"So what am I supposed to do?"
Gina drew a breath and held it for a minute. "You're supposed to come in with me, Stuart."
He glared at her defiantly. "I can't do that."
"You have to," she said. "There's no alternative, if you don't want to be taken by force when they find you, which they will. And then, if you don't actually get shot when they come to arrest you-which is not impossible-then you start off not only as a murder suspect, but as an armed fugitive, in which case you're in twice as deep shit as you are now."
Stuart stood unmoving. "I know there's something going on with the socket."
"Ya-fucking-hoo," Gina said. "I'm sure you're right. And there's also something going on with Bob McAfee. Wyatt had a long talk with him today, and his alibi isn't as strong as Juhle would like to have us believe."
"Then why have they decided to arrest me?"
She stared at him. "Are you kidding me, Stuart? Nobody's that naive. Not even you."
"What?"
"You send your daughter to talk to a critical prosecution witness. She conveys the message that her testimony is inconvenient. What does that look like to you? You're lucky Kym's not in jail herself right now for witness intimidation." Her client's unyielding and uncomprehending expression pushed her into a rage. "Goddammit to hell, Stuart! They think you're dangerous. Get it? Dangerous. Killer on the loose. Armed. Threatening witnesses" Gina shook her head. "What the hell is the matter with you? Do you understand that the first cop that sees you will be ready to shoot you dead?"
"But that's not… I mean, none of that is…"
They could go around like this forever. Gina reined in her anger, controlled her tone. She had to close the deal. "Look, Stuart. The good news is that we can get a hearing in ten days, and if they don't have their evidence by then, the judge might not hold you to answer at trial."
"Might not." Stuart held out his hands, pleading with her. "I don't get it. Even if they really think it was me, why would they go ahead if they've got no way to prove it? Why wouldn't they wait?"
She shrugged that off. "You want more? Beyond all of the above? Okay, you're a name. Your wife was important. When important people get killed, the public wants to see somebody charged, and if nobody is, the DA comes under fire. So Gerry Abrams is protecting the reputation of his boss. And at the same time, if Abrams convicts you, he makes his name."
"So it's just politics? Stupid city politics?"
"Politics. Ambition. Bad luck. You name it. But whatever it is, these are the cards we got dealt, and the only choice is to play them. I'm sorry, Stuart, but there it is. That's why I came down here tonight. There's no other option. The alternative-you hiding out this way-only puts off the inevitable. And you have to believe me, it would be much, much worse."
"I could leave the country."
"You could," Gina agreed. "Never see your daughter again, live with the constant fear of extradition, have everybody in the world believe you killed Caryn. Then your passport expires. What do you do then? You want to do that?"
Stuart closed his eyes; his body sagged. Finally, he looked over at her. "I don't know if I can do jail, Gina. The idea of being with those guys scares the shit out of me."
"I know. I don't blame you. But there's a separate section in the jail, outside of the general population, called Administrative
Segregation, Adseg for short. It's where they keep at-risk prisoners. After you surrender, I'll try to make sure that that's where you wind up."
"Surrender?"
"Just a word, Stuart. Just a word."
"Shit."
"I couldn't agree more."
Twenty-two
Gina parked her Jetta in her space under her building and, making sure that the garage door had closed behind her, took the inside stairs to the back door of her condo. Walking up the short hall, turning lights on all the way, she went directly to her kitchen and opened the freezer section of her refrigerator, where she had a stash of commercially frozen dinners as well as several labeled plastic containers of her own preparations.
The largest of these was a deep, square Tupperware holder with a piece of tape on the side that read lasagna/sausage and she pulled that out, took off the cover, re-covered the dish with a paper towel and stuck it in the microwave, setting the timer for ten minutes. She walked over to the bar area and flicked on the radio which, since David, she'd kept tuned to classical.
To the strains of a flute and guitar performance, she went to her bedroom, took off her clothes and got into a hot shower. Gina considered herself a no-nonsense person, and never more so than when she showered. In five minutes, she was clean and dry again except for
her hair, which she toweled for half a minute, then combed out damp. From her dresser, she grabbed an old comfortable pair of blue jeans and one of David's white button-down dress shirts, washed over the years now to a frayed near-translucence, soft as silk.
Back in the kitchen nook, barefoot, she opened one of the straw bottles of Chianti that she'd bought at Cost Plus a month before, and poured herself a glass. She laid out a regular setting, complete with placemat, cloth napkin, fork, knife, pepper and salt, Tabasco and Parmesan cheese on the small table by the front window, and had just finished watering her early blooming Christmas cactus in its tiny pot on the same table when the microwave beeped.
She brought the steaming lasagna over to her place. It wouldn't be cool enough to eat for a few more minutes, but Gina sat down anyway, picked up her wineglass, took a healthy drink from it. The guitar and flute on the radio had given way to chamber music, perhaps a Mozart concerto. She sat back, let out a long, deep breath and took another sip of Chianti, smaller this time, and started going over the events of the last couple of hours in her mind.
She'd finally convinced Stuart that he had no choice, that he had to give himself up. In his presence at the motel, she'd called Juhle on his cell phone and told him that she was ready to surrender her client. How about tomorrow, say 10:00 a.m.?
She also wanted to make clear to the inspector that Stuart was not now and had never been armed. He'd simply taken some money from his safe for random expenses and had to take out the box of ammunition to get at it; then in his haste to get out on the road he'd forgotten to put it back. He'd snuck out the back way to avoid reporters, not to evade capture. Aside from those small lies, she'd basically told Juhle the truth of what Stuart had been doing all day-talking to people who might know something he didn't about Caryn. He hadn't been running from the police and from his arrest; he hadn't even heard about the warrant. They'd be at the Hall of Justice at ten o'clock sharp the next morning.
The lasagna-one of her specialties-was cool enough to eat. She took a bite, closing her eyes and savoring it, glad she'd made it with the hot Italian sausage rather than the mild, the sauce from the vine-ripe fresh tomatoes she'd picked up last month at the Ferry Building.
All in all, she thought, the night had been a success, a definite win for the home team, although Stuart wasn't quite seeing it in that light yet. But Gina had no doubts that getting him into custody, especially given the weakness of the case against him, was by far the best course of action he could take, albeit still one fraught with risk. Indeed, though, it was the only one that made any real sense.
More than that, in making the argument to him, in dealing with his very real and legitimate concerns, in the intensity she had to draw upon to prevail, she recognized a flame of passion in herself for the law and for her work that had lain as a near-dead ember for the better part of three years. That had been part of the general malaise and shutdown she'd experienced after David's death. But if nothing else, tonight had validated her return to her vocation in an immediate and gratifying way.