Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill (9 page)

“Mind if I borrow this for a few days?”

“Is that the way you take fingerprints in the Ozarks? What do you use for mug shots? Home movies?”

“Very funny. If Cara were at the lake, I’d ask her to come in and give me a set of elimination prints.” Mason furrowed his brow at her explanation. Kelly continued. “I’d tell her that we found prints on the boat and at the condo and that we need to eliminate hers from those we found. Since I doubt that she’s going back to the lake anytime soon, this cup will have to do.”

“Be my guest.”

She was gone before he could use one of his “How about a drink?” lines.

Tommy Douchant bloodied Mason’s nose when he asked Tommy’s girlfriend to double skate at the roller rink. Crawling unseen under the table where Tommy and the girl were sitting, Mason tied the laces of Tommy’s skates together while blood dripped from his nose. They were ten. Neither of them got the girl. Friendships are born in strange ways.

Tommy was Catholic. Mason was Jewish. Tommy was hotheaded. Mason was sneaky. Tommy joined his father’s union. Mason went to college. Tommy broke his back. Mason lost his case. Friendships die in strange ways.

Mason thought about the parts of their lives that intersected and the parts that ran parallel to one another as he sat in his car in front of Tommy’s house, engine running, a six-pack of Bud on the seat next to him. Tommy and LeAnn and their five-year-old twins lived in a small, two-story Cape Cod in Prairie Village, a suburb just on the Kansas side of the state line that divided the metropolitan area.

Tommy’s subdivision was built after World War II, funded by low-rate mortgages for veterans. The house was originally a one-story ranch. Tommy finished the attic into a second floor, added dormers, and turned the ranch into a Cape Cod. Over the years, Mason watched him paint the inside and the outside, pour a new driveway, and rewire the house.

“Got a new project,” Tommy announced with a kid’s enthusiasm the week before his accident. “Gonna put up a basketball goal that I can raise and lower so the kids can use it. Wanna give me a hand?”

They were eating ribs and drinking beer at Bryant’s Barbecue before catching an early-season baseball game. Tommy always asked Mason if he wanted to help and Mason always turned him down.

“You remember those skills tests we took in junior high school?” Mason asked him.

“Yeah. What about ‘em?”

“You remember the section titled ‘Works Well with His Hands’? My results came back ‘has no hands.’”

“Then bring the beer and watch. You can’t screw that up.”

The bit was an old one they’d done dozens of times, still laughing at the punch line.

Mason studied the outside of the house, as if it could tell what had happened to the family who lived inside. The wheelchair ramp from the front stoop to the driveway was the only clue that things were different for them.

Fresh lawn-mower tracks partitioned the small front yard into neat twenty-one-inch slices. Day lilies, their blossoms leaning over like bowed heads, struggled in the heat beneath the dining room and living room windows on either side of the front door. A pink ball the size of a large grapefruit lay against the base of the basketball goal.

Mason looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock. LeAnn was probably giving the kids a bath, getting them ready for bed.

The front door opened. Tommy sat in his wheelchair, rolling forward and back over the threshold, as if he couldn’t decide whether to stay in or come out. They looked at each other, neither waving, just looking. Mason sighed, turned off the car, and got out, carrying the six-pack of Bud. Tommy rolled his wheelchair over the threshold, onto the front stoop, and down the ramp. They met in the driveway.

Mason didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Tommy that he looked good, though his upper body was still strong and the muscles in his arms still rippled against his T-shirt. But his legs were out of place, muscles wasted. So Mason wouldn’t tell Tommy that he looked good. Instead, he scanned the outside of the house again, stopping at the basketball goal.

“The kids must like shooting hoops.”

“Gives ‘em something to do.”

“That’s good.”

Mason wanted to get to the point and skip the awkward small talk. But it was easier to talk about anything other than what they had to talk about.

“I built that ramp.”

“Get out! Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped.”

“Remember those skills tests we took in junior high school?”

“Right. I brought the beer if it’s not too late.”

“Never too late as long as the beer’s cold.”

Mason handed him a bottle, took one, and set the six-pack on the driveway. They drank in silence, the awkwardness still lingering.

“You really built that ramp?”

“Yeah. The workers’ compensation people sent somebody out to put one in while I was still in the hospital. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. I just don’t like other people working on my house.”

Mason remembered that Tommy’s workshop was in the basement.

“How did you get down to your shop?”

“Didn’t have to. LeAnn moved my workbench into the garage. I cut the legs down so I could reach everything from my chair. When I finished cutting the boards for the ramp to size, she got me one of those little carts mechanics lie on to slide under cars and I just sat out here scooting around and hammering nails.”

“It looks great.”

“It looks like shit, but I built it. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

“What about vocational rehab? I thought workers’ comp was going to retrain you.”

“They tried. Told me I should learn computers. So far, I’m better at ramp building, but I don’t know that there’s much demand for crippled carpenters.”

Tommy spoke without a trace of the bitterness he’d shown at the trial. He sounded more realistic than resigned.

Mason finished his beer as the last shadows of the day crept over them.

“I’m sorry about the trial—about the way everything turned out.”

Given enough time, Mason knew he would probably apologize for every disaster of this century and the last. Tommy shook his head and waved off Mason’s apology.

“I should have listened to you and taken the money.”

“I should have done a better job.”

“Quit kicking yourself. I was the one who screwed up. Your partner told me that Philpott would pay a lot more once the trial got started. I believed him because I was so mad about everything. You were right. All I cared about was getting even. It’s too late now.”

“Maybe not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I want to reopen your case. But I’ve got to find evidence to convince the judge to give you a new trial.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Philpott cheated on his wife and she filed for divorce. I’ll start with her. Maybe she’s mad enough to tell me something that will help. After that, I don’t know. I can’t promise you anything, so don’t get your hopes up. But I think it’s worth a shot.”

“Any hope is more than we’ve had for a while now. Do what you can.”

Tommy pulled the six-pack up into his lap and rolled his wheelchair back up the ramp, his arms and shoulders flexing with the climb. When he reached the top, he turned and gave Mason a slight wave.
Not even breathing hard,
Mason thought. He smiled and returned the wave.

Kate was sitting on Mason’s front step, scratching Tuffy behind her ears, when Mason pulled into his driveway. Scott had been waiting for him the night before. He couldn’t wait to see who would show up tomorrow. He didn’t see Kate’s car, which meant that she and the dog had walked from her apartment on the Plaza, about a mile away.

Tuffy liked to have the back of her ears scratched, and once the scratching started, she devoted herself to the sensation, refusing every distraction except for one—Mason. The dog was infatuated with him, which infuriated Kate. It was the reason Kate had stolen Tuffy when they split up. All of which he remembered with jealous clarity when he stepped from the car, clapped his hands twice, and caught Tuffy as she bounded into his arms.

“Never doubt a dog’s devotion,” Kate said with a spare smile as she joined them on the driveway.

Mason had the same reaction each time he saw her. He’d do it again even if it turned out the same way.

Tuffy finished licking Mason’s chin and moved on to sniffing his shoes, pants, and crotch to confirm her master’s identity. A squirrel jumped from a tree onto the driveway, daring Tuffy to give chase. She didn’t disappoint.

“She’s a very faithful bitch,” Mason answered.

Kate shrugged off the irony in Mason’s comment. He marveled at her ability to shrug off things and people. He attributed it to her disengagement gene. It was never more apparent than on the day she left the divorce papers on top of the sports section. Mason tracked her down at her office, where she ran a web-design company.

“What the hell is this?”

He slapped the papers on her desk. She’d looked up at him, her perfect black eyebrows arched over her luminous blue eyes. They were the same eyes he was drawn to the night they met. They were an arresting blue that took him into custody on the spot. Then they seemed electric. Now they were ice.

“I’m done. That’s all.”

“Excuse me. You’re done? Don’t I get a vote?”

Kate pushed back in her chair, folded her arms, and shook her head like a teacher whose student just didn’t get it.

“No, Lou. You don’t get a vote. Love isn’t an election. You’re either in or you’re out, and I’m out. Out of love with you and out of the marriage.”

She said it without rancor. It was the way it was. She had disengaged.

It may have been simple to her, but not to him. They had been married three years. The first had been erotic and ecstatic. The second had been quiet and comfortable. The third had been dead and boring. Mason called it a slump. Kate declared it a dead end.

Afterward, he read an article by a marriage expert who said that successful couples developed rituals that helped bind them together. They had none. But he knew they had needed more than a few minutes spent lingering over coffee to trade stories of the day. After the passion, there wasn’t enough purpose. He had been wracked by the breakup. She seemed to have dismissed it. That was the part he never got, though when she snatched the dog, he wondered if it was really just so much water off a duck’s back.

“I need for you to keep the dog for a while.”

They watched Tuffy tree the squirrel. A moment later, Tuffy lost interest when Anna Karelson whistled at her from her front yard and held a dog biscuit in the air. Tuffy flew across the street.

Anna’s husband, Jack, had run off with a nineteen-year-old file clerk in his office and then resurfaced, begging her to take him back. She changed the locks. Worst of all, she wouldn’t let him have his TR6, which she kept locked in the garage. Anna waved at Mason as Tuffy bounded back to his side of the street.

He scratched her behind the ears. “Not that I’m complaining, but why?”

“I’ll be out of town for a month on a road show.”

“You’re going into show business?”

Kate gave him an exasperated smirk. “My company is very hot right now. We’re one of the best in our space and we’re starting to get national accounts. I’m going to a dozen cities to meet with potential clients.”

“Umm. Sounds thrilling. Better sign them up before you lose interest and move on to something else.”

“Keep drinking from that bitter cup and you’ll give yourself an ulcer. I’ll pick up Tuffy when I get back.”

She walked away without a backward glance, arms swinging with a hunter’s purposeful stride.

“Not if I see you first,” he said.

At ten o’clock Tuesday morning, Mason and Sandra Connelly emptied their pockets for the deputy marshals guarding the federal courthouse before heading to Franklin St. John’s sixth-floor office. Mason did a double take when the deputy gave Sandra a claim check for a three-inch knife she carried in her purse.

“I collect sharp things,” she said in response. “It’s a hobby.”

“Ever hear of stamps?”

“No edge to it,” she said with a shrug as they walked to the elevator.

Franklin St. John was a small, spare man, vain enough to comb the few remaining filaments of hair across his bald head. A high, shiny forehead dropped off to a narrow, long nose, thin lips, and a pointed chin. His upper lip curled into a sneer as he greeted them with a smile. Mason couldn’t tell if it was intentional or a cruel trick played by involuntary facial muscles. He didn’t look like a nice man, and Mason bet his face was a disappointment but not a surprise to those who knew him.

St. John was a career prosecutor from a political family whose connections reached to the White House. Originally from Kansas City, he’d been an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. When the U.S. attorney position opened up in Kansas City, he got the job.

He stood behind a massive desk, flanked by the seal of the United States and the official picture of the president. Tall floor lamps behind his desk cast an artificial aura behind him.

St. John introduced them to Gene McNamara, the FBI agent who was his chief investigator. McNamara’s face was beefy, with a drinker’s hazy red-veined pattern across his nose and cheeks. He nodded perfunctorily at them and took up a station at the end of the sofa opposite St. John’s desk, his coat opened casually enough to expose the service revolver holstered under his right arm.

“We’re all terribly sorry about Mr. Sullivan’s death,” St. John said.

Mason decided that the best approach was to make nice, put his cards on the table, and convince St. John that he wanted to cooperate.