Deadlocked

Chapter 18

It was one-fifteen on Friday morning when Mason woke Samantha Greer, rousting her out of bed. Samantha peered through the peephole of her front door, opening up, hair tousled, lips tight. She stood in her entry hall, keeping Mason outside, a purple tank top barely covering her panties, a pistol in one hand, close against her thigh.

"Who died?" she asked. "And it better be someone important, like the president."

Mason stared at her without meaning to; her breasts were escaping from her top, one ankle locked behind the other, her gun hand up on her hip, the other hand cocked against the door frame. Samantha caught his look, covering up with her arms, squaring her legs as Mason glanced away.

"Sam," a male voice called from upstairs. "What's going on? Who's there?"

"Nothing and nobody. Go back to sleep, Phil," she said over her shoulder, leaving the gun on a table in the hall, joining Mason outside as she pulled the door closed behind her.

Samantha lived in a neighborhood north of the Missouri River. The river came down to Kansas City from Omaha, bending east toward St. Louis. The Kansas River cut across the plains, pouring into the Missouri at the river's bend. The two rivers were geographic quirks that divided the region into thirds. One-third was Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. Kansas City south of the Missouri, together with the suburbs of Johnson County, Kansas, made up the second slice. The part of the city north of the Missouri, called the Northland, was the last piece. In a tribute to tribalism, each region looked down on the other like a stepchild.

Samantha's subdivision was off of North Sixty-fourth Street, middle-class split levels and ranches. Not the kind of neighborhood where women hung out on their front steps in the wee hours, dressed only in their underwear, with or without guns.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what? Calling you a nobody?" she asked.

"No. For not shooting me. This is important."

"I'm listening," she said.

Mason explained, "I've got a missing client."

"And I've got office hours," she answered, turning around.

"Don't, Sam. Not so fast," he said, his hand on her arm. "Hear me out."

Samantha looked at him, shaking her head. "Okay. Reader's Digest version." Mason told her about Mary Kowalczyk. Samantha shook her head again, drawing figure eights with her toe.

"Your client give you a key to her house?" she asked Mason.

"Not exactly," he answered.

"This isn't a commercial for Hertz, counselor. Representing someone gives you permission to overcharge, not break and enter."

"You find Mary and ask her if she wants to file a complaint," Mason said. "I'll plead guilty."

Samantha puffed her cheeks, letting out the air, not hiding her annoyance. "Lou, you know how these things work. No one is a missing person for at least twenty-four hours. Adults with no history of mental illness or disability who don't come home are not missing persons for a lot longer than that. You're not giving me anything to get excited about. Who would want to hurt your client?"

"Whitney King. He knows Mary hired me to get a pardon for her son."

Holding up one hand, reaching for the door with the other, Samantha said, "Do you have any idea how crazy that is? A jury found King innocent. Getting a pardon for someone who was just executed for two brutal murders from a governor who denied him clemency and is running for reelection isn't exactly something Whitney King would lose any sleep over. Besides, he's probably a big campaign contributor and the governor cares a whole lot more about money from the living than he does pardons for the dead."

"I'll tell you what's crazy, Sam," Mason said, grabbing the handle on the door. "The jurors in King's case take a vow of silence and then start turning up dead."

"What are you talking about?" she said, sharpening her question.

"I'm talking about four out of twelve jurors who are dead. Two of them in accidents that probably weren't, and two of them shot in the face, including Sonni Efron. I haven't tracked down the rest of the jury yet."

"You may be certifiable this time, Lou, if you want me to believe that Whitney King fixed the jury in his murder trial fifteen years ago, then turned around and started killing the jurors to keep them quiet."

Mason smiled. Samantha's scenario fleshed out his own ill-formed suspicions. "Doesn't sound so crazy when you say it out loud."

"It's stupid!" Samantha said. "In the first place, the kid was seventeen at the time. How's he going to fix anything, including his lunch? In the second place, why kill the jurors after all these years if they've kept quiet. And, if they haven't, once he kills one or two of them, the rest are going to fall all over each other talking so we'll protect them. None of which has a damn thing to do with your client, I might add."

"Sure it does," Mason said. "If Mary and Nick are out of the picture, I've got no reason to stir things up. It all stays quiet."

"So now you're telling me that Nick Byrnes is missing too?"

The door opened before Mason could answer. Phil, the voice from upstairs, handed Samantha a cordless phone. He was a few inches shy of Mason's six feet, soft in the middle, losing his hair. He was wearing an open terrycloth robe over boxer shorts and house slippers.

"It's for you," he said. Samantha took the phone, walking into her front yard, cupping her hand over the mouthpiece. Phil turned to Mason, "Phone rings more in the middle of the night than it did with my ex-wife, and she was a doctor, but at least no one knocked on the door."

"Sweet dreams," Mason told him as Phil trudged up the stairs, scratching his backside, the back of his robe bobbing like a tail.

Samantha cut small circles in the yard, Mason not able to hear her end of the conversation, moon shadows dancing through a red oak, splashing at her feet. Her call finished, she tucked the phone under one arm, chewing her lip, eyes narrowed, like she couldn't decide what to do with Mason. Thank him or smack him.

"We found your client," she said, arms folded over her chest again.

Mason crossed the short distance to Samantha, his shadow enveloping hers, his pulse jumping, knowing that cops didn't call each other with good news in the middle of the night.

"Where is she?" Mason asked.

"Not Mary. Nick. He's in the hospital."

"What happened?"

"Whitney King shot him."