return addresses for any hints of what might have happened to her. There were no postcards or ransom notes. Her life was captured in a thin string of credit card solicitations, discount coupons, and utility bills that kept coming, indifferent to her fate.
He knocked on the front door and jiggled the knob, a combination of pretense and wishful thinking that roused no one. The back door was still unlocked, the air in the house musty and stale. He moved slowly through each room, looking for things he hadn't seen before, finding only his images of Mary.
He first saw her at her son's execution, a slight woman compressed by her grief. Two days later, at his office, she had shown a lock-jawed determination to see justice done for her son. The last time he'd seen her had been in this house surrounded by her memories, an ordinary woman in an ordinary place carrying an extraordinary burden.
She had asked then if he was going to drop her case. He promised her that he wouldn't. He had made the same promise to Nick, though he wasn't sure he was keeping either promise. Walking through Mary's house, he realized that he hadn't dropped their cases. He'd been kicked off of them by Sandra's murder, forced to worry more about saving himself than serving his clients.
Perhaps, he thought, Sandra hadn't been killed to keep her quiet. Maybe she'd been nothing more than a pawn in a deadly strategy to eliminate Mason as a threat. It would have been simpler just to kill him, though setting him up to take the fall for her murder would do just that. The state would kill Mason, making him the second innocent man to be executed for a murder committed by Whitney King. If Mason was right, Whitney King had redefined what it meant to work the system.
Everything in Mary's house was as it had been on Mason's first visit. Nothing was out of place. Her bed was made. Her clothes were undisturbed. The copy of
'What the hell?' Mason said out loud.
The deep-sea diver stared back at him, alone in the tank.
Chapter 38
Mary was alive. That was the only conclusion Mason could reach. No one else would have bothered to retrieve the fish. He discounted the possibility that the fish died and someone else threw them away. He raced through his reasoning, checking for flaws, hitting one head on. If the police were investigating Mary's disappearance, they could have gotten a warrant to search her house, discovered that the fish were dead and disposed of them.
He paced back and forth in front of the aquarium, flipping open his cell phone and calling Samantha Greer on hers.
'Sam, it's Lou.'
'How could you be so stupid?' she asked.
'About what?' he asked, stunned by her vehemence.
'The grand jury!' she said, unable to hide her exasperation. 'Ortiz couldn't wait to tell me. Honest to God, Lou. What were you thinking?'
'That I'm innocent. That I've gotten nothing to hide and that the system protects the innocent.'
'Fractured fairy tales and you know it as well as anyone does,' Samantha said.
'Hey, you're supposed to be on Ortiz's side, not mine.'
'I know,' she said. 'I am on his side. I investigated the crime scene. I found your gun. But I don't want you to be guilty and, even if you are guilty, I don't want you to make it so easy for Ortiz to nail you.'
'I had to spot him a few points to make it a fair fight,' Mason said.
'Don't even try that crap with me, Lou,' she said. 'Ortiz is very good and you're not defending yourself. You're the defendant. Dixon Smith is your lawyer.'
Mason forgot about Mary's fish for the moment. 'You make being defended by Dixon sound almost as bad as being arrested. What do you hear about him?'
Samantha hesitated, cleared her throat. 'Nothing. Forget it,' she said. 'He's fine, from what I hear.'
'Okay,' Mason said. 'Now get back on my side and tell me what you really hear.'
'He's your guy,' Samantha said. 'Why did you hire him if you're worried about what I've heard?'
'Remember me? I'm the guy charged with murder who waived my right against self-incrimination. You think I'm smart enough to pick the right lawyer to defend me?'
Samantha laughed. Mason was pleased at the sound of her voice. In spite of their luckless romantic history, he and Samantha had been able to hold onto their friendship. He needed that now.
'Good point,' she said. 'Okay, I hear that he practices at the edges. Maybe gets too close to his clients.'
Mason knew what she meant. Criminal defense lawyers were not immune to the temptations sometimes offered to them by their clients, especially those whose illegal operations generated wholesale amounts of cash, drugs and women-or men-depending on the lawyer's gender and inclinations. A lawyer who got too close to his clients could end up in business with them whether he liked it or not.
'Any particular client?' Mason asked. Samantha hesitated again, Mason pressing her. 'C'mon Sam,' he said. 'If I've got a problem, I need to know now, not when I'm writing appeals from death row.'
'Damon Parker.'
'The guy who owns Golden Years, the nursing home guy?' Mason asked, the muscles in his neck tightening.
'Yeah. That Damon Parker. He's made a fortune developing something he calls Life Care Communities. He builds condos, assisted living apartments, nursing homes, and psychiatric hospitals with Alzheimer's disease units. All under one roof. Signs people up for the last part of the downhill slide. All the way from independent living to the graveyard. When their insurance or Medicare kicks in, he moves them back and forth from the hospital to the nursing home as each round of coverage runs out.'
'What's illegal about that if the insurance companies or Medicare are supposed to pay for the care?'
'That's not the problem. The problem is billing for care that isn't given, like therapy given to dead patients, or care that isn't needed, like claiming that everyone over the age of seventy has Alzheimer's. It's a federal investigation so I only know what I hear.'
'Then how do you know anything about it at all?' She didn't answer, Mason filling in the blanks. 'Ortiz told you after Dixon Smith waxed him at my arraignment. Ortiz has friends in the U.S. attorney's office. They must have told him. Smith used to be an assistant U.S. attorney until he quit and started his own practice.'
'He didn't quit, Lou,' Samantha said softly. 'I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you and I shouldn't have told you that much.'
'I'm glad you did,' he said. 'You have to admit, though, he did a great job for me at the arraignment.'
'So what? He got you out on bail so you could hand Ortiz your head in front of the grand jury!' she snapped, before apologizing. 'I'm sorry, Lou. You've got enough problems without me yelling at you too, but it's not too late to hire someone else.'
'I'll keep that in mind,' Mason answered, remembering that he'd given similar advice to Sandra Connelly, telling her she could quit representing Whitney King. Sandra wasn't ready to let go of King and he wasn't ready to fire Smith.
Smith's story that Sandra Connelly had asked him to look into whether Whitney King's mother belonged in a nursing home was suddenly more interesting to Mason. Especially the part about Smith's client firing him when he made the inquiry. His Aunt Claire's lesson about mixing truth and lies reverberated again. If he fired Smith, he wouldn't be able to separate those facts from fiction.
'You didn't call to get a reference for your lawyer,' Samantha said. 'What do you want?'
He'd stopped pacing without realizing it, finding himself staring again at the aquarium. 'Has anything happened with the missing person's report I filed on Mary Kowalczyk?' he asked.
'I talked to the detective on the case today. Her name is Barbara Wilson. She's got a stack of reports and yours is on it.'
