Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

"Cigarette lighter," Mason explained, putting the gun back in the drawer. "You still carry a knife wherever you go?" he asked.

She opened her purse, pulling out a three-inch, pearl-handled knife, blade closed until she pushed an invisible button on the side, and the blade snapped to attention. "No. Just this letter opener," she said.

Mason laughed, remembering how Sandra's fascination with knives had once saved their lives. He hadn't seen much of her in the last several years; her practice focused on well-heeled corporations, his on down-at-the-heel individuals. She was a star at McKenzie amp; Strahan, the city's biggest law firm. The last he'd heard, she was defending tobacco companies, convincing juries that people were responsible for the addictions they chose, not the companies that sucked them in.

She studied him, testing Mason's nonchalance, giving up after a moment when he didn't melt at her feet. "Okay," she said, taking a sheet of paper from her briefcase. "I hear you've got a new client."

"Things must be slow downtown for a piece of news like that to hit your corner office," Mason said.

"Nick Byrnes hit my office," Sandra said. "Or, more precisely, his e-mail did after Whitney King forwarded it to me," she added, handing Mason the hard copy. Nick's message was right to the point.

YOU'VE GOTTEN AWAY WITH MURDER LONG ENOUGH. I'VE GOT A LAWYER. HIS NAME IS LOU MASON. WE'RE COMING AFTER YOU. BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.

"I should have that printed on my business card," Mason said, noting the e-mail identified Nick Byrnes as the sender, Whitney King as the recipient. Time of message, three o'clock A.M. that morning, hours before Mason had agreed to represent Nick.

Sandra pulled a file folder from her briefcase, dropping it on the table in front of the sofa. "Your client is fond of sending e-mails in the dark of night. Take a look. They're all variations on a theme. You killed my parents. I'm going to get you if it's the last thing I do. Yadda, yadda, yadda."

Mason refused the bait, annoyed with Nick, but just as annoyed with Sandra. Mason accepted his clients as they were. Some guilty. Some innocent. Some eccentric pains-inthe-ass. They may be jerks, but they were his jerks, and he didn't hesitate to protect them.

"Nearly as I can tell, Nick's right. Your client killed his parents. That must be why Whitney has never tried to stop Nick from sending e-mails reminding him about what he did. In case Whitney forgot, that is."

Sandra tapped her bottle against the side of the table, slipped her shoes on, and stood. "My client was acquitted by a jury. The same jury that convicted Ryan Kowalczyk, whose conviction was upheld by every state and federal court that reviewed the case. Your client's obsession is understandable, but tell him to move on. Life is for the living."

"You know," Mason said, coming around from behind his desk. "This life is for the living crap is getting on my nerves. It's a lousy excuse for letting someone off the hook. Nick Byrnes has a good case against Whitney King for his parents' wrongful death. It won't mean jail time, but it will mean a lot of money, not to mention a new jury saying what the last one didn't have the balls to say. Whitney King killed those people."

"Are you telling me you are actually going to sue Whitney?"

"Nick's statute of limitations runs in two weeks. If Whitney wants to make a deal now, maybe we can work something out without a lot of noise," Mason said.

"Right. Why don't I just cut off my arm and beat myself senseless with it instead. Save my client the trouble. You don't have a case, Lou. Your client is a screwed-up kid. A whack job. File that lawsuit against Whitney and you'll draw a counterclaim for harassment and those e-mails are exhibit A."

"Your client is a murderer. I'd watch your back. Cutting off your arm may just be the beginning," Mason said.

Sandra shook her head, back in the doorway. "You haven't changed a bit," she said. "Into the breach."

"Beats the hell out of crushing widows and orphans."

Sandra drew her lips back. "You don't want to take me on, Lou. I'll carve you up."

"Funny," Mason said. "I thought your client was the killer. Not you."

Mason and Abby Lieberman lay in bed late that night, windows open, begging for a breeze, the crickets too hot to make much noise. Electric power came and went, the mayor broadcasting an appeal for people to turn up the thermostat on their air conditioners to ease the demand for electricity. Mason's air conditioner went the mayor one better. It quit. He found a fan buried behind boxes in the attic, dusted off the blades, and set it on a TV table at the foot of his bed.

"It's an oscillator," Mason explained to Abby with due reverence, the fan pushing warm air at them. "Says so on the label."

"My favorite kind," she said, kicking the sheet off of the bed.

"We could go to your place," he offered.

"This is good," she murmured, snuggling close. "It reminds me of summer camp."

"You never went to camp," Mason said.

"I saw a special on the Discovery channel."

They were naked, glistening from lovemaking, Abby tracing the path of the scar on Mason's chest with her fingertip. It was an eighteen-inch raised track, pink, smooth, and shiny, short zipper scars bordering each side. He'd been stabbed in the heart, lost his pulse in the ambulance, dead on arrival. A surgeon opened his chest in the ER to stop the bleeding, massaging his heart, bringing him back before hypoxia cooked his brain. Half a day of open-heart surgery repaired his wounds.

"Does it ever hurt?" she asked him, the fan drying them.

"Nope," he told her. It was the same answer he gave her each time she asked, even though there were days when his chest was filled with a dull ache that pressed against his ribs. Normal, give it time, his surgeon said. Abby gave him a T-shirt featuring a beat-up biker scarred from stem to stern promising that chicks dig scars. He counted on that.

They'd been together almost a year, their relationship igniting when Claire invited Abby to Harry's birthday party the day after Labor Day. Abby owned a public relations firm, Fresh Air. Opportunity and crisis management she called it until the phone stopped ringing after she was caught up in the Gina Davenport case. Then she turned off the lights.

Josh Seeley bailed Abby out when he hired her to help with his race for the United States Senate, his first run for elective office, the primary scheduled for August 1. He was one of Kansas City's moneyed elite who decided that his balance sheet qualified him for office. Abby guided him through the fallout from murky business deals dug up by his primary opponent, Congressman Delray Shays. Abby accepted Seeley's offer to work full time for the campaign, shut down Fresh Air, and recruited Mickey Shanahan as an unpaid volunteer.

The loss of her business festered like a low-grade fever in her relationship with Mason. They told each other it was neither of their faults, more the rule of unintended consequences. No hill for their love to climb, Mason assured her, Abby nodding through gritted teeth. Abby told him that her credibility would be restored if Seeley won. Then she would reopen Fresh Air.

Mason propped himself on one elbow, Abby on her side facing him. She'd let her hair grow to cover the scar on her neck left by the same knife that had lacerated his heart. She recoiled whenever he touched her scar, the closed wound still raw. It was shorter than his, no more than a couple of inches, but jagged. It was a cut made as much to disfigure as to kill. Abby wore high collars, scarves, and turtlenecks year round.

Mason told her about his two new clients, gauging her reaction. He had promised her that he'd stay away from cases with deadly retainers, the kind of case that appealed to what she called his death wish. Not that he wanted to die, she explained. It was that he wanted to find out how close he could get to death to prove he was really alive. She'd been there with him the last time and had made it plain that she wouldn't go back.