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  Cold truth

  ( Low Mason - 3 )

  Joel Goldman

  Joel Goldman

  Cold truth

  Chapter 1

  Locked into his camera and headgear, Ted Phillips, the Channel 6 cameraman, didn't hear the window shatter eight stories above or the woman scream as she jackknifed through the glass. Earl Luke Fisher and Sherri Thomas saw it happen.

  Earl Luke, a homeless panhandler still prospecting for donations on a hot night in Kansas City's deserted downtown, was sitting cross-legged in front of the Cable Depot answering questions for Sherri Thomas, the Channel 6 reporter, filling her slot on the ten o'clock broadcast of a slow-news Labor Day. Sherri dumped Earl Luke for the falling woman, motioning Phillips, who swung his camera in a quick skyward arc, not stopping until he caught the woman in his lens, pinwheeling in a fatal tumble and pancaking onto the pavement, one side of her head flattened like a splintered melon.

  "Hold the shot," Phillips said to himself, keeping the camera on the woman's body. "Take it back," he whispered to no one, satisfied that he'd preserved the moment of her death.

  Phillips aimed his camera at the broken window, lighting the way with its built-in lamp, zooming in until he had a tight shot of the ragged outline left by the remaining glass. His eye caught a shadow flickering in the window frame, or so he thought. He blinked, uncertain of what he'd seen, but confident that the camera had a steadier eye than he did.

  "Son of a bitch! Tell me you got that, Ted! Son-of-afucking bitch! If you got that, we're golden!"

  Phillips put his camera down, wiping away flecks of blood that had hung in the air like ruby raindrops before chasing the dead woman to the ground. Earl Luke was gone.

  "And live on the air," he reminded her.

  Lou Mason rewound the tape of the dead woman's plunge, replaying it for the tenth time, forcing himself to focus on the TV screen sitting next to the dry-erase board in his law office. The tape ended with Sherri Thomas covering her mouth, realizing that her ecstatic outburst had been broadcast throughout Channel 6's two-state viewing area. He punched rewind on the remote control.

  The tape whirred inside its metal cage as Mason pulled a bottle of water from the small refrigerator beneath the bay window that looked out on the street from his second-story digs above Blues on Broadway, a jazz joint in midtown Kansas City. The street hummed with people heading home, back in the groove after the long Labor Day weekend. Most people hadn't worked yesterday, but Sherri Thomas and her cameraman had put in a full day. Earl Luke Fisher never worked or never stopped, depending on your view of panhandling. Gina Davenport was in her office at ten P.M., catching up on something. Her killer worked overtime. It had been some holiday, Mason thought to himself.

  He'd seen the broadcast live the night before, coming out of his kitchen chair like he'd been launched, almost tripping over his sleeping dog, Tuffy. He was too young to have seen Jack Ruby kill Lee Harvey Oswald, the first live broadcast of a murder in television history. The immediacy of real-time coverage of wars, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks might have turned death into the ultimate reality show, but that didn't match the intimacy of a single murder captured by homicidal serendipity. And Mason had no doubt the woman had been murdered. Suicides jumped out of open windows. Killers broke the glass.

  The front-page story the next morning in the Kansas City Star made up in detail what it lacked in televised drama. The victim was Gina Davenport, a shrink known by her first name, Dr. Gina, with a nationally syndicated radio gig on radio station KWIN. Her office and the radio station were both on the eighth floor of the Cable Depot. The broken window was hers. Rachel Firestone wrote the story, so Mason knew she got it right. Davenport's show was the highest-rated in town and one of the biggest in national syndication.

  Arthur Hackett, who owned the building and the station, waited until Tuesday afternoon to call Mason, inviting him to his office at the Cable Depot, a renovated building put up in the early 1900s to house cable cars. It was on 6th Street, where the grade from the Missouri River up to 6th was so steep that people used to fall off the cars. Today, the building was practically at the edge of the bluff hanging over the interstate on the west side of downtown.

  When the cable cars went out of business, the building was boarded up. When he was a kid, Mason and his friends dared each other to pry the plywood off one of its first-floor windows and crawl around its dark insides. Then, twenty years ago, Hackett bought the building, got it placed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks, and parlayed the tax breaks into a hot downtown address.

  Mason had been to KWIN's offices a number of times to talk with Max Coyle, the afternoon sports talk host and a client. Mason had recently settled Max's case against a lawyer who played investment advisor, churning Max's five-hundred-thousand-dollar nest egg into a goose egg. He'd caught glimpses of Hackett on those visits, but never met him.

  "It's about our daughter, Jordan," Hackett began, gesturing to an empty chair next to the one occupied by his wife Carol.

  She gave Mason a thin smile, though he suspected that her last plastic surgeon had tacked it into place. Carol's hair was a harvest color sprayed tight, her spare body a tribute to watercress and yoga. She massaged her cuticles while Arthur, his mid-life bulk spreading beneath his chin and between his arms, stood in front of a double-wide window, the Missouri and Kansas Rivers shaking hands two miles away and hundreds of feet below.

  Jordan was a patient of Dr. Gina's until somebody killed the doctor. A twenty-one-year-old head case, her father said. The cops interviewed Jordan, took her fingerprints, hair samples, and fiber samples from her clothes, her parents waiting to call Mason until the cops were through. The Hacketts told Mason they didn't want to treat her like a criminal, asking him to represent her if she was charged with Dr. Gina's murder.

  Mason assured them that the cops were probably talking to all of Dr. Gina's patients, gathering evidence to eliminate suspects as much as to incriminate them. The Hacketts nodded their agreement, gaining greater confidence when Mason told them he knew the detective handling the case, Samantha Greer. He left out the fact that he and Samantha had been dancing between the sheets up until a few months ago, when she told him that she wasn't a car battery he could jump-start whenever he felt too lonely for another night alone.

  "Where's Jordan now?" Mason asked her parents.

  Arthur hesitated, clearing his throat, looking at his wife, who rose like her limbs were hydraulic and left the room. "She lives at a place called Sanctuary. It's a residential facility for teenagers and young adults with emotional problems."

  "Centurion Johnson's program," Mason said.

  Centurion had given up a promising career as a drug and thug entrepreneur for the not-for-profit world of social services. Harry Ryman had busted Centurion a few times, sending him to jail for a long stretch the last time. Soon as he got out, he was back in the game until Blues helped him find religion. Next stop, saving the young.

  Harry was a cop until he retired less than a year ago. He and Mason's Aunt Claire had been a couple since Mason was a kid breaking into the Cable Depot, Claire raising him after the death of his parents when he was three years old. Blues was Wilson Bluestone, Jr., another ex-cop, occasional PI, and the only Shawnee Indian jazz pianist Mason had ever met. Blues was also Mason's full-time landlord and part-time bodyguard. Mason was certain that Centurion didn't list Harry or Blues as references.

  Mason asked, "What's wrong with your daughter?"

  Hackett shook his head, turning to face the rivers that joined at the flood plain below-Kansas City, Kansas, to the west; Kansas City, Missouri, to the east.

  "Dr. Gina said Jordan had problems with anger management. Shrink-speak bullshit, if you ask me. Whatever you're s
upposed to call it, Jordan was too violent to live at home." Hackett asked, "Will you help us?" His back was still to Mason.

  "Sure," Mason replied. "I'd like a copy of the videotape."

  Hackett wrote him a check for a retainer, called the general manager at Channel 6 to arrange for Mason to pick up the tape that day, and gave Mason a copy of Dr. Gina's book, The Way You Do the Things You Do. New York Times best-seller, the cover proclaimed.

  Mason pressed the play button on his VCR again, fast-forwarding the videotape to the moment when the cameraman retraced Dr. Gina's flight back to the window. He used the freeze-frame function to break down the segment frame by frame so he could study each image. The cameraman had told him he thought he'd seen a shadow, like someone standing close enough to look out the window without being seen. The killer? Mason wondered. Or a witness?

  More than a year earlier, Mason had taken an unplanned New Year's Eve plunge into the Missouri River while defending Blues on a murder charge. Ever since, when Mason took a murder case, he felt like he was diving into that dark water again, worrying that he was taking the dive just to see if he could make it back to the surface, gulping for air, beating the odds, wishing he had a reason to play it safe.

  Mason took a deep breath and opened the dry-erase board on the wall, beginning, as he always began, by writing down what he knew and what he had to learn to keep Jordan Hackett off of death row. He wrote Gina Davenport's name, circled it, and labeled her "victim."

  Moving from left to right, Mason drew a line and wrote Jordan Hackett's name, giving her a casting list of roles: "patient, witness, killer." In the upper right-hand corner, he drew a circle around Centurion Johnson's name and labeled it "trouble," then added a capital T.

  Returning to Gina Davenport, he drew a vertical line straight down, capping it with a horizontal bar, labeling it "winners and losers," wondering who he would find when he dove into the dark water.

  Chapter 2

  Murder makes for a lousy party, Mason thought to himself as he parked his TR-6 in front of Cafe Allegro, an upscale restaurant where swank was an appetizer.

  Claire Mason, who never threw parties, was throwing one for Harry Ryman's sixtieth birthday. That she had chosen Cafe Allegro was an even greater surprise to Mason. His aunt was a lawyer who shunned the haunts of Kansas City's upper crust as if they might possess her with the life-sucking grip of the Pod People. Unless, of course, she was there to serve a summons on behalf of a beaten-down client she had decided shouldn't take it anymore. Nearly six feet tall, big-boned and broad-shouldered, she rattled the well-possessed into submission.

  Claire had inspired Mason to become a lawyer with her own brash pursuit of justice. Her practice had been a straight line, often uphill, but always clear-eyed. She used the law as a battering ram to knock down the walls surrounding the powerful, giving meaning to the rights and privileges promised to her clients. Mason's own path had meandered through small and big firms until he'd landed on his own, using the law as a shield for his clients who were accused of crimes.

  Mason tried without success to tuck the image of Gina Davenport's pavement performance into the file marked Not Tonight. The ambiguous shadow in the window kept yanking Dr. Gina's body back to the here and now. Tomorrow, he told the shadow. After meeting Jordan Hackett for the first time, after he sees whether she fits the shadow's description. Tonight's a party.

  I'll tag along, the shadow said, settling comfortably on Mason's shoulder. Mason gave a crisp tug to the lapels of his linen blazer in a final futile effort to shake the shadow. Well, he conceded, at least he had a date.

  Cafe Allegro had a golden, glittering ambience that said prepare to be pampered, but don't look at the prices. Mason surveyed the room, noting one table of dark-suited men with fierce posture, before finding his own party gathered at a table for ten on the opposite side of the room. He did a quick head count.

  Claire and Harry sat next to one another, arms interlocked with wineglasses touching, lost for the moment in a private celebration of their long relationship. Harry was a barrel-built bulldog, with a squat neck, butcher's hands, and bristle-cut hair. Neither he nor Claire was handsome alone, but together they shined.

  Harry had retired from the Kansas City police department after twenty-nine years, the last twenty as a homicide detective. He could have put in his thirty, but that would have meant spending his last year listening to the whispers that forgot a dirty cop but didn't forgive Harry for bringing him down.

  Claire dabbed a napkin at the corner of Harry's eye, her own expression shifting from wistfully romantic to tight-mouthed concern. Harry took her hand, easing it to the table.

  Rachel Firestone, her red hair flashing like a beacon, and her partner, Candace, were laughing at something Mickey Shanahan said while Mickey waved his hands in protest that it was all true. Mickey was a twenty-something PR wannabe who rented the office down the hall from Mason's, paying his rent by bartending for Blues until Mason hired him as his legal assistant. Tina Esposito, Mickey's girlfriend, gave him a playful shove, convicting him of his latest scam. Mason had told Mickey about Jordan Hackett, Mickey's eyes lighting up with the PR angles.

  Blues leaned back in his chair, his muscled frame wrapped in black, catching Mason's eye with a quick nod and wry smile. "It's your world, man," Blues's look said. "I'm just living in it."

  Blues's date, a long-legged model whose name Mason couldn't remember but whose body he couldn't forget, sat next to another woman Mason didn't recognize. She was shorter than the model, with chin-length auburn hair, lively eyes, and a smile that danced with the rhythm of the table. The last empty seat, between the woman and Claire, was for Mason. "Shadow," Mason said, "take a hike."

  Claire rose in greeting as the others hailed Mason with mock applause at his late arrival. She grabbed him by the shoulders, propelling him toward his empty seat. Mason used the momentum to circle the table first, greeting his friends with a succession of handshakes and kisses, finishing with a hand outstretched to the one person at the table he'd yet to meet.

  "My nephew," Claire announced. "Abby Lieberman," she added as if no further introduction was required.

  "Hey," he said, taking Abby's hand, covering it with both of his as he sat down.

  "Hey, you," Abby said, waiting for Lou to release her hand. Mason held on, studying her fine features, offering his smile in trade for her hand until Abby's grin widened. "Okay. I'll lend it to you until the salad is served," she said of her hand. "But that's my best offer unless you plan on feeding me."

  Mason was unprepared for Abby's effect on him. Maybe it was the warmth in her hand after the withering chill of watching Dr. Gina die over and over on videotape. Maybe it was the hint of promise in the sassy way she played along, flirting without being coy, interested without taking him seriously. Whatever it was, Rachel ruptured the moment.

  "Let her go or get a room, Lou," she said.

  Mason loved the crinkles in Abby's cheeks as he let go of her hand and she joined in the laughter. Her laugh was full-bodied, unembarrassed. She was a woman, Mason decided, who enjoyed herself.

  Forcing himself to turn away, he said, "Happy birthday, Harry. I could use the party."

  "Tough day?" Harry asked. "You should try turning sixty."

  "New case. Murder. An ugly one," Mason answered.

  In most crowds, Mason knew his announcement would have brought gasps. In this group, it brought understanding. Harry and Blues, both ex-homicide cops, had their Ph. D. s in killers from the University of the Street. Claire had seen the fallout in the lives of too many of her clients for whom violence arrived more easily than the rising sun. Rachel Firestone reported it all for the Kansas City Star.

  "Can you talk about it?" Blues asked.

  Before Mason could shake his head and explain that it was too soon, Mickey blurted out the answer.

  "Talk about it? Are you kidding? It's the Gina Davenport murder. We're representing a patient who…"

  "Mickey!" Mason said, cutti
ng him off.

  "Sorry, Boss," Mickey said, subdued by Mason's blast. "I just figured we're family, that's all." Tina rubbed Mickey's back, soothing him.

  Mason sighed, regretting Mickey's hurt feelings, especially since Mickey was right. They were family, at least all of Mason's family. And Mickey's too. He knew they would help him if the shadow in the window turned deadly. Claire would remind him of the glorious burden of representing the accused. Harry would pull strings to find out what the prosecutor wouldn't tell Mason. Blues would knock the heads of those in need of head-knocking. Rachel would keep everything off the record unless he told her otherwise. That's what families did, Mason told himself. So Mason would tell them-just not tonight. Not before he had a better sense of what he had gotten into.

  "I've been hired by the parents, but they aren't really my clients. They're just paying the bills. I'm meeting the client tomorrow. Unless the cops make an arrest, it stays quiet."

  "Sure thing," Mickey said.

  Mason looked around the table. He couldn't have ruined the party more thoroughly if he'd mooned the waiter. It wasn't the subject of murder or his rebuke of Mickey that doused everyone's mood. It was Abby. The light drained from her eyes and she couldn't meet his, glancing away, bent slightly as if she'd taken a punch.

  She gathered herself and fished through her purse for a pager Mason was certain had not gone off. "Claire," Abby said, "it was lovely of you to include me, but my answering service has paged me. Client emergency. I'm sorry. Happy birthday, Harry," she said.

  Mason watched her until she disappeared.

  "Never give the hand back, Lou," Rachel said. "You've got to keep something to hold onto."

  "Sage advice," Blues said.

  "Okay, people," Mason said. "I know you aren't the support group for the perpetually single and relationship impaired, but what the hell just happened?"