The Disappearance (31 page)

“Ahhh!” His left side feels like it’s on fire.

She lets go of him, jumping back from his cry. “Sorry. I didn’t realize—”

“That I’d been shot? I thought that was the whole point of all this.” The pain is making him surly. He doesn’t want to be, not with her. She’s the focus of his life now. They have a good thing going and he wants to make sure it keeps going, but—shit, that hurts!

“It’s okay,” he says. “I know you’re trying to help.” He stares at her. “I can’t leave. Not yet.”

“Why not?” She’s tough, but she’s near tears.

“Somebody tried to kill me. I have to find out who.” He pulls her to him; it hurts like hell, but he doesn’t care, not enough to let go. “Walking away from this, that’s not going to solve the problem. I can run from this, but I can’t hide from it. So I might as well stay here, where at least I’ve got protection.” He looks into her eyes. “I came back for a reason, Riva. I didn’t even know what it was. I thought I knew, but that was surface stuff. Polly. Important, but not what it is. Not deep down.”

She buries her head in his chest. “I’m scared. We’ve got it going finally, and then this.”

He holds her tight. “I’m scared too, Riva. I’m scared too.”

Riva drives him to the hospital. The doctor checks him out—he’s coming along okay. Then she drops him off at the jail.

Once again, he sits in the interview room with Joe Allison, bringing him up to date. Allison is visibly shaken, not knowing what to say. Then it dawns on him. “Does this mean you aren’t going to be my lawyer anymore?”

If it wouldn’t hurt so much, Luke would kick some sense into this narcissistic shit’s ass. “How many times are you going to ask me that? Am I supposed to get myself killed over you?” he fires back. “Is that all you can think about? Yourself?”

Allison slumps. “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You shouldn’t have to be subjected to something like that. You have a perfect right to get out of this if you want to.”

Luke stares at his client. “I’m not dropping out.”

Allison looks up, startled. “You’re staying on?”

“I have no choice.”

Allison doesn’t know how to react. All he manages to say is “Thanks.”

Luke shakes his head. “I’m not staying on for you, so don’t thank me.” Off Allison’s perplexed look: “I’m not going to get into the particulars, it’s none of your business and it doesn’t matter, but I was driven out of this town once. I did it to myself, and I’ve been unhappy with myself ever since.” He leans in. “I’m not going to be driven out of town again, for you or anyone else.” He eases back. His body’s throbbing. “One important thing,” he says. “Listen up now. You listening?”

Allison nods.

“No more lies from you, by commission or omission or any other excuse. If there’s anything else out there I should know about, I want you to tell me—right now.”

Allison nods. “There’s nothing else, I promise.”

Luke rises. “All right, then. Let’s keep going on like we have been.”

Behind Allison, the door leading back to the jail interior swings open. A guard awaits his exit back to his cell. “Thanks,” he says softly to Luke.

Luke shakes off the thanks. “I’m doing this for me, Joe. You’re incidental to it now. But I’m still here, and that’s all you need to be concerned with.”

Sheriff Williams has left four messages on Luke’s phone service, asking him to call. He will. But first, he decides, he’ll talk to the press.

He stands in front of the courthouse across the street from the jail, recently remodeled and enlarged, where Joe Allison, now the most notorious person they’ve ever incarcerated, is being held in his solitary cell. Luke has positioned himself so that the lenses of the television cameras will capture both the courthouse and the jail: the ornate, almost rococo building where justice, however one interprets that, is dispensed, and the practical building where the police do their work and the people who are deemed criminals are locked up until said justice is dispensed and are then, almost all of the time, sent somewhere worse.

Luke is dressed for the occasion, with Riva’s help struggling into a white shirt, string tie, sport coat. He talks about the attack on him. “It was a cold, premeditated attempt to kill me, Luke Garrison, a specific person. Whoever was shooting at me wasn’t doing it because he doesn’t like the way I put ketchup on my fries. He was shooting at me because I’m representing Joe Allison, a man accused of a heinous kidnapping and murder, a man this city wants to bury. We all know what that’s about, I don’t have to elaborate on it.”

He looks off to the side. Riva’s standing there watching intently, her face a troubled mix of confusion, worry, love. He stares at her for a moment, then turns back to the cameras.

“There is a good reason that someone would want to eliminate me. It’s that Mr. Allison is
not
the murderer, and whoever did kidnap and murder Emma Lancaster, who’s still at large in the community, knows that I might uncover material that could not only undermine a guilty verdict on Mr. Allison but implicate
him
, the real killer.”

He pauses for a moment. “I have one job. To make sure an innocent man does not get convicted. I am not withdrawing from this case, despite the concerns of my friends and even of some of my foes. Now, more than ever, I’m determined to see this through to the finish.”

He turns and walks away, without a whisper of a smile.

His meeting with Sheriff Williams and Ray Logan is tense, as he knew it would be. Indeed, he’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t. They meet in Williams’s office, a standard-issue corner room, the walls festooned with plaques and pictures, awards and encomiums. The sheriff sits behind his desk. Luke has the seat opposite. Logan’s off to the side. He’s a party to the show, not a participant. The door is closed. The sheriff has instructed his secretary to hold all his calls, without exception.

Luke feels the tension. That’s okay—that’s what he wants.

“That was a nice performance you gave out there,” the sheriff remarks dryly. He and Luke go back a long way. They worked closely together for more than a decade, when Luke was an assistant DA, the rising star in the office, and then after that, when he won the election and became the boss. They were a good team. Now they’re opponents, and it doesn’t wear well.

“Somebody put a bullet in my side, Bob, in case you’ve forgotten,” Luke replies. In a funny way he’s in the catbird seat, for the present at least. They have to take him seriously now, and they have to treat him well. “I assume you’re trying to find out who it was.”

Williams’s reply is serious indeed. “You don’t have to assume, Luke. We have a dozen detectives out in the field, trying to work some leads.”

“I’m impressed.” Then he asks the harder question: “Any hints on who you think it is?”

Williams fidgets in his chair. “Who do
you
think?” he counters.

“Doug Lancaster, who else?”

The name hangs in the air like stale cigar smoke in a closed room. Williams looks at Logan. “He’s on the short list.”

“Do you know where he was?”

“He says he was at home. We’re checking it out.”

“Like you checked out where he was the night his daughter was kidnapped?”

Williams looks uneasy.

Luke glances at Logan, who’s sitting uncomfortably in his corner, then fixes his stare on the sheriff. “You didn’t handle this right, Bob. In a crime like this, the immediate family is automatically under suspicion and you check the hell out of their alibis. That’s a given, you and I did a hundred cases like that. But in this case, you didn’t—or if you did, you didn’t pursue it with any vigor. You let the Lancasters’ position and power in the community cow you. You set it up so they’d be off the hook almost immediately.”

“I resent that,” Williams says angrily.

Luke has to stand. Sitting in one position is too painful. “I didn’t say it was a whitewash, Bob. I’m saying it
looks
like it. The fact is that Doug Lancaster’s whereabouts on the night his daughter was kidnapped can’t be accounted for between one and nine in the morning. I know that, and I assume you do.”

Williams looks over at Logan—how much of their hand should he show?

Logan answers. “We know he wasn’t in his hotel, like he told us he was—which is a mark against him, I’ll admit that.”

“Do you know where he was?” Luke asks. “Some physical proof?”

Logan draws a breath. “No.”

Luke thinks a moment. “He made a late-night call to a number in the Malibu area. Do you know about that?”

Logan nods. “Yes.”

“Have you interviewed the party he called?”

Another nod. “He wasn’t there.”

“So the call didn’t go through?” Luke asks, surprised. This feels weird. If the call wasn’t connected, why would the hotel have a record of it? Of course, the phone would be connected to an answering service. Doug could have left a message.

Logan shrugs. “The man, whose name is Buchinsky, gave us a statement. I’ll fax it over to you. He wasn’t at his beach house the night in question. He wasn’t even in the country, he was in France.”

“So it’s not an alibi for Lancaster. He wasn’t there.”

“No. But that in itself doesn’t make him a suspect,” Logan says doggedly.

“No,” Luke agrees. “It doesn’t.” Then he asks, “Do you mind if I talk to Buchinsky?”

“Not at all,” Logan says. “I’ll call him and let him know you’ll be in touch.”

“I appreciate that, Ray.” Being a crime victim yourself, especially of the crime of attempted murder, opens doors that would otherwise be locked.

“You know we’re sorry you were a target,” Logan says lamely.

Luke shakes his head. “Someone tried to kill me,” he reminds his successor. “Someone is desperate to get me out of the way. Doug Lancaster has been trying to get me off this case from day one, way beyond a father’s grief and desire to avenge his daughter’s death. He tried to warn me, he tried to scare me, he threatened me.” He still doesn’t tell them about the bribe—that’s too precious to waste now.

Williams and Logan both look somber. “I hear you,” Williams says finally.

Logan turns to Williams. “What about protection?” He’s Mr. Efficient now.

“Around the clock,” Williams says without hesitation. Before Luke can utter a word of protest, his big ham-hand goes up like a traffic cop’s. “Someone out there did try to kill you. I’m not going to let them have another shot. I have a job to do, just like you do, and taking care of the citizens is it.”

It’s a reassuring feeling, although Luke won’t give Williams the satisfaction of telling him. Riva will appreciate it. She’s going along with his decision, but she’s unhappy and scared about it. This will give her some comfort.

“Okay,” he answers. “But only at the house, around my lady. I can’t conduct my case properly if your men are always watching me. I have witnesses to interview, some of whom I don’t want you to know I’m interviewing. But I won’t let myself be alone like that again.”

Williams nods sourly. “I wish you were on the right side on this one,” he says.

“I am.” He pats the sheriff on the shoulder. “We’re all on the side of justice, Bob.”

What can be good about someone trying to kill you? Simple answer: They have to take you seriously now. Joe Allison might be guilty as charged, and the odds are he’s going to be convicted no matter what you do. But someone wants you off this case so badly they will kill you to get you off—which makes what you’re doing legitimate, and makes your opponents nervous.

There will be plenty of publicity about this. It’s already started. You keep it going, fan the flames. Give interviews, hold press conferences, demand to know why the authorities haven’t caught your would-be murderer. Are they part of a conspiracy to push this entire thing under the rug, cover it up? Is there a cover-up, and if so, what are they covering up? Could the cover-up be about some doubt on their part now about Joe Allison’s guilt? That maybe they’re not a hundred percent sure anymore but can’t admit it, because they have too much invested in this to back down?

Joe Allison isn’t as guilty as he was the day before yesterday. Now, because someone was desperate and crazy enough to try to kill his lawyer, Allison has a chance. He may be found guilty in the end, but for now he’s more like he should be, a man innocent until proven guilty. Beyond a reasonable doubt.

Someone tried to kill Luke Garrison, Joe Allison’s lawyer. And everything changes.

Except no one tried to kill me.

He’s been pounding his brains over that since he got home from the hospital and his subsequent discussion with Ray Logan. What has been tearing up his mind is his certain knowledge that the getting hit was a fluke. It was a lucky one, in that he wasn’t killed. But he wasn’t supposed to be hit at all. He was supposed to be warned. Those were shots across the bow, calling cards, one last, ultimate warning:
I can knock you off, man, anytime I want. So back off. Now.

But he isn’t backing off. So he has to assume something else is coming, down the line. He has to be prepared for it, he has to be vigilant.

If he survives all this, Luke thinks as he pops another pain pill, getting shot will be worth it. But only the one time. He’s willing to risk his career—he doesn’t have enough of one left anymore to have that much to risk—but he isn’t willing to risk his life again. Even if it was only a warning, once was enough. Because the next time, the shooter won’t be aiming to miss.

Ted Buchinsky’s interview with one of Logan’s assistant D.A.’s is on Luke’s desk when he arrives at his office. He reads through it. It was a short interview, only two pages. Buchinsky had seen Doug Lancaster the day before at his home in Beverly Hills, they had some business dealings, talked about continuing the discussion when he got back from Europe. He had flown out the afternoon before the night of the kidnapping, so he obviously wasn’t around when Doug had called. End of interview, end of story.

Luke tosses the interview on his desk. Doug wasn’t with the man.

He starts to go over some other material, then something clicks. He picks the pages up again, scans them. The telephone number on the interview, Buchinsky’s house—it’s a 310 area code, all right, but it’s a Brentwood prefix, not a Malibu one. Doug hadn’t called Brentwood, he’d called Malibu.