A Conflict of Interest (3 page)

“Thank you. Mr. Daley, any redirect?”

“Yes.” Gil grabbed his notepad, but didn’t even glance at the yellow pages as he stepped to the podium. “Dr. Keaton, did you have an affair with Griff Butler?”

“No.”

“Did you read his diary?”

“No.”

“If he claims in his journal that you were in love with him, or that you and he had a sexual relationship, will that be a lie?”

“Yes.”

“Did you threaten to accuse him of murder?”

“No.”

“Did he confess to shooting his parents?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t afford a second of hesitation. Her future did matter—desperately.

“Have you been honest in giving your testimony?”

“Yes.”

He stepped back, flaunting his pleasure at ending on a rational note. “Nothing more, Your Honor.”

“Anything from you, Mr. Collier?”

“One question, Your Honor.” He danced with the silence for maximum effect. “Miss—Dr.—Keaton, do you love Griff Butler?”

Did he honestly think he could unnerve her now? “No.”

Buck exaggerated his disappointment, as if he’d expected her to find the moral strength to confess her sins.

“Mr. Collier?” the judge asked.

“I’m done with her.”

Maria looked at Jake. His gaze was troubled, and yet, a deep down kindness made him look like Leila, who swore he did not know how to care. About anything.

Leila had been wrong.

Like everyone else in this room, Judge Jake Sloane wanted to know if Maria had seduced Griff Butler.

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
Jake lifted the collar of his black overcoat and yanked the cashmere collar around his ears. Normally, he hurried to work, certain he had the reins tight in his courtroom, but today, he didn’t know how to be objective. He also didn’t know whom to suspect, but the thought of Maria Keaton seducing that kid half enraged him and half filled him with dread.

He was ready with rage for a woman wrongfully accused. The dread came from his own confusing attraction to Maria, who’d ducked his every approach. He might not be the only man in town, but he had a mirror. He was okay to look at.

He had a good job. The evidence informed him women found him attractive. Since he’d finalized his divorce, the available ladies of Honesty had offered comfort in his so-called loneliness.

But the only woman he wanted had shied away from more than simple conversation.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged, his collar now seeming to choke him. Maybe he finally understood why Maria had been so uninterested.

A flake of early November snow blew into his eye, and he yanked his bare hand out of his pocket to brush it away. Overnight the snow had covered the streets and piled up against the Victorian buildings on the square. With plenty more storm on the way, the sky was about as light as at sunset. Veering toward the courthouse, Jake had to pass the relatively new shops, all made to look weathered, in the recently misnamed Old Honesty Market.

Men in thick coats and gloves were swagging holi
day lights from storefront to storefront while a woman watched, leaning on one of the cement posts that prevented traffic from entering the shopping area.

He sucked in a cold breath, but was it the air that froze his lungs?

Snow dotted Maria’s honey-brown hair. She crossed her arms over the top of the pillar and rested her chin on her hands. A long deep-burgundy coat cinched her narrow waist. She lifted one calf, rubbing it against the other as if to warm herself, and Jake imagined walking up behind her, sliding his arms around her, breathing in the scent of her silky hair.

Could she molest a client? A sixteen-year-old boy who’d needed her as much as any patient in Honesty could have?

As if Maria sensed his near-savage need for an answer, she turned. Jake stared through the fat, falling flakes. She looked back, her eyes anxious as if she had something important to say. It was the way she always looked at him—until she pulled a strange coat of touch-me-not around herself.

Was it that kid who stood between them?

She opened her mouth but then only nodded.

He looked toward the courthouse windows. “Are you going?”

“I can’t stay away.”

He walked to her. As usual, she searched for anywhere to go, but he refused to get out of her way. “Why?”

“He needs help.” She grabbed the tails of the soft ivory scarf knotted at her throat. Matching mittens covered small hands that trembled. Fragility beneath her
strength made him want to cover her hands with his and rub warmth into her fingers. “You could help him,” she said.

He turned, but her hand caught his forearm. Hell, he’d imagined touching her for damn near a year. He’d talked to her for the sheer sensual jolt of hearing her voice.

She was a witness in a trial in his courtroom.

“I can’t discuss the case with you.”

“You can see he’s in trouble. Just flavor your instruct—”

“Maria, do you want to look guilty?” He tugged her hand off his arm, but she wrapped her fingers around his, and he found himself tugging her closer. “You don’t seem to realize your doggedness makes Griff’s side of the story seem more plausible. Why does he matter so much to you?” He raised his face to the sky as if he were reaching from under water for breathable air. “Don’t tell me what you’ve done, and stop incriminating yourself.”

“You mean, stop helping someone who needs me.” She tried to pull away, but her wrist ended up beneath his thumb. The ribbing on her thin mitten slid aside, and he could have counted her racing pulse.

“I cannot do this.” He eased her away from him. God, she smelled good. He wanted to breathe her in. He wanted—“If you say another word, I’ll have to recuse myself.” He turned away. His coat brushed at his legs. He ached with frustration and need stoked by the brief touch of her hand.

“I didn’t touch Griff. He was my patient, and he’s a sick kid. You know how to see both sides of any story. Why can’t you see his?”

How did she know that about him? He pretended not to hear, though the slow fall of snow buffered them from everyone else on the square.

He wanted to believe her concern was just that. Concern. But women could lie, even women whose seeming innocence somehow infused the air they breathed with sex. Especially women like Maria.

She couldn’t control her anxiety for Griff, who’d called her a monster in front of a courtroom. She might be so driven by her own needs that she couldn’t turn her back on that kid.

This case was getting to Jake. He yanked at his lapel. This kid and Maria Keaton had nothing to do with his private life. He’d once had a wife who’d lied to him over and over and expected him to believe her every time. Kate wasn’t every woman. Maria wasn’t Kate.

He had to reclaim his objectivity.

“Damn.”

Closing arguments would start by this afternoon. They could have a verdict before morning.

And then he’d have to take a disinterested look at Griff Butler’s story and at Maria’s—Dr. Keaton’s. One of them was lying.

If she’d hurt that kid, he’d have to report her to the Psychology Review Board.

T
WO DAYS LATER,
just past 2:00 p.m., the jury filed in, all staring at their feet.

Jake avoided looking at the gallery where Maria was sitting. While everyone else in the courtroom had wondered if Maria was guilty, she’d studied the jurors with a pleading face, as if she could will them to see Griff through her eyes, as a sick child.

A sick child might not survive prison.

Jake gripped his chair arms, but somehow, he was remembering the silky seduction of Maria’s skin beneath his fingers. He had to stop thinking about her. Her self-destructive refusal to back down reinforced his career-long commitment to keeping his personal feelings out of the courtroom.

He’d heard the gossip. As Buck had said, Maria’s practice was anything but traditional. Apparently, she didn’t believe in the conventional therapist’s tools—a couch, a knowing smile, a “How did that make you feel?”

The obvious question nagged at him. How big a jump was it from meditating on mountains to making so-called love in her office?

Jake had to read that journal. Forcing his attention
from Maria’s face, he dragged his mind back to the task at hand.

The jurors sat. Jake nodded to their foreman. “Have you reached a verdict?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

“Bailiff?”

The uniformed officer took the verdict slip from the foreman and handed it to Jake. He opened it, glanced over it. It wasn’t a total shock. But, completely out of character, all he could think was that he had to decide what to do next about Maria.

Jake handed the slip back to the bailiff, who returned it to the foreman, a woman old enough to harbor grandmotherly sentiments toward Griff. She unfolded the paper and cleared her throat before she gave the boy a warm smile.

“In the matter of the Commonwealth versus Griffin Samuel Butler, on the first count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Channing Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

Voices surged like background sounds in a movie. Half the gallery agreed with the verdict. Half definitely did not.

The foreman continued, “On the second count of first-degree murder, in the murder of Ada Butler, we find the defendant not guilty.”

Griff looked stunned, as if he’d been imagining prison walls and found himself transported out of this musty room to the middle of fresh new snow and the twinkling lights blinking holiday colors on the square. That kid had plenty to be grateful for.

Jake picked up his gavel. Conversation ceased except for muffled sobbing as he turned to face the jury.

“Thank you for your service to the Commonwealth,” Jake said. “You may speak to the press if you wish. If you prefer not to discuss this case or the verdict, follow the bailiff, and he’ll escort you to an alternate exit.”

He turned to Griff, who’d reached behind him, turning over his chair as he grabbed at his family.

His aunt, still crying, held out her arms. His uncle extended a strong hand. Griff tried to take both.

Far from gloating, as the guilty tended to do when they got off, he just looked like a kid. Happy to be going home to the people he was supposed to love.

Supposed to. That was the problem. No matter what a man might see in his job, day in and day out, he assumed a sixteen-year-old kid loved his mother and dad.

At least Jake assumed. And unless Griff was adept at a sociopath’s crocodile tears, he was grateful and glad to wrap trembling arms around his aunt and uncle.

Jake searched for Maria. Perched on the edge of her seat, her hands folded in her lap, she might have looked the part of a prim schoolmarm, but Jake felt a grim compulsion to get her out of here before anyone else saw how deeply she cared for the kid who’d thrown her to the wolves.

It was surreal being one of two still people in a room boiling with activity. Usually, a verdict freed Jake of responsibility. His job stopped at making sure the defendant got a fair trial.

Not this time. Juries were made up of humans. For the first time, he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that twelve humans had made a mistake.

That skinny boy might have taken the gun from his father’s safe and loaded the shells. Gil Daley theorized
Griff had then walked up two twisting flights of stairs in his right-side-of-Honesty house and stood over his sleeping parents. He’d had all that time to rethink his plan. Could a kid kill his parents because they’d grounded him?

What about his aunt and uncle? Jake studied the last two adults in the Butler family. With their arms around Griff and each other, they still reached with outstretched fingers, seeking even more contact, as if they all feared a cop was going to show up and drag Griff back to his cell.

Angela Hammond had lost her sister. Were she and her husband covering for Griff because he was all that remained of his mother?

Gil hadn’t found the least whiff of violence in the Butler household. However, at the high school, the teachers and principal had described several escalating incidents, from shoving in the hall to a more dangerous infraction in the boys’ room, when Griff had shoved a freshman’s head into the toilet.

Which any kid might do if his therapist were abusing him.

Jake straightened, searching inwardly for his customary sense of justice served. Time and the law moved forward, and Jake had no choice. The jury’s decision ruled.

“Mr. Butler, you are free to go.”

Shouting and laughter clashed. A couple of groans layered in an undertone. The boy and his relatives started hugging all over again, still stunned and even happier.

Holding his gavel loosely in his hands, Jake eyed Griff Butler with Maria’s doubt, but Griff was oblivi
ous. He wriggled toward the aisle, past his attorneys, but then he saw Maria.

She leaned toward the kid, her face vulnerable, soft with concern.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak. Jake almost lifted his hand, to warn her. Griff’s aunt saw her nephew’s confusion, and she spun, a look of chilling rage freezing her face.

Maria stared at Angela, her eyes soft with pity. Jake swore silently as Angela’s mouth straightened into a bitter slash. He didn’t have to read lips to guess at the words she spit at Maria. David, her husband, regarded his wife with the dismay of a man confronting a stranger.

Maria stood her ground—sat it—without wavering. David gathered Angela and Griff into his arms and dragged them toward the exit.

The fight seeped out of Maria. She lowered her head as if she couldn’t hold it up. Her shoulders hunched. Light glittered in the curls that framed her pale cheeks.

Her air of submission startled Jake more than any other move she’d made. He slammed the gavel onto its rest. “Court dismissed.”

He turned to the doors behind him and the bailiff, a friend since the first time Jake had defended a client in this building, opened the door.

“Over at last, sir,” he said.

“Yeah, Joe.”

“You should go out that back way, too. Those guys are going to want your opinion on the verdict.”

“I have no opinion, Joe.” It was the way he lived. Objective. As Maria had said, determined to see all sides of any argument.

Camera flashes lit up the back of the courtroom. Some of the press had come from D.C. and beyond. Griff Butler’s father had been a congressman before he’d resigned to make money building strip malls. Griff’s arrest had made big news because of his family name, as well as the depraved nature of his alleged crime.

Jake would like nothing better than to go to his chambers, hang up his robe and spit the taste of this trial out of his mouth. Instead, he had to decide whether to ruin Maria’s career and turn her into a pariah in Honesty. No one would ever trust her again if one of the town’s leading judges believed she’d seduced a patient.

“What do you think, Joe?”

“I’m with you. The jury does all the thinking. That’s our system.”

So why did Jake feel as if he were trying to find steady ground with one foot on either side of a fissure? All his assumptions were suspect.

“I hope you’re right, Joe.” He must be.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do the right thing.” The bailiff held the door and nodded before he went on to his next task.

In his office, Jake took a bottle of Scotch from his desk drawer. On a normal verdict day, it would have been celebratory Scotch. He entered a trial entirely on the fence, but he usually had a gut feeling before the verdict came in.

His gut had deserted him. He shoved the drawer shut and dropped into a leather chair that rocked backward.

He couldn’t ask Maria if she was a liar. He had her reply. Couldn’t ask her clients. He didn’t know who they were, and how could he trust their answers?

He spun his chair to face the window and the snow that had blanketed the courthouse square.

Wait a minute. He knew someone whose teenage son had seen Maria.

Jake picked up his phone and dialed Aidan Nikolas. A businessman and a friend of Jake’s since he’d moved to Honesty, Aidan had mentioned that Maria was his stepson’s therapist. She’d also worked for Aidan when he’d still lived in D.C.

Aidan answered his cell, out of breath. Behind his harried hello, a voice on an airport PA system called all passengers to board.

“Jake? I only have a second. What can I do for you?”

A second? He resisted a damn-near compulsion to back down and hang up. “I have some questions about Dr. Keaton.”

“Maria? She’s great. Remember when Eli was so depressed? He depended on her, and he still sees her occasionally for what she calls refreshers.”

“What kind of refresher? Why would she insist on seeing a kid after he was well?” Jake felt dirty and angry. He got himself under control. “Why should he still need her?”

“Insist? Did I say that? What are you talking about?”

“Just getting a little information. Why does she still see Eli?”

“He tried to commit suicide a year and a half ago, and he’s in the midst of adolescence. He’ll talk to her, even when he clams up on Beth and me.”

“Okay, but why doesn’t she wait for you to call her?”

“Sometimes she does, but depression doesn’t make a kid instinctively ask for help.”

“And she worked for you in Washington?”

The phone filled with airport noise. “What is this?” Aidan asked. “You heard that I had to fire her?”

“What?” The room closed in.

“Why are you butting into Maria’s business? Is something wrong with Leila?”

“It’s not Leila, but I need information.”

“Maria’s testifying in the Griff Butler case. What’s gone wrong?” Again, the PA voice demanded that passengers board. “Jake, did you just ease me into saying something I shouldn’t have about Maria?”

“Like what?” The years that had passed since he’d done investigative work had made him clumsy. Inconvenient attraction to Maria had nothing to do with his heavy hands.

“She does not lie. Is that what you’re asking me?”

To hell with subtlety. “The defendant made troubling accusations.”

“You mean, the guy who confessed he’d killed his parents and then decided he hadn’t?”

“The guy’s a sixteen-year-old kid.”

“Who shot both his parents in cold blood.”

“You believe her? I guess that’s an answer.” Jake took solace in the familiar law books, stacked wall to wall in his office. Nothing came before justice. Not even his own need to believe that Maria was not the woman Griff Butler and Buck Collier had painted her in that courtroom. “Why’d you fire her?”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“I have to know, Aidan.”

Heavy silence stretched between them. Jake let it go on. Aidan would answer if he kept quiet.

“I was fixing problems before they started. When I hired her, there had been several incidences of office rage in the news, and investments are high pressure at the best of times. We tried her out as someone the staff could talk to, but I have a company full of corporate types. Maria encouraged them to relax, rather than stress. That didn’t work with my people. They thrive on structure. When she left, it was more mutual than me firing her.”

“I’m not prying into your company’s business, but did she ever do anything you considered inappropriate?”

“Inappropriate? What the hell are you talking about? What’s Maria done?”

“You’re quick to assume she has done something. I thought you trusted her.” Man, he felt like a jerk. He’d rather not help Griff and Buck ruin Maria’s reputation, but what could he do, short of getting the cops to plant some undercover “client” in her office?

“I’ve known you for two years. You don’t jump to conclusions without evidence.”

“I don’t know what to—” In the background, a man spoke Aidan’s name. What the hell? There was no time. “You’re going to hear this anyway. Griff Butler says he and Dr. Keaton had an affair.”

This time, the silence from Aidan’s end of the phone damn near blew out Jake’s eardrum.

“Not a chance,” the other man finally said.

“Because you don’t want to think she might have hurt Eli?”

“She’s a beautiful woman and Eli’s a teenage boy. He developed a crush on her when he began to feel bet
ter. If she’d done anything to encourage it, Beth and I would have taken him to someone else and reported her. Maria pretended it wasn’t happening, and she kept working with him until he saw her as his doctor again.”

“She might have been oblivious with Eli. He’s younger than Griff.”

“Do you know what you’re suggesting? That she preys on certain victims?”

“I’m not.” He was. He had to, but—“It kills me to ruin someone’s career like this because of assumptions that might be lies.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You wouldn’t just be ruining her career—you’d be ruining her life. And don’t move on this until I get back.”

“What can you do for her, Aidan? If I think she might harm her clients, I have to have her investigated.”

“She kept my son alive when he wanted to die.”

“That’s why I can’t ignore the accusations I heard in court. She has other underage clients.” He had to call the Psychology Review Board. “I’m
not
sure she’s done anything wrong, but I have to ask someone to investigate because of kids like your son. For the sake of anyone she’s treating.”