Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) (35 page)

“I’ve never killed anyone,” Louis said.

“Maybe not with your own hands, but it’s all the same,” Caroline said, mentally noting all the things Louis hadn’t denied doing.

“Even so, there is a distinction,” Louis said.

Controlling her emotions, she met his eyes with an icy calm.

“You might not like technology, Louis, but those contractors who you hire to do your dirty work for you sure do. The things they’ve done leave trails. Every money transfer, every communication. It’s all there, on the Internet, just waiting to be found. Even cryptocurrency isn’t immune to a subpoena. Once the police finish sifting through the data I’m sending them, they’ll know where else to look. And they’ll look. They’ll find everything. False fronts for assassins, mobsters, and Lord knows what else.”

She looked down at Louis’s chess set. In the morning light, the antique pieces cast shadows across the board. The game had progressed since she’d come to work three weeks earlier. Black had a king and a pawn left on the board. White had only its king remaining. Black would checkmate with the pawn. It would take time, but she could see the endgame.

Caroline picked up the black pawn. Its dark facets glittered in the sunshine.

“You might be a good chess player, Louis. But you’re a really bad boss.”

She tucked the black pawn into her pocket and put the envelope on his desk.

“I’m out,” she said.

Then she turned and walked away.

Caroline sat at a table at Black Dog Café, staring unseeingly at the chess game on her laptop. She knew that by now, the data transfer had finished. Information tying Louis to Dr. Heller’s death and a bevy of other crimes had flowed to the police and the district attorney at thousands of bits per second. Auction records. Financial records. Case records. All laid out in incriminating detail.

The long-due reckoning had come for Louis.

Still, Caroline felt no joy. She’d trusted Louis Stern. She had looked to him as a mentor, maybe even as a kind of father figure. And he had betrayed her. The beginning of her career had nearly taken a sharp left turn off a cliff . . .

Someone put a mug in front of Caroline.

The smell of hot chocolate wafted up to her nostrils.

She looked up to find the barista with the blue Mohawk smiling down at her.

“It’s on the house,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the warm cup.

“Any time,” he said and withdrew. Something about the expression on her face must have warned him not to make small talk.

Caroline turned her attention back to her laptop.

It might take the police time to untangle all of Louis’s evil dealings, but that was their problem, not hers.

For her, the long day was over.

EPILOGUE

Caroline stood at the kitchen counter, chopping zucchini. For the first time in a long time, she had the luxury of time. She intended to savor it. The slow-to-prepare, quick-to-eat meal was the perfect activity for the day. After that, she’d figure out the next activity, and then the next. Reentering the work force remained somewhere on the horizon, a glowing necessity on her to-do list. But she hadn’t yet figured out the details.

Visiting her father was on the list, too. When she’d seen him standing on his front yard with his sons, she’d wanted to talk to him. Even despite all that had transpired over the years. Even despite the guilt. He might have made some mistakes, but Lord knew, she’d made so many of her own, too . . .

The sound of the doorbell broke Caroline’s reverie.

“I’ve got it,” she called to the back of the house.

She found Deena standing on the front porch. The New Yorker wore a short white jacket with a wide collar. An alarmingly pink miniskirt hugged her hips.

Caroline glanced down at her own ripped jeans and tank top.

She mentally shrugged. She’d make no apologies for who she was.

“Sorry for the short notice, but I wanted to say good-bye before I left,” Deena said in a rush. Behind her, a black town car sat on the curb with its engine running.

“Thanks for coming by,” Caroline said. Since leaving Hale Stern, she’d been surprised when Deena had reached out to her, sending her texts, asking how she was, how her uncle was, why she’d left. Even as she’d dodged the questions, Caroline had come to realize Deena cared. The woman might have a voice like a chain saw and a cadence that left the listener feeling vaguely bludgeoned, but she was a good person.

“I just wanted to make sure you were doing all right,” Deena said.

“I’m okay. I just had a family emergency that I needed to take care of,” Caroline said. She wondered how the firm had explained her abrupt departure.

“Did you hear Louis got indicted?” Deena asked.

“I saw it in the news.” Caroline had watched the media coverage with fascination. The police had arrested Louis the same day she’d left the firm. They must’ve decided he was a flight risk. Two weeks later, the indictments had been handed down, laying out thirty-five charges of bribery, extortion, jury tampering, and murder. All in incriminating and copious detail.

“You’re lucky you left before things got crazy,” Deena said.

Caroline didn’t respond. No one could ever know she’d been the source of the information the police had received. She needed to protect their ability to obtain additional evidence through legal means so that the case against Louis wouldn’t be thrown out of court. She was pretty sure a whistle-blower’s anonymous data dump passed muster, but she had to be extra careful, just to be certain.

Before Deena could probe the coincidence of the timing of her departure and Louis’s arrest, Caroline asked, “How’s everyone at the firm doing?” She hated the toll that Louis’s departure would inevitably take on the innocent people at Hale Stern.

“As you can imagine, Louis’s arrest was a terrible shock,” Deena said, tutting under her breath. “Silvia’s had her hands full trying to keep all of Louis’s clients calm until everyone figures out how the firm is going to move past this . . . if possible. Thompson Hale has come out of retirement. He isn’t happy about missing his golf games . . . but that’s not really important, is it?” Deena paused, studying Caroline’s face. “How’s your uncle?”

“Still a mess,” Caroline answered. Deena had earned some honesty on this topic. “He’s only been out of the hospital a couple of weeks, and he’s already drinking again. I’ve been trying to get him to go to meetings . . .”

“I know how that goes,” Deena said, the mask falling, revealing vulnerability in her brown eyes. “Having an alcoholic in the family makes you always want to fix people, doesn’t it? You feel like if you just try a little harder, things will improve. But then they don’t. And it makes you feel like you’re failing. Until you realize, finally, you have to stop trying to fix people. Except it’s so hard to make yourself stop. That’s the final irony, isn’t it? You become addicted to trying to be a superhero. That’s your fix. It’s sick.”

“It sure is,” Caroline agreed quietly.

“Who’s there?” came a voice from behind Caroline.

Joanne came into view. Taller than Caroline, but with the same slim figure, she wore a peasant shirt and jeans.

“This is Deena,” Caroline said. “She’s the daughter of that doctor who helped Uncle Hitch.” She met Deena’s eyes. “She’s also my friend.” She watched Deena’s face blossom into a smile at the appellation.

“Please thank your mother for taking care of my brother,” Joanne said.

“I will, but Caroline’s the real hero here,” Deena said. “Did she tell you? She won that case for all of those people.”

“I didn’t win the case. Just one motion,” Caroline said.

“Whatever. One motion,” Deena said.

Joanne looked at her daughter, her eyes glittering with the kind of pride a parent keeps on tap all the time, regardless of how successful or unsuccessful her child might be.

“I knew you weren’t a Wendy,” Joanne said.

Somewhere in the house, a phone rang.

“That’s Bob,” Joanne said, lighting up. “I’ve got to take that.”

She withdrew, leaving Deena and Caroline alone on the doorstep.

“What was that about?” Deena asked.

“Bob’s the guy my mom went on a date with when she was visiting her best friend in Portland. They’ve been talking almost every day,” Caroline said. Who could have guessed that the training-wheels date Elaine had set up for Joanne would have gone so well?

“No, I mean the thing about you not being a Wendy,” Deena said.

“Oh, that.” Caroline quirked a half smile. “Wendy was my almost name. My dad liked it. My mom hated it. She said, ‘Wendy didn’t do a thing but natter and complain. Peter Pan could fly and fight and outwit Captain Hook.’ I think she would’ve named me Peter if she could’ve gotten away with it. Anyway, she liked Caroline because it was a name you could take with you into adulthood. A name that would hold up in a boardroom. ‘You can become president with a name like Caroline,’ my mom said. Back when I was in school, my friends tried to shorten it to Carrie, but my mom nipped that one in the bud. And so I’ve always been Caroline . . . even on the days when it would be easier to be Carrie.”

“I think you make a great Caroline,” Deena said, looking at her in a way that made her wonder if Deena suspected her connection to Louis’s arrest. Not that she could ever confirm that suspicion.

“You really came through for me,” Caroline said instead. She hoped her tone conveyed the depth of her gratitude.

“It was nothing.” Deena waved one manicured hand around.

“It wasn’t nothing,” Caroline said, holding Deena’s gaze.

Deena nodded slowly, then smiled. “I’d better get going. Can’t miss my flight.” She turned to go but stopped and opened her purse. “Oh, I almost forgot. Dr. Wong came by the firm last week. She didn’t know that you’d left. She asked me to give this to you.”

Deena withdrew a small white box wrapped with a red ribbon. There was no card.

Taking the box, Caroline raised an eyebrow.

Deena shook her head.

Caroline opened the box.

Cradled in the white cotton padding, she found a new strand of komboloi beads. Onyx black and smooth, they were slightly smaller than the strand she’d sacrificed at the courthouse. She lifted the beads from the box and looped them over her hand. She flipped them over. Then again. They worked as well as the old ones had.

“You really are an odd duck,” Deena said.

Looking at Deena stuffed like a sausage into her fuchsia miniskirt, Caroline smirked.

“Do you think you’ll go back to Hale Stern once you’ve sorted out your family stuff?” Deena asked.

“No. Without Louis, it just wouldn’t be the same,” Caroline answered, giving an explanation that she knew was both true and misleading in equal measures. “I still need to decide on my next move.”

“Whatever you do, it’ll be great,” Deena said, smiling. “Did you hear Med-Gen set up a huge settlement fund? It’s even bigger than the Steering Committee thought it would be. All of the victims will be compensated and then some.”

“I hadn’t heard that. Wow. That’s great,” Caroline said, her chest flushing with warmth.

“It sure is,” Deena said. She stepped forward and hugged Caroline, then withdrew.

Even after the sound of the town car had receded into the neighborhood, Caroline remained on the porch. Soon the requirements of life and lunch would draw her back inside, but for now, she wanted to enjoy the quiet.

She knew she needed to find another job. She had student loans to pay off. She had her mother’s house to escape. But she needed to get the job thing right this time.

Sitting down on the railing of the porch, she considered her errors.

She couldn’t believe she’d craved Louis’s approval. What a terrible miscalculation. What an obvious displacement of affection. If she needed a father figure, she could reconcile with her own father. She didn’t need to worship some creepy, psychopathic, wannabe blue-blooded fixer.

Bitterness rose in her throat, dull and metallic. But she knew the tang of disappointment covered something deeper. Something more problematic.

Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a small figurine. Cool and smooth in her hand, the black pawn reflected the afternoon light. She’d carried it with her every day since she’d left Hale Stern. Its weight in her pocket felt like an indictment. A reminder of what she’d been. Of what she’d done. Of what she’d almost become.

Caroline ran her fingers over the smooth ball at the top of the statuette.

Louis had been a strong mentor in one way: he’d exposed who she really was. He’d shown her that despite leaving tech, she hadn’t escaped the more sinister aspects of her nature. The thorny truth was that he hadn’t been wrong about her. She enjoyed the dark thrills. Of hacking. Of prying. Of manipulating. She liked discovering people’s secrets. She found joy in outsmarting firewalls and security systems. And she was good at it.

And yet, her survival, both physically and morally, despite Louis’s mentorship, was itself some kind of statement of strength, wasn’t it? Plus, she’d helped win a case that mattered greatly to a great many people.

For the first time since she’d walked out of Hale Stern, Caroline let herself feel something other than consternation about her law career. Things hadn’t gone as planned, but she’d still done some good, hadn’t she? Taking part in the grand struggle of humanity had been one reason she’d left the world of tech. While she might have gotten banged up in her first foray, she’d made a difference.

But what now? Could she really go to another firm?

She knew she’d never be able to trust another mentor. She’d have to rely on herself.

So then, perhaps she should go out on her own? She could hang out a shingle and take whatever clients she could find . . . as a first-year lawyer . . . fresh out of law school. The idea was daunting. And yet, whatever happened couldn’t be worse than what had already happened to her. Reams of practice guides existed to teach lawyers the rules, the levers to pull. She’d figure it out. And she’d do some more good. Wherever she could. However she could.

In the meanwhile, she’d have to be patient. She’d just have to tolerate living in her childhood house a little longer . . .

Caroline exhaled.

There were no perfect answers.

Gently, almost reverently, she placed the pawn on the porch’s railing.

The dark souvenir looked back at her, faceless and small.

Caroline walked back inside the house.

The porch door closed behind her with a snap of finality.