Aftershock (7 page)

“You know why?”

“I don’t have a clue. I mean, teenage girls get into fights over nothing, but MaryLou is twice Danielle’s size, and Danielle was only in middle school then. Some of the clique girls tried to rumor it as all about jealousy, but that never took root.”

“Why would MaryLou be jealous of her kid sister?”

“Well, supposedly, it was because Danielle’s so much smarter. I mean, she’s already skipped two years in school. And she’s very cute, too. Doesn’t look anywhere near her age … but that happens a lot more now than it used to.”

“Wait! What happens?”

“Puberty, Dell. It’s not even a little bit surprising when a ten-year-old starts menstruating. And they … develop right along with it.”

“Oh.”

“And MaryLou, well, you’ve met her, Dell. She isn’t what you’d call … pretty. She’s bigger than most of the boys, too.”

“Ever happen again? Her beating up her sister, I mean.”

“No. I would have heard if it did.”

I nodded agreement—I knew what Dolly was saying was true. It’s not just that this is such a small town, it’s that the pipeline runs right through our house.

“Dell, do you think …? I mean, do you think MaryLou was on some kind of drug?”

“Me? No. A lawyer might, though. There’s no other way to beat this case except some kind of temporary insanity, right?”

“Well, she must have been on
something
.”

“No. She went in there with a job to do, and she did it.”

“How can you possibly say that?”

“Dolly … Dolly, you know what I did. What I did my whole life, before I gave it all up.”

“We don’t talk about that.”

“And we don’t have to now, either. But you asked me—remember?—how could I know that she was on a mission, how could I know that once it was over nothing much else mattered to her?”

“But that’s like saying she meant to do it.”

“She did. And she got it done. That’s why nothing else matters to her anymore.”

“It matters to me, Dell. Maybe I don’t know what actually happened. But, whatever it was, all that matters is what happens to MaryLou now. And what is that going to be?”

“I don’t know. Not yet, anyway.”

“Dell, you’re scaring me.”

“That’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do. How would you expect me to help MaryLou? Go to law school?”

“You don’t have to talk to me like that!”

“Dolly, you want me to try and do something, or you don’t. If you do, I will. If you don’t, I won’t. But if you want me to help, you can’t help
me
, understand?”

I couldn’t help thinking how truly beautiful she was. From the moment I met her, Dolly’s face was always surrounded by a soft, rose-colored kind of light. I thought that aura was her own kind of perimeter. I knew her grayish eyes could go from love’s soft glow to laser strikes in a blink. But I’d never seen this kind of glow that was always around her change colors before. Now it looked like a darkening evening sky, the way it gets just before the thunderbolts come.

“I couldn’t stand to lose you, Dell.”

“You won’t. If it gets ugly, I’ll just walk away. And nobody will know I’ve ever been wherever I walk away from.”

“But MaryLou—”

“She’s yours, not mine.”

Dolly just sat there for a few minutes. Then she reached out and took my hand.

“She
is
mine. But if there was any risk to you, I’d walk away, too, Dell. I’ll do it right now, if you say so.”

I squeezed her hand. Just hard enough so she’d know we had a deal.

M
onday, the courtroom was like the last bus out of a town facing a hurricane. It wasn’t big enough to hold all the people who were there when it opened, never mind those who kept trying to get in.

I scanned them quickly, but it looked like a cross section of the town. Nobody stood out. Nobody looked at MaryLou with what I’d been watching for.

Dolly squeezed my hand twice: “No.” So MaryLou’s parents weren’t anywhere to be seen.

MaryLou herself was sitting at a table close to the judge’s perch, a man I didn’t know next to her. I could see him whispering to her, more and more urgently, but she never so much as turned her head in his direction.

A good soldier
, I thought to myself.
Takes it in, acts it out
.

A bailiff told everyone to quiet down and stand up, but he was more asking than telling. And nobody was willing to give up their seat, anyway.

The judge came in. Sat down. Made an imperious little motion with his hand. The bailiff told everyone to be seated, as if they weren’t doing that already.

I guess that second order didn’t apply to MaryLou, or the man next to her. Or the guy I guessed was the DA at the other table.
He looked more nervous than anyone else. His fat face was already greasy with sweat.

The judge started talking. I tuned him out so I could focus on faces. But I refocused on him when I heard his tone change.

“Counsel,” he said to the man standing next to MaryLou, “are you telling this court that your client refuses to enter a plea?”

“She refuses to speak at all, Your Honor.”

“Is that correct, young lady?”

MaryLou didn’t move.

“Are you dissatisfied with your representation?”

MaryLou stood like a statue.

“Counsel?”

“Your Honor, under the circumstances, I have no choice but to move for a—”

“I don’t want to hear any motions until I hear a plea, counsel.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Silence took over. The judge broke it: “Very well, as defendant prefers to stand mute, the court will enter a not-guilty plea on her behalf. Additionally, in view of the gravity of the charges, the defendant will be remanded without bail.”

A couple of female court officers bracketed MaryLou as they walked her out a side door.
Probably a tunnel straight into the jail
, I thought. I filed that away. I couldn’t expect any of the guards to give me a tour, but maybe there were architectural blueprints still around—the jail itself looked as if it had been built fairly recently.

O
utside, I watched from the parking lot. If there were any reporters around, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t see anyone asking questions.

I caught up with the man who’d been standing next to MaryLou as he walked out the same door I had. He was wearing “I’m from around here” clothes: some kind of corduroy jacket, a white
shirt, and a red tie with white whales on it. Carrying something that looked like a canvas courier’s bag on a strap over one shoulder. Maybe thirty-five years old.

“Excuse me,” I said, coming at him from the side. “Could I have a couple of minutes of your time?”

“Who are you?”

“A friend of MaryLou’s. I have some information that might be helpful to you.”

“Well?” he said, hands on hips.

“She won’t talk to you because you’ve been appointed by the state. And it’s the state that’s prosecuting her.”

“How do you know this?”

“Like I said, I’m a friend.”

“Well,” he said, a little smirk on his face, “that’s her choice. But unless she’s prepared to hire private counsel, I’ll be the one who—”

“She
is
prepared to hire private counsel. That’s why I’m here.”

“Fine. Then have her new—”

“She doesn’t want new counsel.”

“She hasn’t got a choice about that. Unless she wants to represent herself,” he said, doubling up on the smirk.

“I guess I’m not making myself clear,” I said, ignoring the guy’s posturing. “She wants you to be her lawyer, but she wants you to be working for her, not for the state.”

“I don’t work for the state,” he lectured. “The state pays me to represent her because any person charged with a crime is entitled to counsel, even if they’re indigent. Given the girl’s age—she’s legally an adult, but hardly expected to have any income—the court assumed indigence. That’s why I was assigned.”

“I’d feel better if you were hired, instead.”

“Are you saying you want to hire me? I assure you, whoever you are, that I’ll work just as hard no matter who pays me.”

I liked him for saying that, but I didn’t get all carried away with it.

“I’m sure that’s absolutely true. But … well, you know how kids are.”

“Yes. But the state pays—”

“I know what the state pays,” I told him. “I wouldn’t insult you by offering the same kind of slave wages.”

“Are you saying—?”

“What I’m saying is”—I cut him off—“could we go to your office and talk?” As I spoke, I compressed the air between us, so I could walk him farther away from the courthouse but still let him think he was leading me.

H
is office was in a one-story building clad in fake-wood light-blue siding. There were the names of a few other lawyers as well as his own—Bradley L. Swift—on a sign that had a few empty slots below the filled ones.

He asked the piggish woman at the front desk if there had been any calls. She seemed to take some pleasure from telling him no. My guess was that she worked for the landlord, not the lawyer.

His personal office was decent-sized. Computer with a small flat screen, fax machine, two-line cordless phone sitting in a cradle. Small reddish cloth sofa against one wall, pair of wood chairs on the client side of his desk. His own chair was a match to the sofa.

I sat across from him. Before he could start talking, I put five thousand in hundreds on his desk. That shut his mouth quicker than a leveled pistol would have done.

“I don’t know much about criminal law,” I told him. “I know you don’t get paid by the hour. The way I figure it, a case like this, it would have to cost at least twenty-five thousand. If I’m right, then there’s your retainer. I’ll pay you the rest as we go along, the same way as this.”

He swept the cash into a drawer of his desk like he was hiding evidence of a crime he was guilty of. A serious one.

“That is a fair fee for a case this complex,” he said, playing it like he pulled in that kind of cash all the time, but having a little trouble with his voice. “Who should I make the receipt out to?”

I waved my hand, showing him I didn’t want one. That killed any interest he had in knowing my name.

“You’re retained now?”

“Certainly. I’ll notify the court and—”

“I don’t care about that. I just wanted to make sure I understood how things work.”

“Work?”

“I read somewhere that you don’t need a private investigator’s license so long as you’re working for a lawyer. Is that true?”

“I … That’s something I’d have to check for myself, frankly. Using private investigators is kind of rare around here.”

“The state won’t pay for them?”

“Well, in some cases, maybe. In fact, one like this, they might very well do so.”

“Can you look it up?”

“Look what up?”

“Whether I could be your private investigator even though I don’t have a license.”

“Oh. Yes, I can do that. Just give me a minute.”

I couldn’t see what he called up on his computer screen, but I figured it wouldn’t matter.

“Yes,” he said, swinging back to face me. “I’ll need your name, of course. In case you have to testify or—”

“I won’t be testifying. But I will be with you when you go back and visit MaryLou this afternoon.” I put an Oregon driver’s license on his desk. “My name is Jackson. Adelbert B. Jackson. Okay?”

He looked at his watch, like he had a lot of pressing business to attend to.

“How about two o’clock? Would that work for you?”

“Yes. And after that visit, I could go back anytime and see MaryLou on my own, right? Working as your investigator, I mean.”

“Certainly, if that’s what you want.”

“What I want is to know if they’ve got a special place for lawyers to meet with their clients. And if it’s wired.”

“There
are
attorney-client rooms. But this isn’t some television show. No looking through one-way glass walls, no hidden cameras, nothing like that. Still, there
is
one thing you should know: if an inmate makes a call on one of the jail phones, those calls
are
recorded. That’s no secret—there’s a big sign right above the phones.”

“You’re sure? Bet-your-life sure?”

His complexion went white as he nodded agreement. I could see my question had spooked him, so I knew he’d have the correct-and-checked answers to my questions by two that afternoon.

“No comment,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s all you have to say about this case. To reporters, to anyone writing a book, to someone in a bar … to anyone at all.”

“Of course,” he assured me.

“And by the time we meet this afternoon, can you have your secretary type up something on your letterhead that says I’m working for you?”

“Absolutely,” he said. If I was dumb enough to think he had a secretary, that was fine with him.

A
s I drove away from where I’d parked, I could see TV buses disgorging all kinds of equipment. One even had a big satellite dish assembled. The on-camera people were inside, getting
their makeup straight. My guess was that their timing had been off—they thought that MaryLou’s appearance wasn’t going to happen until later, and that it would take a lot longer than it already had.

Dolly was there when I got home. I told her what I’d done.

“That’s perfect, Dell. What did you think of her lawyer?”

“The only thing I couldn’t understand about him was his haircut. What do you call it when women wear their hair down over their forehead? Like bangs, but there’s a name for it.”

“I think you mean a pageboy. It was a popular hairstyle years ago, but you don’t see them much on girls anymore.”

“On a man?”

“Well, actually, you’d see more of that style on men than women … at least in this part of the country.”

“Huh.”

“Well, what else? About the lawyer, I mean.”

“There’s nothing else. He’s only got to be able to let me move around. Any problems, I’ll be able to pull out a letter on his office stationery. If it turns out there’s actually going to be a trial, we’ll get someone else.”

“All right, honey. So when do you start?”

“Two this afternoon. I’m meeting him at the jail, and he’ll get me inside with him to talk to MaryLou.”