Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth (31 page)

"I didn't do it, any of it," she said, her voice muffled with sobs.

Mason said, "You've got two choices. Take your chance with the jury at both trials. If we lose the first case, we can probably make a deal on the second since you'll already be looking at a life term, maybe even the death penalty. If we win the first case, we roll the dice a second time. Your other choice is to make a deal on both cases. I talked to the prosecuting attorney. He'll accept a plea to second-degree murder on both cases with a sentence of fifteen years to life and an agreement that you'll be out in fifteen. You'll only be thirty-six years old. You can still have a life."

Jordan sat up, her face a patchwork of red blotches, her empty eyes a preview of the institutional bleakness of prison. "You really think I should do this, don't you?"

"You're risking the rest of your life and any chance of ever finding your child. The prosecutor may ask for the death penalty. He wants that hanging over your head. You need to think it over and tell me what you want to do."

"When do I have to decide?"

"Friday. The deal is on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, we go to trial. That's the way Ortiz does business. He squeezes as hard as he can."

"I want to talk to Abby first. Will you ask her to come see me?"

"Sure," Mason said. "She'll come tomorrow. I'll see you Friday morning."

Mason called Roy Bowen in St. Louis as soon as he returned to his office. "Roy, it's Lou Mason. Did you find those records?" Mason asked without saying hello.

"Weather here isn't bad for this time of year. We understand you folks got an early frost, probably catch us tonight," Bowen said.

"Roy, I haven't got time for good manners," Mason said. "I need answers."

"You get older, Lou, you develop more patience, get used to things taking longer than you want them to. I'm navigating my way through a city bureaucracy that's dedicated to getting back to you tomorrow, only tomorrow never comes. It would be a hell of a lot easier if you had a name or two you wanted me to track down. Collecting the employment records on everyone who worked in Vital Records more than twenty years ago is a nightmare for those people. They're giving me every excuse except executive privilege and national security."

"You're right and I'm sorry, Roy," Mason said. "The prosecutor is squeezing us to make a deal by Friday or we go to trial. I've got more loose threads than a cheap suit and nothing to stitch them together with."

"Then give me some names, son, and I'll get you an answer."

Mason gave Bowen the names and Bowen promised to call him back before the preliminary hearing. Mason hung up, opened his dry-erase board, felt his eyes cross at his spaghetti graffiti, and closed it. He leaned against his window overlooking Broadway and tried to imagine making the decision he'd left for Jordan. He couldn't bring it into focus any more than he could the murders. The case had become a black hole, sucking reason and certainty into another dimension.

Blues banged on Mason's office door once, pushing it open without waiting for an invitation. He was dressed in black, a color he chose when working the streets. He once explained to Mason that he chose it because it intimidated most people and hid bloodstains from those who weren't so easily persuaded.

Mason said, "I don't care what you had to do to get it, just tell me you got something I can use."

"You're not as particular as you used to be. When we first started out, if I jaywalked, you'd turn me in. Now, you just want results, is that it?" Blues asked, filling the space between the door and Mason's desk.

"I've done a lot of things I didn't think I would ever do since I met you," Mason said. "I'm not proud of some of them, but I've learned to live with them, mostly because I didn't have a choice at the time."

"You had a choice," Blues said. "There's always a choice. You're just getting used to doing things my way."

"Are you going to tell me where you've been and what you've found out, or do I just write a check for this therapy session and call it a day?"

Blues stretched out on Mason's couch, his feet extending out over the other end. "You told me to poke around into Centurion's business, so I poked."

Mason picked up a rugby ball from the floor next to his desk and rifled it at Blues who deflected it with a flick of his wrists. "I'm not paying you for an information strip tease, Bluestone," Mason told him. "Give."

Blues sat up, grinning. "You are going to like this.

Centurion is still in the trade, cooking up meth in a little cabin in the woods, storing cocaine and heroin there till he moves all that shit to the street. Some of the inmates at Sanctuary mule for him."

"Any ties to Robert Davenport?"

"I found one of the middle men that passed the shit to Davenport. He convinced me that Centurion was his source. Didn't take much convincing. By the time we were done talking, he was begging to tell me."

Mason knew that he should feel guilty about using Blues to extract information this way, but he didn't. He would have screamed to the rafters if the police used the same tactics on a client of his. He accepted the necessity of Blues's tactics, rationalizing them in an ends-justifies-the-means framework that pushed him farther from the principles his Aunt Claire had spent her life protecting.

Each time Mason took advantage of Blues's particular skills, he felt a small piece of him die, just as he had when he'd killed a man who would have killed him, just as he had when he'd pushed a judge to compromise herself to save Blues. Just as he did as Blues made his report, the lights on Broadway illuminating the night, leaving his soul closer to darkness.

"Do you think Centurion put the cocaine in Gina Davenport's office?" Mason asked.

"My source says yes, but he doesn't know why. Tell you what else I found out. Those two boys that snatched you out of your car?"

"Yeah," Mason said.

"They were free-lancers working for Centurion."

"Centurion hired them to find out if I kept a copy of the baby ledger."

"And kill you once they knew you had it. First rule of the streets, Lou. Don't leave anything to chance. You just beat the odds."

"So why is Centurion giving me a pass now? Why hasn't he come after me?"

"Two reasons," Blues said. "First, the cops are all over him, flying helicopters over Sanctuary, following him wherever he goes. Anything happens to you, they'll be on him like stink on shit. You can thank Samantha for that."

"What's the other reason?" Mason asked.

"He's waiting to see what happens with Jordan. Word is already out that she's going to plead. If she does, Centurion figures the heat is off. He'll take you in his own time if he has to. So, is Jordan going to plead?"

"I'll find out Friday morning, along with everyone else."

"Should be a very interesting day," Blues said.

Late September in Kansas City is a crapshoot. If it rains enough in the spring and summer, the leaves burn with fiery orange, apple red, and veins of gold. Too dry, and the leaves just burn in lifeless, brown piles raked against curbs on the days the city allows its people to strike a match. Morning might bring a warm sun hung in a pure blue sky like a child's water-paint wish, or it might belt the city with a cold, low-slung, cast-iron-cloud skillet that causes a run on antidepressants.

Friday was the last day of September and it dawned promising nothing. Mason ran in Loose Park, the shadows fighting with the sun, the clouds running interference, a raw mist spitting at him. Finished, he chose a black suit, not certain whether he would look tough like Blues in black or be mistaken for an undertaker.

He didn't know what Jordan was going to do. Abby had spent an hour with her the day before, leaving without an answer but with a message that Jordan wanted her parents to be in court Friday morning.

Mason wanted Jordan to accept the plea bargain because it would save her life, something he couldn't promise. He wanted her to turn it down because he wasn't convinced of her guilt, a doubt he couldn't shake. He wanted her to take the deal to protect him from Centurion, an impulse that shamed him. He wanted to fight and win to save them both.

The courthouse steps were thick with microphones and cameras, electronic limbs hinged to talking heads doing the play-by-play, casting side bets on which way the scales of justice would tip. Mason pushed through, stopping only when Sherri Thomas held him up with her Channel 6 mike like it was a short saber, Ted Phillips aiming his camera at them.

"Mr. Mason, is it true that Jordan Hackett will plead guilty this morning? Did she kill her therapist and her brother? Is it true that she'll serve life without parole to avoid the death penalty?"

The rest of the pack descended on Mason, surrounding him with outstretched microphones, the brass handrail alongside him vibrating like a tuning fork. "I'll make my comments in the courtroom," Mason said.

"My viewers have the right to know if a murderer is going to be back on the streets," Sherri said.

"Your viewers have the right to the news when it happens, not when you make it up," Mason told her.

Sherri's next question was lost in the roar when another reporter spotted Arthur and Carol Hackett getting out of a car, both dressed in mourning black. The reporters surged toward them, leaving Sherri and Mason in their wake. Sherri signaled Phillips, who lowered his camera, covering its flashing red light with his finger, pretending he'd turned it off. Sherri toggled her microphone switch off, lowering it to her side, Mason catching her when she switched it back on, tossing her head back and her chest forward to distract him.

"Is it easier to make a deal when you know your client is guilty?" she asked.

Mason smothered her mike with his hand, leaning in close, pressing against her breasts. "Stick this in someone else," he whispered in her ear.

Clearing courthouse security, Mason caught an elevator, its door closing, shutting out Centurion Johnson and the don't-fuck-with-me look he leveled at Mason. Mason gave Centurion credit for having the balls to show up. It was the perfect way to proclaim his innocence of any charge that might come his way. Only an innocent man would put himself under that spotlight.

The hallway outside the courtroom was clotted with people jostling for a seat in the courtroom. Mason sliced through them, ignoring offered backslaps and handshakes, relieved when he reached the privacy of the offices and witness rooms that, together with the judges' chambers, made up the inner realm of the courthouse.

There were two courtrooms at the end of the floor, facing each other across the hall. One belonged to Judge Pistone, who would conduct the preliminary hearing if no deal were reached. The other belonged to Judge Brendan Tanner, the Circuit Court Judge who would decide whether to accept the plea bargain if Jordan agreed to it, the judges' respective roles dictated by the different functions of Associate Circuit Court Judges and Circuit Court Judges. An interior hallway connected the offices of each judge and their staff out of the sight and reach of the public.

Mason met Jordan in a room reserved for lawyers and witnesses. She was wearing the same outfit Abby had picked out for her, though it had lost the fresh snap of new clothes. She smiled weakly, her balled hands drumming against her thighs.

"It's almost time," Mason said.

"Yeah, I know. I know," Jordan answered, breathing deeply, not able to steady herself. "Okay," she said. "I'll do it. I'll take the deal."

"You're sure?" Mason asked, careful not to push.

Jordan nodded, chewing her lip. "I'm sure."

"We'll be in front of Judge Tanner. The prosecutor will announce the terms of the plea bargain. You and I will stand in front of the bench. The judge will ask you a lot of questions to make certain you understand your rights. All you have to do is answer yes to all of his questions and we'll be out of there in thirty minutes."

"Then what?" she asked.

"Then you start the rest of your life."

The spectators had split themselves roughly into thirds, one third grabbing seats in Judge Pistone's courtroom, another third betting on Judge Tanner's, and the last hedging in the hallway. No announcement was made that a plea would be entered. Instead, the news filtered out like a scent, and Judge Tanner's courtroom quickly filled, the bailiff making way for Jordan's parents, everyone else left to hustle in a herd version of musical chairs, the music stopping when the judge's bailiff said, "All rise."

Mason surveyed the room. Patrick Ortiz anchored his counsel table, flanked by an assistant nervously checking the details of the typed plea-bargain agreement Jordan had signed moments ago. Samantha Greer sat behind Ortiz in a hard, unpadded wooden chair, mouthing "smart decision" to Mason, who shrugged in reply. A courtroom deputy stood on raised toes, scanning the crowd, a Secret Service wannabe.

Arthur Hackett leaned heavily on the rail separating the public seats from the lawyers, the bailiff's well-intentioned efforts mistakenly seating the Hacketts directly behind the prosecutor. Carol Hackett, dark glasses gone, held onto Arthur's arm.

The back wall of the courtroom was standing room only, lined by Blues, Mickey, Harry, Claire, Abby, and Rachel Firestone. Mason's life in a lineup, he thought to himself, pleased they had come. Blues was playing street stare with Centurion, standing in the far corner, winning when Centurion faked a laugh and sat down, Judge Tanner taking his seat first, the bailiff instructing everyone else to be seated.

Unlike Judge Pistone, who shrank in his courtroom, Judge Tanner embraced his. A product of Kansas City's private schools and country clubs, Tanner came to the bench a conservative, evolving into a liberal, championing individual rights, now a favorite of the criminal defense bar. Mason believed that the assignment of Jordan's trials to his court helped convince Patrick Ortiz to plea-bargain. Judge Tanner was a big man with a ruddy face and silver hair whose broad shoulders spread under his black robe, his oversized presence commanding the courtroom.