This Side of Heaven (12 page)

And second, because the sheet was part of a set Annie and Nate had given Josh last Christmas. White with a thin brown stripe near the top.

“Josh!” Her voice could barely be heard. “God, help him. . . . Please help him.” She gripped Nate’s arm tighter. “He can’t breathe.” She moved to take a step toward him, but Nate held her back.

“Annie, don’t. . . . We need to call Lindsay.”

Don’t?
She wanted to scream at them to stop, because Josh could hardly get medical help with a sheet over his face. But then someone was crying, and Annie looked over her shoulder. It was the young woman with Down syndrome. She was covering her eyes and sobbing, and her friend had his arm around her and he was saying, “Josh is in heaven now, Daisy. Heaven’s a good place, remember?”

The reality hit her full force.

The phone call . . . the police officer . . . the coroner’s van . . . the quietly grieving neighbors. All of it provided a truth that she could no longer deny. This wasn’t a dinner party for Josh’s neighbors, and no, her son wasn’t sick or asleep or struggling to breathe beneath the Christmas bedsheets.

He was dead. Her baby was dead, and she hadn’t had the chance to tell him good-bye. She remembered something Josh had told her after his accident, how he was glad he hadn’t died that night because he would have been without family.

“Whatever happens to me, I don’t want to die alone,” he’d told her. “There’s nothing more awful than that.”

But that’s just what had happened. Her only son had died without any family at his side. “Josh . . . no! Not Josh, God . . . please. . . .” Annie started to cry again, and her cry became a wail. Her Josh was gone, and she would never draw another breath without feeling his loss, brushing against her ribs and hurting her insides like a permanent injury. The suffocating avalanche of pain shut out any glimmer of light, and beneath the weight of it, Annie closed her eyes and felt herself begin to fall.

Nate caught her. It had to be Nate. But she couldn’t stop the dizzy swirling in her brain or the way her arms and legs and even her hands hurt from the loss. Josh was leaving and she couldn’t will herself to stand up and go to him, to tell him a proper good-bye. Black spots mixed with the blurred images in her mind, and around her the sounds began to dim.
Josh . . . not Josh, God.

She was fainting, and she couldn’t stop herself no matter how badly she wanted to move, to take the walk from where she was standing to wherever Josh was. But he wasn’t here at all, because he was in heaven. She couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t open her eyes. She had just witnessed two men wheel her son’s dead body out of his apartment and toward a coroner’s van. Nate was holding her, but she was falling harder, losing control. The last thing she remembered was the terrifying truth that Josh was dead, and the certainty that she would be next. She’d been right that day when Nate read her the article about the family on Pikes Peak. This was a pain she could never, ever bear.

Even if God Himself held her up.

ELEVEN

T
homas Flynn hung up the phone, pushed his chair back from his mahogany desk, and paced slowly to the oversize window in his office on the twenty-third floor of the Markham Professional Building. He stared out at downtown Denver and let the futility of the situation wash over him. Josh Warren was dead.

The message was waiting for him when he came in this morning. An urgent call from Josh’s mother, Annie Warren. Somehow Thomas knew even before he placed the call that something was very wrong. Josh hadn’t been himself at the deposition. His skin had paled to a sickly shade of gray and he shook from the pain. At the time, Thomas thought his client’s appearance could actually be good for the case. Anyone in the room could see the damage the accident had caused him, because he wore it like a second set of skin, tight around his body without the possibility of ever taking it off.

He’d told Josh the truth—they were close to a settlement. A month, maybe two. Three at the absolute most. The judge was tired of the defense’s attorneys, a trio of three overpaid suits who apparently made billing the insurance company something of a sport.

There were requests for delays due to scheduling conflicts and corporate meetings and the attorneys’ inability to gather proper evidence. More delay requests came with the revelation of even the slightest new detail in the case—usually provided by Josh during a deposition. The idea that his doctor had asked him to lose weight before he could have back surgery, for instance. Something like that single detail could send the defense into a tailspin after which it would take four weeks to right itself.

The judge knew how the game was played. Deny a motion and the case could get thrown out on appeal. So he’d been patient, narrowing the window of extension as much as possible. If the defense asked for six weeks to examine and prepare for a response to some new detail, the judge would generally grant them three.

But the game was winding to a close—all parties could feel it, and Thomas had been through enough of these to know the signs. Already the defense had agreed that there was liability on the part of its client, the insurance company. The admission meant the judge would decide the settlement amount, which was far better for the defense than the alternative. No culpable deep-pocket client wanted a jury trial. Not when its insured was a drunk driver who hit a guy in the act of being a hero.

The determination that there would be no jury was, in theory, intended to make the process simpler. For that reason, the defense could only push the process so far without making a mockery of it and angering the judge. And the defense definitely didn’t want an angry judge when it came time to determine the settlement amount.

Even so, on this Monday morning Thomas had expected to find a copy of yet another motion on his desk. After all, Josh had revealed something fairly dramatic in Friday’s deposition.

Josh had an heir, a daughter.

He raised his right arm over his head and leaned it against the cool glass window. Annie Warren didn’t know how her son had died, just that he’d gone to sleep Friday night and never woken up. Some of his colleagues could hear this sort of news about one of their clients and be laughing over coffee and doughnuts in the break room ten minutes later.

Not Thomas.

Josh mattered to him, same as every client he ever represented. He handled personal injury cases because he enjoyed breaking stereotypes. Not all attorneys who looked for victim settlements were ambulance chasers. Some, like him, took on clients who really had been hurt by the misdeeds of someone else. Thomas liked to think of himself as a modern-day Robin Hood of sorts, taking money from the rich and guilty and putting it in the hands of the poor and damaged.

But now that would never happen for Josh, and Thomas asked his secretary to hold all calls. He would need a day to regroup, to figure out what to do next in Josh’s case. Thomas squinted against the glare of the late September morning. If he’d known something was this wrong with Josh, he would have driven home with him or taken him to a hospital.

What happened to him, God?
Josh’s weight was down, and mentally he seemed more able to handle the deposition than on past trips to Denver. So how did he die in his sleep? Thomas turned and leaned against the windowsill. As he did, his eyes fell on a small plaque that stood on his desk. His wife had given it to him because it contained one of his favorite Bible verses.

In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28.

He read the words three times over, but still he wasn’t sure. All things? He had loved God all his life, and Josh had come into a stronger faith in the last month or so. But how could his death now work to the good for anyone? Especially Josh’s parents. Thomas sighed and the action slumped his shoulders some.

He returned to his desk and stared at the documents spread out before him. Josh’s deposition from Friday’s hearing. The page that troubled him in light of the news was toward the end, the place where Josh was asked whether he had an heir. The question wasn’t a surprise to Thomas, of course. He had prepped his client that the topic was bound to come up the way it always did in a settlement case.

“You don’t know the girl, and you can’t be sure she’s your daughter,” Thomas had advised Josh every time the subject arose. “If they ask you about having an heir, I’m suggesting you tell them the truth—that as far as you know, you have none.”

“But that isn’t the truth.” Josh had always seemed genuinely baffled by the recommendation. “I
have
a daughter, and most likely she lives somewhere in New York City.”

“Just because you sleep with a woman and she has a baby doesn’t make the baby yours.” Thomas never wanted to sound cruel, only factual. “The woman wasn’t trustworthy. She was married and she was looking for an affair. Now, because there’s a child involved, it’s become an emotional issue for you. Take your feelings out of it and see the situation for what it is.”

The reason Thomas was concerned, and he’d explained this to Josh, was because of his parents. Josh owed them just over twenty-five thousand dollars, and since the accident they had taken responsibility for him, sometimes driving him to appointments when he was in too much pain to move, following up with Thomas after a hearing or decision by the judge on one or another motion by the defense, and being his sole emotional support system.

If by some terrible series of events Josh were to die before the settlement came through, his parents deserved the money. Thomas even spelled that out for Josh, but he was still adamant. “If one of their attorneys asks me on the witness stand if I have a daughter, I’ll tell them what Maria Cameron told me. Savannah is mine. That’s what I believe, and so that’s the only truth I can give.”

Thomas read over that part of Josh’s deposition again and the beginning of a headache started near his temples. He had no choice but to find the woman, to let her know about Josh’s death and the pending settlement. If the search panned out, and if Savannah really did belong to Josh, then his parents would be repaid everything he owed them but not a penny more. The rest of what could be a two-million-dollar settlement would go to Savannah, by way of her mother.

Thomas pictured his client, the sincerity in his eyes. Kind, loyal Josh. For him, giving an answer in favor of Savannah was never about losing his settlement money to the girl’s mother. Rather his testimony was a public validation of his love for the child, his determination to find her one day and share custody of her. In Josh’s mind, he was Savannah’s father. Period. He would do anything for her.

But what about Annie and Nate Warren?

The scenario raised the temperature in the room and made Thomas anxious to find out the truth. He stared at the deposition and shook his head slowly. The odds of Josh being the girl’s father had to be slim. A woman like Maria Cameron could have slept with ten men that week and her husband, too. She wanted money, nothing more. That’s why she’d called Josh looking for child support when the baby was a few months old. But she’d given up too easily, in Thomas’s opinion. If Josh were really the girl’s father, Maria would have checked in at least once a year to see if Josh had come into a better financial picture.

Thomas turned his chair so he was facing his computer. Josh’s parents didn’t know about this twist in the case yet, but eventually Thomas would have to tell them. Especially if somehow Josh’s suspicions turned out to be true. Thomas remembered something Josh had told him about his parents and their opinion of Maria Cameron. “They don’t believe I’m Savannah’s father.” Josh’s disappointment had sounded with every word. “They’d like to forget I ever went to Las Vegas.”

Thomas felt the same way. He signed in to an online service his law firm subscribed to, one that allowed access to information that could help locate a person of interest. In the search line he typed Maria Cameron, and for city and state he entered New York, NY. In almost no time the search turned up six women by that name. But the one that interested him was several years older than Josh, with a criminal record.

He double clicked that entry and a host of information appeared. Thomas scrolled through it slowly. The photo was taken during a booking for prostitution, and it showed a woman who might have been attractive at one time. Strawberry-blond overprocessed hair, pronounced cheekbones, and sunken eyes.

According to the file, she’d been arrested six times over the last several years for charges ranging from drugs to bad-check writing and sex for sale. He pulled up the most recent report, from over a year ago. At the bottom it showed the details of the woman’s arrest.

Suspect is female Caucasian, age 38. She was booked for suspicion of offering sex for sale, and at the time of arrest it was discovered that she had a minor child with her, a six-year-old daughter. Suspect was brought to the precinct, booked and fingerprinted, and held overnight pending formal charges. Minor female child was turned over to suspect’s roommate, Freddy B. Johnson.

Below that the document listed Johnson’s address and phone number—the only phone number the suspect gave, according to another paragraph written by the arresting officer. Thomas jotted down the number and did a quick check on the other five women named Maria Cameron. Each of them was married and without any sort of police record. Thomas had a strong hunch he’d found the right Maria Cameron with his first guess.

With everything in him he wanted to rip up the piece of paper with Freddy Johnson’s phone number and explain that he’d tried to find the so-called heir of Josh Warren, with no luck. But all his life God had dictated his decisions, and that was especially true in his law practice. Josh claimed to have an heir, and it was the responsibility of Thomas and his staff to see that the claim was checked out, one way or another. Even if the news would be crushing to Josh’s parents.

He picked up the receiver, dialed the number, and leaned on his elbows. After four rings an answering machine picked up. “Leave a message at the beep,” was all the gruff voice said. The beep came quickly and Thomas hesitated. “Uh . . . This is Thomas Flynn, attorney for Josh Warren. I’m looking for a Maria Cameron and need her to call me back. Her daughter may be the sole heir and recipient of a settlement from a pending lawsuit.” He rattled off his office and cell numbers twice, and then hung up. He’d done what he needed to do.

Now he could only pray that what happened next would fall in line with the Scripture on his desk, and that all things really would work out to the good of those who loved God.

Especially for the grieving parents of Josh Warren.