contract. My father used me. He said he was just calling Gina's bluff-like I was a poker chip in their fucking card game!' She bent over, her head in her lap, sobbing on folded arms. 'Everyone uses me. It has to end.'
She trembled, Mason placing a hand on her shoulder, Jordan jerking away like his touch was electrified, Mason letting her cry.
'What's your brother Trent have to do with all of this?' Mason asked when she lifted her head.
'Nothing,' she said.
Mason picked up the legal pad he'd brought with him. He hadn't made any notes. 'I'm not like the others,' he said. 'I'm not your brother or your parents. I'm not Centurion and I'm not Terry. I only want one thing from you.'
'What?'
'The truth. Call me when you're ready.'
Mason already had one conversation with Arthur Hackett that morning. Hackett had called as Mason was leaving for the county jail. Mason didn't need the phone. He could have opened his window and heard Hackett yelling from the Cable Depot. Mason let Arthur rant and promised a report after his meeting with Jordan.
Mason was more than a little jumpy as he rode the elevator to KWIN's offices, certain that his reaction was normal, doubting that Dr. Gina or her brethren had much experience with people who jumped off the roofs of elevators and lived to be spooked by the next ride. He thought about taking the stairs, telling himself that he could use the exercise, but he opted for the get-backon-the-horse approach, not realizing he'd been holding his breath until he stepped out onto the eighth floor. Fresh crime-scene tape blocked the entrance to Dr. Gina's office, confirming Samantha's suspicion that Mason's elevator ride had not been an accident.
Arthur and Carol Hackett didn't have to say a word. Her bloodshot eyes and bloodless lips, his fiery eyes and puckered mouth, fixed in fury, condemned Mason as he crossed their threshold. They let him in and unloaded, questioning him at the same time, each oblivious to what the other was saying.
'How could you do this?' Carol asked.
'Mason, I'm not paying you to send my daughter to jail for the rest of her life! What in the hell am I paying you for?' added Arthur.
Mason suspected they'd spent their entire lives talking without listening to one another. He was certain they'd never heard much that Jordan had to say and probably tuned out Trent in self-defense.
'One at a time,' Mason told them. 'First, I didn't do anything to Jordan. She did it to herself, though she had help from your friends at Sanctuary. Second, you were paying me to keep your daughter out of jail, only now you're paying me to get her out. We're on the same side here, so let's focus on that for now.'
Carol Hackett stalked out of the room, repeating the problem-solving approach she took at their last meeting. Arthur didn't bother apologizing for her this time. Mason was learning the family music. It was a classical piece composed of blame conducted with fingers pointed at everyone else.
Mason asked, 'Was Gina Davenport trying to get out of her contract with you?'
'What if she was? What's that got to do with any of this?' Arthur asked.
'It's the story line in Jordan's confession, that's all,' Mason said. 'Dr. Gina threatened to cut off Jordan's treatment if you didn't let her out of her contract. You didn't think the good doctor was that bad, but she was. Last Friday, Gina told Jordan good-bye and why. Jordan didn't take it well and threw a brass paperweight at the window, leaving a nice long crack. After spending the weekend thinking it over-what the prosecutor calls premeditating-she called Dr. Gina and arranged to meet her Monday night so she could throw Gina out the window.'
Arthur Hackett stood behind his desk chair, shielding himself from Mason's explanation. He folded his arms over the back of the chair, pulling it toward him, backing up until he slumped against the credenza along the wall.
'My God,' he whispered, the enormity of Mason's description beginning to take hold. 'I didn't think she would do it.'
'Do what?' Mason asked.
'Both of them. Everything,' Arthur said. 'Gina had lost her own daughter. The poor girl killed herself. I never dreamt she would abandon Jordan over money. That's what it was all about-just money.'
'And your daughter?'
Arthur shook his head. 'Jordan has a temper,' he said. 'That's a little like saying a volcano makes smoke. But I always believed she could control herself if she wanted to.'
Mason asked, 'Is Jordan adopted?'
Arthur Hackett came out of his slump, raising his eyebrows. 'Why do you ask?'
'There may be another angle to this. Was she adopted?'
Arthur pushed his desk chair away and stared out the window for a moment. 'Yes. Trent's birth was very difficult. Carol couldn't have more children afterward. She didn't want another baby, but I did. We were living in St. Louis at the time. I was selling advertising for radio, just getting started in this business. Some young girl got herself pregnant and we adopted her baby.' He shook his head, 'We didn't know anything about the mother,' he added as if that was a curse.
'You didn't like that?' Mason asked.
Hackett squared his shoulders. He was shorter than Mason, but broader, more full than fit, but powerful enough to throw Gina Davenport through the window.
'I like to know what I'm getting, that's all,' Hackett said. 'When Jordan started having so many problems, all I could think about was the mother-was she like that?'
'Did you ever try to find Jordan's birth mother?'
'No. We asked Gina if we should look for the mother in case she had a history of psychological problems. Gina said it wouldn't matter, that we had to deal with Jordan, not her mother.'
'Do you have Gina's home phone number?'
'Of course, but don't expect much help from Robert-that's her husband.'
'Why not?' Mason asked, though he was more interested in whether the number matched the one Abby had called.
'He's a painter, teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.'
'That's okay with me,' Mason said. 'I never got past paint-by-numbers.'
'He's a drug addict,' Arthur said. 'Cocaine. Gina couldn't do anything with him. He was in and out of treatment centers all over the country. Cocaine is an expensive way to kill yourself.' Arthur wrote the number on a slip of paper and handed it to Mason. 'It's unlisted, but I guess that doesn't matter so much anymore.'
Mason looked at the number. It didn't match Abby's. He was zero for three. 'Do you recognize this phone number?' Mason asked Arthur as he wrote the number Abby had given him on the same paper.
'Where did you get this number?' Arthur asked, a tremor rippling through him.
'That's confidential for the moment. Whose number is it?'
'It's Jordan's cell-phone number. What's going on here, Mason? I'm paying you and I want to know.'
Mason said, 'I don't know. When I find out, I'll tell you if I can.'
'You'll by God tell me period!' Hackett told him, pounding his desk with a fury, making Mason wonder whether Jordan's temper was the product of nature or nurture.
'Arthur,' Mason said. 'You're paying my fees, but you're not my client. I'll tell you what I can. Get used to it.'
The ride back down the elevator was easier. Mason didn't hold his breath and turn blue, though he did breathe easier when he spun through the revolving door onto the sidewalk and into the midday sun of a perfect fall day. The Cable Depot had a heavy feel. He didn't know whether it was Gina's death or his near-death. Or whether it was the Hackett family imprint or the lingering ghosts of earlier tenants. The building had a way of laying cold hands on him and he was glad to be outside.
Mason knew that technically speaking, it was still summer, but he operated on a separate calendar he had devised in elementary school. It started the seasons on the first days of September, December, March, and June. It was a lot simpler than remembering the equinox and appealed to his optimistic off-balance logic.
Always too impatient for summer, he decided it should start on June 1. He was back in school by September 1, and that meant it was fall. December was too cold not to be winter. Best of all, his spring started on March 1 when everyone else was suffering through three more weeks of winter. His system was a child's invention that worked in an adult world. It was fall in Mason's world, the heat unseasonable.
