Joel Goldman - Cold truth

"Why not? Not all your clients are innocent."

Mason winced as he put on his shirt, the pain in his ribs still fresh. "I talked to Jordan yesterday. We made an appointment for today. I told her not to talk to the cops again without me. Something happened and I'm going to find out what it was. How about giving me a lift back to my car."

"Not necessary. I called Harry a little while ago. Blues and Mickey picked up your car. Harry is waiting outside. He'll take you home. I've got other cases to solve. This one is over."

Harry drove an eight-year-old Suburban. He didn't need the space. He just liked driving a car that was as broad-shouldered as he was. Mason grunted at the effort of hoisting himself into the front passenger seat, but waved off Harry's offer of a boost.

"Damn," Mason said. "I feel like I've been kicked by a horse with all four feet."

Harry said, "Don't go to bed. You'll just freeze up and we'll have to chisel the spasms out of your muscles." He pulled a tissue from a box on the floor and wiped his eyes, then squinted at the stoplight that had just turned green. He waited until the driver behind him honked twice.

"I'm going," Harry muttered, wiping his eyes again.

"Your eyes okay?" Mason asked.

"They're fine," Harry answered. "Just these damn allergies."

Harry was not normally talkative, except about old cases he'd handled. Some baseball pitchers could recite every pitch they ever threw in a game, adding location, speed, and spin to the name of the opposing batter, the balls and strikes, and who won the battle. Harry was like that with cases he'd investigated, especially murder cases. Outside of that, he wasn't much for small talk. Mason often wondered what Harry and his Aunt Claire talked about. She must have tapped into Harry's other dimension. Mason envied them. They had been together as long as he could remember. Though they'd never married, they were as tightly bound as any couple he'd ever known.

Mason was certain that Samantha had briefed Harry as a professional courtesy, even though Harry was retired. Mason expected Harry to cross-examine him on the way home, but Harry didn't say a word. Mason appreciated the quiet ride. He would eventually use Harry as a sounding board to test different murder scenarios. At the moment, he was still digesting what Samantha had told him and wasn't ready to talk. Still, he wondered about Harry's allergies, especially since he couldn't remember the last time Harry had even sneezed.

Harry pulled in the driveway behind Mason's TR-6. Blues and Mickey had dropped it off but not waited around. As Mason got out of the car, Harry turned to him.

"One other thing," Harry said, as if they'd been talking the whole time.

"What's that?"

"Sam told me they checked that elevator the night Davenport was killed. There was nothing wrong with it. The certificate of inspection had been renewed a month ago."

Mason leaned against the open door, one foot on the ground, the other on the running board. "You think I should sue the elevator inspector?" Harry just looked at him. "No," Mason answered for him. "You think someone sabotaged the elevator because they knew I was in it? Did Samantha tell you that?"

"Something to think about," Harry said. "Remember what I told you. Don't go to bed."

Mason thought about Harry's advice as he stood under a hot shower. If his adventure in the elevator had been a murder attempt, Harry's warning about not going to bed was good advice. He'd better stay awake.

And he'd better take Trent Hackett more seriously.

Trent was the building manager, so he had access to the elevator control room and, probably, enough knowledge to make it happen. He gave Mason the key to Davenport's office and could count on Mason taking a ride. Since the elevator didn't stop on any other floors, Trent knew that no one else would be at risk. If Mason stayed off the elevator, Trent could fix it before anyone discovered what he'd done. Plus, Trent scored high on the freak-ometer.

It was then that Mason remembered the video camera on the elevator. If he had escaped a murder attempt, the killer had to have known he was on the elevator. He called Samantha.

"What about the camera on the elevator?" he asked, skipping hello. "Where's the video?"

"Gone," she answered. "The monitor and the VCR is in the control room. There was no tape. Watch your back, Lou."

If Trent had tried to kill Mason, there was a good chance Jordan was innocent or Trent was guilty of something else that he was afraid Mason would uncover. The Hacketts were starting to look like a nuclear family in the midst of a runaway meltdown.

Mason liked privacy. He liked shutting out the rest of the world when he prepared for trial or wrestled with the devil. All of which meant he hated jails and the claustrophobic cubicles reserved for prisoners to meet with their lawyers. Mason took the jailers at their word that his conversations with his clients were not recorded, but in a crowded corner of his heart he made room for distrust of cops, jailers, and prosecutors. It was enough to keep his jailhouse office hours short and meetings with his clients shorter.

He worried about innocent clients who were guilty of nothing except bad luck. He worried about clients who were innocent of the charge that landed them in jail, but were guilty of other offenses. He worried about clients who were guilty as charged. For each of these clients, he had cards to play, deals to make. Mason knew what to do with them. But a client who confessed to a crime Mason believed in his gut she hadn't committed was the client he worried about the most.

Jordan Hackett had spent the night in jail, long enough to drain her reservoir of anger and refill it with the sullen realization that she would spend the rest of her life wearing government-issued clothes and eating with a spoon she had to turn in after every meal. Her brown hair was grimy and she was wearing a dirt tattoo around her neck. She must have come straight from digging fence posts to surrender, Mason decided. He knew that took a lot of nerve, but not as much as taking her first prison shower. They'd let her stink for a few days, but force her to wash before her first court appearance.

They sat across from one another at a metal table scarred with initials and bolted to the floor. Jordan looked past Mason to the small window in the door, big enough for the eyes and nose of the deputy sheriff on the other side. She looked at her feet, clad in paper slippers, her heels sticking out past the outer edge of one-size-fits-all. She stuck her hands in her armpits, covering them with the billowing sleeves of her orange jumpsuit. She looked everywhere but at Mason, who watched and waited.

"What?" she said at last. "Is this the silent treatment from my lawyer? I don't have to go to jail for that. I can get it at home."

Mason said, "Why did you do it?"

Jordan tightened her grip on herself. "It's all in my confession. I thought you would have read it." She finally looked at him. "What happened to your eye?"

"I ran into a door," he said. "I'm not talking about the murder. I'm talking about the confession. Why did you do it without talking to me?"

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings," she answered, tucking her chin to her chest, giving a cigarette butt on the floor her undivided attention.

"Cut the crap, Jordan. We made a deal yesterday. You don't talk to the cops without me. What happened?"

She stood, paced, sat back down. Assumed the position again. "After you left, I had my session with Terry. I told him what was going on. He told me I had to clear the decks if I was going to deal with my issues. Confessing was the way to do that, the way to get everything straight in my mind."

"Did he tell you what a great psychotherapy program they have in prison?"