John Grisham - The Client

“Perhaps. I don’t know.”

“There’s a chance, right?”

“Slight chance.”

“Good. If we have a slight chance, then we must investigate it thoroughly. I’d start with his office personnel. Find out when he left New Orleans. Check his credit cards. Where did he buy gas? Where did he eat? Where did he get the gun and the pills and the booze? Does he have family between here and there? Old lawyer friends along the way? There are a thousand things to check.”

Trumann handed the phone to Scherff. “Call our office. Get Hightower on the phone.”

Foltrigg was pleased to see the FBI jump when he barked. He grinned smugly at Fink. Between them on the floor was a storage box crammed with files and exhibits and documents all related to U.S.A. vs. Barry Muldanno. Four more boxes were at the office. Fink had their contents memorized, but Roy did not. He pulled out a file and flipped through it. It was a thick motion filed by Jerome Clifford two months earlier that still had not been ruled upon. He laid it down, and stared through the window at the dark Mississippi landscape passing in the night. The Bogue Chitto exit was just ahead. Where do they get these names?

This would be a quick trip. He needed to confirm that Clifford was in fact dead, and had in fact died by his own hand. He had to know if any clues were dropped along the way, confessions to friends or loose talk to strangers, perhaps notes with last words that might be of help. Long shots at best. But there had been many dead ends in the search for Boyd Boyette and his killer, and this would not be the last.

A doctor in a yellow jogging suit ran through the swinging doors at the end of the emergency hallway and said something to the receptionist sitting behind the dirty sliding windows. She pointed, and he approached Dianne and Mark and Hardy as they stood by a Coke machine in one corner of the admissions lobby of St. Peter’s Charity Hospital. He introduced himself to Dianne as Dr. Simon Greenway and ignored the cop and Mark. He was a psychiatrist, he said, and had been called moments earlier by Dr. Sage, the family’s pediatrician. She needed to come with him. Hardy said he would stay with Mark.

They hurried away, down the narrow hallway, dodging nurses and orderlies, darting around gurneys and parked beds, and disappeared through the swinging doors. The admissions lobby was crowded with dozens of sick and struggling patients-to-be. There were no empty chairs. Family members filled out forms. No one was in a hurry. A hidden intercom rattled nonstop somewhere above, paging a hundred doctors a minute.

It was a few minutes after seven. “Are you hungry, Mark?” Hardy asked.

He wasn’t, but he wanted to leave this place. “Maybe a little.”

“Let’s go to the cafeteria. I’ll buy you a cheeseburger.”

They walked through a busy hallway, down a flight of stairs to the basement, where a mass of anxious people roamed the corridor. Another hall led to a large open area, and suddenly they were in a cafeteria, louder and more crowded than the lunchroom at school. Hardy pointed to the only empty table in view, and Mark waited there.

Of particular concern to Mark at this moment was, of course, his little brother. He was worried about Ricky’s physical condition, although Hardy had explained that he was in no danger of dying. He said that some doctors would talk to him and try to bring him around. But it could take time. He said that it was terribly important for the doctors to know exactly what happened, the truth and nothing but the truth, and that if the doctors were not told the truth then it could be severely damaging to Ricky and his mental condition. Hardy said Ricky might be locked up in some institution for months, maybe years, if the doctors weren’t told the truth about what the boys witnessed.

Hardy was okay, not too bright, and he was making the mistake of talking to Mark as if he were five years old instead of eleven. He described the padded walls, and rolled his eyes around with great exaggeration. He told of patients being chained to beds as if spinning some horror story around the campfire. Mark was tired of it.

Mark could think of little except Ricky and whether he would remove his thumb and start talking. He desperately wanted this to happen, but he wanted to have first crack at Ricky when the shock ended. They had things to discuss.

What if the doctors or, heaven forbid, the cops got to him first, and Ricky told the whole story and they all knew Mark was lying? What would they do to him if they caught him lying? Maybe they wouldn’t believe Ricky. Since he’d blanked out and left the world for a while, maybe they would tend to believe Mark instead. This conflict in stories was too awful to think about.

It’s amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, and they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you’d simply told the truth. He could have told the truth to the cops and to his mother. He could have explained in great detail everything that Ricky saw. And the secret would still be safe because Ricky didn’t know.

Things were happening so fast he couldn’t plan. He wanted to get his mother in a room with the door locked and unload all this, just stop it now before it got worse. If he didn’t do something, he might go to jail and Ricky might go to the nuthouse for kids.

Hardy appeared with a tray covered with french fries and cheeseburgers, two for him and one for Mark. He arranged the food neatly and returned the tray.

Mark nibbled on a french fry. Hardy launched into a burger.

“So what happened to your face?” Hardy asked, chomping away.

Mark rubbed the knot and remembered he had been wounded in the fray. “Oh nothing. Just got in a fight in school.”

“Who’s the other kid?”

Dammit! Cops are relentless. Tell one lie to cover another. He was sick of lying. “You don’t know him,” he answered, then bit into his cheeseburger.

“I might want to talk to him.”

“Why?”

“Did you get in trouble for this fight? I mean, did your teacher take you to the principal’s office, or anything like that?”

“No. It happened when school was out.”

“I thought you said you got in a fight at school.”

“Well, it sort of started at school, okay. Me and this guy got into it at lunch, and agreed to meet when school was out.”

Hardy drew mightily on the tiny straw in his milk shake. He swallowed hard, cleared his mouth, and said, “What’s the other kid’s name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

This angered Hardy and he stopped chewing. Mark refused to look into his eyes, and he bent low over his food and stared at the ketchup.

“I’m a cop, kid. It’s my job to ask questions.”

“Do I have to answer them?”

“Of course you do. Unless, of course, you’re hiding something and afraid to answer. At that point, I’ll have to get with your mother and perhaps take the both of you down to the station for more questioning.”

“Questioning about what? What exactly do you want to know?”

“Who is the kid you had a fight with today?”

Mark nibbled forever on the end of a long fry. Hardy picked up the second cheeseburger. A spot of mayonnaise hung from the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble,” Mark said.

“He won’t get in trouble.”

“Then why do you want to know his name?”

“I just want to know. It’s my job, okay?”

“You think I’m lying, don’t you?” Mark asked, looking pitifully into the bulging face.

The chomping stopped. “I don’t know, kid. Your story is full of holes.”