Glass House (14 page)

He put his pen down. He stacked his
remaining papers in a rough pile. For a moment they thought he’d
forgotten about that other question. For that second, Megan and
Waldoch both believed McCallum was simply packing up for the break
and would leave without asking anything more at all. Then he
spoke.

“Why would your company have hired someone
like that?”

Waldoch answered before Megan could cut him
off.

“Samuel Chilcott didn’t work for DMW,” he
said. “He worked for me. Personally.”

“For you personally.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’m sure that makes it better.”

Megan opened her mouth to object.

“Strike it,” McCallum said. He was already
up and heading for the door.

_______________

“What the fuck is this?”

Megan’s face was stony and hard, her lips
down at the corners, the words spitting out between them.

“No screwing with me. Remember? No bullshit.
No shorting the facts.”

Waldoch stood at the window in the
conference room. It was a duplicate of the room where the
deposition was being taken down the hall. Same view, same
furniture, same lights. No people but Megan and her client. He was
staring out at the street, watching the cars as they edged along
two stories below.

“Seventeen thousand dollars,” Megan said.
“You said that sounded like the right figure.”

“I said
perhaps
.”

“Perhaps? So that’s okay, then. It’s only
perhaps
seventeen thousand dollars.”

Nothing from Waldoch.

“
Seventeen thousand dollars
,
Jeremy!”

He sighed. He rubbed at his face as though
suddenly tired. He didn’t turn to her when he spoke. “You’re
overreacting.”

“This isn’t overreaction. This is the
right
reaction. You sat in that room –” Megan stopped
herself. “Look at me.”

For a long moment, Waldoch’s head moved
nowhere, other than slowly from side to side as he tracked the
traffic. He slipped his hands into his pockets. He shrugged his
shoulders slightly.

“Look at me,” Megan repeated. Waldoch turned
around. He sat against the window sill.

“You’re angry,” he said.

“Angry isn’t the word.”

“What is?”

“Furious might fit. Pissed off. Frustrated.
Skeptical.”

“Skeptical of what?”

“You. I’m skeptical of whatever you’ve
offered as the truth each and every time you’ve sat in front of me
and spun out your version of the facts.”

“I didn’t lie in that room today.”

“I was assuming you didn’t, since this was
far worse than any lie you could have dreamed up.”

“I was supposed to tell the truth,
and I –”

“I know what you did. I know what your
testimony was. You said you gave Kathy Landry earrings. Hell, you
testified under sworn
oath
you gave her earrings. Earrings
you apparently ended up having re-collected by a felon. And that
doesn’t even begin to touch Lora Alexander and a necklace I’ve
never heard of.”

“I didn’t admit to the felon part.”

“I guess these things are all fine then,”
Megan said. “But I assume you do still realize that entirely aside
from what you call the
felon part
, the rest of the testimony
you just gave is a completely different version of the truth than
the one you told me a few days ago. You do remember telling me you
didn’t give Landry anything, don’t you?”

“That wasn’t true. This was.”

“Then you should feel free to jump in with
any explanations you’d like to offer on why it took till now for
you to figure what really happened, on an issue that seems not too
complicated to get right the first time out.”

“I took a calculated risk they wouldn’t
bring up the gifts.”

“Wouldn’t bring them up?
Wouldn’t bring
them up?
”

Megan’s expression was all disbelief and
astonishment. “You gave a woman seventeen thousand dollars’ worth
of jewelry. That woman is suing you. She says you had a
relationship. How could you think a gift like that wouldn’t come
up?”

Waldoch came away from the window. He moved
around the table and stepped up beside Megan.

“I haven’t changed my story under oath,” he
told her. His face was only inches away. “The information I
testified to is the information I would have had to give, even if
I’d told you about the earrings before.”

“Jeremy, you changed your story with
me
.”

“I did,” he said, nodding. “I took a risk
that he wouldn’t ask, but when he did, I told the truth, and that
was a change from what I’d told you. But what if I
had
told
you about the earrings? What then, Megan? Would you even have been
here today, sitting in that room?”

She didn’t try to find the answer to that.
“That’s hardly the issue,” she told him. “You let me think you’d
say one thing, but I wound up listening to you say another.”

“And you think that colors everything I told
you. You think everything I’ve said is a lie because of that. Is
that it?”

“Shouldn’t I think those things?”

“I didn’t have sex with Kathleen
Landry.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“It’s not important what you believe, Megan.
Remember? It’s only important what you can prove. Or so you’ve told
me.”

Megan collected a pad and document from the
table. She tucked them under her arm. “You’re not giving me great
assurances that I’ll be able to prove you’re anything but a
liar.”

“I’m not a liar. I didn’t have sex with her.
I didn’t fire her when some supposed relationship went bad.”

“Yeah?” Megan was at the door, Waldoch
slowly following behind her. “Seventeen thousand dollars’ worth of
jewelry might just suggest you did.” Her hand was on the knob,
fingers tight around it, as though she could transfer the stress
and anger she felt by touch alone, like a spark jumping to metal.
She didn’t open it yet.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“Where are what?”

“The earrings. Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lost track of those, huh?”

“You heard me in there. I don’t have the
slightest clue on whether Sam Chilcott took those.”

“I heard it all right,” Megan said. Her hand
lingered on the knob, not moving. “I should withdraw.”

“You can’t.” Waldoch waited. She could feel
his closeness, could smell his careful breath and expensive
cologne. “You’re fresh in, and you’re in too late. The judge won’t
let you leave now. No one would let you out now.”

“You sound happy about that.”

Waldoch could have kissed her he was so
near. “I’m happy I finally have the attorney I wanted. If that’s
what you’re suggesting, then it’s certainly true.”

Megan’s hand loosened. Her shoulders, high
and tense, slipped a fraction. She looked at Waldoch. Studied his
face, with its steeply sloped nose and vague, muddy, ambiguous
eyes. His build, broad and sturdy on top but seemingly thin and
fragile in the middle. The uncut, dishwater hair that contrasted
with the perfectly-fitted three thousand dollar suit.

“First,” she said, “back off me.” Her words
were cool, calm, and level. Her gaze never left Waldoch as he
hesitated, smiled, and stepped back.

“Second,” she said when he did, “you let me
know if there’s more shit waiting for me, and you let me know it
before
it flies.”

Waldoch nodded. “And is there a third?”

“No more surprises,” Megan told him.
“Because you’ve filled your quota for them.”

A
Call to Saifee

“I heard from Neria. I’ve asked her to call
you.”

“She already did,” Saifee said. “She tells
me you want to meet in Cape Town. I assume you’re looking to get
into the safe house there, which makes it sound like you’re
planning to settle in and focus on Laurentian.”

“She tell you about the holding cell?”

“Yes.”

“You think she’s right? Is that where they
killed Anthony?”

“I’m not in the right position at the mine
to have seen it or come across it. But it could be.”

“It’s not enough.”

“No, it’s not. There’s word of more, though.
Something different, but still potentially valuable to us.”

“Something for the Bureau?”

“Laurentian is planning a move,” Saifee
replied. “I’ve only heard bits and pieces, and the timing is tight
enough that I won’t hear more until things start happening. But it
may be enough for SAPS to step up, depending on how it plays out.
And if SAPS does that, we might have the chance to find out more
about Anthony and the others. We might find out about that
room.”

“How long?”

“Twenty-four hours?”

“Learn what you can,” Hanley said. “Make it
to Cape Town afterward. We’ll see where we are then.”

Windows

The
Tango

He swore they’d learn to tango. On their
honeymoon, Megan and Benjamin were walking on an evening far warmer
than this one, up off the beach and into the town in South
Carolina. The memory she still held of the two of them in that
moment seemed impossible. Full of things that never came to be.

Megan had been wearing a white sundress, its
hem stitched with lace and dusted with sand from their walk. One
hand was filled with her sandals, the other one switching between
holding Benjamin’s arm and catching the wide-brimmed straw hat that
kept threatening to jump from her head and fly away. A breeze was
puffing in time to the waves, and the hat brim flipped and the
dress hem swayed with it, back and forth as the two of them chatted
softly and felt and smelled the air off the ocean.

They could see the lights before they even
got close. A park was a block or two in from the beach, across a
busy two-lane and under a clutch of palmettos that sheltered the
fringes of a crowd. Christmas lights hung in the trees, dangling on
strings like icicles and stretching across open spaces like thin,
pin-pointed strands of webs.

There was a gazebo in the middle and tables
and chairs at its edges, all in picket-fence white. The people were
dancing in between, a collection of them swaying from side to side
and spinning from front to back. They were in white, too –
white lights from the trees, white candles on white tables,
surrounded by white chairs and swarmed by people in white
clothes.

“Look,” Benjamin had said. He pointed. They
could both hear the music by that time. The strains of a string
quartet, playing a simple tango that matched the waving motion of
the people, with the notes floating louder and softer, depending on
the breeze.

Megan slipped her sandals on. They crossed
the street and came to the park. Standing to the side, they watched
the people from this new vantage point, their eyes fixed on them,
like children watching a lighted parade.

“Do you want to dance?” he said.

_______________

“
Do you want to dance?”

“
It’s a private party, Ben. I don’t think
we’re invited.” Megan giggled guiltily at the idea. She was a rule
follower. Ben always said he loved that about her, even as he shook
his head when saying it.

“
We don’t have to be invited. We’ll just
… go.”

“
We’ll just go and … what?”

“
And dance.”

“
I don’t tango. We don’t tango.”

“
Sure we do. And what we don’t know,
we’ll learn.”

Her guilty smile again. She was weighing the
idea, trying to figure out if she had the nerve to crash the party
and join the people in white.

“
Here,” she finally said. She pulled him
a step away from the crowd, farther back into the shadows at the
edge, where the light from the strung palmettos only threatened to
go.

“
Here?” He was grinning himself now.
“Really?”

Megan nodded.

“
It’s a start,” he said. He took her
hands, he built a measured distance, and he caught her eyes in his.
They moved into the salida, the simple, pacing and turning, basic
steps.

She wasn’t right, exactly. They did know the
tango. A little of it anyway, learned in quick lessons before their
wedding. It was just that they danced it disastrously.

Megan stepped on Ben’s feet, then he on
hers. Their legs caught twice, nearly tossing them to the ground,
and they tipped with a laugh before righting themselves. Megan gave
a very unladylike snort, and they laughed harder. She lifted a hand
to her nose, and he wrapped his arms around her. They stepped into
a corner, out of the light, where they could hear the music but see
no one else.

“
We’ll practice,” Ben said over their
laughter.

“
We’ll need to.”

“
I’m serious. We’ll practice every day if
we have to, and we’ll figure this out. You’ll quit that horrible
job where you defend all those horrible people you don’t like, and
we’ll go on the World Tango Circuit.”

“
There’s a World Tango Circuit?”

“
I’ve no idea.”

“
But I’ll quit my job.”

“
Sure.”

“
And we’ll learn to tango.”

“
I swear.”

“
No more defending horrible
people?”

“
Not one.”

“
Hmmm.” She seemed to consider it.
“You’ve decided you don’t like to eat?”

They laughed again.

“
I’ll do it,” Megan told him. “You swear
you’ll teach me to be a first class tango dancer, and I’ll struggle
to quit my job.”

Ben untwined his fingers from hers. He
traced an X on his chest.

“
Cross my heart, hope to die.” And he
kissed her.

_______________

A quartet was playing in the park.

Megan was walking home. She’d left the
Chrysler in the garage that morning and hoofed it to the office. It
was only a few blocks, and she had wanted the time to think through
and plan the day’s deposition. She hadn’t known how it would turn
out, of course. She didn’t know she’d also end up having time to
think about how terrible it was on the way back.