Reilly 11 - Case of Lies (41 page)

“No. It was from his hunting license.”

“He saw the attempted robbery from the balcony, with his wife,” Nina said. “He saw Elliott rush Flint and knock the gun out of his hand. There was an interval between the first two shots and the third shot.”

“The students and Flint-they must have all run away after the second shot,” Wish said.

“What are you saying, Willis?” Sandy demanded. “You’re not saying our client fired the third shot?”

“What do you think, Mom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nina?” Wish said.

“Let’s say he came running down the stairs and saw the gun on the ground. He picked it up and saw his wife. He shot her. He might have heard Meredith coming. He only had seconds, Wish! He should have wiped the gun, or kept it.”

“But he didn’t have time to think. He only had time to run halfway up again and pretend he was coming down for the first time when she saw him.”

“He just didn’t have time to deal with the gun,” Nina said.

“There you go,” Wish said.

“I don’t believe it,” Sandy said. “Why would he kill his wife? She was pregnant!”

“Yes. She was thirty-eight and she taught school and she was going to have a baby,” Nina said. “His baby.”

“I just don’t believe it.”

“Hang on.” Nina held up a hand. She struggled with a feeling so intense she couldn’t speak for a minute.

Betrayal. To be betrayed like this by her own client hurt. She breathed in and out, trying to think.

Sandy was still saying it couldn’t be true, but Wish just stared at Nina as she tried to encompass the enormity of Hanna’s lies.

Finally she said, “Remember what Jimmy Bova told me at the Ace High? Flint attacked him because he thought Bova might have shot Sarah. But Bova convinced him he didn’t.”

Sandy’s eyes narrowed into an expression Nina didn’t recognize. Her face changed. Her nose stood out prominently, nostrils wide. Her lips became a thin line.

“I’m starting to believe it,” she said. “Because the next man Flint went to see, the very next day, was-”

“Our client,” Wish said. “He started in on Mr. Hanna, but then the police came after Roger Freeman called 911 and Mr. Hanna must have gotten the gun away from him. Mr. Hanna tied Flint up, not the other way around.”

“But Flint was making Mr. Hanna talk on the phone,” Sandy said, “wasn’t he?” and an expression Nina did recognize, of horror and rage, came into her face. Nina felt it, too. The hidden variable had revealed itself like some cold demon riding through a dark sky, trailing misery and bloodshed.

“Hanna had good luck and bad luck,” Nina said. “He did struggle with Flint, and he got the gun away from him. I imagine the police were just arriving. He didn’t know what to do at first, so he did nothing.”

“And outside, everyone believed it was a hostage situation,” Wish said.

Sandy said, “He was safe that whole time? I don’t want to believe it, because then that man is so cruel. Cruel!”

“Letting Roger and everyone worry,” Wish said. “And he was fine, he was just trying to figure out how to keep Flint from talking.”

“Cruel,” Sandy repeated, shaking her head. Nina closed her eyes and thought back to the awful moments in Placerville when Dave was talking to her on the phone, pretending to relay Flint’s statements.

It was Dave, cruel Dave, who had told her it was all her fault.

When it was really Dave’s fault, Dave who killed his wife and tried to hide his secret, Dave who obstructed Nina’s efforts to find Sarah’s killer.

But Dave couldn’t know then that the robber whose gun he picked up and used wasn’t a random robber, wasn’t some punk off the streets of downtown Reno.

Lee Flint didn’t know who had killed the woman whose death he was being blamed for. He watched and waited for two years while the police investigation fizzled and the civil case wheezed toward dismissal. Then, when Nina came in, he started his own investigation. And he started covering his tracks, eliminating witnesses.

“Hanna piggybacked on Lee Flint’s robbery,” Nina said. “Flint got blamed for Sarah’s murder. He hadn’t killed her. But he couldn’t afford to be caught. To stop the investigation from leading to his robbery, he decided to kill Silke and Raj-”

“And you, too, and Elliott. Flint thought Chelsi was you,” Wish said. “We’re lucky you’re still with us.”

“So Dave Hanna killed his wife,” Sandy said. “I’m gonna believe it. I’m gonna go down to Placerville and kill him myself for killing his wife and lying to us and making you feel like you pulled the trigger on those people.” Her face had turned purple. She stood up.

“Mom?”

“Break his scrawny little neck.” She went into the outer office and Nina and Wish started to follow her. “Feed him to my horses. Don’t try to stop me.” She was putting on her coat.

Nina said, “Sandy, take your coat off, please. Dave’s incredibly dangerous. Do you guys realize he must have shot Flint there at the end, while Flint was tied up and probably gagged?”

“It’s sickening,” Wish said. “He’s sickening. Cheney told me not to talk to Hanna. I think he’ll be arrested within a few hours. What do we do, Nina?”

“He’s still our client, even though he’s a lying, murdering sack,” Nina said. She was trembling with rage.

“Do we warn him?” Wish asked. “Should I go down to Placerville and try to help him?”

“You mean kill him,” Sandy said. “Don’t you?”

She still stood at the door in her coat. Nina thought of all the hours Sandy had put in to help Hanna, the deadlines, the phone calls, the hours in Placerville worrying for him. She and Wish had also been betrayed. Wish walked over to her and put his arm around her and said gently, “Mom, come on back here and sit down.”

Nina said, “Wish, call Roger Freeman and ask him to come up here. Use some pretext. I don’t want him in Hanna’s house when the arrest goes down. Sandy, draw up a Withdrawal of Attorney in the Hanna case. Make copies and date it today.”

“We’re abandoning him?” Wish said.

“We signed on to help him sue the man who killed his wife,” Nina said. “He had to sue, or it would seem as though he didn’t care. But the whole case is a lie. There is no case.”

“Where are you going?” Nina was pulling her hiking boots on.

“For a walk. The trail down to the lake. I want to feel some clean snow on my face.”

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Sandy said. “You do know that?”

“All I know is that Bob can come home now,” Nina said.

She went to the morgue. She had to see Flint.

He was on a gurney, post-autopsy, covered with a sheet. She pulled it back and stared at his scarred face. He looked younger than she had thought. In the way of the dead, he gave nothing back except the empty calm of eternity.

Bastard! she told him. He didn’t answer. She had never seen him alive. She would never fully understand him. Unknowable, he had escaped her by dying before she could tell it to his face, tell him, Got you, got you.

Got you. Selfish and doomed, he rested in peace.

She had one more call to make. Four hours later, in the evening, after Cheney called to tell her that the arrest had gone down quietly, she went to see Dave Hanna at the Placerville jail. The drive down the hill went slowly because of the drifts and she welcomed the chance to think some things through.

***

“You took your time,” Dave Hanna told Nina through the glass in the visitors’ room at the Placerville jail. His ruddy face showed fright. “I only got to make my phone call an hour ago. The cops said I was under arrest for Sarah’s murder. That’s all they would tell me. It’s all a big-”

“Let me bring you up to date, Dave,” Nina said.

She told him about the gun, the fingerprint, the bruises on Flint ’s body.

Hanna began to cave in as she talked. He slumped and said, “Oh, shit,” several times. When she finished, he started to cry. Nina watched him do that.

After a few minutes, when the sobbing and hiccuping had died down, Nina said, “Why did you do it, Dave?”

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. This is-still confidential, right?”

“I’m still your attorney. It’s confidential.”

“Why’d you have to open up the whole thing?”

“Why’d you kill her?” Something in her voice must have shaken him.

“It just happened,” he said. “I snapped, I guess.”

“What does that mean?”

“We saw the robbery from the balcony, then the man in the mask ran one way and the kids took off toward their rooms. I told Sarah to stay put and I ran down the stairs.”

“Why?”

“I saw the gun lying on the concrete. I don’t know why, I just wanted it. I picked it up. It was hot, alive. I wanted to use it on something. I looked up and Sarah was standing on the balcony looking down at me. And she knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was thinking, I’d like to shoot her.”

“Oh?”

“She already knew. So I pulled the trigger and made it real. I was surprised myself. I heard a noise and I thought, Drop it and run back up and yell. So I did that and I had just made it a few steps up when the motel clerk came around the corner, and I stopped.” He grimaced. “Later, I felt really bad about it.”

“About what?”

“Leaving the gun. But I didn’t have enough time to think. You have to understand, Nina, it was like somebody else did it.”

Nina was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “But why? Why did you kill her?”

“Why? Why? How should I know? She was just putting up with me. She ragged on me about money, about me having a few beers at night, about brushing my fucking teeth before I went to bed. She was going to have a baby and there wasn’t going to be any room at all for me after that. The gun was in my hand. It happened.”

Nina leaned back and closed her eyes.

“I was tired of her. Everybody gets that way sometimes. I had a gun in my hand. It’s like an accident.”

“An accident,” Nina repeated.

“The whole thing. A series of random events that put the gun in my hand. I haven’t told a soul,” Hanna went on, “except my attorney. How strong is that evidence, Nina? What’s going to happen to me? If she hadn’t given me that look, like I was an asshole, when I looked up at her on that balcony, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“What about Flint?” Nina said. “Was he gagged and bound when you shot him?”

“Flint? Why are you talking about him? That was no crime, not really, he had come there to kill me. It was self-defense.”

“You shot him in cold blood!”

“So what? He deserved it, didn’t he? Fool. He didn’t dream I could take him.”

Nina said nothing. Dave went back to his wife.

“It’s not my fault. I never did anything wrong my whole life. I walked her to church, I folded the clothes, I went and got the paper for her in the morning. For years. Years. Something snapped. I wasn’t myself. I’d had a few. Whatever.”

“Did you kill Chelsi? Did you follow me to Germany?”

“No! It was Flint. I wouldn’t have done that to little Chelsi. Poor little girl. I was so scared while all that was going on, Nina. It was very hard to keep it together.”

“Flint only finished what you started,” Nina said.

“Not at all. You don’t understand. Flint had nothing to do with me.”

“I’m afraid the difference escapes me.”

Hanna’s face drooped. “I appreciate your coming down, Nina. I was afraid you might walk out. It’s good to know that at least you’re going to do your duty and help me in my hour of need. Lucky for me you’re a criminal lawyer, too. I’ll sell the house. You’ll be paid.”

“Don’t put up the For Sale sign on my account,” Nina said. She opened her briefcase and pulled out the legal pleading, never taking her eyes off Hanna. Then she plastered the paper against the glass. “Read it,” she said. He read it.

“You can’t do that!” he shouted. “You’re my lawyer and you have a duty!”

“This is a new matter.”

“I told you I’d pay you. Don’t leave me, please, Nina. You have to help me. I don’t want to go through this with a stranger.”

Nina said slowly, “You know, Dave, I never really knew what evil was until I met you. I could find some excuse for every one of my guilty clients. But you taught me. Now I know.”

“But-”

“Evil is a man who kills his wife and thinks he deserves pity. You make me sick. Listen. Remember this one thing from our conversation.”

“Wait-”

“Remember this through all the years to come, Dave. It
was
your fault. All of it.” She spat the words out.

“Don’t do this!” He was shouting again. He kept it up while the guard came in and dragged him back into the secure area. Nina sat, her head bowed, until the guard came to fetch her.

Epilogue

THE PRE-CHRISTMAS SNOWSTORM TURNED INTO A whopper. Three feet of snow plumped up the street with mounds of marshmallows. Four feet packed the higher ski resorts. When bright, dry conditions returned, Tahoe went wild. Tourist SUVs clogged the roads in and out, ski racks piled high on their roofs. The Heavenly Gondola sagged with the weight of the people going up and down from the lodge. The lake that never froze, rimmed by its white peaks, gleamed under a cloudless, deep sky. The casinos rocked into the night and Christmas carols jingled across the mountains.

Nina Reilly’s law offices closed, leaving behind a Happy Holidays sign to swing on the door, reminding unobservant clients that the world had shut down. For this short time, all the running hamsters in the town lumbered down from their wheels, ate too much, drank too much, and fell into luxurious stupors. Nobody worked. Even Sandy and Wish went home to Markleeville, Wish’s brown van stuffed full of presents and feed for the animals.

On Vashon Island in Washington State, at his scratched old desk, Elliott Wakefield set down his mechanical pencil and cocked his head at the result. He had checked the equations over and over, and the results never varied. He couldn’t find an error. Starting with any integer on Gauss’s li line, he could first determine precisely how many primes there were up to that point, and then generate the nearest prime by plugging that number into his function. Factoring any-size composite number followed as a necessary corollary of the function.