Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

She tossed her head as if she was shaking off the tremors, giving him a weak smile. "Later," she said. "Let's see how it goes with Whitney."

Mason couldn't tell whether she was concentrating on the cars in front of her or whether she just didn't want to look him in the eye when she lied to him. Mason knew Dixon Smith, had banged heads against him when he was in the U.S. attorney's office. Smith usually defended people accused of violent crimes, leaving the white-collar variety to lawyers like Sandra. Sandra's lie was that Dixon had called her about another case. She was about to tell Mason what she had found in the King family files until Dixon called.

Sandra continued south, cutting east a few blocks then south again on Holmes Road, an artery that would take them to Whitney's office some fifty blocks away.

"Why is Whitney working late? Just to talk to me?" Mason asked.

"Hard as it may be to believe, he might prefer that to going home to a big empty house."

"Where does the lonely rich boy live?"

"Burning Oak, that new golf course project in Lenexa," Sandra answered.

The metropolitan area was bifurcated by the state line between Kansas and Missouri, wealth accumulating in a string of cities that ran together in Johnson County on the Kansas side. Lenexa was one of them, wedged into the western part of the county. Burning Oak offered golf course lots priced at a quarter million on which buyers could build a house for a million-five more and lay down fifty grand to join the country club.

"So what's he doing at the office? Counting his money or stalking jurors?"

Sandra banged her hand on the steering wheel. "Damn it, Lou! Give it a rest!"

He did, keeping his mouth shut the rest of way, his thoughts staggering back to his parents, shredding fabricated images of their lives while Sandra parked outside Whitney's office building. She didn't move for a moment, finally turning the ignition off and taking a deep breath.

"Okay, then," she said. "This is it."

The parking lot was empty, no sign of Whitney's car. Mason assumed there was underground parking or that Whitney had parked on another side of the building, which was one of several in an office park ringed by mature trees with a jogging path laid among them. Park benches and picnic tables were scattered along the outer wall of greenery.

The building was ten stories, packaged in reflecting glass that made it impossible to see inside. It was past nine o'clock, dark, and no one was working late. They were at the entrance to the building when Sandra's cell phone rang again.

"Yes," she said, pausing. "Hello, Whitney. We're outside your building now. Where are you?" Mason tried the door, jiggling it so Sandra could tell that it was locked. "We're locked out," she said. "How long before you'll get here? Fine. We'll wait."

"What's the story?" Mason asked as Sandra stowed the phone and looked around.

"His mother is in a nursing home. He took her out for dinner and has to take her home. He'll be here in about twenty minutes and he wants us to wait. Let's try the bench over there," she said, pointing to one in the shade of the trees lining the jogging path.

"I thought she was in a psychiatric facility," Mason said.

"It's both, really," Sandra said. "Nice place for crazy old people. They have an Alzheimer's unit. Whitney says his mother has a reservation."

The bench was made of a forgiving heavy plastic or light metal. Mason couldn't tell which, only that it was more comfortable than it looked. They sat for a moment, Mason picking out stars. He turned to Sandra.

"You remember the first case we worked on together?" he asked her.

"Hard to forget," she said. "Both of us almost got killed."

"Because we didn't trust each other," he reminded her. "Let's not make the same mistake again."

Sandra pivoted toward him, tucking one leg under the other. "I do trust you," she said, her mouth opening wide at the same instant he felt something sharp and hot pierce the back of his shirt. Her scream was swallowed by his as a jolt of electricity fired a paralyzing spasm through his body.

Mason tried to turn but couldn't make his muscles respond. He was suddenly aware of someone standing behind him, feeling a hand on his shoulder, smelling something familiar, his brain not processing the odor. Seconds unfolded in slow motion.

Sandra raised her hands in front of her face. An earsplitting crack from a gun rocked him as her hands flew away and her face exploded in a spray of blood and bone. Her body splayed across the bench. The shooter grabbed Mason's right hand, wrapped it around the gun, and laced Mason's finger against the trigger with his own, firing the gun again, another burst of blood flowering from Sandra's chest.

Sensation oozed back into his limbs, his movements slow, like he was swimming in molasses. He struggled against the gun that now inched upward across his chest, the hot barrel searing his neck, pressing hard beneath his chin. His hand was more jelly than muscle. His finger was still looped around the trigger, pulling it back against his will, about to leave him a dead puppet when his hand and the gun suddenly dropped in his lap and a hard shove put him on the ground in a heap.

He opened his eyes, rolling over on his back, staring up at Sandra's body. He heard footsteps, someone running toward him. He tried to cry out but couldn't make a sound. He tried to get up, collapsing when his legs refused to move, thrashing his head against the next assault.

Strong hands slipped beneath his shoulders, scooping him up, framing his face, holding him until he stopped shaking.

"I've got you, man," Blues said.

Mason sat in a patrol car in the parking lot less than a hundred feet from where Sandra Connelly's body lay draped across the park bench. The center of her face was a bloody, pulpy mush, the bullet ripping through her hands, barely slowing. Her neck lay at an uneasy angle across the top edge of the bench, her head dangling off the back, blank eyes turned to heaven. Her arms were spread, one leg still tucked beneath the other; the blood pooling from her chest wound dripped onto her lap.

A cop sat next to him, another in the front seat, neither of them talking. His shirt was splattered with Sandra's blood. He reached over his shoulder to a sore spot above his left shoulder blade, the skin irritated, his shirt torn. Petty wounds. He'd regained his coordination within minutes of Blues's arrival. He tried to explain what had happened, but Blues told him to save it.

Mason understood why. Blues had been a cop long enough to size up a murder scene and this one looked simple. Sandra was dead, shot to death with a gun that Blues found next to Mason. Mason was the obvious suspect and Blues didn't want to be forced to testify to anything Mason told him.

"Let the cops figure it out for now," Blues had told him. "You'll have plenty of time to tell me about it. Get your head straight and keep your mouth shut."

Samantha Greer and her partner, Al Kolatch, were running the scene. Samantha gave him one look, the pain in her eyes like another gunshot. He was standing in the parking lot surrounded by three cops when she arrived while two others interviewed Blues.

"You want to tell me about this?" she asked him.

"Later," he said.

She bit the inside of her cheek, pointing to two of the cops. "Put him in a car and keep him there. And no visitors, especially that one," she said, pointing at Blues who was talking to Kolatch.

Forensic cops searched the area under the glare of bright lights set up to illuminate the scene. They shot video, took still photographs, scraped blood, tissue, and bone from the bench and the ground. They scoured the area for bullets, fingerprints, and footprints. They measured distances and angles, building a case against Sandra's killer. The coroner arrived, examined Sandra's body, giving a silent signal when he was finished. An ambulance crew slipped her body into a black zippered bag, then quietly left the scene.