Deadlocked

Chapter 37

Mason emerged from the courtroom four hours later surrounded by a half-moon gauntlet of reporters, cameras flashing and questions exploding in his face. The reporters swarmed over him, knowing he'd been inside too long just to have refused to testify. He spotted Dixon Smith behind the crowd, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed like he was wearing a straitjacket; his head was tilted back, eyes roaming the hallway for an emergency exit.

Sherri Thomas pushed to the front of the pack, her cameraman poised at her shoulder. She wore her blonde hair cut close to her chin and her suit cut close to her implants, aiming her looks at her key demographics.

"You were in there a long time, Mr. Mason. Does that mean you didn't refuse to testify?" she asked.

Dixon Smith knifed through the crowd, grabbing Mason by the elbow, raising his hand and flashing a smile before Mason could respond.

"Mr. Mason is cooperating with the process," Smith replied, not giving Sherri anything she could use.

"You mean he didn't take the Fifth?" Sherri asked.

"I mean he's cooperating with the process," Smith answered.

"Then let him answer our questions. We're part of the process too," Sherri said.

"Mr. Mason is innocent," Smith said. "We'll try his case in the courtroom, not the press. That's all we have to say at this time."

Holding onto Mason, Smith shouldered through the pack of reporters who followed them to the elevator, blocking them from coming along for the ride down, waiting for the doors to close before he unloaded on his client.

"Tell me what happened in there," Smith began, as he punched the button for the basement floor and paced inside the car. "And make it good because I've spent the last four hours telling myself that you aren't stupid enough to have really thought you could convince the grand jury that you were innocent."

Smith stopped moving, hands on his hips, daring Mason to disagree. Mason took a deep breath, looked away and let the air out, his answer evaporating in the silence.

Smith squeezed his chin like he'd rather rip it off than cut Mason any slack. "Tell me," he continued, "you didn't look at those twelve people and convince yourself that everything would be okay if you just told them what happened since they looked like fair minded, reasonable people who would believe you because it was so obvious you were telling the truth and the prosecutor was full of shit to have even taken up their time with his bogus story that you shot Sandra Connelly with your own fucking gun! Tell me that you didn't do that!"

Smith banged his hand against the elevator wall as the door opened. Mason walked past his lawyer into the basement corridor that led to the exit reserved for attorneys and courthouse personnel. Smith caught up to him, planted his

hand on Mason's shoulder and whirled him around.

"Tell me!"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Mason said quietly, biting off the words.

"Really?" Smith asked. "A good idea? Why?"

"Because," Mason answered, "I didn't kill her."

"Like that makes a damn bit of difference, man," Smith said, releasing his grip on Mason's shoulder. He straightened Mason's lapels, the exaggerated gesture helping him calm down. "So," he continued as if they were talking about their golf game, "how did it go?"

Mason pursed his lips, stuck his hands in his pants pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "Shitty. I fucked up. It was a bad idea. Ortiz worked me over pretty good. He punched enough holes in my story that I was ready to indict me. I think the only reason he quit was that he got tired. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize to me, man," Smith said. "I've still got a life."

Mason slumped against the wall. "Do I need a new lawyer?" he asked.

"Not until your money runs out."

Mason asked, "What do I do now?"

"I'd tell you to go home and clean out your sock drawer and let me do my job, except I know that you won't. I'd tell you to get a rabbi and start praying, but you won't put your faith in anyone but yourself. So the only thing I can tell you is whatever you do, don't make it any harder for me," Smith said.

Mason perked up at Smith's suggestion. "Maybe I'll get a priest instead of a rabbi."

"You planning on converting to the pope's religion or meddling some more in my case?" Smith asked.

"Just hedging my bets in case there's more than one way to get to heaven."

Mason was resigned to his coming indictment for murder, his testimony sealing the deal for the prosecutor. At least Dixon Smith had given up trying to keep him on the sidelines. He was caught in the middle of a mess he'd made and he was the only one who could clean it up. As good as Smith was, waiting to be vindicated at trial wasn't an option. Ortiz's conviction rate was better than 90 percent. Adding in Mason's testimony boosted Ortiz's chances even higher. Relying on those odds made him feel like a patient with a terminal disease hoping for a miracle.

Whenever a case closed in on him with suffocating confusion, he started over. He'd done that when he wiped his dry erase board clean, putting the players back on the board. That exercise ignited his suspicion of Father Steve, fueled by his recovered memory that Sandra's killer had smelled of smoke. Dixon Smith had doused that theory, reminding Mason that paranoia and desperation revealed paranoia and desperation more often than they revealed the truth.

On the other hand, he conceded as he power walked to his car, paranoia and desperation were damn good motivators to get out of his office and back on the street where he could find some real answers. He rolled the windows down, letting his thoughts circulate with the breeze, and drove while he clicked off what he knew, what he believed, and what he didn't know but had to find out.

He knew that Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes had been murdered by either Ryan Kowalczyk or Whitney King, or both. He believed that Ryan was innocent and King was guilty; one boy executed, the other free. He didn't know how to prove it.

He knew that Father Steve had told Mary Kowalczyk that her son had confessed to the murders minutes before his execution. He believed that the priest had lied to Mary. He didn't know why.

He knew that ten out of the twelve jurors who had acquitted King were dead, only two of them dying in their sleep after a life lived well and full. He believed that King had killed the other eight. He didn't know why.

He knew that the last two jurors, Janet Hook and Andrea Bracco, were unaccounted for. He believed they knew why the other jurors had been killed. He didn't know where they were.

He knew that Whitney King had shot Nick Byrnes. He believed that Father Steve was covering up for King, corroborating King's claim of self-defense. He didn't know why.

He knew that Mary Kowalczyk was missing and that Father Steve was the last person to have seen her. He believed the priest had lied to Mason when he said he didn't know what had happened to her. He didn't know why.

He knew that Sandra Connelly had been killed with his gun. He believed that she was killed to prevent her from telling him something about Whitney King that would have answered at least some of Mason's questions. He didn't know what that was.

The litany snaked into territory Mason hadn't expected. He had hired Dixon Smith because he believed that Smith had known what Sandra was about to tell him. Smith had denied knowing, giving Mason a story about whether King's mother belonged in a nursing home. Replaying Smith's story, Mason remembered one of the first lessons his aunt Claire had given him about practicing law.

"It's not that people lie to you," she said. "It's that they mix the truth up with lies until they can't tell the difference and neither can you."

Smith had pushed Mason to the sidelines and told him to keep his mouth shut to the grand jury. It was the same advice Mason would have given if Smith had been his client. It didn't matter. Paranoia and desperation were circulating in the air like night riders on a raid. A cold current whipsawed Mason. He didn't trust his lawyer and he didn't know why.

Mason parked in front of Mary Kowalczyk's house, the setting sun painting the picture window a burnt orange before giving way to a dusky violet shadow. It had been several days since Mason had stopped by. Newspapers soaked by the storm had disintegrated on the driveway; weeds sprouted through the cracks in the sidewalk. The house seemed to sag as if it missed Mary.

The mailbox was full, the contents kept dry by overhanging eaves. He shuffled the envelopes, checking the return addresses for any hints of what might have happened to her. There were no postcards or ransom notes. Her life was captured in a thin string of credit card solicitations, discount coupons, and utility bills that kept coming, indifferent to her fate.

He knocked on the front door and jiggled the knob, a combination of pretense and wishful thinking that roused no one. The back door was still unlocked, the air in the house musty and stale. He moved slowly through each room, looking for things he hadn't seen before, finding only his images of Mary.

He first saw her at her son's execution, a slight woman compressed by her grief. Two days later, at his office, she had shown a lock-jawed determination to see justice done for her son. The last time he'd seen her had been in this house surrounded by her memories, an ordinary woman in an ordinary place carrying an extraordinary burden.

She had asked then if he was going to drop her case. He promised her that he wouldn't. He had made the same promise to Nick, though he wasn't sure he was keeping either promise. Walking through Mary's house, he realized that he hadn't dropped their cases. He'd been kicked off of them by Sandra's murder, forced to worry more about saving himself than serving his clients.

Perhaps, he thought, Sandra hadn't been killed to keep her quiet. Maybe she'd been nothing more than a pawn in a deadly strategy to eliminate Mason as a threat. It would have been simpler just to kill him, though setting him up to take the fall for her murder would do just that. The state would kill Mason, making him the second innocent man to be executed for a murder committed by Whitney King. If Mason was right, Whitney King had redefined what it meant to work the system.

Everything in Mary's house was as it had been on Mason's first visit. Nothing was out of place. Her bed was made. Her clothes were undisturbed. The copy of People magazine was where Mason had left it after he had spent an evening waiting for Mary to come home. It all appeared as he had left it until he stopped at the aquarium to feed the fish, staring at the water until he realized the fish were gone.

"What the hell?" Mason said out loud.

The deep-sea diver stared back at him, alone in the tank.