Chasing The Dead

Chapter Nine

The public defender’s offices were on the twentieth and twenty-first floors of Oak Tower at Eleventh and Oak, one of Kansas City’s first skyscrapers. The original fourteen stories were doubled in 1929, and in 1974 the terra-cotta exterior was blanketed in stucco, a sad example of style buried by progress. Its days as class A office space long behind it, Oak Tower was perfect for public defenders, who didn’t have to worry about impressing clients. Lawyers who dealt in life and death had bigger issues than the pale rose paint chipping off the walls and the threadbare carpet lining the halls.

On her drive downtown the next morning, Alex bounced back and forth between how Judge West had blackmailed her with the photograph and how Hank Rossi had dissected her psyche. Both had unnerved her in spite of the show she’d put on, leaving her feeling raw inside and out.

When Alex got off the elevator, no one was at the receptionist’s desk, the secretaries’ stations were abandoned, and the halls were empty. She’d started toward her office when Grace Canfield came out of the bathroom, wiping her swollen red eyes with a tissue.

Grace was one of the investigators in the PD’s office. Middle-aged and stout, her black hair cut short and spiky and flecked with gray, she was a lifelong resident of Kansas City’s east side, home to many of the African American clients Alex defended. She went to church with their families, worked their cases, and went to their funerals, giving her more street cred than any lawyer in the office; even the gangbangers called her Miz Grace.

“Grace, why are you crying? Where is everybody?”

“Oh, Alex,” she said, fighting back tears, her voice catching. “It’s Robin. She was killed last night in a car accident. They’re all in the conference room.”

Robin Norris had spent thirty years in the public defender’s office, the last twenty running the operation. She hired Alex straight out of law school, raising her from a pup, as Robin put it after Alex won a case no one thought could have been won, and she took Alex back after the Dwayne Reed case when everyone bet she wouldn’t. Her death left Alex numb, the reality not yet registering. Though she’d heard the words, part of her brain refused to accept the news, believing instead that someone must have made a mistake. She slumped against the wall, wide-eyed and gut punched.

“What happened?”

“She was out somewhere up north and lost control of her car and ran off the road. She was dead at the scene.”

“Oh, my God!”

Grace sniffed and straightened, wiping her hands against her sides. “I know. I know, but if I don’t get to work and get my mind on something else, I’m going to spend the whole day crying, and that’s only gonna make me feel worse.”

Alex went to the conference room, pushing the wooden doors open and stepping into a sea of sorrow. People were hugging as they sobbed or staring out the windows, dazed and mute. Others were milling around the room, lost. Alex moved from one to another, squeezing a hand, rubbing a back, and giving a hug, tears rolling off her cheeks, everyone muttering that it couldn’t be real, that it didn’t make sense, and that it wasn’t fair, all of it true.

Looking out on the city, she saw the muddy Missouri River rolling past the north side of downtown on its way to St. Louis. A century and a half ago, bluffs a hundred feet high hid the view of the river until ancestral Kansas Citians carved through them, laying the streets that now ran two hundred feet beneath where she stood. Microscopic people glided by Oak Tower, as distant from her and her loss as those who had dug their way from the river. Robin’s death had stopped time for her and everyone else in the room, the rest of the world swirling around them, sweeping past without a second glance.

“Can I have your attention, everyone.”

Alex turned around to see the woman who had joined them. She was slender, her sandy hair cut in a bob. Half a head shorter than Alex, and in her forties, she was dressed in a dark-green pantsuit from the Hillary Clinton collection. On Alex’s beauty scale, Bonnie was at the top and everyone else was ordinary, though this woman was ordinary-plus in spite of the pantsuit, the strength in her face and the glint in her hazel eyes setting her apart.

“My name is Meg Adler. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I work in the St. Louis PD’s office-at least I did until I got the call about Robin. I caught the seven a.m. flight on Southwest and got here as quickly as I could. I’ve been assigned to take Robin’s place-not that anyone can really do that-until a permanent replacement is chosen. I know what a difficult time this is for everybody, but-and I don’t mean to sound callous-we’ve got clients, cases, and trials. We’ll let you know about funeral arrangements as soon as we can. I’ll be stopping by each of your offices so we can get better acquainted. In the meantime, I know this may sound corny, but from what I’ve been told about Robin I think it’s true-let’s get back to work because that’s what she’d want us to do.”

Alex took the long way to her office so that she could walk by Robin’s, lingering in the open doorway, imagining Robin sitting behind her desk, glasses halfway down her nose, engrossed in her latest bureaucratic tangle. She’d given up the courtroom to be an administrator, keeping the office afloat with the budgetary equivalent of bubblegum and Band-Aids.

The credenza behind her desk was crowded with framed photographs of her five children, a timeline of their lives. She wore last year’s styles, buying them on sale to save money for her kids, did her own hair and nails, and told everyone else how great they looked. Fifty-five years old, she’d earned every wrinkle and every extra pound that she wished she could lose. She was a single mother, divorced when her oldest child was not yet ten, her ex-husband long removed from their lives. Alex had always marveled at Robin’s grit, raising two families, the kids at home and the people at work. Thinking of both families made her heart hurt.

There were a few nonfamily photographs tucked in among the rest. One showed Robin shaking hands with the governor, one showed her in the bleachers at a Royals game after she caught a home run ball, arms stretched to the sky in celebration, and another, taken six months ago, showed her receiving an award at the annual Missouri State Bar Association meeting at a hotel in St. Louis. Judge Anthony Steele, who’d recently been elevated from circuit court trial judge to judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals, presented an award to Robin for outstanding service. In the photograph, the two of them were shaking hands and smiling for the camera. Alex had been there. True to form, Robin gave all the credit for the award to the lawyers and staff in her office.

Alex smiled at the memory, not for the award but for what she saw later that night in the hotel bar. Robin and Judge Steele were huddled together in a dark corner, rubbing shoulders, their faces inches apart, oblivious to anyone else. She had kidded Robin about it the next morning, Robin telling Alex she was being ridiculous not only because Judge Steele was married but because both the judge and his wife, Sonia, were her close friends. But she was blushing nonetheless.

Though Robin never confided in Alex about her personal relationships, Alex knew that she didn’t live a cloistered life. She and Bonnie had seen her around town with different men over the years, none of them Judge Steele and none of them wearing wedding rings.

Looking at the photograph now, Alex could understand if they had hooked up. Judge Steele was silver haired, with sparkling blue eyes and the kind of rugged good looks that improved with age, and Robin, in addition to being attractive, had the serenity, self-confidence, and zest for life that any man would have appreciated. And they were out of town, away from prying eyes, sharing the perfect cocktail for a one-night fling, the hell with marriage and friendship.

Knowing that Robin was dead made Alex wish that Robin did have that fling, even if she couldn’t imagine Robin as a home-wrecking adulterer. She wanted to remember her alive and passionate, not lying dead in the wreckage of her car.

For Alex, Robin was the public defender, one not existing without the other. Robin didn’t hesitate to criticize or praise, doing the former in private and the latter in public, telling complainers to suck it up. The only time Alex asked her when she planned to retire, Robin scoffed, saying she’d die on the job. And now she had. Hand at her throat, Alex shuddered and squelched a sob, hearing Robin’s voice telling her to suck it up.

Meg Adler was waiting for Alex when she got to her office, sitting in a chair on the visitor’s side of the desk, a file in her lap, and thumbing through messages on her iPhone.

“Oh,” Alex said, her voice dropping an octave, her shoulders rounding, Meg’s presence in her office a sharp reminder that Robin really was dead.

Meg looked up. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to camp out, but you’re first on my list.”

Alex nodded, hesitating in the doorway for a moment before walking past Meg and settling into her desk chair.

“Shitty way to start the day, huh?” Meg said.

“Not as shitty as it is for Robin’s kids.”

“Amen to that.”

“Did you know Robin?”

Meg shrugged. “Not well. Saw her at meetings, that kind of thing. She was very well regarded. I do know that.”

Alex knew it wasn’t rational, but she couldn’t help but resent Meg’s presence. Not because Meg had said or done anything wrong but because Robin should have been sitting in the chair, not Meg. So she didn’t respond, letting Meg carry their conversation.

Meg cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t like this any better than you do. No, that’s not right. I can’t possibly hate this as much as you do, so I won’t pretend that I do. I’ve been here for less than an hour and already I’ve gotten the wicked-stepmother look from half a dozen people. I get that, and believe it or not, I don’t take it personally. I’m just doing my job, and it will be better for all of us if you mourn Robin without taking it out on me.”

Alex took a breath and let it out, rubbing her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that this is all pretty fresh.”

“And raw, both of which I realize are horrible understatements.”

“Yeah. So what can I do for you?”

“You’re the senior attorney in the office, been here longer than anyone else now that Robin is gone. I don’t know how long it will take to find her replacement. All I know is that it won’t be me. In the meantime, I could use your support.”

“Sure. I’ll spread the word that you’re not the wicked stepmother.”

Meg smiled as she rose. “Great. How about we have a drink after work one day this week. Maybe do that bonding thing all the management gurus get so mushy about.”

The tightness in Alex’s belly began to ease. “Yeah, sure.”

Meg pointed to the picture of Bonnie on Alex’s desk. “She your other?”

“Yep.”

“Well, lucky you.” She was halfway out the door when she turned around, tossing the file on Alex’s desk. “I found this on Robin’s desk with a Post-it with your name on it. Guess it’s your case.”

Ice shot through Alex’s gut as she read the caption on the file, State v. Jared Bell. She laced her fingers together, afraid she’d shake if she picked it up.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” she said.