“So, no priors,” I said, holding back a chuckle.
He squinted his eyes and tapped an index finger on his temple. “Like a steel trap.”
“Yeah, you seem to be forgetting that time you were supposed to get me out of Dad’s car and put me to bed while he whipped up some margaritas. I woke up at two in the morning almost frozen solid in the backseat while you were making whoopie with Mrs. Dunlop next door.”
He adjusted his tie. “I believe that was an alcohol-related incident,” he grumbled. A strangely flattering crimson spread over his face, making the whole account worthwhile.
Just to add icing to the cake, I shook my head in mock disappointment. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Uncle Near Negligent Homicide.”
Elizabeth chuckled.
Uncle Bob didn’t. “How ’bout we leave the filing of criminal charges to the DA.” Before I could argue, he said, “We found Mr. Rivera floating in the Rio Grande.”
“Maybe he was thirsty,” I offered.
“Have you ever tasted the Rio Grande?”
“Not lately,” I said, wondering when he had. And why. And if he carried any parasites because of it. “Barber thinks this might be the same guy who asked him for a cloak-and-dagger meeting.”
Uncle Bob leaned forward, intrigued. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” As Barber explained the incident to me, I relayed the info to Uncle Bob, who, naturally, recorded everything in his notepad.
“This guy calls me,” Barber said, easing onto the seat I’d pulled up earlier. Elizabeth followed suit, but Sussman walked to the window and gazed out at the university campus across the street while we talked. “He wanted to meet in an alley, which I thought was pretty odd. But he sounded, I don’t know, almost desperate.”
“Can he describe his behavior?” Uncle Bob asked me.
“He was nervous,” Barber said, “jumpy. He kept looking over his shoulder, checking his watch. I just figured he was high on the latest jagged little pill.”
“But you listened to him anyway?” I asked, butting into Uncle B’s interview.
“He said he had information on one of our clients,” Elizabeth said. “Jason had no choice but to listen.”
“What information?” I asked, taking note of her knee-jerk leap to his defense. Interesting.
By the time Barber had finished his tale, we’d learned that, according to the deceased Carlos Rivera, there was a man going to prison for a very long time whose worst crime involved the smoking of a little pot in college. Admittedly, he inhaled.
But forensic evidence pointed to a more severe crime. Police found a murdered teen in his backyard and his own sneakers with the kid’s blood on them inside his house. The sneakers were like the final nail in his coffin. Pile on a corroborating witness — an eighty-year-old woman with Coke-bottle glasses and bunions — and the poor guy went down for murder. The woman stated under oath that she saw the defendant stashing the kid in his backyard. Behind a storage shed. On a dark and stormy night. Clearly, she’d read too many mysteries.
“But it was dark,” I said. “And stormy. She could have seen my great-aunt Lillian stash the body there and assumed it was your client.”
“Exactly,” Barber agreed. “Nonetheless, he was convicted of second-degree murder.”
“Did your client know the kid?” Uncle Bob asked. That was totally my next question.
Barber shook his head. “Said he’d never seen him before in his life.”
“What’s your client’s name?” I asked. Before Uncle Bob could.
“Weir. Mark Weir. He gave me a USB flash drive,” Barber said.
“Who did? Your client?”
“Who did what?” Uncle Bob asked without looking up from his writing.
“Someone gave Barber a flash drive.”
“Who did?” he repeated. For heaven’s sake, didn’t I just ask that?
“No, that guy.” Barber nodded toward the photo. “Rivera. Though he never gave me his name, he did give me a location. He told me I could find the evidence I needed to clear Mr. Weir at a warehouse on the Westside. He said to be there Wednesday night.”
“Time?” Uncle Bob asked. Apparently really good interviewers didn’t need to use complete sentences. I made a mental note.
“He never gave me a time. I think he saw someone following him. He pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and ducked inside a pizza place before I could ask him anything else.” Barber glanced back at the photo. “I guess they busted him anyway, figured out what he was up to.”
“Today is Wednesday,” I said. “When did all this happen?”
Sussman turned back, and all three lawyers eyed each other. Then Elizabeth answered, a sadness softening her voice. “The day we died.” She glanced at Barber. “It seems so long ago.”
Barber covered her hands with his. Her tough bravado, her powerful don’t-fuck-with-me demeanor, seemed to fade a little.
“This happened yesterday,” I said to Uncle Bob.
“Okay,” he said, launching into Nazi interrogator mode. He asked dozens upon dozens of questions, scribbling wildly in his notebook as I relayed the answers. I wondered if he’d ever heard of a digital recorder.
“The flash drive is on his desk at his office,” I said, answering yet another question. “No, the guy didn’t say what was on it, but Barber got the impression it was a video of some sort. Yes, this Wednesday, today. No, he didn’t see who was following Rivera. They’ve already filed an appeal, but it’ll take months to get it before a judge. Yes. No. The client hasn’t been transferred yet. Maybe. Not on your life. When hell freezes over. Um, okay. No, his
By the time Uncle Bob had run out of questions — a good thing, since they were veering way off subject — I had run out of energy. Not enough, however, to allay the niggling suspicions I had about this whole situation. This was more important than one innocent man, and I had a feeling it centered on the murdered teen. I needed more information on both.
We headed downstairs to grab a bite. Dad made the best Monte Cristos this side of the Eiffel Tower, and my mouth watered just thinking about them. When I finally had a moment to breathe, my thoughts strayed back to Reyes. It was difficult not to dwell on a man whose mere presence evoked images of the devil hell-bent on sinning.
“I love the name of your dad’s bar,” Elizabeth said as we trod downstairs.
I forced myself back to the present. Elizabeth’s attitude toward me had changed since I’d almost had sex with an incorporeal being in her presence. But I didn’t think she was angry. Or offended. Maybe it was something about Garrett. Maybe she felt as though I were cheating on him, since he seemed to have feelings for me. He had feelings for me, all right, but they weren’t the warm and fuzzy kind.
“Thanks,” I said. “He named it after me, to the utter chagrin of my sister,” I added with a snort.
Sussman chuckled. “He named it after you? I thought it was called Calamity’s.”
“Yeah. Uncle Bob called me Calamity for years, as in Calamity Jane? And when my dad bought the bar, he just figured it fit.”
“I like it,” Elizabeth said. “I had a dog named after me once.”
I tried not to laugh. “What kind?”
“A pit bull.” A mischievous grin spread across her mouth.
“I can totally see that,” I said with a chuckle.
We took a secluded table in a dark corner so I could hopefully talk to my clients without anyone staring. After a quick intro — and an abbreviated version of my night with domestic-abuse husband in the bar to explain the state of my face — I asked my dad if I had any messages.
“Here?” he asked. “Are you expecting one?”
“Well, yes and no.” Rosie Herschel, my first assisted-disappearing case, was supposed to call only if she ran into trouble, so no news was good news. We didn’t want to risk any communication otherwise, any connection to me and my job, thus spilling the fact that she’d hightailed it out of her asshole husband’s pathetic life, not that the man lived anywhere near close enough to the town of Intelligence to figure out what had really happened.
“ ‘Yes and no’ doesn’t answer my question,” Dad said, waiting for me to elaborate.
“Sure it does.”
