even when he was at the top of his game, which he hadn’t been for the last year.
“My friend’s company is handling some important research for us,” the Senator continued. “His secretary was killed in his office last night and aside from the tragedy of it all, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. You’ve prosecuted complicated cases like this where corporate theft may be involved. Would you give him a hand, act as a consultant, and guide him through this?”
So that was it. A supporter was in a mess at an unfortunate time, and the Senator owed him a favor. True, Drake had handled some big trade secret cases in the D.A.’s office as the lead felony prosecutor.
“Senator, I don’t think I can help you. I’m just not ready to take on a case like this right now,” Drake said.
Senator Hazelton hadn’t seen him in six or seven months. If he had, there was no way in the world he would ask him for help. Dark bags under his eyes, a puffy face, he looked haggard and felt like a fighter too tired to come out of his corner for the next round.
“Adam, I need you on this one. There are reasons I can’t discuss over the phone. I need someone I can trust.”
There was more to this than just walking a constituent through some crisis, Drake thought.
“All right, Sir. Tell your friend I’ll call him tomorrow when I get back to town.”
“Actually, I invited him to come over tonight. Could you be here by seven? We’ll have dinner. Meredith has been asking when we’ll see you.”
“Okay, I’ll try to be there by seven,” Drake said and ended the call.
He knew he couldn’t put off seeing Kay’s parents forever. Tonight was as good a night as any to get the meeting behind him. They lost a daughter, he recognized that, but hugs and kisses weren’t going to help him sleep through the night, or make anything matter again.
Drake walked back to his table to finish his coffee. His father-in-law was used to getting his way, in politics and life in general, but he never interfered in his life. He appreciated that. If the Senator wanted his help now, he’d get it, whether it was politics or his mother-in-law asking to see him. Either way, it didn’t matter. They were all that was left of his family, and he’d do what he could.
Drake’s father died in Vietnam on his second tour, wearing a green beret. Aside from the legend that went with his Distinguished Service Cross, Drake only knew his father from his mother’s stories. She raised him as a single mom, working as an emergency room nurse, until she died in a car accident caused by a drunken teenager. He’d been a sophomore in college then. There was no other family, and he’d been on his own after that, until Kay.
Chapter 3
Senator Hazelton’s home was in Lake Oswego, an old money suburb of Portland. He and Meredith moved there shortly after he became the managing partner of the most powerful law firm in the city. He wasn’t born rich, but the careful and graceful use of his legal skills soon made him one of the most respected and wealthy men in the city. Encouraged to enter politics, he served two terms in the state legislature before he was asked to run against the incumbent U.S. Senator, Willard Monroe. Despite the incumbent’s five terms in the Senate, the younger attorney connected better with the citizens, won the election, and hadn’t been seriously challenged since.
Two hours later, after driving his Porsche 993 as hard as the absence of detectable State Police would allow, Drake approached the exit for Lake Oswego. He thought about the night he met Kay. It was after law school, after his time in the army and after working in the District Attorney’s office for five years. The athletic club he belonged to was hosting a dinner and dance for participants of a triathlon he had just finished. Kay had attended and asked him to dance.
“I’ve seen your picture in the paper. Are you as good a prosecutor as you are a triathlete?” she asked him.
“I’m a better prosecutor,” he answered, as she led him to the dance floor. “I don’t come in second as a prosecutor.”
She introduced herself simply as Kay Hazelton, but he knew who she was, just as she knew he knew. The papers called her the brightest flower on the Portland social scene. She didn’t seem to care. She appeared in more newspaper photos working a soup kitchen line in jeans and a sweatshirt than at charity events in a fancy dress. She was attracted to people and causes that mattered, she told him later. What attracted Kay to him that night was still a mystery.
“Does that mean you’re willing to send innocents to jail, just to win? Do young men, trying to survive by selling drugs, deserve a lifetime behind bars? Why not restorative justice instead?”
“Miss Hazelton, if you and your father want to restore felons, whatever that means, you’re welcome to try. You’d be making a mistake, in my opinion. Drug dealers have a choice to make, just like the choice you made when you decided to become a teacher. They make bad decisions. Those decisions hurt people. Your decision to teach helps people. Both have consequences, and it’s my job to deal with the ones that hurt people.”
They danced for a moment before she asked, “If I made bad decisions in my life, would you still dance with me?”
“Miss Hazelton, I can’t imagine any decision that would keep me from dancing with you. Of course, I might still have to put you in jail.”
That had been the beginning of a courtship that lasted almost a year before he asked Kay Hazelton to marry him. Then, of course, he’d had to talk with her father.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the Senator said, when he led Drake into his den. “Would you like something to drink?”
A couple of double whiskeys, Drake remembered thinking, would be nice.
“No, thank you, I’m fine, Sir. I’d like permission to marry your daughter,” he blurted out. No use beating around the bush, the Senator was expecting him.
“I appreciate your good manners, son, but I’m afraid you’re too late. I gave my daughter permission to marry you months ago,” the Senator said with a smile. “Now, would you like that drink?”
That was four years ago. Now, driving to the house where he had that first drink with the Senator, his memory flashed scenes of their outdoor wedding. The manicured lawn sloping down to the lake from the brick Victorian Kay lived in most of her life, a reception with bridesmaids dancing barefoot in front of a bandstand after the guests had left, and finally, following the curving cedar-lined driveway when they left on their wedding night.
He hadn’t been back to the Hazelton’s home since Kay’s funeral. He had talked with her mother on the phone, of course, and had lunched with the Senator once, but he’d declined invitations for dinner.
The house looked the same as he turned in. Lit by the soft glow of wooden luminaries, he saw Kay’s old upper bedroom window between the tall western red cedars that lined the drive. It was the very best of the six bedrooms, she had proclaimed. On the northeast corner of the house, it offered a view of the lake and of Mount Hood’s snowy peak in the distance. She didn’t mind that it was the smallest of the six bedrooms, it was the room she picked when she first walked through her new home.
As he neared the turnaround in front of the house, Meredith Hazelton stood at the open front door. She hadn’t changed a whit, but her vigilance told him that they must have added security cameras since his last visit. His mother-in-law was, in his opinion, the best looking seventy-year-old woman he had ever seen. With light brown hair and sparkling eyes, she was a vision of what Kay would have looked like in another thirty-three years.
Rolling to a stop, he got out and waved over the roof of his car. Drake stretched to get rid of the tightness in his shoulders, and gave himself a moment to compose his emotions.
“Adam, I hoped I would see you today,” Meredith said, as she hurried to greet him with a kiss, wrapping her slender arms around him. She didn’t let go, and Drake felt her sadness as she rested her head on his chest.
A year of loneliness swept through him.
“I shouldn’t have stayed away so long, I’ve missed you. I’m sorry.”
