Deadlocked

Chapter 39

There were times in a case when Mason knew he was on the verge of making sense out of the contradictory, indifferent, and depraved impulses that led people to lie, cheat, and kill. It was an urgent, irresistible sensation that reminded him of when he used to fly down the long, steep, sweeping curve of Ward Parkway from Fifty-fifth Street to the Plaza.

It was the summer before his junior year in high school when the only thing he could drive was a ten-speed bike. In those days before the Plaza went upscale, Sears occupied a four-story building on the west end of Nichols Road, the shopping district's main drag. Mason worked on every floor and in every department from electrical to women's hose, setting a record for the most men's cologne sold the day before Father's Day.

Ward Parkway was a wide boulevard divided by a lush, green median. South of Fifty-fifth, it carried traffic on a level plane to the homes of the urban landed gentry. North of Fifty-fifth Street it became a bike rider's bobsled run, fast and furious. Mason would kick his bike into high gear just before he crossed Fifty-fifth Street, churning the pedals, making his spokes blur as he launched himself down the stretch he called "The Chute."

He hunched over the handlebars, molding his body to the frame, elbows tight to his sides like a jockey on the home stretch. His necktie whipped over his shoulder, the wind digging tears out of the corners of his eyes as he leaned into the curve, pounding the pedals, shooting past cars on his left. He flew, skinny tires spinning over the pavement, teasing gravity and fate, knowing that a misplaced pebble or an unseen crack in the pavement could throw him under the tires of the cars chasing him.

When he came out of the chute and the road flattened again, he straightened in his saddle, his arm raised, his fist clenched in triumph, as he slowed for a leisurely finish alongside Brush Creek. It was his first memory of testing himself against things that threatened him.

The need to measure himself, the need to feel the heat, the urge to raise his clenched fist in victory had driven him to take chances others wouldn't. Sometimes it made the difference for a client threatened by a more powerful adversary-the state. Sometimes it made the difference when the adversary was personal and threatened him. Sometimes it raised the stakes too high, as it had with Abby.

When a case was about to come together like a double helix, he felt like he was flying down that hill again-that if he could only pedal a little faster, he'd come out of the chute like a rocket. He couldn't resist that sensation. Harry's call should have kicked him into high gear. Instead, it left him at the top of the hill, backpedaling and afraid.

He was afraid of what he might learn from Judith Bartholow. The accident investigation report had all but accused his father of killing himself and Mason's mother. How could his father have done such a thing, not just to them, but to him? Mason's throat filled as he searched the picture of his family for answers, finding none. He searched himself for anger, pity, and pain, finding only fear. What would he learn and what would it matter?

He turned the picture of the groundbreaking over, looking at it again. Whitney King was two years old in that picture, his father building for his future, his mother depending on it. He propped the picture alongside the one of him and his parents. Were they so different then? Neither picture hinted at any future calamities. They were, after all, only snapshots.

Saturday morning dawned bright and muggy, the humidity making the sky fuzzy. The heat wave may have broken, but it was still summer in Kansas City which meant that each day could turn ugly. The heat and humidity could make the air stand still or it could whip it into wild storm cells filled with tornadoes and microbursts that pulverized anything in its path.

Mason and Tuffy compromised on morning exercise, settling on a walk in Loose Park. In spite of their easy pace, he was dripping and she was panting when they headed for home.

A neighbor from across the street stood at the end of her driveway, dressed in her bathrobe, the morning paper clutched under her arm, glaring at Mason as he and the dog made their way up the block toward her. Her last name was Irwin. Her first name was something or other. She and her husband had two small children she had forbidden to enter Mason's yard and she had eagerly offered her opinion to the press that it was terrible to live so close to a killer. Her uncombed hair looked like snakes in flight, highlighting the fierceness in her pinched face and burning eyes as she waited with crossed arms for Mason to reach her.

"Mr. Mason," she said, stepping onto the sidewalk.

"Good morning, Mrs. Irwin," he answered. Mason wasn't much for formality, especially with his neighbors, but she had chosen the language and he went along rather than call her "something or other."

"What are you going to do?"

Tuffy sniffed at the woman's feet and circled back to Mason's side. Mason held on to her collar. "About what?"

"About all of this?" she answered. "About all of us. I'm afraid to let my children out of the house. We want you to sell your house, move away, and leave us alone!"

Mason sighed, looking up and down the street. "Who, exactly, is the we you are talking about?"

She wrapped her hand around the end of the rolled newspaper, taking a defensive step back. "Why, all of us," she stammered. "The whole block would be better off without. . without all of this."

"And what if I'm innocent, Mrs. Irwin?" he asked her. "What then? If I let you run me out of the house I've lived in all of my life and I'm innocent, what will you tell your kids? Who should they be afraid of then?"

She sputtered for a moment, backing up more, turning away. "I'm calling a lawyer today!"

"Let me know if you need a referral," Mason said.

Judith Bartholow lived in Leawood, a suburb that hugged the Kansas side of the state line with Missouri. Originally conceived as an exclusive enclave with restrictive covenants in deeds that would have prevented Mason or any other Jew or any African American from buying a house, it had grown into a prosperous municipality with demographics that made retailers foam at the mouth. The restrictive covenants were in the city's dustbin, though there still wasn't much color in the cul-de-sac.

An hour after Mason's chat with his neighbor, he turned onto Judith's block, cruising past large Country French and Tudor spreads with well-manicured lawns all being watered with carefully choreographed sprinkler systems. He wanted to get a feel for her before he decided what to do. Seeing where she lived was the best he could come up with on a Saturday morning, except maybe summoning the nerve to knock at her door.

He imagined her sitting at her kitchen table, having breakfast, opening the door when he knocked. She would greet him with open arms, apologizing for lost time, making up for it with answers to his questions. He knew it never happened that way and wouldn't this time, assuming he knocked at all.

Her subdivision was fairly new, carved out of a farmstead owned by one of the city's blue chip families that cashed in on the insatiable demand of people who wanted to live large. Built close to I-435, it was a magnet for the wealthy and those who thought they should be.

He parked in front of the house next to Judith's two-story beige Country French stone and stucco, its front windows catching the morning sun, bouncing the light back like diamonds. Multicolored summer flowers bloomed along the precisely landscaped perimeter shaded by mature trees the developer had been careful to preserve when the house was built.

Mason had a view of the driveway and three-car garage on the side of the house. The garage was open and empty except for a fleet of bicycles that occupied one of the three bays. A Mercedes SUV was parked in the driveway where a blonde, athletic-looking woman who he guessed was near his age was loading kids into the middle row of seats. Golf clubs, swim toys, and tennis rackets were loaded into the rear.

Mason double-checked the address Harry had given him. He had the right house, but he doubted that Judith Bartholow was the right woman. The woman he was looking for had some connection to his parents. That's why she had visited their grave and that's why she had to be older than the soccer mom he was spying on.

He was about to give up when an older woman came running out of the garage carrying another tennis racket, handing it to the younger woman who rewarded her with a kiss on the cheek before gunning the Mercedes down the driveway and past Mason like he was invisible. The older woman stood in the driveway, looking directly at Mason and not at the SUV disappearing behind him. She covered her heart with her hand, her shoulders drooping as she turned and quickly went back inside.

Nothing about the woman was familiar to Mason, though she acted as if she had recognized him. All he could tell was that she had dark hair, a slender frame, and a family. She could be anyone, but she wasn't, not if she had visited his parents' grave more often in the last two weeks than Mason had in the last two years.

The garage had room for another car that wasn't there. Mason assumed that the younger woman's husband was not at home, leaving the older woman alone in the house. He sat in his car debating whether to leave or knock on her door; the issue settled when he realized he was massaging the scar over his heart. The ache he felt wouldn't go away that easily.

The older woman opened the door almost the instant he knocked, as if she had watched him walk from his car to the house. Mason looked over her shoulder into the wide entry hall, a spiral staircase leading upstairs, the marble floor gleaming beneath a shiny brass chandelier. There was a long, low table along the wall behind her, a plant set in a clear glass vase, smooth stones like the one on his parents' grave lining the bottom.

The woman's oval face was troubled, her cheeks drawn; her deep brown eyes stretched open, darting glances to the street. She was taller than she'd looked from a distance, though half a foot shorter than Mason, and old enough to have known his parents. She was wearing khaki slacks and a white blouse open at the neck; a simple gold chain was her only jewelry. Her hair was too dark to be natural at her age, but apart from that concession to vanity, she'd trusted the years to treat her fairly and she wasn't disappointed. Even without makeup on a Saturday morning, he sensed a woman who'd turned heads in her youth. She straightened when she saw him, adding backbone to his instant image of her, though it wasn't enough to shake off her anxiety.

"My name is Lou Mason."

The light went out of her eyes for an instant, the color in her face fading along with it. She started to close the door without a word.

"Please don't," Mason said. "I'd just like to talk with you for a few minutes."

"I know who you are. I watch the news and I've seen your picture in the newspaper," she said. "I should call the police."

"I do think you know who I am, but not because of that. You saw me in my car when you were on the driveway. I had the feeling you recognized me then even though I've never seen you before."

"I told you," she said. "I saw you on television."

"It's been hard not to," Mason said. "If that was all, you wouldn't have been waiting at the door when I knocked. You would have called the police if you were frightened or you wouldn't have opened the door in the first place. But you opened the door so quickly you must have watched me come up the walk. I think you were waiting for me."

"You're mistaken. I was on my way upstairs when you knocked. That's all," she said, edging back.

"My parents, John and Linda Mason, were killed in a car accident forty years ago. You visited their graves and left a rock on their headstone like the ones in that vase. I'd like to know why."

The woman glanced over her shoulder, then back to Mason. "I don't know anything about that," she said.

Mason ignored her denial. "When a Jew visits someone's grave, they leave a stone behind to show that they remember the person who died. Sheffield Cemetery is a long drive from here. That's a lot of remembering after forty years."

The woman dipped her head. "I don't even own a car," she said, her denial weakening.

"The Mercedes you drove to the cemetery is registered in Judith Bartholow's name, but you don't look like the SUV type. Is Judith your daughter?"

"Leave me and my family alone," she said, closing the door. Mason propped it open with his hand.

"Please," he said. "I was only three years old when they were killed. It was a car wreck, but I know that it was more than that. You must have been close to them. You must know what really happened."

She studied him, giving nothing away, offering less. "I'm not what you think," she said harshly.

"You don't know what I think," he said.

"Oh, but I can imagine after what Claire must have told you all these years."

"She hasn't told me anything, not even your name, not even that you exist," Mason said.

The woman's eyes filled, her chest swelling as she twisted the chain around her neck.

"Then leave it that way. I don't exist," she said, closing the door.