Aftershock (26 page)

“I didn’t know that.”

“Nobody would know that. Even in school. That’s one of their rules. They don’t ‘go steady,’ or give girls their school rings or letterman’s jackets. That’s all kid stuff. But MaryLou, she knew.”

“Because she was your sister.”

“Of course. We have a small house, and it’s impossible to hide anything.”

“Still …”

“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Danielle said, in a voice that matched her words. “Last year, she even beat me up for seeing him.”

“Beat you up …?”

“I mean, beat the crap out of me! I had to go to school with such a messed-up face that they even called CPS on my parents.”

“Did CPS find out the reason your sister—”

“CPS didn’t find out anything. I didn’t tell them, even though I should have. You have no idea how mean MaryLou can be. Why mess up my face unless she wanted me to look as ugly as she is? There’s plenty of other places she could have hit me. I mean, where the marks wouldn’t show.”

“She wanted people at school to see the marks?”

“Absolutely.”

“That does sound like jealousy, Danielle. But it’s still a long way short of murder.”

“Well … she wasn’t going to kill
me
. And she sure couldn’t boss Cameron around. She told me that she was going to break us up—me and Cameron—one way or the other. And … and she did just that, didn’t she?” Danielle said, bursting into uncontrollable sobbing.

Maybe she was a better actress than I thought.

I
held up my hand, palm-out, to signal that the audition was over.

Danielle went into the bathroom, leaving the door open slightly. Probably fixing her face, but wanting to make sure she could hear anything I might say.

I pushed the phone’s button, then hit “speed dial” for my personal assistant, cutting out the audio at Franklin’s end by doing so.

“Frankly, I think she’d be perfect. I hate to admit it, but when A.A.’s instinct is right, it’s
really
right. Even if she can’t nail the older sister’s part, it really doesn’t matter.”

Pause, as I pretended to listen. Then: “
Pourquoi?
Well, for one thing, this girl’s a real beauty. I mean,
gorgeous
. And her sister is
apparently twice her size and … well, let’s say ‘unattractive’ would be a compliment to her. If we’re going to docudram this one, the two-roles thing might be too much to pull off.”

I paused, then said,
“Non, cela ne fonctionnerait pas non plus; elle n’est pas bâtie comme un footballeur, si vous voyez ce que je veux dire. Plutôt que la mettre dans une position absurde, il serait préférable qu’on se préoccupe de son engagement. Je veux dire par là que c’est une actrice. Non, je ne sais pas avec qui elle a étudié, mais c’est clair qu’elle connaît son métier. Je vais prendre le dernier avion comme prévu. Ne dites rien à A.A. Pas un mot! Je veux voir sa tête quand il visionnera les essais.”

Deliberately switching to rapid-fire French, so Danielle supposedly would not understand that I was saying how we
had
to sign this prize. And that I couldn’t wait to see the look on A.A.’s face when he saw this footage.

Pause. “That will not be a problem. Yes, she is underage, but her parents are going to sign anything we put in front of them. Yes, yes, I know. But we can always put some financial incentive next to the contract when we ask them to sign.”

W
hen Danielle came out, her face was scrubbed all the way down to innocent.

“Did I do okay?”

“You actually … well, this is how ‘okay’ you did, Danielle. If you can manage to keep this secret for another several weeks, you are going to be a very happy young lady. Will you trust me on that?”

“Of course. I’ve got really good instincts about men, and I can tell you’re someone I can trust. I hope we’ll be … friends, no matter what happens.”

“Well, given my position at the studio, I suspect we will be seeing a lot of each other. But not here.”

“I guess this hotel isn’t anywhere near what you’re used to.”

“Hotel? No, I mean L.A. Because, as I said, if my instincts are correct, that will be your new address by the time school starts in the fall.”

“Really?! But what about the other test? Don’t you have to—?”

“The other test would be … superfluous. It is now clear to me that you could not play both roles. As you pointed out yourself, in fact.”

“Oh.”

“May I drive you home? It’s rather late, and I didn’t see a cab stand anywhere when we checked in.”

“Uh … well, sure. Can you take me to the same place you did last time? Like I said, walking from there is actually easier.”

“Very well,” I said, pushing the button on my phone that would send audio to Franklin. “I’ll take you home and then come back and load the equipment. It should not take more than a few minutes.”

I
don’t know whether Danielle was eager to get on the phone and tell her friends how she’d just been discovered—which is why we’d decided to leave the website in place for now—or whether she was crafty enough to keep it to herself.

Whichever path she chose, we had it covered.

When I got back to Franklin’s suite, the giant was holding his huge head in his meat-hook hands, not ashamed of the tears on his face when he lifted it to respond to my “You okay?”

“She hates her own sister,” Franklin said, his voice damaged by the sadness of deep pain. “And she’s a big liar, too.”

“That’s right, Franklin. Now do you see what I meant when I told you that you could help MaryLou?”

“I … No.” His face flushed. “I know I’m stupid, okay? But I
can’t … I can’t see what … I can’t see how I can help MaryLou, like you said I could.”

“That’s my fault,” I assured him. “Look, you heard Danielle tell lies, right?”

“I sure did.”

“So you could swear she’s a liar—stand up in court and swear it—couldn’t you?”

“Sure! Sure, I could.”

“That’s all we need, son. That might be enough to get MaryLou off, right there.”

“But …”

“What, Franklin?”

“She did … I mean, MaryLou shot those guys, right?”

“Yeah. But it’s not so much
what
she did as
why
she did it.”

“I’m … sorry.”

I knew what he was really saying. And the need to find a way to explain what I’d just told Franklin sliced through the mist in my mind like a surgeon’s scalpel seeking a tumor. It hit me so hard I had to steady my own breathing.

“Danielle’s a liar, right?”

“Right.”

“And what do liars do? They lie.”

“Right.”

“She wasn’t Cameron’s girlfriend—you know that, right?”

“Sure!”

“And Danielle said MaryLou was jealous of her,” I said, treading more carefully now. “But that was a lie, too.”

“It was all a lie. MaryLou’s beautiful. And she’s not gay, either. I took her to the prom.”

“You really like her, don’t you, Franklin?”

“I think I love her.”

“Now, how could you be in love with a lesbian?”

“Right!”

“So that’s another lie. Once a person lies about one thing—in court, I mean—the jury can throw out everything else they say.”

“But she still shot them.” Franklin may have been the size of an ox, but he could give a mule fits in the stubbornness department, too.

“That’s exactly right. But Danielle said there was a
reason
she did that. Remember? That she was jealous of—”

“I get it! I get it now. MaryLou, she
wasn’t
jealous of Danielle, so that couldn’t be why she shot those guys.”

“Perfect! Now, listen, Franklin. You have to keep this a total secret.”

“Sure. But why? I mean, if I can—”

“It’s like football. You need strength, and you need speed. And what else?”

“Timing!”

“That’s it. You nailed it, Franklin. We know MaryLou shot those boys for a reason. And we know it wasn’t because she was jealous of Danielle. So it has to be for another reason.”

“Right.”

“We’re on the trail of that reason. And we’re going to get there. But if we get there too soon …”

“Now I understand! It has to be … timed just right.”

“That’s it’s, son—you got it perfect. Now, help me get all that damn equipment into my car and I’ll run you home.”

“What’s next?”

“Well, I might have to go talk to some of these ‘society’ guys. I wouldn’t want to do that alone. Will you go with me?”

“You’re helping MaryLou. I’ll do whatever you say.”

The kid wasn’t half as dumb as they were taking him for. I’d talk to Dolly about that some other time. But now I had to tell her about how I found the path I’d been looking for … by stumbling over the lies I’d told MaryLou’s psychopath of a “little sister.”

“D
ell, are you serious?”

I just nodded.

“You actually think there’s some kind of ‘syndrome’ for what MaryLou did?”

“There is,” I said, prepared to match Franklin’s stubbornness twice over if I had to. “I’ve seen it myself. Just listen. What if somebody shot me and I almost died?” I said, watching her face. “What if I was in the hospital, all hooked up to machines, and you were watching over me? And, all of a sudden, you saw the man who shot me walking down the hall. What would
you
do?”

“I … know. But Danielle wasn’t raped.”

“How do you know? That’s what those people do. Why else would you have that big red mark at the spot where they hang out? I think everybody knows. The kids, I mean.”

“They … might. I mean, Iris said that girls don’t even report rapes anymore.”

“Like Cameron’s crew had immunity. Safe passage.”

“No. That can’t be.”

“Why not? You’ve been in places where certain people would be above the law … if there’d
been
any law. If I’m so crazy, then tell me something else that explains what that boss SANE nurse told us.”

“I can’t,” she said.

If I’d been part of this Tiger Ko Khai bunch, and I’d seen my Dolly’s face at that moment, I would have gotten as far away as I could, not even saying goodbye to anyone who might know where I was going.

Before I could stop her, Dolly was up and moving, almost knocking Rascal over as she charged to the computer.

“Leave me alone,” is all she said.

I
t was almost four hours before she said another word. When she came down to the basement, she was so sweaty her hair was plastered to her face, and she smelled like she hadn’t been near a shower for weeks. But I recognized the smell. It wasn’t fear, or even anger—it was Warrior’s Perfume.

“Rape Trauma Syndrome” is all she said. Then she slumped forward like there was nothing else in her. I caught her easily, carried her upstairs, laid her down on our bed, and wrote in heavy blue marker, “At lawyer’s. All phones turned off.”

Then I propped the note up where she couldn’t miss it when she opened her eyes.

“You
guard
!” I told Rascal.

“W
e don’t call it ‘self-defense,’ ” Swift said. I had to blink a couple of times to make sure I was looking at the same person. It wasn’t his suit or his haircut; it was like he’d been taking self-respect pills. Even the pig at the desk had asked, “You’re here for Mr. Swift, aren’t you?” as if she really was his receptionist.

“What
do
you call it?”

“Justification.”

“That makes more sense,” I told him. “I’ve met plenty of men who should have been killed, no matter what scale you measured them on. Wouldn’t matter if you shot them in their sleep or in a firefight, getting them dead was the only thing that mattered.”

He gave me a strange look, but not a surprised one. Then he snatched a law book off a shelf behind him. I couldn’t help noticing it was already tabbed with several of those little colored sticky notes.

“I’ll read you the legal language right out of the statute so we can be sure we’re on the same page. Okay …

“Clear enough?”

“Yeah. So, if I thought someone was about to hurt my wife, I could strike first?”

“The key word is ‘imminent.’ So you could strike first only if you actually believed another party was about to attack.”

“A crazy person could ‘believe’ anything.”

“It still has to be a
reasonable
belief, not some delusion. Listen to this:

“See?”

“So, even if I
reasonably
believed someone was going to slap my wife, I couldn’t shoot them in the head.”

“No. The law requires this ‘reasonable’ standard, true, but it is never defined. So what’s ‘reasonable’ under the circumstances, that’s up to a jury. What’s reasonable to a jury in New York might not seem so reasonable to a jury in Dallas. That’s why there’s such state-specific case law on the subject. Here …

“What’s the difference?”

“I … I don’t believe I understand what you’re asking.”

“That’s because I don’t know what I’m doing, trying to swim in your pool. I meant, what’s the difference between these ‘statutes’ and ‘case law’?”

“Ah, okay. A statute is the law as the legislature wrote it. Those are just words. Case law is how the appellate courts
interpret
those words. And since only the defense can appeal—”

“Wait! So, if a jury was to cut MaryLou loose, no matter how bogus their reason, there’s nothing the law could do about it?”

“Ask O.J.,” he said. When he saw my blank look, he said, “That’s absolutely correct. There’s even a concept known as ‘jury nullification.’ That’s when a jury finds a defendant innocent even though there’s no way he actually could
be
innocent. This was common in many of the racial murders in the South in the fifties and sixties. In fact, that probably did more to bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act than any other kind of advocacy could.”