He was back to ties now, and back from lunch, lounging sociably against the frame of my office door. “You have got to come sailing with us,” he said. “I know you’re not a sailing man, but you will be. Blue Seas will convert you.”
“That’d be great,” I said. “I got nothing against it, just never got into it.”
“I’m thinking the shrimp festival,” he said, referring to the town’s annual week-long party in late September and early October. “He’ll have some charters going then. A short pleasure cruise, dinner on the water, that kind of thing. He’s been real happy with your work these past few weeks, and it’s time you got the social end of things going with him too. I mean, it’s way past time, but you got to start somewhere.”
“I really appreciate that, Roy. I mean, if I’m ever imposing, you let me know, but I really do appreciate all your help.”
“Hell,” he said, “I’m helping myself, here! I been sitting in this office for twenty-five years. I’d much rather be out sailing and golfing, but somebody’s got to sit here writing and researching while I’m out doing that.”
I said, “Happy to oblige.”
“Well, then,” he said, “we got us a win-win. But you got to get out in the community, let people know who you are. How they going to trust you otherwise? And if they don’t trust you, you can sit here all you want with your little computer fired up, but there won’t be any work.”
“Yup,” I said. “Well, sign me up for the shrimp festival. Whatever Henry’s got going for that, I’m in.”
After Roy went off to do whatever he did in the office these days, I closed my door to concentrate and got back to work on Jackson’s case. I had six Redweld files of discovery: the autopsy and the forensic report on the boat, a partly redacted but unremarkable personnel file for Detective Blount, arrest reports, piles of paper I’d read many times before. Ruiz had put a few surveillance-camera videos online in Dropbox for me, and I’d watched them a dozen times each, changing the brightness and contrast in case it helped, and concentrating on different parts of the frame. I hadn’t spotted Jackson in any of them. No magic bullet had emerged. The mess remained a mess.
A knock came at the door—Roy was genteel enough to always knock—and I said, “Come in.” When I looked up, it wasn’t him; it was Mazie.
“My goodness,” I said, unfolding myself from my habitual slouch and standing up to gesture her to a seat. “Hello. What can I get you? Water? Coffee?”
For once she wasn’t wearing a waitress uniform or her other staple, sweatpants plus some decorative T-shirt featuring kittens, flowers, or both. She had on a skirt and blouse. It looked like she’d dressed up for this visit. I could see she was intimidated by the surroundings.
She wanted coffee, so I hit the button for Laura’s phone to ask her to bring a cup.
“Oh, no,” Mazie said, waving her hands like she was trying to erase what she’d just said. “I don’t mean to be any trouble. Forget it. I had coffee already.”
“It’s no trouble,” I said. “Besides, we got to finish the pot. The day’s almost done.”
“Well, if you’re sure,” she said. “If it’s no trouble.”
“Not at all.”
When the drink was brought and Laura shut the door on her way out, I asked, “Everything okay? Is something going on?”
“Well, I just visited Jackson at lunchtime,” she said. There was pain in her face. “Leland, what’s happened to him? He ain’t himself. I thought he’d feel better when his jaw got healed up, but he’s still so low. It’s like the fight’s gone out of him.”
I nodded. “It’s taking its toll.”
“How long does he have to be in there?”
“Well, the solicitor’s office is pushing to fast-track his case—”
“Oh, good,” she said.
“So that means his trial could begin as early as December.”
She stared at me. “That’s fast?”
“For a murder trial, yes.”
She shook her head and slumped in her chair, looking at her hands in her lap.
I reached back to my bookshelf to get the box of Kleenex I figured she was going to need and set it on my desk so she could reach it.
“Leland, he’s so thin,” she said. “He barely talks, and he’s had bruises on his arms the last couple times I was there. Something’s wrong in there. I have got to get him home.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was no way of getting him out of jail short of waiting for trial and then winning when it finally rolled around. And, based on the evidence we had today, I wasn’t at all sure we would win. On top of that, Ruiz hadn’t reached out with so much as a hint at any kind of plea deal. I didn’t know what he was playing at.
While I was contemplating the whole sorry situation, she opened her purse, found a folded dollar bill, unfolded it, and pushed it across the desk to me.
“You’re my lawyer now, right?” she said. “That makes you my lawyer, so everything’s confidential?”
“Uh, well, it don’t really work that way outside the movies. But what’s going on? You need legal advice?”
“If it’s just between us.”
“Well, look,” I said. “Your son’s my client, so on the off chance you tell me something that goes against his interest, we got a problem. But otherwise, I guess, fire away.”
She took a deep, shuddering breath, like she was preparing to get something bad off her chest.
“Okay. I don’t know what it was,” she said, “but
