Blood Rock (35 page)

“Only
your
testimony ties him to that crime,” Ross interrupted. “The man was a national treasure. He took a bullet for you in front of live witnesses. And you killed him. With
magic—”

The door burst open.

“This interview is over,” a thin, hawk-nosed man said, sweeping into the room with Helen Yao close at his heels. The man looked young, but his temples were graying, and he was wearing a suit that looked as expensive as Philip’s helicopter. “I’m ashamed of you, Miss Ross, interrogating a witness without counsel.”

“She didn’t request I wait for you,” Ross said, followed slowly by, “Counselor Lee.”

The man I now recognized as Damien Lee, the more prominent partner of Ellis and Lee, glanced at me sharply. “She didn’t?” he said. “How interesting. Helen.”

Helen twitched, then opened her briefcase and pulled out some forms. “I have here—”

“Oh, give it,” Ross said, motioning for the papers and scanning them quickly. Suddenly she held the papers out and stared at them, incredulous. “Now that’s a very interesting gambit, Counselor.” Next she stared at me with those piercing eyes. “We can resume this later.”

“We’re done here. Let’s go,” Lee said. He turned, then paused and turned back, staring at me dumbfounded in my chair, actually putting his hands on his hips. “Unless … you
want
to spend the night in jail, Miss Frost?”

There was surprisingly little paperwork to be handled. They just ran me through an exit room, clicked a few buttons on the computer to mark me released, and returned my effects. As I walked out of the processing room, Lee and Yao scooped me up and began ushering me out.

“Isn’t there a side door?” Helen asked.

“For people the
DA
wants to keep under a lid,” Lee said, punching numbers into a cell phone. “As for us, we take our chances. Barker, it’s Lee. You ready? We’re coming out.”

“What’s going on?” I said, confused—but with a definite sinking feeling that things were about to get worse. Lee started walking, holding out his hand to indicate the hall, and I quickly followed, Helen falling in on my right. “Why the cloak and dagger—”

“Miss Frost,” Lee said, glancing at me hurriedly, “we’ve got to hurry before news gets out. Barker’s pulling up in a black limo. When we go out those doors, we’ll run straight down to it. Don’t stop for anything.”

And then we reached the outer doors, Lee and Yao opened them for me, and I stepped outside … into a sea of flashbulbs and microphones.

The media had their new story, and I was it.

I admit it: I’m an exhibitionist. I love attention. I walk around with a deathhawk every day and with my long, tattooed arms bare nine months out of the year. And it’s for a purpose. No, really! Just a month or two ago, I would have relished the chance to stand before a crowd of reporters: think of the business it would bring into the shop.

But now all I could think of was Cinnamon, and how hard it would make our case.

The questions of the reporters were a dull roar, the flashbulbs scattered shots of lightning.
Did you kill Christopher Valentine? FOOM. Did you use magic? FOOM. Did you use your tattoos? FOOM. Is tattoo magic dangerous? FOOM. FOOM. FOOM.

In a daze, I followed my lawyers, who fended off reporters with practiced ease. They’d clearly put thought into it. Lee took the left with his arms spread wide, soaking up questions like a sponge, dodging, deflecting, denying. Yao took the right, nonchalantly swinging her briefcase wide, between them clearing a path for me to walk unimpeded.

But they hadn’t counted on my height, and even with me scrunched down, Lee wasn’t a tall enough man. When he stepped down the next set of risers, one of the reporters shoved her microphone straight into my face and shouted, “Is it true that you’ve confessed to the murder?”

“Miss Frost,” Lee said, trying to interpose himself between me and the mike, “has always fully cooperated with the police, but has not confessed to anything, much less murder.”

“But in November you claimed to have killed him,” the reporter pressed, still talking directly to me as we tried to press past her. “In your testimony—”

“Miss Frost’s testimony has been misrepresented—” Lee said, trying to come between us.

“So she was lying?” the reporter said, talking over him. “Were you lying, Miss Frost?”

I stopped on the steps, glaring into space. Lee looked back in alarm and reached to grab my arm, but it was too late. The reporter shoved her mike in my face again and asked, “Don’t you feel any remorse for killing a man who saved your life?”

My nostrils flared. Valentine had
staged
that shooting.

“No, I don’t,” I snapped, and the reporter’s eyes gleamed.

Lee twitched violently. “Miss Frost,” he said loudly, “doesn’t mean to imply—”

“That she killed him?” the reporter asked. “You
are
saying that you killed him?”

Lee raised his arms, shouting something, but was drowned out as the reporters surged in. Flashbulbs flashed. Cameras pressed inwards. As Lee and Yao tried to fend them off, I got angrier and angrier. I wanted to belt out that yes, I had killed him, and no, I wasn’t sorry. And it was true. But saying it would torpedo any chance I had of getting Cinnamon back.

Finally I could stand it no more. I straightened up, looked out over Lee and Yao, and picked out a reporter standing on the steps just beyond them. I made direct eye contact, and he shoved his microphone over Lee’s head and into my face. I leaned in and spoke clearly.

“Everyone, please, step back, you’re obstructing the stair.”

Then I walked straight forward between Lee and Yao, gently moving the reporter aside with my hand as I passed. I heard scrambling and splutters behind me, but I just kept moving and hopped right into the open door of the limo. Moments later, Lee and Yao followed.

“Drive,” Lee said, slamming the door. He settled into the backwards-facing seat opposite me. “Damn. That was a hell of a trick.”

“I used to date a musician,” I said. “She taught me a few tricks about working crowds.”

Helen covered her face as Lee choked a little. “She … ah … well,” he said. Then he recovered. “Still, let me do the talking from now on. You can’t go around torpedoing yourself—”

“Have you been briefed?” I said. “Was I not completely honest with the police?”

“We had been hoping to quash that testimony,” Lee said, now openly glaring. “We can’t claim that your confession was coerced if you’re going around corroborating—”

“My confession
wasn’t
coerced,” I said. “So your argument was going to be that the jury should trust me now because I was lying before?”

“Trust won’t have anything to do with it—we’re going get as much evidence thrown out as we can and argue self-defense, but
without
you testifying,” Lee said. “Innocent people look terrible on the stand, but the unrepentant look worse—”

“I-didn’t-do-anything-wrong,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“So
you
think,” Lee said. “But you don’t seem to have realized that your own approval of your actions is meaningless if a prosecutor disagrees—and she can convince a jury.”

“But Valentine was a serial killer.”

“He was never arrested and prosecuted,” Lee said. “He just died, by your hands, via magic—and Paulina Ross just loves making examples of people who kill with magic.”

I leaned back in the limo as Lee went on. I wondered how much this was going to cost me. Surely they weren’t going to take a criminal defense on spec the way they had done with the lawsuit by the Valentine Foundation. Then the bigger problem came back to me.

“What is this going to do to my custody case?” I said. “It can’t look good.”

“Oh, hell, Miss Frost,” Lee said, frowning, “you’re right, it certainly can’t help.”

“That’s not our most immediate problem with Cinnamon,” Helen said. “Earlier tonight I contacted the foster parent, Jack Palmotti, and it turns out he was frantic. Apparently Cinnamon brought something home that was meant for you, and he didn’t know what to do with it.”

“What’s happened?” I asked, mouth dry.

“Cinnamon’s getting kicked out of the Clairmont Academy.”

I bore down on the glass doors of the Clairmont Academy, watching my reflection loom large in the glass, Doug at my heels. I was
not
in the mood. But I couldn’t leave Cinnamon’s fate in the hands of a foster parent I’d never met and school administrators who didn’t care. Then the doors slid aside, once again revealing Catherine Fremont, looking—relieved?

“Oh, thank goodness,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, glaring down at her. “After all the effort we spent to get her into this school, I’ll be damned if I see you just boot her out—”

“That’s
so
refreshing,” said a male voice, and I looked over to see a shag-haired man in a red-checked shirt limp towards us from the waiting area. “I didn’t think you were going to show, but I’m so pleased you actually came here to fulfill your parental duties.”

“Jack!” Doug said sharply. He wasn’t just my ride; he’d been Cinnamon’s tutor since … heck, even when she was in the hospital. But I’d not expected him to know more about what was going on than I did. “That was
completely
uncalled for. Dakota’s a devoted parent.”

“Doug, please,” Jack said, “you haven’t dealt with these parents like … I … ”

He trailed off as I glared at him. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” I said coldly.

“Jack Palmotti,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Cinnamon’s foster father.”

Fremont shrank back from the two of us. After a moment, I extended my hand to him.

“Dakota Frost, Cinnamon’s adoptive mother,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”

Palmotti glanced between us. “So, Miss Frost … what is your relationship to Doug?” he asked. “It’s low to circumvent a court order by sending a friend in the guise of a tutor.”

“Doug is the fiancé of my best friend,” I snapped, “and I resent the insinuation—”

“Please, please, everyone,” Vladimir said, appearing from nowhere, stepping up between us, touching both me and Palmotti on the arm. “We’re all here for one reason: Cinnamon.”

I sighed. He was right. “Mister Palmotti, where are my manners?” I said. “It is my pleasure to introduce you to Doctor Yonas Vladimir, Cinnamon’s math instructor. Yonas, please meet Mister Jack Palmotti. He’s taking care of Cinnamon while the court case is resolved.”

Vladimir and Palmotti froze for a moment. Apparently I’d broken their ‘let’s get everyone angrier’ script by apologizing and introducing them politely. That was nice. Perhaps I should try it more often. Finally it was Palmotti that spoke, directly to me.

“So you know her math teacher,” he said, with a half smile. “That’s encouraging.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry I was snappish. I … just lost a close friend.”

And then I choked off, staring into the distance. Doug put his hand on my shoulder. And then Palmotti put his hand on my arm tenderly. I glared, through the edge of tears, but instantly I could see that he’d lost someone—I guessed, from the pain and the sympathy, his wife.

“I am
so
sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me my suspicions. I wasn’t trying to make it harder on you right now. And I
know
it’s hard on you—believe me, I understand.”

Our little group was admitted to Dean Belloson’s office, a double-sized version of Fremont’s office at the end of the row, containing a youngish, pudgy man with thick glasses who I first took to be Belloson’s secretary before I realized there was no office beyond the one in which we now stood. There, the five of us sat in a semicircle of chairs opposite the Dean.

“I understand this may seem precipitous,” the Dean said, “but young Miss Frost has skipped nearly a dozen classes this week, totaling almost three full days of class time.”

“I’m sorry,” Palmotti said, “I just can’t make her do anything, much less go to school.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, it took
me
a while,” I said. “And precipitous is precisely the word I’d use for kicking a new student out after only a few days of absences.”

“Did you not read the Guide for Students and Parents?” the Dean said. “Didn’t my staff explain it to you at the entrance interview? This is
not
a public school, open to all comers. We have
very
high standards. Three consecutive days of unexplained absences—”

“
Unexplained?
” I said. “What do you call that business with Burnham? You can’t expect perfection when she’s just been taken from her mother—wait, scratch that. Why is this even an issue with all that I’m paying you? This is a disciplinary issue between me and Cinnamon.”