Obstruction of Justice (12 page)

A client of hers convicted of selling cocaine would be leaving for a stay in the joint in a few days. She had done the best she could for him, preaching about mitigating factors until she was purple in the face, but Milne had listened stonily and given him the middle term of years. A poor hardworking defense lawyer could hardly find a legal technicality to stand on anymore. The loopholes of the seventies were being firmly tied up, one by one, by appellate courts overstocked with ex-prosecutors.

"Is there any other drink?" Sarah was saying. "Hmm, in your case, we go with classic one-fifth vermouth." She poured vermouth over ice into a silver shaker and added chilled gin, measuring both with the finicky precision of a candy-store owner.

Nina’s parents had drunk martinis. She remembered her father at the end of the day, offering her a gin-soaked olive. Nobody had drunk martinis for decades, but here they were, popping up again for some obscure reason.

"The olive is such a mysterious fruit," she said.

Sarah handed her the glass. "Salud," she said. Nina took a small sip, and then another. Though it tasted like mercury in a thermometer on a freezing day, the drink was industrial-strength, and she liked the wallop. It was exactly what she needed, another vice to substitute for a love life.

"I’m sorry," Sarah said, "if I seemed pushy in your office. I’m not used to being the one who has to get things done. I don’t have a lot of style at it."

"You’re apologizing again."

"So I am. It’s an old habit. I wonder when I’ll stop."

"When you’re ready."

"Do you take that thing with you everywhere?" Sarah said, pointing at her briefcase.

"It’s waterproof, so I can take it into the shower," Nina said almost gaily. "It’s my albatross."

"What’s in it?"

"Why, my wallet and cell phone, spare shoes, uh, my laptop computer, a big bottle of ibuprofen, an apple. And a file or two. Pretty boring. Oh, and my copy of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Got any more from that shaker?" Nina held out her glass, had some more, and said, "Mmm. You know, the fifties weren’t such a bad era after all." Her father used to eat herring when he drank gin, she remembered suddenly, almost able to smell the vinegary fish. Now she could admire the reflections on the distant water, wondering what it would be like to spend her life at this house with this view and that shakerful of moonshine.

Of course, that picture would have to include drill-sergeant Ray, up until quite recently. This thought brought her back to business. "Is Molly here?" she asked. "I need to show her the draft I put together and get any changes and a signature tonight."

"She went in," Sarah said. At the mention of Molly, Sarah’s mood had changed swiftly. Now she blurted out, "Molly doesn’t like it when I sit out here like this. She says I’m zoning out. Maybe I’ll be able to stop now. The martinis and the sleeping pills and the Xanax. I’ve been thinking a lot since I saw you this morning. I’m glad he’s dead," she went on, in eerie imitation of Molly at the coroner’s. "I often dreamed of the day when I’d be free of him. I thought if Ray was gone I could fix everything and... but I’m so afraid."

"Afraid of what?" Nina said. "Ray’s dead."

"I’m so afraid it’s too late, that we can’t fix it."

There was a long pause. "It may be too late," Sarah repeated. The way she said the words, they sounded desperate.

Nina said, "I was shot. In the chest, almost two years ago now. For a long time after that I was afraid of just about everything. The wound was more than just a physical wound, you know? But Sarah, I got over it."

Sarah didn’t answer. She set her drink on the tray carefully, and folded her arms around her body, as if clasping a familiar despair to herself.

Noticing, Nina went on. "I wrapped my fear around me like one of those blankets that gave the Native American people smallpox. It was making me sick. I couldn’t do my job, raise my son, live again, until I gave it up."

Sarah got up, said, "I’ll go get Molly and bring her out." She went into the house.

Nina watched the lake gulls flying low across the silver water. The sun dipped behind Tallac.

A scream cut through the air, shrill and high.

Nina knocked over her chair jumping up. The gardener was ahead of her. She ran after him through the great front door.

Northwestern lodge decor. A huge stone fireplace. Pine paneling. A thick rug in greens and blues. A long, long staircase...

"Help me!" she heard. "Help me!" They ran up the staircase and into a bedroom at the end of the hall.

Heavy curtains covered the windows. In the center of the room Molly was hanging, squirming on a rope attached to the light fixture, her mother frantically trying to bring her down.

9

MOLLY SWUNG SILENTLY ON HER ROPE BETWEEN worlds, hovering between life and death, her toes only inches from the floor. Dropping the dull knife with a clang and a cry of frustration, Sarah clawed and jabbed at the rope with her fingernails, her struggles weirdly ineffective as if Molly were turning into a ghost she could not touch. Molly wore an astonished expression, as though she had not expected to suffer. Garbled noises came from her throat as she clutched at the rope around it.

The gardener pushed Sarah aside, ordering her and Nina to hold Molly up. Nina ran to grab a wildly flailing leg, and took a hard thump to her kidney before she was able, with Sarah’s help, to lift Molly a few inches and take the pressure off her neck. Whipping a pair of clippers out of the tool bag he wore around his waist, the gardener cut the rope hanging from a hook in the ceiling beam that must usually hold the large Boston fern lying spilled on the rug beside them.

Molly collapsed onto them, causing Nina to stagger and almost fall. They lowered her gently to the floor, where she continued to scrabble at her neck, her movements weaker, her bulging eyes beginning to glaze over. As Nina and Sarah jumped out of the way, in one swift movement the gardener severed the tightened necklace of rope.

Blue-lipped, gasping and coughing feebly, Molly lay on the floor, her eyes open but dull with shock. Very gently, as gracefully as choreographed dancers who had rehearsed together, the three adults lifted her up in one move, placing her on the bed.

Sarah bent over her, examining the girl’s neck and listening to her breathing, talking gently to her while Molly sobbed hoarsely, "I’m sorry, Mom."

Down on her knees now, her arms wrapped around the girl, Sarah said, "It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. We’ll get the doctor." The mother and daughter comforted each other with the heat of their bodies, pressing them together as if their closeness could erase the ugly tangle of rope on the floor and the marks coming up around Molly’s neck. Sarah reached over to the tissue box by the bed with one hand, never letting Molly go, and began wiping the snot and tears off Molly’s face.

Nina saw no sign of pills or drugs or bottles there or in the bathroom. Now certain she could control herself well enough to speak intelligibly, she picked up the phone to call 911, which seemed to have become her favorite number, but Molly saw her from the bed. "Don’t," Molly said. Her voice sounded rolled in gravel. Nina held the phone but didn’t go ahead. She had learned since her 911 call on the mountain that even punching in the first number might bring a callback or even a police car.

Molly spoke to her mother in a low voice. Nina couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Sarah said finally, "She won’t go in an ambulance. She doesn’t want a fuss. Call Dr. Lee. He’s the family physician. His number’s downstairs, in the address book on the buffet in the entryway."

The gardener, who had watched quietly from a few feet away, now spoke up. "She needs to go to a hospital. "

"I’m just fine now," Molly whispered loudly from the bed, obviously not fine but looking less awful as awareness and color returned to her face. "Mom, make them leave."

Nina looked around the room. It was far from the ruffled pastel room she might have expected of a girl still in her teens. Although it was upstairs it felt like a basement. The narrow bed with steel rails on which Molly lay, covered with a black sleeping bag, could have come straight on the bus from San Quentin, and the chest in the corner and the computer desk had been painted black. A thin indoor-outdoor rug in dark gray completed the stark postindustrial look.

But the most depressing thing about the cell Molly had made of her bedroom was the wall of photos torn out of magazines, all of the late rocker Kurt Cobain, a famous young suicide; Cobain smoking a cigarette, riding a skateboard, playing music, mugging for the camera, stringy blond hair hanging over his face to shield his lost and lonely eyes.

"Please, Nina, Joe, both of you, go downstairs. Call the doctor," Sarah said insistently.

Nina and Joe looked at each other. Joe’s hands, so steady in the emergency, now shook like leaves in a gust of wind. "That was a close one," he said. "Are you sure you should—"

"Get going!" Sarah shouted.

The physician’s answering service located Dr. Lee at the hospital. After quizzing Nina briefly on why an ambulance had not been called, he promised to arrive in ten minutes. Nina and the gardener sat down on a couch made of enormous pieces of burlwood covered with a thick, fluffy sheepskin, staring into the darkness of the fireplace, listening to the silence above. As evening came on, the house had gotten cold, even though September was still a few days away.

"That little girl, she’s got big problems," Joe said eventually. He got up, stuffed papers and logs on the grate, and lit a match from a metal container on the hearth. Then he sat back on the edge of the couch, holding his baseball cap on his knees. He smelled of grass and sweat. "Her and her brother, both."

"She looked so ... I’m amazed she can talk," said Nina.

"I saw it once before. I saw a man who died like that. My cousin killed himself."

"It’s a hard way to die. I’m surprised she didn’t use pills. You saved her life, you know."

He looked shocked, and Nina saw that his hands continued to shake, and his skin had developed a sickly pallor under its warm brown color. He had been as affected, or even more affected, as she had been by the sight of the girl.

"Not me! Her mother was already there. She would have found a way to get her down without me or you."

"Maybe," Nina said.

"Jason and Molly, they’ve been protecting their mother like she was the kid. Now I guess she has to be the grown-up. That’s good, at least."

"What do you mean, protecting?"

"I saw them try many times to stand between their mother and father. He never hit her, he just ran her down all the time, and raised his fist at her—you know—to keep her in line. The kids, they were afraid of him, but they were more afraid for their mother. Jason was starting to stand up to him, becoming a man."

"You know a lot about the family."

"They spend a lot of time outdoors. It’s not like I listen at the window. And Molly talks to me sometimes."

"What about?"

"I don’t know if I should talk to you about this."

"I’m Mrs. de Beers’s attorney," Nina said. "I’m just trying to help."

"She wisecracks," Joe said, "but underneath she’s not laughing. She has all the boys hanging around, but she doesn’t care, she just hangs out with Jason and their friend Kenny. She and Jason are like this...." The fingers on his hands intertwined. "Jason shouldn’t have moved out like he did. She misses him a lot. She goes out on the lawn and sits on the phone with him so her mother can’t hear."

"And what does she say on the phone?"

He looked at her sideways. "How am I supposed to know that?"

"You can’t help overhearing," Nina said. "I mean, you’re out there doing your job just a few feet away. Of course you hear things."

"It’s true. She doesn’t care what she says around me. I’m like that herb garden that’s hidden behind the flowers, useful but they don’t have to see me," he said. "Well, I heard her yesterday talking to her brother. She says she’s tired of telling lies. Then Jason says something, and she says, don’t worry, she’ll keep her promise, but she’s worried and can’t sleep and why doesn’t he come home."

The front door opened with a bang and a stocky Asian-American man with gray hair brushed straight back, holding a doctor’s bag, strode in, Leo Tarrant close on his heels.

"I’m Dr. Lee. Where is she?" he said.

"Top of the stairs, to your right."

"I’m coming up," Tarrant said.

"Oh, no, you’re not," Dr. Lee called, taking the stairs two at a time. "I’ll be down as soon as I can. You just sit tight."

Tarrant turned to Nina and Joe, saying, "I just drove up and saw Dr. Lee getting out of his car. He told me about Molly on the way in. How is she?" He looked frightened.

"I really don’t know," Nina said. "But she was awake and talking when we left the room. She wouldn’t let us call an ambulance."

"May I be excused?" Joe said. "I have to finish the lawn." Tarrant’s entrance had erased him. His intelligent face smoothed out into bland emptiness and he seemed to shrink a little as he slid back into the role of being just the gardener.

"I guess," Nina said. Joe went out and Tarrant walked over to the fireplace, where the logs crackled and burned, propping his arm on the mantel in an easy stance. He wore a tan sport coat and chinos over chukka boots. He had a face like an old boxer’s, flat-nosed and battered, but his eyes were shrewd, and he had a gentle voice. Ugly-handsome, Nina decided.

"Thank God you people went in there in time. Poor Molly," he said, looking toward the top of the staircase. "How close was it?"

"Ask the doctor, Mr. Tarrant. She was talking to her mother, fully conscious. I don’t know. She had a close call."

"What in the world made her do this? The shock of Ray’s death? I don’t believe it. I hate to say it, but she disliked Ray so much, I would have thought she’d..." Tarrant said. "Never mind. She’s going downhill instead. Damn it! Poor little thing." He shook his head in disbelief.

"You came to see Sarah?"

"Yes. I thought she might like to go over to Harrah’s for a bite to eat and a show."

"Do you see each other often?" Nina asked.

"Is that your business?"

"I just like to have a half-wit’s understanding of what’s going on when I take on a client," Nina said. "And I am deeply confused about this whole family."

"Don’t get involved. Do what you’re supposed to do," Tarrant said. "Get Quentin off our butts."

"Explain one thing to me. I’m curious about Quentin’s relationship to his son. I understand you were in partnership with the two of them in De Beers Construction," Nina said.

"Quentin drummed up the business, Ray screwed up the construction, and I cleaned up the mess," Tarrant said. "Quentin had to bring somebody in after Ray almost drove the company into the ground. I’m making the company profitable again, in spite of Ray obstructing me at every turn. I’ll say this for Quentin: He’s a smart enough businessman to keep me as general manager no matter what Ray says—said, I mean.

"Quentin forgave every crummy thing Ray did. He just couldn’t see it. Quentin worked for thirty years to make a good reputation and Ray dragged it in the dirt, but Quentin just made excuses for him. They hunted, fished, gambled together. He took Ray’s death hard. He needs somebody to blame. He missed seeing the body, that’s the whole problem. He’s a concrete thinker. He doesn’t trust anybody else’s opinion. He has to see things with his own eyes."

"Maybe we should just let the old man have a look," Nina said. "If it means that much to him. We could have the police do a civil standby, so he wouldn’t have a chance to—wouldn’t be alone with the body. Sarah doesn’t agree, of course, or we wouldn’t be handling this hearing the way we are...."

She expected Tarrant to flare up at her suggestion, but his expression broke into one she was getting used to instead—the harassed look she had seen on the faces of both Sarah and Molly.

"Listen. This hearing is about much more than Quentin’s fatherly need to see his son’s body. It’s about Quentin controlling Sarah and the kids. Sarah is trying to stand up to him for the first time. Her freedom, and Molly and Jason’s freedom, depend on her breaking that control. She needs you to battle him, not compromise with him. Are you going to take care of the job or not? Or should I tell Sarah she should get a postponement and another lawyer?"

"Oh, I’ll go to battle, Mr. Tarrant. But I won’t go in blind," Nina said. "You and Sarah had better understand that."

Tarrant nodded, saying, "Thanks. I’m sure you’ll do your best." He glanced up toward the landing. "I’m going up there."

Dr. Lee appeared above them, brushing off his sleeves. "She’s fine," he said, talking down the stair-well. "Just a few bruises. She’ll be hoarse for a few days. That kind of rope stretches, so her weight when she stepped off the chair didn’t break her neck. Her mother is staying with her. She said there’s no reason for you to stay at this point."

"She’s not going to the hospital?" Nina said in amazement.

"She’ll be all right here," the doctor said flatly.

"She needs psychiatric help," Nina persisted. "Don’t we have to report this to someone?"

"Excuse me," said the doctor, stepping rapidly down the stairs. "I don’t believe we’ve met."

"I’m Mrs. de Beers’s attorney, Nina Reilly."

"Well, then, Ms. Reilly, you’ll understand why I suggest that you discuss any questions on medical treatment with your client, won’t you?"

"Can I go up now?" Tarrant said.

"You can knock on the door and see," Dr. Lee said. "I’ll let myself out."

Tarrant took to the stairs. "See you at the hearing, Ms. Reilly," he said.

"Please tell Sarah that I will be in touch," Nina said.

From below, Nina heard Tarrant’s rapping and the door opening. The door to the bedroom shut again and the house fell silent except for the snapping of the fire. Outside, she heard Joe’s leaf blower extirpating every wild thing that had had the temerity to fall upon the expensive grass. It was getting dark.

Apparently, the incident with Molly was closed. It seemed wrong that a human being could come so close to losing her life with so little official involvement. Nina had the sense that Molly’s suicide attempt was being buried just as efficiently as Ray had been. She would bet she’d never hear another word about this, unless she brought it up herself.

And then she thought of something else. The declaration she had prepared for Molly to sign, opposing the motion for exhumation, might as well be thrown away. Molly wouldn’t be available to sign it.

Could the declaration have had anything to do with Molly’s attempted suicide? All it did was briefly reiterate her statement to the coroner’s office about her father’s death on the mountain, express the wish that her father not be disinterred, and state that she had not seen the ring on his finger at the open viewing at the mortuary.