The Partner (24 page)

The Honorable Karl Huskey arrived at Keesler Air Force Base late in the afternoon, and slowly made his way through security to the hospital. He was in the middle of a one-week drug trial, and he was tired. Patrick had called and asked him to stop by, if possible.

Himself a pallbearer, Karl had sat next to Sandy McDermott at Patrick’s funeral. Unlike Sandy, though, Huskey had been a recent friend of Patrick’s. The two had met during a civil case Patrick had tried not long after he arrived in Biloxi. They became friendly, the way lawyers and judges often do when they see each other every week. They chatted over bad food at the monthly bar luncheons, and once drank too much at a Christmas party. They played golf twice a year.

It was an easy acquaintance, but not a close friendship, at least not for the first three years Patrick was in Biloxi. But they grew closer in the months before he disappeared. With the benefit of hindsight, though, it was easy to look back and see a change in Patrick.

In the months after his disappearance, those in the legal community who knew him best, including Karl, liked to gather over drinks at the Lower Bar at Mary Mahoney’s Restaurant on Friday afternoons and piece together the Patrick puzzle.

Trudy took her share of the blame, though she was too easy a target, in Karl’s opinion. On the surface, the marriage didn’t appear to be that bad. Patrick certainly
didn’t discuss it with anybody, at least no one who drank with them at Mary Mahoney’s. Trudy’s actions after the funeral, especially the red Rolls and the live-in toyboy and the go-to-hell attitude she adopted as soon as the life insurance was collected, had soured everyone and made objectivity impossible. No one was certain that she was sleeping around before Patrick left. In fact, Buster Gillespie, the Chancery Clerk and a regular at those sessions, professed admiration for Trudy. She’d once worked with his wife at a charity ball of some variety, and he always felt compelled to say something nice about her. He was about the only one. Trudy was easy to talk about and easy to criticize.

Job pressure was certainly a factor in pushing Patrick to the brink. The firm was rolling in those days, and he desperately wanted to become a partner. He worked long hours, and he took the difficult cases his partners didn’t want. Not even the birth of Ashley Nicole kept him home. He had made partner three years after joining as an associate, but few people outside the firm knew it. He had whispered it to Karl one day after court, but Patrick was not the least bit boastful.

He was tired and stressed, but then so were most of the lawyers who entered Karl’s courtroom. The oddest changes in Patrick were physical. He was an even six feet tall, and he said he had never been thin. He claimed to have been quite a jogger in law school, at one point doing forty miles a week. But as a busy lawyer, who had the time? His weight crept up, then ballooned the last year he was in Biloxi. He seemed oblivious to the jokes and comments from the courthouse
crowd. Karl had chided him more than once, but he kept eating. A month before he disappeared, he told Karl over lunch that he weighed two hundred and thirty pounds, and that Trudy was raising hell about it. She, of course, aerobicized two hours a day with Jane Fonda and was as thin as a model.

He said his blood pressure was up, and he promised to go on a diet. Karl had encouraged this. He found out later that Patrick’s blood pressure had been normal.

The weight gain, and its overnight loss, made perfect sense now that they thought about it.

The beard too. He had grown it around November of 1990, said it was his deer hunting beard. Such growth was not unusual among non-rednecks and lawyers in Mississippi. The air was cool. The testosterone was up. It was a boy thing. He didn’t shave it, and Trudy bitched about that too. The longer he kept it, the grayer it became. His friends got accustomed to it. She did not.

He let his hair a grow a bit and started wearing it thicker on top and halfway down the ears. Karl called it the Jimmy Carter look from 1976. Patrick claimed to have lost his hairstylist and couldn’t find one he trusted.

He wore nice clothes and carried his weight well, but he was too young to let himself go.

Three months before he checked out of Biloxi, Patrick succeeded in convincing his partners that the firm needed its own brochure. It was a small project, but one he embraced with great vigor. Though Patrick wasn’t supposed to know it, the firm was getting closer
to the Aricia settlement, and the money was almost in sight. Egos were expanding daily. A very serious firm was about to become a very wealthy one, so why not impress themselves with a professionally done brochure. It was a way to humor Patrick. Each of the five sat for a professional photographer, then they spent an hour on the group shot. Patrick printed five thousand, and received high marks from the other partners. There he was on page two, fat, bearded, bushy-headed, and looking nothing like the Patrick they found in Brazil.

The photo was used by the press when his death was reported. It was by far the most recent, and coincidentally, Patrick had sent a brochure to the local paper, just in case the firm decided to advertise. They had laughed about this over drinks at Mary Mahoney’s. They could envision Patrick orchestrating the photography in the firm’s conference room. They could see Bogan and Vitrano and Rapley and Havarac in the darkest navy suits and their most serious smiles, and all the while Patrick was laying the groundwork for his exit.

In the months after he left them, the gang at Mary Mahoney’s had toasted Patrick many times and played the game of “Where could he be?” They had wished him well and thought about his money. Time passed and so did the shock of his disappearance. Once they had thoroughly analyzed his life, the sessions came further apart and finally stopped. Months became years. Patrick would never be found.

Karl still found it difficult to believe. He entered the elevator in the lobby and rode alone to the third floor.

He wondered if he had ever given up on Patrick. The mysteries were too rich to escape. A bad day on the bench, and he would think of Patrick on a sundrenched beach reading a novel, sipping a drink, watching the girls. Another year without a pay raise, and he would wonder what the ninety million was doing. The latest rumor on the demise of the Bogan firm, and he would shame Patrick for the misery he had caused. No, the truth was, Karl had thought of Patrick, for one reason or another, at least once a day, every day, since he left.

There were no nurses or other patients in the hall. The two deputies stood. One said, “Evenin’, Judge.” He greeted them and entered the darkened room.

Twenty-three

Patrick was sitting in bed watching “Jeopardy” with his shirt off and the blinds drawn. A dim table light was on. “Sit here,” he told Karl, pointing to the end of his bed. He waited just long enough for Karl to see the burns on his chest, then quickly slipped on a tee shirt. The sheet was up to his waist.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. He turned the TV off, and the room grew even darker.

“Pretty nasty burns, Patrick,” Karl said as he sat on the edge of the bed, as far away as possible, his right foot hanging off the edge. Patrick pulled his knees to his chest. Under the sheet, he still looked painfully thin.

“It was ugly,” he said, his hands wrapped tightly around his knees. “Doc says they’re healing okay. But I’ll need to stay here for a while.”

“I have no problem with that, Patrick. No one is screaming for you to be moved to the jail.”

“Not yet. But I bet the press will start soon.”

“Relax, Patrick. That decision will be made by me.”

He seemed relieved. “Thanks, Karl. You know I can’t survive in jail. You’ve seen it.”

“What about Parchman? It’s a hundred times worse.”

There was a long pause as Karl wished he could take back the words. It was instantaneous, and cruel. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was uncalled for.”

“I’ll kill myself before I go to Parchman.”

“I don’t blame you. Let’s talk about something pleasant.”

“You can’t keep this case, can you, Karl?”

“No. Of course not. I’ll have to recuse myself.”

“When?”

“Pretty soon.”

“Who’ll get it?”

“Either Trussel or Lanks, probably Trussel.” Karl stared at him intently as he spoke. Patrick was having trouble with eye contact. Karl was waiting for a telling flicker from the eyes, followed by a grin, then a laugh as Patrick broke down and bragged about his escapades. “Come on, Patrick,” Karl wanted to say. “Let’s hear it. Tell me the whole story.”

But the eyes were distant. This was not the same Patrick.

Karl felt compelled to try. “Where’d you get that chin?”

“Bought it in Rio.”

“And the nose?”

“Same place, same time. You like it?”

“It’s handsome.”

“In Rio, they have drive-through plastic surgery shops.”

“I hear they have beaches.”

“Unbelievable beaches.”

“Did you meet any girls down there?”

“A couple.”

Sex was not a subject Patrick had ever dwelt on. He enjoyed a long, admiring gaze at an attractive woman, but, to Karl’s knowledge, he had remained faithful to Trudy throughout their marriage. Once, at deer camp, they had compared notes about their wives. Patrick had admitted it was a challenge to keep Trudy satisfied.

A long pause, and Karl realized Patrick was in no hurry to talk. The first minute passed in silence, and the second one dragged on. Karl was happy to visit, even delighted to see his friend, but there was a limit to how long he could sit in a dark room and stare at the walls.

“Look, Patrick, I will not hear your case, so I’m not here as your Judge. I’m not your lawyer. I’m your friend. You can talk to me.”

Patrick reached for a small can of orange juice with a straw in it. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No.”

He took a short drink and put the can back on the table. “I guess it sounds romantic, doesn’t it? The dream of simply walking away, vanishing into the night and when the sun comes up you’re somebody new. All your problems are left behind—the drudgery of work, the heartbreak of a bad marriage, the pressure
of becoming more and more affluent. You have that dream, don’t you, Karl?”

“I guess everybody does at some point. How long did you plan it?”

“A long time. I seriously doubted that the baby was mine. I decided—”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s true, Karl. I’m not the father. Trudy slept around throughout our marriage. I loved the child as best I could, but I was miserable. I gathered evidence and promised myself I would confront Trudy, but it was easy to put off. Oddly enough, I sort of got used to the idea that she had a lover. I was planning to leave, but I just didn’t know how to do it. So I read a couple of underground books on how to change identities and obtain new papers. It’s not complicated. Just takes a little thought and planning.”

“So you grew a beard and gained fifty pounds.”

“Yeah, I was amazed at how different I looked with the beard. That was right about the time I made partner, and I was already burned out. I was married to a woman who wasn’t faithful, playing with a child who wasn’t mine, working with a bunch of people I couldn’t stand. Something clicked, Karl. I was driving one day along Highway 90, headed somewhere important but stuck in traffic, and I looked out across the Gulf. There was a lonely little sailboat barely moving on the horizon. And I wanted so desperately to be on it, to sail away to some place where no one knew me. I sat there, watching it move, aching so badly to swim out to it. I cried, Karl. Can you believe that?”

“We all have days like that.”

“Then I snapped, and I was never the same afterward. I knew I would vanish.”

“How long did it take?”

“I had to be patient. Most people get in a hurry when they decide to disappear, and they make mistakes. I had time. I wasn’t broke or running from creditors. I bought a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, and that took three months. I knew I couldn’t leave Trudy and the baby with nothing. I started gaining the weight, eating like a maniac. I changed my will. I convinced Trudy that we should make our funeral and burial arrangements, and I did it without arousing suspicions.”