The Victim (28 page)

That night he had felt like a porn star, but the video was a disturbing reality. His sex face was hideous, all puckered, impervious to interpretation. He could have been in the throes of passion or straining on the toilet. You couldn’t tell.

His body wasn’t the block of marble he’d imagined. His belly flab swung like a cow’s udder as he thrusted away in a stilted, offbeat sort of way, like an epileptic having a seizure on the floor.

Jesus. Was that what it looked like?

So unremarkable. Average at best.

He shut it off, deleted the email, and cleared his cookies.

He picked up his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts.

“
Good afternoon,” she answered. “Didja get my email?”

“
You crazy bitch,” he growled. His voice teemed with hate, his words gruff and scratchy, projected from deep in his belly. His face burned. “You fucking crazy bitch. You ever fucked with the wrong person before?”

She laughed. “Nope. Have you?”

“
You sent that shit to my wife? You fucking psychopath. You sent that to my wife?”

“
Figure she should see what she’s been missing.”

Anton felt violence in his bones. He wanted to crush her skull. Snap her neck. He folded his tongue and bit down so hard he tasted blood. He delved deep into the fucked-up corners of his mind, harnessing his primal instincts. He wanted to kill her.

“
You don’t involve my family, you understand?”

“
Why?” Her nonchalant, even tone only fueled his rage, wildly frustrating him. “You involved mine.”

He got a handle on his temper, feeling his anger give way to desperation.

“
What do you want from me?” A tone of surrender in his hoarse voice. “Please, Daniella, this is my life. This is my marriage, my family.” Tears flowed, muddying his diction. He realized what was at stake. “I have a baby girl. I’m their only support. I have a life that I want to keep.”

“
Funny way of showing it. I guess a few minutes of visceral pleasure trumps marriage and family any day of the week. But I’m not surprised, Anton Mackey. You’re always looking out for yourself first and foremost. How about when you drove shit-faced drunk and plowed into my sister and her boyfriend, and then set them on fire? Who’s crazy here, Anton? Not me.”

“
Daniella, I panicked and made the worst, most awful decision any human being could ever make. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that. That I don’t think about them. But please. Anything you do to me isn’t going to bring your sister back. I thought they were already dead. I saw the gasoline leaking and I had the cigarette lighter in my pocket and I panicked. Jesus Christ, I made an awful mistake and—”

“
Mistake? You narcissistic piece of shit! You call setting two human beings on fire and then running off like a coward a mistake? You’re a murderer! Can you say that, Anton Mackey? Can you just give me that? Tell me you murdered Kelsie McEvoy and Evan Rangel. Just tell me that much.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I murdered Kelsie McEvoy and Evan Rangel.”

“
Thank you,” she said, jubilant, even satisfied.

She hung up.

CHAPTER 30

By the time Jack and Mandy returned from court, the bottle of Knockando was half empty.

Anton shifted his glassy-eyed stare toward the two, standing in the open doorway of Jack’s office. “I owe you five hundred bucks.”

Jack’s heavy brow crinkled with concern. “I don’t care ’bout the money, kiddo.” He checked his Rolex. “It’s not even five yet. You either won the lottery or you just got served with divorce papers.”

“
Neither.” Anton remained seated in Jack’s leather wingback. He hadn’t the desire nor the physical ability to move.

Jack and Mandy stepped inside tentatively. Mandy pulled a cart stacked with two cardboard boxes full of documents and copies of exhibits. They were both dressed for trial, Mandy in the one navy Brooks Brothers suit he owned, his goatee trimmed and the sleeves of his sport coat long enough to conceal his tattoos. He always assisted Jack in trial. Jack wore a gray Pal Zileri with a crisp white shirt and monochromatic red tie. His oyster cufflinks reflected iridescent glints.

Anton forced himself to stand, bracing his hand on the edge of Jack’s desk as he made his way to the office door. He shut it and locked it.

Mandy stood by the bookshelf. His biceps bulged beneath his tight sport coat as he folded his arms across his chest. “The hell’s going on,
mijo
?”

Jack perched himself on the corner of his desk. “I was wondering the same thing.”

Anton fumbled through his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He extracted two hundred dollar bills and handed one to Mandy, one to Jack.

Mandy awkwardly studied the bill in his hand. “What’s this?”

Jack tried to hand the money back. “Anton, you can drink the goddamn Scotch. You don’t have to pay—”

Anton held up a hand, urging him to stop talking. He stood with his back pressed against the door, his ear close enough to hear what was going on outside. Most of Jack’s staff was preparing to leave. He could hear purses being slung over shoulders, the jangling of car keys.

“
I’m hiring both of you.”

Jack and Mandy looked at each other.

“
I’m in no mood for games, kiddo, I just spent seven hours cross-examining a testifying co-defendant. Mandy and I gotta prep for tomorrow; I’m tired, cranky, didn’t get to eat lunch. What is this?”

The color drained from Anton’s face, his legs turned to jelly and he slid with his back against the door, his heels squeaking against the marble, until he was seated. A cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

Mandy lunged forward, kneeling beside Anton. He placed a hand on his shoulder. “Fuck, bro, you all right?”

“
No,” Anton said, barely able to put the word together. What came out was just a thick, hoarse noise. “No, I’m not all right.”

Jack leapt off the desk, poised and ready to help. The lawyer in him was gone, replaced by Jack the father. Jack’s only son was an accountant who lived out in Colorado with his wife and the two young boys Jack saw maybe once a year. Jack knew that the physical distance between them was just an embodiment of their strained relationship. The son who grew up barely seeing his workaholic father. The grandsons, ages nine and seven, who knew Jack more from the silly birthday cards he sent stuffed with thousand-dollar checks and the weekly video chats on FaceTime than they knew him in person.

With his parents all the way out in Los Angeles, Anton needed Jack as much as Jack needed him. They never spilled their hearts out to each other or verbally acknowledged their surrogate parent-child relationship. It was just there.

“
I don’t get the money,” Jack said, waving the bill at him. “What are you hiring us for?”

Anton’s legs were sprawled out in a V. He repeatedly banged the back of his head against the door, penance for his stupidity. “I’m buying your time. Both of you. A hundred bucks each should be enough for ten, fifteen minutes. And you both better take the fucking money ’cause I need you guys. Jack, you’re my lawyer. Mandy, you’re the investigator. I pay you both; it’s official. Everything I tell you for the next ten to fifteen minutes is privileged. You both get me?”

They froze, keenly aware that this was no joke or drunken charade. They folded the bills and slipped them into their pockets.

Jack took two steps closer, slowly and carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal.

“
Fine, Anton. For the next ten to fifteen minutes I’ll represent you. Everything you say will be in the strictest confidence. Did…did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?

Anton thrust his head back against the door, gazing up at the ceiling.

“
I think I just confessed to a double murder.”

***

Anton walked them through the events of March 16, 2003, with painful attention to detail. He left no facet of his crime untold. It was the first time he had ever opened up to anyone about it. By the time he was done, he felt exhausted. Tears poured down his face, splashing onto the floor. He didn’t care. He was letting go of an eleven-year-old secret.

He told them about Daniella and her connection to Kelsie McEvoy. He told them about how he had caved to his weakness in her apartment and the admission she’d made about her husband’s innocence. He told them about the Arthur Hearing and the incriminating email.

He told them about the phone call. How in a moment of despair, he truly thought that by simply acknowledging his crime, she would be satisfied and leave him alone. Like so many of his hapless clients who believed that the truth would set them free, he had confessed. If she had recorded their tryst in the bedroom, then certainly she had recorded their phone conversation. She was all too happy and quick to hang up after he had said it.

Like those condemned men and women in the Nazi concentration camps, bone thin and foolishly clinging to hope that wasn’t there, he had tried to claw his way out of the gas chamber.

Mandy pursed his lips and stared at the ground. Anton had stopped talking, filling the room with an awkward silence. Nobody knew what to say.

“
Anton,” Jack began, the oldest, most experienced of them all taking control of the situation. Anton and Mandy felt at ease just hearing him speak. “What’s in the past is in the past. You fucked up, so be it. We’ve all fucked up. But this lady? We gotta get a handle on things. Now you’re representing her husband and she tells you that she made the whole thing up?”

“
You’re missing the point, Jack. I confessed. I told her everything. Right there on the phone.”

“
Are you certain she was recording you?”

“
She recorded us in her bedroom, didn’t she?”

The real Jack Savarese belied his larger than life courtroom persona. He was worried, which in turn worried Anton. A part of him wanted Courtroom Jack, not Father Jack, whose angst had burrowed deep lines into his forehead like rungs on a ladder. He ran his tongue across his top teeth, stared out the window. The waning sunlight twinkled on the Bay’s rolling current.

He turned, sat on the corner of his desk. “Nobody saw you behind the wheel of the RV. She found a lighter that supposedly had your DNA on it. Now without a confession, that’s still worthless evidence.”

Anton smacked his head hard against the door, realizing that fact now. “Thanks, Jack.”

“
Had you kept it in your pants you coulda told her to get lost,” Mandy said, unintentionally adding insult to injury. “She didn’t have shit on you, bro. But you go and jump into bed with that
mamacita
and she’s got leverage on you.”

Anton looked up at him. “Again. Thanks.”

“
Okay, okay,” Jack said. “Let’s not play
what if
. It is what it is. Now you think she’s gonna take this hypothetical taped confession and run to the cops?”

Anton rose to his feet. He took a step but nearly fell. He was lightheaded from getting up too fast and the Scotch had compromised his balance. He braced his hand on the door for support, hunched over at the waist. “She might. Although she might just use it to fuck with me even more. She told me. She doesn’t want ‘traditional justice.’ She wants to hurt me. And she’s using Bryan to do it.”

Jack cocked his brow. “You really think the guy’s innocent? I mean, she might just be fucking with your conscience by telling you he is. Let’s all be realistic here. How many of our clients are innocent? Sure, half of ’em will tell you that and won’t accept anything less than a letter of apology from the prosecutor and a civil settlement from the cop who cuffed him too tight. She knew about that other girl he choked back in college. Unless she’s Meryl fucking Streep, you really think she could
pretend
as well as you say she has? The 911 call? Her testimony?”