Gospel (19 page)

‘Okay,' he said, managing a half smile in return before turning to jog back towards the field with Tony and Negley by his side.

‘Shit, dude,' said Tony.

‘Yeah,' managed David.

‘Jesus she looked hot,' said Negley.

‘For God's sake, Negley,' said Tony.

‘What? She did. It's true. Just stating the facts, dude. The chick was always a stunner, but she looks even better now, if that's possible. Not that Sara isn't a major babe as well, because she totally is, but I mean, geez DC, you got yourself in some situation, you . . .'

‘Just shut the fuck up, Negley,' said Tony, not knowing what else to do to put a sock in his tactless friend's mouth. ‘Just shut the fuck up.'

S
ome things never change.

Bristow's was like that. It was a small but popular Bar and Steakhouse in Boston's Downtown Crossing, packed with locals and the odd tourist attracted by the heritage-style frontage and, once inside, the promise of cheap but delicious grills and salads served with chunky French fries covered in salt and smothered in ketchup or mustard or mayo or whatever other condiment happened to take your fancy.

At six the place was packed with twenty- and thirty-somethings enjoying a cold beer after a long hot Saturday in a city that embraced the summer with a greediness that comes from knowing the true meaning of cold. In other words, days like this were never taken for granted.

David took a corner booth, ordered a Heineken and wondered why the hell he agreed to come – or even if he had. Sixteen years ago he had sat in this exact same spot, looking across into the dark brown eyes of his beautiful new wife. They had both been drinking Buds, so full of energy, excited about their futures, separately and together, as lawyer and doctor, husband and wife . . .

‘The course is amazing,' she had said, brushing the thick brown bangs from her eyes. Karin had just transferred from BC nursing to Boston University's
medical school and was bursting with a passion for the opportunities in front of her. ‘Their cardiovascular centre is to die for.'

‘Well, not literally, I hope,' he took her hand and smiled
.

‘Well, no of course not, silly,' she squeezed his in return. ‘The good news is, I can major in cardio and still make up some extra credits in emergency and genetics. That leaves my options open – gives me some room to play with.'

‘Sounds good to me, Dr Cavanaugh.'

‘Not yet, but some day. Anyway . . .' She took a sip of her Bud, leant across the small table and kissed him quickly on the lips. ‘. . . right now I am just happy to be Mrs Cavanaugh. God it sounds so good to say that. It's all about to happen for us, David. I feel it. You are gonna make a kick-ass attorney and I'll be there to cheer you on every time you win a case.'

‘And resuscitate me when I don't.'

‘That too.' She reached up and placed her right hand against his left cheek. ‘We are so lucky, you know . . . to have found each other. It was just meant to be. We were meant to be.'

‘I hope so,' he said, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘Because I spent my entire life's savings on that ring and . . .'

‘Mr Cavanaugh,' she said in mock horror
.

‘No seriously,' he smiled, pushing his empty bottle aside so that he might lean even closer towards her. ‘The truth is, I don't know what I would do without you. I couldn't imagine my life being any other way. You . . . I . . .'

‘You will never have to,' she had said, stopping him there by placing her fingers to his lips as if to reassure him of her commitment. ‘You are it for me, DC, you and the kids that we will have some day. I love you, and I am never letting you go. So if you think there is a way out of this deal, you're way too late.' She kissed him again. ‘Way, way too late.'

‘I'm sorry I'm late,' she said, jolting him out of his daydream. She did not wait for the invitation to sit, or even for him to acknowledge her. She immediately took the familiar stool across from him and looked directly into his eyes.

She had spent the past three hours getting ready for this ‘meeting', changing her clothes four times, putting her hair up and then letting it down again. Finally she had decided on a simple pale pink summer dress with beige leather sandals and light makeup. Somehow the outfit made
her feel young, innocent, like she was someone else, or someone she used to be.

‘Karin,' he said, and she could see he was feeling a desperate urge to run now that she was here beside him. ‘I am not sure what I . . .'

She was nervous. No, more than nervous, she was petrified. But she knew she could not allow her feelings to interfere with her purpose. She did not expect David to forgive her, let alone agree to what she was going to propose. But she was alone and knew he was the only man on earth who could help her. Such was the irony of it. She once ran from a future with him, and now he was the only one who could help her get her life back.

‘I'm sorry,' she began. ‘I know how hard this must be for you, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your . . .'

‘Okay, Karin. Let's get one thing straight,' he said. ‘You know nothing,
nothing
about me or who I am or how I feel. I don't even know why I agreed to meet you. So why don't you say what you have to say so I can get the hell out of here and on with my life, which is pretty damned good right now.'

She looked at him, knowing he had not intended to say so much, feeling his discomfort and embarrassment, his pain and his anger. Right then she hated herself more than she had ever hated herself in her entire life. She saw what she had done, and wished to hell that she could take it back. But she couldn't and she knew it and so, that was that.

‘I understand how inappropriate this is and I know I am in no position to ask you any favours. But I have a proposition for you and, if you are still the same man I knew twelve years ago, then I believe you will, at the very least, listen to what I have to say.'

David said nothing, just took a sip of his beer.

‘I want you to represent my husband.' There, she said it, straight out.

David almost choked on his drink, banging the base of his almost empty Heineken down on the stained walnut table.

‘You
what?
You can't be serious.'

‘Serious,' she laughed. ‘I am not a lot of things David, but if there was one thing I
am
right now it is serious.' Karin took a deep breath before going on, knowing this was her one and only shot.

‘Stuart is innocent, David. He did not kill Tom Bradshaw. He is being
framed, which means the real killer is running free. You are the only man I know who has even the slightest chance of winning this, DC.' She saw him flinch at the use of the nickname. It had just slipped out, force of habit.

‘You're a good lawyer, David, I saw what you did with the Martin trial. I've read the stories, I've heard the news reports, I've kept track. I know how crazy this sounds but I am asking you . . . I am
begging
you, to at least consider what I have to say. For, if you don't, an innocent man will be sentenced to death and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life.'

‘Croker?' asked Joe as he pulled up a stool opposite the middle-aged detective whose somewhat slumped physique and relaxed but furtive eyes smelled ‘cop'.

‘Pleased to meet you,' said the large detective standing to extend his right arm.

Mannix shook the man's hand and noticed Croker was big, but certainly not what you would call ‘soft'. He may be carrying a few extra pounds, thought Joe, but his guess was this guy could probably give chase with the best of them.

‘Thanks for coming,' said Croker.

‘Forget it. I needed a change of scenery and this place is as good as any,' said Joe, gesturing at the tropical paraphernalia on the walls of the somewhat run-down pub.

‘This guy Mal from the Islands?'

‘Nah. That's him behind the bar,' said Croker pointing to a thin man of Indian appearance serving vodka jelly shots to two young women. ‘He's from New Delhi. Never set foot in Hawaii. The locals seem to like it though,' he said, pointing to the girls.

‘Nothing like an Indian in a loud shirt with a ukulele over his shoulder,' said Joe.

‘Good point,' answered Croker.

They sat there for a few minutes, making more of the same cop to cop banter before Croker broached the subject they were both here to discuss.

‘So here's the thing,' said Croker finishing his first Coors and signalling to Mal for two more. ‘This woman is mad as a hatter, completely loco, or at least that's how she appears at first. But spend enough time with her
and she starts making sense – and the “sense” I'm talking about makes for an even wilder story.'

‘You check her out?' asked Joe.

‘Sure, she's clean as a whistle – Mrs Typical Aspiring Upper Middle Class LA, at least on the surface. In fact the whole Walker family history seems like a stereotypical profile for middle American normalcy.' Croker went on to tell Joe about the family's scant personal backgrounds. ‘But dig a little deeper and things get murky, and I'm talkin' dark as mud dirty with plenty of unanswered questions attached. I'm no psychologist but blind Freddie could tell this lady is terrified. I get the feeling she . . .' Croker hesitated then, taking Joe in, as if not sure what he was about to say was safe, or maybe he just didn't want to sound like an idiot in front of a respected fellow detective he had just dragged from one side of the country to the other.

‘Look,' said Mannix, picking up on Croker's discomfort. ‘I know you just met me but something tells me this Rita Walker isn't the only one you've checked out over the past couple of days. So you know I'm straight up, and I'm guessing you also know I wouldn't be here unless I thought that you had something important to say.'

Croker said nothing, but Joe picked up a slight nod of his head.

‘There isn't any point in two pieces to a puzzle being on opposite coasts of the country,' Joe went on. ‘What you got may not mean shit without what I got and vice versa.'

Croker accepted his second beer and took a few sips before responding. ‘All right, Joe. Why don't I start from the beginning. And then, we'll take it from there.'

Croker began by telling Mannix about the bizarre recent events involving Rita Walker and her family. He told him about her husband, Kevin – a white, middle class IRS clerk found murdered in South Central, his throat cut like a sacrificial lamb, his watch missing, the contents of his wallet drained but his expensive hand luggage intact along with a single white rose for the wife and thirty quarters in his right hip pocket.

He told him he believed Rita Walker anticipated his ‘death knock' – that her psychotic reaction was more out of expectation than shock, and that her biblical ravings, which at first seemed maniacal, would later start to take shape in the form of a conspiratorial mantra.

Then there was the car accident, the death of her son Chase who Rita insisted was named Gavin, the lack of drugs in Rita's system, the repeated references to the Bible and her claims that she knew who murdered the late Vice President.

He finished with the visit from the ‘cousin', and a new series of investigations he had made over the past few days.

‘So I pull in some favours,' said Croker. ‘I got a bud from the accident squad to work overtime assessing Walker's car. The Volvo was a mess but my guy is good. He says he's sure the brake fluid had been drained
before
the crash, and not as a result of it.

‘I also got a friend in scientific to re-check Rita's tox screen, broadening the tests beyond the usual candy of choice. All the expected stuff turns up negative, just like the first test. But they did find a new narcotic in her system. Hydrogen cyanide.'

‘What?' said Joe. ‘Then why is she . . . ?'

‘Still breathing?' finished Croker. ‘Just lucky is my guess. The levels were too low. The screen showed minimal trace elements of the drug – almost negligible.'

Croker paused there, and Mannix sensed the LA detective was giving him the opportunity to interrupt with further questions. But Joe knew this was a story better told ‘clean'. Croker was on to something, and he wanted to hear it all before he decided what to ask and how to ask it.

‘Anyways,' Croker went on, ‘after Rita's visit from the so-called “cousin”, she told one of the nurses he had been messing with her equipment. The nurse told me and I got the idea to check her IV. Sure enough, the lab guys found traces of cyanide in her old drip.

‘Bottom line, this “cousin” came back to finish the job. The husband is sliced from ear to ear, her son pulverised in a sabotaged car and Rita is the only remaining “problem”. Rita just got lucky the nurse changed her IV before the poison could do any major damage.'

Croker stopped there, taking a much needed drink, Joe allowing him to take his time.

‘The thing is,' he said, wiping the small trace of froth from his top lip with the back of his large weathered hand, ‘injecting that cyanide in a crowded ward in a busy city hospital with plenty of potential witnesses is some gutsy murdering. This “cousin” has some nerve, no doubt about
that. But my guess is, our guy, or whoever was dishing out his orders, was racing against the clock. He needed to take her out before she could wake from sedation – before she would start up with the whole Bible bullshit all over again and eventually find someone who would listen.'

Croker then told Mannix how he had had Rita Walker moved, quietly, late at night, to a secluded private hospital in the Hollywood Hills. The hospital was more specifically a hospice for the dying run by the Sisters of Mercy – a place Croker had fortunately, and unfortunately, become familiar with last year during the gruelling final months of his wife's life.