Time of Departure (2 page)

It was a phone message.

Ms. Talbot's accountant called. She'll be in later to cancel her request for mortgage preapproval. Please do not process further.

I handed the message back. “Interesting … since I don't have an accountant.”

His eyebrows notched up. He rechecked the document. “Hmm … maybe Mrs. Tierney misheard the customer's name. Good thing, though…”

“Why?”

“Because I was about to register your file in the system. Cancellation would have cost you a seventy-five-dollar fee.”

“I thought preapprovals were free!”

“New bank policy. They're calling it a ‘commitment fee.'”

“A commitment fee for a
pre
approval? That makes no sense!”

“The real estate business is booming, and—”

“Not for long, from what I'm hearing!”

“Maybe. But right now a lot of people are going from bank to bank, making multiple applications. Our loan officers are working flat out, and management says we can't afford to have them wasting time on people who aren't serious, so it's seventy-five dollars for bank customers and a hundred dollars, payable up front, for noncustomers.”

“You didn't mention this fee when I first spoke to you.”

“Oh? Didn't I?” He didn't seem too concerned. His mind had moved on. His eyes swept the stacks of paper on his desk. He grimaced, tapped the phone message slip, and said, “Now I'll have to figure out which file this call was about. There's no return number.”

I left him to his confusion. The next day I changed banks. Fees for preapproval?

Bankers!

As it turned out, I had actually benefited from the housing crisis because my rent payments were now ridiculously low. A year after I walked out of that bank, I became the proud tenant of a recently renovated two-bed, two-and-a-half-bath end unit in a quiet complex on Magnolia Walk in Haile Plantation. It came with all the features Realtors had been happy to extol when they were seducing the chronically underemployed into signing subprime mortgages: hardwood floors, plantation blinds, blue granite counters, solid mahogany cabinets, and … wait for it … genuine wood-burning fireplaces in both the living room and master bedroom. True townhome luxury at 100 percent financing! How could a buyer lose?

Let me count the ways.

I stepped under the cute little clamshell awning that hung over my front door and slid the key into the top lock.

It was already unlocked.

I always lock the dead bolt when I leave the house.

I put my hand on the knob and twisted. It didn't budge. The bottom lock was still engaged. I used my key and quietly stepped inside.

The house was silent. I flashed on Sam Grayson's advice to me during a particularly tense gang prosecution a few months earlier. “Get a permit, girl,” he'd said. “Buy yourself a gun, and learn how to use it.”

Advice I had ignored.

I slipped the machete out of the decorative umbrella stand my mother had given me. I searched both floors, room by room, closet by closet. There was no one there. I set the machete on my bed and started searching cupboards and drawers. I'm not a shopper, and I'm not an accumulator, so the search didn't take long.

Nothing was missing.

As far as I could tell, nothing was even disturbed.

I descended the stairs and I slid the machete back into the stand. I wandered into the living room. I stood in the middle of the room, thinking … trying to remember my exact movements as I left for work that morning. I was beginning to doubt myself: Did I forget to lock that dead bolt?

Then I noticed it.

It was very faint. Just a whiff that barely registered, and then it was gone.

It was perfume.

*   *   *

I stood at the bathroom mirror for ten seconds or so before going to bed, just staring at myself.

Here I was, doing it again.

Here I was wondering why the hell I was here … in this place, in this time. Why hadn't I been born centuries ago? Why now? Why had I been born in 1979 and not in 1479? Why was my name Claire and not some other name? Why was I born in Florida, and not, say, Nairobi or Brisbane or Kiev?

Why do I have this lopsided, watercolor face and not some other face? Why didn't I have a face that was more … conventional?

I was fairly sure most people would not consider me beautiful, at least not in any classical sense. In fact, not in any sense for which a descriptive word exists in English. In a world obsessed with youthful, gorgeous—and symmetrical—faces, the one looking back at me from the mirror was more likely to be described as “intriguing.” It was a bit narrow, which actually worked for the cheekbone thing, but not so much for the chin. My lips were standard issue, but my smile was wider on the right side than the left. On top of that, I was probably a bit too thin. I'd always figured I had to stay in tight shape if I was going to endure the debilitating grind of jury work without ruining my health.

Bottom line was, for whatever reason—my looks, my manner, my pushiness—after my first few months on the prosecution staff, my male colleagues stopped including me in their Friday-night plans.

It didn't matter what the lawyers at the office thought about me. I wasn't looking for a relationship with any of them. The problem was … I had no relationship outside the office, either. It's not as if a female prosecuting attorney can cruise the happy hours or start dating a defense attorney.

Close observation of my mother had taught me, from a young age, not to expect a romance-novel version of life when I grew up, but for reasons I hadn't yet plumbed, the only men who ever came on to me were invariably already married.

I sighed, switched off the bathroom light, and took my intriguing self to bed.

 

2

“Okay, folks. That's it for this week.”

Sam Grayson was sitting at the head of our boardroom table; I was on his right. Prosecutors gathered papers and began to drift out.

I started to get up. Sam stopped me.

“Wait, Claire.” Sam called out to one retreating figure, “Perry!”

I settled back into my chair.

Assistant State Attorney Perry Standish was about to exit the room. He turned around. Sam pointed at the chair on his left. Perry reversed course and walked stiff-backed toward us. He was dressed in his usual foppish style, complete with boutonniere. I'd never seen him work in shirtsleeves, except on those rare occasions when he came in on a weekend to prepare a case.

I wasn't the only one who had observed that the man's unshakable self-regard was hardly justified by his conviction rate.

I felt cold eyes sweep over me as he took his seat.

“If this is about the grievance I filed—”

“No. It's about the Whitman trial. Claire hired a jury consultant. You dismissed her!”

Cold eyes switched back to me. “I guess I've been around long enough to know how to pick a jury.”

Sam paused for a second, studying the man's expression. “You think I don't hear the talk, Perry? Defense lawyers calling you Prince Catch-'n-Release?”

“Prince? Really?”

Sam stared at him in straight-faced disbelief. He leaned forward. “They're laughing at you, Perry! Watch my lips!
No plea bargains on Whitman!
This is a full-contact prosecution! It's not just the press who are watching this case. People in positions far above your pay grade and mine are watching. Do your job, and do it well!”

Cold eyes slid back and forth between us. “You're the boss.”

“Yes, I am. And so is Claire.”

Standish stood. He shot me a quick sulfurous look that Sam didn't see, and walked away. My eyes followed him out the door.

“I know what you're thinking,” Sam said quietly.

“What am I thinking?”

“That maybe he'll resign when he loses on that grievance.”

“Will he?”

Sam shook his head. “He'll never resign. He lost his shirt in the market.”

“You'd never know it from the way he dresses,” I said.

Sam chuckled. “That's the thing about mediocrities, Claire. They're always at their best.”

“You could push him out,” I suggested.

“I could. But I'd just be making trouble for both of us.”

“How?”

“His family is well connected in Tallahassee.”

“Then why isn't he in the Attorney General's office? Why is he here?”

“You can go only so far on connections.”

“I get it.” I stood up to go.

“Hang on,” Sam said. “As a matter of interest…”

“What?”

“Why the jury consultant?”

“Groupthink.”

Sam looked puzzled.

“The fastest way to a unanimous verdict is to encourage groupthink,” I explained. “To get that working, it helps to have the right mix of personalities.”

“You're talking about packing the jury with conformists.”

“In a sense. But I've read the studies. It doesn't mean they'll necessarily conform to convict; they can just as easily conform to acquit.”

“Still … it sounds a bit cynical.”

“I know. But like it or not, the defense bar have started doing this. Wade Garrison hired a psychologist from Seattle to help him pick the Capelin jury. It's a question of equality of arms, Sam. If they're doing it, we have to do it.”

“I thought Whitman was a special case. If we start hiring jury consultants for every trial, it's going to become a budget issue.”

“I'm not saying every case. But definitely the big ones. Look at it this way: What we spend on experts, we could save on hung juries and retrials.”

“I don't know.” Sam sighed. “Maybe I'm just getting too old for this job.”

I squeezed his arm. “Come on, now. Don't you quit on me!”

*   *   *

I suppose I could have warned Stirling McCandless about what I was planning to do before he got up on his hind legs and made that big tear-jerking pitch to Judge O'Connor. But one of the first things Sam Grayson had taught me was never to interrupt my opponent when he was making a mistake. And … I wanted to hear McCandless say it. I wanted to hear him repeat the lies his client, Barbara Hauser—former jewelry chain owner and now convicted felon on her own plea—had told him.

So when we entered the courtroom earlier, I'd just nodded to McCandless and taken my seat.

“—and so, Your Honor,” he was saying as he wrapped up a thirty-minute waterspout of distortions, “the regrettable facts are clear: My client is deeply remorseful for the financial loss she has caused to each and every one of her former employees. Although she would dearly wish to make good on those very substantial losses, her grave physical condition makes it virtually impossible for her to pay restitution in the near term, and as the medical reports we have filed with the Court show, she is in no position to serve a custodial sentence of any length, or at all.” He took a long overdue breath and then resumed his bleat. “The traffic accident was not her fault and, coming on the heels of her arrest and public humiliation, can only be viewed today—in these proceedings—as a substantial mitigating factor.”

Stirling laid a theatrically comforting hand on his client's shoulder.

“Judge, in these highly regrettable circumstances, a suspended sentence, with a lengthy probationary period, is really the Court's only viable option.”

Stirling's client sat slumped in her wheelchair, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She looked utterly pathetic. From the moment her daughter rolled her into the courtroom, her posture of defeat and hollow-eyed despair had been on constant display for all to see.

The judge gazed down at the defendant. Plainly, he was affected by what he had heard. The defense had drawn the best judge in the circuit for their case. Evan O'Connor was every inch a gentleman jurist: quietly spoken, even tempered, and scrupulously fair. He was also inclined to err on the low side when it came to sentencing in cases of nonviolent crime. Stirling McCandless knew that, and so did I.

But I knew something else about Judge O'Connor.

He could not tolerate a liar.

The judge's blue eyes turned to me. “Does the State have a reply?”

“Yes, Your Honor. In fact, we have a witness to call.”

McCandless leapt to his feet. “We object, Your Honor! We've had no notice of any witnesses to be called at this hearing!”

“That is correct, Your Honor. I will explain.”

“Who is this witness?” O'Connor asked.

“Your Honor is familiar with Mr. Edward Carlyle, from our office.” I gestured toward the tall, heavyset man who was sitting behind me. One of the first African-Americans to head up an ATF Field Division, Eddie had joined our office after his retirement from the Bureau. He worked just as tirelessly for us as he had for the feds.

“Why should I agree to hear evidence from the State Attorney's Chief Investigator at this stage of the proceedings?”

Eddie reached into an inner pocket of his jacket, removed two DVDs, and passed them to me. I checked the labels, selected one, and held it up for the judge to see.

“The witness will be tendering this surveillance footage of the defendant, showing her working in her backyard, mowing her lawn, moving garden furniture, and weeding her flower beds. This footage was shot over a forty-eight-hour period—” I paused for effect. “—last weekend.”

I heard a general intake of breath and a few muttered expletives from the gallery rows directly behind me, where a number of the defendant's former employees had been hanging on every word. For several years prior to her arrest, their employer had been embezzling from their pension plan contributions. Some had lost thousands of dollars.

I glanced over at Stirling McCandless. His face had gone pale under his health-spa tan, and he looked genuinely stunned. I realized that he had been completely taken in by his client. I shifted my gaze to the woman in the wheelchair. She was glowering at me, obviously torn between maintaining her tragic pose and leaping out of her chair to go for my throat. I placed the second DVD on the corner of my counsel table. “I have a copy of the exhibit for Mr. McCandless.”