Keep No Secrets (12 page)

"About as good as can be expected. I think she believes I'm innocent. I mean, she's hasn't said that outright, she won't give me that, not yet, but I think she knows. If this had happened in a vacuum, and the girl had been any other girl, well .

. . it still would have been difficult, but . .

. I don't know."

"But it wasn't any other girl. And it's happened right about the time Jenny showed up."

"Right."

"Has it occurred to you there might be a connection?"

"I've considered it, but there's no way.

Jenny didn’t contact me until the night after I drove Celeste home. Whatever game she’s playing, it doesn't involve Celeste. I'm certain of it."

Earl sucks in a deep breath, blows it out. Jack knows he wants to argue. "You have to know how difficult this must be for Claire right now."

"I do."

The phone on his desk buzzes. "Excuse me. I was hoping to hear about the test results while you're here. This could be Gunner now."

Jack rises and goes over to stand at the two walls of glass that meet in the southeast corner. The hard rain falls at an angle and attacks the floor-to-ceiling panes. Yet even through the deluge he sees the Arch and, below that, the Mississippi. The red light at the top of the Arch blinks intermittently to warn errant air traffic; its lazy rhythm captivates him.

He closes his eyes and makes a conscious effort to relax the tightness in his shoulders. It's not just his shoulders, though. Every muscle in his body is tense.

He's carried the tension with him ever since his trip in the car to Celeste's house.

Jenny's reappearance, and now his arrest, have made it exponentially worse.

With some effort he opens his eyes and watches a tugboat pushing a long barge north up the river, against the current. He imagines returning to his office, closing the door, and slipping into the chair behind his desk for a nap. The chair once belonged to Earl and still bears the indentations from years of his use. It's the most comfortable desk chair Jack has ever sat in. It wouldn't be the first time he's napped there.

"Gunner says the tests show the hair in her bra was yours."

Jack surprises himself by laughing.
Of
course they do
. "They were fooling around on our couch, where I sit almost every day of my life. This is evidence?"

"You'd use it."

Earl is right. Jack would use it. The presence of his hair supports one side of the story, Celeste's. The State's. He's not sure how he ended up on the opposite side.

Frustrated, he takes his chair again.

"There's another problem, too," Earl says. "They ran tests for other hairs collected in the car. Some they thought belonged to Celeste don't match."

"So?"

"So who do they belong to, Jack?"

"You know who they belong to."

"Is Claire aware that she's been in your car?"

"Yes."

Earl regards Jack skeptically.

"
Yes
. She knows."

"Are you prepared to explain from a witness stand why Jenny's hairs are in your car?"

"Why would I have to do that?"

"Because if Gunner or someone else at the station puts two and two together, they'll suspect who those hairs belong to.

When they do, they'll run the results against Dodson's records." He turns to the computer on his side desk and begins tapping at the keyboard. "You know as well as I do that they'd want to question her if they knew she was back."

"To my knowledge, there's no outstanding warrant. I'm not harboring her."

"No one said you were. But have you considered, as DA, you might have a higher ethical duty?"

Since the night Jenny appeared in the tunnel, Jack has asked himself repeatedly whether he needs to report her return to town, as he threatened he would. He hasn't answered the question for himself satisfactorily. He does know, by not doing anything—not even bothering to research the issue—he's done
something
. He made a decision by his failure to act.

Earl sighs. "Look, in any other circumstance, your relationship with another woman might not be anyone's business except yours and Claire's. But

—"

"There is no relationship."

"Like hell there isn't."

"I haven’t seen her since before my arrest."

"Good. Keep it that way. Stay away from her while all this is going on."

"Or what?"

"Or I won't represent you. I can try to protect you from the state, but I refuse to spend the next several months trying to protect you from yourself."

Jack knows he's bluffing. "Like you said at the jail, I can't afford you anyway."

"God dammit, Jack." Earl slams his fist on the desk. Jack starts from the surprise of it. "Why are you being so stubborn about this? Are you
trying
to get locked up? You heard Wolfe's question

downstairs in the lobby. What do you think he'll start asking if he finds out she's in town and you're in contact with her?"

"Frankly, I think it might help my cause."

"And why's that?"

"If you accept their logic, that I simply couldn't help myself because of Celeste's resemblance to Jenny, well, that logic crumbles, doesn't it, if Jenny's readily available? I mean, think about it. If I want to betray Claire again, then isn't it more likely I'll do so in a way that doesn't land me in prison?"

Earl shakes his head in disgust. It's obvious he can't believe he's having this conversation. But Jack thinks that Earl is the one who isn't looking at things with clear eyes. He's worried about Jack and Claire just as much as he's worried about a conviction. Probably more.

"Earl, listen. Claire
knows
, okay? She understands the position Jenny's put me in. She doesn't like it, but she knows why I just can't let it go. If the threats are legitimate, and I ignored them, then—"

"Tell her to call the police."

Jack simply rolls his eyes at that.

"What if they're
not
legitimate? What if she's just playing you?"

"I'm well aware she might be doing that." Jack grabs his coffee and settles back into the chair, a signal to Earl that he wants to drop the topic. "You just need to trust me, okay? I won't agree not to see her, but I'll guarantee that no one will know about it for now. If I learn something that needs to go public, I'll come to you first. Will that satisfy you?"

Earl grunts and closes whatever he'd pulled up online. Jack wonders if he found what he was looking for. He's struck by what he sees on Earl's face, the burden of what he's trying to hide: he's too close to the case; he cares too much what happens.

Jack wants to remind Earl how difficult all of this is for him, too. He wants to confess his profound fear of being convicted, of losing his freedom to a prison cell. He wants to explain to Earl that the only fear greater than his fear of being convicted is his fear of losing his family for good.

But he knows Earl needs to hear

something else, so he says none of this.

"Look, I
do
know how hard it is for Claire." Grinning just a bit for Earl's benefit, he thinks of Claire's comment the other day and adds, "We've survived much worse. We'll be okay."

Now, if only he could convince

himself.

Once Earl drops the topic of Jenny, they spend another hour planning the next steps of Jack's defense. Earl focuses on Celeste's allegations—a subject upon which Jack is unequivocal. He takes Earl one more time though the events of the night, step-by-step, word-by-word. They agree to meet again once Earl has made his formal discovery requests and the state has responded. Meanwhile, Earl will hire a private investigator to work Jack's case.

Earl escorts him out and offers one more piece of advice.

"Whatever you do, talk to your staff about the charges. You need them to be on your side, and if you handle it right, they will be. Most of them look up to you, Jack. And they're smart enough to see through the rhetoric. But don't wait. The longer you wait to address it with them, the less they'll trust what you tell them."

As they stand in the reception area waiting for the elevator to arrive, he also reminds Jack not to speak to the Chief about his case. "It's business as usual on other cases, but you can't talk to him about—"

"I know that."

"And Celeste. Don't try to speak to her, either, not even indirectly via Michael. You have to be careful. Your communications with him have no

privilege, and any prosecutor worth his salt would be able to spin anything you say in the worst direction."

Jack nods and steps into the open elevator. He presses the button for the lobby.

"Don't try to solve this case on your own, you hear me? Let our PI do that."

"We'll talk later," Jack says. As the doors close, Earl inserts his arm to stop them.

"
Jack
, you hear me?"

"I hear you."

The lies aren't what he says; they're what he doesn't say.

CHAPTER TEN

THE RAIN DRENCHES Jack on the

way from his own parking garage to the court building. He can't help but notice the difference between the benefits of a job at a silk stocking firm versus the DA's office. Even as the head of that all-important office, the public employee's equivalent to a firm's managing partner, he still parks in an off-site garage. Even a lowly first year associate at Earl's firm gets a spot in the building's garage, not to mention a salary that probably surpasses Jack's. He's never cared about any of this

—his two years at Newman, Norton & Levine right out of law school taught him that an attorney pays for those benefits in other ways, many times over—but he knows his life would still be his own right now but for his being DA.

He doesn't mind that he's soaked, not really, because the rain probably forced the media to finally give up the chase—if only for a few hours. He's seen no sign of them since he left them clamoring in the lobby of Earl's building.

He nods at the guards as he passes through security. To his relief, they seem content to pretend it's just another typical Wednesday.

In the empty elevator he anticipates the reception he'll receive in his own office.

He spoke briefly with Beverly by phone the day before. She was gentle and sympathetic with him as she always is, but they didn't broach the reactions of everyone else in the office. He thinks about how to implement Earl's advice.

The longer you wait to address it with them,
he said,
the less they'll trust what you tell them
. So Jack decides he'll ask Beverly to gather everyone in the large conference room while he takes a few minutes to comb his wet hair and put on the dry shirt that he thinks is hanging behind his office door.

But the minute he steps off the elevator and turns right toward his office, he knows something's up. He hears the television in the large conference room.

The new receptionist, Sharon, bolts from her chair and stutters, "Uh, Mr. Hilliard, I don't know if . . . uh, maybe you should wait . . . " Those words alone tell him
not
to wait—something is happening,

something she doesn't want Jack to see—

and she's done a lousy job of covering.

He steps to the open double doorway of the conference room. Every attorney on his staff, it seems, either sits around the long table or stands along the perimeter of the room, mesmerized by the large, flat screen television on the far wall. With their backs toward him, they're oblivious to Jack's presence.

Frank Mann's in charge of the remote.

He flips from station to station. Fox News. MSNBC. CNN. ABC. CBS.
Five
fucking national news stations are talking about
Jack's arrest
. Stunned, Jack watches, transfixed not only by the fact of the story making the national news, but also by the restrained revelry that flavors the discussion of it. He watches the dissection of his life: his career, his marriage, his education and any other irrelevant tidbit the hosts dig up. On CNN, Nancy Grace rips him apart as if he's already been convicted of the charges. A former prosecutor, she should know better.

Greta Van Susteren on Fox seems willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. She reminds viewers that "Mr. Hilliard is innocent until proven guilty, of course,"

but she still refers to him as an "admitted adulterer." Even in Jack's shock he's fascinated by how much they get right.

He's also fascinated by how much they get wrong.

"I can't believe this!" Frank says, a little too enthusiastically.

What Jack finds most interesting is how little time they spend on Celeste's allegations. Instead, his history with Jenny carries the hour. They rehash all of it: how Jenny was charged with the murder of Maxine Shepard; how Jack was with Jenny on the night Maxine was killed and became her alibi; and how eventually investigators instead decided Jenny's ex-boyfriend, Alex Turner, had committed the murder. That conclusion came much too late for Jack, who had already lost his wife and reputation after his one reckless night with Jenny became public.

"He's gonna shit when he sees it's gone national," Jeff McCarthy adds, sounding only slightly more sympathetic than Frank. Like so many of Jack's

relationships, his once close friendship with Jeff also suffered, albeit indirectly, because of Jack's wrongdoing.

Jeff was given the task of prosecuting Jenny' ex-boyfriend, Alex, because Jack, as a witness in the case, couldn't. After a very public trial in which Jack humiliated himself on the stand by reluctantly testifying to his tryst with Jenny, Alex was convicted. Months later, however, after both Claire and the city miraculously, if not grudgingly, accepted Jack's

repentance as genuine and forgave him, he stumbled across the information that Maxine had been much more to Jenny than a disagreeable client.

Jack immediately went to Jeff with what he'd found. It was one of the most difficult things he'd ever had to do. He desperately wished for Jenny to be innocent—but he also couldn't live with the knowledge that he might be partly responsible for the conviction of a possibly innocent man. But despite Jack's pleas, Jeff made only a cursory

investigation into Jenny's whereabouts.