Chapter 24

The jury instructions were complex and took more than an hour to read. In a droning, patient voice, Judge Liu instructed the jurors on the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof, and the charged offenses: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter. Then, giving the state’s version of the forfeiture instruction, he instructed the jurors regarding the circumstances under which they would be allowed to consider Lawrence’s alleged confession.

My heart raced as Liu navigated this complicated instruction. I watched the jurors. Who knew what they were thinking, or if they even understood what they’d just heard? Liu had denied Nina’s request to put blanks on the verdict form requiring the jurors to check yes or no in response to various questions, meaning that in the event of a conviction, we’d be unable to show that the jurors had failed to follow his instructions. We would know only the end result.

~ ~ ~

The courtroom was ours. The jurors were in the jury room. Judge Liu was in his chambers, and Shanahan and Crowder were presumably in the offices upstairs.

While Nina worked on her laptop at the counsel table, my brother, father, Dot, and I lounged in the gallery, our jackets folded over the back of the bench in front of us, our legs outstretched.

“The Grand Canyon,” my father suggested. He and Dot had been throwing out ideas for the honeymoon they meant to take after their marriage.

“Europe,” she countered, echoing Crowder’s suggestion that they tour the world. “The Italian coast.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

“And then Spain,” he told her. “Then ferry across to North Africa. Morocco. Casablanca. Tangiers.”

He kept talking as if he’d have the chance to see all these places—the words rolling out of him with the lazy unflagging momentum of a person used to filling sleepless nights with harmless untruths.

In contrast with my father’s apparent acceptance of whatever was to come, I was a wreck, unable to sit still with my second-guessing of Nina, thinking that Lawrence shouldn’t have waived his right to a hearing before the confession came in. Since our conversation this morning, I’d begun to doubt that there’d be issues for appeal; more likely, our agreement meant that the appellate court wouldn’t overturn a guilty verdict. There was no point in having that discussion with Lawrence now, after I’d just talked him into rejecting the DA’s offer.

It was nearly six. In the world outside, commuters were boarding their trains, starting their cars, beginning their journeys home. Going back to their lives, their families. Teddy had phoned Tamara and told her he wouldn’t be home for dinner. Jeanie had gone home, Teddy said, but Debra was there and able to stay.

The jurors could have left and resumed their deliberations in the morning, but the door to the jury room remained closed. We heard murmurs of raised voices behind it, intimations as heart-quickening as they were impenetrable. Often, juries would send written questions asking for clarification on a point of law, or for certain testimony to be read back to them. Such questions often provided clues as to which way the jury was tilting. This jury sent none.

No doubt Crowder and Nina each had their proxy in that room. Nina’s would be the social worker in her twenties, with the tattoo and the vegan complexion. Crowder’s proxy would be the stockbroker who worked in the Financial District and was always thumbing away at his BlackBerry during the breaks. The other jurors didn’t appear to like him, but his voice would carry weight.

The social worker, by contrast, seemed on good terms with everyone, yet I guessed she’d have little experience imposing her views. I knew nothing about her, had nothing but my own stereotypes and prejudices to judge her by. But I was heartened by the sense I’d gotten from observing her over the past several days that she would care deeply that an innocent man not be convicted, while at bottom the stockbroker wouldn’t mind at all. Of course I was just applying my preconceived notions. It could easily have been the other way around.

At seven fifteen, there was a firm knock on the jury room door. The deputy answered it and spoke a few words to the foreperson, a confident young manager at a software company whose sympathies I’d been unable to read. After that, things went quickly. The courtroom deputy phoned upstairs, and a few minutes later Crowder appeared, with Shanahan not far behind. Judge Liu came out, buttoning his robe at the neck, and took the bench. My father, in his coat again, straightened his tie, kissed Dot on the lips, pressed his sweaty hand into mine, then Teddy’s, and came out of the gallery to take his place at counsel table with Nina.

As he passed through the swinging door into the well of the courtroom I was painfully aware he was taking steps he might never retrace. If he were found guilty, Judge Liu would almost certainly order him taken into custody. If that happened, he’d be shackled and led out the secured entrance at the front of the room. That damp handshake might be the last contact I had with him as a free man.

I put my arm around Teddy’s shoulders and squeezed briefly. Then we rose as the jurors came in. My eyes sought Nina’s juror, the social worker. She looked exhausted. She didn’t meet my gaze but didn’t avoid it, either. The stockbroker, his tie loosened, looked like he just wanted to get out of there, impatient but not triumphant, as I thought he might be if he’d gotten his way.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” Judge Liu asked.

“We have,” the foreman answered. The stockbroker shot a look at Crowder.

The judge instructed him to hand the verdict form to the deputy, who brought the document to the bench. Liu studied it, and said, “I’ll now read the jury’s verdict into the record. ‘As to count one, the charge of first-degree murder, we find the defendant not guilty.’”

Dot sagged beside me, catching herself on the back of the bench in front of her. I saw Lawrence’s hand find Nina’s. She looked down in surprise but didn’t take her hand away.

“‘As to count two, the charge of second-degree murder, we find the defendant not guilty.’”

At the DA’s table, Crowder and Shanahan were stone-faced.

“‘As to count three, voluntary manslaughter, we the jury find the defendant not guilty.’”

Lawrence lowered his face onto his hands, trembling with sighs, then sat up straight and let his head fall back. Then he was on his feet, turning to look for Dot.

Amid the chaos, they went to one another and kissed in a lingering embrace. A few of the jurors were smiling. One woman even wiped away tears. I wondered when their sympathies had turned to him, and realized it must have been during Dot’s testimony. She’d humanized him, allowing the jurors to believe in him as she believed in him. That had been the difference.

For the first time in twenty-one years, Lawrence was truly free.

~ ~ ~

“I’d have thought you’d be with your family tonight.”

We were at Tony Nik’s in North Beach. “Teddy’s with his family. Lawrence is with Dot. I seem to be the odd man out.”

I’d already told Nina what a tremendous job she’d done, how wonderful she’d been. But I told her again, and added, “We ought to try a case together sometime.”

“Sure, sure,” she said. Eventually I paid the bill and we left.

“It isn’t the end, you know,” she told me after a bit, slipping her arm companionably through mine. “I didn’t want to mention this to your father today. Let him catch his breath. But I’m pretty sure they’re still going to try him for Russell Bell.”

I nodded, her cool appraisal sobering me. In her company, with drinks in me, I’d begun to relax. Now I felt my shoulders tighten, though I’d already recognized the likelihood of what she was telling me.

“He won’t be able to go through that experience a second time. Or third.”

“With any luck, he won’t have to. But we don’t have to think about that tonight.”

We walked up Columbus. At one point, as we paused for a light, I turned to her and tried to kiss her. She stopped me with a finger on my lips.

To cover the awkwardness of her rejection, I asked her if the story about her father running out of gas was true. “It might have happened,” she said, looking at me with something like regret. “Maybe just not like that.”

At the next corner we said good-night.

I was getting off the BART in Oakland half an hour later when my phone rang. It was Eric Gainer. I’d been half expecting his call, though maybe not so soon. It was clear to me that we had unfinished business between us. I pressed the Talk button. “Eric?”

He gave a cough, then spoke as if with effort. “I guess congratulations are in order. From the news reports, the consensus seems to be that after so long, the evidence just wasn’t there.”

“The evidence never was there. He’s innocent.”

“Well. Congratulations.” His voice was tense.

“Are you calling just to tell me that?”

He breathed in sharply. “Look, can you come over to my place? Tonight? You see, something’s happened, and you and I are the only ones who know the whole story. Lucy Rivera’s alive, and she’s here. She’s told me some shocking news about my brother and Russell. The things she’s telling me could be very significant to your father’s case if the DA prosecutes him for Bell’s murder. I think you ought to hear what I’ve heard.”

“Okay,” I heard myself say. “I’ll be right over.”

I ought to have suspected a trap, but the bait he’d laid out for me was too tantalizing to resist, especially after my conversation with Nina about the second case still hanging over my father’s head. On the drive from the MacArthur BART back into the city, in a belated fit of caution, I called Car. I asked him to get to Eric’s place as fast as he could, then park with a good view of the front, and be prepared to follow us if we left. And if things went bad, to call the police.

I didn’t think things would go bad. With Lucy’s help, I hoped to convince Eric that Jackson was behind Russell Bell’s murder. Then, according to my half-formed plan, we would call the police and put the matter to rest. In ten minutes I pulled into Eric’s garage. He came out to stand in the doorway, then turned to go inside. As I followed him inside, Lucy stepped from behind the kitchen wall and put the gun to my head. Too late, I realized my error.

Eric turned at the doors that led to the patio out back. “Thanks for coming over.”

“I guess you didn’t kill her,” I said. “That must have been welcome news.”

He gave me a warning in the form of a glance at Lucy. “You’ll need to leave your car keys on the table there for me. Sorry, but Jackson may need to borrow them later. And your cell. Turn it off. Are we ready?” he said to her when I’d complied.

“Where are we going?” I asked, though I’d already guessed.

“Back to the house out there,” Lucy said. “And then we’re going to make a phone call.” To Eric she said, “You’re sure your brother can come up with the money tonight?”

“Normally, we wouldn’t keep that kind of cash on hand. But this isn’t exactly ordinary times. I knew we might end up having to pay someone, but I didn’t know when. I thought it’d be Leo’s father, but it doesn’t really matter to me who gets paid, as long as this is the end of it. Jackson will have the money before morning.”

I sat in the passenger seat of Eric’s Cherokee, with Lucy behind me. He drove. “What’s the plan?” I asked once we were out of the city.

Eric glanced over at me. “Don’t you know? I thought you were the one who gave her the idea. The body in the freezer, I mean. This was supposed to be your show, not mine.” After his experience in the courtroom, he wasn’t above taking pleasure in asserting his power over me.

Car had been at his place in the Western Addition when I called. If he’d hurried, he might have made it to Eric’s in time to follow us as we pulled away. But the Friday night traffic had probably prevented him from making it in time. In any case, if he was there as we left, I didn’t see him.

“Russell could have been lying about the body, too,” I said. “Maybe she went in the ocean and never came up.” I didn’t want to say, Lucy’s lying. She was using Bell when he thought he was using her. She was in on the scam, and she shot him not for revenge, but so she wouldn’t have to share the payout you’re making tonight. There’s no body.

Lucy touched the gun barrel to my ear. “Then it’s your lucky day.”

Eric’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. From time to time he glanced at my face. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. On the coastal highway, when we reached it a few hours later, we found long stretches where I saw no other headlights in either direction, just the dark curve of the headlands blotting out the sky, and the moonlit, seething Pacific.

“What’d she mean it’s my lucky day?”

Eric glanced at me. “This is one of those times when it’s good to be the one who picks up the tab. Nothing is settled until every­thing is settled. That’s what Jackson always says. I’m no lawyer, but I think the principle applies.”

“I’m a loose end, is what you’re telling me.”

“Jackson will be coming with your car. If there’s no body in the freezer, you drive it home after we hand over the money.”

“And if there is . . .”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Lucy interrupted.

“Sorry,” he told her. “It’s not really about you, Leo. It’s just that she’s got to have some insurance. We struck a deal. She’ll help us take the body away, get rid of it. That’s her end of the bargain. If her hands weren’t dirty before, they will be now. And yours will be, too. You’ll help her take the body away, and you’ll dump it together somewhere where it’ll never be found. Then your hands will be dirty, too. Either that, or we can do this the hard way. It’ll look like self-defense. You’ll be found with a gun. The window will be jimmied.”

“You called me, remember? They’ll get the phone records.”

“Sure I did. To offer my congratulations. Then you started spouting a lot of nonsense about a body in the freezer at George’s. I drove out here in the morning, meaning to check for myself, heard a noise, saw you running at me with a gun in your hand, and I shot you dead with the gun I bought when I started getting blackmail threats. Self-defense. That’s as close to the truth as we can make it, Leo, and I think the story will hold up pretty well.”

It was too risky to try anything while we were driving. I didn’t doubt Lucy would shoot me if I made a move, and even if she didn’t, there was no guardrail and a drop of hundreds of feet to the rocks below. If I was going to take action, it would have to be at Chen’s.

Eric had calculated against this, likely betting that the glimmer of hope he’d offered me, of walking away if there was no body, or choosing to be an accomplice, would discourage me from rash acts. There was no question for me of going along with their plan, of helping her to dump the body. He must have known that. I could only hope he was playing along with Lucy with the goal of setting her up, and that when he phoned Jackson, the police would show up instead.

It was after 4:00 am by the time we arrived. Eric parked at the end of the long driveway in the turnaround near the front door. He got out first. My heart dropped as he took a gun from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt, a little snub-nosed revolver. He held it ready as I got out. As soon as Lucy was out of the car and had her automatic on me again, Eric put his gun away. He unlocked the door with a key he had, then quickly stepped inside and entered the alarm code.

We went into the living room. “Make that call,” Lucy told him. She took out a cheap cell phone still in its package, the prepaid kind that was for sale at gas stations and liquor stores in every marginal neighborhood where drugs were dealt and cheap, untraceable communication was in demand.

Eric tore open the package, powered up the phone, and thumbed in a number. “It’s me. Sorry to wake you, but we’re live with that thing we’ve been expecting. A quarter million in cash is the price. I’m at Chen’s.” He gave Jackson instructions about my truck, letting him know the keys were on the table at his house.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Now we wait,” Lucy said.

“Unless you’d prefer we shoot you now,” Eric told me. “But we’re not opening the freezer until she has the money in hand. That’s the deal. Think of it as the mystery box at the auction. You’ve got to buy to find out what you have.”

“I don’t even see why you’d pay her if it’s empty.”

“A deal’s a deal. If we knew in advance she was in there, I’d pay more.”

Motioning with the gun, Lucy directed me into a leatherette armchair set back from the massive central hearth. She and Eric sat on opposite ends of the matching couch facing it. I wondered how I’d misjudged him so thoroughly. The only light came from the hall. Lucy closed her eyes and after a few minutes was asleep, the gun in her hand, her chest rising and falling. Eric took his gun out of his pocket. I thought for a moment he was going to disarm her, and hope surged in me, but he just set the gun on his knee and held it there.

“So this is real,” I said to him. “This is you.”

“For about two months, I really believed I was a killer. At first, it tore me apart. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. But gradually, that feeling faded. Or I just got used to it. Probably the same way I got used to having lied when I identified Russell Bell. One day I was sitting in my office, thinking what if you put it in the balance—the world before and the world after? What difference does it make, one death? Once the idea came into my head, I realized I was right. It didn’t matter. Not if I wasn’t caught.”

“You don’t think there’ll be any difference between that and what you’re planning to do here now?”

“Sure. This will be a choice. That wasn’t. The whole thing was a setup by Russell, a sadistic game, and now he’s dead. I don’t feel bad about that, either.”

“Lucy shot him,” I said. “It wasn’t Jackson. You don’t have to protect him.”

“Anything’s possible,” he said with a yawn, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other anymore, if it ever did.

We sat in silence for a while, me digesting that, trying to master my fear. I kept vacillating between disbelief and the impulse to make a move. That would mean testing him, however, and despite what he’d said, I couldn’t convince myself that he meant to go through with it. Or maybe he knew that in the end I’d go along with his plan to make me an accessory to murder after the fact. I wondered who the other girl in the picture was, what she’d done to end up tangled in such a mess. Somewhere, someone must be waiting for her to come back, but she never would.

My greatest hope was that Car, having missed us at Gainer’s house, had waited to see Jackson arrive and drive away in my truck, and that he would follow Jackson here.

And so we sat in silence. He kept the gun pointed in my direction, Lucy snoring at the other end of the couch, his own eyes remaining open. After another hour, the sky began to brighten. In the predawn light, the noise of the waves beneath the balcony seemed to draw nearer. I’d almost convinced myself that he wouldn’t do it, that it was a bluff, and then Lucy started awake and he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. Her eyes widened in surprise and she reared away from him. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” Eric said.

I recognized the rattle of my truck’s engine as it pulled up outside. Jackson Gainer came in with a duffel bag in his gloved hand.

Lucy rose. Jackson stared at her for a moment, his eyelids heavy, the skin beneath them appearing bruised. “Here it is,” he said, hefting the bag. “One hundred thousand.”

For the first time Lucy seemed uncertain. She must have wondered if she’d miscalculated. Three of us, only one of her. “I thought you said a quarter million.”

“This was all I could get together on such short notice.”

With sudden decision, she crossed to the hall and took the bag from Jackson.

He pretended to offer my keys to me, then tossed them to Eric. “Why don’t you move it while I have a look downstairs,” he said to his brother. “There’s a pullout up the road a bit. Make it look like he walked onto the property.”

“Let’s do this first,” Lucy said.

“You got your money,” Eric told her.

He walked out, handing his gun to Jackson as he went. I remembered Lucy’s comment the other night about Eric turning his back while others did the dirty work for him.

“Eric,” Lucy said sharply. But he was already out the door.

She had her gun in her hand and seemed to want to do something with it.

“Don’t shoot Leo yet,” Jackson warned her. “You’re going to need the two of us to carry the body, if there is one. That’s if Russell Bell wasn’t a liar. I’ve been of the opinion all along that he was. I know Eric feels the same way. Leo, what’s your bet?”

“Mine is that if she and I go down there, neither one of us comes back up.”

Jackson seemed entertained by this. “What’s the deal the three of you worked out before you called me? No body, you live? Body, you either help us dispose of it or you die? Only, if there’s no body, how do we know that you’ll keep your mouth shut about tonight?”

“That’s your problem,” Lucy said.

I didn’t like him already knowing the terms of the deal they’d discussed.

“Leo’s used to keeping nasty secrets. Think we can trust you with this one, Leo?”

“Sure. Here’s a deal for you. We all go home and sleep in our beds, and we keep quiet about this. Eric refuses to testify when they charge my father with the murder of Russell Bell, and I don’t say a word to anyone about tonight. I drop her off at the bus station in San Rafael.”

“I like that. You respect my family’s privacy going forward, and we respect yours. Otherwise it’s your word against Eric’s and mine. I don’t know how far you’d get, but you could cause us some problems. I’ll give you that.”

“You two go on down ahead of me,” Lucy told us.

“After you,” Jackson said, nodding for me to go first.

The downstairs was a single open room, with a wall of windows facing the sea. The postdawn shadows of the headlands fell across the water. The room was divided between a TV and sitting area on one side, and exercise equipment on the other. Down here, the impact of the waves on the cliffs was felt rather than heard, and the salt smell was somehow stronger.

A small kitchen took up the end of the room opposite the window, the part that was below the grade of the surrounding property. Inside a walk-in pantry, a chest freezer hummed. Jackson threw open the lid and stepped back. “Leo, why don’t you clear out all this crap so that we can see what we’ve got.”

Frozen dinners, seafood, and meats filled the freezer nearly to the top. I began taking the items out and stacking them on the floor.

Halfway to the bottom, I lifted a box of steaks and saw a patch of blanket showing through the gap. The blanket, once a creamy white, was stained dark brown with old blood.

The body had been positioned with the knees bent to the chest, the head bowed so she would fit. Someone had wrapped the blanket around her in this position, then wound the blanket with thick nylon climbing rope, presumably the one that had been used to haul her off the rocks. The rope and the blanket together were encasing her in a tight cocoon. A towel bound her head. The only exposed flesh was at the feet, which were visible through the gaps where the ends of the blanket had been folded over. The skin of her heels was grayish, covered with ice crystals.

“Have a look,” Jackson said to Lucy. “Then we’ll get her out of here.”

As Lucy stepped forward, Jackson stepped back, took the gun from the pocket of his coat, and extended it toward the back of her head.

She’d craned onto the balls of her feet to see into the freezer. Hearing my shout, she turned, diving to the floor as Jackson’s revolver discharged into the wall. Plaster dusted them both. Lucy flipped onto her back as she landed, holding her automatic in both hands.

She squeezed off five shots at point-blank range, the bullets slicing into Jackson’s groin, tearing bloody furrows up the front of his coat, blasting off a chunk of his jaw that created a look of openmouthed startlement as he fell.

“Arrogant prick!” she shouted, rolling away from the spreading dark pool. She got to her feet. “You thought you could take me?”

She now pointed the weapon at me. “Don’t move or you’ll be on the floor, too.” She picked up her duffel bag and Jackson’s revolver. Her scraped elbow was starting to bleed.

The gunsmoke stung my nostrils and eyes. “You’ve got the money. Just go.”

“This can’t be happening,” she cried. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

“He was supposed to shoot me with your gun, not get shot with it, is that right?” I said. “That would have wrapped things up nicely. Jackson kills me, and the bullet in me matches the ones that killed Russell Bell from your gun. You’ll have to go to plan B.” I didn’t know what plan B was, and I doubted she did, either.

“I didn’t kill Russell. I told you that.” She was jittery, agitated, and I wondered what kind of drugs she was used to taking. She looked like she needed a fix. “How strong are you?” she said. “Can you carry her?”

I had no choice but to agree.

I dragged the freezer away from the blood and tipped it over to get her out. Through the blanket, the frozen flesh was numbingly cold and hard as rock, but the climbing rope provided me with places to grip. Bracing the heavy mass against my thighs, I started for the stairs, one painful step at a time.

“Why’re you taking all this trouble?” I said between grunts. “Who is she?”

She’d thought it through quickly. “Nobody special. Just somebody I met. No one would have missed her, but the photograph’s in the press. If they find one of us dead, they’ll expect to find us both. And if they don’t, they’re going to be looking for the one they can’t find. And now evidently we’re going to leave behind this god-awful mess.”

“They’ll be looking for you no matter what, after what’s happened.”

“Maybe, but there’s a difference between looking and expecting to find.”

I heaved the body step by step back up to the main floor, resting frequently, exaggerating how heavy she was. I wanted to give Car a chance to show up and save the day.

Halfway up the stairs, the towel came off the dead woman’s head, exposing the glistening mess of her face, her dark hair matted in a dark encrustation of frozen blood. No one deserved to end like this, I thought. No one.

Outside, I got the body to the cargo area of the Cherokee, put my shoulder below it and with one heaving motion tipped it up. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now we wait for Eric to come back.”

I sat on the bumper, head hanging. Four feet away, Lucy held the revolver in my face. I thought of where I was supposed to be in a few hours: with my father, helping him rent a tuxedo for the city hall wedding he and Dot had hastily begun planning in the giddy hours after the not-guilty verdict. I heard the crunch of footsteps coming nearer.

“I left the truck at the turnout,” Eric’s voice said. “Where’s my brother?”

I didn’t look up. There was only one way this could end for him. And only one way it could end for me.

Lucy shot him. As soon as she did, making the only move I could, I rushed her. I was nearly on top of her when the gun in her hand spoke in bright winking flashes. She stepped aside, and I stumbled and fell where she’d been standing.

After a while I rolled over, my legs pushing the gravel. My heels slipped in it, and my arms wouldn’t obey me. There didn’t seem to be much blood on my shirt, but I felt dizzy, and my hands and feet were cold.

I heard the Cherokee’s rear hatchback slam, then the driver’s door open and close. The engine coughed to life. Anger surged in me at this stupid end I seemed to have achieved, and with the strength of my rage I pushed myself up on one palm, my arm resisting every inch of the way. As I did this, the pain came alive in my chest like a clawing animal, and I crumpled as the Cherokee drove away.

The noise of the sea grew more distant. Great intervals of time passed between each crash and boom of the swell. A haze seemed to have descended. With my face on the gravel, I was barely aware of the daylight beyond the perimeter of the darkness that remained.

The wail of a siren roused me. I heard the sound of running feet, and someone calling my name.

Recognizing Car’s voice, I told myself that everything was going to be okay.

In the hospital in Fort Bragg, Car slips through a curtain to crouch by my bedside. His voice is whispered, urgent. “Listen. Ricky Santorez is dead. He was killed yesterday in prison. Rumor is Bo Wilder ordered the hit.”

My mouth’s cottony, my head woozy from the drugs. I’ve been opened from belly button to sternum and stapled shut again. The bullet missed my major organs by millimeters, the doctors say. I’m going to be in for a long recuperation, but I’ll live without any lasting effects. Just the scars, they promise. “Good.”

“Leo, listen to me,” Car says. “The corpse was mutilated. Whoever stabbed him to death cut off the ears, as trophies. They’ve got the whole prison on lockdown. They’re going cell to cell, trying to find them. Only they’re not going to.”

I wonder if I’m hallucinating, if Car is really here, pestering me with this strange and disturbing news. I take another thumb press of morphine. “Good riddance.”

“Stay with me. Not six hours after Santorez got cut up, someone dropped off a FedEx envelope at your office. The package was addressed to your dad, care of you. Inside was the ears.”

Even through the morphine I realize this means the DA was right all along. I try to sit up but I can’t.

“It’s a message, Leo,” Car says. “A message and clearly also a threat.”

There’s only one message Bo Wilder could be sending to us: that he killed Russell Bell, or rather, had him killed, in apparent continuation of the protection he’d given Lawrence in prison. And he wants us to know it. “What does he want?” This means that both Lucy and Jackson are innocent of Bell’s murder, but my father may not be, depending on what contact he had with Wilder after his release. They haven’t found Lucy yet. According to the police, she ditched Gainer’s Jeep with the body in it and stole a car from a beach parking lot in Mendocino.

I wonder again about my father’s whereabouts the morning of Bell’s death.

“It may be months before we find out what he has in mind. But it doesn’t take much imagination. A law office like yours could be a lot of use to a man like Bo, trying to run a criminal empire from behind bars. His people could use it as a home base, set up shop behind the attorney-client relationship to move money, hold drugs. He might want to use you as a go-between, carrying messages during client visits. It’s the sort of thing Teddy always refused to do for Santorez, but Bo probably figures he can control you easier than Santorez controlled Teddy.”

“So we nip it in the bud, go to the cops with our concerns right now.”

“And tell them what? All we’ve got right now are the ears. No return address. It’s only speculation piled on rumor that connects them to Wilder. And if we go that route, the police will never believe that your father didn’t ask Bo to put out the hit.”

I think about this for a long time, drifting on a haze of morphine. “Throw them in the garbage,” I finally say.

I let my head fall back.