The Family Lawyer Read online

  “What about Dennis and Kelly?” I ask.

  “They should get commendations. But like you said, we were two hundred miles outside our jurisdiction, with no backup. No one wants to shine too bright a light.”

  “They’re okay, though?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Dennis is on desk duty for now, if you can picture that. Kelly’s got another round of physical therapy before she’s back on the street.”

  “They’re damn good cops,” I say.

  “Heroes,” Randy says.

  “Yeah, well, they aren’t alone,” I say. “Tell me again how you happened to be there. I thought you were holding down the fort at the precinct.”

  He grins.

  “I didn’t want to miss the action,” he says. “I was a mile from Jarry’s mansion when Pete called.”

  I don’t press him, but something tells me there’s more to it. Some connection between us. Some kind of intuition that builds over years.

  We’re heading down the off-ramp into suburban Long Island. It’s a clear, crisp morning—perfect weather for a fresh start.

  “Dr. Miles Caffee,” Randy says.

  “A doctor?”

  “A surgeon.”

  “Where’d a surgeon learn to shoot like that?” I ask.

  “His father was a sniper in Vietnam,” Randy tells me. “His mother died young. He grew up on a compound. Some kind of militia operation. They were going to take down the government, abolish taxes, build sky-high walls along the borders.”

  “So how did Miles end up in med school?”

  “When he was sixteen, the feds started closing in on the compound. Instead of giving up, the militia members gassed themselves. Somehow Miles made it out. He wound up in foster care. He’d never set foot in a public school before, but he tested at genius level. Two years with a family in Boise, then straight to Harvard.”

  “It’s sad,” I say. “He had everything he needed to escape.”

  “Escape?”

  “His childhood. The thing we never get past.”

  “Profound,” Randy says.

  “I’m quoting someone,” I say. “Or at least paraphrasing.”

  He doesn’t ask who.

  “You heard about the DA who was stabbed to death alongside his wife-to-be?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “The wife was an anesthesiologist. She worked on Caffee’s team.”

  “Small world,” I say.

  “Yeah.” Randy nods. “It sure is.”

  The houses are getting farther apart. There are clusters of gulls everywhere you look. Randy pulls up in front of Lifeline: A Haven for Women. We sit for a while, neither of us quite knowing what to say.

  From the outside, it might be any other oversized home near the water. If anything, it’s a bit worn. The gray shingles are breaking free in spots; the paint is chipping along the window frames. But maybe it’s the defects that make me feel at home. I’m looking forward to six more weeks of beading and pottery, gourmet meals and group therapy.

  “You’re sure this is what you want?” Randy asks.

  I lean across, kiss him on the cheek.

  “I’m sure,” I say. “It’s time to finish what I started.”

  The Good Sister

  James Patterson

  with Rachel Howzell Hall

  Chapter 1

  A phone only rings at 12:38 a.m. on Monday morning for two reasons: a wrong number, or someone’s dead.

  So when my big sister Melissa’s ringtone, Chaka Khan’s “I’m Every Woman,” blasted from my iPhone, my instincts told me this was no good.

  It was late but the call hadn’t pulled me from sleep. I was kneeling before my hallway closet, playing real-life Tetris with boxes of out-of-season stilettos, Mardi Gras masks, a pallet of parasols, and a heavy Hermès Birkin bag.

  My sister’s picture filled the phone’s screen, a few feet away from me on the floor. The day I’d taken this shot, Melissa was sand-flecked, sun-kissed, and rum drunk, sandy-brown skin made golden by a Virgin Islands sun. She’d been so happy, the old Melissa I knew and loved.

  Chaka Khan kept singing, and my heart tripped in my chest. I sat the shopping bag of gold-green-pink Mardi Gras beads in front of the shoeboxes, shoved the Birkin into a now-available rectangular slot, then slid the pallet of pink parasols over the bag. I closed the closet door, which immediately popped open, leaned against it, and grabbed the phone from the carpet.

  “Hey, sister.” I forced lightness into my voice, stretching out my long legs and wiggling my painted toenails. “What are you doing up?”

  “Dani…” A sob escaped from Melissa’s throat.

  I closed my eyes, and pictured the beautiful sun-kissed woman who had danced the sexy merengue (platonically, she kept telling me) with a man who was not her husband. That night was just a year ago, but so much had changed since then. “Mel,” I said. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Melissa kept crying—her sobs burst past my phone, against the mauve-painted living room walls, across the screen of my seventy-inch television, and into my carpet where tears that she’d cried yesterday, last month, and last year still soaked the padding.

  “Mel, sweetie,” I said. “Calm down, okay? Tell me what’s—”

  “I need you,” she choked. “I need you to come over right now.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I…I can’t…Just come, okay? I can’t say why, okay? I just need you here.” Another sob, then a final, “You have to come over.”

  I tugged at the neck of my sweatshirt, then nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “Okay. I’m on my way.” My stomach cramped, making my toes flex. “Hey. Mel, listen. Are you listening?”

  She hiccupped, and said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Good,” I said. “Take a breath. Right now.”

  Melissa took a deep breath, hiccupped again, then slowly exhaled. Another deep breath. Another hiccup. Release. “I’m, I’m li-listening,” she stammered.

  With my eyes closed, I said, “Whatever’s going on, trust me: it’s gonna be okay. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  It’s gonna be okay.

  My first lie of the day.

  Chapter 2

  Where are you?” Melissa sounded panicked again. No more deep breathing. No more relaxing. “Marina del Rey’s not that far away.” From my beachside condo to her house was just four miles.

  “I don’t want the cops pulling me over cuz I’m speeding.” Butterflies the size of condors slammed against the lining of my stomach. “I’m almost there. Just turned on your block.”

  “Hurry up!”

  “I’m hurrying,” I snapped. “Calm the hell down.”

  Melissa lived on Don Lorenzo Drive, a magnolia-lined street in a fancy Baldwin Hills neighborhood that sat high above Los Angeles. The Talented Tenth lived here, in handsome Mediterraneans, sprawling California ranch-styles, and two-story colonials like Melissa’s, with well-trimmed, well-watered lawns, drought be damned. They boasted MDs, PhDs, JDs, MSWs, E350s, and every letter–number combination that signified wealth and education. A Norman Rockwell Twenty-First Century Black Americana portrait south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

  In this neighborhood, at this time of night, no one stood on their lawns with joints and bottles of Hennessy. The only police cars around were those making late-night safety checks. The only clicking sounds came from sprinklers watering those well-tended lawns.

  I parked my Escalade behind Melissa’s late-model Lexus, then sat there, hands still tight around the steering wheel, listening to the engine tick…tick…tick.

  A shadow at the house across the street lingered in the window, watching me indulge in these last moments of quiet. Probably a neighborhood watch captain, ready to alert the network about the strange Caddy with the tinted windows, doing something suspicious.

  Cold night air tightened the pores of my face as I tromped up the walkway and to my sister’s red front door. Small white clou
ds puffed from my mouth. Beginning to feel a lot like Christmas—but it was still October, and this cold spell was a special effects trick played on us by dwindling Santa Ana winds and global warming.

  Those butterflies were still torpedoing my stomach as I slipped my key into the front door’s lock. I stepped across the threshold and whispered, “Mel?”

  Nothing appeared out of order—Jonah’s Elmo roller-bag that he took to daycare sat over there on the foyer’s tiled floor, and today’s mail had been placed on the staircase’s banister. The house smelled of burning jasmine candles, red wine, and…soiled diapers.

  “Mel?” I said, louder. “Where are—?”

  “Shh,” she stage-whispered. “In here. In the living room.”

  Eyes focused on the white carpet, I tiptoed to the living room, where that candle-wine-poop smell was the strongest.

  And there I found her, a tall, full-figured woman wearing a black and teal wrap dress with a plunging neckline and a tattered hem. With her hands clasped before her face, prayer-style, she was kneeling beside my brother-in-law Kirk Oakley. He was crumpled over, ass-up, facedown on the carpet.

  A bottle of red wine sat on the dark walnut coffee table—a bottle of 2010 Burgundy I’d given Melissa as a push present three years ago. A wineglass had toppled, spilling its contents onto the white carpet.

  “He pass out again?” I asked.

  “Don’t start,” she hissed.

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Is he sick again?”

  “Stop being a—”

  “He’s a drunk.”

  “Can we not—?”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She frantically shook her head, shrugged, shook her head again. “Don’t know.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What do you mean—?”

  “Don’t shout at me,” she whispered.

  I held out my arms. “I’m not shouting,” I said, nearly shouting.

  “He won’t wake up, Dani. He was just lying here, I swear, and I tried to wake him and—”

  “Breathe, Mel.”

  “Stop shouting at me,” she shouted, eyes wild. “Don’t you see that something’s wrong?”

  “I know—”

  “Wake up, Kirk,” she said, shaking his shoulder. “What’s wrong with—?”

  “Where’s Jonah?”

  That was the verbal slap that calmed her down, and forced her to focus and to breathe.

  She took a breath. Held it. Slowly released it. “He’s upstairs, asleep.”

  I pointed at my brother-in-law. “And you’re sure he’s not asleep?”

  “He’s dead,” she whispered. “I think.”

  I saw no blood on the carpet. I saw no guts on the coffee table. Kirk looked as though he’d had too much to drink (again) and had simply passed out (again).

  But then again, I wasn’t a doctor, nor was I an EMT—I threw parties for a living.

  From the stereo speakers, Jill Scott sang softly about being so gone.

  So gone. Just like Kirk.

  Melissa fixed the collar of Kirk’s polo, then shook her head. “He won’t wake up. I tried but he won’t.” She clutched her neck with trembling fingers. “I…don’t know what to do.” She brushed her knuckle against the stubble on Kirk’s cheeks. “He’s dead, huh?”

  “Mel, I don’t…Maybe…But…” Speechless. I wanted to rush over to my sister and hold her like we’d held each other that morning we broke Mom’s favorite vase, like that summer afternoon we bent Dad’s favorite 9-iron, like that day in college when I thought I might be pregnant. But I didn’t dare move from my spot. Instead, I hugged myself, and asked, “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t…” Eyes glistening with tears, Melissa shuddered as though ghost fingers had gripped her shoulders and shaken her. “I didn’t want to call 911 yet cuz…I didn’t call cuz it’s my fault. I didn’t call cuz…I did it. I killed him.”

  Chapter 3

  Something cold and sharp jabbed at my brain. “You killed him? How?”

  The heater clicked on, the sudden whoosh making me jump.

  Melissa pushed away from Kirk’s body to stand. “I don’t know. I mean, I do know but I didn’t mean to. Dani, please believe me. Do you believe me? That I didn’t mean to?”

  I nodded. “Of course I do, but you can’t say that anymore, okay?”

  “Don’t say what?”

  “That it’s your fault that he’s dead.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘but,’” I said. “The cops will take that as the truth and arrest you. And you’re not—”

  A murderer? Even though she’d just confessed to me that she was?

  My sister was a real-life do-gooder. As the executive director of KidsFirst, she advocated on behalf of orphaned and foster-care children of Los Angeles County. That’s how she met Kirk, a social worker. A pretty wolf dressed in a do-gooder’s cotton Dockers.

  I finally took a step toward my sister. “Just tell me what happened.”

  “When I got home this afternoon, we got in a fight.” She held out her hands to stop me from interrupting. “Not a physical fight.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “This time.”

  She touched her forehead. “We fought about his cheating. We fought about—”

  “Her. Again.”

  “Yeah.”

  A golden wedding band still hugged Kirk’s stiff ring finger. It could have been a squirting flower or plastic dog poop since Kirk treated that band like a joke. A gag. A prop.

  Melissa now twisted her own wedding ring. “And I told him that I was through dealing with his disrespect, and I told him that I deserved better. That Jonah deserved better. But Kirk…” She gulped and a tear tumbled down her cheek. “He said awful things to me. Awful, nasty things. Called me fat, and frigid, blind, stupid…” Her foot jerked and touched Kirk’s hip.

  Was that a kick or just a reflex?

  “He’s called you those things before,” I said, arms folded, nerve twitching above my right eye. “I was there for a few of those—”

  “I know.” She dropped beside him again, and stuck her hand into the bulging left pocket of his cargo shorts. “But I am stupid. Every night I lay beside him, every time he came home, smelling like…I didn’t do anything even though I wanted to burn him alive, even though I wanted to take an ice pick and drive it in his eye. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t because…”

  “Jonah,” I said.

  My three-year-old nephew. Framed pictures of the handsome little boy—say “cheese,” meet Santa, this is my mommy and daddy—hung on every mink-colored wall, sat on every flat surface including the baby grand piano near the bay window.

  Melissa shoved her hand into Kirk’s right pocket. This time, she pulled out his cell phone. “He was texting her,” she said, “even while he was fighting with me, he was texting her.”

  “Melissa, don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t erase anything. You shouldn’t even be touching it.”

  She dropped the device as though it had bitten her.

  “What were they texting about?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  I glanced around the living room, still looking for any blood speckling on the yellow, purple, and green couch cushions. Any dried specks spattering the coffee-table book of Hawaiian volcanoes. Any drops on the crystal bowl Melissa had crafted at a glassblowing course last fall.

  “I think I killed him,” she whispered.

  “I told you not to say—”

  “I found these packs of Ecstasy in his closet,” Melissa said. “And then I found some more in his jacket. And I found some of her shit in his closet, too. So this time, I had proof and I showed him my proof and he kept lying at first, saying that he’d taken the E from one of his clients, that the panties I found used to belong to me back when I was skinny. But I guess he realized how ridiculous he sounded and he finally manned up.”

  She looked up at me. “That son of a bitch laughed at me. Actually guffawed
in my face. And then, he told me that he knew something that would destroy me, something that would upset my Wonderland. Our life together—he called it Wonderland.”

  My face numbed—I’d hardly taken a breath. “Destroy you? What did he mean by that?”

  She shrugged, then said, “I couldn’t take it anymore.” She squeezed her hands, then pointed to the wineglass. “And I saw that he’d been drinking my wine from you, that I’d been saving, and so I took the E and dumped them into his glass when he left the room.”

  My eyes bugged. “Like…how much did you dump?”

  Her lips quivered. “I lost count.”

  I gaped at her. “Oh, shit, Mel.”

  “I was mad,” she shouted. “I wasn’t thinking. The wineglass was just…sitting there, and the Ecstasy packs were in my hand, and…So after I did that, I grabbed Jonah and ran out the house before he could destroy me. I drove all the way to Orange County. Hours, just driving. Jonah was hungry so I stopped at McDonald’s, bad mother again. But that’s when I realized that this is my house. I bought it before I even met Kirk, and if anyone was moving, it was gonna be him.

  “So, I drove back home to get rid of the glass before he finished it. It was quiet so I thought Kirk was gone. I put Jonah to bed first, then came back down here and saw that Kirk had already…He was slumped like this and he wouldn’t move and that’s when I called you.”

  I sighed, rubbed the bridge of my nose, then muttered, “Shit, Mel.”

  “Before I drove away,” she said, “you know what I told him? I told him to drop dead.” She bit her lower lip. “Drop dead: that’s the first time he’s ever done what I’d asked.”

  Kirk’s phone buzzed from the carpet.

  Melissa and I froze. “Who the hell is that?” I whispered.

  The phone buzzed again.

  “Should I check it?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  She dropped back to her knees and picked up the phone again. “Text messages.” She swiped at the phone’s screen. “It says, ‘U RAT BASTARD WHERE DID U GO???’ And the second one says…” She took a rattling, deep breath, then: “It says, ‘U DESERVE EVERYTHING THATS COMING TO U!!!’” She looked at me with tearful eyes. “They’re from Sophia.”