Act of God (42 page)

“The cops got Joshua?” Big Dug looked puzzled. “Why? What did he do?”

“I don’t know that he did anything,” Jessup replied. “All I know is they had him in court this morning, testifying at a trial.”

“The Hill House trial?” Big Dug asked.

“Why would you think that?” the investigator asked.

“Because he was there that night, at Hill House,” the behemoth replied. “The night before the bomb went off. I think he saw
the guy who planted it.”

Jessup’s stomach fell. “Is that so?”

“But when the police interviewed him a couple weeks ago, they said he wouldn’t have to testify.”

“Why was that?”

“Because he couldn’t identify the guy,” Big Dug said. “All he really saw was a shadow. He couldn’t be positive it was that
fellow they arrested. The best he could do was say it might be him.”

“Are you sure?” Jessup inquired.

“Sure I’m sure. I showed him the defendant’s picture in the newspaper, and even took him to a bar so he could see the guy
on television. Joshua couldn’t identify him, not for certain.”

The investigator frowned. “I see,” he said.

“What’re the police gonna do with Joshua?”

“Don’t worry, I don’t think they’ll do anything bad to him,”
Jessup said. “They’re probably just keeping track of him until his testimony is over. I expect you’ll see him back here very
soon.”

“It’s my fault, you know,” Big Dug admitted. “I’m the one made him go to the police in the first place. He didn’t want to
go. I promised him they wouldn’t put him in jail. But that’s what they did, isn’t it? They put him in jail. After I promised
him they wouldn’t.”

“I think so,” Jessup said.

“The poor kid, he must be scared to death. And he’ll probably never trust me again, after this. Look, mister, you seem to
be in the know. Do you think you could maybe make sure he’s doing okay? He’s a little slow in the head, you see. He needs
looking after.”

“I’ll do what I can,” the investigator promised, already knowing what he had to do.

Judith Purcell didn’t remember driving home. She didn’t remember getting out of her car, or going into the house. When Tom
Kirby found her, she was sitting on the stairs, in the dark, still in her coat.

“What’s the matter?” he asked in alarm.

She shook her head, as if to clear it. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost six,” he told her. “Where’s Alex?”

“What day is this?”

“What do you mean, what day is this? It’s Tuesday.”

“Then Alex’s at basketball practice. What are you doing here?”

“I left my blue shirt.”

“Oh,” she said. “I didn’t wash it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

What’s wrong, she thought, is my whole life is about to collapse. The vice president of the bank had been very kind, but what
could he do?

“I’m sorry, Ms. Purcell,” he had said, “but your mortgage
payments, well, they haven’t been made in months. We notified you, repeatedly. We tried to help. We warned you this might
happen. We have no choice.”

“It’s nothing,” she told Tom. What was the point in crying on his shoulder? He couldn’t help her. She didn’t know how he made
ends meet, as it was. Whatever it was, when her husband had died so unexpectedly, when her second marriage had fallen apart,
no matter, Judith had always somehow managed to land on her feet. Only this time, she knew there was nothing but quicksand
beneath her.

“Well, if this is nothing,” he said, “I’d hate to see you when it’s something. Talk to me.”

She looked up at him then and sighed. “I’m going to lose my house,” she said.

“What do you mean, lose your house? Why?”

“Because I haven’t been able to pay the mortgage for a while, and the bank’s going to foreclose.”

“How long haven’t you paid the mortgage?”

She shrugged. “Six months.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

“What for?” she replied. “It’s my problem, not yours. Besides, I didn’t think you were in a position to help me.”

“Well, you should have told me anyway,” he insisted. “Who knows? I might have been able to come up with something.”

She smiled wistfully. “For someone who doesn’t want to get too serious, you’re sounding awfully serious, all of a sudden.”

“Look, maybe I don’t have the kind of money you need, but there has to be an answer here,” he said. “Do you own anything of
value that you could take a loan on?”

“Anything of value I might have had is long gone,” she told him.

“What about your friend Dana? She must earn a good living. Couldn’t she lend you some money?”

“She’s been buying my work at twice its market value for years now. I can’t ask her for any more.”

“Well, how about your family?”

“My mother’s done all she can, too,” Judith said, biting her lip to keep it from quivering. “I’m really at the end this time.
And it’s not that I mind for me so much, but I mind so terribly for Alex. Having a useless mother isn’t his fault, and he
shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

“What will you do?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Try to get some kind of job, I guess, although God knows what I’m equipped for. Find a cheap
apartment for us to live in, if I can. I kept thinking, my big commission is right around the corner, you know,” she said
with a catch in her voice. “The one that’ll make my name, and put me over the top.” Tears finally began to roll down her cheeks.
“I’m good at what I do, I really am,” she sobbed. “It isn’t fair.”

“There may be a way,” he said.

“There isn’t,” she said through her tears. “Believe me, there’s nowhere else I can go. I’ve tapped out everyone I know, and
practically put my mother in the poorhouse in the process. I haven’t just robbed Peter, I’ve robbed Paul, too, and now it’s
all caught up with me.”

“There may be a way,” he repeated, a little more emphatically than before, because he could still hear his editor’s voice
over the telephone this morning, telling him enough was enough and it was time to fish or cut bait.

“What?” she asked with a sigh.

“If you had, say, information of some kind that had value to someone else, maybe that someone else might be willing to pay
you for it.”

“Information? What do you mean, information?” she asked, clearly perplexed. “I don’t have any information that anyone would
want to pay me for.”

“Are you sure?”

Judith frowned. “Of course I’m sure. What is it you think I know?”

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug and then his eyes widened. “Wait a minute. What about the trial?”

“What trial? You mean the Hill House trial?”

“Yes.”

“What about it?”

“Well, you’ve got to know that the tabloids are tripping all over themselves to get the inside scoop on it, and you just happen
to know the lead defense attorney, don’t you? Maybe Dana’s told you something juicy you could offer to sell to them.”

“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “Dana doesn’t discuss her cases with me. She doesn’t discuss her cases with anyone.
Not even with Sam.”

“She hasn’t told you even a little something?”

“I assure you, not even a little something.”

“Well then, what about Dana herself?” he suggested. “She hasn’t exactly gone out and promoted herself, when you’d think that’s
exactly what a defense attorney ought to do in this situation.”

“Well, there’s a reason for that,” Judith said, without thinking.

He was instantly alert. “If that’s the case, and the reason is juicy enough,” he suggested smoothly, “I bet one of those tabloids
would pay really big money to hear it.”

“Don’t be silly, I couldn’t do that,” Judith declared. “She’s my best friend. I couldn’t rat out my best friend.”

“Hey, you’re the one with money problems,” he said. “I’m just trying to help here.”

“I know, I’m sorry, but no,” she told him.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “Some of those papers would probably pay a hundred thousand for the right story.”

“Do you mean a hundred thousand dollars?” Judith asked, incredulous.

“At least,” he said. “Maybe even a hundred and fifty. For the right information, of course.”

“I had no idea,” she murmured.

He shrugged. “That’s why I thought, well, you said you’d been friends forever, so it stands to reason you’d know something
about her that would make a good story,” he prompted. “And with that much money, you could probably clean up your debt, and
keep the house for Alex, and maybe even be able to stick with your art a while longer.”

Judith shook her head. “It wouldn’t be right,” she said.

“Okay,” Kirby said, choosing a different strategy and taking her in his arms. “What time does Alex get home?” he murmured
into her hair.

Judith giggled in spite of herself and her predicament. “Any moment now,” she told him. “Can you wait until after dinner?”

Kirby waited, although he knew he was as close to getting what he wanted as he would ever be, and wasn’t about to let it slip
out of his grasp. He dutifully ate the macaroni and cheese, which he had come to loathe, and managed, without much resistance,
to get three glasses of wine into Judith.

When dinner was finally over, she came to him eagerly, and it pleased him that he was able to oblige, because sex was the
last thing on his mind.

“I’m sorry about your money problems,” he said as they lay together afterward. “I didn’t mean to imply that you should betray
a confidence. I was just trying to help.”

“I know,” she murmured dreamily. “And I appreciate your caring so much. God knows, I could use the money. And if it were anyone
but Dana, I might be tempted. But we go back too far.”

“Jeez, now you’ve got
me
curious,” he said with a casual chuckle.

“Well, it’s not that big a deal, really,” she told him. “It’s mostly just the irony of it.”

He yawned as if it didn’t mean everything in the world to him. “What irony?”

“Why, taking this case, of course,” she said. “Dana just plain should never have taken this case.”

“Why not?”

“Well, when I tell you, you’ll understand,” Judith confided with a little giggle, knowing she could trust him without question.

He spent half an hour coaxing all the details out of her, and as soon as he had everything he had come for, he made his escape,
inventing an early job in the morning. Then he was out the door and in his pickup. He forced himself to drive a safe distance
away before he brought the vehicle to a halt and allowed himself a howl of pure animal pleasure.

“Tracking me down on Tuesday night, when I was going to see you on Thursday, anyway?” Al Roberts said, opening the door of
his West Seattle home. “It must be pretty important.”

“If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” Craig Jessup declared.

The telephone in Paul Cotter’s private office, the one that bypassed the main switchboard, rang at nine.

“Glad you’re still there,” said the voice at the other end of the line.

“I was waiting,” Cotter responded. “I had a feeling you’d call tonight.”

“It looks like things are going well.”

“Yes,” the attorney agreed cautiously.

“What?” asked the caller, suddenly alert. “Do you foresee a problem you haven’t told me about?”

“No,” Cotter replied. “But I never like to start the celebration too soon.”

The caller chuckled. “That’s why you’re so good at what you do.”

“I just hope we’ve got everything covered,” Cotter declared.

“Don’t you think you do?”

There was a pause. “Yes,” the attorney said. “But then, you never know when something unexpected will jump up and bite you.”

It was well past midnight before the telephone in the McAuliffes’ cozy Magnolia house rang. Dana was waiting, grabbing the
receiver on the first ring, hoping it hadn’t awakened Sam.

“It’s all right,” Craig Jessup told her. “I’ve got everything we need. You can go to bed now, and sleep like a baby.”

M
r. Clune, I have just a few questions,” Dana began pleasantly, when court resumed on Wednesday morning.

“Joshua,” the witness corrected her, with a trusting smile.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not Mr. Clune,” he said. “I’m just Joshua.”

“Oh, I see, I’m sorry,” Dana said, smiling back. “All right then, Joshua, who was the first person you told about seeing the
delivery man at Hill House?”

“Big Dug,” he replied. “I told Big Dug.”

“Who is Big Dug?”

“He’s my friend.”

“And when you told your friend, what did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. Not right then, anyway.”

“When
did
he say something?”

“It was weeks past that, after that man got hisself arrested,” Joshua replied, nodding at the defendant.

“What did Big Dug say then?”

“He showed me a picture in the newspaper, and asked me if that was the delivery man I saw.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I didn’t know.”

“Why did you say that?”

Joshua shrugged. “Because it wasn’t a very good picture.”

“Then what did Big Dug do?”

“He took me to the bar where we go sometimes, ’cause they let us sit all night and drink one beer, if we want, and he showed
me the man’s picture on the TV.”