JACK KIRKLAND
The three stood in his entryway. A tense, silent triangle. Jack whirled, took a seat, in the armchair this time. Planted both feet wide apart on the floor, opened his arms.
“Give me all you got,” he challenged. “I mean it. Take a seat. Bring it on. And call your thug down from up there, Gardiner. This whole thing is bogus. Bogus as your illegal warrant. But we’ll deal with that after I hear your so-called evidence.”
Millin perched himself in the center of the couch. He scratched one ear like his life depended on it. Then took out his spiral notebook and flapped it open, talking as he turned the pages.
“She had an alibi, back then. Rachel North? That she was home, alone, watching TV. Or else working at the statehouse, which was not suspicious. I mean, she worked there.”
“Which, in retrospect, was pretty damn convenient,” Gardiner said. She’d stayed in the entryway, a solo Greek chorus.
“That’s absurd,” Jack said. “Truth is not convenient. It’s simply true.”
“To continue.” Millin flipped a page. “The TV show she supposedly was watching was actually on. No way for us to prove she wasn’t home. No calls, no texts. She had a pattern of working weekends. She had no history of violence, no problems in the office. There was no DNA—she wasn’t in the database anyway. She didn’t seem to have a motive.”
“Exactly,” Jack said.
“In fact,” Millin went on, “back then, she seemed like a good guy. On the right side of this. Rachel North wasn’t on our radar.”
“So what the hell put her there?” Jack leaned forward. This was the crux of it. The future legal—and personal—battleground.
“Jack?” Martha took a few steps toward him, high-signing Millin that she was taking point. “In fact, you did. Though not on purpose.”
“What?”
Martha shrugged. “By choosing her for the Deacon Davis jury. Which gave Rachel’s suspicions of her beloved Senator Rafferty’s relationship with Danielle Zander time to fester. She couldn’t stand it, thinking of them, together—that’s what I imagine. And she turned out to be correct about their affair. But she couldn’t let it go. Had to punish him. By punishing her rival. It was Rachel North who was the jealous one, not Nina Rafferty.”
Jack was silent, for a fraction of a second. No. Rachel was not that kind of a girl. An old-fashioned phrase, and she’d hate that he’d put it that way, but still. No.
“How the hell do you know that?” Jack challenged her, his tone dismissive. “Did Rachel confide in you, in some half-assed sorority-sister confessional? Did you get her to spill the beans without letting her know she was a target? None of that’s admissible, Gardiner. And you know it.”
“May I go on?”
Jack rolled his eyes at Martha. “Cannot wait to hear this.”
“Because the person who ratted out Tom Rafferty? The confidential interviewee, the informant who ruined Tom Rafferty’s career? And Logan Concannon’s? And who knows who else who got in her way? The one who provided us with the salacious motive to convict Nina Rafferty? And who now, every day, tries to get us to convict someone else?”
“No.” Jack’s head turned from side to side again. His brain stumbled, faltered, failed him.
“Yes.” Millin flipped his notebook closed.
“Yes.” Gardiner repeated. “Your wife.”
RACHEL NORTH
NOW
I hate this, I honestly do, and I’m sick of being told what to do by everybody else.
“Rachel North, you have the right to remain silent,” that statie Oz instructs me as I get out of the car. The punishing June sun is belting down on me, my flat shoes threatening to melt into the asphalt. “If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”
Like I don’t know that.
“Don’t say anything, Rachel.” Jack’s talking over him, my husband’s hand grasping my arm.
Like I don’t know what’s best for myself. I’m almost a lawyer, for God’s sake. I feel like wrenching out of Jack’s clutches, but his clutches are exactly what I need.
“What’s going on, Jack?” My eyes are welling with tears as I look at him, and it’s honestly true that I don’t know.
Me and Jack. And Martha.
My mentor, my colleague, my good buddy Martha Gardiner, the one who promised she saw potential in me, completes the parking lot triangle of people telling me what to do.
“Tell us, Rachel. Tell us what happened.” Martha opens her arms to me, and her voice is saccharine and poison. “You can’t hide this any longer. Let’s go inside. And you can tell us the truth.”
Like I can’t make my own decisions about what’s true.
Oz hovers at my side like some muscle-bound nanny as we troop through the back door and down the hall. A studiedly uninterested Leon passes us, going the other way. He doesn’t even flinch. So he knew, too.
Does everyone know what’s going on but me?
I’m ready to explain, perfectly, whatever it is. I simply need to know what it is.
Ten minutes later, I do.
Jack had demanded to be here after Martha revealed her “findings” at our house. Our house! He’d demanded, wisdom aside, to represent me. He’d promised he wouldn’t warn me to keep quiet, but he’d called anyway. Because he cares about me. And needs to protect me.
They think I killed Danielle Zander.
That I lured her out to the parking lot. That I pushed her, hard, against a dumpster. And when she fell, I made sure she was dead. That I dragged her between two big green garbage containers and waited for the Sunday night snowfall to cover her. That I knew the surveillance camera was down, the statehouse was closed for a snow day, and the trash collection wasn’t until Monday night. Because I was jealous of Dani and Tom Rafferty.
Far as I’m concerned, they can concoct all the outrageous stories they want. They have no proof. None. At all. Because there is none. I’ll handle this, and I’ll walk out of here, and Jack and I, partners, will sue them for everything they’ve got.
Jack has his arm over the back of my metal chair. We’re sitting across the conference table from Martha, who’s opened that red accordion file folder she’d never let me see. Based on the drivel evidence she’s attempting to foist on us, I should have swiped it.
I sit, silent, taking it in. I know not to say a word, but I mentally respond to every one of Martha’s idiotic pieces of “evidence.”
That I reported Logan’s “screw you” call to Annabella? So what? That’s statehouse protocol. And screw Annabella for telling. That’s supposed to be confidential. I could nail her for that, I bet. And hey, I win, because Martha revealed Logan admitted she did it. Which is probably illegal, some kind of sexual harassment. I could nail her, too.
Martha’s saying it’s proof of my jealousy that I made up a story about Logan and Tom Rafferty’s late-night parking-lot encounters and told it to Annabella. Made up? Who’s to say I didn’t see them? Everyone worked late.
They should focus on the real bad guys. Annabella and Logan, for two. And Tom. And Nina. One of those is a far more likely suspect for Danielle’s murder. Or, as I’ve always hoped, they could charge both of the entitled Raffertys. Poetic justice.
Martha’s back is to the door. Behind her, seated in a row of plastic swivel chairs, Nick and Andrew and Eli, acting like they don’t know me. They all have yellow pads, and are taking notes like obedient do-bees. That statie’s posted outside the door.
“Do you have more?” Jack’s been taking notes, too, though he’s not as outraged as I might have expected. We need to talk. I need to make sure he knows how to handle this.
“We do,” Martha says, “We do have more. But don’t you want to—confer with your client? Tell her whatever you decide to tell her? I’m happy to give you two whatever time you need.”
Damn right, I think.
“We do.” Jack turns his yellow pad facedown. Places his pen on top of it. Waits.
Martha and her minions stand. The three good interns let her open the door, then troop out after her.
I wait until I hear the door click closed.
“Can you believe this?” I turn to Jack, eyes wide. “What do you think, honey?”
“I think they’re prosecutors, Rach,” he says. “And they’re convinced they have a case.”
“But we have a plan! Martha Gardiner’s a sleaze, a cheater. We have all that proof! She thought she had a case against your slasher-killer, too. Until you were too good and she had to disappear that witness.”
“Rachel.”
“Jack. Don’t interrupt me. Seriously. Listen. She knew she was losing the Deacon Davis case, so she got rid of those jurors. With the help of the judge, too, had to be. All we have to do is drop a big freaking dime. Several dimes. Or flat-out tell her we’re going to spill the beans. Rat her out. Her credibility will be zero. We know how to play this game. It’s worked out so well that I took this job. Wasn’t I right? I’ve learned so much from both of you.”
“Rachel.” Jack was shaking his head. Like I’m wrong? I’m totally not wrong.
“Jack, no, I’m right. Remember? You told me it was a bad idea, working here, but I truly thought I could learn the other side of the law. But she’d cheated on you—oh, that sounds funny—and I knew I had to report her. We had to. Because it wasn’t fair to you! Or poor poor Deacon Davis.”
“Rachel.”
“What?” I hate that tone. It’s like he thinks I’m an idiot.
“Rach? You think it’s random that you wound up in Martha Gardiner’s office?”
“I don’t want to argue with you, honey,” I say. “You know we never argue. But wait. Martha said—you could decide what to tell me about what you talked about his morning. What’s ‘this morning’?”
A sharp rap on the door. I look up, frowning. They’re not supposed to interrupt us until we say it’s time.
“Jack? What happened this morning?”
“Come in,” Jack says.