The gavel fell, and Ben McCarthy was free. Mira, that was
fast, Lucia thought, stunned. She'd been expectingโฆ
something else. A bit more theater, perhaps; at the very
least a token few questions or some fussiness from one
attorney or the other.
The prosecutor looked pale and drawn in the early morning
hour, squinting against the harsh overhead lights. She was
a hard-looking woman, with dark hair and a fashion sense
that tended toward square-cut shoulders and block skirts
with sensible shoes. No doubt she won a lot of cases, but
it wasn't on style points.
Lucia didn't begrudge her the lemon-sucking expression,
considering how humiliating it was to have to publicly
acknowledge a prosecutorial mistake of this magnitude.
This had been a gigantic miss for the cops and the
district attorney's office. A murderer had gone free, and
a cop โ not a good cop, granted โ had been wrongly accused
and convicted. McCarthy's life was over, professionally
speaking; he was damn lucky that it wasn't over in every
sense. The time he'd spent behind bars had been hazardous.
He had the mended bones to prove it.
As soon as the gavel hit wood, McCarthy turned to look
over the sparse crowd in the courtroom. Looking for Jazz
Callender, Lucia knew, because he and Jazz had always been
close, and it was reasonable to expect her to be present
for his exoneration.
As Jazz would have been, if not for a conspiracy between
Lucia and Jazz's beau, James Borden, to keep her safe at
home.
The judge rose in a flutter of black robes and escaped
back to his chambers. Apart from the usual complement of
guards and court stenographers, there was the sour-faced
prosecutor, the cheery defense attorney, Ben McCarthy โ
somehow still neat and striking even in a prison-issue
jacket โ three bleary-eyed reportersโฆand a man sitting two
rows ahead of Lucia, hunched forward.
McCarthy's eyes gave up the search for Jazz and fastened
on her, and Lucia felt an undeniable surge ofโฆsomething.
Not a handsome man, McCarthy, not in any sense she could
name, but there was something about him that was
compelling. Clear blue eyes in an expressive face, a force
of personality that could freeze you solid or melt you to
syrup, depending on his mood โ she'd learned that quickly,
during their prison interviews. He wasn't tall โ in fact,
in heels she probably topped him by an inch โ but he was
strong, and there was something graceful about him. The
way he moved. The deft, neat hands.
She saw the flash of disappointment. But the flash was
only that, and then he smiled at her โ a warm smile โ and
nodded his head. This wasn't unusual; men smiled at Lucia
Garza a lot. She was beautiful, and she was a careful
steward of the gift; she took pains with her hair, her
makeup and her clothing, and she stayed in shape. She was
used to male attention.
And still that smile made her go entirely too warm in
secret places. They'd gotten to know each other well these
last few weeks, while Jazz was recovering from being shot,
and Lucia assumed the primary investigator spot for
McCarthy's case. It had started cautiously, but Lucia,
much to her surprise, hadn't found McCarthy the typical
closed-off cop nor the equally typical closed-off prison
burnout. He'd beenโฆinteresting. Literate and smart and
cool.
She had, in fact, interviewed him more than was strictly
necessary, professionally speaking. Fifteen visits in all,
two with Jazz, the rest without. He had remarked, the last
time, that it had been the best interrogation of his life.
She'd subsequently spent more than a few hours wondering
why Jazz had never succumbed to temptation with McCarthy.
But Jazz had assured her โ the third time loudly and
profanely โ that she'd never slept with him, and never
really been tempted. They just hadn't clicked.
Whereas Lucia seemed to be clicking with him like a
castanet.
She stood up and willed herself to keep it cool and
professional. She edged down the row to the central aisle.
McCarthy stopped to exchange some words and a backslap and
handshake with his attorney, then a not-very-cordial look
with the prosecutor as she snapped her briefcase closed.
No handshakes necessary on that one.
He turned toward Lucia, and took two steps in her
direction.
Someone came between them. A man, tan suit, rounded
shoulders, wire-tight body language. Lucia scanned him
instantly with the unerring instincts of someone who'd
spent sweaty months in counterterrorism training; the man
spelled trouble, even from the back. He wore a cheap
summer-weight suit coat with a grubby look, as if he'd
worn it for months at a time. Even from ten steps back,
Lucia had the unmistakable impression that he needed a
shower. He wasn't much taller than McCarthy, and a great
deal more nervous; from behind him, Lucia could see the
jangles and twitches in his arms and legs. Emotion,
possibly, or drugs.
"McCarthy," she heard him rasp, in a voice like silk
ripping on wire. "You son of a bitch."
Ben McCarthy's face went still, the blue eyes opaque. He
shot one fast glance at her over the man's shoulder and
then focused on his opponent's face. McCarthy stayed
still, a total contrast to the man facing him, who had
tension vibrating through every muscle. Lucia could feel
it like an electrical field as she moved steadily forward.
She had her weight poised, in case she needed to move
fast, and she focused in on the balance points that were
her targets.
She didn't have a gun โ a wholly unusual circumstance for
her โ but that wasn't an issue. Neither did the man facing
down McCarthy.
"Stewart," McCarthy said. "Hey. Thanks for coming." Ken
Stewart. Kansas City Police Department, Detective First
Class. Lucia let the adrenaline course a little faster,
let her heart rev up another couple of beats per minute.
Stewart was, at best, unpredictable. At worstโฆJazz's
bitter assessment came back vividly: He's got the winning
personality of a rottweiler raised by wolves. He'd always
struck her as volatile, but now she was convinced he was a
Molotov cocktail in search of a lit match. "You think I'm
here to smile and kiss your feet like these other
assholes?" Stewart asked, and took another step into
McCarthy's space. McCarthy didn't back away. He tilted his
head a few degrees to continue to stare into the other
man's eyes. "You hear me? I'm not letting you just walk
away from a mass murder, you bastard. If it's the last
thing I do, I'm going to make you pay."
McCarthy said nothing for a few seconds, then glanced at
Lucia. "Detective Ken Stewart," he said, calmly and
steadily, "meet Lucia Garza. Since she's a witness to you
threatening me, you should probably be formally
introduced."
"Oh, we've met," Lucia said crisply, as Stewart turned
around to look at her. He had blue eyes, too. Crazy ones,
shallow as glass. His skin looked pasty, unpleasantly
shiny, and his hair stuck up in greasy spikes. Very
unattractive indeed.
He tried the crazy-eye with her. She stared back, a faint
smile on her lips, until he whipped back around to
McCarthy and muttered something under his breath, then
pushed past to talk to the prosecutor.
It was comforting to see that the prosecutor didn't look
any happier to see him, especially when she entered ground
zero of his body odor.
McCarthy took a deep breath, let the coldness fade from
his face, and said, "Sorry about that." He came the last
few steps to join her, but his attention was still on the
other man, who was haranguing the prosecutor in a low,
furious voice.
"No problem. It isn't the first time Detective Stewart and
I have locked horns."
"No?" That got his attention, with a vengeance. He was
wearing a blue sport coat that was too large for him, blue
jeans that were perfectly acceptable, and a plain, open-
collar shirt. No tie. Relaxed for a court appearance, but
then he'd been there to get out of jail, not to try to
avoid going in. He smelled of a particularly cheap
aftershave and an underlying astringent scent that was
probably prison-issue, as well.
"He's made a run at Jazz a few times," Lucia murmured. Ben
started walking toward the courthouse doors. She kept
pace. "Bet she handed him his nuts on a platter," he
chuckled.
Lucia grinned. "I don't think she bothered with the
platter."
"Yeah, she's not much in the kitchen. Soโฆwhere is she? I
admit, I kind of expected to see herโฆ." McCarthy opened
one of the doors and stepped aside to let Lucia pass. She
glanced at him, but there wasn't any calculation in his
eyes. It was automatic gentility. He wasn't even aware of
doing it. She suppressed another smile as she thought of
how little gestures like that would have chafed on Jazz.
She liked her independence and saw every common courtesy
as an infringement upon it. Jazz should have been born in
the Old West, where she could have made a living on the
frontier, riding rough, drinking hard and swearing at the
top of her lungs. Calamity Jazz.
McCarthy was fishing for an answer to a question he hadn't
asked. Lucia obliged. "Truthfully? Borden and I kept her
away. We didn't want her presenting a clear target." James
Borden had volunteered to keep her distracted โ not
exactly a sacrifice; the man had been madly in love with
her for almost a year โ and the significant lack of Jazz's
presence this morning might mean that they'd finally
tipped over from flirting toโฆsomething more.
Or alternatively, knowing Jazz, it could mean she'd had a
massive fight with Borden, gotten drunk, belligerent,
taken on a motorcycle gang in a fistfight, and was
celebrating her victory with a hospital visit.
McCarthy looked somber. "She okay?"
"She's fine."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure." Again, a little white lie. Jazz was all right
in one sense, in that the past few months had made a huge
change in her life. Since the day Jazz had been given her
first red envelope โ the same day that Lucia, halfway
across the country, had received one โ her life had begun
an uphill climb, after the downhill express she'd taken
following McCarthy's arrest. But the offer Lucia and Jazz
had jointly received โ to open a new detective agency with
funding from a rich but highly secretive donor
organization โ had come with trip wires attached, and Jazz
had been a casualty. When they'd followed the last lead,
from instructions in one of those damn red letters from
the Cross Society, she'd nearly died.
Lucia had no idea how much of that Jazz had shared with
her former partner. Knowing her, probably little.
No new envelopes had arrived recently. Lucia allowed
herself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the insanity
was over. A faint hope, but she refused to abandon it just
yet. All of this unexplainable conspiracy-theory stuff was
just too odd to live with for long, if you expected to
have a firm grip on reality.
McCarthy had noted her brief mental detour. "Some-body's
still gunning for her, right?"
"Why do you say that?"
He grinned, a flash of humor that lit his eyes like
sunlight. "Hell, you tell me. You're the one who kept her
out of the courtroom."
"Well, somebody was gunning for her. Are they still?"
Lucia shrugged. "I don't know. But I prefer to be careful."
"Good plan."
They moved out into the hall, and he suddenly stopped
walking. She looked back at him with eyebrows raised. He
surveyed the corridor, the people coming and going as the
day began to come alive. The glow of dawn outside the
courthouse windows.
His eyes had a wet shine to them. Tears. "McCarthy?" she
asked gently.
He took in a breath. "Yeah. Freedom. Kind of took me by
surprise," he said. "Give me a second."
"Take your time," she murmured. She knew how it felt.
There had been a dark time in her life โ pitch-black, in
fact โ when she hadn't been sure she'd ever see daylight
again. The emotional impact of realizing that the trauma
was over, that you were freeโฆit could be overwhelming. It
wasn't relief. It was terror.
When you get used to the dark, the light can burn you. He
blinked, and smiled slightly. "Sorry," he said, and
cleared his throat. "So. Want to have breakfast with an
excon? I mean, it's not like we're not acquainted already.
Fifteen hours of interviews has to count for something."
First, second and third dates, most likely. She cleared
her own throat, banishing the thought. "I'd love to."
"Got to confess, I'm low on funds."
"They confiscated your ill-gotten gains?" She made it an
ironic question, not quite accusatory. He met her eyes
without shame.
"I asked them to," he said. "Wanted to start out fresh."
"Ah. My treat, then."
He offered her the crook of his elbow. She put a hand in
it, and they resumed their walk down the long paneled
hallway, to the free world.
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