The Advocate's Daughter (10 page)

Ryan's voice reeled him back in. “What'd you guys talk about?”

“What's that?” asked Sean, not understanding.

“You and Abby. What'd you used to talk about when you'd sneak out all those times?”

“She often talked about you, Ryan,” Sean said. “And how proud she was of you.”

Ryan picked up a shell and studied it. “She did?” There was a skeptical lilt to his voice.

“Oh, she admired you, Ryan. How you're so naturally smart, how you have no fear of public speaking, and how musically talented you are. She struggled with all those things, you know.”

“I don't know why she'd admire me. She was the one who was the best at everything. Like you said on the news.”

Sean again regretted speaking to the press. “She did admire you. I'm not just saying that.”

Ryan's eyes glistened. Sean realized that as hard as he and Emily had tried not to make Ryan feel inferior to his overachieving sister, they'd failed. Parents don't like to admit it, but when a child excels it sends a message to the world: you were good parents. The truth was, Abby was born to achieve and Ryan—sweet, empathetic Ryan—was born to stumble before he'd find himself.

Ryan rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “The last time we spoke she was mad at me.”

Sean hugged his son. His bare shoulder grew wet from Ryan's tears. Sean was choking back a sob himself. “Brothers and sisters fight. Abby adored you. And she wouldn't want you worried about some silly fight you had.”

“But she was really mad at me, Dad,” Ryan sobbed.

Sean felt a hand on his back and he turned. Emily. She gripped Jack's hand with her left hand. In her right, a sack that read
BIG BROWN BAG
. The Bloomingdale's bag. Abby's ashes.

Ten minutes later, with the beautiful red, orange, and purple sky and the sound of waves crashing, they watched as the pillow-shaped urn slowly disappeared into the ocean where it would break down and his little girl's ashes would become a part of this place she loved. Sean wanted to dive in the water and let the riptides take him away. But looking at Emily and the boys, he knew that, for them, he needed to be strong. Cliché as it was, he believed Abby would have wanted it that way.

On the slow walk back to the hotel, Emily reached for his hand. And he knew then that, if for only the moment, Emily was thinking the same thing.

 

CHAPTER 20

Sean idled the SUV curbside in front of the Starbucks on Rehoboth's main street. He could see Emily through the coffee shop's window ordering their drinks for the drive home. He glanced in the rearview at Ryan and Jack, who were bickering in the backseat.

“Stop breathing on me,” Ryan said to his little brother. “You didn't brush your teeth and your breath smells like butt.”

“Oh yeah,” Jack countered, “well, your breath smells like
dummy.
”

Ryan: “That doesn't even make sense, you're such a—”

“Boys, enough,” Sean said. They were acting like
Before.
Just an hour ago they were in the midst of saying good-bye to Abby, one of the saddest events of Sean's life, yet here they were back to being brothers. It gave Sean hope. He eyed his phone sitting in the console. He could no longer avoid it. He powered on the device, which buzzed and quivered as e-mails scrolled onto the screen. Then the chirp of an incoming call.

He scanned the caller ID:
J. TWEED
. Jonathan. He took a deep breath and answered, prepared for the interrogation about why he had skipped his own daughter's vigil. Before he uttered a word, Tweed said, “Sean, thank God you picked up. I've been trying you since last night.”

“I'm sorry we didn't make it, Jon. We just weren't up to—”

“It's not about the vigil,” Tweed interrupted. “It's about the nomination. Marty Lang has been trying to reach you. They called me hoping I could track you down. The president wants to meet with you—today if possible. They're doing the final vet and you must have made the short list.”

“Today? What time? I'm in Rehoboth. The soonest I can make it home will be one o'clock.”

Tweed paused a beat. “Rehoboth? What are you—never mind. They want you in the lobby of the Hay-Adams at five o'clock so that should work. Abani Gupta will pick you up and take you to the White House.”

Gupta was the lawyer who'd successfully vetted and served as the sherpa for the last two Supreme Court nominees. She was no-nonsense and smart. Sean assumed they wanted to meet him at the hotel since it was right across the street from the White House, and he could easily be shuttled through the gates, hidden behind the tinted glass of a town car.

At any other point in his life, he would have felt butterflies of excitement, the surreal honor of even being on the list. But the death of a child teaches something: your career, your accomplishments, the plaques hanging on your wall, they don't mean shit. If he could get back the late nights he'd spent working his cases and writing briefs, the weekends preparing for oral argument, the conference calls and meetings, he'd trade it all for the chance to walk down the beach just one more time with his Abby.
Before
he'd questioned Emily's decision to give up her career to stay home with the children. And he'd resented her demand that he slow down at work, that he take the job at the law firm. But now he understood. Emily had been right all along.

“I'm not sure, Jon. Let me think about it.” He powered down the phone. He watched as Emily stood expressionless in the line at the coffee shop. The boys were still going at it in the back.

“Dad, tell Jack that it's okay to say sitting ‘Indian style.' He says it's racist…”

“Mom says we should say ‘crisscross-apple-sauce,'” Jack defended.

Sean twisted around and was met by Ryan passing him a bottle that had a ribbon around its neck. “This rolled from under Mom's seat.”

Sean remembered the bottle from the night he'd found Abby. As he took the glass decanter from Ryan, the note affixed to it came loose and fluttered to the floor in the back. Sean scanned the bottle's label, which had Japanese characters all over it but the brand was written in English. Nikka whiskey. The brand from that night.

“Oh my God, is this you, Dad?” Ryan said. Jack blurted a laugh. They were looking at the back of the note card. All Sean could see was the writing on the front,
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE NEW JOB!
He reached over and plucked the card out of Ryan's hand. The boys were both giggling.

“And you give me trouble about my hair,” Ryan said.

It wasn't a card at all, Sean realized. It was a photograph. Heat engulfed his face, accompanied by a feeling of disorientation. The photo was of fourteen-year-old Sean, drunk and unsteady, hair that hit his shoulders, sleeveless Def Leppard T-shirt. Next to him were two boys, glassy-eyed. One short and cocksure, the other a scrawny Hispanic kid. Written in messy handwriting on the white border of the photo were two words:

THEY KNOW.

 

CHAPTER 21

He was quiet on the drive home, but his thoughts thrashed through the possibilities. Who had placed the bottle of Nikka whiskey and photo in the SUV? Why? What did it mean? Other than telling his father—who'd seemed more intent on protecting his military career than helping his son—Sean had never spoken about that night. Not to Emily, not to anyone.

His thoughts jumped to the man in the flannel shirt who'd bumped him on the subway.
They know.
The man's face then morphed into his younger self. It was the face from the photo. Not thirteen-year-old Juan, whose brown skin ruled him out, but the other boy. Sean blinked away the image of Kenny wiping the bloody blade on the grass.

But why, after all these years, would Kenny seek him out? Maybe he'd seen the news about Sean's possible nomination to the high court. Or maybe an adversary of the president digging up dirt on the potential nominees found Kenny under some godforsaken rock. In the devastation of the past two weeks, Sean had not thought about Japan. He wasn't worried about himself anymore, and there was something freeing about that.

But the bottle still sent a lightning bolt through his chest. Was it a coincidence that the boy who without remorse killed a storekeeper had entered the scene at the same time Abby was murdered?

He reminded himself that they'd already arrested the killer, Malik Montgomery. They had hard evidence against Malik. But then Blake Hellstrom, Malik's lawyer, came rushing to mind. The doubts ignited inside of Sean, burning through the entire three-hour drive.

At home, Sean retreated to the shower. He closed his eyes, the hot water pouring over him, and lapsed into a crying jag. After the shower, he put on his suit pants, white dress shirt, and a conservative tie for his meeting with the president. He'd considered skipping it, but Emily had said, “Abby loved the Supreme Court. What would your daughter want you to do?”

He went to his home office and sat behind the desk, staring off into space. He was consumed by thoughts of Japan, the bottle, and Kenny reappearing. The isolation was the worst part. He was in this alone. Now was not the time to unload his past on Emily. She was barely keeping it together as it was. And, anyway, where would he even begin after all these years?

There was a knock on the open door, and Ryan popped his head in.

“Preparing for your meeting at the White House?” Ryan asked. He had a thick folder in his hand and placed it on Sean's desk. “You left this in the car.”

It was the file Jonathan Tweed had given him: Abby's vetting research. She'd been assigned to dig into the past of the front-runner for the nomination, Senator Mason James.

He'd analyzed Abby's file at the beach and found nothing out of the ordinary. Newspaper articles, speeches, campaign expenditure reports, Facebook and Twitter posts, printouts from high school reunion websites, the senator's voting record, and a stack of Internet research organized in folders and covered with highlighter, all focused singularly on the impressive career of Mason James. Sean assumed there were now several such files throughout Washington focused on himself.

“I probably should prepare, but I figure that I just need to be honest. Thanks for asking, though. Hey, you know the meeting is supposed to be secret, you can't tell—”

“I know, Dad,” Ryan said. He let a long moment pass, then said, “Is that Abby's stuff you were looking at last night?”

Sean nodded.

Ryan's eyes settled on the floor and he lingered at the doorway. He then bit on a thumbnail.

Sean asked, “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”

Ryan continued working the nail.

“Ryan?”

When his son lifted his gaze, more tears. Sean wondered if it was possible to run out of tears. If so, the entire Serrat family must be getting near empty.

“About what happened at school—the Facebook messages about the weed,” Ryan muttered. “I'm so sorry, I—”

“Buddy, stop.” A family crisis just two weeks ago, those events seemed trivial now. On top of his grief, Ryan shouldn't be carrying around guilt about inappropriate Facebook messages and made-up pot sales.

“You don't understand,” Ryan said. He continued to cry and seemed to be having a hard time catching his breath, like when he was a little boy. “It's about Abby.”

Sean digested that. “Abby? What about Abby?”

“Remember I said she was mad at me?” Another sob. Ryan was sucking his breaths in gulps now. “It's because of the weed.”

Sean gave him a confused stare.

“I went to her for help. I was scared.”

“Scared? Scared about what? What are you talking about?”

“The man from Chipotle.”

The guy in his Facebook messages. The man in red. The dealer. “I thought Chipotle Man was made up, that you were just trying to impress your friends?”

Ryan looked away and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I got weed from the guy, Dad.” He whimpered. “He gave it to me for free. I was supposed to sell it and give him the money and keep some for myself, but I got scared, so I flushed it.”

Confusion was replaced with a surge of anger, but it didn't have the energy it once did. Sean drew a deep breath to slow the pounding in his chest. “What's it have to do with Abby?”

“The dealer. He said he was gonna hurt me if I didn't get him the money. I went to Abby for help.”

The words bounced around in Sean's head. Abby knew about this? And she hadn't come to him? He remembered her call. Her last ever to Sean. That goddamned missed call.

Ryan was crying again. “Abby went to see the guy. She paid him what I owed, but he said it wasn't enough. He said we'd better come up with five thousand bucks or he'd go to the press—he knew who you were. He ripped her necklace from her neck, said she could get it back when he got the five grand. Abby thought she was being followed, and she was scared and gonna go to you for help.”

“When? When did she say she was going to talk with me about this?”

“The day she was killed.”

 

CHAPTER 22

“I'm so sorry, Dad. I'm so, so sorry.” Ryan's nose was running and his face red.

“You should be,” Sean said. Ryan seemed like he might hyperventilate, but Sean had no urge to comfort him. He was consumed by wrath for the man who had threatened his children. The man who had taken something that Abby had worn every day since Sean gave it to her for her college graduation: an antique necklace worn by Sean's mother. Abby wasn't wearing the necklace when they found her body. Agents thought that the killer may have taken it that night. But apparently they were wrong.

“This guy, when is he usually at Chipotle?” Sean's head was throbbing.

When Ryan didn't respond immediately Sean walked around the desk and put his hands on Ryan's shoulders as if to shake him. “Stop crying and answer me. Where can I find this guy? The Chipotle in Bethesda? When's he there?”