Guilty (33 page)

"I didn't realize we
were
seeing each other."

She made an impatient sound. "You know what I mean. I don't think you should come by the house anymore. I don't want you seeing Ben. I know you have to do your job, and I'm willing to answer questions from you if and when they come up, but from here on out, I want things between us to be strictly professional. No more..."

Her voice broke off as she searched for the best way to put it. "Kissing?" he suggested. Her chin came up. "Yes. Exactly." "Okay," he said. "You got it."

His easy acquiescence left her without anything else to say. It also, if she was honest, rankled her just the tiniest bit. Because she had kind of liked the kissing.

No—and again with the being honest here—she had loved it. "Okay. Good." Feeling ridiculously uncomfortable with him now, she cast a quick glance at the couch. "Um ... the sheets and things you used last night are in the dryer. I'll just get them and—"

"I'll get them," he interrupted. "I know where the dryer is, and I can find anything else I need. Go on up to bed. Get some sleep."

Going up to bed was exactly what she needed to do, she knew, because it would get her away from him. Especially since part of her wanted to take it all back.

"Yes, I'm going," she said, and headed toward the stairs. She could feel his gaze on her. With one hand on the newel post, she glanced at him.

"Good night," she said. He simply nodded in reply.

Climbing the stairs, knowing she had done the right thing, the only thing possible under the circumstances, Kate nevertheless was conscious of a sickening sense of loss.

Then she got angry at herself:
Idiot! How can you lose something you never even had?

FOR THE NEXT two days, Philadelphia was a sea of blue. Thousands of police officers from across the Northeast lined up along the streets to pay their respects during the funeral processions for Judge Moran and the slain deputies. In addition, the citizens of Philadelphia turned out en masse. During those hours of mourning, the city came to a virtual standstill. Flags few at half-mast. Bells tolled almost continually. At the huge cathedral basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, where Judge Moran's and Deputy Russo's funeral masses were celebrated within hours of each other, televisions throughout the sanctuary showed scenes from the men's lives, while across the street in the park enormous screens were set up so that overflow crowds could watch the services. Kate attended all the funerals, usually sitting between Mona and Bryan, with both of them holding her hands tightly, although whether for their own comfort or hers Kate couldn't tell. The services were emotionally wrenching; witnessing the grief of the bereaved families was terrible, especially when Kate couldn't shake the thought that she could so easily have been among the dead, with Ben left to cry useless tears for her.

The local and national news media were also out in force. She, Bryan, Public Defender Ed Curry, and Sally Toner, the court reporter, as the only survivors among the official personnel who had been in court that day, were besieged by cameras and microphones and shouted questions wherever they went. One enterprising CNN crew managed to capture the four of them huddled together near a service elevator as they sought to escape the relentless media scrutiny via an underground garage. The resulting images and the brief, shouted question-and-answer session that accompanied them—Curry, as a public defender, wasn't bound by the same order that had gagged the DA's office, and it was he who responded to the questions—was broadcast, presumably worldwide, much to Kate's dismay.

But there was nothing she could do about it. About any of it. Except get through it the best way she could.

She glimpsed Tom at a distance several times, always in the company of the army of police officers attending the funerals. His mouth tight, his expression somber, he looked so starkly handsome that Mona was poking her in the ribs and pointing him out (like Kate might have missed him) while she sighed over his good looks. But Mona pined alone, because Kate wasn't in the mood to sigh over them herself.

Despite the little speech she'd given him, the one he'd agreed to so readily, he ended up spending Thursday night on her couch. Why? Because, after they had delivered Ben to school Thursday morning and he had driven her on into work where, later in the day, the insurance company had arranged to drop off a rental car for her use, he had dropped a bombshell on her.

"You want to be extra-careful today." As they had driven over the bridge into the city, Tom had glanced at her, breaking the uneasy silence that had filled the car since Ben had gotten out. "Yesterday afternoon we found two adult male bodies in a torched U-Haul. Looks like they were supposed to be the getaway drivers Rodriguez and his pals were waiting for. Only those guys were dead long before these two were killed. Which means there's somebody else out there—
still
out there—who killed them. And given the run of bad luck you've been having lately"—here a touch of sarcasm colored his voice—"I'd say it's not impossible that you might encounter this somebody. So take some precautions, okay? Like not walking through dark garages alone. Like not being alone, period."

As she processed the ramifications of that, Kate's blood ran cold.

Mario.

Motive, method, and opportunity: Those were the three cornerstones of prosecuting a successful murder case. As she knew only too well, Mario had been back on the streets as of yesterday afternoon, which meant that, depending on the exact time of death, he could have had the opportunity. He'd certainly had motive, if the dead men knew he'd been party to the escape attempt. As for method, she didn't even have to think about that. When it came to violence, she was willing to believe that Mario was infinitely versatile.

But she couldn't tell Tom about Mario. Not a word, not a syllable. The risk to herself was too great.

It was then that she had a stunning epiphany: With the deaths of the others who'd been present that night, just like Mario was the only one who knew she'd been there when David Brady had been killed, she was the only one who knew the same about him. And he had been eighteen, a legal adult at the time, and despite his denial, very likely the trigger man to boot. And she also knew that he had shot Rodriguez. And had been party to the escape attempt that had left Judge Moran and the others dead.

She was even more of a danger to him than he was to her.

And he knew it. He was many things but not stupid.

If Mario was killing witnesses to his crimes, she had to be number one on his hit list.

At this, she went all light-headed.

"Why didn't you tell me this last night?" she asked when she could trust herself to speak.

"I didn't see any point in worrying you. I was there, and I knew you were safe. Today's a different story."

Oh, yeah. Definitely.
She tried to keep her physical reactions invisible, tried not to let him see the sudden need she had to breathe deeply, or the acceleration of her pulse, or the pounding of her heart.

When she didn't respond, he gave her a quick, hard look and continued.

"Look, I called in some favors with some first-rate people I know. By the time you get home tonight, your locks will be changed and you'll have a security system installed. But you know, nothing's foolproof. If there's something going on with you that's putting you in danger, you need to tell me before you—and maybe Ben with you— wind up dead."

Oh, God.
It was her worst fear, and now that he'd put it into words, she reeled inwardly at the terror it invoked. If Mario came for her, and if Ben was around, would he leave Ben alone? She didn't even have to think about it: not likely.

Should
she tell Tom everything, and thereby at least make sure Ben would be physically safe?

Physically safe but with his mother in custody and his life destroyed?

Or should she try to come up with another, alternative, solution? Like abandoning her job and grabbing Ben and running for it, maybe? But she had six dollars to last till Monday—no, wait, that was gone with her briefcase; except for what was in the change jar in the house, she was broke. So wail until she got paid, and then run? That small amount of money wouldn't last long. It wouldn't be enough to find a place to live and keep them until she could get another job.

Anyway, Mario might come after her or have someone come after her.
In fact, given the magnitude of what she knew about him, the odds were good that he would. He wouldn't feel safe while she lived. She would be forever scared, forever looking over her shoulder.

Forever at risk.

How about making sure Ben was kept safe while she tried to deal with Mario on her own?

Tom glanced at her again, waiting for her reply.

"I keep telling you," Kate said. "There's nothing."

"You keep telling me," Tom agreed. Like he didn't believe her. Well, she didn't have the heart to try to convince him otherwise. She was getting sick of telling lies.

They were across the bridge now, cutting through the densely populated, kitschy-for-the-tourists area that was Chinatown. Looking out at the crowded streets without really seeing anything, Kate came to a decision.

If this was a game she and Mario were playing, the rules had changed: It had just turned into winner-take-all.

And for Ben's sake, she meant to win.

The first thing she had to do was make sure nothing happened to Ben while she made further plans. Although Tom posed his own particular brand of danger to them, keeping him as their protector until she could get Ben out of harm's way was only smart.

"You know, you're scaring me to death here." She slewed around a little in her seat to look at him. "Do you really think Ben and I are in danger?"

He turned left onto Juniper. They were almost there. The skyscrapers formed a canyon closing them in on two sides. The iconic statue of Billy Penn that sat high atop City Hall was just visible through an opening between the buildings.

"My guess is that you know the answer to that better than I do."

"Just for the record, your suspicious mind is getting old. But I don't want to argue with you. I ... I have a favor to ask."

"What?"

"Do you think you could spend the night with us again tonight?"

His lips compressed. The glance he sent her way was unreadable.

"Yeah."

"But no ... no ..." Stupid as it was, she still couldn't put it into words.

"Kissing?" His mouth twisted. "You don't have to worry, I won't touch you again. That was a mistake, anyway, which I think we both agree on. But I'll spend the night just to make sure you and Ben stay safe until we catch these guys."

She was surprised to discover that it stung to hear him describe kissing her as a mistake. Even though it had been.

"Thanks. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you understanding that it isn't you. I just can't get involved with anyone right now."

"Not a problem." His voice was dry.

By the time Tom let her out in front of her office, a plan was already taking shape inside her head. The first thing to do was to make arrangements for Ben to spend Friday night at the Perrys'. The second was to tell Tom they were going out of town. Then, with her son safely out of the way and Tom no longer hovering protectively, she was going to confront Mario. It had occurred to her that Mario had her cell phone, which gave her a way to get in touch with him. She would set up a meeting at her house to supposedly talk things over, and if Mario showed up—and she felt there was a strong possibility he would, because clearly he still wanted something from her—she would shoot him and claim he was a burglar. Given the way the law was written, if he was inside her house when she pulled the trigger, she wouldn't even be charged with a crime.

Problem solved.

It was a terrible solution, and one that the respectable mother and lawyer she had become shuddered at. But now that she realized she was truly fighting for her and Ben's lives, she could feel the tough inner core of her that had helped her survive her hellacious childhood reemerging.

In this time of extremis, she was prepared to do whatever she had to do.

Which was why on Friday she was alone in the rented Civic as she pulled into her driveway. Tom thought she was picking up Ben at the Perrys' and then going on to a hotel for the night near Longwood Gardens, the former du Pont estate in the Brandywine Valley that was a huge tourist attraction this time of year. What she planned to tell him, if Mario showed up and everything went as planned, was that she had changed her mind about going, deciding instead that she just wanted to be alone for the night to decompress. Tom might have his suspicions—that was nothing new—but with Mario dead, there would be no way for him, or anyone else, to uncover anything that could hurt her or Ben.

They would be safe forever more. They could go on with their lives as if this whole nightmare had never happened.

All she had to do was kill a man first.

Despite her grim determination to see the task through, the thought made her queasy.

Yesterday, she had called her cell phone and left a message: Call me. If ever her phone fell into the hands of the police, she had devised a simple explanation for the call. She was hoping to persuade whoever answered to return her things. But when, as she had hoped, Mario had called back, she told him she wanted to talk and asked him to meet her at her house at midnight Friday. He had agreed.

Even as she had disconnected, the knowledge that she was trying to set Mario up so she could kill him made her want to vomit. But at that point, as she saw it, it was pretty much his life—or hers and Ben's.

Ben tipped the balance.

Since she had no reason to rush home after work Friday, it was almost seven by the time she stopped in her driveway. The remote to the garage had been lost along with everything else in her car, but, courtesy of Tom's connections, she had a new one, along with a whole new garage-door operating system complete with an automatic light. So far she hadn't seen the bill, and it was something that she preferred not to think about until she had to. Anyway, paying for the stuff that had been done to her house was the least of her problems at the moment.