Maddy didn’t have a lawyer so the Court had appointed her a young, caring, legal aid worker. The universal translator in my scythe wasn’t much good when it came to understanding the legalese, though. Near as I could figure, Maddy had strangled someone during a bar brawl. Nice. Classy.
She had chosen to plead self-defense, which the courts called “guilty with an explanation.” Or maybe “guilty with an excuse.” I wasn’t paying that much attention. It’s not like I wanted her set free. Unlike Conrad, Maddy was granted bail—a huge sum she had no hope of raising.
Perhaps this wasn’t Maddy’s first time through the court system, because she seemed blasé about the entire proceeding, even when the legal aid worker argued that Conrad had been treated with favoritism. The judge begrudgingly agreed to piggyback Maddy’s preliminary hearing onto Conrad’s. That is, if Conrad’s finished up with time to spare, they’d allow Maddy the leftover time.
Then it was time for the next contestant, I mean, accused. Judge Wilson ran her courtroom with cool efficiency. I just hoped that worked in Shannon’s favor.
I rejoined my posse as we left the building. The reporters swarmed us again on the way out. This time Theresa and the other guard refused to stop, leaving Gill Hammerhead the job of declaring Shannon’s innocence to the world.
Speaking of poor Shannon, she had barely said a word all day. She looked faint. I don’t mean she looked like she might faint, but rather she looked like she was fading away. I decided to ask Dante about it but before I could approach him, he approached me.
Pulling me into one corner of the van, he spoke in low tones. He might as well not have bothered since Shannon was the only one who could hear us and had she wanted to, she could probably hear us even when we whispered. It wasn’t a large van.
He leaned in close, meeting my gaze. His big, soulful eyes melted my crankiness into a little green puddle that stank of jealousy and insecurity.
“Kirsty, I am sorry that I have hurt your feelings. I do not like it when we fight. I want very much to make up with you.”
My insides tingled as I thought about how we usually made up. It might be fun to see what we could do with these semicorporeal bodies here on the Mortal Coil. I glanced around, but the van was really not conducive to makeup sex. “It’s okay, Dante. I just need you to be more supportive. I’m paying the price of having used your scythe to reap Conrad back in my hospital room. I’m going to make it right. But you have to believe that Conrad attacked me. It wasn’t self-defense like he said in his version of events.”
Dante placed a hand on my cheek, his sad, brown eyes meeting mine. “I do believe you, Kirsty. I believe that you remember the events leading up to your final demise to have occurred as you’d described them.”
“What? You believe that I believe? If that is supposed to make me feel better, it fails epically. I need you to believe me. Not that evil jerk who bashed my brains in.” Or his whiny daughter, I added mentally.
I’d wanted so much to see my best friend again, but now that I had, I had to admit Shannon was getting on my nerves. Not only was she playing up to my boyfriend, but she wouldn’t stop tearing up. At one point she cried so hard she tripped over her own feet.
Honey, you should look before you weep.
I knew I wasn’t being fair to Shannon. And maybe not to Dante, either. I hadn’t told Shannon Dante was off the market, but he should have. Or maybe he was just following my lead. I had introduced him as my colleague.
I tried to look at it from his point of view but I didn’t like what I saw so I tried another tack.
“Look, Dante. I understand that Conrad’s sequence of events is logical, but it’s just not true. You need to take my word for it. That’s what boyfriends do.”
“But I’m not here as your boyfriend, Kirsty. I’m here in my official capacity of Reaper First Class. I must not allow our relationship to color my judgment. I must treat you the same as I’d treat any case I was assigned.”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s look at this from Conrad’s point of view. Maybe he didn’t realize how weak I was when I stumbled across the room toward him. He had already been panicked about losing his Deal and his life. Plus he was busy trying to force his daughter to sign the amendment. How had I looked to him, coming at him, arms outstretched? Dead gal walking.”
Dante didn’t look convinced. I rushed on before he could interrupt me with more nonsense about ethics and morals.
“I fell toward him, he could have seen it as a tackle. I couldn’t have hurt him, though. All he had to do was take a giant step backward out of my range and I would have face-planted harmlessly at his feet. Well, harmless to him.”
Oh, look. Here I was making excuses for my rat-bastard, skegging ex-boss. Again. I shook myself like a wet dog coming out of a dirty, murky swamp covered in filth.
“No, Dante. I know what happened. I was there. It doesn’t matter what Conrad believed. Or what Shannon thinks she saw, because the end of the story—the end of my story—is that he brutally bashed my brains in with office supplies.”
Office supplies! What a crappy, ignoble ending.
If I hadn’t already been murdered, I would have died of embarrassment.
I turned my back and stormed away, although given we were still in the transport van, I didn’t storm very far.
Chapter 10
If Words Could Kill, I’d Sentence You to Death
ONCE BACK IN prison, Theresa and her coworker escorted Shannon and Maddy back to their cell. This time they were given orange jumpsuits and some other basics. Maddy settled in for the duration, but Conrad fussed about. Anytime a guard passed his cell, he demanded to be heard, to be released, to be given a cell phone.
Gill Hammerhead arrived shortly thereafter. His assistant, he told Conrad, would join them soon bearing a fresh suit for the hearing, along with other necessities. She’d been held up by Security checking the deodorant and hairbrush for illicit substances and possibly very small firearms.
Theresa appeared and led Conrad and Gill to a private meeting room. We shades-in-waiting trooped along like Conrad was the Pied Piper and we were the town rats instead of the other way ’round.
“I’ll be right outside if you need me,” Theresa offered helpfully.
Both men ignored her. She closed the door after herself, giving them privacy, but she kept an eye on them through a big shatterproof window. I stood beside her for a moment, enjoying how the thick safety glass distorted Hammerhead’s smarmy features.
Then I joined Dante and Shannon inside the room so we could listen in on Conrad and Hammerhead’s plans.
Conrad acted nonchalant, cocky even. He barely paid attention to Gill’s advice and counsel.
“Why is he so overconfident?” Dante asked Shannon.
Like she’d know.
It seemed a fair question, though. I already knew Conrad’s story; I’d heard it often enough. And I knew what the evidence would reveal. That left only the preliminary interviews. Was he counting on one of the witnesses’ testimony to exonerate Shannon?
What would Detective Leo say? The day of my death, the hospital staff had arrived to find me clubbed to death, Conrad dead and Shannon standing over the bodies with the stapler in her hand. That was pretty incriminating to start with.
Now Conrad, posing as Shannon, would say that he’d brained me to protect his daughter and then died. Then Shannon had picked up the murder weapon. That explained her fingerprints on the stapler. Now that I considered it, the only difference between what had actually happened and what Conrad was now saying happened was the intent—that Conrad claimed I’d attacked Shannon while I knew I’d only wanted him to kill me so I could reap him. I’d sacrificed the life I’d worked so hard to get back to save Shannon and here was everybody acting like I was the guilty skegger.