Samantha drummed her fingers on the table, working the angle Mason had given her. "The rumor we picked up was that Abby thought she was Jordan's mother. We heard that's why she posted the bond."
Mason said, "That's what she thinks. According to the autopsy report, Gina couldn't have kids. Whoever got Abby to call Gina must have known the truth."
"Have you told Abby she put her money on the wrong baby?"
"Not yet. Not until I'm certain," Mason said. "Gina was also skimming money from the charity she set up in her daughter's memory. Maybe Nix and Centurion were in on that too. Maybe Trent was a bagman for them. I don't know. The murders should be tied together, but I can't make it work."
"I can," Samantha said. "Jordan had the motive, the opportunity, and the rage to do them both. That's what the jury is going to believe."
"Assuming you're right, what kind of deal will Ortiz make? I may not have much, but I've got enough to muddy the waters."
Samantha shook her head. "You don't have that much mud," she said. "I'd bet on pleading guilty to second-degree murder on Gina's case, taking into account Jordan's emotional history and the sympathy the jury might show her when they find out what an asshole her old man is. The jury might blame him for some of this, figuring he drove her to it. She gets fifteen years to life, maybe gets out in ten years."
"What about on Trent's murder?"
"Ortiz will want a guilty plea on that one too. He'll probably agree to the same sentence, let them run concurrently. Maybe make her serve the minimum of fifteen years. Two brutal murders a week apart is a lot to overlook."
Mason reached back across the table, patting her hand for an instant. He knew she was right. It was time to make a deal. "Thanks, Sam," he told her. "For everything. I mean it."
"Hey, listen," she said. "All in a day's work. See you in court, Counselor."
Chapter 31
Mason met with Jordan the next afternoon. She was anxious to see him, giving him a bear hug when the guard ushered her into the cramped, windowless room where Mason waited.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" she said, letting him go.
"I've been pretty busy working on your case," he answered. "Besides, the guards tell me you've had company."
"Yeah, Abby has been here a couple of times. I still haven't figured out how she got involved in all of this, but I'm glad she did."
"Blame it on me," Mason said, dodging the question. "Are they treating you okay in here?"
Jordan walked around the perimeter of the room, extending her arms like yardsticks, measuring the space. "You know, this room is actually smaller than my cell. I didn't think anything could be smaller than that. The guards haven't bothered me. One woman came on to me and I thought we were going to have a problem, but she backed off."
"Jordan, tell me about the baby you gave up for adoption," Mason said.
She looked at him, her arms drooping at her sides. "It happened the first time my parents put me at Sanctuary. I was pissed at them and my brother. This guy, he wasn't even cute, I just figured, what the hell, it couldn't be worse than my brother. When I missed my period, I got scared and I wanted to get an abortion. Terry talked me out of it."
"What did your parents say?"
"Don't come home until the baby was gone." Sitting down at the table in the middle of the room, she clasped her hands together, laying them out in front of her, her eyes moistening. "Lou, you've got to get me out of here. I want to find my baby."
Mason knew that people often responded to incarceration the same way they did when a doctor told them they had a terminal illness, grinding through denial, anger, and bargaining until they accepted their new reality. Jordan was twenty-one years old. Fifteen years was almost as long as she'd been alive. Mason didn't know how she could ever accept the reality he was about to give her.
"Jordan, it may be a while before you get out."
Jordan's eyes flickered, light draining from her face like a picture morphing from color to black and white. "What are you saying?"
Mason gathered himself, looking at her, not wanting to tell her, not having a choice, giving it to her straight. "I think we should consider a plea bargain, making a deal with the prosecutor."
"What kind of a deal?" she asked, her voice rising an octave, the veins in her arms beginning to bulge as she clamped her hands more tightly together. "What does that mean? That I plead guilty? I'm not guilty! You don't believe me, do you?" she accused him, jumping out of her chair, knocking it over behind her. "I'm not guilty! I can't stay here. You've got to get me out!"
Jordan planted her palms on the table, leaning over Mason, pushing him back with her demand. Mason rose, circled past her, picked up her chair, and put his arm around her. She wrestled away, Mason holding on, pulling her back.
"It's not that simple, Jordan. It should be. It should only be about guilt or innocence, but it isn't. It's about proof, theirs and ours. It's about what a jury might do. It's about the risk you are taking with your life. I need you to know all these things so you can decide. I'm not going to make you do anything."
She wouldn't bend, keeping her frame rigid, fighting his grip and his words. "If you think I'm guilty, what chance do I have?"
Mason patted her on the back. "I don't think you're guilty, Jordan, but I'm not on the jury," Mason said, dispensing the standard lawyer's bromide, not telling her that he wasn't certain of her innocence any longer, but wouldn't let his doubt stand in the way of a vigorous defense.
Mason returned to his seat, Jordan still standing, her head turned to the side, not meeting his gaze. "Your preliminary hearing on Friday will be just like the one last week. The judge will bind you over for trial for Trent's murder. You won't get bail. Your trial on Gina's murder starts in two months. Let me tell you what the jury will hear."
Mason recited the evidence in a flat, neutral monotone, letting his words fall like small hammers on Jordan, beating the resistance out of her until she fell back in her chair, her head on the table, covered by her arms.
"I didn't do it, any of it," she said, her voice muffled with sobs.
Mason said, "You've got two choices. Take your chance with the jury at both trials. If we lose the first case, we can probably make a deal on the second since you'll already be looking at a life term, maybe even the death penalty. If we win the first case, we roll the dice a second time. Your other choice is to make a deal on both cases. I talked to the prosecuting attorney. He'll accept a plea to second-degree murder on both cases with a sentence of fifteen years to life and an agreement that you'll be out in fifteen. You'll only be thirty-six years old. You can still have a life."
Jordan sat up, her face a patchwork of red blotches, her empty eyes a preview of the institutional bleakness of prison. "You really think I should do this, don't you?"
"You're risking the rest of your life and any chance of ever finding your child. The prosecutor may ask for the death penalty. He wants that hanging over your head. You need to think it over and tell me what you want to do."
"When do I have to decide?"
"Friday. The deal is on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, we go to trial. That's the way Ortiz does business. He squeezes as hard as he can."
"I want to talk to Abby first. Will you ask her to come see me?"
"Sure," Mason said. "She'll come tomorrow. I'll see you Friday morning."
Mason called Roy Bowen in St. Louis as soon as he returned to his office. "Roy, it's Lou Mason. Did you find those records?" Mason asked without saying hello.
"Weather here isn't bad for this time of year. We understand you folks got an early frost, probably catch us tonight," Bowen said.