Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (36 page)

“In a minute, Cheryl,” Amy said, keeping her eyes and gun firmly on Mason.

“Now! I wanna go now!” Cheryl stomped her feet and hammered her sides with her fists.

“In a minute, I told you!”

Cheryl began to cry, softly at first, then building to a wail that convulsed her. “Now! Right now!”

Cheryl ran toward Amy like a child grabbing for her mother. Mason bolted at Amy in the same instant, knocking the gun from her hand as the three of them collided. Mason and Amy rolled into the headstones, with Amy on top of him howling and scratching his face. He gripped her wrists, and she crashed her forehead into his nose. Mason felt the cartilage crumble and tasted the blood that ran into his mouth. He pulled her toward him, cocked his arms like springs, and threw her off of him.

A shot rang out, stopping Amy for an instant in midflight, before she tumbled to the ground at Mason’s side. Cheryl sat on the snow, the gun in her lap.

“I just wanna go home.”

Mason always found April a soothing month. Its cool breezes and sun-painted skies made promises the rest of the year could never keep. Though the life cycle continued unaltered, April convinced his soul that life had an edge over death. He thought about that perpetual scorecard as he stood at the foot of Amy White’s grave, the sun warming his neck without penetrating to the chilled memories he carried of the past winter.

Patrick Ortiz had ruled that Amy White’s death was accidental. It had been his first official act after Leonard Campbell resigned and he was appointed to serve out Campbell’s term as prosecuting attorney. Campbell had gone on the offensive, quitting and denying any wrongdoing before he was indicted.

“What happens to Cheryl White?” Mason had asked Ortiz.

“She’s a ward of the state for now, but Howard Trimble has started adoption proceedings. What about you? I hear that Campbell tried to hire you.”

Mason had laughed. “I took a pass. He and the mayor have been leaving me messages every day. I hear that Donovan Jenkins made a deal for immunity with the U.S. attorney that will put the mayor away.”

“So why not defend one of them?”

“I’m too close to what happened. I’ll probably be a witness.”

Mason hadn’t told Ortiz that he was waiting for his own visit from the feds. Galaxy Gaming Company had bought the Dream Casino. Mason figured it was just a matter of time before some Galaxy employee found the tape recording he was certain Fiora had made of Mason conspiring to gain Blues’s release. He figured that Galaxy would either turn him in or book a favor. He couldn’t decide which alternative he dreaded more—the visit from the feds or the visit from Galaxy.

Beth Harrell had visited him first. He was studying notes he had written on his dry-erase board about his newest case. Mason had agreed to defend a professional wrestler who’d been indicted for involuntary manslaughter when he’d killed his archrival during a match.

“From the ridiculous to the sublime,” Beth had said from the open doorway.

Mason had looked up and pointed to the board. “My case or your life?”

“Fair question. I suppose an explanation is in order.”

“No. I’d say it’s out of order. You don’t owe me an explanation. You just need to quit blaming your weaknesses on your past and move on. You may be kinky or just fucked up. I don’t know which and it doesn’t matter.”

Mason cringed inwardly at his coldness toward Beth but shook it off with the realization that it was the only way he could break from her. She had a toxic allure that he couldn’t risk.

“Meaning you don’t care?”

“Meaning it doesn’t matter. I can’t help you either way.”

Mason had picked up the wrestler’s file and started reading. When he looked up a moment later, Beth had gone.

That had been a month ago, when winter was just releasing its grip. Mason bent down and pulled a dandelion from the sod covering Amy’s grave. When he stood up, he saw Harry Ryman walking toward him.

“Blues said I might find you here,” Harry told him.

“Yeah. I just thought I’d stop by and pull the weeds. What’s up?”

“The chief wants to know if I’m coming back to work.” Harry had declined a commendation for solving the murders of Jack Cullan and Shirley Parker and had been using up his accumulated vacation and sick leave. “There’s a lot of outside pressure on him to bring me back, and a lot of inside pressure the other way.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Carl was six months shy of a full pension. The department lets you buy out the time so you can retire, and still collect your full pension. I told the chief if he’d let me buy out Carl’s time, I’d retire. What do you think?”

“I think we’re both pulling weeds. Maybe that’s the best we can do.”

Harry looked out over the acres of grave sites. “I suppose so.”

“Listen, I’m on my way to a rugby game. You should come along. I promised Rachel I’d take her to a game. You can keep her company while I get beat up.”

“Sounds great. I’ll pick up Claire and meet you at the game.”

Mason thought about Amy’s father and his own father, whom he scarcely remembered, as Harry walked away. Mason had pictures of his father, but little else. Jonathan Mason had been a tall, sturdily built man who his aunt Claire said had an easy laugh.

He couldn’t remember the scrape of his father’s unshaved cheek against his own. He couldn’t summon his father’s smell after he’d worked in the yard on a dusty, hot afternoon, nor after he’d slapped cologne on his neck on Saturday night. He couldn’t remember the view from atop his father’s shoulders. He had never caught a ball his father had thrown, nor measured his own strength against the man who’d given him life. He couldn’t repeat the stories his father must have read to him. Nor could he conjure the fear he must have felt at his father’s raised voice, or the comfort he surely had found in its softer tones. He examined his hands, searching without success for the memory of his father’s touch.

There were times when Mason would have killed for memories of his father, though he knew the depth of his longing was metaphorical. Amy White’s memories of her father had made the metaphor murderous.

He bent down to pull another young dandelion. Casting it aside, he placed a small rock on Amy’s tombstone in the Jewish tradition of remembering the dead, certain that no one else would remember Amy White.

Thank you for adding
The Last Witness
to your library. This is an exciting time to be a writer and a reader. The indie revolution has given writers the chance to connect with readers in ways that were never imagined before.

Don’t miss the first novel in the Lou Mason series,
Motion To Kill
, available now as an e-book and POD and get ready for the next book in the series,
Cold Truth
, coming soon in both formats. Enjoy the opening chapters of both books beginning on the next page and stay in touch!

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Writing is not always a solitary pursuit. Thanks to the following people who helped with this book the first time around: Stuart Jaffe, my honest reader; Josh Garry and Dan Cofran, my political consultants; John Fraise, my private cop; Karen Haas and Ann LaFarge, my editors at Kensington Publishing Co., when this book was first published in 2003; and Meredith Bernstein, my agent. Special thanks to my loving wife, Hildy, who keeps my feet on the ground when my head is in the clouds.

The e-book revolution is about a lot of things, including more choices for readers and new opportunities for writers. One of the best things is the chance to share my books with people who, in spite of my late mother’s best efforts, had somehow missed them when they were first published. I think of her with an ebook reader and smile.

Joel Goldman is an Edgar and Shamus nominated author who was a trial lawyer for twenty-eight years. He wrote his first thriller after one of his partners complained about another partner and he decided to write a mystery, kill the son-of-a-bitch off in the first chapter and spend the rest of the book figuring out who did it. No longer practicing law, he offices at Starbucks and lives in Kansas City with his wife and two dogs.

Lee Child and Michael Connelly recommend
Motion To Kill
! If you like the action, suspense and excitement in their books, you’ll love
Motion To Kill
!

“The story line never skips a beat. Fans will set in motion a plea for Mr. Goldman to return with more Mason (Lou not Perry) legal thrillers.”

—Harriett Klausner

“Lou Mason is still the sexy, brilliant but flawed counselor who is thrown into chaos and finds order. The plot leads you to the edge like the thrilling Yungas cliff road in Bolivia.”

—Elizabeth Wenig

When two of his partners are killed, corruption, sex and murder fill trial lawyer Lou Mason’s docket as he tracks the killer. Will Lou be the next victim? Found out in
Motion To Kill
, the action-packed, can’t-put-it-down first book in the Lou Mason thriller series!

“Joel Goldman is the real deal!”

—John Lescroart, Bestselling author of the Dismas Hardy thriller series.