The Jezebel Remedy (46 page)

“Why'd you lie to me, Lisa?” Joe shouted. He glared at her. “With a fucking straight face?” He was in their conference room, sitting at the table, alone. He'd brought along the wooden bowl of nuts he kept in his office. Busted brown walnut shells littered the table, and a skinny, pointed pick was lying among the shells and helter-skelter fragments.

“I…Joe…” Lisa stammered. She flushed red, from her collarbone to her hairline. Betty had told her that Joe was happy after Lettie's DNA test, celebrating with the other lawyers, but Lisa was on guard when she eased through the conference room door, worried about Seth Garrison's threat, cautious and wary, ready with tentative fibs and rickety explanations she'd cobbled together during the last of the ride from the airport. When she saw Joe, she didn't even bother. His snarl and ferocious yelling and the roped veins in his neck—as angry as she'd seen him in years—overwhelmed her and choked off any dishonest instincts. There was also a measure of relief, the junkie caught before she was compelled to rob another pharmacy, the jig finally up.

“Just flat lied.”

She noticed a large yellow envelope on the table, the flap opened, released from its bendable clasp, a small section of a photograph sticking out. “I'm…sorry.” She raised her hands, then let them slap against her hips. She cried, made no effort to hide the anguish.

“When were you planning on telling me?” he demanded.

“I'm so sorry.”

“Twenty years, and this is the thanks I get. I can trust you about as far as I can throw you.”

She didn't speak. It was odd, though, his mood—he was angry, bad angry, but his fuming didn't seem to quite square with what she'd done, wasn't popping the needle completely off the scale. There was still some give and margin in him.

“So?” he asked.

“It was…one error…a single—”

Joe stomped his foot to interrupt her. “It might've been one time, Lisa, but it was a doozy, wasn't it? How friggin' long did you think a spiteful lunatic like Lettie VanSandt could keep her mouth shut?”

“Huh?” Lisa dabbed at her eyes, smeared foundation onto her blouse's cuff. “Huh?” she repeated, stunned, confused.

“Brilliant answer, Lisa. ‘Huh.' Lettie fucking called me, okay? She wanted to know why you were dressed to look like her, right down to the gold tooth. You didn't think that would send her into orbit?”

“Lettie called you,” Lisa said deliberately. “Okay.”

“I'm waiting for an explanation. What the fuck were you thinking? You promised me you wouldn't try this dumb-ass DNA masquerade. Promised. As my wife. As my law partner. Gave me your word sitting there on our porch.”

“Technically, I only promised I'd forget about it. And I did, for days at a time.”

“That's just the worst kind of lawyer bullshit. Pathetic. That's your excuse? Really?”

Lisa took a seat, leaving a chair between them. She raised her index finger. A speck of green polish was still on her cuticle. “Did Lettie also mention that she killed the Benecorp people? She shot Jane Rousch—or whatever her name is—and the man who was with her. Did she tell you that too?”

“Seriously?” Joe's expression unknotted a bit. He sat deeper in his chair. “Damn. How do you know all this?”

“She told me,” Lisa said. “A few hours ago. During our drive to Falls Church.”

“She confided in
you
? Confessed to Della Street?”

“Yes,” Lisa answered, gaining composure. “She sees it as a hall-of-fame-caliber accomplishment.”

“So what happened?”

“For sure, she believed the Benecorp people were apocalyptic. Poor Rousch showed up for the first visit in purple and jewels, and she and the guy with her attempted to make nice and befriend Lettie, and it turns out the woman was born in, yep, Babylon, New York, and it's Katy bar the door after that. Lettie tells them no sale, no way, no how. According to Lettie, they threatened her. Good cop didn't work, so they tried bad cop. They gave her a deadline. The guy opened his coat and let her see his gun. So far, this all seems reasonable to me. Very plausible. Most likely true.” Lisa sniffed. She needed a tissue.

“Except the lady probably wasn't from Revelation,” Joe said. His shoulders relaxed. He took the nutcracker from the spindle in the bowl's center and squeezed the handles together.

“Here's the ticklish part. Lettie claims that when the Benecorpers returned—the second trip from the Roanoke airport—she'd begun sleeping in her shed, armed and ready for doomsday. They snuck in at night, but even if you come through the Gregory tract that borders her land, you'll set off the dogs. Lettie swears they broke into her house, both with guns drawn. She shot them, Joe. Killed them. Got the drop on them because she was hiding in the shed. Her den window was missing and the space covered with cardboard, remember? She shot them from outside.”

“Next…Benecorp manipulates the DNA to make it seem as if Lettie's dead so they can bargain with moron Neal and cut a deal for the Wound Velvet.”

“Partially true, Joe. But think about that. It doesn't mesh.”

Joe absently banged the nutcracker tongs together, the metal ends clicking rapidly against each other. “From what we've seen, they certainly have the capability to rig it, especially since none of this was a priority for anyone when she died.” He put down the nutcracker.

“Lettie fixed the DNA, not Garrison. She shot Rousch and burned her in the building to give herself a cover. As far as the world—and Garrison—was concerned, Lettie VanSandt was a fried meth-head, six feet under. She tossed in the meth equipment as part of the misdirection. I've said it a thousand times: DNA's about the same as bird augury, just with better paperwork, if you plug it into a hidebound system.”

“Still doesn't account for the match,” Joe said.

“Lettie assumed nobody would waste any effort and money on her given the physical evidence. But to her credit she didn't take any chances. That night, she bought a new toothbrush and hairbrush. A razor. Remember the Walmart video and register tape? The toiletries? She dunked the toothbrush in the deceased Miss Rousch's mouth and brushed her hair—yeah, gruesome as hell. She also scraped and nicked the corpse with the razor. Then she planted everything for us to find nice and easy, just in case. Made them superhandy for us to locate. A high school sophomore knows which items the lab takes for comparison—you can learn that from an episode of crime show TV. She spent several hours cleaning and sanitizing, even wiped her nail polish bottles with Clorox. The body's DNA matched the samples the sheriff collected. Lettie was dead, but she wasn't. She'd escaped Garrison. Egomaniac that she is, she loved reciting this for me, went on and on about every detail, proud as punch.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “
She
drove the rental car and ditched it in Charlotte.”

“Wore gloves and a shower cap—again, on the one-in-a-million chance the police happen to check the car. Garrison paid the charges and late fees because he damn sure didn't want an ugly loose end with the car company or the cops. That's why, on the boat, he kept pumping us about Rousch. He knew his goons were missing and something wasn't quite kosher. The odd circumstances had to be nagging him. Where was Rousch? Why was the car abandoned miles away from Martinsville? How were we involved?”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “I remember.” He still sounded upset.

“Lettie left everything to you. She figured you'd be a safe place to park the Wound Velvet while she sussed out why Benecorp wanted it and tried to stay alive and beat the Devil. She knew she could trust you. And then, because it's how you are—and I love how you are, I'm not complaining—Honest Abe Lincoln gave it away. Ironically, even though I was just being professionally cautious, I sort of waved a few red flags. As we both know now, Garrison substituted a clumsy forgery to frame us. I'm not sure if he did it before or after we sued him, but he had to realize there was a problem early on.”

“Why didn't Lettie come to me with all this? I'm her lawyer and her only friend in the world.” He rested his elbows on the chair's arms.

“She told me Lawyer Joe's too honest. It's fair to say you were a victim of your own blue-chip integrity and her not wanting to disappoint you. We both understand it's technically not self-defense when she could've escaped or phoned the cops and instead elected to blast people through a window. We both also understand that a Henry County jury
probably
would find her not guilty—you don't go snooping around a woman's house at midnight and expect a pleasant result, not here, not in Southside, no matter the niceties of the criminal code.” Lisa tended to her nose with her bare wrist. “But she was afraid. She was afraid of how you'd handle it. How you'd react. What you'd do. She's not a lawyer, and she's paranoid and batty, so she was worried you might not help her or might even report her to the cops. She has such a low regard for me and my morals that it wasn't an issue.”

“I'll be damned,” Joe said. He scowled and shook his head. “How dumb can she be? I'd have fought tooth and nail for her.”

“These were wicked people. They deserved it. This Rousch lady and her accomplice, they were armed; Lettie claims she kept their weapons as proof. I'm convinced they didn't return to Henry County to watch old movies and sip cocoa with her—at a minimum, they intended to hurt her and teach her a lesson. But she didn't have any interest in resolving the shootings through a proper police investigation and a trial, which would've put her in the public view and teed her up for Garrison. And also put her at risk criminally—the wrong judge or jury, and she winds up in jail.”

“Where was she? Or where's she been?”

“Hiding. She mentioned a welfare hotel and a shelter in Charlotte. I know she used a computer there at the library. She also camped in the woods for long stretches, which explains the Walmart sleeping bag. After a while, she realized she couldn't manage this alone and jumped me that night in my car.” Lisa leaned closer to Joe. “She swears she never saw all the messages we sent before your bar hearing. She always had to use a public computer and didn't want to risk being located through the Internet. She insists that she went weeks without any computer access. I do know she called you from the Charlotte bus station just as she was leaving for Salem. Used a college kid's cell. Her occasional wheelman and confederate is some dude nicknamed Goose, who breeds miniature goats and draws a disability check. He
was her driver when she came here dressed as a leprechaun, and he helped her after the DNA test. According to his bumper sticker, he's a big Ted Nugent fan. She had a very inventive disappearance from Falls Church if you're interested.”

“I'm interested in the man she killed. Where's he?”

“Bottom of Philpott Lake,” Lisa said.

“Did you discover what happened to the strays?”

“Seth killed every damn animal after he had them hauled to Florida and then discovered they had no connection to Lettie's formula. I know because we hacked his computers. We played by Benecorp's rules, not lawyer rules.”

“No shit? You hacked Garrison's computers?”

“Derek hacked Garrison's computers. We have to big-time take care of him if Benecorp comes hunting him.”

“Ah. And you've learned what the Wound Velvet cures, I'm betting, the same way? We're thieves now too?”

“I have a clear conscience where Benecorp's concerned. Seth Garrison might as well have pulled the trigger on Downs, he absolutely screwed you at the bar hearing, and he killed those animals—think of Brownie getting shot thirty times over. Then there were his plans for Lettie. I didn't tell you about Derek because I wanted this to be all on me if it fell to pieces. My responsibility. You were completely out of the loop. Besides, I knew you wouldn't have any part of it, and it had to be done. No other choice.”