Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

But stoke up the blast furnace long enough on people who struggle every day to hold their lives together in the midst of money problems, job problems, family problems, and the heat starts burning them down like a wildfire on a New Mexico mountain. Short tempers get shorter, disappearing in a swallow of whiskey or in the crack of an insult. And people start killing each other.

A local shrink said as much on the Channel 6 evening news Monday night, a week and a day after Ryan Kowalczyk was executed, a legal killing that didn't offend the laws of nature or cause the distress that an outbreak of weekend fights and domestic disturbances had generated.

Two Hispanics in a bar on Southwest Boulevard fought over whether one had insulted the other's girlfriend, both of them too drunk to know for certain. The fight ended with the boyfriend's throat ripped open by the jagged edge of a broken bottle of tequila. The boyfriend bled out. The girlfriend grabbed a table knife, snapping the blade off between the other guy's ribs. One dead, one wounded. The girlfriend in jail.

North of the river, two brothers fought over a gold cap for the younger brother's tooth. He'd left it in the older brother's car and the older brother offered to sell it back to him for thirty dollars. The younger brother decided it was cheaper to cap his brother with a.38.

On the east side, rival black gangs cruised up and down Prospect Avenue, trash talking until respect and disrespect turned into guns and knives, the cops firing tear gas and busting heads. Two dead, eight injured, two of them cops.

In Mission Hills, a part of town where only the hired help spoke Spanish and the only cruising was done on a ship, a bank president grilling steaks dumped hot coals on his drunken wife when she confronted him about his latest mistress. The banker told the cops his wife was screaming so loud, he thought he'd give her something to scream about.

Mason half listened to the news, finishing a cold beer and short end of ribs as he leafed through part of the King file he'd brought home from the office. Setting the file aside, he replayed his weekend. Tuffy nudged his thigh until he shared the ribs with her.

Friday night, he'd found Josh Seeley's campaign Web site, clicking on the candidate's itinerary, toying with the notion of showing up at one of Seeley's events despite Abby's insistence that he stay away. Mason wasn't willing to give up. His ex-wife, Kate, had cut off their relationship one day with the dispassionate news that she was finished with him. So long. It's been real. Let's be friends. Or not.

Abby hadn't said that. The hurt in her eyes said she loved him too much to live the life he'd chosen. She would come back to him if he could find his way back to her. It was one of those how-did-I-get-here moments for Mason, wanting her back but not knowing how to make it work and knowing he couldn't walk away from Nick and Mary.

Seeley was campaigning in Cape Girardeau, a small town in the Missouri boot heel, more Tennessee than Missouri, the first stop on a swing through the southeast part of the state. Mason watched a streaming video feed of the candidate climbing down from his chartered plane, catching a glimpse of Abby behind him, her hair swirling around her face in the prop wash. She could have been Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, she was that far away.

Mason spent Saturday catching up on his other cases, writing a brief to convince a judge his client lacked criminal intent when he sneaked out the bathroom window at Best Buy with a thousand dollars worth of computer software stuffed down his pants. It was an exercise in legal gymnastics that ended when he launched another dart assault on his office wall.

He stopped by the hospital to visit Nick, not getting past Nick's grandmother. She told him that the doctors were going to operate on Tuesday to remove the bullet fragment. Progress of a sort, Mason told her, asking her to tell Nick he'd been there. She grunted in reply, leaving the interpretation up to Mason.

On Sunday he took another pass at Mary's house. Newspapers had accumulated on her driveway, mail filled the mailbox. The fish in the aquarium were listless. Mason found a container of fish food on a shelf beneath the aquarium and sprinkled some on the surface. After a moment, the fish woke to their meal, darting after the morsels, knocking over the deep-sea diver. Mary wouldn't have left the fish unattended. He knew her that well. She would have asked a neighbor to pick up the papers and the mail and feed the fish while she was gone.

He stopped to talk to the neighbor across the street, glad to catch him outside. Cats peered at them from the front window.

"Any sign of Mary?" Mason asked.

"Nope. Not a peep," the man said. "But you're not the only one been looking for her."

Mason straightened. "Who else has been over there?"

"A woman. Driving a silver Lexus. Came by Friday afternoon, late in the day. Knocked on the door and left. That was it."

"What did she look like?" Mason asked.

"Dressed to the nines, that's all I can say," the man told him. "Real pretty. Dark hair. I wandered down to the curb, said hello to her. She give me a look like to cut right through me. I said fare-thee-well my lady to you too, if you get my meaning," he said flourishing his hands like a hula girl.

"That I do," Mason said, recognizing Sandra Connelly.

After hammering him for not playing by the rules, Sandra had gone Mason one better by not bothering to ask him for permission to talk to his client. Maybe she just wanted to find out for herself if Mary was really missing. Either way, Mason was primed for his next conversation with her.

Vince Kowalczyk called Mason Sunday night, saying no, he hadn't talked to Mary in two years. Mason thanked him, adding Father Steve to his Monday call list, anxious to hear the next dodge the priest had for him. He wasn't surprised Monday morning when a secretary at the church told him Father Steve wouldn't be in, apologizing that she didn't know where he was or how to reach him.

Mason had no better luck with Sandra Connelly, leaving her a voice message, following the recorded instructions to press the number two if his message was urgent.

Late Monday morning, he went downtown to police headquarters and filled out a missing persons report on Mary Kowalczyk, telling the desk clerk to deliver a copy to Detective Samantha Greer. The desk clerk, a skinny kid with slicked back hair and a T-bone nose, wearing a civilian uniform, playing cop dress-up, gave Mason a look that translated as I'll-get-around-to-it. Mason left Samantha a message, convinced that the rest of the world was observing Don't Answer Your Phone Day.

He didn't hear from Harry about the license plate on the car at the cemetary and forced himself not to push. Harry was reluctant to trace the plate and, as much as Mason wanted to know who was visiting his parents' grave, he had to let Harry do it on his own schedule. It was one more piece of his past that hung out of reach.

Rachel Firestone had wrapped up Mason's Monday with a scouting report on the King jury.

"I've tracked down five of the eight names you gave me. You're not going to like this," she told him over the phone.

"Give it to me," he said, putting her on the speaker phone, standing at the dry erase board, red marker in his hand.

Rachel began. "Nate Holden dropped dead of a heart attack nine years ago."

Mason read from his notes on the board. "He was forty-four at the time of the trial. That makes him fifty when he died. I can buy that. Shit happens when you turn fifty," he said.

"Another juror, Troy Apple, was shot coming out of his house early one morning. Cops suspected it was drug related."

"Apple was black, twenty-two years old. Back then. Single, lived on the east side. Who needs proof when you've got a good stereotype? Any arrests in that one?"