Lisa Scottoline - Legal Tender

I felt the shock of sheer terror. Please don’t shoot me I didn’t do it. I faced front and put on the afterburners.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” Azzic ordered.

A bystander screamed. I imagined Azzic dropping to his knee and aiming two-handed for my back, so I zigzagged for a few steps, then ran like hell. I tore up the Walk and hit the concrete footbridge spanning Thirty-Eighth Street, taking its steep grade in stride. Charging up the hill with power and muscle and stone-cold fear. It was almost easy after the stadium steps. I ignored the pain in my thighs, the ache in my lungs. Even my shoes were helping, bouncy as running shoes.

One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe. Keep your knees high.

I reached the crest of the footbridge and streaked full tilt down the other side. The momentum carried me down the hill. I accelerated, surefooted from the stadium steps. My breathing was easy and free, my wind strong. Soon I couldn’t hear Azzic’s voice anymore. I couldn’t feel the strain, I couldn’t feel anything. I was running, I was moving, I was gone. Slicing down the blackness like a scull. Running, rowing hard.

Nobody was faster. Nobody rowed better. The night blew cool. The wind gusted behind me. The city was far away, so were the police. The city lights, streetlights, the headlights were pinpoints in the darkness, on the banks of the river. Everything was far away. There was only me, my heart pumping explosively, doing what I’d trained it to do. Sweat poured down my body. I took it up for ten power strokes with energy to spare.

One, two, three strokes, to move the scull. It was a race and I was riding high, a long-legged waterskate, feeling only the speed and the spray. Hearing only the clean chop of the oars as they splashed into the moving water, one stroke after another. No halting, no lurching, just the smoothest race possible, pulling the oar hard and then harder. Four, five, six. Rowing fast and then faster.

Taking flight. The creak of the rigging. The smell of the river. The wetness of the spray. The cops were gone. Azzic was gone. Seven, eight, nine, ten. I’d finally found the rhythm and I couldn’t go wrong.

In the middle of the river, in the middle of the night.

I slumped on the floor, naked and exhausted behind the locked door of my room in the basement. I had stripped off my wet clothes, but was still sweating from heat, exertion, and fear. The room was arid, my lungs burned. I felt dizzy, nauseated. I couldn’t think clearly, my brain was a fog. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and tried not to drip on the clinic file as I turned the page.

It was a typical case file, except it was neater. The correspondence file, in its own manila folder on the top, contained only form letters from Renee at the legal clinic and no response letters from Eileen. I tossed the folder aside, not caring where it landed.

The pleadings index held restraining orders against Eileen’s husband, filed by Renee. Ten orders in all, with contempt citations when the previous court order was broken. There were fines levied against Eileen’s husband, but he must have been judgment-proof. Incarceration orders, too, but he couldn’t be found. The record told a story if you could read between the pleadings. The courts couldn’t stop Eileen’s husband from beating her. She would never be free of him, no matter where she moved, no matter where she went.

Until he was dead.

Had Eileen taken matters into her own hands? Had Renee covered, or even done it for her? Was it possible? I flashed on Renee’s childhood and the beatings she must have suffered. There were worse things that fathers could do to their daughters than abandon them. Renee had said she knew the depth of my anger, maybe that was because she knew the depth of her own. And maybe Eileen’s anger had struck that same dissonant chord. My head throbbed. It hurt to think. I needed sleep, rest, and food, but I couldn’t stop now.

I slapped the pleadings index closed and hunted through the accordion file for Renee’s notes. Aboveground there would be sirens screaming for me. Azzic and the cops searching the city. I didn’t think anyone had seen me slip into the building but maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were upstairs right now, entering the lobby, finding the staircase down. At the door.

Not yet. Not now. I was so close.

Renee was involved with the murder of Eileen’s husband, I just didn’t know what Mark had to do with it. Had Mark discovered the truth, and Renee killed him for it? Both men had been stabbed to death.

My damp fingers found notes in one of the folders. I squinted to read them, but they wouldn’t come into focus. I felt light-headed, disoriented. The notes were scribbled in ballpoint on legal paper, apparently notes from another interview with Eileen. I was so close I could smell it. I just couldn’t read it. My head was killing me, and the handwriting was terrible. I held up the paper. Renee didn’t have sloppy writing, did she? I fought to remember but my brain wouldn’t work.

I threw the paper aside and ripped through the file. I felt sick, crazy, almost deranged. Where was it? What was it? There had to be an answer. Mark was dead. Bill was dead. I had to find the answer, I was dead if I didn’t. It had to be here. The initial complaint stared back at me from my wet hand. I tore off page after page, scattering it willy-nilly, until I got to the last. The signatures.

There. Renee Butler’s signature. It swam before me, teasing me like a fish just under the water’s surface. I held the signature page next to the messy notes. I blinked. They were completely different. Renee’s script was careful, but the notes were careless. Who had taken these notes? Who else had worked on Eileen’s case? Another clinic lawyer? Who?

I ransacked the file, then dumped it onto the dirty concrete floor. A waterbug scurried by but I ignored him, tearing through page after page. The file flew in all directions. I was losing my mind. I found the clipping and read it again, then hurled it across the room.

Think. Think. Think. Assume Renee killed Eileen’s husband, what did that have to do with Mark? Where was Renee the night Mark was killed? What had the cleaning lady said, just before I saw the cops? And what had Hattie said, about Renee bringing a box of stuff to my house?

I could barely breathe. My brain sizzled. I’d played out the string and reached the end. I slumped forward, doubled over on the littered floor, a madwoman in isolation. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed silently, every nerve, every muscle stretched to the limit of fear and fatigue. A silent primal scream. A secret cry of pure anguish.

And then it all became clear. My eyes flew open. I sat bolt upright on my haunches.

It had been right in front of me and I hadn’t seen it.

Hiding in plain sight.

Now all I had to do was prove it without getting killed.

Good morning,” I said into my cell phone. “This Leo the Lion?”

“Rosato!” asked Azzic, in disbelief. “What the fuck -”

“I’m at the federal courthouse. Tenth Floor. Be there or be square.” I hung up, flipped the phone shut, and jumped out of the Yellow cab. It was done, set in motion.

I bolted through the doors of the courthouse. The Roundhouse was only blocks away and traffic wouldn’t be an issue. Azzic would fly here. I checked my watch: 9:30. I figured I had ten minutes to pull this off, at the most. I rushed into the lobby.

Deliverymen pushed dollies across the polished floor. Lawyers conspired with their clients before trial. Federal employees moseyed by on their way to work. There were no cops in sight, only a few blue-jacketed court security officers talking among themselves near the elevators. I kept my head down and joined the line at the metal detector. It was longer than I expected. My stomach tensed. I glanced at the time. 9:35.