Mason snatched the gun from him and grabbed him by the throat. “I’m not your man, you miserable piece of shit. Now, call the nurse!”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Sunday started with a steady rain pinging against Mason’s windows as he lay in bed long after Harry Ryman’s last questions stopped reverberating in his ears. It was welcome white noise, something to concentrate on when he felt Gino’s blood trickling down his arm again.
Bright flashes of light sparked against his eyelids when he clenched them against the jarring array of mortal images he had collected. Snapshots of Sullivan’s bloated corpse, Harlan’s gargoyle death mask, Julio’s pulverized face, and Gino’s mutilated eye dotted his mental landscape like unholy billboards.
He had slipped so easily from a world of rules where uncivil conduct toward an adversary was grounds for sanction to one in which blood ruled and the only sanction that mattered was death. He doubted whether he could return to his old world without a part of him remaining in his new one.
Dawn, gray and misty, found him pounding the jogging path around Loose Park, two blocks from home. Breathing raggedly, he tried to outrun the demons that had become his new best friends until he dropped facedown in the grass, cool and wet. The rain ran off him as he rolled onto his back, squinting skyward, looking for an opening in the clouds. With no epiphany in sight, he trudged home to find Anna Karelson camped on his doorstep, dry and nosy under her umbrella.
“For pity’s sake, Lou, you’d have to look better to die!”
She had bed head and she hadn’t found her mouthwash yet. Her candy-striped housecoat, loosely tied at the waist, was playing peek-a-boo with her heavy bosom.
“Early morning isn’t your best time of day either, Anna. It’s just the rain. I’m fine.”
“In a pig’s eye! My two-week-old bananas have better color than you do.”
“Look, Anna. I appreciate your concern, but I’m really okay. I promise to look better after I clean up and get some rest.”
“Well, Mr. Celebrity Lawyer, I wouldn’t plan on getting any rest today if I was you.”
“Meaning?”
“TV trucks and reporters have been banging on your door since you left this morning. I told them you took a cab to the airport. But they’ll be back; that’s for sure.”
Mason had one more rock to turn over before he was ready to go to the cops with Sullivan’s and Angela’s killer. If the media started shining their light on him now, he’d lose the privacy he needed.
“Anna, mind if I shower at your house?”
“Lou!” she said as she blushed and clutched her gown to her chest. “Jack’s still asleep!”
“Don’t worry, I’m a quiet scrubber.” He ran upstairs and grabbed clean clothes, a black Windbreaker, a Beaver Creek cap, and Vernon’s Bible. “Drive my car around the block behind your house,” Mason said when he came back and handed her the keys to the TR6. “I’ll be in the shower.”
Anna came in through her back door, dripping and cursing Mason as water ran off her neck and between her breasts. “Honestly, Lou, I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”
He was sitting at her kitchen table, tying his shoes while scanning the front page of the morning paper. McNamara would live. St. John announced that his investigation into organized crime would continue.
“That’s what neighbors are for, Anna. I owe you one.”
Mason glanced out her living room window. Camera crews for the local affiliates of the major networks were setting up shop in his front yard, their logos emblazoned on the rain poncho of each crew member. The clock was running on his fifteen minutes of fame.
Mason kissed Anna on the cheek and went out the back door, cutting across lawns to the next block and his car. It was eight o’clock, early for house calls. Mason hoped he wasn’t too late.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
Pamela’s newspaper was still in the driveway and there were no lights on in the house. It felt as though more than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d last knocked on her door. Vernon’s Bible lay heavily against his side, protected from the rain by his jacket, as he leaned on the doorbell. Five minutes of chimes brought protesting footsteps that stopped on the other side of the peephole in the door.
“Lou, what are you doing here at this hour?” Pamela asked in a voice muffled by the thick oak door.
“I’ve got to talk with you. It’s very important.”
“I had a late night. Can’t it wait until later, or tomorrow?”
“Pamela, please open the door. I can hardly hear you.”
Mason hoped that it would be harder to send him away face-to-face than separated by the heavy door. The dead bolt slid back. Pamela pulled the door open enough to peer around the edge. Mason stepped sideways through the narrow opening before she could protest.
She had the same puffy-eyed, just-rousted-from-bed look as Anna Karelson had. He could taste the stale, smoky aroma that hung on her, and he could smell the booze in her sweat. She hunched her shoulders inside the velour red robe she had zipped to the neck. She was close enough to rock bottom to touch it with her tongue.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I know who killed your husband. I thought you would want to know.”
She slumped against the door, pushing it closed, as she covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes asking questions that she refused to speak.
“I don’t want to go to the police until I’m certain,” Mason continued. “There are a few details about Richard’s past that I need to clear up. Let’s talk in the study.”
Mason led the way, not giving her the chance to object. He hoped that taking charge in her own house would keep her off her guard. The study reeked of Pamela’s long night. She didn’t smoke. Mason wondered who did.
The sofa cushions had been left in casual disarray, with two of them piled at one end. Pamela sat on the sofa, holding a cushion in her lap, her arms wrapped around it. Mason chose the wingback chair opposite the sofa, setting his jacket next to the ornamental letter opener on the small table next to the chair, the Bible tucked inside the jacket.
A dark walnut butler’s table separated them, adorned with an empty wine bottle and two glasses turned on their sides. Two streaked glasses, one with lipstick on the rim. He pretended not to notice. It wasn’t any of his business if Pamela skipped the grieving-widow stage and jumped into friendly arms.
Pamela squeezed the cushion in her lap as if she were trying to pull herself inside it. She hadn’t uttered a sound since he’d told her why he was there. Not even a monosyllabic “Who?” The silence was so puzzling that he decided to wait her out and make her ask him who did it.
Smiling at Pamela, Mason stood and began a quiet survey of the books lining the shelves behind Sullivan’s desk. He had a theory that you could learn a lot about a person by the books they kept. Some people kept them for show, while others intended to read them someday, though they never would. Still others read them, loved them, and took comfort in being around them. The bindings on Sullivan’s books were crisp and virginal. Having them was what counted. Not knowing them.
Mason stopped in front of a volume half-hidden by the vertical molding at the end of the middle shelf. The top half of the letters in the title was visible enough along the book’s spine that he could read
“Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?” Mason asked, looking at Pamela as she rocked back and forth on the sofa. Her eyes bore down on the intricate pattern in the Persian rug as if the answer could be divined in the weave.
“Pamela, over here,” he said, breaking her spell. She jerked her head up and raised her lids halfway in his
