Grand Avenue (45 page)

They weren’t the only ones.

Susan, Chris, and even Jeremy had questioned the wisdom of her taking on this case.

“What if she’s guilty?” Susan and Chris had asked almost in unison.

“What if she’s not?” Vicki countered.

“What if you lose?” Jeremy asked.

“What difference would it make?” Vicki said, knowing that, down the road, the public would remember her name, not whether she won or lost.

Besides, she didn’t intend to lose.

Vicki stepped into the elevator, staring resolutely at her brown Ombeline pumps as several bodies carelessly brushed up against the tan suede of her jacket. “Seven, please,” she said to no one in particular, watching out of the corner of her eye to make sure the appropriate button was pressed, not looking up until she heard the elevator doors draw to a close. A slight bump and the elevator began its painfully slow ascent.

It stopped again almost immediately. Vicki looked to the panel above the doors. The second floor, for God’s sake. She watched a heavyset woman amble out, clearly in no hurry to get where she was going. Would it have killed her to take the stairs? Vicki wondered, reaching over to press the door-close button, tapping an impatient foot when the door failed to respond quickly enough.

“Big date?” a familiar voice asked from behind her.

Vicki didn’t have to turn around to know who it
was. “Michael,” she acknowledged, spinning around slowly, more to ascertain who else was in the elevator than because she was eager to see the assistant state’s attorney who was her former lover. A woman in jeans and a sloppy yellow sweater stood near the back of the elevator seemingly absorbed in her newspaper, oblivious to the two attorneys. “How are you?”

“Great,” he said.

In truth, he did look pretty terrific. Vicki noted that his hair was parted differently from the last time she’d been this close to him. She smelled his familiar aftershave, felt an unwelcome tingle between her legs. Yes, indeed, Michael Rose looked very dapper in his dark blue, pin-striped suit, pale blue shirt, and plain power-red tie. Every inch the successful prosecutor, she thought, fighting the urge to run her hand across the front of his trousers for old times’ sake. Vicki shook the unwelcome thought from her head. She had no real interest in traveling down that path again, especially since she’d soon be seeing a great deal of Michael Rose in court.

“I understand
Time
magazine is doing a cover story on you,” he said sarcastically.

“Not yet,” Vicki said with a smile. In fact, she was considering an offer from
Vanity Fair
for an interview with regard to an article they were writing on the case, as well as a request for a photograph of her with her young client. A major law firm in New York had made polite inquiries about dispatching a representative to Cincinnati to meet with her over lunch when she had a free moment. A Hollywood agent had offered his guidance and expertise should she choose to spread her wings and fly west.

How long before she was chosen one of
People
magazine’s Fifty Most Beautiful People? How long before
Time
actually did put her on its cover? Even if she lost this case, Vicki knew she’d already won.

The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, and the woman reading her newspaper flicked it closed and stepped out.

“Visiting your client?” Michael asked as the doors slowly came together again.

Vicki glanced at the keyboard, noted Michael was also going to the seventh floor. “You?”

“A sweet young lady who hired a hit man to kill her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend says she’s ready to talk a deal.”

“I take it the hit man was an undercover cop?”

“Aren’t they all?”

Vicki thought the girl should take her chances in court. Michael Rose, while a decent prosecutor, was as unimaginative in court as he was in bed. A good lawyer could run circles around him. And she was a very good lawyer, Vicki thought, a smile stretching across her narrow face.

“You might be smart to consider a plea bargain yourself, Counselor,” Michael offered.

Vicki arched one eyebrow. Plea-bargain the biggest case of her career? Was he crazy? “What are you offering?”

“Man one. She serves the maximum.”

“You’re dreaming. Besides, she didn’t do it. Why would I plead?”

“The evidence is pretty conclusive. Headlines are one thing. Substance is something else.”

“A lot of people only read the headlines.” God, how long did it take to get to the seventh floor?

“And that’s all that matters to you? Headlines? I thought the murdered woman was a friend of yours.”

“My motives—and my friendships—are hardly your concern, Michael.”

“God, she speaks my name. Be still my heart.”

Vicki took a deep breath, reached for her most conciliatory voice. “Let’s not do this, okay?”

“My wife’s suing me for divorce,” he said, managing to sound as if it were somehow her fault. “Did you know that?”

“Yes, I think I heard something about it. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Not really, no,” Vicki snapped, her patience completely gone. “Look, I don’t mean to sound—”

“Like a bitch?”

“I think this conversation is over.”

“I’m dismissed?” Michael asked as the elevator doors opened.

Vicki brushed past him into the corridor without a word.

“You know, I’m really looking forward to beating your ass,” he called after her.

Vicki threw her head back and laughed. “My ass is way out of your league,” she said without looking back.

“Am I ever glad to see you.”

Vicki entered the small, windowless room at the end of the long hall. The walls were a sickly shade of green, like a too ripe melon, and not helped any by the
recessed fluorescent lighting overhead. In the center of the room was a rectangular table of inferior walnut, heavily scarred with graffiti—
There is no gravity, the earth sucks! Martin loves Cindy, Cindy loves Joanne. Fuck you. Fuck the fuckers. Fuck the lawyers. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
. So many fucks, Vicki had lost count during her last visit.

She sat down in the straight-backed wooden chair across the table from Tracey. Aside from her obvious restlessness at having been confined for more than a month, Tracey looked remarkably well. Her color was good, despite the fluorescent lighting, her hair clean and brushed away from her face. There were no bags under her eyes, no sign she spent her nights crying herself to sleep. The pale blue of her prison uniform actually flattered her. Her arms looked newly toned, as if she’d been lifting weights, which was probably the case. Vicki shuddered as she realized that Tracey looked wonderful, that life inside the Helen Marshall Correctional Institute for Women actually seemed to agree with her.

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Tracey said easily. “Except for my roommate. That’s why I called you. I need you to get her transferred.”

Vicki dug her freshly manicured nails into the alligator briefcase that rested on the table in front of her. “That’s what was so urgent you needed to see me right away?”

Tracey seemed genuinely puzzled by Vicki’s surprise. “She just sits on her bed all day crying. It’s kind of nerve-racking after a while.”

“What’s she crying about?”

Tracey shrugged, shaking loose several curls. She pushed them away from her forehead. One fell back. “She just keeps moaning. You know—she’s sorry about what happened. She didn’t mean to kick the kid so hard. She wants her mommy. Stuff like that.”

“All that talk about her mother,” Vicki offered generously. “I guess that upsets you.”

“Yeah, well, like I said, it gets on your nerves.”

“Do you miss your mother, Tracey?”

Tracey looked startled by the question. Her shoulders lifted toward her ears. “I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Do you think you can get her transferred?”

Vicki nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.” Tracey smiled.

“How’s everything else?” Vicki opened her briefcase, drew out several files.

“Fine.”

Vicki shook her head, afraid to lift her eyes to her client lest her eyes reveal what was going on inside her head. How many people would describe life behind bars as “fine” and sound as if they meant it? “How’d your meeting go with Nancy Joplin?”

Tracey looked blank.

“The staff psychiatrist,” Vicki elaborated. “Weren’t you scheduled to meet with her this morning?”

“Oh, yeah. She was nice.”

“Nice,” Vicki repeated, chewing on the word as if trying to digest it. “What sort of questions did she ask you?”

Tracey pushed the lone curl away from her forehead. “Things about my mother. You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Um, let’s see. What kind of relationship we had, if we were close, how I felt about her engagement, stuff like that.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. Like you told me to. That we had a great relationship, that we were very close, that I liked Howard.”

“What else did she ask you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Tracey, time is running out. We go to court in January. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

Tracey stretched her legs out in front of her, looked to the ceiling. “She asked me about the night my mother died.”

“What did you tell her?” Vicki asked.

“You know.” Tracey folded her arms across her chest, her lips gathering into a stubborn pout.

“I don’t know,” Vicki insisted, not bothering to hide her growing frustration. How many times did they have to go over the same territory? “You told her that a masked intruder killed your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Then why is there no evidence such a person exists?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me explain what we’re up against here.” Hadn’t she explained this a hundred times already? “Aside from no signs of forced entry, no blood anywhere but in the bedroom and all over you, there’s the little matter of the murder weapon the police found hidden in your closet and covered with your fingerprints,
there’s your mother’s missing diamond ring that the police discovered in your jewelry box.…”

“I know all that.”

“How did the murder weapon get into your closet?”

“I don’t know,” Tracey insisted. “Maybe he put it there.”

“Who? The Lone Ranger?”

Tracey’s response was a nervous giggle.

“When
did he put it there?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You said he didn’t come into your room, that you confronted him in the hall.”

“Then he must have come in later, when I was with my mother.”

“But you said he ran down the stairs and out the door.”

Tracey jumped to her feet, began pacing back and forth. “I don’t know what he did. I’m confused. You’re confusing me so much I can’t remember what happened.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“Why not?”

“Why not!” Vicki repeated in amazement. “Because you can’t keep changing your story. You can’t say one thing and then another. The district attorney is going to pounce on each and every little inconsistency. Michael Rose may not be the best prosecutor in the world, but he won’t need to be. He’s got a mass of forensic evidence; he’s got opportunity; he’s got motive.”

“Motive? What motive?”

“He’ll say you were jealous of your mother’s relationship with Howard Kerble.”

“That’s not true. I like Howard.”

“That you’d gotten used to having your mother all to yourself.”

“So what?”

“That you killed your mother in a jealous rage.”

“I didn’t kill her in a jealous rage!”

“Why
did
you kill her?” Vicki shouted.

“Because!” Tracey shouted back, then gasped, as if trying to pull the word back into her mouth. She stood very still, stared at the wall.

Vicki held her breath, her whole body shaking. My God, had Tracey actually admitted killing her mother? Was she about to confess? Vicki felt her muscles turn to jelly. She grabbed the side of the table to keep from sliding off her chair to the floor.

“Because,” Tracey repeated, as tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

“Tell me what happened that night, Tracey.”

Tracey shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Please.” Vicki slowly pushed herself to her feet, her knees knocking together as she approached Tracey, who’d begun spinning around in increasingly frantic, tight little circles. Vicki reached out her arms, gathered Tracey inside them as a desperate wail escaped Tracey’s throat.

“I can’t tell you. I can’t. Please don’t make me. I can’t. I can’t.”

Vicki guided Tracey to her chair, sat her down, knelt before her on unsteady knees as the door to the room
opened and a muscular guard with a surprisingly feminine face peeked inside.

“Everything all right in here?” the guard asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Vicki told the woman, although in truth the answer was no, nothing was all right. Nothing would ever be all right again. And it was about to get a whole lot worse. She was sure of that.

The guard nodded and left the room, closing the door after her.

“Tell me what happened, Tracey.”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t hate you.”

“I didn’t mean to do it.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her. I begged her to stop.”

“Stop? Stop what?”

Tracey shook her head so hard, her hair whipped around her neck, catching Vicki in the face. Tears automatically sprang to Vicki’s eyes. She pushed them aside, waited for Tracey’s response.

“It was around nine o’clock,” Tracey began. “Chris had already left. Mom said she was going to have a nice hot bath and crawl into bed.” Tracey stopped, stared intently at the wall ahead, as if it were a movie screen. “She asked me to scrub her back, and I did. Then she asked me if I wanted to sleep in bed with her. I used to sleep in her bed a lot, but not lately. I didn’t think it was such a good idea anymore.”

Vicki shifted uncomfortably on the balls of her feet. Where was this going?

“I said okay, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want her to …”

“You didn’t want her to what?” Vicki repeated in a voice not her own.

“You know.”