The Last Plea Bargain (23 page)

53

On the last Saturday of June, I woke up early and took Justice for a walk. It was already in the eighties, and the temperature was predicted to hit the high nineties by afternoon. Sprinkler systems were running throughout the neighborhood, and there were a few early-morning joggers trying to beat the heat.

When I returned to the house, I mowed the lawn for the first time in two weeks. My yard was not large, but the house sat on a hill, and by the time I finished, I was sweaty, tired, and out of breath. Part of my fatigue was due to lack of sleep and the emotional strain of everything I was facing, but I had also exercised less in the past few months than at any other point in my adult life.

In a few days, I would join thousands of crazy Atlanta residents and run the Peachtree Road Race on July 4. I had done it for eight straight years and wasn't about to skip a year, even though this would be one of my slowest times yet.

I sat on the deck, thinking about the race and sipping some sweet tea while Justice begged me to throw his tennis ball. On top of everything else, I was now feeling guilty for ignoring Justice over the past month and for being so out of shape. Jamie Brock, once an Olympic hopeful in kayaking, now winded from mowing the lawn.

Even Justice seemed to have put on a few extra pounds. It was not quite nine o'clock, and I was usually at the office by this time on Saturday morning, but I knew I couldn't keep living like that.

“Want to go for a swim?” I asked Justice.

His ears perked up as if the words were too good to be true. His tail began wagging, thumping against the railing on the deck. Then he started jumping a little, prancing around the deck, excitement and adrenaline coursing through his body.

He hopped over to the back door and pawed at it. His enthusiasm made me smile. I changed into some workout clothes and barely kept Justice under control as I loaded my kayak onto the 4Runner.

We're going to the river!
Justice could sense it, and just the thought of it made him crazy.

Last summer, we had gone to the Chattahoochee almost every weekend. But this spring, with everything else happening in my life, I hadn't had my boat in the water once. It had sat in the garage, covered in dust. Today that would all change.

Thirty minutes later, Justice thought he had died and gone to doggy heaven. I stood on the bank of the Chattahoochee and threw his big rubber toy into the middle of the current. He performed a flying belly flop into the water and swam out to his toy, grabbed it in his mouth, and chugged back to shore. He exited the water, shook himself off, dropped the toy at my feet, and waited at attention for my next throw.

Throw, retrieve, drop.
Let's do it again!
Throw, retrieve, drop. Over and over until his tongue was hanging so far out of his mouth I thought he might trip on it.

“Time for Mommy to get some exercise,” I said finally. And he knew the drill from there. I carried my boat to the river and paddled to the middle of the current while Justice stayed on the shore. I sprinted hard against the current for about five minutes and turned around at a concrete abutment under the bridge at Medlock Bridge Road. Justice followed along the banks of the river, fighting his way through the underbrush and slipping occasionally down a muddy slope into the water. I cruised back down the river to where we started and then turned and sprinted again.

All the while, Justice shadowed me. Back and forth, back and forth.

Last year, I would do this for a solid hour, but today my arms were burning after thirty minutes. On the last sprint, my lungs felt like they might explode, and I leaned forward in exhaustion when I cleared the bridge abutment. It felt great to be out on the water with Justice getting enough exercise to last him a week. It was the first time in months that my mind wasn't preoccupied with thoughts of Antoine Marshall's appeal or Caleb Tate's prosecution or how much I missed my dad. I floated back down to the small park where I had launched my boat and carried it to the 4Runner.

The last part of our routine was undoubtedly Justice's favorite. I took the Frisbee out of the backseat and got ready to give it a good toss. But before I did, I noticed that the red light on my BlackBerry was blinking.

“Hang on a minute, buddy.” The missed call was from LA. Justice was panting at my feet, pawing at the Frisbee, but something about that blinking red light was addictive. I returned the call.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“None of your business. It's Saturday.”

He laughed. “Nice to see your foul moods aren't limited to working days.”

“Last I knew, Saturday was a working day.”

“Good point.”

I threw the Frisbee and watched Justice take off after it.

“I stopped by the office to see if you were in,” LA said. He sounded more tentative than usual. “Had something I wanted to talk to you about, but it's better person to person.”

Justice came racing back, dropped the Frisbee at my feet, and sat at attention. “Can you give me a hint?”

“Not over the phone. I want to be there to see you smile.”

Now he had me. “You better not be toying with me. I've had a long week.”

“There's only one way to find out. Tell me where you are.”

He sounded a little flirtatious, and I surprised myself with a grin. “Chattahoochee River Park on Medlock Bridge Road. Hard at work on next week's cases.”

“Sounds like you need some help. Maybe I should bring J-Lo.”

“Justice would like that very much.”

LA showed up twenty minutes later driving a pale-green Element that looked like a box on wheels, his brown-and-white English bulldog riding shotgun. J-Lo was about sixteen inches high with short, stocky legs, a wide muzzle with a short pug, and a broad, black nose. Her dark eyes were deep set, and her skin hung from her face—XL skin on a size-M face.

“She's a bit of a prima donna,” LA said. “She doesn't do well in the heat.”

LA kept her on a leash. He wore jeans, flip-flops, and a T-shirt. I assumed he had come straight from work. I still had on my bathing-suit top and shorts. LA started asking questions about the kayak, like he might want to try it out.

I knew he was a good athlete, but I also knew that my racing kayak was extremely tippy. I had never met anybody who could stay upright the first time he tried it.

“You want to give it a shot?” I asked.

“I didn't bring any shorts.”

“You can always roll up your jeans. But, I mean, if you can't handle it . . .”

After some hemming and hawing, he agreed to give it a whirl. He carried it to the water for me, as if somehow a woman couldn't handle the thirty-pound boat, even though I had already done so earlier. I gave him a quick demonstration and made it look easy. I showed him how to brace on one side and how to sit up straight and pump with your legs at the same time you rotate your body to get maximum power in each stroke. I went a few yards up the river before doing a sharp turn and came flying back past him. I eventually pulled next to the launching pad where LA was standing in water almost up to his knees.

He took off his shirt, and I tried not to notice the six-pack abs. I steadied the boat as he climbed in and grabbed the paddle.

“You ready?”

“Not really.” He was already a little shaky, and he hadn't even started.

“It's like riding a bike. Once you get going, it's actually easier to keep your balance.”

I gave him a gentle shove, and he took off into the current. The boat was shaking, but he was smart enough to use the force of his stroke to brace himself. He looked like he was starting to get the hang of it. He had broad, muscled shoulders and stayed focused on the water, staring at a spot a few feet in front of the boat, just like I had told him. Before long, he started feeling comfortable and picked up the pace a little.

That's when he got into trouble.

The current caught the front of the boat and started turning it downstream. “What do I do now?” he shouted.

“Paddle on your left.”

LA tried to comply, but it's hard to paddle on just one side with a kayak paddle. He took a couple of strokes on the left and almost tipped. He braced with the paddle on the right, but then the current pushed the boat around farther. He tried to take another stroke on the left. His paddle caught the water on the recovery, and before he could blink, LA was in the water, swimming next to the kayak, hanging on to his paddle.

Justice stood on the shore and barked. I held J-Lo's leash. “You okay?”

He looked over at me as he tried to scramble into the kayak. His jeans were waterlogged and weighing him down. “Other than my pride, I'm great.”

He looked clumsy during his first two attempts to get back in the boat. On his third try, he finally managed to clamber aboard, almost losing his pants in the process. He took a few more strokes heading downstream. He flipped a second time when he tried to turn around.

All told, LA flipped five times in the next twenty minutes, but he still impressed me with his tenacity. Before quitting, he managed to paddle nonstop to the same bridge where I'd made my turns and sprinted back to me without going in the drink. His strokes were still lunging and rough, but he had figured out how to balance the boat.

“You're a born kayaker,” I said, holding on to the boat as he got out.

“That's harder than it looks,” he said. “You've definitely got to know what you're doing.”

Together, we carried the kayak back to my car. As we were tying it on, I asked LA for the third time what was so important that we had to talk about it face to face. He walked over to me, water dripping off his body.

“I've got friends with some inside information at the Georgia Supreme Court,” he said. “They're issuing an opinion on Monday.”

He paused, and I braced myself for the news.

“Your boy Antoine Marshall is not going to like it.”

I blew out a breath in relief. I almost gave LA a hug but caught myself. I'm not a hugger by nature, and there was no real joy in any of this. I certainly didn't want Antoine Marshall to win the appeal, but knowing he was going to lose would not bring my mom back. It would not make things right. At the most, it would bring closure to this chapter.

“That's good news, I guess.”

“That's it? I came all the way out here and made a fool of myself for
that
reaction?” He pretended to be hurt, but I could tell he was kidding.

“I don't know, LA. It just feels like there're never any real winners in this. I guess I just want it to be over.”

“Yeah. I have no idea how you've been able to handle it this far. And I know it doesn't bring your mom back, but at least the court didn't buy this garbage about Cooper's change of heart.”

LA put his shirt on, then knelt down to play with Justice. I was really starting to like this guy. He had a softer side than I had previously thought. Plus, he'd handled the humiliation of kayaking much better than most guys I knew would.

There were some other folks who were taking advantage of the park. A few boaters had launched from the same spot we had just used. Other dog owners were here; a few guys were throwing a football and drinking.

“I need to talk to you about something else,” I told LA. “I don't live that far from here, and my dad's probably got some dry clothes you could wear. Though they might be a little big in the gut.” I smiled.

LA grinned. “J-Lo and I would be honored.” He put the dimples on overdrive. “Come on, boy,” he said to Justice. “You're riding with me.”

LA was a good sport, wearing a pair of my dad's jeans that were three inches too big around the waist and a few inches too short. I gave him one of my dad's belts, which he tightened down, bunching up the waist. He rolled the legs up so they came to the middle of his calves.

We talked at the kitchen table with both dogs lying at our feet. Haltingly, I told him about Caleb Tate's threat and what my research had uncovered.