No way out

Chapter Twenty

Lucy called at seven-thirty Tuesday morning.

“I wake you?”

“Roxy and Ruby beat you by an hour and a half.”

“Simon told me you want to hire Roni Chase, give her a shot at one of our cases. Not that I’m surprised, but how’d that go?”

“Hard to tell.”

I gave her a rundown on my day and night.

“Some people are trouble magnets.”

“I don’t know. Maybe Roni was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twice.”

“Not her, moron. You. That’s what you get for trying to fix the world one messed-up kid at a time.”

“I thought I did okay with you, but keep giving me grief and I may have to rethink that.”

“Wait until I tell you who called me yesterday.”

“Who?”

“It’s a beautiful morning. Go outside and play with the dogs, and I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes.”

Fall in Kansas City is a season of gentle regret, evoking good times past and trials yet to come as summer surrenders to September and October’s fiery leaves drape the city in a fragile rainbow canopy back-lit by the sun, low and sharp, nature’s high-definition broadcast. November’s cold, cleansing rain readies us for December’s frozen, pale shroud, the promise of spring faint, distant but certain.

I waited for Lucy in the front yard, the dogs swirling around me, chasing squirrels because that was their job. They were unburdened by the past, oblivious to the future, living in the moment while I straddled all three dimensions.

Lucy was wrong about one thing. I wasn’t trying to fix the world one messed-up kid at a time. I was trying to fix me, put the pieces back together that were shattered when Kevin and Wendy died. There was nothing gentle about my regrets, nothing soothing about my dreams. Memories of my children were a saw-toothed reminder of broken promises. If I could help Roni Chase and if I could find Evan and Cara Martin, I might save myself.

My cell phone rang. It was Roni.

“Detective Carter wants to meet me at my house at three o’clock. Can you make it?”

“Sure. Don’t start without me.”

Lucy pulled up just as I finished talking with Roni.

“Had breakfast?” Lucy asked when I got in her car.

“Coffee.”

“Good. We’re going to the Classic Cup.”

“Because?”

“Because we’re having breakfast with Ethan Bonner.”

“Jimmy Martin’s lawyer?”

“One and the same.”

“Who’s buying?”

“He is. Jimmy told Bonner we came out to the Farm to see him on Sunday. Bonner called me yesterday afternoon. I thought he was going to chew me out, tell us to stay the hell away from his client. But he didn’t. Instead, he asked us to meet him for breakfast.”

“How’s a blue-collar guy like Jimmy Martin afford a lawyer like Ethan Bonner?”

“Beats me.”

The Classic Cup is on the Country Club Plaza, Kansas City’s Spanish-inspired signature shopping district, located in midtown. There’s enough power at its breakfast tables to light the shops at Christmas.

Bonner was waiting for us, his scuffed shoes propped on an empty chair, glasses halfway down his nose, long hair pushed behind his ears, reading the New York Times. He was wearing jeans and a corduroy blazer over a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a three-day growth of beard. He was a solo practitioner, mixing criminal defense with plaintiff’s personal injury work; winning more cases than most with strategy and tactics few had the balls to use when someone’s life was on the line.

He had the perfect Kansas City pedigree. He grew up in Mission Hills, home to old money and older mansions. He graduated from Pembroke Hill, the city’s premier private school, before going to Yale and then Harvard for law school. He worked for the law firm his grandfather had founded and his father ran for an entire week before he quit and opened his own shop, his father saying that his son didn’t just march to the beat of a different drummer; he was playing an instrument no one had ever heard before.

Bonner dropped his feet to the floor, shoving the chair away from the table, folded his newspaper in half, and waved us to our seats.

“Jack,” he said, extending his hand, “I haven’t seen you since the Janice Graham case. You remember her?”

“Sure. She and her husband were in the residential mortgage business. She was charged with stealing Social Security numbers belonging to dead people and selling them to illegal immigrants so they could get fraudulent home loans.”

“I thought I was going to lose that one, sure as hell.”

“So did I until you blew our star witness out of the stand. Been so long I can’t remember her name.”

“Kendra Wood. Wasn’t hard once I figured out she was in love with Janice’s husband. She wanted to get rid of Janice so she could run away with him. Turned out she was the one running the scam and had set Janice up.”

“We checked her out six ways to Sunday and didn’t come up with that. Janice’s husband had no idea Kendra felt that way about him. How did you tumble to it?”

“You looked in the wrong places.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You looked at Kendra from the outside, at all the stuff you could see. She worked for Janice and her husband. Always showed up on time. Always got good performance reviews. She was married with kids, went to church on Sunday, and didn’t stay out late.”

I nodded. “The kind of upright citizen with enough guts to blow the whistle.”

“That’s who you saw. I saw a woman who betrayed the people she was closest to outside of her own family. We weren’t talking about a drug addict that needed a fix or a gangbanger looking to get right with the cops before it was his turn to take the needle. Shit, upright is easy compared to betrayal. Upright takes guts, but betrayal takes loathing and guts. I wanted to know where the loathing came from, so I looked at her from the inside out.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I’m like a magician. I never give up my secrets. Kendra Wood was living a fantasy, and no one knew it because she came across so normal she’d bore you to death. Crazy how people can hide shit like that.”

“Not as crazy as Jimmy Martin killing his kids.”

Bonner leaned back in his chair. “Point taken. Except for one thing. He may not have done it.”

“May not have done it? I thought defense lawyers stuck with innocent until proven guilty.”

“Jimmy Martin is charged with two things: stealing and contempt of court. He stole to support his family, and the judge held him in contempt because he’s pissed at his wife. He hasn’t been charged with killing his kids.”

“Yet,” I said. “There’s a reason the cops are looking at him so hard.”

“You and I both know that doesn’t mean they’re right.”

A server took our orders. Three men in suits, carrying briefcases, filed past our table, one of them telling Bonner he’d see him in court after lunch. Bonner got up, followed the man to his table, wrapped his arm around him, whispered, patted him on the back, and came back to his seat.

“Just settled a case. Now I can pay for breakfast. What if Jimmy Martin didn’t kill his kids?”

“Then he should tell his wife where they are,” Lucy said.

“If it were that easy, we’d all have to find another line of work. Look, I don’t know what happened to his kids. Jimmy won’t talk about them. Not one fucking word.”

“At least he treats you the same way he treated us,” I said.

“I don’t mind. Sometimes it’s better not to know. Lets me sleep at night. This time, I’m not so sure. Best chance I’ve got to get Jimmy a deal on the theft charge is find those kids and hope they’re still alive when I do.”

“Then tell him to talk to us,” Lucy said.

“Won’t do any good. He won’t talk to me about the kids. He’s not going to talk to you. But you guys can still help me.”

“How?”

“His wife Peggy hired you. Tell her to let you work with me. We want the same thing, to get the kids back, and I need investigators Jimmy can’t afford.”

“Can he afford you?”

“Nope. Public defender is refusing to take any new cases. Their workload is so heavy they’re probably committing malpractice every time they answer the phone. The judge asked me if I’d take the case. Looked like a simple deal-work out a plea on the theft charge-and then this thing with the kids came up. Be a big help if we work together.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Lucy asked. “Peggy hates Jimmy. Why should she help him? You’re just trying to find out what we’ve got on Jimmy so you can get him off.”

“That’s what I’d think if I were sitting where you’re sitting,” Bonner said. “So, here’s my offer. I’ve hired someone to help me with this case. Anything she comes up with, you can have. The three of you can work together.”

“You can’t afford to pay investigators. How are you going to pay someone else?” I asked.

“She owes me a favor. Here she comes,” Bonner said, pointing over my shoulder.

I turned around, stood up, and started to shake.

“Hello, Jack,” Kate Scranton said. “How are you?”