When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3) (2 page)

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Did you read the paper this morning?”

“No. I don’t think I want to.”

“You’re probably right. Want to talk about it?”

“Not really. I’m not being evasive or anything – I just don’t have anything much to say about it. He’s got parole, I’m angry, that’s it.”

“Do you think there’s any chance he’ll mess with you?”

“I don’t have any more idea about that than you do.”

“Okay.”

“Sorry I missed you last night. I was gonna go to the Rhythm Room, but I just wasn’t in the mood.”

“Understandable. Too bad, though. It was a good night.”

“These things are sent to try us.”

“No, that’s the court’s job.”

She laughed. “And, speaking of the fine residents of Florence Prison, I have to go talk to Mobley’s sister.”

“You found her?”

“Sure did. She’s living on the West Side. I’m going over there now.”

“Cool.”

“See you later.”

Timmie Dave Mobley was one of Pat’s clients. His appeals were running out, and the Department of Corrections would be setting an execution date for him soon. Laura liked a few of the people on death row that Pat represented, but Mobley was hard for anyone to like. He was a brute who hated everyone equally and without prejudice. There was nothing about him that members of the clemency board or anyone else would find sympathetic, but Pat had decided to look into claims that Mobley had suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome, and had been severely abused by his father. Both of his parents were now dead, so the only possible witness to the abuse was his sister.

Laura found the apartment complex, parked on the street outside and went in. The apartment number she was looking for was 920, but many of the doors had their numbers scraped off. She found what she thought was the right one, and knocked on the door. No answer, but she could hear voices inside. She pushed the door and it opened into a living room that had no furniture except a couch and a big-screen T.V.. Two women were lying on the floor, and from the look on their faces Laura could tell they’d been sucking the glass cock. Behind the women, a filthy, naked baby lay face-down on the couch. The child’s back and ass were covered in sores, and he/she wasn’t moving. Laura wondered if the kid was on crack too.

The women looked at her without concern, and didn’t say anything.

“Hi. I’m looking for Destiny Mobley,” she said.

One of the women laughed.

“Next door. That way,” the other woman said, pointing.

“Thanks.”

Laura went back out into the heat, closing the door behind her. There had been a time in her life when she would have called Child Protective Services and told them about the kid on the couch, but experience had taught her that they would only make the mandatory visit, and then do nothing.

She knocked on the door of the next apartment.

The woman who opened the door could have been as young as thirty-five or as old as fifty. She looked at Laura with the nervousness of someone used to being ordered around by people with more money.

“Hi, are you Destiny Mobley?” Laura said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hi, I’m Laura Ponto. From the Federal Public Defender’s Office? I called you on Tuesday?”

“Yeah. About Timmie Dave.”

“Uh-huh. I just want to ask you some questions that I hope will help us to help him.”

“Come on in.”

Then a male voice from inside the apartment shouted,
“Don’t fucking bring her in here!”

“That’s my boyfriend,” Destiny said. “Don’t pay him no mind. He’s just mean.”

As she spoke, the guy came out of the apartment. He was compactly muscled, hadn’t shaved and reeked of cigarettes.

“What the fuck do you want?” he said, looking at Laura. She ignored him and kept looking at Destiny.

“Boone, come on,” Destiny whined. “She works for the lawyers that work for my brother. She just wants to help.”

“Help, how? What the fuck’s she gonna do? Get back in the apartment right now.” Then he looked at Laura and said, “You better leave.”

Laura went on ignoring him. “If you like, we can go to a Denny’s or something,” she said to Destiny.

“Are you deaf, you fucking whore? Why the fuck should I let her talk to you?”

Laura looked at him for the first time. “I’m talking to her, not you, you pencil-dick piece of shit,” she said. “When I’m talking to you, you’ll know. I’ll break your fucking leg to get your attention.” Spit flew from her mouth as she spoke. She turned back to Destiny. “Come on,” she said, and started walking. Destiny followed her, as Boone said something else. Laura didn’t catch what it was.

Neither woman spoke as they walked to Laura’s car. Laura wanted to ask Destiny why she let the guy bully her, but she was aware that she had just bullied Destiny herself, ordering her to come with her. Laura knew she had just proven herself a more powerful bully than Boone because Destiny thought she was obligated to do what an official in a suit told her to do.

By the time they reached the Denny’s at Camelback and 24
^th
Avenue, Laura wasn’t feeling like her suit gave her much power. It was drenched in her sweat, and she could feel wet drips falling from her ears and nose. Destiny was wearing a gray sweatshirt, and its underarms and shoulders were soaked almost black.

The Denny’s was so cold it felt like their sweat would turn to ice. They sat down, ordered coffee, and Laura opened her notebook and began asking questions. She got the answers she’d hoped for – Timmie Dave Mobley’s father had sodomized him with a baseball bat while his mother watched, had once sat him naked on a hot stove-top... It was nothing that Laura hadn’t heard before, in other interviews with family members of other clients. As Destiny described it, her tone of voice was almost casual, like someone describing a kid being grounded. Laura took notes automatically, still seething about the encounter with Boone. When she’d finished, she drove Destiny back to the apartment complex.

“Does your boyfriend ever hit you?” Laura said as she drove.

“No.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Destiny just looked ahead and didn’t say anything.

When Laura parked the car, she gave Destiny her business card. “You ever get sick of him and need any help finding someplace to live, call me, okay?”

“Thanks. I’m all right.”

“Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. We’ll be in touch.”

“Okay.” Destiny got out of the car. As she did, Laura saw Boone walking towards them.

“You,” he yelled at Destiny, “Get up those fucking stairs.” He spat on Laura’s windshield. “You. Get the fuck out of here, and don’t come back.” He turned and walked away, pushing Destiny in front of him.

Laura got out of the car and followed him. “Hey,” she said. When Boone turned around to face her, Laura had a can of mace in her left hand and a spring-loaded cosh in her right.

She maced Boone in the eyes. He yelled in pain and shock, staggered, covered his eyes with his hands. Laura knew she should have stopped at that point, but she also knew she wasn’t going to.

She swung the cosh low, into his kneecap. She thought she actually heard the bone shattering, just before his scream blew away every other sound. Destiny ran for the apartment, crying. Boone lay on the hot concrete, unable to stop screaming. He grabbed at his knee, and that made it hurt even worse.

“I told you,” Laura said. “If I wanted to talk to you, I’d break your leg. But you know what, homes? You suck at conversation.”

––––––––

T
he next morning, Laura and Pat sat in Pat’s office.

“I don’t even know what to say, Laura.” Pat raised his hands. “Tell me. What am I supposed to say to you right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that helps a lot. That’s great. Okay, here’s what I’m going to say. You’re my friend, but right now I’m not talking to you as your friend. I’m talking to you as the Federal Public Defender...” He trailed off and they sat and looked at each other.

“Am I fired?” Laura said.

“You just assaulted somebody. You’re lucky your cop friends kept you out of jail. I mean, tell me again –
what
the fuck did you hit him with?”

“A cosh.”

“A cosh. Where did you get a goddamn cosh?
Soldier of Fortune
magazine?”

She started to laugh, but held it back. “I ordered it off the Internet.”

“So, as an investigator for this office, you go to interviews armed like some military thug from a banana republic?”

“The cosh is legal for me to carry. I have a concealed weapons permit.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sure you had a gun as well, so maybe I should be grateful you didn’t just shoot the guy.”

They looked at each other, and this time they both had to swallow laughter, though it was tinged with hysteria.

“The cosh might be legal, but what you did with it wasn’t. And, even if you hadn’t used it at all, carrying a weapon is a violation of FPD office policy, which you’re well aware of. Laura... this is so fucked up. Go have lunch and let me think about what to do.”

“Okay.” She had always assumed that Pat knew she carried weapons, and that he just preferred to look the other way, hoping he would never have to deal with it. When they’d hung out socially, they’d sometimes argued about the gun laws. Pat favored gun control, which Laura opposed. She approved of the fact that in Arizona anyone who wasn’t a convicted felon could carry a sidearm, as long as it wasn’t concealed. If you wanted a concealed weapons permit, you had to put in a few hours on the range to prove that you knew how to shoot. Laura had never understood the reasoning behind that regulation, but she didn’t really care, since she was a good shot and had no problem passing the test. She had once told Pat that the only reason she bothered concealing her weapons was that they clashed with her clothes if she didn’t. She was only half-joking; the other half was that she didn’t like the way a visible weapon attracted stares.  Now she wondered if Pat had thought all of her comments had been in jest. She decided not to ask him.

She drove to Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Café, a soul food place on Jefferson Street. She’d started going there when she’d started hanging out with blues musicians. It was always crowded, but she got a table and ordered the smothered pork chops. As she waited for her food to arrive, she looked out of the window and thought about the things that had happened on that street, things she had seen during her time as a cop, and things that had been done by some of the clients whose lives she now worked to save. To Laura, it sometimes seemed like everyplace in the city was a crime scene.

As she ate, a hand touched her shoulder. It was Pat.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. I thought you might be here.” He sat down, and the waiter came over with some iced tea. When the waiter asked him what he wanted to eat, Pat said, “Nothing today, thanks,” and Laura knew.

“So you’re done thinking?” she said.

“Yeah.” He took off his sunglasses. “I don’t have any choice, Laura. I wish I did.”

“Okay,” she said.

“I hate this.”

“Me too.”

“I’ll pay you through a week from Friday. Is that okay?”

“I guess.” She felt numb. “So you don’t want me to work out any notice?”

“No, I don’t think so. You can use the paid time to get your bearings and find something else.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, can I suggest something to you? As a friend?”

“Sure.”

“You might want to think about getting some help... I don’t know, like therapy or something. I don’t want you to get angry and end up being one of my clients.”

One of
my
clients. Not one of
our
clients. She wasn’t on the team anymore.

She said nothing.

“It’s just a thought. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

She stood up, bent over and kissed Pat on the cheek. “I’ll let you pay for my lunch,” she said. He nodded. As she walked out of the restaurant, she looked back and saw that his eyes were becoming red. He put his sunglasses back on.

––––––––

L
aura drove back to the Federal Public Defender’s Office. Instead of going to the parking garage, she parked on the street near the entrance to the building. As she rode the elevator, she wondered how many people in the office already knew. As she walked in, she tried to act as though nothing were amiss, but she immediately began clearing out her office. It didn’t take long. Some of her colleagues decorated their offices with as much care as they did their homes, but all Laura had was a few pictures on the walls, some paperwork on her desk, some books and magazines. She went through the paperwork, and most of it was stuff she wouldn’t need anymore. She took the pictures from the walls, and assembled the books and magazines into a pile. She found a box, and the stuff she wanted to take with her only half-filled it.

She left her office keys on her desk, along with all the documents she didn’t need. She picked up the box and walked out. As she walked through the bullpen, she looked straight ahead. She didn’t know if Pat had come back to the office yet. She heard someone call her name, but she pretended she hadn’t heard, and she kept walking. She got in the elevator before anyone could catch up with her.

She was putting the box in the trunk of her car when she heard her name being called again. Lee Cetrine, one of the lawyers, was practically jogging towards her.

“Hey, dork,” he said breathlessly. “You just gonna take off and not say goodbye to anybody?”

“No, I’ll call everybody later. I just didn’t want a big goodbye moment right now.”

“Well, the gang wants me to bring you back upstairs...”

“I’m really not up to it right now.”

“I can understand that. You know we all hate it that you’re leaving.”

“I know. Me too. Listen, it’s hot. I’m gonna hit the road.”

He said nothing. They hugged, and she got in her car.

By the time she got home, there was a message on her machine from Lee. “Okay, you skank, once things are less frantic around here, we’re having a going-away party for you. If you try to get out of it, we’ll come and get you. We’ll be in touch when further details are available. That is all.”