Case of Lies

“They have a lawyer. You didn’t serve him. You could have faxed him. I’m not sure about this ex parte stuff.” Flaherty appeared uncertain, but ready to blow the way the strongest wind blew.

“Technically, he’s not retained to represent them as defendants, to my knowledge,” Nina said. “Naturally I will cooperate fully with him when I’m notified that he will be involved in that capacity.” She turned back to her main point, adding urgently, “We have to find out who did this. The murder of Chelsi Freeman is an affront to the court. It’s an attempt to intimidate us into not pursuing the complaint. It’s the one thing, the one thing, Judge, we can never permit. Our justice system can’t flee from intimidation.”

Betty Jo said, “Your Honor, we see the steamroller and we would like to step to the side in time. Please. Let us out. We’re just a building, a series of room numbers. We don’t want to go two- dimensional during whatever attack Ms. Reilly has in mind.”

“Two-dimensional?” Flaherty said. “Oh, flattened.”

“That’s tough,” Nina said. “You could almost feel sorry for the Ace High clerk, E-mailing her boyfriend while a mother-to-be lost her life. She should have been at her desk. She should have called 911 sooner. Or how about that cul-de-sac, that tight vending-machine space, isolated and unsafe, set up by the Ace High. Or the three robberies in the past year on the premises.”

“Whatever our culpability,” Betty Jo said, “it’s not worth more than the settlement we have already offered. A failure to accept the settlement at this late date will amount to bad faith.”

“Then bad faith it is,” Nina said. “The case has changed. It’s about two deaths now, and nobody skates.”

“We’re good for fifty thousand, Your Honor. I thought Mr. Hanna took our offer. Where is Mr. Hanna, by the way? Hmm?” She turned toward Nina, her eyes narrow. Betty Jo was as aggravated as hell, and Nina didn’t blame her.

“Tell me again. What’s the problem with letting this party out of the case?” Flaherty asked Nina.

“We don’t know enough yet. We don’t know if someone from the Lodge might be involved somehow,” Nina said. “Mr. Hanna told me on the phone this morning that he understands we cannot go forward with a settlement right now.”

Betty Jo folded her arms and looked over the top of her specs at the judge. In a hard tone that Nina hadn’t heard before, she said, “Well, then, the settlement offer’s withdrawn, Your Honor. It’s off. It’s as off as three-day-old chicken left in a hot car trunk. We’ll stay in and request our attorney’s fees at the right time.” She didn’t look at Nina.

“Then there’s nothing before the court with regard to the settlement,” Nina said.

“I can still dismiss the case next week based on the court’s discretion, since two years will have passed,” Flaherty said.

“And let the whole world know this court bows to a killer?” Nina asked. Her words seemed to resound through the courtroom. The clerk looked scandalized and the lawyers lounging in their chairs, waiting for their own arguments to be heard, shifted and whispered.

“No need to grandstand, Counsel,” Flaherty said. “You still have another week. The court will consider any additional documents filed during that time that tend to show progress in bringing the matter to trial.”

“Very well,” Nina said. “Then I assume the court will execute the subpoenas requiring the newly named defendants to be deposed pursuant to our papers?”

“Any objection?” Flaherty asked Betty Jo.

“We’re just the sacrificial lamb on the side altar, Your Honor,” Betty Jo said. “Let’s get on with the immolation.”

“Immolation?” Flaherty said. “Do you object or not?”

“No objection. Bring ’em on.”

“Then it is so ordered. The signed papers will be available from the clerk’s office in an hour or so, Ms. Reilly.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Ms. Reilly-”

“Yes, Your Honor?”

“Be careful.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Nina went out to the hall, Betty Jo at her heels. She tapped Nina on the shoulder. “Wait,” she said. “I have a question for you.”

“You should have raised it in front of the judge.”

“I thought about it. Thought about asking if your own client approved you throwing away fifty grand. Then I realized, no way did he approve this. You’re here blowin’ off the settlement, and your client’s in jail, ’cause he’s a sick alcoholic. Who’s backin’ you? That’s the question. Well, it’s none of my business. Bottom line, you’re never going to get a dime out of the Ace High now. I warned you.”

“It’s worth it, to have everybody still sitting together in the pot.”

“And you’re the little cannibal, stirrin’ it all up with a big wood spoon.”

“Sorry, Betty Jo.”

Betty Jo shrugged. “I’ll just tell Jimmy you’ve gone crazy. He’ll understand.”

Nina felt a rush of anger. She said, “A friend was shot to death three feet away from me. I am going to find and take down the shooter. I want you and your client with me on this. We can find the shooter and deal with him together. He’s caused you as much harm as he has me.”

“You want to ride piggyback on the Lodge,” Betty Jo said, unmoved. “That’s not an option. I won’t let Jimmy crouch down so you can take a ride on his money and his business. You’re on your own.”

“I would think you’d like to find the guy who shot up the Lodge.”

“You’d think wrong. The best strategy for the Lodge is to end all this. Every time you make a move, the Tribune reports it and Jimmy gets cancellations.”

“I thought you were-” Nina turned away.

“What? Your mama?” This stung.

“No. An honorable… an honorable lawyer.”

“You’re a funny one,” Betty Jo said. “Look, nothing personal. You’re causin’ me a lot of trouble, but I forgive you because you can still use the word honor in a court of law. I’m startin’ to figure you out. You’re an idealist, and you’re a romantic, and you have some ideas about lawyers being gentlemen champions on white horses.”

“I do not,” Nina said.

“White horses with gold stirrups, and a world just beggin’ to be saved.”

“I’m starting to figure you out, too,” Nina said, “and it’s too bad. A bright mind, a lot of life experience, and a strong desire not to rock the Good Ship Lollipop you find yourself sailing on. I was thinking you and I might become friends. It’s too bad, it really is.”

Betty Jo gave her a measured look. “No, I don’t think we’d ever be friends. You take things too personally.” She gave her umbrella a firm shake and opened it as they reached the portico.

“Yeah. And you don’t take them personally enough. I’ll let you know when I depose the three kids, so you can attend.”

“Do that.” They had reached the parking area. Rain fell straight down, mercifully free from wind. Betty Jo drove a Porsche Cayenne SUV, burgundy, water beading on its expensive hood. It let out a discreet burp as she used the remote to unlock it, and she swung into it. “Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” she said with a trace of her former joviality. She closed the umbrella and tossed it into the back seat, then slammed the door.

Nina went to her beat-up white Bronco a few stalls away and got in. Betty Jo purred past her onto Johnson Boulevard, her profile vague behind the water-smeared driver’s-side window. But it seemed to Nina that on her way past, she gave Nina the finger.

Thus ended a beautiful friendship, which had barely begun, immolated, as Betty Jo might have said, on an altar to a blind Greek goddess who holds a set of scales. At least Flaherty had given her what she needed. Nina drove off, depressed because she liked Betty Jo, thinking about her unexpectedly rich vocabulary.

She had said Nina was trying to “ride piggyback.”

That word again. Nina remembered the dream of a couple of weeks before, when the case was just starting up. How had it gone? A scary old lady trying to climb on Nina’s back. All she wanted was a piggyback ride.

Some of her most important cases began with dreams, dreams that somehow meshed later with the case. They didn’t exactly provide clues-she didn’t believe in premonitions or any of that other New Age magic-but they sometimes did seem to pull something from her subconscious about the dynamics of the case.

She passed the small shopping center near her office, her wipers whapping across the windshield as the rain fell faster. The Starlake Building looked solid and warmly lit as she pulled into the lot. The Titanic had also looked solid and warmly lit. A killer was hiding somewhere, maybe still at Tahoe. It wouldn’t be wise to relax her guard…

What did it mean, to ride piggyback? To use another’s strength. To oppress someone, sit on them. To be an opportunist.

She shrugged mentally. If the dream meant something, it was something still in the future.

The Bronco door swung open and she struggled with her umbrella. What, really, was going on? Good thing the shooter couldn’t read her mind right now, rife with speculation, unreined and vulnerable.

Several long days went by. Two things happened in the Hanna case: The new defendants were served with the Amended Complaint and Notices of Deposition, in Boston and Seattle; and Dave Hanna was released from jail, not without having pled guilty and having his driver’s license taken away, among other punishments.

Chelsi’s father called as she worked through a stack of phone messages late in the morning. Rain still fell at lake level, with a blizzard above seven thousand feet on the cloud-concealed peaks ringing the lake. The radio in Sandy ’s office was predicting the ski resorts would open in a couple of weeks. Winter was lowering itself like a hearty lover upon the town.

“Dave won’t answer his phone,” Roger Freeman said. “I went over there, but he’d gone somewhere. A bar, probably.”

“How are you?” Nina asked.

“Not too good. Chelsi’s mom called me last night from Arizona. She was thinking about her and started feeling like it’s all my fault. She wanted to take Chelsi to live with her when she left with her boyfriend years ago, but I fought her and got custody. If I hadn’t, Chelsi would be sunbathing in Tucson right now. My beautiful little girl. Excuse me.” He set the phone down and she heard snuffling and nose-blowing. Nina steeled herself not to fall into her own grief about Chelsi. She could grieve later, after she went to bed.

“She’s very sad right now, Roger, and not thinking clearly,” Nina said in a matter-of-fact tone when he picked up again. “You mustn’t take it personally. It’s not your fault.”

“I have to ask-are you going to stay with the case? I couldn’t blame you-you almost got killed yourself.”

“I’ll stay with it as long as Dave can stand me,” Nina said.

“I’m glad to hear it. It would seem like this monster got his way, if we stopped now. But I’m worried that Dave doesn’t understand that. He had already spent that settlement money in his mind. He’s not too happy with you.”

“I have to keep the motel in, until the case solidifies a little more. That’s the way it is. That’s my professional opinion.”

“Fine, just fine, but I don’t think Dave agrees.”

“I’ll come down there and talk to him.”

“Don’t come. If he sees you, he’ll fire you. He needs money to pay his DUI fine and a bunch of back bills, Nina. He gets his disability, but he spends it on booze in the first week. I keep thinking he’s not responsible anymore, can’t take care of himself. I keep thinking-about what I told you, that he needs, you know…”