Move to Strike (15 page)

On the video Jeffrey Logan untied the string and removed the paper, fold by fold, to reveal the long, deadly weapon that would eventually take the life of the pale, thin woman beside him.

‘What is it?' he asked again.

‘It's your fucking birthday present, you ingrate . . . I mean,' she hesitated,
as if annoyed at herself for using the same sentence twice. ‘It's a Goddamned walking stick . . . no . . .' She faltered again. ‘It's a Goddamned umbrella. What the hell do you think it is?'

‘Stephanie,' said Logan, looking at the weapon with disgust, his right hand moving over its grip, his left palm running along the base towards the trigger. ‘You know how I feel about guns.'

‘And you're not getting it, Jeffrey.' And then, just like J.T. had done previously, her eyes flicked to the front of the room, before she turned back to her husband again.

‘
Hear everything, listen please
,' she said, deliberating on every word. ‘
Maybe even
. . .' she paused, ‘. . .
decipher the conundrum
.'

Logan looked at her in genuine confusion.

‘I may know how you
feel
about guns, but I also know how I
felt
about a certain reptile-skin handbag,' she said, the retort sounding both ridiculous and (considering the preposterousness of the situation before them), appropriate at the same time.

‘So the next time I ask you for an alligator accessory you can, in the very least, go shoot the fucker yourself.'

And then she shocked everyone in the room – both in the past and in the present – by plunging towards her husband, snatching the gun and swivelling it quickly, sharply, a full ninety degrees to her left.

‘Do you understand me?' she said, as her only son, thirteen-year-old J.T. Logan, looked up to stare down the barrel of the very same weapon he would use against her mere weeks down the track.

‘Oh, Mom!' said Chelsea, her own tears now cutting swathes down her pale lime green face.

‘Enough, Stephanie,' said Logan, shooting a glance at his daughter before returning his gaze to his wife. ‘
Please!
' he said, until she finally lowered the gun. ‘I understand. I am sorry.'

‘No, you don't,' she snapped. ‘No, you don't,' she said again and this time with determination. ‘But I promise you, one day, that you will.'

And then the screen went fuzzy with that crackly grey haze that signified the ‘show' had finally come to an end.

David hung his head in his hands before, after what seemed like a very long time, rose to his feet and turned to the man behind him. ‘Your son needs an attorney, Doctor, and a good one at that.'

He could feel Sara's gaze upon him.

‘You'll do it then?' asked de Castro, also rising to meet David's eye.

‘Yes,' said David, answering her but looking directly at Doctor Jeff. ‘For after seeing that tape, I could not live with myself if I didn't.'

‘W
ell, this is totally ass about face,' said Detective Frank McKay, leaning on the fingerprint counter in Boston Police Headquarters' booking section, looking across at J.T. Logan who was having his photograph taken across the other side of the room.

‘You mean the kid being arraigned before he is processed,' said Joe Mannix, sliding sideways to avoid the now overpowering smell from Frank's ‘leaking at the edges' lunch.

‘I mean the whole fucking charade,' said McKay. ‘Jesus, Chief, the kid is barely out of diapers. Look at him,' he said, gesturing at the terrified looking boy now blinking at the flare of the photographer's flash. ‘He looks like he could barely hold a baseball bat let alone fire a big-game hunting rifle.'

Frank was right. J.T. Logan was small for his age – a skinny, awkward-looking kid whose good looks were marred by his obvious lack of confidence. Joe had noticed it the first time he saw him – in that oversized T-shirt with the blood spatter swallowing his narrow olive-skinned face. It was almost like the boy was ashamed to take up the small space in the universe that he did, like he was embarrassed to even be here, like he had done the world a disservice the minute that he was born.

‘The kid isn't much older than Joe Junior,' said Frank then, referring to Joe's oldest son.

‘Not much,' said Joe, the thought having occurred to him at least once over the past few days. ‘Why can't I help but think that this whole thing has gotten away from us, Frank?'

‘Because it has, Chief,' said McKay. ‘Which means we just gotta take it back.'

Frank was right and Joe knew it, but at this stage, given they had not even had a chance to question the boy who was now giving his full name, address and other personal details to the booking officer, he had no idea as to how this might be achieved. He knew Cavanaugh had stepped up in court, largely because he was livid at Carmichael's blatant manipulation of the judiciary process, but he did not know if his attorney friend would be willing to take this any further, given his relationship with the kid's mother and the way that she had died.

‘You want a soda, kid?' asked Joe as the officer went to lead J.T. back towards a juvenile holding cell. The boy had just been digitally fingerprinted – a new ink-free process which detected oils on the offender's hands – and would be held in a juvenile cell until the Sheriff's Department organised his transfer to the maximum security juvenile detention unit in Plymouth.

By law, juveniles in the state of Massachusetts were not to be held ‘behind bars', which meant the juvenile cells – set apart from their adult counterparts, also by law – had what Joe considered to be much more intimidating solid doors, with small glass windows at adult eye level. Another example of bureaucracy gone insane, thought Joe, another example of laws being made for the hell of it, without any regard for the individuals involved.

‘It's okay, Officer Blunt,' said Joe to the heavy-set policeman now holding J.T. by the elbow. ‘We'll watch him until the sheriff's van arrives.'

Blunt nodded, before leading the kid to where Joe and Frank were sitting next to a drink machine in a far corner.

‘My attorney told me not to talk to anyone,' said J.T., looking up at Joe, his voice still a high-pitched squeak – months, maybe even years, away from breaking.

‘That's okay,' said Joe. ‘We can just sit if you like. While you down a Coke and we take a load off.'

J.T. nodded.

‘How's the shoulder?' asked Joe, a random question.

‘What shoulder?' asked J.T. as he took a seat across from Joe, a look of genuine confusion in his wide brown eyes.

‘Your right one. I thought you hurt it.'

‘No. The policeman didn't pull me when he brought me here, if that is what you are asking.'

‘It was, and that's good to know, kid,' said Joe.

J.T. nodded again, before accepting the Coke from Frank.

‘What about your ears?' asked Joe after a pause.

‘They're sore,' said the boy.

‘Are they still ringing?' asked Joe, probing that little bit further.

‘A little.'

And Joe nodded as they all took a sip of their sodas.

‘You love your mom, son?' asked Joe – another question, completely out of the blue.

‘Yes, sir,' said J.T. without drama or hesitation.

‘Me too, kid,' said Joe just as evenly. ‘Me too.'

‘It's a fake,' said David the moment he had shut the door behind their two obviously satisfied visitors. The others simply stood there, saying nothing – three of the people David respected most in this world, staring at him in blatant disbelief.

‘It's a
fake
,' he said again, as if to make sure they had heard him the first time. ‘It was a set-up, a forgery, a scam.'

‘David,' said Arthur, ‘Doctor Logan may be on TV, but I doubt he has the skills to mastermind such advanced technological wizardry. Stephanie Tyler was your friend, and as such it is understandable that you . . .'

‘No,' said David, his heart racing. He could feel the adrenaline pumping as he paced around the room. ‘The recording itself is for real – but its content is a load of sick and twisted lies.' The three of them stared at him some more. ‘It was scripted, directed, acted, crafted, manufactured, contrived.'

‘Hold on a minute,' said Sara, striding across the office to meet him. ‘You think that the entire Logan family agreed to play themselves in the dysfunctional family video from hell?'

‘I think at least three of them were forced to take roles they hated themselves for playing.'

‘Dear God,' said Nora.

‘That's right, Nora,' he said, moving towards his beloved older secretary. Nora Kelly was like a second mother to him, and as matriarch of their small but tight office ‘family', he felt an all-encompassing need to make her understand.

‘I know Stephanie was a good mother, she would have loved her kids more than life itself. She must have known her children were in danger – and so she agreed to . . .'

‘She held a gun at her teenage son's head,' argued Arthur, his voice now raising a notch.

‘Because he was holding a gun on them.'

There was silence, the only sound in the room the thickness of David's breath.

‘You saw a gun?' asked Sara.

‘Well . . .' David hesitated, shaking his head. ‘Maybe not a gun specifically, but there was something on that table that scared the hell out of them – something powerful enough to keep them all in line.'

‘You think Logan has been terrorising his family?' said Arthur.

‘I think Logan killed his wife.'

‘But J.T., the evidence . . .'

‘Things are not always as they seem, Arthur.'

‘Like the video,' said Nora.

‘Like the video,' David repeated. ‘Which does not tell us everything, but in the very least, gives us somewhere to start.'

‘So that's why you said you would represent him,' said Sara.

‘That – and because his mother asked me to.'

‘She
what
?' began a completely confused Sara before stealing a glance at Arthur. ‘David . . . how on earth . . . when did she . . . ?'

‘Just then, in that video,' replied David. ‘She asked me to help her, Sara – and no matter what it takes, that is exactly what I am going to do.'

Seconds later they were interrupted by the simultaneous ring of two telephones in outer offices – one on Nora's general office number and a second on David's direct line. David moved across the room quickly to pick up his own call from Arthur's extension, while Nora moved just as swiftly from Arthur's office to answer the main line from her own front reception desk. Both Sara and Arthur stood stationary as they watched
David and Nora listening, barely responding to the callers on the other end of their phones, before hanging up simultaneously to move back into the centre of Arthur's office. Nora took the first opportunity to report.

‘J.T. Logan is out of processing,' she said, her strong Irish accent giving the statement an almost profound rhythm of importance. ‘Detective McKay wants you to call him back immediately if you would like to see the boy before he is transported to Plymouth for the night.'

‘Call him back and tell him no,' said David.

‘
No?
' said Sara. ‘But I thought you just said . . . ?'

‘That was Marc Rigotti,' said David. ‘J.T. will have to wait until morning, because Marc says he needs to see us – fast.'

‘The Logan case?' asked Arthur.

David nodded. ‘It seems Stephanie never bought that kick-ass rifle after all.'

The following morning

T
ony Bishop rose from his black leather ergonomic chair and moved towards the window. It truly was beautiful, he thought, as he looked out across the eastern side of the city and the royal blue harbour beyond. It was barely after eight but the sun was already burning with a vengeance, bouncing off the cobalt blue water now being sliced at random by boats big and small as they went about their ‘business', promising a respite from what had been an unusually cool spring, and warming the pedestrians whose pace always slowed on mornings such as this, as if they needed to soak in every last ray before they hit the confines of their tiny, rectangular, artificially lit workspaces.

Tony had always thought it odd that he could watch people, from up here on the thirty-fifth floor of his circular Financial District commercial high-rise building, but that they could not watch him back. He could see them walking – men and women, solo and in pairs, young and old, tall and short, fat and thin, collar and tie, hat and overalls, trainers and suits and the odd commuter in a compulsory company uniform which no doubt bore some square-shaped shrunken logo embroidered just so on the left breast pocket, suggesting to the world that ‘my name is not important but the people who pay me are'.

Tony knew he was one of the ‘others' – one of the elite minority who got to look down without the inconvenience of reciprocation, and he had to admit it felt good. True, he only felt the sun on his back a couple of days a week; true, he spent double the time in his office than he did in his space-age Tempur bed; true, he was servicing clients who cared more about the bottom line than they did about world starvation – but in the end it was all a matter of give and take, and in all honesty, the compensation was more than enough to ease the pain. At least it was most of the time, but perhaps not all of the time, as was proven a bare two minutes later when an unexpected visitor came to his door and he felt the first twinge of bona fide professional discomfort.

‘Tony,' said junior attorney Harry Harrison from the Family Corporation Management Division way down on the twenty-ninth floor. Harrison had tapped on his door like a bird before sliding into his office sideways, with one foot pointed in and the other staking its claim on his seemingly much anticipated retreat.