Case of Lies

“And you, too, and Elliott. Flint thought Chelsi was you,” Wish said. “We’re lucky you’re still with us.”

“So Dave Ha

“Mom?”

“Break his scrawny little neck.” She went into the outer office and Nina and Wish started to follow her. “Feed him to my horses. Don’t try to stop me.” She was putting on her coat.

Nina said, “Sandy, take your coat off, please. Dave’s incredibly dangerous. Do you guys realize he must have shot Flint there at the end, while Flint was tied up and probably gagged?”

“It’s sickening,” Wish said. “He’s sickening. Cheney told me not to talk to Ha

“He’s still our client, even though he’s a lying, murdering sack,” Nina said. She was trembling with rage.

“Do we warn him?” Wish asked. “Should I go down to Placerville and try to help him?”

“You mean kill him,” Sandy said. “Don’t you?”

She still stood at the door in her coat. Nina thought of all the hours Sandy had put in to help Ha

Nina said, “Wish, call Roger Freeman and ask him to come up here. Use some pretext. I don’t want him in Ha

“We’re abandoning him?” Wish said.

“We signed on to help him sue the man who killed his wife,” Nina said. “He had to sue, or it would seem as though he didn’t care. But the whole case is a lie. There is no case.”

“Where are you going?” Nina was pulling her hiking boots on.

“For a walk. The trail down to the lake. I want to feel some clean snow on my face.”

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Sandy said. “You do know that?”

“All I know is that Bob can come home now,” Nina said.

She went to the morgue. She had to see Flint.

He was on a gurney, post-autopsy, covered with a sheet. She pulled it back and stared at his scarred face. He looked younger than she had thought. In the way of the dead, he gave nothing back except the empty calm of eternity.

Bastard! she told him. He didn’t answer. She had never seen him alive. She would never fully understand him. Unknowable, he had escaped her by dying before she could tell it to his face, tell him, Got you, got you.

Got you. Selfish and doomed, he rested in peace.

She had one more call to make. Four hours later, in the evening, after Cheney called to tell her that the arrest had gone down quietly, she went to see Dave Ha

“You took your time,” Dave Ha

“Let me bring you up to date, Dave,” Nina said.

She told him about the gun, the fingerprint, the bruises on Flint ’s body.

Ha

After a few minutes, when the sobbing and hiccuping had died down, Nina said, “Why did you do it, Dave?”

“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me. This is-still confidential, right?”

“I’m still your attorney. It’s confidential.”

“Why’d you have to open up the whole thing?”

“Why’d you kill her?” Something in her voice must have shaken him.

“It just happened,” he said. “I snapped, I guess.”

“What does that mean?”

“We saw the robbery from the balcony, then the man in the mask ran one way and the kids took off toward their rooms. I told Sarah to stay put and I ran down the stairs.”

“Why?”

“I saw the gun lying on the concrete. I don’t know why, I just wanted it. I picked it up. It was hot, alive. I wanted to use it on something. I looked up and Sarah was standing on the balcony looking down at me. And she knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was thinking, I’d like to shoot her.”

“Oh?”

“She already knew. So I pulled the trigger and made it real. I was surprised myself. I heard a noise and I thought, Drop it and run back up and yell. So I did that and I had just made it a few steps up when the motel clerk came around the corner, and I stopped.” He grimaced. “Later, I felt really bad about it.”

“About what?”

“Leaving the gun. But I didn’t have enough time to think. You have to understand, Nina, it was like somebody else did it.”

Nina was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “But why? Why did you kill her?”

“Why? Why? How should I know? She was just putting up with me. She ragged on me about money, about me having a few beers at night, about brushing my fucking teeth before I went to bed. She was going to have a baby and there wasn’t going to be any room at all for me after that. The gun was in my hand. It happened.”

Nina leaned back and closed her eyes.

“I was tired of her. Everybody gets that way sometimes. I had a gun in my hand. It’s like an accident.”

“An accident,” Nina repeated.

“The whole thing. A series of random events that put the gun in my hand. I haven’t told a soul,” Ha

“What about Flint?” Nina said. “Was he gagged and bound when you shot him?”

“Flint? Why are you talking about him? That was no crime, not really, he had come there to kill me. It was self-defense.”

“You shot him in cold blood!”

“So what? He deserved it, didn’t he? Fool. He didn’t dream I could take him.”

Nina said nothing. Dave went back to his wife.

“It’s not my fault. I never did anything wrong my whole life. I walked her to church, I folded the clothes, I went and got the paper for her in the morning. For years. Years. Something snapped. I wasn’t myself. I’d had a few. Whatever.”

“Did you kill Chelsi? Did you follow me to Germany?”

“No! It was Flint. I wouldn’t have done that to little Chelsi. Poor little girl. I was so scared while all that was going on, Nina. It was very hard to keep it together.”

“Flint only finished what you started,” Nina said.

“Not at all. You don’t understand. Flint had nothing to do with me.”

“I’m afraid the difference escapes me.”

Ha

“Don’t put up the For Sale sign on my account,” Nina said. She opened her briefcase and pulled out the legal pleading, never taking her eyes off Ha

“You can’t do that!” he shouted. “You’re my lawyer and you have a duty!”

“This is a new matter.”

“I told you I’d pay you. Don’t leave me, please, Nina. You have to help me. I don’t want to go through this with a stranger.”