Before I Sleep (20 page)

“He's an alcoholic,” Carey told the woman. “He's in a treatment center right now, and I can tell you he doesn't have a dime to his name.”

“He's paying you, isn't he?”

“I'm doing this pro bono.”

“Oh.” Silence.

“I understand you've confiscated some of his property. A fishing boat, in fact.”

“We'll have to auction it. I doubt we'll get that much for it.”

Carey was well aware that these auctions didn't bring full value, so she didn't argue. “Well, you can't get blood from a stone. The man is ill and broke. I'm sure we can negotiate something.”

“I'll have to talk to my supervisor.”

“You do that.”

After she hung up, Carey felt a little better. At least she had managed to accomplish something to help someone.

Sitting there, listening to the sounds of the radio station all around her, it suddenly struck her that it had been a very long time since she had felt she had helped anyone, except for her work with Legal Aid. Talk radio sure didn't give her the feeling that she was doing any good for the world. It didn't even give her the feeling that she was justifying her existence.

Whoa there,
she told herself sharply. This was not a good way to think.

She had gone to law school with all kinds of idealistic notions and had managed to preserve them until working as a prosecutor had uprooted them one by one, leaving her cynical and wounded. Everybody had an ax to grind, and everybody lied, and all too often the cops weren't any better than the perps. She had watched political considerations be weighed into decisions that should have been made solely on the basis of the law. She had watched judges do back flips and act like prosecution stooges even though it meant ignoring the law or believing blatant lies simply because they had wanted to be reelected and feared being thought soft on crime.

And in the end, she had come out of the process feeling sullied and raw. The good guys, it seemed, were motivated by the same self-interest that the bad guys were. And while the bad guys might steal and rob and rape, the good guys could take away people's lives by locking them up or killing them. In the end, she had found the law to be almost as dirty as the criminals it was trying to punish.

But it had been five years, and during those five years, she had found satisfaction in her work with Legal Aid. The people who came to her there had relatively minor problems—divorces, landlord disputes, bankruptcies, employment problems—but the problems had been overwhelming them, and she had been able to offer an invaluable service. And in the process, some of her wounds had healed.

But the last thing she wanted to do was let go of the protective shell of cynicism that she had built. It was all that stood between her and the pain she had felt when she realized that there was no room for idealism in the world, that horse trading was the bottom line for nearly everyone.

There were exceptions of course, and she found herself remembering them now. Judge Greg Hanson, for one. He was considered a maverick and a wild card by the state at-$$$orneys, but he was a man who could be counted on to stand up for the law. And there had been a couple of prosecutors who'd been around long enough to be able to stand up to the political pressures that weighed so heavily on their boss, the State Attorney.

And there had been Evan Sinclair, who had surprised her one day in court. A decree had come down from the higher-ups that the state's lawyers were not under any circumstances to accept downward departures from sentencing guidelines set by the legislature. The order had come through as the result of a newspaper investigative report that had recorded the percentage of downward departures being allowed in the county.

The departures hadn't really been all that shocking. Every case, after all, had its own set of facts, and judges were trying to weigh the threat to the public in their sentencing decisions, especially when prisons were crowded. Some people, it was reasonably felt, were not likely to err again, or to be a threat to anyone else. But the stats looked bad in the paper, so the prosecutors were ordered to oppose downward departures.

Then had come the case of a man who had rented a gold necklace from a rent-to-own place. He had pawned the necklace in the full expectation of being able to continue making his payments on it, and being able to get it out of hock within a week.

Unfortunately, he had been arrested for getting into a brawl in defense of his sister before he could recover the necklace. He didn't get out of jail again for three and a half years.

He was charged by the state for theft of the necklace, even though the rent-to-own place got the necklace back from the pawn shop for a hundred dollars. The man had been out of jail for six months when the cops picked him up on the necklace charge. He scraped the money together, and paid the rental company everything he owed them, but the state asked for twelve years anyway, because the score on his rap sheet demanded it.

The defense attorney made a persuasive argument for a downward departure, pointing out that what had happened had been beyond the defendant's control, and that the defendant was making large strides in getting his life together, was working full-time, paying child support, and had paid full restitution to the rental company.

The judge had looked at Evan, who was representing the case for the state, and asked what he thought of a downward departure.

Evan could have made an argument for twelve years as his bosses would have expected. Pawning the necklace had been a violation of the rental agreement, even if the defendant hadn't realized it. But instead all Evan had said was, “Your honor, the state is not permitted to agree to a downward departure.”

It was as good as saying he would have, if he could have. Carey, who had felt that the prosecution was pointless once restitution had been made, given the facts of the case, had been surprised and pleased by what Evan had done.

Nor had the judge misinterpreted him. “I cannot,” said Judge Greg Hanson, “in good conscience sentence this man to twelve years based on these facts.”

So sometimes it did work right. And at times it occurred to her that if all the idealistic attorneys bailed out of the system, then only self-interest would remain. Sometimes she felt uneasy, as if she had betrayed a trust.

But she didn't want to think about that now. It was just a way to avoid thinking about Harry Downs and John William Otis.

She could deal with the hash she had made of her own life later. Right now, she had to save a man from death row.

She had a friend at the newspaper who occasionally fed her tidbits to use on her show. It was a two-way street, though, and Sally Dyer never forgot it.

“Yeah, I could get you everything from the morgue on Otis,” Sally said, her voice hoarse from years of smoking. “What's in it for me?”

“Maybe an inside track on who killed Harry Downs.”

Sally's voice sharpened. “What do you know about that?”

“Not much just yet. But there may be a link, Sally. I need to check it out. Word is, Harry was slashed to death. And he was lead prosecutor on the Otis trial.”

“A lot of people could have wanted to slash Harry,” Sally said, and coughed. “Christ Carey, the man put some really tough dudes away.”

“But the method may have been the same as in the Kline case. That's a little coincidental, don't you think?”

“Maybe. Do you know that for sure?”

“Not until the M.E. prelim is in. But for now, we've got two weeks until the Otis execution. I can't afford to wait for anything.”

“You've sure been stirring up the stew on that, haven't you.” Sally thought a moment. Carey could hear her pencil tapping nervously. “Okay, I'll do it. What exactly do you want?”

“Everything where there's a mention of John William Otis.”

“That ought to be a trailerful or two.”

“All the way back to his first murder trial, if you can get it.”

“They're going to want to fire me in the morgue. Okay. Let me see what I can do. If I get it on floppy, can you read it?”

“I've got a laptop.”

“Okay then. That might make things easier. Let me get on it.”

“If necessary, I'll come over there and read everything, but I could sure work a lot faster if I could do it in every free moment.”

“I figured that out already.” Sally gave a dry laugh. “Why do I think you've got a tiger by the tail?”

“Time will tell.”

“I get first dibs.”

“Always.”

And after that call, Carey felt a whole lot better—until she started thinking about poor Harry Downs again. Thinking of him drove her out back to smoke the first cigarette she had had in days.

Harry might have been a son of a bitch, but he hadn't deserved to die.

Gil pulled the earphones off his head and switched the tape player off. “Interesting. Especially the part about the nightgown.”

“That's what I thought,” Seamus agreed. He felt as if he were viewing the world from the bottom of a swimming pool, and his brain was full of cotton. “Carey noticed the similarity first. Linda Kline was wearing a pink silk nightgown, too.”

“Shit.” Gil rubbed his chin wearily. “It's hard to call it a coincidence when Summers didn't own the nightgown that was slashed.”

“Yup.”

“But that still doesn't mean this guy did the Klines. Maybe he just researched the case. That would even cover the connection between Summers and Downs and Otis.”

“I know.”

Gil reached for his coffee and grimaced when he found that it was cold. “Well, let's pull the Otis file anyway. No stone unturned, and all that.”

“I've already requested it.”

Gil tipped his chair back and looked up at the ceiling. “This kind of puts the pressure on.”

Seamus nodded and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and fingers of his right hand. He usually did better than this on a few hours of sleep, but for some reason his brain was refusing to make connections without a lot of difficulty.

“Look,” said Gil. “I don't make a habit of mother-henning, but get your ass home and get some sleep. We've got that interview tonight on the Mayberry murder, and it would be a great help if you were awake.”

“I want to wait for the prelim.” Among his messages this morning had been one from the M.E. promising a preliminary report by late this afternoon on the Downs killing.

“I'll get it and bring it with me tonight. A couple of hours isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference, and you know it.”

Seamus was past arguing. For whatever reason, he was on the edge of hallucinating. “Yeah, all right. See you at seven.”

And all the way home, he tried not to feel guilty about all the cases on his desk, because Gil was right; he was next to useless in his present state.

And he was next to useless because he hadn't really gotten much shut-eye this morning. Lying next to Carey had made it impossible for him to sleep soundly. Every one of his senses had been acutely aware of her.

Shit. What he really needed was some kind of twelve-step program for people who were addicted to misery. God knew, he wasn't any good at breaking the habit himself. Like this morning. Why in the hell had he shared Carissa's bed? Even with covers and clothing between them, it had been an asinine thing to do, like picking at a scab on a barely healed wound.

It was hardly any surprise that he felt like he was bleeding from his soul all the time.

And that, he told himself, was a very sick state of mind.

He slept until five-thirty. The September sun was still high, bright and hot, but in the shade of the live oaks that sheltered his house, he felt removed from the steaming world outside. Looking out his bedroom window, he saw shimmering heat waves rising from the pavement of the street, but they didn't reach into the shadows around his house.

Nothing reached into the shadows around his house.

He headed for the kitchen to make some coffee, and heard the air-conditioning click on. Moments later, cool air was stirring the warm, heavy air inside. He paused under one of the ducts, letting the chilly air wash over him until he felt more awake.

In the kitchen, he started the coffeemaker and hunted up some day-old bagels and a tub of cream cheese, all the while trying not to look out the back window.

His backyard had been a no-man's-land since his wife had hanged herself from the oak out back. He wouldn't even mow the grass anymore, but paid a company to come and take care of it every week.

But somehow, with a bagel in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, he found himself standing at the kitchen sink, staring right out at that damn tree. He ought to have it cut down. For seven years he'd been telling himself to get rid of the thing, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. It was like a hair shirt, to remind him of his sins and failings.

He couldn't have found words to explain to anyone why he felt that he needed the tree as a reminder. It wasn't as if he would ever forget the awful events of that couple of weeks, or forget his part in them. Nor was it likely that if he didn't see the tree for a while, he might actually go a day without remembering.

He stood now looking at it, hating it, and admitting that a healthy person would simply have cut the damn thing down—or moved to another house.

Muttering a curse, he turned his back on the window and tried to eat his bagel. Even with cream cheese it seemed too dry, and wanted to stick in his throat. He washed it down with scalding coffee, accepting the discomfort as his due.

His wife, Mary, had been a beautiful, vivacious young woman. Somewhere in this house of pain, he had photo albums full of pictures of Mary, full of pictures of their daughter, Seana. He wasn't sure why he kept them, because he
was
sure he'd never be able to look at them again. He had no one to pass them on to, now that his only child was dead. Somehow he had come to a point in life where all the family he had was his father. And Mary had never had any family at all.

They had tried to build that dream family, the two of them. Maybe they had expected too much. Maybe that was why neither of them had been able to deal with the reality of tragedy. He sure wasn't dealing with it, even now, and Mary hadn't been able to deal with it at all. Sometimes he even had the stupid idea that he continued to draw breath only so that he could experience the suffering that was his due.