Something that he shouldn’t have.”
Thurman Jones was fifty-three, of average height and weight, with wavy brown hair that always looked windblown. He wore navy suits, dark knit ties, and black running shoes while in court, which gave him a sort of country bumpkin appearance. When in court, he spoke slowly and clearly and never lost his cool, and that combination, along with his appearance, played extremely well to a jury. Why he represented the likes of Otis Timson and his family was beyond Charlie, but he did and he had for years.
Harvey Wellman, on the other hand, dressed in tailored suits and Cole-Haan shoes and always looked as if he were heading off to a wedding. At thirty, he had begun to go gray at the temples; now, at forty, his hair was nearly silver, giving him a distinguished appearance. In another life, he could have been a news anchor. Or maybe a funeral director.
Neither one of them looked happy as they waited outside Charlie’s office.
“You two wanted to see me?” Charlie asked.
They both stood.
“It’s important, Charlie,” Harvey answered.
Charlie led them into the office and closed the door. He motioned to a couple of seats, but neither of them accepted. Charlie moved behind his desk, putting a little space between him and the visitors.
“So what can I do for you?”
“We’ve got a problem, Charlie,” Harvey said simply. “It concerns the arrest this morning. I tried to talk to you earlier, but you were already out.” “Sorry about that. I had to take care of some business out of town. What’s this problem you’re referring to?”
Harvey Wellman met Charlie’s gaze directly. “It seems that Miles Ryan went a little too far.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve got witnesses. A lot of witnesses. And they’re all saying the same thing.”
Charlie said nothing, and Harvey cleared his throat before going on. Thurman Jones stood off to the side, his expression blank. Charlie knew he was taking in every word.
“He put his gun to Otis Timson’s head.”
Later, in the living room, Miles was nursing a beer and absently peeling the label as he told Sarah everything that had happened. Like his own feelings, the story came out jumbled at times. He jumped from one point in the story to another, then backtracked, repeating himself more than once. Sarah never interrupted, never looked away, and though there were moments in which he was unclear, she didn’t press him to clarify for the simple reason that she wasn’t sure he could.
Unlike with Charlie, however, Miles went further.
“You know, for the past two years, I’ve wondered what would happen when I came face-to-face with the guy who did it. And when I found out it was Otis… I don’t know…” He paused. “I wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted to kill him.”
Sarah shifted, not knowing what to say. It was understandable, at least on some level, but… a little frightening, too.
“But you didn’t,” she finally said.
Miles didn’t notice the tentativeness of her answer. His mind was back there, with Otis.
“So now what happens?” she asked.
His hand went to the back of his neck and he squeezed. Despite how emotionally caught up he was in this, the logical side of him knew they’d need more than they had now. “There’s got to be an investigation-witnesses to interview, places to check out. It’s a lot of work, and it’s harder now that time has passed. I’m gonna be busy for I don’t know how long. Lot of late nights, lot of weekends. It’s back to where it was a couple of years ago.”
“Didn’t Charlie say he was going to handle this?”
“Yeah, but not like I would.”
“Are you allowed to do that?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
It wasn’t the time or place to discuss his role, and she let it go. “Are you hungry?” she asked instead. “I can throw something together in the kitchen for us. Or we can order a pizza?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“You want to go for a walk?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“You up for a movie? I grabbed a video on my way over.”
“Yeah… sure.”
“Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Whatever you picked up is fine.” She rose from the couch and found the movie. A comedy, it succeeded in making Sarah laugh a couple of times, and she glanced over at Miles to see his reaction. There wasn’t one. After an hour, Miles excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he didn’t come back in a few minutes, Sarah went to make sure he was okay.
She found him in the bedroom, the manila folder open beside him.
“I just have to check something,” he said. “It’ll only take a minute.”
“Okay,” she answered.
He didn’t come back.
Long before it was over, Sarah stopped the movie and ejected it, then found her jacket. She peeked in on him once more-not knowing that Jonah had done the same thing-then slipped quietly from the house. Miles didn’t realize she’d left until Jonah
Charlie was in the office until almost midnight. Like Miles, he was looking over the case file and wondering what he was going to do.
It had taken quite a bit of cajoling to cool Harvey down, especially after he threw in the incident in Miles’s car as well. Not surprisingly, Thurman Jones remained fairly quiet throughout it all. Charlie guessed that he thought it would be better if Harvey did the talking for him. He did, however, flash the tiniest of smiles when Harvey said that he was seriously considering bringing Miles up on charges.
That was when Charlie told them why Otis had been arrested in the first place. Seemed that Miles hadn’t bothered to tell Otis what the charge was. They were going to have a serious heart-to-heart the following day-if Charlie didn’t wring his neck first.
But in the presence of Harvey and Thurman, Charlie acted as if he’d known all along.
“No reason to start flinging accusations when I wasn’t sure they were even warranted.”
As expected, both Harvey and Thurman had problems with that. They had further problems with Sims’s story, until Charlie told them he’d met with Earl Getlin. “And he confirmed the whole thing” was how he phrased it. He wasn’t about to tell Thurman about his doubts, nor was he willing to share them with Harvey just yet. As soon as he’d finished, Harvey gave him a look that meant they should meet later to talk in private. Charlie, knowing he needed more time to digest things, pretended not to notice.
They did spend a great deal of time talking about Miles after Charlie finished. Charlie had no doubts that Miles had done exactly what was described, and though he was…upset, to put it mildly, he’d known Miles long enough to know that it wasn’t out of character in a situation like this. But Charlie hid his anger, even as he kept his defense of Miles to a minimum.
In the end, Harvey recommended that Miles be placed on suspension for the time being, while they sorted everything out.
Thurman Jones asked that Otis either be released or charged right away, without further delays.
Charlie told them that Miles was already gone for the day, but that he would make a decision on both counts first thing in the morning. Somehow, he hoped things would be clearer by then.
But they wouldn’t be, as he discovered when he finally headed home. Before he left the office, he got in touch with Harris at his house, asking how it went.
Turned out he hadn’t been able to find Sims all day.
“How hard did you look?” Charlie snapped.
“I looked everywhere,” Harris answered groggily. “His house, his mom’s place, his hangouts. I went to every bar and liquor store in the county. He’s gone.”
Brenda, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, was waiting up for him when he got home. He recounted most of what had happened, and she asked what would happen if Otis was actually brought to trial.