Ascension Day

Steady rhythmic beat. Though now it was more from Jac’s fingers drumming by the phone than his heartbeat. The only sound — apart from the traffic passing a block away on Tulane Avenue, heavily muted through the thick glazing of his second-floor motel window — as Jac made his call to John Langfranc.

When Jac had first called, after the agreed two hours, there’d been no answer — then successively after five minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes. Still no answer, his finger-tapping by the phone heavier and more impatient each time. Now again after another three minutes. It answered late, at the start of the fifth ring, Langfranc slightly breathless.

‘I just got back in this second,’ he said to Jac’s Where the hell had he been?

‘I’ve been going crazy here… didn’t know what to think,’ Jac said. ‘What might be happening?’

‘I know… I know. It got a lot more complicated while I was there, unfortunately. You see, the thing is — ’

‘How was Alaysha?’ Jac was only half paying attention to Langfranc; his emotions so pent-up that all he could think of were the questions that had burned through his mind the past two hours. ‘How did she cope with the police questioning?’

‘She coped fine, Jac. But — ’

‘And had she said the right things before you got there, so that you were able to cover the bases okay?’

‘Yes, she’d covered well, hadn’t… but… but they found the gun, Jac.’ Langfranc blurted it out mid-sentence, as if afraid that if he got stuck in question-answer mode, he might never get the words out. Langfranc let his breath out heavily. ‘That’s our main problem now.’

‘But how? I hid it over half a mile away, and I — ’

‘You were seen burying it, Jac. A neighbour a couple of doors away, apparently.’

‘Oh God. God.’ Jac felt as if a trapdoor had opened beneath him, but it was Alaysha he saw tumbling into the abyss, her reaching one hand up desperately. Her gun. Her prints on it. He shuddered, his voice shaky, quavering. ‘How on earth is Alaysha bearing up with that news? I… I should be with her now.’ He realized something else too in that second. ‘And now I’ve made things far worse for her… trying to get rid of the gun. Made her look guiltier still.’

‘Jac, the problem is, it’s — ’

‘Jeezus… I’ve made a right pig’s ear of everything, I’ve — ’

Jac was wrapped up in his own thoughts again, only half listening as Langfranc tried to broach the subject delicately, gently, soften the blow; but, in the end, as if the only way to get the words across, they came out sharply, a hatchet swipe:

‘Jac! They’re not Alaysha’s prints they’ve found on that gun — they’re yours!’

Jac felt the words hit, but they didn’t sink home, as if Langfranc had said them to someone else. Then, hesitantly, ‘That’s… that’s not possible. I… I never touched the gun with my hands.’

‘The prints are there, Jac… they’re there. No question.’

And as it did finally sink in, Jac felt himself falling again, as if Langfranc’s words had held him in mid-air for a moment, suspended in disbelief, and now that the totality of the set-up dawned on him, he was in freefall again: Alaysha’s gun, his fingerprints on it — he should have deduced earlier that if they’d gone to the trouble of lifting it from her apartment, that’s what they’d do; after all, a part of him had questioned all along that he was meant to be the main target. The letter and restraining order, the argument, Mrs Orwin seeing him over the body, ‘You’ve shot him… you’ve shot him!’ And now, as if he wasn’t roped and tied enough, him fleeing and trying to dispose of the gun. He’d provided the final ribbon on top himself.

‘Uuuhhh.’ All Jac could manage; a half-grunt, half-wheeze as he felt all the air shunted out of him with the terrible realization. After a moment, ‘You… you know it’s all a set-up, don’t you?’ But Jac’s tone carried strong hesitance, doubt, as if with the sheer weight of evidence, even John Langfranc might have trouble believing it.

‘Yeah, I know.’ Though there was a slight pause, and the tone was that of reluctant concession. ‘But, like I said before, Jac — that’s only because I know you. With everyone else, it’s going to be tough. With the way everything’s stacked against you — a real mountain climb to try and convince them.’

‘What can we do?’ Yet even as Jac said it, with the hopelessness of the situation, it sounded rhetorical; Langfranc was a lawyer, not Houdini.

Langfranc took a fresh breath. ‘The first thing is — you’ve got to give yourself up to the police, Jac. Give them your side of things to back up Alaysha’s account. That’s the start point.’

But as Langfranc said it, Jac’s first thought was Durrant. After all, Durrant’s fate had been the main purpose of the set-up: to get him off the scene. ‘Will I get bail?’

‘I don’t know, Jac. I’ll try, obviously. But running off with the gun and hiding it hasn’t helped. And your work- visa situation, too, is going to make it tricky — the fact that you’re not an American citizen. DA will protest like all hell that you could flee.’

Jac had worked with Langfranc long enough to read a ‘No’; Langfranc just didn’t want to come flat out and say it. Like everything else so far and no doubt from here on in, he’d be let down softly, in stages.

Only eleven days left now until Durrant’s execution. ‘I just can’t leave Durrant hanging now, John. Not when I’m so close.’

‘Durrant?’ Langfranc’s voice was incredulous, cracking slightly. ‘You won’t be able to do anything to help him now, Jac. You’ll be lucky to save yourself from sharing the cell right next to him, way things stand now.’

‘I can’t come in, if I’m not going to get bail — don’t you see? He’ll be dead before half this is sorted out — if it ever is.’

‘It’s not just the bail, Jac.’ Langfranc’s voice was stretched; the tone Jac had heard him adopt with difficult clients. ‘Beaton’s going to drop you from the firm quicker than a hot potato soon as he gets wind of all this. You won’t be able to represent Durrant in any case.’

Jac heard Langfranc, but another part of his brain quickly rejected it; the part in denial, still stuck on everything he had planned before it had happened. ‘There’s the BOP hearing tomorrow, and I’ve got that psychiatrist, Ormdern, visiting Durrant a few hours after. I’ve got to be there for those. And, don’t you see — that’s why they’ve done this now. They’ve heard about Ormdern’s visit, and are worried that I might be getting too close.’

‘You can’t be there, Jac. I can’t say it plainer than that.’ Tired, worn tone; shifted deftly from ‘difficult clients’ to ‘insane’. ‘And who the hell are they?’

‘Roche and his henchman, guy called Nelson Malley. Remember, I told you the other day about him following me — the photos that Bob Stratton took?’

‘Yeah, yeah. I remember now.’ Langfranc rubbed his forehead. The Durrant case had gone through so many hurdles that, with his own heavy caseload, at times Langfranc found it difficult to keep track.

Jac continued, ‘I’m convinced they’re behind this now. And, in turn, I’m more convinced than ever that they somehow set Larry Durrant up. That’s the link between the two, right there, don’t you see? The perfect set- up.’

Part of Jac’s thinking came across as totally rational, Langfranc considered; the other part now firing on odd cylinders at wild tangents, totally irrational.

‘Perhaps that’s something you could share with Lieutenant Derminget when you see him,’ Langfranc said, still trying desperately to reel Jac in. Appeal to the rational side. ‘Feed him everything you’ve got. Hopefully save your neck and Durrant’s at the same time.’

Silence from Jac for a moment, as if he was seriously contemplating it, before exhaling tiredly. ‘No, no… it wouldn’t work. There’s still too much for me to piece together — and this Lieutenant Whatever is not going to do all that for me. And I can’t do it while I’m locked up. I need to be out there.’

Langfranc lost his last shred of patience then. ‘Jac, Jac! You’re just not thinking straight! Any minute now there’s going to be an all-points out for you, and you won’t even be able to go to your local seven-eleven without being arrested — let alone walk into a maximum security penitentiary to see Durrant. So how the hell are you going to be able to help him then?’

‘I don’t know, I… I…’ Jac could feel the options — practically feel the cell walls — closing in on him as