Keep No Secrets (42 page)

When Claire touches Jack's arm, he shakes her off. Michael glances at her, and Jack gets it. He doesn't want to answer in front of his mom.

"Leave us alone a minute," he says, his gaze never leaving his son. "Both of you,"

he adds, so Mark knows Jack wants him gone, too.

"No." Claire is just as adamant. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

"Look, you can leave on your own or I'll call a guard."

Her mouth falls open but she recovers quickly. Her jaw clenches with anger.

"What has gotten into you?"

The two of them, father and son,

continue to stare at each other. Claire must finally accept that she's the outsider in their cryptic communication and that Jack has no plans to answer her. She tells Michael she'll be in the witness room and to call if he needs her.

"No, wait for him in the cafeteria,"

Jack insists. The basement café is another spot off-limits to all but courthouse personnel, parties, and witnesses. Without another word, Claire marches off toward the elevator, Mark on her tail.

"Well?" he says to Michael when they're left alone.

"It was just a joke."

"
What
was just a joke?"

"The juris doctor thing."

"Does it involve Jenny?"

Michael nods bashfully, like a kid copping to a kid-sized crime. But Jack knows this offense is full grown. "Tell me."

"I didn't know she would really do it.

It was just supposed to be a joke."

"
What
was?"

"Dad . . ."

"
What was
, Mike? Answer me!"

"She sent letters."

"Who sent letters?" he asks, and all the answers fall into place. "Celeste?"

Another nod from Michael. "To Jenny?"

"Yeah."

"Why? What kind of letters?"

"I don't know. It was just a joke."

"I'm getting sick of repeating myself.

Why
did she send Jenny letters? In fact, why don't you tell me everything without me having to drag it out of you?"

Michael looks as if he's about to cry again, but at that moment, Jack feels no compassion for him. "A long time ago I told her what happened. I guess I sounded mad at you . . ." He won't meet Jack's eye.

"Go on."

"I guess she looked up everything online, you know, the whole story, more than what I told her, and Jenny's address.

She thought it'd be funny to scare her.

You know, like to punish her for what she did."

"To punish Jenny?"

"Yeah. But I thought it was just talk. I never thought she'd really do it."

"Tell me, did you think it would be funny, too?"

He shrugs, and Jack takes the gesture as a
Yes
.

"She actually did it?"

"Yeah, but like I said, I didn't know it, not at first. I thought she was just joking.

That's all it was supposed to be. A joke.

Just talk."

"So how do you know she sent them?"

"She told me. She sent them from the post office by her dance classes."

"Where are her dance classes?"

"In U. City."

That explains the postmark.

"On Saturdays?"

Michael nods suspiciously, as if he wonders how Jack knows that.

"How many?"

"I think four."

This surprises Jack. "Four?"

"Yeah. She didn't even tell me she'd sent any until after the third one. I asked her to stop. I thought she did. She told me later she mailed a fourth one. As far as I know, that was it."

"Do you know what they said?"

"They were just dumb things, meant to scare her."

"Like what?"

He shrugs again. "I don't know exactly."

"Think."

"I don't know the exact words! Like they came from the guy who killed her parents."

"Don't forget her little sister, Mike. She watched her sister take a bullet to the head, too."

About to cry again, Michael's face twists in shame at Jack's sarcasm.

"You didn't see a problem with this?"

"Yeah! That's why I told her to stop!"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Why? Why would I?"

Jack really doesn't have a reason, not one that he could admit to his son.

"I need you to try to remember what they said."
The fourth one, in particular
. Why didn't Jenny show him the fourth one?

"I could tell you if I had my phone.

She told me in some texts. But they took my phone downstairs."

"Come on." Jack stands and a touch to Michael's shoulder causes him to do the same. "We'll get it, and then Mark will take you home. But we're having a little talk tonight, got it?"

Jack's phone vibrates in his back pocket.

"Where are you?" Earl asks when Jack answers.

"Upstairs in the library, talking to Mike."

"How is he?"

Jack watches Michael pick at a

hangnail. The skin around it has been scratched to an angry pink. "That remains to be seen."

"One of the jurors is complaining of a stomach ache, so Judge Simmons

extended the break to three. I'd like us to talk before Claire takes the stand, though."

"I need to drop him off with Claire and Mark, and then I'll meet you in my office." He can't wait to tell Earl what he's learned.

"The press is waiting for you in the lobby like rabid dogs."

"I'll deal with it."

When they hang up, Jack leans close to his son and says, "You are not to breathe a word to Celeste that you told me this, do you understand?"

Michael tilts back, cowering.

"
Do you understand?
"

"Yes. But why?"

Jack ignores the question. They're alone when they step onto the elevator.

He hopes most of the media is still on the tenth floor in the hall outside the courtroom so he can retrieve Michael's phone from the guards downstairs

undisturbed.

"I have one more question for you,"

Jack says after the doors seal shut. His voice has lost none of its indignation.

"Were her accusations against me meant to be a joke, too? A way to punish me, like the letters were meant to punish Jenny? Because if they were, she's taken it a bit too far, wouldn't you say?"

Michael doesn't answer. His eyes fill again and his bottom lip quivers. He sniffles and uses his hand to wipe under his nose.

"Mike?"

"The letters had nothing to do with all of this!"

"What does 'all of this' have to do with, then? I'd really like to know."

The crying jag on the witness stand is starting all over again. He won't look at Jack.

Jack slams the red emergency stop button, and the elevator screeches to a halt. Michael has to put a hand against the wall to keep his balance.

"Mike, do you think I'm guilty?"

He sobs, shakes his head. "No."

"I don't get it, then. Do you have any idea how serious this is? I could go to prison. Do you really hate me that much?"

Another shake of the head, eyes still down.

"Then
what the hell
is going on? Why is she so afraid for her dad to know that you two were having sex? What could happen that's worse than what she's putting all of us through?"

Nothing but a wretched shrug.

"You sat there on the witness stand and admitted she cuts herself. Do you not see a problem with that? Do you not see she needs help? Accusing me of

something I didn't do won't help her, you know?"

Michael tries to wipe away his tears with his sleeve, but Jack thinks he saw a small nod somewhere in the motion.

"What happened in Florida? Did her mom's boyfriend hurt her?"

Michael suddenly stills. Jack knows he's wondering how Jack found out about the Florida boyfriend. He's amazed at how easily his son forgets the resources at Jack's disposal.

"Is that it? Does her fear have something to do with him?" At the continued silence, Jack resorts to pleading. "What do you know that you won't tell me? Why are you so willing to cover for her at all costs?"

Michael finally lifts his gaze. Jack sees some of the contrition he hoped for, but he sees something else, too. Reflected in Michael's sixteen-year-old eyes is the last question being thrown back at Jack, and a wisdom that no boy his age should ever learn from his father.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

AFTER THEY COLLECT Michael's

phone, Jack reads the text messages from Celeste that detail the letters she sent Jenny. Although only the last one—WE

KNOW THE TRUTH—is new to Jack,

he pretends otherwise in front of Michael.

Jack then drops off Michael with Mark and a very irate Claire before fighting his way back up to the DA's office on the second floor. Despite the reporters and other onlookers who crowd him, he goes slowly to give Mark time to escape with Michael unseen.

His staff members who aren't at lunch congregate around him when he comes off the elevator. As they have every day since the trial started, they pepper him with questions about its progress and offer words of encouragement. He gives them a brief update and then escapes to the seclusion of his office by claiming a phone appointment. Fifteen minutes later, when Earl still hasn't arrived, he breaks his self-imposed embargo and calls Jenny with the news.

Jack expects the 411 operator to tell him the number is unlisted and is surprised when she connects him without delay.

The phone rings three times before it's answered by a voice that sounds younger than the forty-two years of its male owner.

"Brian?"

"Yes?"

"This is Jack Hilliard."

He receives static in response. He thinks the man is about to hang up on him.

Finally, "Jack." He says it intimately, as if they've already met and he knows Jack well. "Is my sister okay?"

Damn
. She's not with Brian, and Brian is apparently unaware that Jack and Jenny haven't been in touch. He has to make a quick decision. Let Brian know why he needs to talk to Jenny and risk having her tipped off, or pretend he saw her just yesterday and use the call to get some other information. He chooses the latter.

"She's fine. I mean . . ." He sighs.

"Yeah, she's fine."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."
Everything's wrong
.

"I'd like to ask you a question, although I realize you may not want to answer. I'll understand if you don't."

"I'm listening."

"The scar. Can you tell me what happened?"

More static. The impending storm is playing havoc with the reception. Is Brian debating whether to answer? Or is he reliving an event in his mind?

"Did you ask her?"

"Yes. She wouldn't tell me. I get the feeling she thinks she's protecting me from something."

"She's protecting you from a lot of things, Jack." He speaks the words quickly, without the hesitation that preceded his other responses. Jack feels a touch of vertigo at hearing them.

"What do you mean?"

Brian blows out a long stream of air.

"She slit her wrist."

An answer to Jack's first question, not his last.

"I know that. I'm wondering why, when, what happened."

"She did it about a year after she arrived in Chicago. She was a mess. She'd been a mess since the day she showed up on my doorstep, and she only got worse. I kept trying to get her to talk to someone, but she worried about being found out.

She lived in fear of the day they showed up at the door to extradite her to Missouri. She—"

"They'd dropped the charges. Why was she so afraid?"

"You know as well as I do why she was afraid. She knew what everyone would think once they figured out who Maxine was."

"I’m sure she followed the news, Brian.

She's smart. I'm sure she knew their attempts to find her were lukewarm at best. She had to know they had no plans to charge her again."

"Sure she knew. And she also knew Alex appealed his conviction and

therefore those plans could easily change."

"That's true, but—"

"She also knew who sold her down the river."

The comment angers Jack. "Like hell.

She's the one who set
me
up."

"You honestly think she murdered Maxine?" Brian's question reminds Jack of his own to Claire about Celeste.
Are
you honestly telling me there's a part of you that
wonders, truly wonders, if I did something with
her?
And like Claire, he has only two choices: have faith, or not, because it's unlikely he will ever have proof.

He did have faith in Jenny Dodson's innocence at one time. He's not sure when he first began to lose it, but once he learned who Maxine was, he gave it up completely, if regretfully. He forced himself to accept that everything Jenny had done from the moment she agreed to sleep with him had nothing to do with her feelings for him and everything to do with creating the perfect alibi.

"She manipulated me. She should have told me about Maxine from the start.

What was I supposed to do when I found out? I'm an officer of the court." Brian snorts at that, but Jack ignores it. "She's still trying to manipulate me, as far as I'm concerned. She's got you telling me—"

"You called
me
, Jack."

"She should have told me! If she trusted me enough to tell me about your parents and sister, she should have trusted me enough to tell me about Maxine." He scoffs. "But that would have made it difficult to set me up as her alibi, wouldn't it?

"She didn't know!" Brian shouts, and Jack jerks back in his chair as if the man is standing right in front of him. "She didn't know," Brian says again, softer now.

"She didn't know what?"

"She didn't know Maxine had been our father's mistress."

"I don't understand."

"Maxine was simply another client to Jenny. It wasn't until just before her arraignment that she found out she was more."

Jack, shocked into silence, waits for Brian to continue.

"She called to ask if I could help with her bail, if she were lucky enough to get it. Until that phone call, I didn't even know she'd been arrested. I about shit my pants when I heard the name of the victim." He pauses. "And that's when I told her."