Dark Moon, page 23
“Jim and I saw the lay of the land when we were there. You have all my sympathy.”
“Don’t bother. I married him, and I’ve thrown away all my chances to escape. But I want to help Alexa.”
“So how can we talk to the children undetected by your husband?”
“I always take them to the Smithsonian on Wednesdays. We arrive at ten and stay until around three. Be there at ten thirty and ask for Noel Dean. She’s an assistant curator for the Americana collection and a friend of mine. She will let you use her office to interview Meggie and Sam. I’ll wait elsewhere in the museum. I know it needs to be a private conversation. When you are through, Noel will know where to find me.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Reed.”
“You don’t have to thank me. You should have been allowed to talk to them long before now.”
“Do you know anything about what they might say?”
“No. They’ve never brought up that night, and Coleman put the fear of God into them when he found out you and your investigator were coming. They may yet be too afraid to talk about it.”
“I understand. I’ll make every effort to make sure your husband doesn’t know you helped us.”
“Thank you, but he’ll probably find out, no matter what you do. I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“But your life could be in danger.”
“Honestly, Ms. Knight, I don’t care if it is.”
* * *
Third Wednesday in November 2013, The Smithsonian
At ten thirty, Sarah and Jim were waiting in Noel Dean’s office as instructed. She was a pleasant-faced woman in her early forties. She looked like a museum curator in a dark suit and oversized tortoise shell spectacles with her auburn hair pulled into a tight bun. Her office had a small sofa flanked by two small chairs. She motioned for Sarah and Jim to take the chairs while she went to fetch the children.
Sarah had been unable to go back to sleep after Myrna’s call, so she’d made a not-very-good pot of coffee on the little machine in her room and had waited until six to ring Jim with the news.
“Frankly, I didn’t think she had it in her,” Jim had said at eight thirty over breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. “It’s no secret in this town that she drinks too much.”
“I would, too, if I were married to Coleman Reed and had Michael for a son. She called him a monster.”
“That sounds about right.”
* * *
And now, two hours later, the door opened and Noel reappeared with Meggie and Sam. Yesterday’s snow had been only flurries, but it was still unbearably cold. The children were dressed in jeans and turtlenecks and identical navy puffy coats with hoods. They eyed Sarah and Jim carefully as they crossed the room and sat down on the sofa. Meggie reached over and took her little brother’s hand as if to reassure him.
“I’m in a meeting in the conference room next door,” Noel said as she was leaving. “Just knock when you are done, and I’ll fetch Mrs. Reed. She said there’s no rush. Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you.” Sarah smiled at her retreating back and then smiled at the skeptical children. “Hello, again.”
“Hello.” Meggie didn’t smile.
“You know that I’m an attorney, and this is my friend Jim who is helping me find information to help your mother.”
“When can we see her?” Sam suddenly demanded.
It was the question Sarah had dreaded. “I don’t know when.”
“Coleman says we’ll never see her again,” Meggie said.
“You’re supposed to call him ‘Grandpa,’” Sam corrected her.
“Louise calls him ‘Coleman’ when she thinks no one is listening.”
Sam eyed Sarah and Jim suspiciously. “Grandpa said we aren’t supposed to talk to you. He said he’d hit us again if we did.”
“So I take it he hit you before we came to warn you not to talk to us?”
“That’s right.” Meggie put her hand up to her left cheek with its fading bruise.
“Does he hit you often?” Jim asked.
“When we do something he doesn’t like,” Meggie said. “Our dad used to hit us. Our mother never did.”
“We want to go home,” Sam said. “Grandpa wouldn’t even let me take Mr. Wiggles. I miss him. I wish you had brought him.”
“We couldn’t bring him, Sam. Your mom is keeping him safe for you.”
“Okay.”
“What we need to talk about is that last night you spent with your dad,” Sarah said.
“Meggie, why don’t you go first and tell us what you remember.”
“One of my dad’s girlfriends was there. He had a lot of girlfriends.”
“Yeah,” Sam chimed in. “A lot. Some of them he paid for. Some he didn’t.”
Sarah frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Because the paid-for ones used to argue with him over how much they were supposed to get,” Meggie said. “He would give them an envelope, and they would count the money and then say it wasn’t enough.”
“Do you know if the one that night was a paid-for girlfriend?” Jim asked.
“I think so. We said hello to her when she got there, and my dad handed her the envelope.”
“Did she say it wasn’t enough?” Jim asked.
“No. She counted it, but she didn’t say anything about it. “
“So what happened after you said hello to the girlfriend?” Sarah asked.
“We went to bed,” Meggie said. “It was summer and school was out, and our bedtime was nine o’clock.”
“Did you go to sleep?”
“Not at first,” Sam said. “My dad tried to make me sleep in a room by myself, and I didn’t like that because at home Meggie and me had the same room. So I sneaked down the hall to Meggie’s room.”
“Did you see your dad or the girlfriend when you went down the hall?”
“No.”
“And what did you do next?” Sarah asked.
“I made him a bed on the floor with my blankets,” Meggie said, “because I only had a little bed at my dad’s, and there wasn’t room for both of us. Then we went to sleep.”
“And when you woke up what did you hear?”
“Our dad and a woman, yelling at the top of their voices.”
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
“No.”
“Did you go down the hall to see who your dad was fighting with?”
“No, we were too afraid.”
“Could the woman have been your mother?” Jim asked.
“No,” Meggie shook her head emphatically. “Our mother never went into our dad’s house. She always let us out in front. She was too afraid of him to go inside.”
“So what happened after the arguing woke you up?”
“The shouting went on for a little bit, and then Sam and I heard thumping like something being dragged, and then we heard bang, bang, bang.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Bang, bang, bang.”
“What happened after that?”
“The house got very quiet,” Meggie said. “So I decided to sneak down the hall to see what was going on in the living room.”
“And what did you see?”
“My dad was lying on the floor, and he wasn’t moving. And there was a gun next to him that looked like my mom’s. I was afraid the person who shot him was still in the house and would find me and Sam and shoot us. So I ran back to my room and hid us in the closet.”
“Is that when you called your mom?” Sarah asked.
“Yes. While we were hiding, I used my phone to call her. She got it for me because she was always afraid something might happen to us at my dad’s.”
“What happened to your dad’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Meggie said. “I didn’t see her in the living room when I was there after the gunshots.”
“Did you go back into the living room after you called your mother?”
“No. We stayed in the closet. It was safer.”
“So that’s where your mother found you when she got there?”
“Yes.”
“How long did it take her to arrive?”
“I don’t know,” Meggie said.
“It seemed like a long time,” Sam spoke up.
“How did you know that your mother had a gun, Meggie?” Jim asked.
“We weren’t supposed to know. But she kept it in the trunk of her car, and sometimes me or Sam would see her checking on it. She had it because my dad was going to kill her.”
“How do you know that?” Sarah asked.
“Because when we were at his house, he would get on the phone with Coleman. And he would talk about killing my mom.”
“Why did they do that?”
“I’m not sure.” Meggie paused to wrinkle her nose in thought. “I heard my father say things like ‘I’m paying too much right now to keep them. If she were out of the way, I wouldn’t have to worry about paying anymore.’ But I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s okay. We do. Did your mother talk to you about her gun?”
“Yes.
“She told us never to touch it, and she said she needed it to keep us all safe.”
“Only, it didn’t work,” Sam piped up. “Our dad stole her gun, so she had nothing to protect us with.”
“How do you know he stole it?”
“Because we saw him,” Sam said.
“When did he steal it?”
“It was the day our school was out. Our dad came to get us at our mom’s, and after he put us in his car, he walked over to our mom’s car and took the gun out of the trunk.
“How did he get into the trunk?”
“He had a key. He told us he was taking her gun because he was afraid she’d hurt herself with it. But Sam and I knew he was taking it so he could use it to hurt her.”
“Did you tell your mother what you’d seen?”
“No,” Sam shook his little head emphatically. “Our dad said he would hurt us if we told on him.”
“Did your mother ever ask you if you knew where the gun was?”
“No,” Meggie said.
* * *
Third Wednesday in November 2013, Dulles International Airport
The United Airbus lifted off from Dulles at seven-thirty that night. They would be in San Diego at midnight, West Coast time. As the big jet roared and gathered speed to hurtle itself into the night sky, Jim said, “You missed your dinner date tonight.”
Tom Barrett had been the last thing on Sarah’s mind as the cabin shook with the effort of take-off.
“We rescheduled for Friday. He had an emergency operation tonight, anyway.”
“Sounds like your kind of guy.”
Sara smiled. “It was a nice change to call him to say I can’t make it and have him completely understand.”
“We have to find Michael’s call girl. I noticed some of his neighbors have surveillance cameras. I’ll see if any of them are willing to share their footage. They might have picked up her arrival at the house.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Last Friday in November 2013, Pacific Beach
Sarah was deliberately avoiding Alexa. Jim didn’t want to believe that, but the conclusion was inescapable. She had given her a summary of the interview with Meggie and Sam by telephone and had left it to Jim to go to the cottage to talk to her about it in person. It did not help Jim’s mood that nothing had gone his way in the week since their meeting with the Reed children, either in his investigation into Alexa’s case or in his private life.
As far as the case was concerned, all of Brigman’s neighbors with surveillance cameras were out of town at exotic destinations over Thanksgiving. And he couldn’t find any leads on Michael Reed’s call girl. As far as his own life was concerned, Cody had decided not to come for a Thanksgiving visit; so he had spent yesterday with Alexa, trying not to depress either her or himself because they both missed their children. Sarah, as usual, had begged off dinner with the two of them; and he suspected she’d spent the day with Tom Barrett.
Now they were sitting in her office, going over the bits and pieces of Alexa’s defense. Sarah looked worn and thinner than ever. The blue half-moons under her beautiful dark eyes said she didn’t sleep. She was casually dressed in gray yoga pants and a deep green sweater, and she kept fiddling nervously with a pen as they talked.
“You need to see Alexa.”
“I’ve talked to her on the phone.”
“But you need to talk to her in person. We’re less than two weeks from starting trial.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!”
“I’m not telling you how to do your job.” He tried to keep his own anger in check, but the frustrations of this case were becoming overwhelming, Every lead turned to dust and crumbled between his fingers. “You haven’t been to see her since the trip to D.C. You’re avoiding her.”
She reached up and traced the scar on her cheek and stared out at the ocean. He’d come to associate that gesture with extreme stress. Abruptly she brought her eyes back from the water and fixed them angrily on him. “Ok, what do you want me to do?”
“I’ll make dinner for the three of us tonight at Alexa’s place. Seven o’clock.”
* * *
Neither woman had eaten anything, Jim reflected as he watched them on opposite ends of Alexa’s shabby sofa after dinner. Alexa’s golden hair glowed in the dim light like a halo around her face as she fixed her thoughtful eyes on Sarah, who was still wearing her casual outfit of the morning. Sarah was staring at the threadbare carpet, lost in thought.
He said quietly, “Have you talked to Alexa about how our meeting with Meggie and Sam changes the defense theory of the case?”
Sarah studied his face for a moment and then looked at Alexa. “We’ll need to call Meggie and Sam as witnesses. We need them to testify that Michael took your gun.”
Alexa frowned. “I don’t want them involved. They’re too young.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Jim said gently. “They’re the only ones who know how your gun went missing.”
But Alexa shook her head. “There’s a police report. You still need to find it. Besides, you know as well as I do, Coleman is not going to comply with any subpoena issued for Meggie and Sam.”
“But he won’t have a choice,” Sarah insisted. “A court order is a court order.”
“Not if you are Coleman.” Alexa shook her head. “Haven’t you learned that by now?”
“He’s not above the law,” Jim observed.
“But he thinks he is,” Sarah said. Alexa was becoming upset, and she needed to step in to calm things down. “Alexa has a point. And, too, the children are only six and five. It is very likely Coleman would lean on Judge Tomlinson to find they aren’t old enough to testify.”
“You still have to try to get them here,” Jim insisted.
“No, I don’t. It is not ineffective assistance of counsel to refuse to do something that is impossible.”
“But you don’t know it would be impossible!”
“Wait,” Alexa interrupted, looking from one angry face to the other. “I’m the client, and I have the final say in this.”
Jim frowned. “We need the children, Alexa. You know the defense desperately needs them as witnesses.”
“I can’t let you do anything that would hurt them,” Alexa said. “They’re too young, and they’d be terrified in the courtroom. And they’d see me and not be able to touch me or talk to me, and that would terrify them even more. And if the jury convicted me, they’d blame themselves for the rest of their lives. No, Jim. I don’t want anyone to involve Meggie or Sam as witnesses.”
Jim looked over at Sarah, who sat ashen-faced on the couch, lost in thought. He wondered if she’d even heard what Alexa said.
But she had. “We’re two weeks from trial. We have to go with Jordan.”
“That’s worse than no defense.” Jim kept his eyes on Alexa, whose expression of calm determination never changed.
“Even if it is,” Alexa spoke in a quiet, steady voice that twisted his heart with admiration for her courage, “it’s all we’ve got.” Sarah’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out of her purse and read the text message. Then she stood up abruptly, obviously relieved to have an excuse to escape. “Tom wants to meet at Trend for a drink. Don’t worry, Alexa. Jordan can win this for us.”
Seething, Jim got up, too. “I’ll walk you out. I’ll be back, Alexa, to help clean up the kitchen.”
Once outside, Sarah hurried toward her car without looking at him. Being ignored made him angry, so he reached around and put his hand on the driver’s side door to keep her from opening it
“Let go of the door.” Her voice was level, but infuriated.
“In a minute. I want to know why you keep holding out false hope that Jordan can win this for us.”
She spoke in an exasperated parent voice. “Because she can.”
“You don’t believe that!” He told himself to regain control and let her leave before he did or said something he shouldn’t.
She leaned against the car, her face sharply outlined by the bright light of a full moon. She looked up at him, and studied his face in the silver light. “I’m not sure what I believe, anymore.
“We need Meggie and Sam!”
“Alexa says no.”
“Then we need that police report and that call girl!”
“What we really need is a miracle.” She reached for the door handle, and he withdrew his hand. He watched her get in and drive away before he went back into the house.
* * *
Alexa sat on the couch alone with the last glass of wine from the bottle Jim had opened for the three of them at dinner. He had left at eleven, after they had cleaned up the kitchen following Sarah’s exit. Dinner, Jim, kitchen cleanup. It had become an almost daily ritual that she clung to like a tiny island of peace in the ocean of fear and unpredictability that her life had become. She sipped the last of the cabernet and closed her eyes, listening to the stillness. She could pretend Meggie and Sam were sleeping in their bedroom, and in the morning they’d be up at seven and ready for the usual school-day ritual. Breakfast, backpacks, sweaters, and lunch money, then fastening seat belts for the ride to kindergarten and preschool. She imagined a quiet morning with the sunlight dappling the worn carpet while she sat here in the living room working on her laptop on a project for Alan. She’d have until eleven when she’d have to be at preschool to pick up Sam. Then lunch here at home and a nap for him while she worked a few hours more before going to fetch Meggie. She had never taken that life for granted, but it seemed doubly precious now that it was lost.
