll with the flow."

She sighed and stood up straight, pushing him away in the process. "Are you hungry? I didn't think you'd be this late, so I put the food in the oven to keep it warm. It's probably all dried out now." She walked away from him toward the house.
 

"I won't do it if you really don't want me to."

She stopped abruptly and turned. "Oh no, I'm not going to let you lay that on me. I don't want you to make a decision based on what I want. You're the one who has to look in the mirror every morning. You're the one who will take the questions and come up with the answers. If you have no problem with it, then I have no problem with it. Pretend I never asked."

She left him standing there, gazing at the empty space between his body and the car and wishing he could explain that Harry Truman stuff to her as well as Earl had explained it to him.

Later that night in bed, after they'd turned out the lights, she asked him to rub her back. He gathered her hair in his hand—she hadn't braided it—and tossed it to the side so he could rub her neck, too. She'd never told him so, but he always took her failure to braid her hair as a sign to him that she wasn't ready to go to sleep just yet. He now questioned his previous assumptions about the lack of a braid. But when he drew a big, invisible heart on her back, she laughed softly. He then pretended to play dot to dot with her freckles and moles, and she laughed at that, too, because she knew he claimed that when he connected the dots it formed a gigantic
J
and therefore she was marked for him. Maybe everything between them
was
okay.
 

He finally decided he'd rubbed her back long enough and had made his way over the curves of her behind, to the back of her thighs, to the back of her knees, to the inside of her thighs, and was on his way back up again, when she spoke.

"So what was the impetus?"

"Hmm?" His eyes were closed and he wasn't really listening as his hand kept moving, only inches from its intended destination.
 

"What made you decide finally?" She rolled over to face him, and his hand slid over her leg and landed on the mattress between them. He opened his eyes and they stared at each other.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on. You know how you are, a little impulsive. You might have been thinking about it for a long time, but something happened to make you decide. Did Earl say something to you?"

He rolled onto his back and stared into the dark. "Is there a reason we're talking about this right now?"

"I just thought of it. I'm curious."

He wondered whether to tell her about the letter. At any other time he wouldn't have hesitated; she would have understood completely. But something about her demeanor—how she'd been so hot and cold ever since their phone conversation earlier in the afternoon—caused him to be almost embarrassed that he'd let the letter affect him as it had. But this was Claire, and he had to believe that she'd get it, that she'd comprehend its significance to him.

"I got a letter today from the mother of a murder victim in a case I tried a few years ago." She rested her arm on his chest in anticipation—she wanted his reasoning to be heartfelt, if not sound—and it spurred him on. "She encouraged me to run. She wanted me to run. I thought . . ." He remembered that he'd shoved it into his pants pocket before leaving to meet Jenny. He threw the blankets off, grabbed his pants from the floor, and dug out the letter. "Turn on your light," he said.

She reached for the paper, squinting a little, and said, "Why's it so wrinkled?"

Instead of replying, he watched her read it and tried to gauge her reaction. Twice she raised her eyes, without comment, to look at him over the top of the letter. It took her a long time to read it and he thought that maybe she was reading it more than once, as he had. This was Claire. She had to get it.
 

When she finished, she set the letter on her nightstand and turned off the light. She scooted over to him, snuggled in tight, and sighed. "I'm sorry, Jack. I jumped to conclusions."

She started to say something else, but he put his finger to her lips and pulled her closer. He didn't need her to say any more. He understood what she'd been thinking and he really couldn't blame her and he didn't need to hear any apologies. He was tired and he'd lost interest in anything else but sleep. He closed his eyes and fingered her hair and thought about earlier in the day when everyone was in his office. He thought of telling her about it now. Instead he drifted off, a slight smile on his face, feeling again like an honest man.

PART 2

SUMMER

CHAPTER NINE

THE BLACKTOP DRIVEWAY was already hot under Jack's bare feet when he dashed out early to grab the morning paper. As he sat down at the table with his coffee, the headline screamed up at him.
OUTGOING DA MUM ON WHETHER HE'LL SEEK DEATH IN LAST CASE OF HIS TERM
.
 

"How can you drink that when it's so hot outside?" Claire asked. She stretched to get a glimpse of the headline.

He barely heard her. "It's like he's purposely dragging this out to make my life difficult. They're going to descend on me when I get to work today."

Jack knew the honeymoon was over. After announcing his candidacy, he'd braced himself for a barrage of high-pressure questions from reporters, but they'd never come. He'd received plenty of calls, of course, and had been interviewed several times for profile pieces, but, amazingly, no one had pushed him on the death penalty.

He now suspected the media had merely been waiting for the most opportune moment to spring the issue. They would take advantage of the public's combustible emotions resulting from the Barnard case and then throw Jack's position into the mix and wait for something to ignite. He pushed the paper away without finishing the story.

"Oh, come on." Claire was skeptical. "Isn't that inevitable regardless of when he decides?"

"I guess." Although usually he admired her reasonableness, he resented it just then. "I feel like he's milking the issue, though. He enjoys playing the media."

She ruffled his hair. "I think maybe you're the one he's playing, Jack." He tilted his face to her, but she slipped away to the sink and began putting dishes in the dishwasher.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Maybe he's trying to force the issue. Maybe he wants to make sure you can handle it before it gets too close to the election." She spoke without looking at him.

"He knows I can handle it."

"Then why are you so worried?"He drew the paper closer to him and turned to the sports page. He tried to read an article but the words stuck to the paper like glue, refusing to find meaning inside his head.

"You know what?" he said. "We can't talk about this. It always ends up this way."

She shut off the water and grabbed a dishtowel. She turned to him as she dried her hands.

"What way?"

"With you challenging everything I say."

He rose from the table and searched for his keys in the cabinet. He called up the stairs to Jamie, who emerged at the top in his pajamas. "Come down and say goodbye to me," Jack said, his tone softer. When Jamie reached the bottom, Jack grabbed him and lifted him into the air. "Are you going to the pool with Mommy?" he asked, tickling him under his shirt. Jamie shrieked with pleasure.

"I don't mean to," she said as if they were still the only two in the room.

"Yes, you do." He set Jamie down. "Go put your suit on." He kissed his head before the child climbed to the top. "I think you're waiting to see me squirm."

"Jack . . ."

"It's true. I'm not doing this exactly how you wanted me to, so you want me to pay."

"That's not true." She crossed the kitchen and gently touched his shoulder.

He picked up his briefcase and started for the garage. She followed, but stopped in the doorway as he climbed into his car. She pressed the button to open the garage for him.

"Then why do you ask me a question like that?"

"You took it wrong."

"I don't think so," he said and slammed his door shut.

Giving her a chance to make a move toward reconciliation, he fiddled with the air conditioner before backing out. But she merely stood there, arms crossed, and when he finally put the gear in reverse, she raised a hand and gave him a little wave.

"Bye, Claire. Thanks for your support," he muttered to himself.

He took the steps instead of the elevator from the third floor of the parking garage, but regretted it as soon as he stepped into the rank stairwell. The odor from urine and discarded beer cans hung in the stagnant heat, remnants of the city's July Fourth celebration a few days earlier. He emerged on the sidewalk expecting relief, but stopped abruptly at the corner when he noticed a small crowd at the bottom of the courthouse steps. He knew without being told they were there because of Barnard; the only question was whose side they were on.

The light changed to green but he didn't cross. Feeling someone at his elbow, he mumbled, "Excuse me," and mindlessly took a step to the side to let the person pass.

"Come on, we'll walk right by them together."

He turned at Earl's voice. "Oh, it's you."

They crossed together and Jack waited for an explanation, but none was forthcoming.

"I can't do this," he said, more to himself than to Earl.

But Earl kept walking. "You don't have a choice. Anyway, you don't deserve to be DA if you can't do this."

As they neared the group, the homemade signs made it clear they were there to protest the possibility of Earl's asking for the death penalty. The largest of the signs encouraged Earl to "take the more humane approach to justice." That was okay with Jack, of course, except that now he couldn't very well express his sympathies with them, could he?

The group had enough of a presence to attract a news truck. A single reporter stood with the crowd, her cameraman tailing her every movement. Jack glanced sideways at Earl to gauge his reaction, but Earl merely nodded to the crowd in greeting and kept going. The cameraman motioned to the reporter. Seeing Earl and Jack, she yanked the microphone away from the face of the young man talking into it and started in their direction.
 

"Keep walking as if there's nothing unusual going on," Earl said quietly to Jack without changing his expression or his pace. They began to climb the steps.

"Mr. Scanlon! Mr. Hilliard! Can I have a moment, please?" Jack heard the tap of the reporter's heels as she followed just behind them. Despite Earl's instructions, he couldn't just pretend he hadn't heard her. He stopped and turned, forcing Earl to do the same.

"Of course," Jack answered, smiling slightly. A drop of perspiration trailed down the back of his neck; the collar of his shirt felt tight.
This is it
.
 

"Mr. Scanlon" —the light on the camera came on and she shoved the microphone in Earl's face— "have you made up your mind whether to seek death in the Barnard case?"