25

We drove to a nearby Steak ’n Shake and ate burgers and fries in the parking lot. For dessert, LA added a vanilla milk shake. He was sitting in the passenger seat sneaking fries into the backseat floor area, where Justice anxiously awaited the next installment.

“He’s not allowed to have people food.”

LA quickly showed me both open palms, his bottom lip sticking out. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

But Justice didn’t know he’d been busted. He pawed at the outside of LA’s seat as if he couldn’t understand why the conveyor belt had slowed down.

“Bad dog,” LA said.

I punched him playfully. “See what you’ve done?”

I then scolded Justice and made him climb up on the backseat, and the conversation with LA returned to the case.

We had two different theories about the polygraph. LA assumed that Dr. Feldman had been bought off. I thought it more likely that Tate was such an accomplished liar, he could beat the exam. I had talked to several prosecutors who said Caleb Tate could make the most outrageous arguments in his cases and act like he believed them 100 percent. I knew people who could self-delude to the point that they believed their own lies. I figured Caleb Tate was one of them.

But what really intrigued me was LA’s theory about the hair evidence. “You remember that case out in Los Angeles where Kendra Van Wyck was accused of poisoning her backup singer after she found out that her husband and the backup singer had an affair?”

“Yeah. I’ve thought about the similarities.” I’d done my research on the Van Wyck case as soon as I learned about the hair results in ours. Kendra Van Wyck was acquitted because hair testing proved her backup singer had been taking the drugs in question for a long time. But in a subsequent civil suit against Van Wyck, a hotshot young attorney named Jason Noble had proven that the hair results probably represented false positives from surface contamination—the result of improper washing techniques in the lab. The verdict on behalf of the backup singer’s family had been nearly twenty million dollars. But I also knew that National Toxicology Testing, the lab used by Dr. O’Leary, had addressed any problems with the wash procedures.

“I asked our computer guys and the special master the judge appointed to check Tate’s computer to see if he had ever accessed details of the Van Wyck case,” LA said. “Even though they found cocaine in the backup singer’s body—not a drug we found in Rikki’s bloodstream—I just thought there were too many similarities for it to be coincidental.”

LA, probably sensing that he had my undivided attention, stopped to take a bite of his cheeseburger. I could see where he was going. What if the Van Wyck case had somehow triggered Tate’s plan for Rikki? What if Caleb Tate had secretly drugged his wife for six months so that her hair would be full of drugs from the roots to the outer ends? He could use the Van Wyck defense. Juries loved CSI-type evidence, and maybe Tate had created some of his own.

“About seven months ago, Tate pulled down several documents from the Van Wyck case on Westlaw. Not just the court’s opinion but the briefs of the lawyers discussing the hair-testing issues in great detail.”

LA was definitely proud of himself, and he took another bite to extend the drama. But I was already seeing holes in his theory. According to Gillespie’s notes, Rikki Tate had problems with drugs off and on well before Caleb Tate accessed those legal documents.

“I also talked to some of Rikki Tate’s friends about the change in her hairstyle,” LA continued. He turned on the lights and showed me two pictures of Rikki. The first one was from a year earlier, when Rikki had long dark hair. The more recent one showed the short and layered look I recognized from the autopsy pictures.

“According to her friends, guess who pushed Rikki to get her hair cut?”

“Caleb Tate?” I asked hopefully.

“Told her he liked it short. Told her it made her look younger and hotter. She changed hairstyles about six months ago, and according to her friends, he heaped on the praise. A month before her death, she got another trim. Conveniently short.”

And it was also convenient, I knew, that Tate had already disposed of his wife’s old hairbrushes and other toiletries. “But what about Gillespie’s notes? She had addiction issues for years.”

“I thought about that. But to me the notes seemed to suggest that she would go through periods of recovery and then slide back into addiction. Off and on. She tried to quit again after her religious conversion. Plus, we don’t know how many pills she was taking or how often. We do know that Caleb Tate is a control freak. Maybe he read the Van Wyck case and started slowly pumping these narcotics into her. A pill here and there in her food, whatever. He increases the dosage over time to make her look like a typical addict. He convinces her to get a haircut so we can only see the pattern for the last six months, a dramatically higher level of drugs in her system, and then . . . boom. He gives her a megadose, and he’s free to go marry that cute little legal assistant of his.”

“You’ve got more on the legal assistant?”

“I made a graph of Tate’s phone calls.” LA pulled out another set of documents. “He spent a lot of time on the cell phone with her. I can’t prove it yet, but Caleb definitely had something going on the side.”

LA had been working a lot harder than I’d thought. But we still couldn’t put the drugs in Tate’s hands. And phone calls were a far cry from an affair. Still, even this small bit of progress made me wish I hadn’t been suspended from the case.

“I don’t know,” I said. “If anybody checked our phones, they’d find a lot of calls to each other.”

“And . . . ?”

“And we’re not having an affair. We work together. We’ve got a big case. . . .”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet what? What does that mean?”

LA smiled his best sly, shy, melt-the-girl’s-heart grin. “Not yet we don’t have a big case. But I’m working on it.”

I snorted. We both knew what he was really working on.

He wiped his hands on his pants and then handed me another photo. It was a shot of Rikki Tate’s hands.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Manicured hands. Bright-red fingernail polish. Surface veins.”

“And long fingernails,” LA added. “You know what you can do with fingernails?”

I thought for a second, and it hit me. “Please tell me you can grind them up, autoassay them, and test them for chemicals.”

He smiled, nodding. “Yep. And from the lengths of those babies from the cuticles to the tips, I’d say two years’ worth. Fortunately, the Van Wyck case didn’t involve fingernail testing.”

I finished my meal and put my trash in the bag, wadding it up. “Why are you telling me about this stuff now? I don’t even know when or if I’ll be back on this case.”

He took a long slug of his milkshake, slurping as his straw caught air at the bottom. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to go on the air and give a tearful apology,” he said. “Tell everybody about your dad dying. Tell them how this man who called your dad a liar got in your face and scoffed at you. Tell them how sorry you are for allowing your passion for justice to cause you to lose all sensitivity. You could melt a few hearts with those big brown eyes, especially if you could get them to brim with tears.”

“Fake crying’s not really my thing.”

“Didn’t think so. That’s why I’ve got a plan B. Make sure you check the eleven o’clock news tonight on WATL.”

“For what?”

“You’ll see.” And that was all he would say about the matter. Despite my cajoling, begging, and even pouting, I couldn’t squeeze another word out of him about the upcoming newscast.

When we returned home, LA got out of my 4Runner, let Justice out the back, and gave him some love. Then he stood to face me.

“We’re going to get you back on this case,” he said. “You’re the best lawyer in the DA’s office, and I’m not willing to go to war with anyone else.”

This man hardly knew me. Still, I appreciated his vote of confidence, especially on a night like tonight.

“Thanks.”

He told me to take care of myself, jumped into his sports car, and backed out of the driveway.

I had clearly underestimated the man, once again proving that Justice was a better judge of character than I was.

That night, a WATL reporter interviewed Isaiah Haywood, my law school buddy. Isaiah was the perfect choice for the interview, and I assumed that LA had met him at my father’s funeral. Isaiah was not just a close friend; he was African American and a former football star at the University of Georgia. Most people in Atlanta knew of him. He now worked for a prominent sports agency.

“Jamie Brock is one of my best friends,” he told the reporter. “I can guarantee you one thing—that woman does not have a racist bone in her body. I first met her in law school. And racist girls don’t usually go out with dudes like me. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly the redneck type.”

Isaiah and I had been close friends. In truth, we had hung out together a lot, but I had refused every offer of a date. Yet I wasn’t about to call the station to clarify.

“And I find it insulting that one of the other television networks would let this white criminal-defense attorney from an all-white law firm hide behind racism as if his people had somehow been the victims of lynchings.” Isaiah was getting fired up now, his neck muscles tight. The camera zoomed in so viewers could better see the fire in his eyes.

“I’ve done some checking on Mr. Tate, and I found that his firm only employs two African Americans. One is a personal driver for Mr. Tate and some of his high-paid partners. The other is a courier.”

Isaiah took a breath, and the reporter interjected: “Why is that relevant?”

“Because a guy who grew up in Buckhead with rich white parents and now runs with the country-club crowd shouldn’t be allowed to trot out the race card against a young attorney whom I know to be one of the most tolerant and open-minded people I’ve ever met.”

The reporter wrapped up the interview with a cutaway line to the anchor while Isaiah posed for the camera. I wanted to kiss the TV. Instead, I called Isaiah immediately.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“I got your back, Jamie. Just make sure you get a conviction.”

At midnight, I got my second unannounced visitor of the night. I had fallen asleep on the couch, and Justice went crazy when he heard the doorbell. I jerked awake, and my heart banged against my chest. I tried to collect my thoughts, separating the nightmare I had been experiencing from the reality I had just rejoined. I shuffled to the front door and turned on the porch light.

It was Chris.

I opened the front door, and Justice mauled him.

I had to blink twice to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming. Chris lived several hours away in the mountains.

“Thought you could use a little company tonight,” he said. “Got any extra rooms?”

He came into the hallway, and I gave him a big hug. But before I could say anything, before I could even thank him for coming, I started crying. I put my head on his shoulder and let the tears flow. To be honest, I wasn’t sure whether I was missing my father or thankful for my brother or mad at everything that had happened at work. I just knew I had to let it out.

“Okay,” I said when I finally pulled myself together. “I needed that. You can go back home now.”