Irreparable Harm (39 page)

“Vivian!”  Irwin warned her.

Vivian laughed her ugly laugh again.

Irwin saw his chance and lunged from the chair for the block of knives on Laura’s counter. He scrabbled with the block, tipping it over, and pulled out an eight-inch chef’s knife.

“Jerry!”  Laura screamed, hands flying up to her face.

Sasha dropped Vivian’s gun to the floor and kicked it toward Connelly. She wasn’t going to fire it and it was just going to be a hindrance. She’d need two hands to deal with Irwin.

Connelly held Laura tight around the waist and brought her close, so he could cover Vivian with his gun.

“Do not move,” he told her. Vivian nodded and pressed herself as far back as possible in the chair.

Irwin’s eyes darted from side to side. Sasha flashed on the story Mickey had told, of Irwin slashing him wildly with a broken bottle. She prepared for an erratic, disorganized attack.

Instead, Irwin charged straight at her.

Active defense
. She leapt to the right and he stabbed at the air where she’d been.

He came again. This time Sasha charged forward, toward Irwin and the knife in his right hand. He blinked, surprised that she was moving toward him, and tried to back away. He slid across the floor in his socks.

Sasha moved closer, swung her left arm in, and caught his right hand at the wrist.

Control.
She bent his arm back at the elbow and leaned forward. She felt his hot breath, as he panted from exertion and fear. She kept pushing him back, and he started to lose his balance.

Attack.
Irwin leaned forward—the natural reaction to stop himself from falling backward. She was waiting for it and brought her right elbow up in a roundhouse and smashed it into his jaw, with her full weight behind it.

Take.
Still twisting, she turned so that now she was standing directly in front of Irwin, who was howling and keening, rocking with the pain. She kept her left hand tight on his right wrist. Brought her right knee up and struck his wrist bone quick and hard. The knife popped out of Irwin’s hand and clattered to the floor.

Sasha stepped on the knife and then forced his wrist back until his bones splintered and cracked and his eyes rolled back from the pain.

Laura was screaming and crying now, big heaving sobs.

“Calm down, Mrs. Peterson, please.” Connelly maneuvered her into the chair next to Vivian.

Sasha caught her breath and dragged Irwin over to the wall.

“Does she know?” Sasha asked Vivian, nodding to Laura. She picked up the knife and put it on the kitchen island behind her.

“Know what? That Jerry’s a homicidal maniac who caused a plane full of people to crash so he could fund their new island home?”

Laura looked up in horror. “Is that true?” she cried, asking everyone and no one in particular.

“Yes,” Sasha said, “your boyfriend is a mass murderer.”

“I’m sorry,” Irwin said from the floor, “I know you’re disappointed, Laura.”

“But that’s not what I meant, Vivian,” Sasha said. “Does Laura know you killed her husband?”

Vivian was completely still and quiet.

Laura whipped her head around to Sasha, mascara staining her cheeks. “She killed Noah?”

“When the police gave you Noah’s belongings was anything missing?” Sasha said.

Laura looked at her blankly.

Sasha reached into Vivian’s purse and held the keys up for Laura to see: the globe and its bright red plane dangled from the Mercedes key ring.

Laura turned to Vivian. “You killed him?”

Vivian shrugged. Her face revealed nothing. She hadn’t spent her entire adult life as a lawyer without learning to lawyer up.

“You
killed
him?” Laura repeated.

“Oh, Laura, what do you care if I did? You’re moving on, remember.” Vivian’s voice was cold and her face was a frozen mask of disdain.

Connelly was busy examining Irwin’s injuries. Sasha was busy staring at Vivian.

Neither of them saw Laura launch herself forward and grab the chef’s knife. She was on top of Vivian in a flash, plunging the knife into her chest.

Sasha pulled Laura off her, but she could tell it was too late. Bloody froth bubbled out of Vivian’s parted lips.

Laura let the knife slip to the floor and collapsed onto Sasha, shaking and crying. “He was still my husband,” she said.

Irwin called to her from the floor, telling her he loved her. She didn’t seem to hear him.

Connelly left Irwin there, shouting, and checked Vivian’s vital signs.

He looked up at Sasha and shook his head. “Her pulse is really thready. I think she has at least one punctured lung.”

Connelly called for an ambulance, then he took Laura from Sasha’s arms and sent her out to the porch to wait for it.

Sasha sat on Noah and Laura’s hanging porch bed and just swung, curled up among the richly patterned pillows, until Pulaski and Morgan careened to a stop at the curb below.

They pounded up the stairs and ran past her, as Connelly yelled out to them from inside the house, “We’ve got one down!”

His voice carried down to the quiet street, lined with old maple trees, their leaves just starting to turn red and gold.

Chapter 44

After Irwin was taken into custody and Vivian was zipped into a body bag, it seemed to Sasha that time somehow both sped up and slowed down. In the immediate aftermath of flashing red lights and local reporters thrusting microphones at her, she remembered only Connelly, shouldering through the crowd in front of her and handing her off to Naya, who’d somehow gotten word to come out to Sewickley.

Naya and loyal Carl drove her home. Naya tried to stay, but Sasha just wanted to sleep.

Once Sasha convinced Naya to leave, she changed into warm pajamas and collapsed into a pile on her bed. It was three thirty in the afternoon. She slept until morning but did not dream.

Connelly let himself in with her spare key and found her still curled up under the covers on Friday morning. He had an Einstein Brothers’ bag with bagels and cream cheese in one hand and a takeout coffee in the other. He looked well rested.

Sasha fought through the syrup covering her brain and struggled to a seated position. She stared at him blankly.

“Hi,” he said, handing her the coffee. “Do you need to call your office?”

Sasha looked at the clock. Eight thirty. In nearly eight years at Prescott & Talbott she’d never arrived after eight. Not once.

“I guess.” Her voice came out in a croak. She pushed the hair out of her eyes and picked up the phone. She didn’t know what she’d say. Everyone would say they didn’t expect her to come in, that she should take some time.

That’s what they always said—after a trial or when a lawyer had a family emergency. After all, the firm’s lawyers were entitled to five weeks of vacation and unlimited sick and personal days. But, the reality was, at least for the trial attorneys, machismo demanded no rest. No one used their vacation days. It was a badge of … something.

Sasha knew male attorneys who hadn’t taken the day off to be present when their children were born. The female attorneys had to be present for their children’s births, but they made up for it by spending their labors sending e-mails from their Blackberries and calling in to participate in unimportant conference calls during their transition to active labor.

The associate in the office next to hers had convinced his siblings to put their mother in cold storage when she had the bad timing to die while he was in the middle of a trial. They buried her afterward, when it was more convenient for him.

An income partner whom Sasha liked a great deal had come to work every day during her chemotherapy treatment. Never mind that she’d spent most of each day vomiting and shaking—she came to work.

Sasha put the phone down. “No.”

She wasn’t going to call because she wasn’t going in.

She sipped the coffee and studied Connelly. “Are you on the clock?”

He nodded. “I’m wrapping this up today and then I’m taking the rest of the month off.”

He stood awkwardly at the foot of her bed.

“They grabbed up Harold Jones and talked to Bob Metz out in Seattle. Jones is cooperating, but he doesn’t know anything. Irwin is, too. He’s hoping it will impress Laura somehow. His story is they hadn’t planned to kill Noah. Vivian was supposed to tell Metz about the RAGS link with the hope he’d confide in Noah.”

“And he did,” Sasha said.

“Yeah, but it was just to establish Metz had knowledge. Somehow, Vivian thought she’d be able to pin everything on Metz after he died in the second crash. But, Noah pressured Metz to go to the government, and Vivian had to stop him. The coroner is reviewing Noah’s autopsy to determine how she killed him.”

Sasha looked up at him. “I was driving that train. I pushed Noah to push Metz. Are you saying I got Noah killed, too?”

Connelly sat on the edge of her bed. “Look at me. You saved several hundred people, Sasha. You stopped them.”

She shook her head. Warner. Noah. Their blood was on her hands.

“Did Irwin say why she did it?”

“Vivian?”

Sasha nodded.

“Money. She was going to invest in a startup that would compete with Hemisphere Air on its northeast routes. She figured the crashes would hurt Hemisphere Air’s business and drive customers to the new airline. Her cut of Irwin’s auction was just gravy. For her, it was plain old vanilla greed.”

“You think it was something else for Irwin?” Sasha asked.

“I think it started out as greed. And ego. Then he fell in love with Laura. He’s deluded, no doubt, but he really thought they would move out of the country and live off the money and she would never know.”

Sasha suddenly felt strangely sorry for Jerry Irwin. And tired again.

“Thanks for the coffee, Connelly. I think I’m going to take a nap. Let yourself out?”

He frowned down at her. She put the cup on her bedside table, rolled over, and pulled a pillow over her head.

* * * * * * * * * *

It was dark when she woke, sweaty and hungry. She squinted at the glowing display on her alarm clock. It was almost seven p.m. She sat up and switched on the lamp.

Connelly was sitting at the foot of her bed. He’d dragged her reading chair in from the living room. The one she’d tied Gregor to the night before.

“Have you been here all day?”

“No. I came about a half an hour ago. It’s time to get up. Take a shower. We’re going to get some food.”

“I don’t want to go out,” Sasha told him.

“Take a shower. Go.” His voice was firm.

She stood up. Her brain was fuzzy. She went into the bathroom and ran the water. While the shower got hot, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her skin was stark white. Her purple bruises were dark against it. Black smudges creased her eyes from exhaustion. She turned away from the mirror.