John Lutz - Pulse

“We didn’t have time to talk about it this morning.”

“I thought you were intrigued by your mom’s work.”

“I am.” Jody took a bite of bagel and chewed.

Sarah smiled. “But you’d still rather be an attorney than a cop.”

“As of now, yes.”

“That doesn’t sound like a very strong commitment.”

“It’s not.”

Both women sipped their lattes, thinking about the answer that had popped out.

Jody, not committed?

“Something about Enders and Coil?” Sarah asked.

“About one of their cases. A woman refusing to move out of her apartment so the client, a big development company, can tear down her building.”

“Sounds like the plot of a movie.”

“Or a novel.”

“Why do they want to tear down the apartment building?”

“They want the entire block for some big project. Office buildings, condos… they have no moral-or possibly legal-right to just plow this poor woman under.”

“What about eminent domain?”

“It’s not that simple,” Jody said. “Believe me.”

“Lots of times, when you’ve finally finished thinking things through, they are simple. That’s when you make up your mind.”

Jody laughed. “I’m not there yet.”

Sarah looked at her more seriously. “How important to you is this woman’s plight?”

“Very.”

“But why? Do you know her?”

“I feel that I do.”

Sarah frowned. “Does anyone at Enders and Coil know how you feel?”

“To a degree.”

“I think you should give this a lot of thought before siding with a woman who’s going to have to move out one way or the other. You might be risking your career, your future.”

“How do you know she’ll have to move?”

Sarah shook her head, her expression sad. “They always do, in these kinds of cases. It’s in almost everyone’s best interest.”

“Everyone’s but hers.”

“There’s no denying that. But maybe they’ll offer her a large settlement to agree to move.”

“They’ve done that and she’s refused.

“Did she say why?”

“No. But it isn’t about money.”

“What money can’t do, maybe more money can. Or some other kind of persuasion.”

“What makes you think so?”

Sarah leaned closer across the fake marble table. Steam from the lattes rose as if the two women were engaged in some sort of alchemy. “I know someone who has a connection at the developer, Jody. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you disassociate yourself from this case, and this woman’s hopeless cause.”

Jody was surprised, but she realized she shouldn’t be. She actually didn’t know much about Sarah Benham. “You know something Enders and Coil doesn’t?”

“Probably.” Sarah studied Jody and then shook her head. “You know I can’t tell you, Jody. It would be betraying the confidence of a friend. I wouldn’t betray our confidences that way.”

Jody sampled her latte and still found it too hot to sip. “See?” she said.

“See what?”

“It really isn’t that simple.”

Fifteen minutes later Sarah left the coffee shop first.

Through the window displaying pastry, Jody watched her join a sunlit crowd of people massed on the sidewalk, waiting for the traffic light to flash a walk signal so they could cross the intersection. The signal appeared like a silent command. After an aggressive cab bullied its way through a right turn, Sarah disappeared in the flow of pedestrians.

Jody still had time to spare, so she opened her laptop. But she didn’t tap into the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi. Instead she inserted a thumb drive containing copies of Enders and Coil files and began rummaging through them. If someone from the firm, which was only a few blocks away, happened to enter the coffee shop and saw what she was doing, it would probably mean immediate dismissal. And less immediately, but just as likely, prosecution.

Well, life wasn’t without risk.

Jody thought about Mildred Dash trapped and terrorized in her apartment, waging the good fight against an evil manifestation of capitalism, and pressed on.

She enjoyed the challenge and couldn’t help becoming engrossed in what she was doing. She came across no actual evidence of criminality, but she was surprised to find e-mail exchanges with Waycliffe College. All the e-mails were encrypted, and she was unable to break the code. But she did notice that some of the messages bore Elaine Pratt’s email address. That surprised her, and kept her at her task longer than she’d intended.

Futilely trying to decode the e-mails made her almost twenty minutes late when she arrived at Enders and Coil.

That didn’t seem to matter, though, in light of more important events. Word had arrived that Mildred Dash had been terrorized by an intruder last night and had been found by a watchman early this morning in a coma. She was hospitalized and in intensive care.

Associate attorneys were dashing about or yammering on the phone. Jack Enders and Joseph Coil both appeared somber and determined, and totally in control. Jody had never before seen or been part of an event of such urgency at the firm.

She was assigned to continue calling the hospital and family to learn the seriousness of Mildred’s condition. Meanwhile, litigators at Enders and Coil would be busy discussing the legal ramifications of razing her apartment building while her unit was unoccupied.

Here was opportunity, if they seized it.

Hours counted. Maybe minutes.

No one actually came right out and said it would be best if Mildred Dash died, but it was on the tips of a lot of tongues.

Jody was disgusted, but like everyone else at the firm, hanging in suspense. The mood was contagious and oddly, undeniably, pleasurable. She could see it on the faces of her coworkers. They loved being part of the drama.

Suddenly Jody wondered, was this what Sarah Benham had known about when she’d cautioned her at breakfast?

Leighton, Wisconsin, 1986

“You’re sure your mother thinks you went to visit your aunt in Milwaukee?” Rory asked Sherri.

“She saw me get on the Greyhound bus. What she didn’t see was when it stopped to pick up more passengers, and let some off, down the road in Grantville. I got off along with some other people. Nobody noticed.”

“So how’d you get back here?”

“Hitchhiked.” She flashed him a wicked grin. “And you know why.”

Rory did. His mother was out of town, in Milwaukee with a new boyfriend, and he and Sherri could make good use of her house. Rory simply had to be home now and then in the evening, so he could answer the phone if his mother called to check on him. And he would be home. With Sherri.

That was the plan.

They were standing now outside Rory’s mother’s Chevy, parked near where Duffy had died and been buried. Where that other girl-the one only Rory and the killer knew about-had been tortured, murdered, and then buried. It gave Rory a kind of chill when he walked holding hands with Sherri and stood kissing her over the dead girl’s grave. It was a feeling he found he liked.

Sherri thought she was having that effect, and kissed him back hard, using her tongue.

Rory almost immediately had an erection. Beneath him was a closely kept secret only he and one other person knew. And the other person-the killer-thought only he knew what had happened here.

Rory remembered how the girl had been bound and gagged, staring straight up at nothing. The expression on her face when the killer began to do things-such small, delicate things at first-to her with the knife. The faint movements she made. Her quivering, unfeeling fingers. The pleading sounds emanating from her taped lips. The way her nude body vibrated near the end. Most of all, her eyes… her eyes…