Life Support (3 page)

Alexia had clerked for Leggitt & Freeman in Santee during the summer following her second year in law school. Pleased with her work, the firm had offered her a job before she returned to Gainesville for her final year of study. Six years later at the age of thirty-two she was on the verge of attaining partnership status. Alexia's monthly draw as a partner would be less than her current salary, but she would have the opportunity to share in the larger pie of the firm's total revenue when it was divided each December. Prestige as a partner was an additional, intangible benefit.

It was a three-minute drive from the courthouse to her office. Leggitt & Freeman occupied a single-story, cream-colored stucco building set amid palmetto trees and surrounded by large clumps of dune grass. Everything about the office was designed to create an image of stability and prosperity. A branch bank stood across the street and a fancy café was a few doors down. Banks, boutiques, restaurants, and real-estate offices had proliferated in the area as development spread inland from the crowded coastal area. Santee was too far from the beach to advertise itself as an oceanside resort, but local business leaders had found a lucrative and less messy alternative to hordes of ill-tempered tourists—golfing communities.

They were everywhere. Fields that had been farmed by tenant farmers for generations now boasted million-dollar homes overlooking lush fairways. People with accents as homogenized as those of TV actors and actresses shopped at new stores owned by national chains. There were retirees from the northeast who viewed the price of large homes in South Carolina as a bargain and people from other areas of the South who had dreamed of living near the beaches where they had vacationed when their children were small. Wherever they came from, the new residents bought homes in the golfing communities. Some actually played golf, but most just wanted to live in a relaxed, upscale environment.

Alexia opened the front door of the office and stepped into the reception area. Except for sea scenes on the walls, the waiting room didn't reflect anything about the coast. A deep red, oriental rug was surrounded by leather couches and chairs. On one wall hung high-quality photographs of all the partners who had worked at the firm since it was founded by Mr. Leggitt's father before World War II. Each man's name was engraved on a small brass plate on the bottom of the frame. It was an unusual feature, more suited to a boardroom than a law office, but Mr. Leggitt's father had started the tradition, and like most traditions, it had developed an inertia that perpetuated the practice. Once she became a partner, Alexia's picture would join the others—the first woman on the wall.

Alexia's office was on the back side of the building. Her secretary was Gwen Jones, a slightly overweight woman in her fifties who dyed her hair a reddish brown, always dressed in bright colors, and kept a perpetual tan. At the sound of Alexia's footsteps, Gwen looked up in surprise.

“What happened?” she asked. “I didn't expect to see you until after the jury went home for the night.”

Alexia responded with a small, triumphant smile. “We settled it. Marilyn is set for life.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thanks. It felt good. Up to the last minute, I wondered if Greg Simpson had an escape hatch, but he was busted in open court. Do you have time to type the settlement documents if I dictate them this afternoon?”

Gwen pointed a ring-bedecked finger toward Leonard Mitchell's office. “L. M. loaded me down with paperwork for a deal he's trying to put together. I don't know when he needs it, but he acted like it was a rush job. Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No,” Alexia responded.

Alexia often faced resistance when she asked the partner to set aside his work so Gwen could help her on an urgent matter.

“It will be easier to do it myself.”

Alexia went into her office and shut the door. The exposé of Greg Simpson's hidden business dealings had been one of the more dramatic triumphs of her career. It wouldn't be reported in the local newspaper, but by the end of the week the legal community would be buzzing with the result. Simpson was a sleazy cheat, but it's rarely possible to neatly unravel a web of deception. Alexia didn't have a complete picture of Simpson's involvement with KalGo, but after the exposure of the Nesbitt deal, Byron Smith wasn't willing to call her bluff. The questions in court were routine; the hard work had been the behind-the-scenes investigation.

Alexia had personalized her office with items collected from all over the world. It was like a mini-museum. On one end of her credenza crouched a primitive sculpture of a roaring lion she'd bought in Tanzania. On the other end rested a hand-painted tray from the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. An intricate tapestry from Greece adorned one wall, and a collage of photographs of Alexia in front of famous buildings across Europe decorated another. Most of her early travels were with her mother. Lately, she'd been sojourning on her own. After the hectic pace of life at the office, she longed for times of prolonged solitude.

For more than a year, a picture of her former fiancé, Jason Favreau, had occupied the place of highest prominence on the front corner of her desk. Jason, a tall, dark-haired engineer, shared enough common denominators with Alexia that most computer dating services would have predicted a storybook romance. Both had international pedigrees: Alexia's mother was a Russian who defected to the United States in the 1960s and married a man from Ohio, while Jason's father was a Frenchman who married a woman from California. Jason was fluent in French, and Alexia spoke passable Russian. They both loved to travel, read, swim, and listen to classical music.

Shortly after their engagement, Jason went to Marseille to supervise a large construction project. Ten weeks passed with excruciating slowness until Alexia was scheduled to fly over for a five-day visit. The night before she was to leave, Jason called and told her not to come. One of his father's cousins had introduced him to a French girl, and they were in love. Two months later, they married and moved to Quebec.

After her tears dried, Alexia tore up Jason's picture and scattered the pieces in the ocean, but a measure of pain remained. Having experienced betrayal and misplaced trust, her empathy for her jilted clients increased, and she poured herself more fiercely into her work. Her daily diet of divorce work soured Alexia's taste for romantic relationships, and her mother was worried that she'd be an old maid. Alexia deflected her comments with statements that she was too busy for men and needed time to forget what had happened. In any event, the sampling of suitable men in Santee for a woman like Alexia was sparse.

She turned on her computer. A fast typist, she was almost through with the first draft of the Simpson agreement when the light for an interoffice call came on and the phone buzzed. It was Mr. Leggitt.

“Alexia, I heard about your exploits in court today,” the senior partner said. “Can you come to my office? I have something important to discuss with you.”

“Yes, sir. I'm finishing up the agreement. I'll be there in a few minutes.”

Alexia smiled. Her marriage to Jason Favreau hadn't worked out, but her partnership with Leggitt & Freeman was about to be consummated.

3

Confused and filled with murder and misdeeds.

THOMAS KYD

R
ena crawled to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

It was a long way to the boulders at the bottom of the gorge, and the chance that a person could strike the unforgiving rocks and live to tell about it was negligible.

Baxter's body was in plain view. He'd fallen directly below the spot where she peered over the edge and come to rest with his back arched over a smooth, tan boulder. His right leg was twisted in an unnatural manner that left no doubt it was broken. His face was turned away from her as if looking downstream toward the place where the water regrouped and entered the woods. Straining her eyes, she tried to detect any hint of life in her husband's broken body. Nothing moved except the water cascading into the valley below. Human beings have an amazing capacity for survival, but a skier hitting a tree with a fraction of the same impact wouldn't live to the bottom of the slopes.

Spray from the waterfall was splashing on her husband's clothes. It would have been chilly to a conscious person sitting on the rock, but it was apparent Baxter didn't feel anything. Wherever people go when they die, Baxter Richardson had made a quick, unexpected journey. Rena didn't believe in a hereafter. It was all she could do to endure each day.

She sank down with her face against the cool rock and sobbed with a mixture of shock at what she'd done and relief that it was over. The childhood monsters she'd mentioned to Baxter didn't hide in the woods near the top of the waterfall. They lived as memories of the years she spent after her mother's death with Vernon Swafford in a ramshackle house where her worst tormentor sat across the dinner table from her and threatened her with death if she ever told anyone the truth. During those years of pain, what should have been a sharp line between fact and fiction blurred and sometimes Rena didn't know what was real and what was nightmare.

When she was fifteen, her stepfather was arrested and put in jail for thirty days after a barroom brawl. Left alone, Rena ran down the road to a store and called her mother's older sister in Spartanburg. She waited an hour until her Aunt Louise arrived in a dilapidated car, which to Rena looked like a heavenly chariot. They hurriedly collected Rena's meager personal belongings and fled.

Rena told Louise a fraction of her story, but it was enough to convince the local juvenile court judge to issue a restraining order prohibiting Vernon Swafford from further contact with her. Upon his release from jail, her stepfather ignored the court order and appeared one night at Louise's front door. Rena hid in a closet while Louise called the police from the phone in the kitchen.

Outside, her stepfather yelled in the darkness, “Rena! Git your things and come outside! You don't want to make me come in there and fetch you!”

Rena peeked out the door of the closet and saw his burly silhouette as Swafford passed by the window in the moonlight. She crouched lower and held her breath. The voice grew more insistent. He began to swear— a sure prelude to greater threats of violence.

“Rena! I'm tired of waiting! Git out here now!”

Rena heard a bottle crash against the side of the house. The front door rattled as he tried to turn the doorknob and then it shook under the dull thud of his boot as he attempted to kick it open. The locks held, and the wood didn't splinter.

It grew silent outside, and a glimmer of hope came into the closet. Her tormenter had given up and gone away. She strained to hear the sound of his truck backing down the gravel driveway. Seconds passed like minutes.

Then a gunshot shattered the stillness, and Rena knew it was her night to die. Her aunt screamed. Rena opened the door of the closet and began walking slowly toward the living room. It would be better to end her life quickly than continue in the torment of anticipation. Before she reached the room, sirens filled the air as the police arrived. Louise saw Rena and screamed for her to lie down on the floor. Her stepfather shot wildly in the air several times before he was disarmed. He went to prison for five years.

But Vernon Swafford's threats weren't held captive by prison bars. They were locked within the dungeon of Rena's mind. Over the following months Louise did the best she could to salve Rena's wounds, but all she had were band-aids. Rena needed major, reconstructive surgery.

So, Rena stuffed the traumas of her childhood deep into the crevices of her soul and learned to pretend. Her grades went up, and she received a college scholarship. Outward circumstances improved. Inside, she remained dark and twisted. Nightmares choked out any hope of peaceful sleep. Classmates labeled her moody, but her good looks insured a level of popularity with boys and envy from girls. Attracting the attention of males was not a problem but building an enduring relationship was an impossibility. Nothing lasted. She had a bottomless mistrust of men. At the first sign of stress, Rena bolted or reacted with emotional violence that scared off her current suitor.

She talked to a counselor in college; however, the well-meaning man only knew how to unpack a person's internal baggage, not what to do with the dirty laundry it contained. She avoided contact with her stepfather after his release from custody, but past torment stalked her along paths of fear. Only an iron will kept her from insanity.

Until now.

Rena took a deep breath and felt a weight lift from her chest. Killing another person was a drastic step, but at the core of her being she knew she had acted in self-defense. Eventually, her rich, young husband would have tired of her and thrown her away or begun his own cycle of abuse. She stood and brushed a few specks of dirt from her knees as the calm after the storm entered her soul. She would never have to trust in a man again. Baxter's money would insure security for the future. She could survive without needing anyone's help and perhaps find a measure of happiness.

She carefully cleaned the area where they had eaten their light supper and began to compose the story to tell when she returned to civilization. Baxter had already provided a logical explanation for his unfortunate slip and fall from the wet rocks. Analysis of his blood would reveal the presence of enough alcohol to impair balance and judgment.

When everything was back to normal, Rena turned away from the waterfall. It would take more than an hour and a half to hike back to the expensive new SUV they had driven to the mountains. She followed the path through the low trees and bushes that grew in scattered patches of dirt between the rocks near the top of the waterfall. When she reached the bottom of a rough, earthen stairway cut into the side of the hill, she looked up and prepared to make the ascent toward a life without fear.