Fox is Framed (22 page)

I heard the Cherokee's rear hatchback slam, then the driver's door open and close. The engine coughed to life. Anger surged in me at this stupid end I seemed to have achieved, and with the strength of my rage I pushed myself up on one palm, my arm resisting every inch of the way. As I did this, the pain came alive in my chest like a clawing animal, and I crumpled as the Cherokee drove away.

The noise of the sea grew more distant. Great intervals of time passed between each crash and boom of the swell. A haze seemed to have descended. With my face on the gravel, I was barely aware of the daylight beyond the perimeter of the darkness that remained.

The wail of a siren roused me. I heard the sound of running feet, and someone calling my name.

Recognizing Car's voice, I told myself that everything was going to be okay.

In the hospital in Fort Bragg, Car slips through a curtain to crouch by my bedside. His voice is whispered, urgent. “Listen. Ricky Santorez is dead. He was killed yesterday in prison. Rumor is Bo Wilder ordered the hit.”

My mouth's cottony, my head woozy from the drugs. I've been opened from belly button to sternum and stapled shut again. The bullet missed my major organs by millimeters, the doctors say. I'm going to be in for a long recuperation, but I'll live without any lasting effects. Just the scars, they promise. “Good.”

“Leo, listen to me,” Car says. “The corpse was mutilated. Whoever stabbed him to death cut off the ears, as trophies. They've got the whole prison on lockdown. They're going cell to cell, trying to find them. Only they're not going to.”

I wonder if I'm hallucinating, if Car is really here, pestering me with this strange and disturbing news. I take another thumb press of morphine. “Good riddance.”

“Stay with me. Not six hours after Santorez got cut up, someone dropped off a FedEx envelope at your office. The package was addressed to your dad, care of you. Inside was the ears.”

Even through the morphine I realize this means the DA was right all along. I try to sit up but I can't.

“It's a message, Leo,” Car says. “A message and clearly also a threat.”

There's only one message Bo Wilder could be sending to us: that he killed Russell Bell, or rather, had him killed, in apparent continuation of the protection he'd given Lawrence in prison. And he wants us to know it. “What does he want?” This means that both Lucy and Jackson are innocent of Bell's murder, but my father may not be, depending on what contact he had with Wilder after his release. They haven't found Lucy yet. According to the police, she ditched Gainer's Jeep with the body in it and stole a car from a beach parking lot in Mendocino.

I wonder again about my father's whereabouts the morning of Bell's death.

“It may be months before we find out what he has in mind. But it doesn't take much imagination. A law office like yours could be a lot of use to a man like Bo, trying to run a criminal empire from behind bars. His people could use it as a home base, set up shop behind the attorney-client relationship to move money, hold drugs. He might want to use you as a go-between, carrying messages during client visits. It's the sort of thing Teddy always refused to do for Santorez, but Bo probably figures he can control you easier than Santorez controlled Teddy.”

“So we nip it in the bud, go to the cops with our concerns right now.”

“And tell them what? All we've got right now are the ears. No return address. It's only speculation piled on rumor that connects them to Wilder. And if we go that route, the police will never believe that your father didn't ask Bo to put out the hit.”

I think about this for a long time, drifting on a haze of morphine. “Throw them in the garbage,” I finally say.

I let my head fall back.