Chapter 2: Chapter 1
"You missed court! The judge chewed Kate out for being unprepared. She ain't happy, and let me tell you, neither am I." Scott Buchanan let fly before the door to his office, which Linda Grant was, at his direction, closing behind her, was even all the way shut. Knowing she was at fault, Linda still winced inwardly at the idea that their colleagues, because he was the boss could hear every word.
"I had car trouble." She should have been apologizing abjectly, she knew. She would have been, if her boss had been anyone other than him. Stomach tight, she stopped in the center if the spacious corner office to meet his gaze.
"Bullshit." He stood behind his battered metal desk, no expensive mahogany for this district attorney, the blue-collar man's friend! glaring at her out of the light blue eyes that were, on this Tuesday morning, slightly bloodshot, as though he'd tied one on the night before or, more probably, though she hated to admit it, been working until the wee hours. His short, thick tobacco brown hair looked as if he'd recently run his hands through it from sheer aggravation. His thick brows beetled over his meaty nose. His square jaw looked ever more belligerent than usual. He had his suit coat off, it was dropped over the back of his chair, and the contrast between his white dress shirt and pale blue tie and the tanned skin of his face and neck was marked. He was a white shouldered, muscular man of thirty-three who looked like what he was, the son of a no-account, chronically unemployed sometime mechanic, who'd done physical labor all his life until he'd managed to claw his way through law school.
"It's the truth."
His face tightened. "Come here."
From the way he was looking at her she knew he meant it, so she complied, holding her head high as his eyes ran derisively over her, aware that her cool elegance in the face of his wrath and the already sultry late June heat was maddening to him and taking a small degree of pleasure in the fact that this was so. At age twenty-seven, she'd been told often enough that she was beautiful to have a healthy sense of her own attractiveness, and she was perfectly sure he was aware of it too. Her face was oval and fine-featured. Her eyes were large and caramel brown, with a slight tilt to them. Her complexion had a naturally tawny tint which meant she only rarely had to resort to fake tans, and her hair, currently twisted into a chignon at her nape, was long, thick, and black. Her black linen pant suit looked as though it had cost the earth, and never mind that it was two years old. It fit her tall, willowy form like it had been tailored to it, which it had. The sleeveless white shell beneath was silk. Wearing her expensive louboutin heels, unmistakable because of their red soles, she still lacked a few inches of reaching his height which was a six-foot-one, but not many, which she devoutly hoped he found maddening too.
"Look out that window." As she reaches him, he slid a hand around her arm just above her elbow, pulled her a few inches to her right, and yanked the cord of the dusty mini blinds that covered the big window behind his desk. The blinds shot up with a rattle. Blinking at the sudden onslaught of sunlight, Linda found herself looking out on busy main street, the building's front entrance, and the nearly full parking lot. "That's what I was doing about, oh, let's say ten minutes ago, because I got a call from Kate saying you hadn't shown up for court and I was checking to see if your car was out there in the parking lot. Know what I saw instead?"
It was a rhetorical question, and Linda knew the answer even before he told her. Knowing he was looking at her, she had to suppress the urge to grimace.
"Lover boy in his black Porsche, dropping pampered princess off at the door. Oh, and let's not forget the five-minute-long good-bye smooch. Pretty steamy, especially when you're a fricking hour and thirty minutes late. What, did the morning quickie run long?"
He let go of her arm. Head high, she moved away from him, walking back around his unbelievably messy desk to stand facing him across it.
"Go to hell." Her voice was perfectly pleasant.
"You're fucking fired." His wasn't.
"I'm sorry, okay? My car really did break down." She desperately needed the job, or she wouldn't have said it. "I had to call Davis" the man she was currently dating, Davis Peyton, aka Lover boy "to come pick me up."
"How about calling in to the office at the same time? Just to say, oh, I don't know, you might be running late." His voice dripped sarcasm.
In point of fact, she had called in and spoken to one of her fellow research assistants, Sarah Jantzen, who had promised to grab the needed material from her desk and hurry over to the courtroom twelve to cover for her. She wondered what had happened to Sarah. Something clearly had.
Whatever, there was no way she was getting Sarah in trouble on her behalf.
"I'm sorry," she said again.
Scott snorted. "You missed court. We don't do that here in the DA's office. That's a big no-no with us." He said it as if he was talking to a slightly stupid two-year-old. "Judges don't like it when we look unprepared. I don't like it. It's unprofessional. You ever heard that word before?"
God, she hated to grovel to him. "It won't happen again."
He gave her a level look, and she knew she was safe. From being fired at least. Well, she hadn't really thought he meant it.
"It better not. You probably don't know it, having just come down from Mount Vernon like you have, but this here is called a job because we work. From eight a.m on the dot until whatever time the work is finished. Pretty much six days a week. No excuses accepted. Got that?"
"Yes."
"We have to have this talk again, and you'll be out on your ass before the first little wheedling apology gets all the way out of your mouth. Am I making myself clear?"
It was all she could do not to shoot him the bird and turn on her heel. "Yes."
"Great." The phone on his desk began to ring. He picked it up, said, "Yeah. On my way," into it, and hung up again, all without taking his eyes off her. "I don't have the time or patience to follow you around to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing when you're supposed to be doing it, and I can't spare anyone to babysit you either. Until further notice, you're down in the basement sorting through the cold cases. When you get down there, you can send Gemmel up here to take your place. She at least has some kind of work ethic."
That stung. "Scott...."
He was already shrugging into his light gray jacket and coming around his desk, heading for the door. Since everyone in the office called one another by their last names, that slip of the tongue had his eyes colliding with hers and holding them for a pregnant instant.
"Baby, you're that close" he pinched together his thumb and forefinger so that there was maybe half an inch of air between them. "to being out of a job, so I'd watch myself if I were you. I didn't want to hire you in the first place. The only reason I did was because of your mom."
The thought of mentioning that she probably liked being called a baby, especially at work, even less than he enjoyed hearing her say Scott occurred, only to be dismissed. To begin with, the first time he'd called her that had been roughly a dozen years ago, so despite the fact that he was a male DA speaking to a newly hired female attorney currently working for him as a research assistant, it wasn't as demeaning as it might seem. Second, ticking him off any more probably wasn't something she wanted to do right now. No, correction, something she should do. Because she wanted to. She definitely wanted to.
"She loves you too." As annoying as it was to admit, it was the truth. Her beautiful, kindhearted, gentle-souled mother, the owner of Greystone Springs, the storied, thousand-acre horse farm she had inherited from her wealthy parents, had taken interest in the young son of a loser neighbor from the time he'd first started doing odd jobs for them for a couple of dollars when he was about twelve years old. From that time on, as he grew up, he had pretty much spent his summers and after-school hours working on their farm. Karen Grant had invited him into the kitchen to eat (the meals were prepared by Morgan, the cook, but a teenage farm worker wouldn't even have been allowed inside the house without Miss Karen's permission) and seen to it that there was always work for him when he came looking for it, and had done countless other things on his behalf, most of which Linda knew nothing about but suspected including making calls that got him the scholarship money he'd needed to swing college and beyond. That was why a month before, when the prestigious law firm she worked for had gone belly-up in the bad economy and there had been no other jobs in the area to be had, she had swallowed her pride and come to him, the hunky former farm hand made good that she and her girlfriends from Lexington, Kentucky, had once upon a long time ago wiled away many a summer afternoon ogling and teasing as he went about his chores. He hadn't exactly been gracious, but he'd given her a job. As a research assistant, at just a little more than half her previous pay. It was, he'd said, the only position available. Take it or leave it.
She'd taken it. And she'd been doing a damned good job at it too. The material that had been needed in court this morning, background information on the defendant, priors, forensic results, the impact statement on the victim, had been compiled in plenty of time, ready and waiting in a file on her desk for her to take with her to court.
Only fate in the form of the six-year old Jaguar's transmission had intervened, and she'd been stuck by the side of a narrow, leafy country lane in Woodford County until first the tow truck and then Davis had arrived.
"I've been meaning to get out there to see her. How's she doing?"he asked as he walked past her.
"About the same. She doesn't complain."
"No, she wouldn't. She's a fine lady. Shame you took after your dad, isn't it?"
Reaching for the door, he opened it, then held it with ironic courtesy for her to precede him through it. Seething at the low blow, her parents were divorced, and her relationship with her federal judge father was frosty at best, she barely managed not to stalk past him and out into the room where his administrative assistant, Diane Adams, sat at her desk. Silver-haired, plump, and good natured, a twenty year veteran of the prosecutor's office, Diane instantly averted her eyes, pretending to be busy doing something on the computer.
"Hey," Scott greeted two deputy DAs, Carter Practchett and Sandier Elly, who were waiting for him. Beyond them, in the big room with the cubicles, where a host of associates labored and her own desk was located, there was a collective rush as a dozen chairs rolled out of the aisle where they had been, Linda was sure, congregated as those who occupied them watched the closed door and speculated on what was going on behind it, to disappear back into their assigned spaces. Everyone knew she'd been the DA's morning whipping boy, of course, and they were dying to see how she'd taken it. But nobody wanted to be caught looking, or gossiping, by the boss.
"Chandra in Homicide sent word that Garlin is ready to confess." Elly was breathless with excitement. An attractive, fortyish brunette, she was wearing a pale green summery skirt suit and carrying a brief case. Garlin, Linda knew, was the crack-addled suspect who'd been taken into custody the day before, charged with murdering his own grandmother with a hammer when she wouldn't give him any money for dope. The whole office was taking an interest in that one, herself included.
"Let's go." Joining them, Scott strode away without a backward glance. Diane dared to look up then, and gave Linda a commiserating look.
"You okay? Whatever he said, don't take it personal. He's been in a really bad mood lately.". The fact that Diane was almost whispering in volumes, in Linda's opinion.
"I'm fine."
"A little shaky" would have been a truer answer, but she wasn't about to let it show. Returning Diane's sympathetic smile with a quick resolute one of her own, Linda headed for the ladies' room to give them time to get clear. The last thing she wanted to do right now was ride down in the elevator with Scott Buchanan.
It proved to be a mistake. Instead of riding in the elevator with Scott, she was standing there in front of the elevator bank when a car going up arrived and opened to disgorge, along with half a dozen others, Kate and Sarah. Assistant DA Amandla Kate, a hard charging, pretty platinum blonde of maybe thirty who was wearing a sleeveless navy dress and carrying her jacket along with her briefcase and purse, looked tense. Research assistant Sarah, an equally pretty but much softer sandy blonde just a couple of years out of college, who was clad in bright print skirt and pink tee, looked miserable. Both of them spotted Linda at the same time.
Sarah's eyes widened. Kate's narrowed.
"Oversleep, Grant?" Kate glared at her. "I guess eight a.m is a little early."
"I'm sorry." Linda knew the apology was owed, and Kate's annoyance was justified. It didn't make her feel any better about it. Her stomach was still tight from her meeting with Scott, and this was just rubbing salt in the wound. "My car broke down."
"Tell it to Buchanan."
With that, she swept on by. Trying not to let her chagrin show on her face, Linda cast a questioning look at Sarah.
"As soon as you called, I rushed the folder over there just as fast as I could." Sarah spoke in a hurried hushed voice. "I got here maybe ten minutes after court started. She wouldn't take it! Said she'd already told the judge she was unprepared. If you ask me, I think she was just being as difficult as possible to get you in trouble. She is such a bitch."
"You've got to be kidding me." Linda looked after Kate. She'd thought before that the other woman didn't like her, but this was the first overt indication that she was right. Laying the whole sequence of events out before Scott in an attempt to point out that she was not the only one at fault here instantly occured to her, only to be quickly dismissed. It might get Kate yelled at, but it wouldn't make her any friends, or even change Scott's feelings about the screw-up, which was in the final analysis still her fault. Besides, she wasn't one to carry tales out of school. Her attention shifted back to Sarah. "Thanks for trying, anyway. I owe you."
An elevator pinged. This one, she saw at a glance, was heading down.
"No problem." Sarah smiled at her. The doors opened, revealing a couple of people already inside. Sarah looked a little puzzled as Linda moved to join them. "Where are you going?"
"The basement. To sort through the cold-case files." Having stepped into the elevator, Linda turned and made a wry face at Sarah.
"Oh my God, he's sending you to Siberia!" She gave a nervous giggle. "He does that when he's really...."
Whatever Sarah had to say was lost as the elevator door closed and Lisa was carried ten floors below to the basement, where in one of the rooms, boxes of old files waited to be sorted through. Originally housed in the basement of the venerable county courthouse, the files had been transferred when the prosecutor's office, had moved into this building, which was new. Instead of just putting them in storage and forgetting about them, which, among the staff, was felt to be pretty much the consensus of the best thing to do, the files were being reread, checked for any forensic evidence that had been collected at the time for which tests that had not been available then were now available, quickly evaluated to see if anything in them seemed in any way to be linked to any case the county was currently working in, and entered into the computer system for possible future reference.
It was a thankless, seemingly endless job that nobody wanted to do.
The basement was a windowless warren of storage rooms that seemed airless and already felt a little dank, despite the building being new. The lighting was of the overhead fluorescent variety, and dim. The walls were yellow, the floor, a shiny, hard gray. Realizing that she was still on the edge from her recent unpleasant encounters, Linda took a deep breath as she reached the room where the files were stored, then opened the door. When she did, the musty smell of decades old paper made her nose wrinkle. Brown cardboard boxes were stacked everywhere, rising almost to the ceiling against the walls, piled layers deep so that the only clear space in the room was a path leading from the door to an area around a table near the far wall.
At the sound of the opening door, both Allen Rinks and Tursler Gemmel looked up in surprise. In his early twenties, pale and plump, with short frizzy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, wearing rumpled khakis and a short sleeved white shirt and red tie, Rinks was a rising 2L spending the summer before his second year search assistant, Gemmel was maybe thirty two, tall and wiry, with shoulder length black hair and a predilection for the color red, which she was wearing today in the form of of short-sleeved blouse with a pair of black pants. In the brief time Linda had been in the prosecutor's office, she'd developed a liking for Gemmel, who'd done her best to try to make her newcomer feel at home.
"Yo, Grant. What are you doing down here?" Rinks asked. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with an open box next to him and manila folders piled in his lap. The top folder was open.
"I've been banished." Closing the door behind her, Linda made a comical face as she advanced toward the table where Gemmel sat behind a computer. With Rinks on the floor to her right and a stack of folders on the table beside her, Gemmel clearly had the job of entering the information into the system after Rinks had first gone through the files.
Gemmel grinned at her. "What'd you do to get on the black list?"
"Was Kate, among other things. I'm sure you'll hear all about it." She motioned for Gemmel to rise. "I'm supposed to take your place."
"Restored to the land of the living at last!" Gemmel stood up with alacrity. "I've been down here for a week. I was beginning to think nobody else was ever going to screw up."
"Yeah, well, that would be me." Linda took Gemmel's vacated seat, looked at the screen in front of her, glanced at the open file from which information was obviously being transferred, and stifled a sigh. "What do I do?"
"You don't have to type in everything." Gemmel stood beside her while they both looked at the screen. "Just fill out a form for each file, and give each file a number. Once you do that, you can just scan the rest of the documents in. If anything jumps out at you, you know, something like available DNA that we can do something with, set that file aside. Actually, Rinks is supposed to look out for that. You're just backup, in case he misses something."
Linda looked at the stack of manila folders beside the computer. "After the information's entered, what do we do with the files?"
"It depends. Tell her, Rinks."
"Most of them, the ones we can't do anything with, they go back in the boxes," Rinks said. "Stuff that is still relevant, like a **** case or a murder case where we got DNA to test, goes in this green tub." He jerked his thumb toward a green plastic tub with a few files in it that sat near the table. "Urgent stuff, like a prior on somebody currently in the can, we're supposed to call up to which prosecutor can use it. We've had only one of those since I've been here. Orders are not to destroy anything, or let anything leave this room without permission from above."
"Not God, Buchanan," Gemmel clarified.
"You're impressing me Rinks," Linda told him.
"Hey, I've been down here for weeks, so I know this stuff cold."
"That reminds me." Gemmel reached around Linda for a file that had obviously been set aside at the far edge of the table, plopped it down where Linda could see it, and flipped it open. "I was gonna call you to come down here and take a look at this anyway. What do you think of it?"
Linda obediently looked. She frowned at what she saw. Secured with yellowing scotch tape to the inside folder of a grungy manila folder was a Polaroid snapshot of what appeared to be a family, a young couple, two small children, and a dog. They sat close together on the front steps of a nondescript one-story ranch house, with the adults on the top step and the children, a boy and a girl, maybe six and four years old, respectively on the bottom. The boy had his arm draped around a big black dog that sat beside him. The date October 2, 1982, was scrawled in fading ink on the white strip at the bottom of the snapshot.
There was darkness to the picture, a sense of ineffable sadness of the type that often clings to images of people and things long past. Or maybe she just felt that way because, if the picture was taped to manila folder stored in the prosecutor's office, clearly something bad had happened to somebody in it. But it was not that which made Linda's eyes sharpen, or cause her to suddenly lean closer.
It was the woman, the mother that caught her eye.
Clad in jeans and an oversize white sweater, she faced the camera unsmiling, her long, thick black hair blowing a little in what was obviously a breeze, her arms wrapped around her knees.
Linda's first shocked thought was that she was looking at a picture of herself, as she was right now, taken, impossibly, almost thirty years in the past. Before she had been born, in fact.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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