Motion to Kill

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Sunday started with a steady rain pinging against Mason’s windows as he lay in bed long after Harry Ryman’s last questions stopped reverberating in his ears. It was welcome white noise, something to concentrate on when he felt Gino’s blood trickling down his arm again.

Bright flashes of light sparked against his eyelids when he clenched them against the jarring array of mortal images he had collected. Snapshots of Sullivan’s bloated corpse, Harlan’s gargoyle death mask, Julio’s pulverized face, and Gino’s mutilated eye dotted his mental landscape like unholy billboards.

He had slipped so easily from a world of rules where uncivil conduct toward an adversary was grounds for sanction to one in which blood ruled and the only sanction that mattered was death. He doubted whether he could return to his old world without a part of him remaining in his new one.

Dawn, gray and misty, found him pounding the jogging path around Loose Park, two blocks from home. Breathing raggedly, he tried to outrun the demons that had become his new best friends until he dropped facedown in the grass, cool and wet. The rain ran off him as he rolled onto his back, squinting skyward, looking for an opening in the clouds. With no epiphany in sight, he trudged home to find Anna Karelson camped on his doorstep, dry and nosy under her umbrella.

“For pity’s sake, Lou, you’d have to look better to die!”

She had bed head and she hadn’t found her mouthwash yet. Her candy-striped housecoat, loosely tied at the waist, was playing peek-a-boo with her heavy bosom.

“Early morning isn’t your best time of day either, Anna. It’s just the rain. I’m fine.”

“In a pig’s eye! My two-week-old bananas have better color than you do.”

“Look, Anna. I appreciate your concern, but I’m really okay. I promise to look better after I clean up and get some rest.”

“Well, Mr. Celebrity Lawyer, I wouldn’t plan on getting any rest today if I was you.”

“Meaning?”

“TV trucks and reporters have been banging on your door since you left this morning. I told them you took a cab to the airport. But they’ll be back; that’s for sure.”

Mason had one more rock to turn over before he was ready to go to the cops with Sullivan’s and Angela’s killer. If the media started shining their light on him now, he’d lose the privacy he needed.

“Anna, mind if I shower at your house?”

“Lou!” she said as she blushed and clutched her gown to her chest. “Jack’s still asleep!”

“Don’t worry, I’m a quiet scrubber.” He ran upstairs and grabbed clean clothes, a black Windbreaker, a Beaver Creek cap, and Vernon’s Bible. “Drive my car around the block behind your house,” Mason said when he came back and handed her the keys to the TR6. “I’ll be in the shower.”

Anna came in through her back door, dripping and cursing Mason as water ran off her neck and between her breasts. “Honestly, Lou, I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”

He was sitting at her kitchen table, tying his shoes while scanning the front page of the morning paper. McNamara would live. St. John announced that his investigation into organized crime would continue.

“That’s what neighbors are for, Anna. I owe you one.”

Mason glanced out her living room window. Camera crews for the local affiliates of the major networks were setting up shop in his front yard, their logos emblazoned on the rain poncho of each crew member. The clock was running on his fifteen minutes of fame.

Mason kissed Anna on the cheek and went out the back door, cutting across lawns to the next block and his car. It was eight o’clock, early for house calls. Mason hoped he wasn’t too late.