The Last Witness

Chapter Nineteen

Mason awoke to find his aunt Claire sitting in one of the chairs next to the sofa. She was reading the newspaper, and sipping coffee from a stainless-steel mug. The coffee's aroma was strong enough to wake the dead.

"You didn't answer your phone at home last night or this morning, so I thought I might find you here," she said.

Mason sat up slowly, running his tongue over his teeth to brush away the sour remnants of the previous night. Mason enjoyed an hour or two spent sleeping on a sofa while pretending to watch a football game on a dreary winter day. It was time well spent, especially if the Kansas City Chiefs were slogging their way through another mediocre season. Sleeping the entire night on the sofa in his office while doing battle with his demons was worse than no sleep at all. Mason stretched out his arms, and legs in a spread-eagle salute, and then let his limbs flop back onto the sofa, resuming his torso's flaccid posture. He felt trampled.

"You didn't consider the possibility that some beautiful woman had taken me home to comfort her?" Mason asked. He pushed himself off the sofa, stepped around Claire, and stumbled toward the dry-erase board.

"Have you looked in the mirror?" she answered. "Anyone who picked you up would take you to the nearest shelter. Make that the nearest animal shelter. And don't bother with the board. I've been here long enough to read it, and the newspaper."

Mason changed course for the refrigerator next to his desk. He was surprised to find a bottle of orange juice.

Without looking up from her newspaper, Claire said, "You're welcome. By the way, the next time you decide to sleep in your office, lock the door, and don't leave a gun sitting on your desk. Put it under your pillow like all the other action heroes. Just don't shoot yourself in your sleep. That would be pathetic."

Mason settled into his desk chair, shook the bottle of orange juice, opened it, and gulped half of it before taking a bream.

"Any more advice?" he asked her.

"Sorry, I'm fresh out."

Claire read the newspaper, and Mason looked out the window, his back to her. His window faced west, and he could see the morning sun glancing brightly off the windows on the building across the street. The sun was still in the east, behind his building, a cold reminder that his was not the sunny side of the street.

"So," Claire said with as much neutrality as she could muster, "someone is trying to kill you again. That's why you have a gun. Who is it this time?"

She folded the newspaper, slapped it against her thighs to smooth out any wrinkles, and dropped it on the table in front of the sofa. The headline shouted back at her ex-cop bound over for murder. Mason swiveled around in his chair, drained the last of his orange juice, and banked the empty bottle off the wall, and into the wastebasket.

"Don't know," Mason answered.

Mason had often been amazed at his aunt's capacity to listen to the most outrageous stories of abuse told to her by her clients without betraying a hint of her own outrage. She had explained to Mason that her clients had enough emotion invested in their problems without seeing their lawyer lit up as well. He was glad that she employed the same detached interest as he told her about his New Year's Eve swim in the Missouri River.

"You could talk to Harry," she offered when he'd finished.

"Not this time," he told her. "You were right. It's too complicated."

"Can I help?"

Mason considered her offer. His love for her was as unconditional as hers was for him. She had been his anchor, his reality check. She had never waited for him to ask for her advice or help. She had given it whether he wanted it or not. That she had come to check on him, not demanded that he call Harry, not called Harry herself, and only gently berated him, underscored how delicate the situation was.

"There's too much going on here that I don't understand, and I don't want to be the last one to figure it out," he said. "The key players are connected as if they've been inbred. You could fill in one branch of the family tree for me. Tell me what happened between Harry and Blues."

"Why is that so important?" she asked.

"Harry thinks Blues got away with murder six years ago. He's using this case as payback. I think somebody knows that, and is using Harry to make sure Blues is convicted. I can't go to Harry unless I know what happened."

Claire studied the headline in the newspaper. It was a silent sound bite, incapable of telling the whole story. Yet it was enough for most people, and all that many would read or remember.

"Harry and Blues had been partners for a couple of years," she began. "Harry had taught Blues at the Academy, helped him along when he first got on the street, and recommended him for detective when Blues took the exam. Harry always said that Blues had the best instincts of any detective he'd ever seen, but that he also had one of the worst weaknesses."

"He used violence too easily?" Mason asked.

"It wasn't just that," Claire answered. "The violence came too easily to Blues. He didn't get worked up or enraged. He just did it, and went on. Harry didn't know why. He worried that Blues had a dead spot that made it too easy to kill. It scared Harry because he didn't want Blues to get it wrong. Someone would die."

"So why didn't Harry wash him out at the Academy? Why promote his career, and take him on as his partner?"

"I met Harry for the first time at the Nelson Art Gallery. He was sitting on a bench in the Chinese Temple in front of the statue of the Water and Moon Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva was a Buddhist god that was supposed to protect the faithful from catastrophe. That's what Harry does. That's why he volunteered to go to Vietnam. That's why he became a cop. That's why he took Blues as his partner. He'd seen and done some pretty awful things in Vietnam. Things he barely talked about; just said that they had happened. He'd seen men who had that dead spot, and he thought he could keep it from happening to Blues."

"That doesn't explain what happened with the shooting."

"It was a drug bust. They had an informant who claimed that some Colombians had brought in a substantial quantity of cocaine, and were setting up shop on the East Side. Blues was the first one through the door of the apartment. The Colombians were waiting for them. Blues and Harry both would have been dead if they hadn't been wearing Kevlar vests. Two of the Colombians were killed."

"I remember when it happened. Harry wouldn't talk about it, but it was all over the newspaper. The woman Blues shot was a prostitute who had a gun," Mason said.

"She was in the back of the apartment. Blues went room to room. He heard a noise. It was Harry's nightmare come true. Blues said he thought the girl had a gun, but she didn't, though she wasn't innocent either."

"Who was she?"

"She wasn't a prostitute. She was the daughter of a very wealthy man who'd used her father's money as seed capital for her drug business. She had hired the Colombians to bring in the cocaine. The father settled for Blues's badge rather than have the story made public. And there was some question about whether the father knew where his money was going."

"That's a pretty tough story to cover up."

"Not if your lawyer was Jack Cullan."

Mason came out of his chair. "Harry and Blues went along with the cover-up?"

"They didn't know. She didn't have any ID on her. Later, Harry and Blues were fed the prostitute story. The Internal Affairs investigation was kept quiet. Blues was given a choice to resign or be prosecuted. It was a bluff that worked because no one wanted to hang the department's dirty laundry in public, including Harry and Blues. Blues took the deal."

"How do you know what happened if Harry and Blues don't know?"

Claire gathered her coat, finished her coffee, and stood up, facing Mason. "I represented the wife when she divorced her husband six months later. He'd told her what had happened, and she couldn't spend another moment under his roof. She told me."

"What she told you was confidential. Why are you telling me?"

"The purpose of the attorney-client privilege is to protect the client. My client committed suicide last month. The privilege didn't do her much good."

"Did you tell Harry?"

"Yes. I told him this morning. I should have told both of you sooner. I'm sorry."

"What did Harry say when you told him?"

"He thinks Blues found out that Jack Cullan had cost him his badge and had been waiting for a chance to get even. He thinks Blues used the incident at the bar with Bern Harrell as cover."

"That makes no sense. Blues has been charged with the murder, not Beth."

"Harry says that Blues got careless when he left a fingerprint in Cullan's study. Otherwise, Beth Harrell would have been the number-one suspect. Harry thinks Blues is using you to get him off. Harry says that you'll try to convince the jury that Beth Harrell killed Cullan."

"That's a hell of a risk for Blues to take."

"Harry says that a man with a dead spot takes risks no one else would consider."

"Does Harry know that you've told me all of this?"

"He asked me to tell you. He's afraid that Blues will take you down with him. He wants you to convince Blues to take a plea."

"I'm Blues's lawyer, not his coconspirator. How can Blues take me anywhere except to the poorhouse when he doesn't pay my fee?"

Claire walked over to Mason's board, picked up the black marker, and drew a large circle around Mason's question why kill me? "Someone knows the answer to that question, Lou. Don't take too long to find out."