The Heavens May Fall (11 page)

“He must think he’s going to be charged. Otherwise he wouldn’t come to you.”

“Not necessarily. Back in the day, I represented quite a few clients who were under investigation who didn’t get charged. Ben has an alibi. We just need to put the proof together. A simple thing even for a marginal defense attorney like myself.”

“But you’re not a defense attorney. He of all people knows that. He knows why you quit practicing. How can he ask you to go back to that? He can’t ask you to do that.”

“Honey, he trusts me. He doesn’t want just another lawyer out for a cash-cow client. He needs someone who believes in him. If I were in his shoes, I’d feel the same way.”

“And do you believe in him?”

“Diana . . . you’re not saying . . . this is Ben Pruitt we’re talking about. Ben and Jennavieve. You once said that they were as perfect a couple as we are. Remember?”

“But we haven’t been a part of their lives for a long time now. We’ve seen them maybe four times in the last six years.”

“He was my law partner. I’m Emma’s godfather. I know Ben. He didn’t have anything to do with Jennavieve’s death.”

“I’m not saying he did. I just don’t know how he can ask you to go back into a courtroom. He knows how the Quinto case nearly killed you.”

Boady turned the heat off and moved the pan to a backburner. He walked to the table and sat down with Diana, holding her hand in his. “I know you’re worried. I went though some bad times after Quinto, and that means that you went through those bad times too. I wouldn’t take this case if I had any doubt about Ben. I know you’re concerned about how I might react, going back to court. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous myself. A lot of rust can build up in six years.”

Boady smiled, but she remained hard. “How would I feel about myself if I didn’t help my friend? He was there when I needed him. He picked up the pieces of my crumbling practice. For almost two years, he kept things going while I wallowed in my self-pity. No one ever knew how self-destructive I’d become because he kept the practice going. He didn’t turn his back on me. So how can I turn my back on him?”

Diana raised Boady’s hand up to her lips and kissed him. “I know you have to help Ben. I’m sorry. You have to do this. I can’t help it if I’m a little selfish when it comes to you.”

“There’s one more wrinkle in all this.”

Diana closed her eyes. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

“Max Rupert is the lead investigator.”

Diana sat back in her chair, her eyebrows raised. “Does Max know you’re representing Ben?”

“Not yet. I was thinking about telling him tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“It’s the anniversary of Jenni Rupert’s death. I was planning on going to the cemetery anyway—just to make sure he’s okay. If the topic comes up, I’ll mention it to him.”

Diana leaned in, kissed Boady on the forehead, and nodded her understanding. “It’s going to be dark soon. We’d better get you fed so you can get going.”

Chapter 15

Boady pulled up to the northwest corner of Lakewood Cemetery and parked. He looked around at the quiet street, no walkers, no traffic, no one to see him heave his body over the fence—again—the second time in three years. The last time had been on the first anniversary of Jenni Rupert’s death, and Boady prayed that this visit would be far less distressing.

That time, Boady had been at home, already in bed as it was nearly midnight, when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Boady, this is Alexander Rupert, Max’s brother. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

Boady put the phone to his chest and cleared the slumber from his throat in a futile attempt to sound awake. “No, Alexander, I was up grading some papers. What’s up?”

There was a slight pause, then: “I was hoping that Max might be there. I know it’s a Tuesday and you guys usually play poker on weekends, but I was just thinking that he might have stopped by.”

“I don’t understand. Is Max missing or something?”

“He’s not answering his phone. I’ve been trying to get ahold of him for a couple hours now. I just thought I’d call a few of his friends and see . . . well, it was a year ago today that Jenni died.”

“Oh.” Boady sat up, slipping his legs over the side of the bed.

“We had lunch today and he was acting strange.”

“Strange?”

“I don’t know, what’s the word . . .
morose
maybe? He couldn’t concentrate. Kept losing his train of thought. Hardly touched his lunch. Finally, I came out and asked him what the hell was wrong. That’s when he pointed out that today was the first anniversary. I felt like an idiot for not remembering.”

“When’s the last time you heard from him?”

“I called him around five. He said he was going home for the night. I thought I’d drop by there to check up on him around ten, and he wasn’t there. I thought maybe he might have contacted you or . . . I don’t know. I mean he’s a big boy. He can take care of himself, but he seemed so out of sorts at lunch.”

“So, what now?”

“Well, Max isn’t the kind of guy to go out to bars all by himself, but there are a few places he and I go to have a beer. I thought I’d check around and see if anyone’s seen him. Maybe he can’t hear his phone ringing.”

“Would you do me a favor?” Boady asked.

“Sure.”

“If you find him, can you call me and let me know.”

“Sure, Boady.”

Boady hung up and walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and grabbed a small handful of carrot sticks out of a bowl of cold water. As he nibbled on the carrots, he thought about his wife, Diana, asleep in the bedroom. How would he react if he ever lost her? How would he handle the anniversary of her death as the years passed?

Boady went back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed next to Diana, the movement stirring her from her thin sleep. “Max is missing,” he said.

“I heard,” she answered. “Are you worried?”

“No. Max isn’t the kind of guy that needs looking after.” Boady rolled back into his nest and pulled the comforter up around his shoulders.

Diana turned onto her right side, her face nuzzled into her pillow, her eyes closed, her words still half-asleep. “If I ever lost you, I’d probably never leave the cemetery,” she said.

Boady let a heavy sigh leave his chest.
Of course
, he thought.

He slipped out of bed, put on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers, and headed out the door.

On the drive to the cemetery, he tried to remember where Jenni Rupert had been buried. Lakewood Cemetery was two hundred and fifty acres of rolling hills riddled with thousands of grave markers, everything from small, bronze placards to large statues of angels. He got lost trying to drive out of that cemetery after Jenni’s interment, and that was in broad daylight. He held little faith that, at night, he would be able to find a single, brown-marble stone tucked away in the heart of that enormous labyrinth. But he went anyway.

He remembered that, as they gathered around the casket, there’d been a small lake to his back, a basin of still water for mourners to gaze upon as they contemplated their sorrow. Boady also seemed to remember a moose—no, it was an elk, a life-sized bronze elk about a hundred yards from the grave site. The elk had been facing in the general direction of the ceremony. And then there was the silver maple tree, one of the largest Boady had ever seen. He stood in the shade of that tree as they lowered Max’s wife into the ground.

Boady tried to remember these markers as he pulled up to the cemetery gate, a closed gate with a sign that read that visiting hours ended at 8 p.m. He paused at the entrance for a moment and examined the length of wrought-iron fence that reached into the distance as far as he could see. The black pickets stood in formation, six feet tall and pointed, but not sharp—the kind of fence intended to discourage intruders but not prevent them, even late-middle-aged men with questionable knees, like Boady.

He eased back onto the road and drove slowly along the northern border of the cemetery, looking for a good place to enter, and found a spot on the northwest corner, a spot where streetlights cast very little light and a pine tree inside the fence reached its branches out over the iron spikes. Boady pulled to the side of the street and put his car in park. It was then that he saw Max’s car parked a few feet away. Boady walked up to the car, just to make certain that it was Max’s car and that Max wasn’t in it. He was right on both assumptions.

Boady placed a call to Alexander to let him know that he’d found Max’s car, then Boady went for a stroll.

He paused opposite the pine tree inside the fence and glanced around. No one around. He hoisted himself onto the top rail of the fence, the iron spikes pressing against his forearms. He swung a hand up, grasped a pine branch, and pulled his weight up enough to get a foothold atop the rail. From there, it was a simple matter of climbing down a tree, something he’d perfected as a boy growing up in in the Ozark hills of Missouri.

He believed that the lake he remembered lay somewhere near the center of the cemetery, so he set a course into the heart of the field of gravestones.

About the time that he crested his second hill, he began to doubt his memory. But on the third hill, he glimpsed the shimmer of the full moon rippling on the surface of water. He headed for the lake, stepping a bit slower now that he knew he was in the right neighborhood. The elk had to be nearby. Twice he stopped to peer through the darkness at what he believed to be horns but turned out to be branches catching the moonlight. He had to duck behind a statue of an angel as a car with a security guard in it rolled past.

He found the elk, slightly larger than life-sized, its hooves anchored to a granite mound. Boady stood beneath the elk and faced in the direction of the animal’s stare. There he saw the giant silver maple tree, the one he stood beneath at the funeral. He walked to the base of the tree and looked into the shadows cast by the moonlight until he saw the form of a man sprawled out in the grass. Max lay prostrate, his mouth open, his face flattened into the ground, one hand clutching a tuft of sod, the other hand pressed up against the smooth granite of a headstone.

Boady knelt at Max’s side and immediately smelled the odor of whiskey radiating up from his friend. He tried to roll Max over, but Max resisted, muttering “no” and wrapping his protest with impotent threats and slurred expletives. When Max’s squawking grew too loud, Boady gave up his effort and let Max settle back into the grass.

The moon painted the surface of the lake with a wide swath of light that flickered off tiny ripples, giving the water a sequined cover. The shadows cast by the trees created patches of black on gray that swayed in the light breeze. Boady sat up against a nearby headstone to wait for Alexander to arrive. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of freshly cut grass. In the distance he could hear a mockingbird singing to the full moon.
This would be a nice place to spend eternity, if such things mattered to the dead
, Boady thought.

Soon, Boady heard a hollered whisper coming from the direction of the elk statue.

“Max? Boady?”

“Over here,” Boady called back.

Alexander scampered through the shadows, partially crouching as he ran, as if he were advancing on an enemy pill box. He slid to a stop at Max’s side.

“Holy shit, he’s smashed.” Alexander gave a nervous chuckle and poked his brother in the side with his thumb. “I haven’t seen him this drunk since, well, never. Max, wake up.”

Alexander rolled Max over and started tapping his face. Max swung blindly at imaginary flies. As he did, an empty whiskey bottle slid out of his jacket.

“Christ, what was he thinking?” Alexander whispered. “Max never did handle whiskey well.”

“Leave me alone,” Max stammered as he rolled back over to resume his prostrate position at the base of his dead wife’s gravestone.

Alexander relaxed his grip on his brother and sat back to assess things. “If they catch us here after hours, it’ll be a problem, especially with Max being smashed.”

“It’s just a cemetery security guy. Surely, he’ll understand. He probably sees this all the time.”

“Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Let’s say he turns out to be a dick and calls this in. If the press catches wind of it, we might make the evening news. They’re always looking for cops-gone-bad stories.”

“How do we get him out of here? We can’t hoist him over that spiked fence. And he’s in no condition to climb over it himself.”

“Due west of here, there’s a gate. That’s where I parked. If we can get him there, I have a bolt cutter in my trunk.”

“A bolt cutter in your trunk?”

“Hey, I’m a narcotics detective. Bolt cutters come in handy. You’d be surprised how many drug dealers think a padlock will make a difference.”

“I’m not complaining.”

Alexander sat beside his brother and patted Max between the shoulder blades. “Max, I need you to listen.”

Max grunted something loud and unintelligible, something that sounded like a word and a belch combined.

“Max, I need to get you out of here. I know you want to stay, but that’s not in the cards.”

“Fuck you, Festus!” Max spoke with a snarl in his throat.

“Festus?” Boady said.

Alexander waved off Boady’s curiosity with a shake of his head. “Childhood nickname,” he said. Then he patted his brother’s back a little harder. “Max, I need you to get your shit together and stand up.”

“Fuck off,” came the reply.

“Fine. I’ll just drag your ass to the fence.” Alexander stood up and grabbed one of Max’s ankles. “Come on, Boady, grab a leg.”

Boady picked up Max’s other ankle, and the two began dragging Max, facedown, through the grass.

“God dammit! Leave me alone,” Max yelled. He began to kick and twist and claw at the grass, but Alexander and Boady kept walking.

Max continued to cuss and twist for about twenty yards before they heard him mutter, “Okay. I’ll walk. Just let me go.” Alexander gave Boady a smile, and they dropped Max’s legs. They let him catch his breath before lifting him off the ground, each pulling one of Max’s arms across their shoulders.